My Name is Earl: Season 2, Episode 2 – “Jump For Joy”

my name is earl jump for joy

Originally posted on September 29, 2006.

This week’s episode was different for two reasons: it didn’t involve a single item from the list, and it wasn’t particularly funny. It was also a direct continuation of last week’s episode, which may be totally different, but since I watched last season in non-sequential reruns I’m not sure about that.

Earl begins the episode by telling us that he begins most mornings thinking about the list, but on this morning he was thinking about other things, mainly going to court to help get Joy out of jail – then he recaps the events that happened in last week’s episode, landing Joy in jail in the first place.

The idea to create episodes that don’t involve the list seems like a decent one. The show is popular and it seems quite possible that the list could run dry before the show runs out of episodes, plus the concept of writing certain wrongs could become tiresome more quickly than the producers would like. But if tonight’s episode is any indication of how it will go without a list, Earl had better start thinking about his past mistakes more often.

The judge sets Joy’s bail at one million dollars due to this being her third strike. In flashback number one (or two if you count the opening recap) we see that Joy once tried to make counterfeit money by copying bills at a big copy center like Kinkos. Strike number two occurred when she was being fingerprinted for that crime and struck the officer due to him breaking her newly minted fingernails.

Randy, as usual, isn’t concerned with the events of the day, but with a walnut – he wants to see if the judge will crack it with his judge hammer. Amazingly, the judge obliges, even after tossing Joy out of court.

So, a million-dollar bail is set making it a cool $100,000s needed for a bondsman.

Earl no longer has that kind of money, but Randy makes a helpful list of folks they can borrow it from – Richie Rich, the Beverly Hillbillies, and the like – but the list of fictional characters is written on a Chubby’s Pork bag, and Earl thinks he might be able to borrow the cash from Chubby himself.

Chubby, played in full-on sleaze mode circa Striptease by Burt Reynolds, relents to the money request, but only if Earl can bring back his favorite dancer, who happens to be Catalina.

Turns out Catalina loved being a dancer, but her unusual method of jumping up and down was hazardous to local citizens – an old man died of a heart attack from watching her “assets” go boingy-boing. Thus she reserved herself to a life of cleaning motel rooms.

Ever the helpful lot, Earl and Randy (who can’t seem to think straight after Earl mentions Catalina being half-naked) track down the dead guy’s family and it turns out the old man was a slave driver in a sweatshop. His death has brought happiness to the sweat shop workers (for the son brought in a fan) and everything is better.

Catalina agrees to dance prompting Randy to ponder “which half’s going to be naked – I hope it is the front half.” But all doesn’t go well when Catalina finds out her dancing will get Joy out of jail. Catalina refuses to, as she puts it “jump for Joy” in what has to be the cheesiest clever pun in the history of television.

Joy agrees to apologize for all the wrongs she has committed against Catalina in hopes that she will agree to the dance. But as usual, Joy can’t play nice and the apology turns into a catfight over which of the two is hotter.

Somehow Joy convinces the judge to release her for a one-night Chubby dance in order to raise bail money. Joy gets drunk to calm her nerves and instead of dancing, she pukes all over the front row.

In the end, Catalina saves the day and agrees to dance – not for Joy, whom she still loathes, but for Earl and his quest to make people’s lives better.

Though in the episode, Earl was unable to scratch something off his list, the episode still revolved around him trying to help people out (in this case getting Joy out of jail, and Catalina back to dancing.) This causes me to ask what’s the point of moving away from the list if all you’re going to do is set up the same type of situation. Without the list, Earl seems a little unfocused. The show focused even more on juvenile gags (witness Randy’s long gag with Catalina’s half-nakedness) and less on any moral center involving karma.

House, MD: Season 3, Episode 4 – “Lines in the Sand”

house lines in the sand

Originally posted on September 27, 2006.

I keep adding shows to my list of reviews to write which, at some point is going to bite me on the buttocks. And that right hard. But for now, I don’t mind doing little reviews of the shows I watch, when I watch them.

House is a show I started watching late last season. And for most of that, it was more filler than anything I was particularly interested in. If it was on and I was bored I watched it with detached interest, but if I missed it, I didn’t really miss it. As per usual with my writings on television these days, it was the summer that made me a fan.

I was anxious for this season to start and then I became nervous after the preview for last week’s episode thinking House had already jumped the shark and landed in X-files territory. It didn’t and we all were relieved.

What I like about House is that it is a mystery that pretends to be a medical drama (or is that a medical drama pretending to be a mystery?) Each episode brings us a patient with unexplained symptoms. House and his team spend the episode trying every test imaginable to figure out the problem. Hugh Laurie, as House does a magnificent job playing the cantankerous doctor who just happens to be brilliant. Truly he is the reason to watch.

Tonight’s mysterious illness lies in a young autistic boy who suddenly begins screaming and is seemingly in pain.

The pain isn’t related to the autism, but the team run a series of tests anyway. The tests come back negative, but the kid coughs up fluid.

In a very enjoyable sub-plot, Cuddy replaces House’s blood-stained carpet to which House complains and promises to never enter his office again until the blood carpet is returned. It is a great showdown between the two and one that seems so silly and petty in its foolishness it would be hilarious were they both not so serious about it all.

Also, the young jail-bait hottie from last week is back. She pretended to have the same chest symptoms as her father so that House would examine her (naked) chest. House plays along in his own little way and the girl continues to come to the hospital and call him repeatedly until Cuddy is forced to issue a restraining order.

In a nice, intimate, and helpful moment, House, to get the autistic lad to breathe in a sleeping agent, begins sucking on the tube himself and then putting it to the boy’s face. By doing this, the boy learns to trust House, and House gets high. But in his usual manner, House destroys the moment by telling the boy’s parents that it is a case of monkey see/monkey do, relating their son to nothing more than a primate.

Throughout the episode, House and his team set up shop in a variety of places including the main ward of the hospital, Dr. Wilson’s office, a conference room reserved by Cuddy, and eventually Cuddy’s office. All of this is part of House’s plot to make Cuddy give in and give him his carpet back.

We discover that House has an affinity for the child for he never has to deal with all of the social niceties that House deplores so much.

During a basic biopsy of the autistic child’s underarm, they discover that the cells located there are in fact liver cells. This brings up many other issues such as the possibility of cancer and more tests being run.

The tests lead the team to believe the kid may have ingested something harmful. House immediately suspects the parents of poisoning, but this is ruled out through some tests. This leads to accidental ingestion and the team scours the house to see what may be a threat without anyone knowing it.

Sure enough, there is jimson weed on location and House takes pictures of it and various other items in the yard to the boy. Without treating him like a sick kid, House demands the boy show him what he has been eating, but the boy only points at the sandbox.

Finally having enough of the Lolita, House breaks up with her using lines from Casablanca. Looking into her eyes while doing his best Bogart impression, House notices her milky tears – a symptom of some type of simple disease – to which he subscribes to a drug and leaves her alone. As often happens this small symptom leads to House discovering the large problem in the main patient. After looking into the autistic boy’s eyes, House discovers small worms. Worms that would be received through eating sand could have caused all of his other symptoms.

The worms are removed and the boy is well again.

The bloody carpet is returned.

Man, House is a difficult show to cover. It has so many complexities that a plot analysis gets tedious, and I’m still unsure how to cover it critically. We’ll see if I can keep it up.

The Red Shoes (2005)

the red shoes

I suppose it is only natural that Asian horror should become as trite and bloated as its American counterparts. Eventually, they will most assuredly start aping themselves – mining their old material for what struck gold – and trying to recreate the old magic, only to fail miserably.

The Red Shoes isn’t as bad as all that, but it sure feels like a movie made upon audience testing and computer printouts of what has made the genre such a popular thing. It contains just about everything a good Asian horror movie should.

Inanimate objects that take on creepy spiritual significance? Check

A young child becomes enamored and endangered by said object? Check

Single mom recently divorced, living in a dilapidated and perhaps haunted apartment? Check.

Gruesome, unexplained murders? Check

Gruesome, unexplained murder that went unrevenged? Check

Long, black-haired

girl in desperate need of a chiropractor? Check

Buckets of blood? Double check.

Yet for all the textbook reasons why it should be an excellent creep-o-rama, it never really manages to pull itself off. At least part of the reason why Asian horror has become so successful both financially and artistically is that it managed to take a haggard genre and revitalize it with freshness. The Red Shoes does nothing new, but takes what has worked in the past and redoes it.

For all that, it’s not half bad. The production values are quite excellent and it does steal from some of the best horror movies this decade so I guess it would have to be pretty good. It’s the type of thing where had I not seen all of the films it rips off I’d probably have loved it.

Let’s slip into the plot for a moment. Sun-jae (Hye-su Kim) catches her boorish husband boinking some girl and decides to take herself and daughter Tae-su (Yeon-ah Park) away from the adulterer and they move into a run-down old apartment (did somebody say Dark Water?)

Later, Sun-jae finds a pair of pink shoes (I know the flick is called Red Shoes but the shoes are most definitely pink – this is either a bad translation or a literary device – they’re red because of all the blood! – get it?!?) and she takes the shoes home. Before she knows it she is attached to those shoes enough to get violently angry with anyone, including Tae-su who tries to touch them. (Inanimate object takes on spooky personality – did anyone see Ringu, the Ring, or the Ring Virus?)

Sun-jae’s friend gets a hankering for some pink –er red – shoes and steals them. Quickly she meets a bloody end. There are obligatory flashbacks showing why the shoes are now evil (I’ll only say the previous owner never got proper revenge, and so the shoe’s soul (get it?) must take that revenge on themselves.) Along the way, we get homages (or rip-offs) of The Eye, Ju-On, the Ring series, Dark Water, and just about every Asian horror film I’ve seen.

Like most Asian cinema the lighting is eerie and very well done. The acting hits all its cylinders and most of the production qualities are quite good. It just isn’t particularly original which makes it kind of a bore.

It’s just plain difficult to muster up any fear over a pair of pink heels. You might say the same thing over a television set, but for anyone who’s ever watched Mama’s Family you know that TV can be as scary as hell. But pink freaking shoes, there ain’t nothing horrifying about that, except maybe bad taste.

It is a good introductory film for Asian horror as it takes a lot of what works and applies it to one picture. But for anyone who has spent a good amount of time with Miike, Park, and Nakata, then the Red Shoes will feel a little too been there, done that.

Lady Vengeance (2005)

lady vengeance poster

Forget Kill Bill.

Screw Quentin Tarantino.

There is one filmatic revenge series to obsess over and it doesn’t come from the mighty shores of California. Chan-wook Park’s final installment to his vengeance trilogy, Lady Vengeance, has just been released on US DVD and it is an awesome way to end the series, indeed.

Where Tarantino gave us two films full of exquisite style and very little substance, Park finds time to explore the meaning between the bloodletting.

Where Tarantino created an amazing genre-bending exploitation masterpiece, Park has made a violent, stylish trilogy that is more than just eye candy.

That’s all the Kill Bill references I’ll make, I promise.

Lady Vengeance (which was forever named Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, until the good people at Tartan decided it needed a little spiffing) is a tad slower, and less action-oriented than the other two in the trilogy, but it is the final in the series and like Kill Bill Vol. 2 (darn it, ok I swear that was the last one, for real this time) the series needs a little grounding.

Lee Geum-Ja (Yeong-ae Lee) is sent to prison at the age of 19 for the abduction and murder of a small child. Truth in fact she did not murder or abduct the boy (she merely helped keep him) but takes the blame for her accomplice, Mr. Baek (Min-sik Choi) because he threatens her own child with violent harm if she does not.

She spends 13 years in prison for those crimes and while there she makes good with everybody. She is the perfect inmate – she finds religion, helps out, cares for an elderly inmate, and even donates an organ – all the while she meticulously plots her revenge.

Upon release, she uses her former cellmates to help get her revenge and extols it in true Chan-wook Park fashion.

Although served deathly cold, the revenge is not so sweet. In fact it is quite bitter and does not relieve Geum-Ja of guilt like she thought it would. Like all of the films in the trilogy, Lady Vengeance delves deep into the consequence of being wronged and how finding vengeance reaps more than it sows.

The film is astonishingly beautiful. Bathed in gorgeous color and light that makes even the most blood-soaked scenes look as delectable as the desirous confections Geum-Ja is so good at making.

With only four films under his belt, Park has proven he is an artist of the finest measure.

As mentioned, the film is slightly more subdued than the others. There are no liver donations as performed by hoodlums, no ironic circle jerks, and certainly no massive fist-fights as performed in small hallways, but what it lacks in extremism it finds in emotional gravitas.

Yeong-ae Lee is to Chan-wook Park as Uma Thruman is to Quentin Tarantino (oh forget it, you can’t review Lady Vengeance without referencing Kill Bill, at least not in this house.) Gawd just looking in her eyes would make a cold stone weep. She plays the role of Geum-ja with an intensity of a thousand suns, yet manages to keep an eternal sadness just below the surface. It is a performance worthy of honor.

For once Park has ended a vengeance film with something resembling a happy ending. No, the vengeance isn’t really vindicated, nor is Geum-ja satisfied, but unlike the preceding films, the violence, and vengeance seem to stop here. And that seems to be enough.

It may not be as gut-wrenchingly satisfying an ending as we get in Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance or Oldboy, but it is one that rings the finality to the trilogy, one that serves as an answer to the questions brought up by all three films.

Random Shuffle (09/26/06) – Martin Simpson, The Black Keys, The Black Crowes, Steve Earle & Ben Folds

Originally written on September 27, 2006.

“Boots of Spanish Leather” – Martin Simpson
From A Nod to Bob: An Artists’ Tribute to Bob Dylan on His 60th Birthday

Frankly, I’ve never heard of Martin Simpson, but being a Dylan fan I got this tribute disk. Dylan is one of the few artists that have been covered by just about everyone who has ever sung a song. He’s also one of the fewer whose covers are often better than the originals.

Sorry Bob, I love ya, but that voice can be improved upon. (Editors note: I have clearly gone on to absolutely love Dylan’s voice). This version is much slower and sadder than the most excellent Nanci Griffith cover version. It has its charm though. Simpson phrases the lyrics a little oddly, with lots of pauses and stops and then a rush to get to the end of the line before the next one starts. This creates kind of an interesting flow to the song but does keep me from actually listening to the lyrics. This isn’t all that weird for me since I often don’t pay attention to lyrics, but here I know the lyrics quite well but continue to find myself forgetting what the song is.

“The Lengths” – The Black Keys
From Rubber Factory

The brother-in-law recently turned me onto The Black Keys as he has to many a good old rock n roll band. You see somewhere over the last decade I got lost in a sea of folk and bluegrass and alt.country acoustic instruments and forgot how to rock. Over the last many months, I’ve tried to find my way back.

The problem was that radio sucks and most of the electrified music I could find just kind of stunk. I’ve found a path called indie rock and have begun to dig walking my way along that path. This song is actually a pretty nice acoustical number.

The beginning of this song reminds me immensely of some other tune that I can never remember. I get that nostalgic reminiscence going in my head and even sing the first line “baby…” but then this song changes and I can’t put my finger on my memory.

“Seeing Things” – The Black Crowes
From Shake Your Money Maker

I recently had an argument with a coworker (or is that ex-coworker since I no longer work there?) over whether the mix-tape was dead. Her point was making mix tapes went out with junior high and good riddance since it was an utterly juvenile practice. I actually agreed with the general premise that the mix tape was dead, but this has more to do with CD-burning technology and MP3 players than any type of junior high play. Mix-taping was a craft, and a good one, that has died because no one knows what a freaking tape is anymore. But in the day a good tape could convey emotions you could never impart in real life. It could tell the person to whom the tape was going what kind of person you were, impart upon them all kinds of cool tunes, and get their groove on all in one 90-minute piece of plastic.

Who now knows anything about the importance of the first and last songs on each side? The last song on side A may seem trivial since there is still side B to listen to, but if a person doesn’t have an automatic flip on their tape player side A may be all they listen to, and thus last song on side A may resonate a lot farther than first perceived.

What about segues? Sure now with all this digital technology, it’s easy to splice two songs together and give them some fade in and out. But in the day all you had was the stop button and pause. An awful “kawack” between songs, because you hit Stop poorly, could totally kill the mood.

I could go on, and probably will someday, but you get the point. I rant about mix-tapes because this song was a pivotal one in a good friend’s mix-tape to a lost love. By now the tangled web that was that love has gotten all mixed up. Was the tape made before they hooked up or after? Was it about the long-term boyfriend from hell, or before he even existed? Who knows? But I do remember the tape and its significance.

“Ft. Worth Blues” – Steve Earle
From El Corazon

Before I began dating the girl who became my wife, we spent a lot of time thinking and talking about dating. Well, that’s not entirely true, because we didn’t talk about it that much straight out, but there were undercurrents of what that would mean flowing all the time.

You see at the time we lived a thousand miles apart or so. While I toiled away in Tennessee she was spending a cold winter in Montreal, Canada. There was talk of her going to graduate school at the University of Tennessee and I figured that proximity would allow for all sorts of romantical escapades. The problem was the talks of Tennessee turned into a reality of Indiana which convoluted those escapades a great deal. The heart subdued the mind and we eventually did date, fall in love, and marry. However, it was during this time that I heard a quizzical little song containing a lovely lyric that went something like:

“Oklahoma’s alright when I’m in Montreal”

Oklahoma being the place I was raised and Montreal being where the girl was, this line seemed a bit prophetic.

Unfortunately, I was driving when I heard the song and the name slipped past me like a passing car. I later e-mailed the radio station asking what the name of the song was, but by that time I couldn’t remember the precise lyric only its mentioning of the two locations. Their response was that it could be this Steve Earle song.

I quickly downloaded said song and realized they were wrong. The song stayed though and I’ve grown to love its lonesome, sadness on my own.

The song I was looking for, by the way, was “Some Things Gotta Hold On Me” by Steve Forbert.

“Annie Waits” – Ben Folds
From Rockin’ the Suburbs

Lead piano in a rock group never sounds like a good idea. Sure Elton John pulled it off quite profoundly in the 70’s but then he got old and gave us “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.” Billie Joel sounded promising with “Piano Man” and then married Christie Brinkley and it was all over. Folds takes the idea and creates something (usually) interesting.

I think what I like about him as a songwriter is that he doesn’t (usually) make the piano the focus of the song. Sure, it’s there and often pounding away, but so are the guitar and drums and it all sounds like a real rock unit, versus a singer-songwriter who never learned to play an acoustic guitar. This one starts the ever-excellent Suburbs album and carries this incredibly syncopated rhythm. I don’t know what the heck Annie is waiting for, but if it is good piano rock, she’s found it.

The Simpsons: Season 18, Episode 3 – “Please Homer, Don’t Hammer ‘Em”

please homer dont ahammer em

LOL total: 6 (but three of them were butt jokes)

Episode three of season 18 continues the latter-day saints period of The Simpsons. It is still not up to classic ranking, but it is definitely funny, and definitely not a disappointment to watch.

Tonight’s episode centered around two stories: Marge finds out she is quite the handyman, but apparently the entire town of Springfield is so sexist no one will allow her to work. Also, Bart finds out that Principal Skinner is deathly allergic to peanuts and in Bart-like fashion begins tormenting Skinner with a peanut-on-a-stick.

The episode starts with the Simpson clan shopping in a ramshackle mall that no one goes to anymore (since somebody shot the Mayor’s dad). This allows for some nice bits with Bart inside a terribly outdated arcade (with an Asteroids clone, and a Remington Steele game, all of which look suspiciously like the games Bart used to play in the early episodes of the show) and Homer eating decades-old gummy bears, which have all congealed together.

Homer buys a Time-Life set of carpentry books which he promptly forgets and never uses. Marge picks them up after a piece of floorboard comes up and breaks the bedroom nightstand. Turns out she is quite skilled with a hammer and nail and quickly begins building all sorts of stuff.

Unfortunately, everyone who answers her ad for a carpenter quickly laughs at her for being female. Now maybe this was typical Simpson satire knocking society for screwed-up gender roles, but it felt like plain old sexism to me.

Marge gets the idea to put Homer’s name on the company and when he lands jobs she’ll secretly do the work. The funniest bits of the show come from Marge brainstorming how she could put the typical construction worker in the ad (lazy, fat, and showing plenty of butt-crack) and realizes Homer is the perfect model from seeing his fat crack in bed.

Yeah, butt jokes are what got me through tonight.

I’m not offended by much. The Simpsons have certainly skewered plenty of sacred cows, and I’ve laughed through most of them. They’ve jabbed most major religions, politicians, celebrities, and all sorts of social norms and I’ve seen the humor behind the satire. But here it just seemed overdone, or maybe that’s because it was un-funny. Had the jokes been right on, then this paragraph wouldn’t have been written.

Both stories, now that you mention it were rather weak. Bart learns of Skinner’s peanut weakness after the students are ordered to leave all nut-related items at home. A wee chat with Groundskeeper Willie turns up the offended allergic is Skinner. Bart applies peanut to stick and begins making Skinner do everything he says (eating garbage, stuffing firecrackers down his pants, etc).

Funny, Homer’s butt makes me laugh, but Bart’s juvenile jokes left me flat.

Marge eventually gets miffed at Homer taking all the glory that she makes him redo an old roller coaster by himself. Of course, he screws up and when his ego takes him on a ride over his death-trap of a roller coaster, he finally admits it is Marge who is the construction genius.

Skinner finds out Bart has an allergic reaction to shrimp and they engage in a shrimp-on-a-stick/peanut-on-a-stick battle royale ending in both being soaked in a giant tub of Chinese peanut shrimp gumbo.

The stories really were lame. The sexism failed to be the least bit funny (ok, Kent Brockman telling Homer that he would tear down the gazebo and build a coffin to his manhood if Marge actually built it and then challenging Homer to a topless wrestling was actually pretty funny, but still) and Skinner being allergic to peanuts so suddenly felt like lazy writing. However, they still nailed some good, if admittedly juvenile, jokes. It didn’t feel like penance watching the show, which is more than I can say for most of last season. And at least there were comprehendible stories to follow instead of a series of nonsequiturs.

I laughed heartily, out loud even. And that’s enough for me….anymore.

Unfortunately due to football, the next original episode won’t air until November 05. In an unfortunate, and annoying tradition, that episode will be the Halloween special, a week after the holiday.

Bootleg Country: William Shatner – 1977

William Shatner
??/??/77
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY

I first learned of bootleg trading through the now-defunct Grateful Dead Usenet group rec.music.gdead. It is no surprise then when I say that the majority of the music I collected was of the Dead and Dead related bands. Once in a while I would find a list with something a little more unusual, say Pink Floyd or Lynard Skynard on a list, but it was usually just one show from such a band and it was an unusual sight.

Whenever I would see these “odd” shows I would scramble to trade for them. Partially because I thought they were so rare and would make good trade bait, and partially because I was interested to hear what these other bands sounded like.

It wasn’t until years later, with the availability of broadband internet and the usability of bit torrent that I realized that these oddities were much more available than I thought. Moving out of jam band circles enlightened me to another world.

By far the oddest bootleg in my collection is this 1977 recording of William Shatner performance. It is part stand up, part dramatic performance, and part audience participation and completely weird.

The performance is some 8 years after the original Star Trek television series was canceled and a couple of years before the first movie came out, yet it is obvious that Shatner is performing before a group of Trekkers.

The show begins with Shatner reading a poem entitled “Earthbound” about a fanciful young man who is abducted by aliens for a time. It is very theatrical with spacey sound effects and Shatner reciting in his best Shakespearean voice.

Throughout the show, he reads poetry, essays, and theatrical monologues to illustrate points he’s trying to make in his spoken word performance. In his verbal essay, he points towards man’s yearning to travel, explore and learn throughout time.

Shatner appears very well versed in history and philosophical matters, at least for the purpose of this performance.

Scattered throughout the theatrics, he answers questions from the audience which mostly deals with the series and rumors of the upcoming movie. It is particularly interesting to hear this information as the film is still in the very early stages of development (Leonard Nimoy has yet to even sign-on, though Shatner says it is simply a dispute over contracts.)

In these segments, Shatner also sounds nervous and unsure of himself. It is quite often he tosses off a quick line and follows it with a high pitched giggle making him sound like a schoolboy asking a girl to the prom. It seems peculiar that a well-worn actor of stage and screen would get nervous around an audience, but that may be the difference between performance and simply talking in front of a lot of people. In fact, the nervousness goes completely away when he recites his theatrical lines.

I would never be able to consider myself one of the Trek fold. I remember watching the original series as a boy in afternoon reruns. I was enthralled with the drama, the action, and the lady’s legs in those little skirts. On the school bus me and a friend would often draw the different versions of the Enterprise in the condensations forming on the window.

However when the Next Generation came out I watched some episodes with enthusiasm, but often I was distracted by other things and paid it no mind whatsoever. I’ve watched all of the movies, but have paid no mind to subsequent series. So while I would consider myself a fan, I am always humbled when I say such a thing for I know my fandom goes only so far.

This may be why when I listen to William Shatner wax poetic about mankind’s deepest desires to explore the unknown I have a mysterious smirk on my face instead of a mystified look of reverence.

The Office: Season 3, Episode 1 – “Gay Witch Hunt”

the office gay witch hunt

Originally written on September 22, 2006.

You’ll notice tonight that I’m covering some TV shows step by step. For a while, I’ve been thinking about doing TV coverage episode by episode. In time it could be a really cool database.

I have been watching the first season of The Sopranos and have hand-written plot lines for each of them, yet I haven’t gotten around to blogging them out. Tonight I decided to scribble notes for The Office and My Name is Earl. As you can see I have managed to get them here. It was a little difficult to determine how much I wanted to say. A simple plotline synopsis seems a little boring, but an actual review of each episode likewise seems boring and monotonous.

Fans of a show know what works. There is not a good reason to continually point out which actor does a good job, or what is annoying about a program. That leaves the plot and the best jokes. So that is what I’ll attempt to do. Give a rundown of exactly what happened adding my little thoughts here and there. We’ll see if it works, or if I manage to continue with it.

I started watching The Office last season. The trouble was I never could remember when it came on, so I only caught it sporadically. Over the summer I managed to figure out the time slot and catch most of the season’s episodes. Before the season had ended I did see the season finale ending with Jim finally telling Pam of his love and kissing her as the credits rolled. All summer I’ve waited for tonight to see exactly what Pam is going to do.

And here we are.

Jim transferred to Stamford and we got a few quick looks into how things work in another office. Jim has been promoted, but we quickly see that none of the employees like him. They certainly don’t take to his practical jokes (he puts Ed Helms’s calculator in some Jello, and Helms promptly has a total freak out), or his mugging for the cameras.

I’m not sure how Stamford is going to work out. Ed Helms is a brilliant edition and could create some wonderful comic moments, and the rest of the cast seems okay. They at least seem somewhat more normal than the Scranton bunch, and watching Jim try to find acceptance there could be very funny indeed. However, the overall cast is already almost too large, and adding an entirely new office may prove to be way too much for the series to hold. It seems highly difficult to handle plot lines for both offices which may mean Jim gets regulated to quick gags, which would ruin the show.

Who knows though, maybe he’ll work something out with Pam and move back to Scranton.

Which brings us to that relationship. Part of what made The Office work was the relationship between Pam and Jim. They have a great deal of chemistry, and the awkwardness between their obvious feelings for each other and their inability to do anything about it brought a nice bit of drama to the otherwise outrageousness.

Pam broke off the marriage and the relationship with Roy, though they had to keep all the food, now frozen. Roy doles it out at lunchtime. He seems to have had a rough go with it but promises he’ll get her back.

So now Pam and Jim could feasibly get back together. But as everybody knows, the will they, or won’t they aspect of a relationship is always the best part (in television at least). Just as Sam and Diane or David and Maddie. I hope they don’t ever get together. I hope Pam feels too hurt over the breakup and we’re treated to many seasons of not knowing if they’ll hook-up.

The bulk of the show dealt with Michael offending and then outing Oscar. Michael somehow felt that calling everyone “faggie” was appropriate. Oscar complained of this and confided in Toby that he is gay. Toby chastised Michael for being insensitive.

Michael immediately blabs to everyone in the office about Oscar’s homosexuality and gets mixed reactions.

Kevin thinks it is hilarious, Angela that it is disgusting (she says she tried to watch Will and Grace but was repulsed by it), Dwight doesn’t believe it (he’s not wearing women’s clothes) and Michael remains as obnoxious as ever.

Michael and Dwight form a mission to find out who else is gay, but have no idea how to do it. Dwight searches gay porn for possible clues and calls up Jim about purchasing that gaydar he talked about previously.

As tensions rise Michael calls an office meeting where he manages to enrage Oscar even more by raising more homophobic gossip. Ever endearing Michael attempts to smooth it out by embracing Oscar and even gives him a quick kiss on the lips (ever the follower, Dwight then jumps up for a kiss on the cheek.)

Hilariously, the episode ends with Dwight receiving his very own gay-dar from Jim (it is a portable metal detector in reality.) He quickly finds Oscar and runs it over his body, pleased when it beeps at Oscar’s crotchal region (in reality the belt buckle), but shocked to discover when it beeps at his own.

The show is back and in fine form. There were many laugh-out-loud moments and a few of the awkward, I can’t believe Michael just did that moment as well. The two offices could create more moments of hilarity or could cause the plots to be diluted. The Jim/Pam relationship is in flux once again and I’m crossing my fingers it will remain as such.

My Name is Earl: Season 2, Episode 1 – “Very Bad Things”

my name is earl very bad things

Last year I only caught a couple of episodes of My Name is Earl. I enjoy Jason Lee in just about anything he does, but this show never really grabbed me. It had some funny bits, but the characters all seemed a little too dumb to be interesting and I kept myself busy with other things to watch much.

This summer, or as I like to call it, The Summer of TV Addiction, I began watching it regularly and now add it to my ever-growing selection of must-watch.

The season premiere starts with Earl deciding to scratch off Joy from his list. It seems he never agreed with her while they were married. In a series of flashbacks, we see Earl take sides with everybody but Joy including Randy (who grabs the potato chips with his toes) and a lobster (who squirted Joy while she was cutting it up.)

Earl finally takes Joy’s side by telling Darnell that he should throw Joy a surprise party even if she knows about it (thus ruining the surprise argues Darnell.)

Joy decides to buy a “disappearing” TV after watching Britney Spears and K-fed use one on their show.

Unfortunately, the TV is too big to fit inside the trailer and the store won’t take it back because there is gum inside the receipt. They attempt to watch the television outside in the yard, but the glare of the sun and motorcyclists keep them from it. After a rain the TV is completely ruined.

Joy again attempts to take the TV back. Declaring she is going to get her $3,000 back one way or another she steals a truck from the store.

Joy tries to sell the entire truck, not what’s in the truck mind you, to someone but he doesn’t buy due to the truck having the name of the store still written upon it. His friend, an Eastern European by the accent, says she’ll buy the truck, but when they arrive at Joy’s trailer, Darnell has landed the surprise birthday party a month early, scaring off the European.

Earl, still feeling generous, decides to help her unload the truck. They paint the name off the truck, then brilliantly decide to open the danged thing to see if the contents might be worth $3,000.

Oops, there is a man (a store employee) inside! After some thinking, they decide to order (in fake British accents no less) the man to blindfold himself and run out of the truck when they open the door. He obliges but crashes into a tree, knocking himself out.

Earl and Joy load him into the truck and drive off to a hospital. The truck runs out of gas along the way, and while Earl walks to get more fuel, Joy accidentally lets the man loose. She got hungry, you see, and opened the truck door looking for food. The man had taken off his clothes and stuffed them to look like he was unconscious, then whacked Joy on the head while she was looking at it.

Prompting the second-best line of the episode, “Son of a bitch he Ferris Bueller-ed me.”

Man, now in his underwear is caught by Joy and Earl and Randy, but Randy sticks the man in the front of the truck, instead of the back, prompting him to take off in the truck.

During the hot pursuit, Randy suggests they could cut out the man’s tongue so that he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone who he saw. Realizing that he could still draw them he suggests they cut off his fingers, prompting the best line of the show, “At least he’s thinking, he can’t help it if he’s not good at it.”

Earl decides he has helped Joy enough and lets the man escape. Joy is charged with stealing a truck and kidnapping and ends the episode in jail.

I read recently that the writers were going to focus more on the characters than on the list this season, and they seem to be off to a good start. Most of the episode had nothing to do with a list point, and in fact, the only item on the list “Take Joy’s Side” was done within a few minutes. Instead, the episode moved forward from the general concept of that item.

Joy got a lot of screen time and she ran with it. She’s always a funny character, but here she stole the best lines, played the best scenes and pretty much ruled the episode. It was a nice change of focus from the usual Earl/Randy relationship.

Anatomy of Hell (2004)

anatomy of hell dvd art

Originally written on September 20, 2006.

Nudity in the United States is an odd thing. We tend to love our nudity, yet are mostly ashamed of our love and try to hide it. Well we try to hide what we determine is actual nudity while plastering near nudity everywhere we can.

From TV to magazines to print ads, on beaches, sidewalks, and shopping malls, flesh reigns king. Skimpy bikinis, short skirts, and tight shirts are all acceptable, admired, and loved. Yet again, flash a nipple or pubic hair and there is an outcry from the same public that so adored the near nudity.

As a lad, I could often get my mother to allow me to watch the newest Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick filled with bloody battles, but as soon as a movie showed a bit of nudity and it was off to play Monopoly.

The nudity didn’t even have to be sexual. A girl walking out of a shower was reason enough to turn it off. Strangely we could often get away with a film full of innuendo or engaging in physical nuances that hid the nudity.

I don’t want to knock my mother too hard here, certainly, the culture she was raised in had a great deal to do with how she parented us. She tried her best to do the difficult job of guarding our television and movie viewing habits. A difficult job with no official rules to what is acceptable

It also must be said that we often baited her and pressured her constantly to allow us to watch the newest action flick while staying mostly mum about the nudity. As a kid, I didn’t mind complaining that it was just fake violence and wouldn’t affect me, but there was no way I was going to beg for boobies, no matter how much I secretly longed for them.

Funny how some 12 years after I’ve left home I’m still worried about what my mother will say having watched and reviewed a picture such as Anatomy of Hell.

The film starts with a warning which looks like the typical FBI copyright warning but which reminds the viewer that film is not real, but an illusion and informs us that the most intimate moments do not belong to the main actress, but a stand-in.

It then moves into two men involved in a little back alley oral action.

No kids, this isn’t going to be your typical night at the cinema.

The plot involves a woman (Amira Casar) on the verge – she is first seen in a nightclub where she promptly slits her wrists in the bathroom – and a young gay man (Rocco Siffredi) who rescues her from suicide.

The woman invites the man to her secluded home for four nights to “watch her where she is unwatchable.”

The film then concentrates on four nights of sexual exploration and philosophy.

It is not a film for the prudish, or squeamish, or for those looking to get their jollies off.

It is full of explicit nudity and sex, but also of graphic imagery that exposes both man and woman for everything that they are physically – from urinating to coitus to pulling out bloody tampons. It is anything but sexually stimulating.

It tries to do the same emotionally but is all too often obtuse with its imagery and symbolism.

In one scene the woman talks of her pubic hair and vulva as a newborn bird lying in its nest. The film cuts from a close-up of the woman’s nether regions to such a bird. The bird is then plucked from its nest by a young boy who sticks it in his pocket. Moments later blood on the shirt reveals the bird is dead and the boy then throws it to the ground and stomps the bird with his boot.

Not exactly subtle. But not exactly poignant either.

The dialogue is similarly robust. The man discusses disgustedly at the horridness of the female body while the woman remarks that all men despise women and if they could would murder them all.

There are lots of long, languid shots where the camera rests upon the couple laying in bed, or pouring a drink without music, sound, or dialogue. As if the image brings some meaning to its story.

If you look closely, beyond some of the more pompous turns of phrase, there is a deeper meaning to be found. Despite the hamfistedness, the director does have something to say.

There is a scene towards the end of the film after the couple parted ways where the man sits in a bar, angry at the previous night’s actions. Like many a man, he displays that anger by playing the braggart making like he devoured the poor woman and split her apart with his maleness, while it is he that has been torn down by those events.

No, Anatomy of Hell is not a film for everyone. Nor does it reach the lofty heights it aims for by breaking so many boundaries. Yet, for those willing to try, there is some truth to be gleaned, some treasure buried beneath its repulsiveness and pomp.