Four Problems with Glee's Glorious Return

Minor ones, obviously, because I'm blinded by the perfection that is Sue Sylvester. Nonetheless...

#1. Why bother suspending Sue before the hiatus? I thought the roofie explanation was brilliant (not to mention the use of the phrase "sexual congress"), but her being gone amounted to literally nothing. There was no gap, no period of limbo, no opportunity for her to coach a competing glee club to beat McKinley at regionals! The latter's an unfortunately missed opportunity that I can live with, but I don't understand what her suspension adds to the show, except a moment of unnecessary drama to the pre-hiatus finale.

#2. Jessica Simpson jokes are lazy.

#3. Glee club isn't get shut down. Stop pretending that's really a risk, writers; it smacks of fake drama & lack of creativity.

#4. The adults (with one glaringly obvious exception) are boring. Let's cut down on Will, and Emma, and Terri. More of this. And this.

Acts of Violence - A Warning

In case my mugshot appears on Gawker or NY1 in the recent future, I want you to have the all facts.

There is a car that's frequently (or maybe always) parked on my block. And its alarm goes off at LEAST once a week. And what's worse, it's not the standard car alarm--you know the one I'm talking about. Despite my abiding love for onomatopoeia, I really don't think I can accurately describe the whole thing; there's a lot of "beep-beep-beep-beep, weee-ohhh wee-ohhh," and the like. If I were dealing with that constant wall of sound, I think I'd be able to tune it out.

Nope. This car's alarm is nothing but little horn blasts, three in a row. Over and over. Separated by a five seconds, just enough time to make you think it's going to be peaceful again, but then..."Honk honk honk." How do I know that it's precisely five seconds? It's happening now. It has been for at least 20 minutes. I was actually able to break out the stopwatch on my cell phone and time it, and by the way: this car is nearby. It's not in the distance, so I can hear it very clearly.

"Honk honk honk." Approximately 4.9 seconds go by, and I think to myself, Was that the last one? I think it might have been, thank GOD it's finally... "Honk honk honk." Oh, you son of a BITCH.

The incessant bouts of honking are driving me, slowly but surely, absolutely insane. I think there's only a limited number of times I can hear it before I grab the heaviest blunt object in my apartment (which, looking around, I'm realizing would have to be the vacuum cleaner, or a table) and finish off the offending vehicle once and for all.

So if you come across one of those outlandish headlines like, "Local Lunatic Attacks Toyota with Dirt Devil; Overheard Ranting 'Where's Your Alarm Now, You Honking Piece of Crap?'" I'd appreciate it if you could bail me out.

A Series of Award-Worthy Complaints. Part II, Television Edition.

Now to take a look at the television nominees for Golden Globes. I have surprisingly few complaints!

In fact, when it comes to Best TV Series / Drama: no complaints! I haven’t seen Dexter or True Blood, but it’s my understanding that they’re both excellent—and Mad Men, House, and Big Love are all totally deserving. On the acting side, I think it’s bogus that January Jones was nominated for Mad Men over Elizabeth Moss. Her Betty Draper is a pitch-perfect mannered ice queen, but seeing her on SNL revealed that January is just…that person. Even watching Love Actually over the holidays made me realize that she doesn’t have much of a range—she’s just sort of lucked into a role that lets her play that person every week.

Now, comedy. Entourage. Again. It’s still on, you guys. I’m basically reiterating my position on The Hangover, but I think my point still stands—it does not take talent to write this show. I find it totally impossible to care about the characters, they don’t make me laugh at all. And Piven. The fucking Piven. I’ll concede that when this show first came on, there was something appealing and original about his manic, high-energy performance. But it’s old now. Stale. Boring. We’re totes over it. He’s not nominated, so I don’t know why I’m so annoyed at him, but here we are. Given the caliber of shows that Entourage is up against—30 Rock, The Office, Modern Family, and Glee—if it somehow pulls off a win tonight, I will fly to LA myself and kick Mark Wahlberg in the nards.

Looking to the brighter side, Glee makes this year’s nominations more interesting than usual. The Golden Globes’ weird and inexplicable choice to lump comedies and musicals together (because they’re totally the exact same thing…?) usually has no effect on the television nominations, because nobody makes musical TV shows. Or at least, nobody was nominating Cop Rock for anything. (Oh my God, except apparently a bunch of Emmys? What the fuck, Emmys?) But now Glee is going up against the comedies, and I find that it’s really tough to call who’s going to win, because they each do different things really well. Glee definitely has brilliantly funny moments, but its strong suit is letting the main characters belt out some kick-ass numbers. I don’t think it’s as funny as 30 Rock often (though admittedly not always) is, but the shows are kind of like apples and oranges. I think Best Comedy and Best Actress will come down to these two shows, and making the call between Tina Fey and Lea Michele is, again, a tricky one. Ultimately, I think I have to give the edge to Michele because Fey’s main strength is her writing rather than acting. 30 Rock is fantastic because of its sharp, quick wit and manic pace; and while Liz Lemon is brilliant and I totally want to be her best friend—it’s not a stretch for Tina Fey to play this person. She’s writing & producing one of the best comedies on television in a while, but I don’t think her acting is necessarily the show’s strong suit. I do think she’s a funnier lady than Lea Michele, but! The weirdness of the combined comedy/musical category pushes Michele over the edge for a win, because goddamn, can that girl sing.

Meanwhile, I hope that 30 Rock is being considered not only as a comedy, but for its top-notch musical offerings as well:

“Muffin Top”

“Werewolf Bar Mitzvah”

“Midnight Train to Georgia”

And let us not forget Liz Lemon’s unique contribution to the world of dance.

A Series of Award-Worthy Complaints. Part I, Film Edition.

Golden Globes time! As promised, I’m here to offer my thoughts on the nominees before tonight’s awards ceremony. I thought about going through and doing a full analysis of all the major categories, but for one thing, I haven’t seen nearly enough of the nominees to make any sort of fair judgment. Also, the Globes separate the drama & comedy categories, so that would be, like, double the effort on my part. I’ll focus my energy on bitching about what seems important to me.

Films first—I’ll save my take on the TV nominees for a new post.

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to point out that I have seen…two of the movies that are nominated in big categories. Avatar and The Hangover. Let’s start with those.

Avatar. Obviously this was nominated. There’s been such a fuss over how James Cameron spent a thousand years making this masterpiece, so that was inevitable. Should it win? I think that comes down to which criteria determine what makes a movie the best. Ordinarily, I’d say that the story and acting are the most important factors, and that things like special effects are little extras that get their own separate awards. But if you take filmmaking seriously as an art form, there’s no way to separate the visual element from the rest of it. I think if you consider innovation & originality as crucial parts of what separates one film from another, then has a lot going for it. Cameron really did create something new and exceptional in the way the movie was created—he gets major points for that. But apart from that, Avatar was just…fine. The acting was adequate, the story was predictable—and in fact, didn’t totally hang together in my opinion. I don’t think that Jake’s motivations were clear, and there wasn’t a clear explanation for why he withheld information from the Na’Vi until literally the last possible second. I think it played out that way to get the Major Betrayal reaction, and that didn’t feel genuine to me. So…we’ll see. I wouldn’t have a problem with it winning, per se, but I don’t think it was so exceptional outside of the innovative filmmaking.

The Hangover. Oh boy. I think I have to restrain myself here, if only because I’m going to be saying a lot of the same things about Entourage in the next post. Am I alone in thinking that this movie was seriously over-hyped? It was funny…ish, but I think it was mostly Wacky! WTF?!?! humor. In other words, the kind of thing that a couple frat boys could have written. I personally don’t think we should be giving out awards to a movie whose script is essentially, “OMG, these guys get sooooo drunk! They steal a cop car! And then one of them marries a hooker! [Played by Heather Graham, because apparently that is the full extent of her range] Oh, and dude! There should be a craaaaazy Asian gangster! And a fucking tiger!!” Was there more to the movie than this? Am I missing something? There weren’t really any quotable lines, either—only a couple days after seeing The Hangover, I’d already forgotten almost everything about it. Don't get me wrong; I don’t mind crude, silly humor—but compare this to Wet Hot American Summer, a veritable font of toilet humor, but far superior to The Hangover in almost every way. It’s witty & tongue-in-cheek, with lots of small jokes so that it doesn’t bash you over the head with the sophomoric zaniness. Just look at Paul Rudd pronouncing “journal” with a hard G, Michael Showalter’s quick “I want you inside me…I mean, hey, what’s up?”, and Amy Poehler as an amazingly bitchy and over-serious director of the camp talent show. Not to mention that Bradley Cooper is much more…compelling in Wet Hot American Summer. Ahem.

Sorry, did I get distracted? My point is, there’s nothing special about The Hangover. It’s not as witty as Wet Hot…, and it’s not even as quotable as Old School or Dodgeball. It’s watchable enough if you have nothing else to do, but let’s not give it any awards.

A few other brief thoughts on film nominations.

Up in the Air looks like exactly the kind of movie that was made to win awards. Overly earnest & impressed with its own importance. Yawn.

Sandra Bullock, nominated in two categories? Really? I’m so utterly unimpressed with her—I don’t think the woman has ever done a movie that stood out as something special. She’s the Sheryl Crow of the movie industry: basically unobjectionable, usually watchable, but she never surpasses expectations. Like The Hangover, she’s not awful, but not an award winner either. Certainly not for Sports Movie of the Moment or Romantic Comedy #47729. Maybe I’m just bitter that Betty White wasn’t nominated for that one.

Was Precious actually good? I got the feeling that it was just a huge guilt trip set up by Oprah to make us cry about how terrible this girl’s life is. Whatever. At least Mariah Carey’s not nominated.

Addendum

In response to my December 11 post:

Danny. Nope, no way, it is no longer in any way plausible that Liz Lemon is a sad person who is unlucky in love. Bullshit.

I have things to say about the Golden Globes. I promise to say them before the show Sunday night.

What I Learned This Thanksgiving

My mom likes Lily Allen. She sings along to this one.

My Verdict

Julianne Moore is certainly an improvement over Salma Hayek, but she's no Edie Falco. Although I don't know that anybody can compete with Isabella Rossellini.

By the way, are we really still supposed to buy that Liz Lemon is an unattractive weirdo who can't attract a man? Because: Gray. And Floyd. And oh my word, Dr. Drew. Not to mention Thomas.

Lily Rhodes-van der Woodsen-Klause-Bass-Humphrey...

My new brainstorm for Gossip Girl plotlines: this one's for Lily.

I know! The parents are a snooze, and I recently made the argument that they should be at most tangentially involved in their children's lives. I stand by that.

So, Gossip Girl writers: stop giving Lily van der Woodsen real storylines. Take her back to fabulously cold Season 1 Lily who only remembers she has kids when they break shit or almost die, and whose favorite hobby is marrying for sport. We've heard about how she goes through husbands like Kleenex--so have fun with it! Turn her into the Murphy Brown of marital relations!

Break up Lily and Rufus, and have her marry someone new every year. Like, next year she'll be sick of being with a Brooklyn poor, so she'll go for power and hook up with Old Man van der Bilt (she'd barely even have to change her name!). And then for Season 5 she'll go cougar and marry Carter Baizen for a minute or something. Are Nate's parents still married these days, even with the Captain in jail? God, I hope not, because seeing Lily visiting prison, like this was suddenly Arrested Development would be fantastic (NO TOUCHING!). Hell, so what if they are married? Who better than Lily (except Blair) to manipulate them out of it? And then, just to really fuck with everyone's heads, she would end up marrying Vanessa's dad, and he would be Alan Tudyk (seriously, I wish there was more Firefly that I could watch), and it would seriously piss off every other person in the world. But then: whatever, because they split when Lily refuses to eat dirty hippie farmer's market food, and next year (or month?), she's back with Keith van der Woodsen, or off in France, triple-married to Blair's gay dads.

And! We'd be guaranteed at least one wedding per season, which is just a terrific excuse for the bullshit drama that makes Gossip Girl so great.

As long as she doesn't shop for wedding accessories at Claire's again: