SemiReview: Men of a Certain Age

Just now I turned on the TV and caught the last 5 minutes of the second episode of "Men of a Certain Age" and I think I'm in love. To be fair it was only 5 minutes, but it went straight for the heart. It was funny, sweet, sad and sincere. The three main actors (Ray Romano, Andre Braugher, and Scott Bakula) have great chemistry and act like friends actually act. 3 old guys living life, drinking beer, and cursing; based on my brief exposure to the show I want to see more.

Arrested Development Clip

There's nothing like a little bit of Arrested Development to brighten your day.

Love/Hate: Watching No Reservations

Love: Watching Anthony Bourdain, or anyone for that matter, eat delicious looking foods from other countries. I love food, a lot. Problem is that I'm not any good at making any, and I'm pretty cheap so I rarely want to go spend money on it. My solution is simple, watch other people eat food on TV. Bourdain goes around the globe and does exactly what I want to see, he goes to the places where great food comes from and eats it. Perfect.
Hate: Bourdain's narration telling me how each of his trips is like an out of body experience and how he constantly considers leaving his cool New York City lifestyle to relax in a small hut somewhere on an Asian island. It happens every freaking time! I get it, travel is cool. Seeing people live differently than you do is crazy, but I'm tired of hearing you yap about the same thing in every episode. Stop talking and EAT SOMETHING.

Top 5: Charlie Kelly

Most of the characters on my top 5 T.V. characters list have been lacking in the intelligence department, but this one takes the cake. Charlie Kelly is dumb. He's dirty. He's addicted to inhalants. He lives in poverty. He can't read or write. But he's one of the most brilliant characters on television.

Charlie is one of the main character's on FX's "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." He co-owns a pub and works as the pubs custodian. Charlie mind works in a way so different from most of the world that words can barely describe it. Here's a quote from the episode "Dennis Reynolds: An Erotic Life"

Dee: What were you even doing in that crawlspace, Charlie?
Charlie: Well, for starters, I was minding my own business. I was also trying to do a little light reading, and then I was putting some cheese in the rat traps.
Dee: You were putting the cheese in the rat traps?
Charlie: Yes!
Dee: Can I smell your mouth?
Charlie: Why?
Dee: You were eating the cheese, weren't you? Out of the rat traps.
Charlie: No—well, yes—I mean, I was eating the old cheese to test it to see why the rats weren't eating it.

Will Arnett, Spike Jonze in David Cross's Pilot

Thanks to the UK's Channel 4 the internet has been treated with a glimpse of the pilot for David Cross's "The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret." I think the show looks great, but I'll let you judge for yourself.

The clip contains A LOT of foul language. Just a heads up.

Top 5: Steven Karp

Last time I posted about my top 5 T.V. characters I mentioned how watching Futurama made me feel better about being away from home my freshmen year, that Christmas Undeclared sort of did the opposite. It made me miss the experience of feeling alone and completely starting over at the beginning of freshmen year.

Undeclared, created by Judd Apatow, is the story of a dorky high school student, Steven Karp played by Jay Baruchel, and his glorious transformation as he starts his freshmen year at the University of North Eastern California. The show didn't truly represent college life but it did an incredible job of capturing the strange, uncomfortable feelings that accompany starting life in at a new school.

I, like Steven Karp, was pretty nerdy in High School. It was never an issue. I was never teased for it. In fact I had a lot of friends and people, for the most part, liked me. The same couldn't be said for Karp. The show never went into too much detail but it is maid evident that High School wasn't a good experience for the guy and college is his chance to become a new man.

He's awkward. He's lame. He tries to hard. He is just like we all where when we were freshman and for that I love him.

Undeclared was canceled after one season. Maybe it was for the better. Freshman year only lasts a year.

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Love

Almost everyone I've talked to loves to hate on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon but I'm not sure why. My girlfriend and I have been watching the show regularly since it it debuted in March and we've loved it. Almost everything about it in fact. One of our favorite things to watch over the summer was 7th Floor West. Fallon's take on The Hills. It is magical. It follows Fallon as he starts his new job as host of Late Night. If you haven't given Fallon a change I highly recommend you do.

Love/Hate: Watching Modern Family on Hulu

Love: Modern Family.
In 3 short episodes Ed O'Neil has won me over. I never liked O'Neil as Al Bundy in Married with Children, but his portrayal of Jay Pritchett on ABC's Modern Family is incredible. The show itself if incredible. It feels like the creators took a little bit of Arrested Deveopment and gave it a whole lot of heart. The show follows three seperate couples that are all related and tells their stories. It may sound pretty standard but the show really excells at what it is trying to do. It is an funny, emotional story about a family living in today's society.Hate: Watching shows on Hulu
Yes, it is free. Yes, it is easy. But man sometimes I just hate watching stuff on Hulu. It seems like every other time I try and watch something on the popular streaming tv website I find that I spend about as much time watching my video buffer as I do watching my shows. It's not that I have a bad internet connection, I can stream, download, play, and dilly dally online at great speeds but when I get onto Hulu sometimes it just disappears. It's a shame too because Hulu provides a great service the way it is right now.

Whedon's Dollhouse Canceled

Why is it that every time one of my favorite shows gets canceled that Fox is at the helm? They aren't terrible shows. First it was Futurama, which is o.k. I guess, at least they managed to go 5 seasons without getting the cord pulled. Next was Firefly. Then they hit me with a big one. Arrested Development, which is as far as I'm concerned the funniest program that has ever and will ever be on T.V. I thought it was over, but news broke today the Fox has canceled Joss Whedon's science fiction show Dollhouse.

Dollhouse took awhile for me to really get into, but once it started to pick up I was in it. The acting was great, the story incredible, and the pace perfect but still Fox couldn't find the right viewers. Seems like that is always the problem. Maybe Fox just doesn't put enough effort into properly marketing their programing.

Unfortunately that is something I can't change and with that I leave you a short video of David Cross' opinion on the matter. (Video includes some profanity)

Top 5: Phillip J. Fry

When Futurama first premiered on Fox back in 1999 I couldn't be happier. At the time didn't fully understand what series creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen where trying to create with the show but as far as I was concerned it was going to be The Simpsons in the future...it wasn't, and I was very disappointed.

Cut to my freshman year in college when I saw the series DVDs on sale. This time around I watched a hilarious, deep and sometimes very sad story about a guy whose is, for the most part, completely and utterly alone in a world that is not his own. The guy was Phillip J. Fry who after being cryogenically frozen for a thousand years had to go from being a loser pizza delivery boy that lives at home with his parents to a futuristic space delivery man working for his great(x30) nephew.

The show is a comedy, there is no doubt about that but it is a lot different than shows like the Simpson and Family Guy. The characters, as crazy as they where, where much more realistic. They had feelings, goals and dreams that they wanted to achieve. You could sympathize with them. And for me being someone who was living away from home for the first time in a completely new place I related a lot to Fry. Sure he's dumb, but he's also dedicated. The guy spends the better part of fours seasons and four straight to DVD movies fighting for the love of his one eyed purple haired co-worker Turanga Leela. Our situations weren't identical but watching Futurama was something that always made me feel like everything would end up ok, and it did.

Top 5: Tobias Funke

Last night my friend Dane Hurt posted a list of his top ten favorite TV characters on his personal website. The list got me thinking about who'd be in my top ten. Here is the first character to join my top 5.

"Oh here, here. In the dark, it all looks the same."

Words like these have made Tobias Funke one of television's strange characters. Played by David Cross, Funke was the first licensed analyst/therapist, or analrapist, turned wanna be actor on Mitchell Hurwitz's Arrested Development.

The thing that makes Tobias so funny is the way he interacts socially. He is completly oblivious to so much of what is going on around him and the things he says. Funke will spout out sentances like "Michael, you really are quite the cupid. You can zink your arrow into my buttocks any time" without realizing that his statment might be interpreted in more than one way.

He is incredibly outgoing, but lacks real social skills. It's like watching someone new to a country try and figure out a new culture, new sayings, and new social behaviors but instead of being a forigner he is just an idiot. It's good fun.

Time management with Dexter

Anyone out there watch Dexter? I recently streamed the first episode through Netflix because I had heard a lot of good things. I watched the episode and really liked it. It was very unique. I liked the story, the action, pretty much everything about it...except for one little thing. The show is an hour long.

I don't mean to make it sound like my time is super valuable, because lets face it I waste a lot of it, but an hour is a big chunk of time. Especially in the world of streaming Netflix. I could spend that time watching 2/3 of a movie, but Dexter wants me to use that hour to watch 1/12 of it's first season story? That's a big commitment.

I realize this seems silly but it's just the way my mind manages time. I really would like to watch the next episode, and ten following that one. But I haven't. It's been about two weeks since I first sat down and watched the first episode. And the more I think about it the more I realize that time is the only thing holding me back.

Maybe tomorrow will be the day that I watch episode 2.

The Negative Effects of Netflix

For the last year or so Netflix has been allowing users to stream thousands of movies live on to their computers, TVs, and through their Xbox consoles. I recently resubscribed to Netflix and have been loving the service. It gives the ability to watch tons of incredible films with great ease.

Unfortunalty nine times out of ten I find myself wasting away my time with stupid slapstick movies (Little Nicky) and tween comedies (iCarly). Today I found my self watching an hour and half worth of Inspector Gadget. Time well spent? I liked it so I guess was worth it.