Television is a basically a death factory. If you watch just a couple of hours of primetime fare, you’re almost guaranteed to see at least one dead body and probably a couple more. Watch it for a whole year and you’ll see hundreds upon hundreds of bodies. In real life, death is the thing we fear [...]
Archive for April, 2011
The Killing and The State of Death on Television
Posted in Television, tagged The Killing on April 23, 2011 | 2 Comments »
The Paul Reiser Show: “The Father’s Occupation” or The Paul Reiser Show Is Just Like Curb Your Enthusiasm, Except Without All The Good Parts
Posted in Television, tagged The Paul Reiser Show on April 18, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The Paul Reiser Show desperately wants to be Curb Your Enthusiasm. Desperately. It even goes so far as to feature Larry David as a guest in its first episode. It even feeds David lines like, “You should do a show like Curb Your Enthusiasm.” I wonder if David would still feel comfortable saying after seeing [...]
How I Met Your Mother: “The Exploding Meatball Sub” or Meta-Jokes Gone Wrong
Posted in Television, tagged How I Met Your Mother on April 15, 2011 | 1 Comment »
“The Exploding Meatball Sub” is a deeply frustrating episode of television. It comes off of a string of excellent episodes that have very successfully mixed humor with heavy emotional stakes: Ted has broken up a marriage, Marshall’s father has died and Barney has reconnected with John Lithgow. It’s understandable that the show might want to [...]
The Good Wife: “Killer Song” or America Doesn’t Suck. People Suck.
Posted in Television, tagged The Good Wife on April 3, 2011 | 1 Comment »
It’s a universal truth that our past has a tendency to follow us around. As such, it makes a good theme, and a lot writers have put it to good use. Just last year, How I Met Your Mother devoted an episode to the concept, literalizing the metaphor of baggage by forcing its characters to [...]
