“So. How much of why this is a thing do I have to explain to you?”
“She was in Clueless…?”
“SO WAS HE.”
My hand to Elton’s Cranberries CD in the Quad, Suburgatory is good — and I say this as someone who doesn’t make TV friends easily. I have whole seasons of stuff I KNOW I’ll like; Bunheads, Make It or Break It, and yet, I can’t bring myself to watching.
I’m shy. I need a lot of coaxing to make new TV friends.
I didn’t like it at first. I mistook the bordering-on-cartoony satire for bad — and it’s not. There’s a lot that’s pretty brilliant. And Jeremy Sisto. Oof, and I hope not sporadically.
The most impressive part is that they manage to make even the antagonists likeable. Maybe it’s thanks to Cheryl Hines, maybe it’s thanks to the writing that attends to the character-shaking details, or maybe it’s just this:
How? How is every deadpan Dahlia monologue the most riveting mean girl revelation since Heather had a scrunchie?
But more important than entertaining satire, Jeremy Sisto. Siiigh.
You can never count on when you’ll be hit by 1-2-3 tons of bricks. Sitting in the living room this morning, we had vintage Sesame Street on — Frankie doesn’t get to watch per se, she’s not old enough — but it’s mesmerizing for adults, makes us sing along to her, and it’s shocking how many segments I remember vividly.
Except one.
One that I spent 29 years avoiding.
One minute Big Bird is innocently showing all of his adult friends drawings he made of them, including one of Mr. Hooper.
“Who’s Mr. Hooper?” asked Ryan, b. 1983.
“He’s the reason I couldn’t watch Sesame Street for months. He d-“
The next minute, as the explanation is leaving your face, you realize with horror — this isn’t just any vintage Sesame Street. THIS IS THE “MR. HOOPER DIED” SESAME STREET. The one where they explain to all the kids through Big Bird, the concept of death and that Mr. Hooper isn’t coming back. I couldn’t watch it then, and I didn’t mean to see it now.
All of the adult actors in the scene cried. Bob most especially. And 29 years later, I joined them. And I mourned the actor who’d been a part of thousands of kids’ lives, despite not having any kids of his own. And with that, the last piece of my own childhood resolved, I supposed I might be actually ready to be a parent.
Oh, man. Never underestimate. Sure, filling up your window-washer-fluid thing is useful, but someone who’s game enough to sit down and watch a show you know is going to be a train wreck and who will armchair — whatever the non-sports equivalent of a quarterback is?
This could very likely be my favorite piece I’ve ever done. He was a delight to interview, gracious and fascinating. There’s a difference between introducing someone relatively new in a profile, and finding insight on someone whose resumé seems boundless. He made it a joy to tackle that challenge.
I am so taken with the accompanying portraits, though I had no hand in them — they seem precisely right, down to the unexpectedly loud socks.
Perhaps it goes without saying, but I’ll following the Tonys tonight with keen interest.
“I can’t even convert to tweet how horrendous it was.”
This might be why I don’t give new TV shows a chance. I have Gilmore Girls, I have Gossip Girl, I have New Girl which I watch because it makes me mad, and I have LOST.
What I do not have is a need for…what IS this show?
I feel bad for how bad it is. Bless their hearts, the writers, yay for them for having a TV-writing gig, and yay for the actors being on a show…but the end result. It can really only be our fault.
Three minutes in, after conservatively 16 applications of the most aggressive laugh track since The Flintstones I said,
“Is this set in modern day?”
It’s racist, you guys. And not even with an edge of societal commentary, it’s just plain The-Honeymooners hamfisted about it. The set ups for the jokes are so obvious, you can almost Rocky Horror along with the punchline. It’s painful. And it’s our fault.
When the third season premiered on September 21, 2009, Big Bang Theory ranked as CBS’s highest-rated show of that evening in the adults 18–49 demographic.
It’s not a new show. And how many shows never even get a second season? This has been around since 2007, it’s been nominated for Emmys, and its survival must mean this is what we want. We want stereotypes. We want gimmicks that have so much potential, yet are played to a lowest-denominator badum bum. We want not to think. Entertainment in this form is really only an interruption of silence. That’s what we want?
Can we as an audience not handle more? The wiki page makes this seem like an awesome show. And it is! If you love going to see a friend of a friend in a beginning Improv class where you’re insulted in the lobby beforehand and slip on a banana peel on the way home, you’ll adore it.
Shatner wept.
(PS: It was really Spock? I said during the episode, “They couldn’t even get Leonard Nimoy to do his own voiceover?” When I don’t even believe you playing yourself? Eesh.)
