The Office Was Not Terrible This Week

Not a perfect episode by any means, but pretty good and even great compared the average of this season. The other NBC shows were pretty good tonight too.

Me No Understand.

I don't get why Modern Family is so wildly popular with critics. Don't get me wrong, it is kinda funny and the idea of a sitcom about an extended multicultural family is a good one, but there are a lot of other shows that I find much funnier. Honestly even The Middle, despite being a ripoff of Malcolm in the Middle makes me laugh more than this show. Hmmm....maybe the problem is the show is too syrupy for my taste? Every episode seems to end with everybody hugging and I really do prefer my tv families to be very dysfunctional (think Arrested Development).

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This week's episode was not a dinosaur taking a shit. It was a hideous, smelly, criminally insane, homeless man taking a dump, while you lie bloody and broken on a urine soaked street watching. My god, a fucking clip show! The Office, which used to be the least formulaic and cliche of sitcoms has come to this. Parks and Recreations looks like Seinfeld compared to this Shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rickey Gervais had the Right Idea.

I saw an add for the upcoming episode of The Office. Ugh...an add is obviously not enough to pronounce an episode terrible, but going by the recent batch of Office episodes I'm not too optimistic. This season of The Office has so far been quite disappointing and really shows that Gervais was smart to quit while he was ahead with the original show. He made just enough episodes to get you invested in his show, and then he ended the story leaving you wanting more. The current season of The Office leaves me wishing they wrapped up the show during season Four. So what is wrong with the show?

*The Story arcs: A general bane of sitcoms is becoming a show about romantic relationships. The Office has become too shipy. Jim and Pam as husband and wife are not interesting enough characters to anchor the show around. The actors (at least Fisher) also lack the acting chops for their expanded roles. You could tell that Jenna Fisher was struggling to act angry in the episodes where Michael was dating her mom. Also how many times can the jobs of everybody at The Office be threatened by some big corporate doings without anybody at Scranton actually losing their jobs before it becomes a cliche?

*Nobody ever leaves the fucking Office for good: Of the secondary characters that were established in the first and second seasons, only Roy and that Devon guy have been fired for good and I'm not even sure If Devon counts since I had to actually to go on Wikipedia to look up his name.

* Secondary Characters: Another problem is that there are too many secondary characters that are not being used properly, if at all. This may be related to the previous point about there not being enough turnover. Perhaps some of these characters have run their course and should be replaced? Its also possible that Michael, Pam, Jim and Dwight are just crowding out most of the other characters.

*Too Many Episodes seem Written More for the Cast Than the Audience: I think Dennis Miller once quipped that if a movie was judged by how much fun the cast had making it than Cannonball Run II is the best movie of all time. Whether its the nonsensical dance party at the end of the wedding episode, the talking in southern accents episode, or that god awful disco episode from last season, it seems like many episodes are being written more to entertain the cast than the people who actually watch the show. Whats next, an episode where they all take a trip to Marine Land?

*Dwight Shrute: His character used to be genuinely funny just a Gareth was on the original. Now his character is way too cartoonish (remember, the premise of this show that it is a documentary-i e somewhat realistic). Andy is also annoying for similar reasons.

Oh what's that you say? The Office is still better than the other crap on tv? Well maybe, but watching it is kind of like watching a dinosaur take a dump. It may be more entertaining than other craps you've seen, but it is still crap.

While on the Subject of Fox...

Siskoid really likes Fox's new action series Human Target. I agree. This is easily the most entertaining pilot I have seen in while. If you like Bond movies or shows like Burn Notice you should love this. Let's just hope they can maintain the quality past the pilot.

Bad Idea BEEB, Bad Idea.

I have a confession to make. Even though, I have mostly enjoyed the new Doctor Who, I have not seen an episode of Torchwood. With that said, doing a US version on FOX is really bad idea (especially if it is done instead of the BBC version as Rob seems to believe). Fox has a miserable history with sci-fi series. Even if they are not sabotaged from the beginning(Firefly, Virtuality) they always fail to attract the ratings that Fox wants and wind up getting canceled after one or two seasons (Sarah Conner, Dollhouse). I think the last sci-fi show to go for more than two seasons on Fox was either Sliders or Millennium (unless you count Futurama, yet another mistreated series) and the only one that ever was really successful was The X-Files.

Then of course there is the Doctor Who connection. Doctor Who is a very British thing and is an acquired taste when it comes to Americans. The show has never been particularly popular-relegated to PBS or Cable. Oh and their open to doing an Americanized version of Doctor Who itself. I'm sure that will work just as well as last time.

Perhaps Conan Should Do Something Else?

I stand by my earlier comments. If Fox won't take him than he can probably find a cable channel that will give him a talk show for the right price. Thing is though, there are a lot of late night talk shows these days. Six just counting what runs on network tv every weeknight.

As far as I know SNL is the only first run sketch comedy show on American tv right now. That is pretty sad, especially considering how weak SNL has been for the last ten years or so. As much as I liked his old late night show, the gossip coming out of Conan's negotiations with NBC indicate that NBC will retain the rights to all the characters and comedy bits from Late Night and The Tonight Show. Well, if Conan has to start anew, then perhaps he should look to Dave Chapel for inspiration as opposed to Johny Carson?

ABC and CBS may be interested in competing with SNL. HBO, Showtime, and the other usual suspects might be interested in a sketch comedy show from Conan as well. What say you Coco?

More on the Simpsons

In light of my previous post on the Simpsons, I thought I would give a breakdown of what I think about the changes the show has undergone over the previous twenty years.

Prehistoric Age: 1987-1989: This era covers the shorts that aired on the Tracey Ulman Show. These shorts, while charming and funny in their own crude way give little indication of the brilliant sitcom that was to come. It is during these years that the character designs of the Simpson undergo the most evolution; going from characters that could be mistaken as crude ripoffs of the Simpsons, to the familiar forms that appeared in Simpson's Roasting On an Open Fire.

Golden Age: Christmas Special Through Season Two: The beginning of classic Simpsons, these first three seasons saw the show rise to meteoric popularity that it would never enjoy again. There was also considerable evolution during these three seasons. At the beginning The Simpsons had more in common with the down to earth King of the Hill than more surreal cartoons like South Park and Family Guy. The shows produced during this era are funny and a definite improvement over the shorts, but they are not quite The Simpsons most people know and love.

Silver Age: Season Three Through Season Six: Season three was where the show developed the style it is known for; biting satire, an irreverent attitude towards just about everything and a constant stream of good jokes( and I mean jokes, not just Homer getting hit in the head or Family Guy style pop culture homages with no actual joke). The show also got progressively wackier and more cartoonish during this era, but this worked as long as the show never strained from the formula listed above. Most of the episodes that you would find on any list of the best episodes of The Simpsons would be from these seasons.

Bronze Age: Season Seven Through Nine: These three seasons mark the end of classic Simpsons. Season seven, though still very entertaining, feels creatively exhausted compared to the previous season. This continues through season nine with a marked decline in the quality of episodes. During these seasons the show continues its trend of becoming more wacky, but without the satire and jokes to make it work. Starting around season 8 a very noticeable trend emerges of episodes opening strong, only for the plot to move in a weird direction and end on an unsatisfying note. There are still some best of list episodes scattered through these seasons, but they are comparatively scarce during the bronze age.

Dark Age: Season Ten to the Present: The Dark Age is the age of what the fine folks over at Dead Homers Society refer to as "Zombie Simpsons". The term is appropriate as by this point the show is only The Simpsons in the most superficial sense. Few if any of these episodes meet the quality of average episodes from pre-bronze age simpsons and in general you will few episodes from these seasons on best of lists. The show continues to evolve, but not in the sense that it becomes better. Today The Simpsons feels like a neutered imitation of the original. The characters look like The Simpsons, but they lack the qualities that made them famous in the first place.

The Magical World of Cats

I don't normally watch Martha Stewart, but I wound up sitting through a special episode all about cats. Aparently good cat owners are supposed to brush their cats teeth, trim their nails (shouldn't these wear down naturally from play and simply walking around on a daily basis?) feed them special pet vitamins, and sniff their ears for odors that may be sighs of an ear infection. Oh and they had a holistic vet that administers acupuncture to cats as well! And they had plenty of surprisingly sedate kitties that let Martha and friends brush their teeth, trim their claws, and force feed them vitamins! I would love to know where cats like that come from. I have been around cats my whole life and I cannot think of one that would not try to claw me to death if I tried anything that was shown on this strange hour of television. Come to think of it, I would like to know from what planet the pet owners on this show originated from!

20 Years of The Simpsons, 10 Years of Good Episodes

If you've been watching FOX lately than you must have seen the adds for The Simpson's 20th anniversary episode (the twentieth anniversary of the first episode was actually in December, but whatever). Well I tuned into the Simpson's for the first time in a long while out of curiosity. I got 15-20 minutes into the show before I was compelled by boredom to change the channel to ESPN. I get the same feeling watching newer episodes of The Simpsons that I get whenever I see some attempt to revive Loony Tunes or any other classic cartoon. They almost always come off as pale imitations of the original classics. This what The Simpsons feels like now. Some of the jokes are funny, but the plots are not up to the high standards of the 90s, the characterization is off, and the voices are no longer right thanks to the aging of the voice actors. Oh well, at least all the classic episodes from the 90s are readily available on DVD (which is a godsend because you can't count on syndicated reruns with all those 21st century Simpsons episodes in the mix) .