They say the first step is admitting you have a problem.  Lady and gentleman who read my blog, I have a problem.  I watch way too much television.  Case and point:  I visited Hulu.com as I often do when I have other things I should be doing and decided to give the pilot episode of SyFy’s Haven a look-see.

I like Stephen King.  I like Maine in theory.  And while waiting for Fringe to return in the fall, I could use something reminiscent of The X-Files and every other crime fighting science fiction show ever.   Plus, Haven has that one actor from Six Feet Under and 24 with the great goatee that I saw in Santa Monica the other weekend.  Consider me sold.

Ten minutes into the pilot, our fish out of water FBI agent is having a somewhat heated conversation with the local police chief because this murder just isn’t making any sense.  That’s when I recognize the police chief.  He’s the actor who played the coroner and title character in the Canadian crime show Da Vinci’s Inquest.

He’s a little grayer and puffier than when I last saw him bucking the system and fighting for his dead victims in Vancouver, but it’s definitely him.  Although I lived in Canada for several years, the only reason I know and love Da Vinci’s Inquest is because my Canadian grandmother stumbled across it at 4pm everyday on A&E.  The show was amazing, and not just because in Canada, the coroners are a cross between a homicide detective, American coroners who conduct autopsies, and judges who get to hold their own trials otherwise known as inquests.  Every episode was reminiscent of Homicide:  Life on the Street or Law & Order in it’s prime when Sam Waterson aka A.D.A. Jack McCoy played the system anyway he could to get justice.  And Da Vinci himself was a brilliant alcoholic misanthrope who could banter up and down a scene with his teenage daughter.  Anyway, the show was amazing until Da Vinci got into politics, but back to the point– this actor my grandma loves shows up in the middle of a crime scene on this new show Haven.

I immediately call my grandpa’s cell phone, and when he answers and explains that they’re out to lunch with some visiting family, I assure him it’s an emergency and I need to talk to Grandma now.  Very confused and a little concerned, she takes the phone, and I start heatedly describing to her what I’ve just witnessed.  Da Vinci is on a new show that they absolutely have to start watching immediately, like during lunch if possible.  You see, not only do I watch too much television, but I know far too much about other people’s viewing habits.  I know that my grandparents love procedurals, but especially the kind that are a little tongue in cheek and on the quirky side.  Haven is set in Maine with an absurd recurring cast of locals and the occasional death or dismemberment is seen as puzzling and troubling rather than earth shattering, and that’s perfect as they really enjoy something with a body count and a sense of humor a la the long dead Nash Bridges or more recently Castle.

Doesn’t get much better than Don Johnson and Cheech

Except for maybe Nathon Fillion and… can we replace her with Cheech?

Grandpa also has a thing for young, pretty professional woman who are too smart and too sarcastic for their own good.  This describes the blonde protagonist in Haven to a tee.  And Grandma loves paranormal undertones, but nothing as frustrating or vague as the supernatural on a show like Lost.  The strange phenomenon in Haven have a logical and clear if still fantastical explanation by every episode’s end.  PLUS, there’s a recurring role played by Da Vinci!  If the start of a television show tailor made for them isn’t an emergency, I don’t know what is!!!!

Grandma laughed, explained to visiting family what my call was about, and handed the phone back to Grandpa.  Grandpa laughed and asked me to email him the name of the show and when it aired so he could record it on his DVR.   A few days later, he emailed me back to say they loved it.  Just as I was starting to feel proud of my recommendation, my television viewing prowess, it hit me.  I watch way too much damn television.

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M. Night Shmyalan had his cake, ate it, and threw it up all over the Avatar: The Last Airbender fan base.

The discussion is long over, (after wasting ninety minutes watching this monstrosity who’d want to keep talking about it?), but I’m not over it.  Let’s move past the inert plot, and this is simple as the plot was so inert it’s difficult to remember what happened between Aang breaking out of the ice and Aang scaring off the Fire Nation with a big scary wave.  Let’s forget the horrible casting, and not the token white kids in the clearly Inuit tribe but the fact that every actor was either horribly miscast or horrible.*

*The guy playing Sokka, famous for being part of the sullen Cullen clan in the Twilight movies, didn’t smile once.  This is Sokka, the character responsible for every bad, nay every brilliantly bad pun, failed rescue attempt turned hillarious bit of slap stick, butt of all the best jokes and you cast a kid who can’t smile without risking his entire angsty fanbase!

Finally, let’s set aside the complete lack of character development and pretend it’s convincing when characters become best of friends or fall in love because the segue in the constant  voice over narration tell us they do.

Insta-true love, just add earnest voice over

Based on his earlier films, these are things I expected when I heard M. Night was writing and directing the live action version of one the best television series’ of all time. The Last Airbender was never going to be as epic as say the Lord of the Rings trilogy or even as mildly distracting as the first two Christopher Columbus-helmed Harry Potter films.  But at the very least, I was hoping that M. Night would follow the example set by Tolkein and Rowling camps and realize his job was to do the source material justice as best he could.  But no.  M. Night took it upon himself to “improve” upon the original series. (more…)

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My obsession with Greek started out as a day long marathon on some random Canadian channel when there was thirteen inches of snow on the ground and nothing outside my apartment worth wading through the weather for anyway.  Growing up, I completely missed out on the WB’s golden era, and maybe I’m just making up for lost time with these crazy college kids and their beer pong, but as overthinking often follows obsession, I’m pretty sure there’s more to it than that.

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For the past five weeks, Sundays have been Spielberg Nights with an hour and a half of Taken, the 2002 miniseries about alien abductions as experienced by three families over three generations, followed by The Pacific, the unflinching WWII miniseries set on islands I haven’t had to pronounce since AP U.S. History.  While Taken started out incredibly strong, the transition from the fifties and into the eighties has been rough in such a way that begs this question: With multi-strand, multi-generational stories, do they feel convoluted because they’re rushed or do they feel rushed because they’re convoluted? (more…)

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I have a minor obsession with Jaime Oliver’s Food Revolution.  The first thing I do on Saturdays is make a pot of coffee, head to hulu.com, and watch the newest episode.  Over a homemade nachos and Castle Crashers, I was singing the show’s praises to my friend Amanda when she criticized the program for being incredibly exploitative.  She cites the episode where Jamie is appalled when elementary age school children can’t name their vegetables, and her point was that children that age are still learning to put names to all kinds of concepts and objects.  Was he in fact being exploitative?   Am I a fan of one of those reality television shows that entertain their audiences at the expense of the their subjects? (more…)

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The original Parenthood with Diane Wiest, Tom Hulce, a young Martha Plimpton, younger Joaquin Phoenix, and Steve Martin is one of my favorites.  It used to be on TBS or TNT or one of those other cable channels that was around before cable channels were ubiquitous, and it always sucked me in.  Even before I understood exactly what the photos Diane Wiest’s character developed showed her daughter doing with Keanu Reeves, I found it hysterical, heartbreaking and totally honest.  The new NBC series is getting there with the hysterical and the heartbreaking, but they often miss the mark in the honesty department.

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In Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, the Red Queen’s head was beautifully bulbous, Alice’s size and dress fluctuations were incredibly fun, and the tea party with its flying flatware was mad indeed.  But did the movie have to be about a dragon and a sword?  There are many great stories about the child who must become the hero capable of slaying the ultimate evil, but Alice’s tale never struck me as one of them.

When Alice arrives in Wonderland, she’s shown a scroll that predicts she will slay the Jabberwocky with the Vorpal Sword on Frabjous day and free all of Wonderland’s anthropomorphic creatures from the tyranny of the Red Queen.  This is a world known and celebrated for its nonsense and absurdity, but this incredibly linear, rigid plot device makes all the really great whimsical story elements feel like dead weight.  What does a tea party with the Hare, Hatter, and Dormouse matter if Alice is no closer to the Vorpal Sword?

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2 comments | posted in Film