TV Connections

I was watching an episode of Supernatural this week and I got distracted because I recognised an actress guest starring in the show, and I couldn't quite remember what I'd seen her in before. It turns out her name is Emmanuelle Vaugier and she plays a recurring character in One Tree Hill. I also watched 2 episodes of Castle and one had Riley from Buffy guest starring and the next one had Alyssa Milano from Charmed.

This got me thinking because it seems like I can't watch anything lately without reaching for IMDB. Either TV casts are really incestuous or I clearly watch way too much TV (probably both). Anyway I thought it would make an interesting challenge to see if I could link all the scripted programmes I watched in the last week through their cast members, and here are the results:

The Walking Dead to Raising Hope = 6 degrees of separation!

OK so I had to use some extra shows (shown with dotted lines) but they're all things I've watched in the past and I recognised the connections myself. There were actually far more connections between them when I looked in IMDB because it seems nearly all TV actors play a victim on Law & Order or CSI at some point in their career!

Walking Dead and Raising Hope

Two new shows have hit our TV screens in the last few weeks (well at least they have if you have Sky).

The first one, "The Walking Dead", is a big budget dramatisation of a graphic novel by the same name. It's about a deputy sheriff who wakes up from a coma to find that most of the world has been hit by a virus that's turned them into zombies. He's on a mission to find his wife and son, but while he was in a coma they fled to a commune with some other survivors and his wife, believing he wasn't going to wake up, started a relationship with his best friend and partner. The lead is played by Andrew Lincoln, who you may remember as "Simon" in the Channel 4 comedy "Teachers". It's been interesting watching him pull off a Deep South accent as the show is set in and around Atlanta, Georgia. Seems like more and more Brits are stealing the leads in US shows lately with Stephen Moyer in True Blood and Hugh Laurie playing House, accent coaches must be raking it in!

Rating: 7 out of 10, I'm not usually a fan of zombies because I don't really like being scared, but I'm finding this show well written and pretty gripping so far so I'll stick with it.

Now on to the second new show. "Raising Hope" is a comedy from the makers of "My Name Is Earl" about a white trash family. The show centres on the son, Jimmy.  He had a one night stand in his van with a girl he picked up on his way back from getting ice cream. She turned out to be a wanted serial killer who'd murdered most of her previous boyfriends. She went to jail, and was later executed despite having a newborn baby, so Jimmy was granted custody of "Princess Beyonce" (renamed "Hope" at the end of the first episode). He's pretty clueless about how to raise a baby, but he means well and refuses to abandon her at the fire station regardless of what his parents say. Now I know all this sounds a bit dark, but the family have a refreshingly naive and lighthearted outlook on life which actually makes it quite uplifting. My favourite scenes so far have probably been the first time Jimmy changed Hope when he had to run out to get paper towels because he accidentally threw up on her, and when Hope got stuck in the garage under a precarious mountain of clutter that the mother had been hoarding, and the senile grandmother had to play Jenga with it while listening to "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" to free her.

Rating: 8 out of 10, novel and witty show, the 30 minute episodes are always over too quickly!

The Power Is Yours!

This week there was a viral Facebook campaign trying to get everyone to change their profile picture to a cartoon from their childhood to increase awareness of child abuse. While I thought the reason for the campaign was pretty lame, I did think it was fun seeing all the cartoons popping up and bringing back memories so I opted for Captain Planet and the Planeteers on my profile.

This inevitably got the theme song stuck in my head, and it got me thinking about the impact of enviromentalism on recent generations. I remember growing up learning about the greenhouse effect, the hole in the ozone layer, and global warming. And then there was climate change and carbon footprints. I can't remember a time when I didn't feel guilty for throwing away something recyclable or boiling a full kettle of water for one cup of tea. But what's really sad is that it doesn't feel like we're any closer to changing our behaviour en masse and actually doing something to reverse the damage we're doing. Seems like we're all just waiting for everyone else to make a change because we can't see the point if it's just us.

However on a lighter note, the end of the world has made for some excellent music. I was driving into work today listening to the new Disturbed album "Asylum" when I realised "Another Way To Die" is about the environment (which I wouldn't expect from a band like Disturbed so it shows how wide reaching this issue is). I also love the opening song on Rise Against's "Appeal To Reason" called "Collapse (Post-Amerika)". Its lyrics are full of such vivid imagery as "When our rivers run dry and our crops cease to grow" and "When the air that we breathe becomes air that we choke". The catchy chorus and power chords don't hurt either.

Sidenote: I found it particularly amusing that the Daily Mail accused the Facebook campaign of being a smoke screen for paedophiles, so typical of them!

Better Off Ted Cancelled - Damn You ABC!!!

This is the first of a new series of posts about TV shows that should never have been cancelled. It really pisses me off when an amazing show like this gets scrapped before it has time to find its audience. (Usually because the network didn't really give it a chance anyway!) TV has certainly improved in the last decade with bigger budgets and better actors, but it's rare to find a comedy show on a mainstream network that's intelligent, pushes boundaries and is still hilarious. However Better Off Ted met all those criteria and more. The dialogue was excellent and as quotable as any episode of Glee. The wide range of characters, acting and storylines were great too.

The show centered around a group of employees in the research and development department of Veridian Dynamics, a fictional evil corporation with the typical faceless bureaucracy and ethos of profit before ethics. Each episode included a fake commercial for the company with genius taglines such as "People lie. Companies protect their interests. It's different."

Many of the plots focused around the company's attempts to increase profits, including my personal favourite episode where they gave one employee each day a red lab coat instead of a white one. The employees speculated endlessly as to the meaning of this, and switched back and forth between thinking it was a reward or a punishment depending on who received it each day. But regardless they worked harder to earn or avoid it, which is exactly what the company planned. It turned out the assignment of the red lab coat was totally random, it was just because they did a study that proved any change in the workplace increased productivity. I just hope none of the managers at my work saw this one!

Another great episode featured a new automated system for the whole building including doors and elevators that operated using sensors to detect people, however it couldn't see black people. Instead of reverting back to the old system at great expense, the company's answer to this problem was to pay white people minimum wage to follow around the black people.  The black employees tried to rise up against this, but ended up stuck in an elevator on the way to the boss's office.  It was classic!

So anyway, in an effort to spread the word about this show (and hopefully help the DVD sales so they reconsider cancelling it), here are some clips for your enjoyment. The first one is an outtakes reel from an episode where a typo in a memo led to all employees being forced to swear at each other (so beware there is some objectionable language in that one). And the others are some of the Veridian commercials I mentioned earlier.

A couple more of my favourite Veridian commercials that I didn't have permission to embed:
Veridian Dynamics: Competition. It makes everything better.
Veridian Dynamics: Family. Yay.

Rating: 10 out of 10, TV comedy doesn't get much better than this!

Monster Magnet at Southampton University

I went to see Monster Magnet at the Southampton University Student Union on Monday night. I didn't have high expectations because I only know them from one song released 12 years ago, but my husband was quite excited about seeing them and I figured I owed him after the Goo Goo Dolls.

The venue was essentially a big hall with a table off to one side selling band tees, and a "bar" selling room temperature cans of Fosters, Blackthorn cider and Coca Cola or bottles of Smirnoff Ice poured into a plasic cup...classy! It wasn't even that cheap at £3 per alcoholic drink and £0.80 for the coke. However there wasn't much separating you from the bands, the crowd wasn't that densely packed, you could move about freely and see the stage easily; it was probably one of best gigs I've been to for actually appreciating the music.

The opening act was a band called Seventh Void who seemed determined to make up for a lack of good songs or lyrics with volume. This tactic is used by many of the metal bands I've seen live, and I still don't see how it works in their favour to deafen their fans. (The amateur AV nerds running the sound system could have been at least partially to blame though.) I'd never heard of the band before and they weren't even billed on any of the promotional material for the concert, but after reading about them on Wikipedia I found out that two of the band's members were from Type O Negative, so it's surprising they didn't suck even more.

So as for the headliners, their songs did at least sound different from each other, and I could make out some of the words, but there was nothing that memorable except for the last song of the night, "Space Lord" which had a surprising number of the crowd singing along...clearly the only reason we were all there! The lead singer had an annoying habit of turning his back on the crowd and facing the drummer towards the end of each song, and there wasn't a whole lot of chemistry on stage. However, the band did have the most impressive collection of effects pedals I've ever seen, the sound check was probably one of the highlights of the night, watching them test each one individually.

Rating: 4 out of 10, entertaining enough for a Monday evening, but wouldn't pay to see them again.

Seventh Void - I want the Vaya Con Satan tee!

Check out the lead singer's pose - the wink and the gun x 2!

Oh how the mighty have fallen (OK they were never that mighty but he's sure hit rock bottom!)

Check out the rock angst!

The Goo Goo Dolls at the Brixton Academy

I saw The Goo Goo Dolls at the O2 Academy Brixton on Saturday night. I wasn't sure what sort of crowd to expect because none of the people I talked to before the show had heard of them. But the venue was sold out and there was literally a queue round the block to get in! This was the first event I'd been to at the Brixton Academy, and I'd definitely go back since it had plenty of bars and it was small enough that you could actually see the band from anywhere inside. The surrounding area looked fine regardless of what I'd been told about it beforehand too.

The band is currently on tour in the UK to support their latest album, "Something for the Rest of Us". I got the album a couple of months ago in preparation, and to be honest I wasn't that impressed. Each album they make is increasingly bland and they've almost completely lost touch with their alternative rock roots much like U2, Bon Jovi and Coldplay before them. There are some great songs on the album and I'm sure they'll make a killing selling them to TV shows like Grey's Anatomy to provide the soundtrack to heart-wrenching break ups. However it's never a good sign when the token songs they let the bassist Robby Takac take lead on are a welcome respite from the monotony of commercial love songs.

Despite all that I actually enjoyed the concert and I probably appreciate the album more after having heard it live. They are one of the few bands I've seen who sound just as good, if not better live. And the live performance added a rawness and volume which provided a much needed kick to their latest songs. They also acknowledged their past successes by covering most of their greatest hits including "Slide", "Black Balloon", "Dizzy", "Broadway", "Name", "Here Is Gone" (my personal favourite), "Better Days" (Merry Xmas everyone!), "Stay With You", "Let Love In" and of course "Iris", which according to lead singer Johnny Rzeznik, "they have to play." (Although he left it to the crowd to sing most of the words and had to pause at one point because the cheering was too loud for him to sing over!) I would have liked to have heard "Sympathy", "Naked", and "Long Way Down" too, but I'm not complaining because I expected the setlist to be much more weighted in favour of the new material.

Rating: 6 out of 10, enjoyed myself but wouldn't bother seeing them again unless they release some new material as good as the 90s stuff.

Johnny Rzeznik and Robby Takac (and random backing musicians)

"Black Balloon" with actual black balloons!

Robby Takac was over-excited throughout the performance.  Most of the time he seemed like a crazed fan who'd jumped on stage and was milking it for all it was worth before security tackled him!

Due Date: a decent rental but NOT the next Hangover

I went to see the movie Due Date on Saturday, so I thought it would make a good candidate for my first movie review on here.  The movie stars Zach Galifianakis AKA Alan (The Lone Wolf) from The Hangover, and people have been talking about it as the "next Hangover".  This fact put me off before even seeing it because any movie that says that is just trying too hard.  The Hangover was great partially because it wasn't expected to be so good. No one in it was particularly famous, so they could actually make it about the script and acting (a rare thing in Hollywood these days).  Who would have thought a Korean man jumping out of a car boot could be so funny!?!?  You can't manufacture that kind of comic genius!

Due Date also stars Robert Downey Jr. who is starting to make me nervous too because he seems to have gotten way too famous, way too quickly.  I know he's been around since the 80s but you'd be hard pushed to name anything decent he's been in before Iron Man, and all of a sudden he's in everything!  He reminds me a little bit of Johnny Depp who mainly seems to be famous because he makes a sexy pirate and because he's friends with Tim Burton but I'll save that rant for another time.

Anyway back to the movie review: Due Date was good but it wasn't great, and there weren't any big budget special effects that demand the big screen experience, so I'd put it firmly in the rental category.  Don't get me wrong, there were definitely some funny moments (which I won't go into because I hate spoilers!) and Zach Galifianakis did a fine job of playing an annoying but loveable idiot.  However, the plot is pretty much ripped off from Planes, Trains & Automobiles with a post 9/11 update so it doesn't get any points for originality.  It also has a cheesey over the top stoner scene which loses it even more points.

Rating: 6 out of 10, it was an enjoyable way to pass a couple of hours but I don't think I'd mind if I never saw it again.

People are actually reading this!

I didn't think I'd care if anyone was reading my blog, but I just found the stats page and I can already tell it will become my new obsession! I was pleasantly surprised to find that 29 people have already viewed my blog in the first day! Initially, I wondered how so many people had found it, but then I remembered I'd posted a link on facebook. However I've only had 4 friends talk to me about it and I'm assuming one of the viewers is me, so that leaves 24 people stalking me secretly on facebook! Good to know I'm more popular than I thought, or at least people will look at anything if you post a link to it on facebook!

All the good blog names are taken!

I just spent the last 30 minutes looking for a blog name that wasn't taken. I originally wanted "God Is In The TV" since media reviews will feature quite heavily here and it's a bit more clever than "Media Addict", "Media Junkie", "TV Junkie", "TV Addict", "Square Eyes", or "Media Blog" (all taken), in fact the name "All The Good Blog Names Are Taken" has even been used! And here I thought I was a pretty original person! Oh well, "This Will Be My Year" will have to do, I like the Semisonic reference and it works pretty well as a general journal style blog without a main theme, what do you think? Any better ideas?