Glee: Season Two premiere

I don’t feel like writing up a long post on the last half of season one, so I’m just going to sum up my feelings here briefly. I really thought the second half of the season took a big nosedive. The writing was already worrisome, but it got progressively worse throughout the season. There weren’t as many stand out musical numbers either, and the poor writing and ridiculous arcs on the show started to overshadow awesome performances. I enjoyed Neil Patrick Harris in his episode and the episodes devoted to Lady Gaga and Madonna, particularly Jane Lynch’s rendition of “Vogue” (“Will Schuester, I hate you!), but I wasn’t doing nearly as much rewinding. As obsessed as I became during the first thirteen episodes, I found myself getting bored and irritable finishing the season. How many times do we have to see an episode close with a musical number and watch these kids set aside their differences for a moment, come together as a group, smile, and exchange meaningful looks? They even ended the season by giving Sue Sylvester a heart, which is not a good look for the future, as her crushing criticisms and constant sabotages were the one non-musical pieces of writing I always looked forward to.

Season two opens with a new potential villain–for both Will Schuester and Sue Sylvester–as Coach Beiste (pronounced Beast), an extremely large and butch woman, takes over the football team and the school shifts focus to sports, threatening the budgets of both the Cheerios and New Directions. I’m tired of hearing about budget cuts on this show. It’s hard to believe that a Glee Club constantly facing budget woes has the financial freedom to pony up for new (and expensive looking) outfits and elaborate sets for every new musical number they do. Seriously, where is that money coming from? Lazy writing, that’s where.

I did like the way the season started with high school blogger, and nerd, Jacob interviewing various members of the Glee Club with loaded questions. He asks Will Schuester: “Did you know there’s a forum on my blog begging you to stop rapping?” A good question! It was a rare moment when the white people on Glee did hip-hop and my face didn’t look like this —-> : / It’s obviously a montage meant for the writers to respond to some of the negative feedback people have posted about the show online. Rachel is asked if she is difficult to work with, which mirrors similar real-life rumors that actress Lea Michele is the same way. It’s good tongue-in-cheek humor with a bit of self-deprecation. Kurt tops it off by giving a big “Fuck You” to the blogosphere. It’s good that they are self-aware and don’t really care about the critics, but seriously, no one on this show can rap.

A new season and a new school year means new students and potential new cast members. What’s the deal with discovering male vocal talent in the showers? It was weird the first time and now it’s just creepy. Fortunately, Sam Evans (Chord Overstreet) can sing. He doesn’t join the glee club in this episode, but we all know he will, and his number shows that he’s going to contribute to the show in a good way. Charice also joins the cast as Sunshine Corazon and her confrontation with Rachel in the bathroom doing Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” was the highlight of the episode. She shows right away that she’s got a good voice and later proves that she has some serious pipes, announcing herself as legitimate competition with Rachel for best singer in the group…. so naturally, she’s lured away by Vocal Adrenaline by the end of the episode.

It was a better premiere than I was expecting after last season’s lackluster run to the finish line. The new cast members are great additions and all the musical numbers were excellent with the exception of Jay-Z’s “Empire State Of Mind,” which featured more of that questionable rapping. After briefly teaming up against Coach Beiste, Sue & Will are enemies by the end, which is good because a friendship there doesn’t help this show out at all. Sue is definitely at her best when she’s stirring up trouble for everyone… but “poop cookies?” Really? Come up with some better gags. A solid premiere episode that has me a bit more optimistic about this season than I was a few days ago.

Glee: Season 1 – Part 1 (Episodes 1-13)

Premise: Spanish teacher Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) takes over as head of the Glee Club at William McKinley High School, a once popular school program that is now hanging by a thread and likely to be axed due to budget cuts. A large portion of the school’s budget is being used by the Cheerios, McKinley’s nationally recognized and dominant cheerleading program headed by the ruthless Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch). As Glee Club gains momentum under Schuester’s tutelage, the enormous budget of Sylvester’s program is threatened and a heated rivalry is born between the two teachers and their respective clubs.

I had written Glee off as a corny high school show that probably featured its cast bursting out into random musical numbers in mid-conversation. The TV spots and the few times I skimmed by Glee while it was on the air, did nothing to quell this assumption. After receiving a ridiculous amount of Emmy nominations (including a few wins), a lot of attention for the Sue Sylvester character, and good word of mouth over the summer, I found myself excited to be adding it to my Netflix queue.

With the popularity of singing-based reality shows, the premise for Glee couldn’t come at a better time. The question was: how can you turn a TV show into a musical without coming across corny? Glee succeeds because there is nothing random about the musical numbers performed. Since the characters are part of a Glee Club, all the performances are premeditated and performed as part of their after school activity and only once during the first thirteen episodes did a character seem to start singing out of no where. While it takes some getting used to the fact that all the vocals are prerecorded–creating a sense of detachment from what’s happening on screen and the feeling the actors aren’t really singing (oh, but they are!)–it’s a necessary process. We get to hear these kids at their best instead of struggling to catch their breath while singing and doing demanding choreography sequences at the same time.

The cast is tremendously talented and the casting directors should be lauded for managing to bring together a group of relatively unknown actors that possess such amazing skill. Leading the pack is Lea Michele, who plays Rachel Berry, a character that constantly reminds me of Tracy Flick played by Reese Witherspoon in 1999′s Election. While Michele’s character is an obnoxious know-it-all hell bent on her own success before others, her talent is undeniable (a fact the Glee group reluctantly has to swallow constantly). Watching the pilot episode, I found Rachel only mildly attractive… and then she started performing, and suddenly I was declaring my love on Facebook. This is a woman that would probably be a hands down favorite in almost any American Idol competition, and from what I’ve seen, her range knows no boundaries. Glee is just going to be the first big step (Michele is a noted Broadway actor already) into a wildly successful mainstream career for this enormously talented actress/singer.

Jane Lynch is the other standout in this cast. Even after Lynch won the Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Emmy, I was pretty skeptical when I read a couple online articles that separately declared Sue Sylvester the 18th best character in pop culture over the past twenty years and one of televisions greatest all-time villains. That’s some pretty lofty praise for a character that has been on air for less than a year… yet, it was all justified by the end of the first thirteen episode arc. Sylvester gets all of Glee’s best lines and Lynch delivers them with confidence and hilarity. Sylvester’s obsession with bringing down the Glee Club provides the series’ most laughs and her constant feuding with nemesis Schuester is almost always laugh-out-loud funny, especially her constant references to his hair. There were moments when I thought Sylvester might simply become a petty enemy, but by the close of the first half of season one, she has cemented herself as truly evil and Lynch is worthy of all the accolades showered upon her.

Lynch and Michele are definitely the stars of Glee, but the rest of the cast is pretty talented too. Although relegated to background duty most of the time, Amber Riley (who plays token black girl Mercedes) is almost as talented as Michele. She gives Jennifer Hudson a run for her money with her rendition of “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” and stands out in several other numbers as well. Matthew Morrison is probably the best actor of the bunch (outside of Lynch) and has some good singing moments as well, particularly his mash up of “Young Girl” and “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” when the teacher is trying to keep Rachel’s feelings for him at bay. Chris Cofler, the gay kid, while over-the-top with his flamboyance a lot of the time, actually can sing too. He kills “Defying Gravity” in a “diva off” with Rachel. On top of the great individual performances, it’s when the entire Glee club comes together to perform a number that the cast is at its best. I might be as gay as Kurt Hummel for admitting this, but the first time I heard them do Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” I actually got chills.

The performances and talent on Glee are great, but the writing seems to have a hard time keeping up. The moments in between musical numbers and Sue Sylvester appearances can be excruciating. Outside of the Sylvester vs. Schuester drama, the major conflicts of the first season center around the pregnancies of Will’s wife (she’s faking it) and Quinn Fabray (the gorgeous Dianna Agron), the head cheerleader and lead male vocalist Finn Hudson’s girlfriend (she’s pregnant by his best friend Puck). Rather than drive the story forward, these conflicts just cause annoyance. Will Schuester is made out to be a blind idiot married to a woman that has absolutely no admirable qualities and the love triangle between Finn, Puck and Quinn is equally obnoxious, as they trade loyalties like baseball cards and go from throwing punches to smiling and hugging in a musical number a few scenes later.

Speaking of relationships, there’s not a single couple on Glee that you’re rooting for. It seems like we’re supposed to want Will to hook up with guidance counselor Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays), and she is somewhat adorable, but she’s also a complete wacko. Between her obsessive compulsive disorder, phobia of germs, and some ridiculous decision-making, it’s hard to believe this is someone we want our main protagonist to hook up with. There’s a similar vibe for Finn and Rachel, which is understandable when they’re performing together, but off stage these characters lack any sign of charisma: Finn’s a self-conscious moron and Rachel’s obnoxiousness is often taken to extremes. Maybe the writers think they are making an accurate depiction of high school life, but none of these kids have any consistency and constantly walk the line between lovable and repulsive. The lone exception is Sue Sylvester and it’s odd that the writers can always display such brilliance with her dialogue and arcs while being so messy with the rest of the characters. If they could learn to apply that writing ability to the rest of the show, Glee might be able to elevate past an awesome novelty and turn into something that can be taken a bit more seriously.

Now here’s a list of the best numbers from the first 13 episodes (search for them on YouTube):

New Directions – “Don’t Stop Believing”
Will Schuester – “Young Girl”/”Don’t Stand So Close To Me” mash up
Rachel & Finn – “Smile”
Rachel & Kurt – “Defying Gravity”
April Rhodes & Rachel – “Maybe This Time”
Mercedes – “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going”
New Directions – “Push It”
New Directions – “Look At All The People”

Grade: B+

Entourage Season Six

I’ve been hearing some talk that Entourage has jumped the shark and I don’t really get it. It was never a great show to begin with. Entourage is the equivalent of the mindless, summer blockbuster, guilty pleasure at your local cinema. The story has never been riveting, the acting has never been great (outside of Jeremy Piven’s Ari Gold), and no one is ever going to ever laud Entourage for its intricate writing. The allure of Entourage is similar to why people like reality T.V. shows. The only difference really is the characters in this show are mostly fictional. I say “mostly” because Entourage is loosely based on actor Mark Wahlberg’s own experiences as a movie star. With that said, as long as Entourage delivers ridiculously hot (and often naked) women, a healthy dose of humor, and a look at what it might be like to be famous, I don’t see how fans can be disappointed.

While maybe not as strong as previous seasons, season six delivers more of the same. It does attempt to get a little heavier than normal, however. Vince struggles briefly with loneliness, E continues his bitch ass ways with women and can’t seem to shake ex-girlfriend Sloan from his memory, Drama runs into trouble after a successful run on his show Five Towns, Turtle experiences problems with Jamie Lynn-Sigler for the first time, and Ari deals with an affair within his agency that could cause major problems. Whatever.

What’s missing, for me, from this season is Vincent Chase as a movie star. He apparently starred in a big hit based on the book The Great Gatsby directed by Martin Scorsese and has resurrected his career after a couple of flops… but we really don’t get to see anything about Gatsby. I don’t even think we ever saw Vince act a single scene. I still remember how cool I thought it was when the show created an entire sequence for Aquaman. Season six focuses on Vince’s actual film career the least of any season to date. We have Gatsby in the past and his next project as a race car driver in the future… in between, we have season six, which seems to focus on all the secondary characters. Granted, these characters are all vastly more interesting than Vince, but still, Vince as a movie star is still the force that drives the show and I want to see more of it.

Thankfully, the show is not a total loss like some might suggest it has become. While Vince may be between movies, that doesn’t stop plenty of hot chicks happily dropping their panties for him and we still get envy his ability to have any woman he wants. Drama and Lloyd are still hilarious and I think this was still a strong season for the Ari Gold character. Even if someone hated this season, they had to enjoy Ari’s scene in the finale with the paintball gun. C’mon now! Season six also has solid cameos from Tom Brady, Mark Wahlberg, and Matt Damon.

I’ve never cared for E’s character and he continues to be more of the same. His continued fascination with Sloan, while understandable, is obnoxious, even more so because he’s dating a perfectly good looking girl anyways. Just when you think E can’t sink to new lows, the season closes with him at his most ridiculous. I won’t spoil the surprise, but it’s brutal and doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. The biggest disappointment in season six is Turtle’s transformation into a simp. His entire arc in season six focuses on his relationship with actress Jamie Lynn-Sigler of Sopranos fame. No thanks, we already have one E and we didn’t like it when you pulled this stunt with Vince and Mandy Moore.

Entourage might not be as good as it once was… but it’s not like we’re talking about Weeds here. This show is still plenty watchable and has lots of fun moments. So before you start saying things like Entourage has jumped the shark, remember, it wasn’t all that great to begin with.

Grade: C+
Viewings: 1.5
Replay Value: Decent amount, but I’m personally glad I never invested in the series on DVD.
Emmy Awards: After a string of 3 straight Emmy wins, Piven hasn’t been nominated the past two years and Entourage could only muster one nomination in 2010: for sound mixing. Ouch.
Nudity? Tons! Yay!

HBO’s Hung: Season 1

HBO’s Hung features Thomas Jane playing a high school basketball coach named Ray Drecker whose life is slowly unraveling. In the pilot episode we discover that he is divorced from his wife of twenty years, a woman that is now married to a much more financially stable dermatologist. In addition to this bit of information, we see a flashback to Ray’s house getting caught on fire and nearly burning to a crisp. Ray’s kids had preferred to live with him rather than their uptight mother, but after the fire, Ray finds himself all alone, living in a tent on his property.

It’s during these grim circumstances that Ray seeks some help and decides to attend a money-making seminar. At this point we’re introduced to Tanya (Jane Adams), a woman that Ray recognizes as someone that used to come into his class to read and teach poetry to his students. The seminar doesn’t really work for Ray, but one thing stood out to him: “everybody has one special tool that can help him succeed.” Ray can’t admit his revelation to the workshop, but he decides that he knows what his tool is: his cock. Apparently, the man is blessed and the rest of the season follows his shenanigans as he progresses into a male prostitute or, in the case of his business, a happiness consultant. Tanya jumps on the bandwagon as his pimp and together they dive head first into an industry they both really know nothing about.

The first season of this series isn’t particularly good. The characters are mostly uninteresting. It seems as though Ray is pining after his ex-wife (Anne Heche), but it’s hard to see what he finds desirable other than familiarity and family unity. She’s shallow and not particularly attractive. Dude can do better and does so… many times. I’m on the fence about Tanya… at times I like the character and other times I can’t stand her. Ray is given a decision later in the season to step up his prostitute game with a more resourceful potential pimp and it’s hard to see the dilemma: he needs money and the opportunity presented should be lucrative. On top of that, prior to their business arrangement, Tanya and Ray don’t have any kind of history aside from a couple of one night stands together. Any reasonable man would be like “look, you’re good people, but I need to rebuild my house and get my family back and this is simply something I can’t pass up. Sorry.” But this is a T.V. show and tension must occur, no matter how implausible. The one moment this show had to create an awesome moment, the writers decided they weren’t ready to tackle that particular corner just yet and pussied out.

The acting here is mediocre as well. Something about Thomas Jane screams ordinary. I’ve never seen him in anything that impressed me and many times through Hung’s first season, I found myself wondering if this guy was even acting at all (and not in the good way). The supporting cast is pretty lifeless too, with possibly the exception of Jane Adams as Tanya. In a series where it seems like everyone else is kind of going through the motions, she at least looks like she’s putting some effort into her performance. The acting highlight of the season goes to Natalie Zea who drops in for a four episode arc as Jemma, a mentally twisted client that Ray finds himself falling for. It’s never clear what Jemma’s true intentions are and that’s a testament to what Zea brings to the character. It was sad to see her go.

Hung isn’t a total failure however. The premise of an ordinary man diving into the world of prostitution creates several interesting situations and hot scenes. Ray soon discovers that there is nothing glamorous about selling yourself for sex as you can’t always pick your clients. In this business money talks, so it’s fun to see his reaction when he knocks on the door of a big-boned, 50+ eternal loner. Fortunately, the first season has Ray tangling with Tanya’s “friend” Lenore and the wife of his obnoxious neighbor, both ridiculously hot and fully naked. It’s primarily this reason why I’d continue to watch Hung, as plenty of good looking women happily shed their clothing. I’m also looking forward to seeing what happens when Ray’s family discovers what he’s now doing for a living. Not a particularly good show, but I can’t see too many straight men hating it too much.

Grade: C
Viewings: 1
Replay Value: Probably worth investing in a Mr Skin account instead of this DVD series.
Awards: Doubtful
Nudity?: Plenty! The saving grace of the series so far!

Showtime’s United States Of Tara: Season 1

All I knew about United States Of Tara before I started watching it was that I liked Toni Collette as an actress and that a buddy of mine, with fantastic taste in film and T.V., recommended it to me. I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting, but if it wound up being a drama about the first woman President of The United States I wouldn’t have been surprised.

Five minutes into the pilot episode and I already knew what the title of the show was referencing. After a personal confessional with her digital camcorder about discovering her 15 year old daughter’s morning after pills, the next time we see Tara (Collette), she’s rummaging through her daughter’s closet, wearing a teenager’s clothes, with her jeans so low you can see plenty of her g-string. When her daughter discovers her, she says: “I’ve been searching in your closet for a half hour and I can’t get to fucking Narnia.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out we’re dealing with multiple personalities here. It’s not long before this teenage version of Tara is identified as “T,” a flirtatious and foul personality that’s more a depiction of a father’s worst nightmare than an actual teenage girl. Either way, she immediately caught my attention and she’s the most entertaining of all of Tara’s “alters,” or any character on the series really. Whenever Tara transitions, it’s always “T” that I hope is getting the air time.

Aside from “T,” we’re introduced to Tara’s two other alters, “Buck” and “Alice.” “Buck” is a motorcycle-riding, beer-swigging, and cigarette-smoking MAN. “He” looks like he’d fit right in at a biker’s bar and I’m surprised I haven’t seen him spitting tobacco juice into a can yet. “Alice” is the series’ version of a 40′s or 50′s housewife… someone who looks like they’d use the words “proper” and “fluff” in their regular vernacular. It’s hard to say which personality has Collette at her acting best. Even though I find “Alice” the most annoying of all the alters, she’s probably also the most challenging to portray. The character is an absurd and exaggerated caricature, as are all the alters, but I think that’s the point. I’m no expert on Multiple Personality Disorder (or Dissociative Identity Disorder as it’s now called), but it seems that Tara’s split personalities are based on her own idea of a specific stereotype. Regardless, the range in personalities only showcases Collette’s talent as an actress and her Emmy win last year makes a lot more sense to me now. She especially shines in the season finale, when she transitions from personality to personality in the same camera shot. It’s a tour-de-force performance.

Dealing with all this is Tara’s immediately family: her husband Max (John Corbett), homosexual son Marshall (Keir Gilchrist), promiscuous daughter Kate (Brie Larson) and her sister Charmaine (Rosemarie Dewitt). A couple things are clear within the first couple of episodes. One, is that Tara’s husband and kids are in complete understanding of her condition, and two, that her sister doesn’t buy it one bit. I spent the first season trying to understand why that could be and all I could come up with is that Max and the kids have known Tara to have DID ever since they’ve known her, while Charmaine grew up with a normal human being who transitioned into the disease later in life, apparently from a traumatic experience at boarding school. This experience is a bit vague in itself… my natural assumption is that boarding school is a place for young girls, but my impression from the show is that it happened in Tara’s late teens.

Tara’s family is a moderately interesting group. While they are mostly understanding of her condition, often referring to her alters by name without so much as blinking at the switch, at other times it seems like they’ve reached their limits; all of them have a breaking point during the first season. Max hasn’t been all that interesting so far and the character isn’t a big deviation from what Corbett has done in the past (think Aidan Shaw on Sex & The City and the husband in My Big Fat Greek Wedding). The antics of Tara’s kids are much more entertaining. If I had a gay son, Marshall is exactly the kind of kid I’d want: smart, funny, sophisticated and nothing close to flamboyant. He seems like someone that could have the future of a David Sedaris, my favorite author. Kate is more of a father’s worst nightmare; she seems an offer short of having sex on camera for money (I’m looking at you Laurence Fishburne). Kate’s taste in men is borderline despicable and after a promising showing in the first couple episodes, her character becomes less and less likable as the season progresses.

Towards the end of the first season, a new personality emerges. It’s an interesting plot twist and again makes me wonder how accurate the show’s depiction of the disorder really is. Do people that actually have DID suddenly develop new personalities after years, maybe decades, of having the same rotation of alters? I don’t know, but either way, it makes for good television and only broadens the range that Toni Collette can display.

The United States Of Tara is a fun, good show. I’m not exactly blown away by anything here aside from Collette’s performance, but I’m interested enough to keep watching. Looking forward to checking out the second season and the possibility of more ridiculous personalities.

Grade: B
Viewings: 1
Replay Value: Worth watching again, but I wouldn’t own it.
Awards: Collette won the 2010 Golden Globe and 2009 Emmy for Best Actress In A Comedy and is nominated for the 2010 Emmy. Aside from nominations for the title sequence, this show has been passed up in the awards department, which goes to show that Collette’s performance is much better than the show actually is.
Nudity?: I can’t remember… but I’d be surprised if “T” doesn’t do something ridiculous at some point.