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Not another doctor show? Oh, but when Scrubs debuted in 2001, it was instantly the perfect antidote for the increasingly soapy melodrama of ER — and here are the DVDs to prove it. The first season, 24 brilliant episodes, veers from the profoundly silly to the achingly poignant, often in the same scene, as it … more…
It’s very easy to puncture the self-importance of Hollywood types, and this HBO original series never fails to take that easy route, though it cloaks itself in a veneer of intelligence and insight. Vince Chase is the hottest thing to hit the movies since Johnny Depp, but Adrian Grenier (Hart’s War) fails to make us … more…
Visually, Cartoon Network’s kiddie entry Ed, Edd n Eddy is delightfully gonzo, its inventive animation style and garish colors reflecting the adolescent confusion of its identically named boy heroes. But their goofy misadventures hold little appeal for grownup cartoon fans — this one is pretty much strictly for the kiddies. In these six brief 10-minute … more…
It’s the series that launched Melissa Joan Hart as a star, and if you’re saying “Who?” you’re not alone. It’s not as if this Nickoeleon sitcom for peewees boded well for its then-adolescent headliner in its 1991 debut season, when throughout 13 episodes, Hart’s just-barely-teenaged Clarissa broke the fourth wall to whine directly at the … more…
It’s a bit of a labeling error to call this series from cable network A&E and Britain’s London Weekend Television a “reality” show, unless you’re talking about the original reality genre: the documentary. There’s nothing of the exhibitionist game show about the surprisingly engrossing minidoc that is each of these standalone episode — no one … more…
Oh, how can I possibly resist Apocalyptic cheese like NBC’s *Revelations*? It’s goofy Jesus stuff *and* it’s ridiculous prime-time ‘drama.’ It’s movie actors slumming on TV *and* it’s a finely calculated mercenary attempt to get all those consumers of *The Da Vinci Code* back in front of the boob tube, where they belong. What’s *not* to have a love/hate/despairing-for-the-culture relationship with?
If you were a Star Wars completist dork like me as a kid — I had to have all the action figures, including all the cantina characters I didn’t even remember being in the film and all the characters in their different costumes, like Leia in her Bespin getup — then you’ll probably want to … more…
Here’s what you have to do in order to survive *The Star Wars Holiday Special*: Don’t watch it. If you must, then 1) Have alcohol or some other inebriating substance close to hand — a rock to bang against your skull will do in a pinch. And 2) Remember that your tender 10-year-old self probably witnessed this atrocity the one time it aired on TV to unsuspecting, nay, *eager* audiences, and suffered such psychological trauma that your brain blocked off the memory in order to spare you further harm; know that you may suddenly experience violent flashbacks to Christmas 1978 as that mental wound is viciously reopened.
With its clear and obvious choices — think Eddie Izzard’s ‘cake? or death?’ bit — *Unleashed* really is a fairy tale next to *Crash,* where half the time when you think you’ve got a grasp on what’s the ‘right’ thing to do and the ‘right’ way to live, you turn out to be wrong, even if the other guy is wrong, too.
This is it right here, people: the ‘ownership society’ our so-called leaders think we ‘deserve,’ an unregulated, unpoliced Wild West of corporate hegemony. Fraud, greed, arrogance, powermongering? All part of the game, folks, all part of the game. It’s every man for himself, the way God intended, and God help you if you were so fucking stupid that you let yourself be born with anything less than a platinum spoon in your mouth and powerful connections out the wazoo. Cuz most of us are gonna end up serfs if this stuff continues.
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