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My HBO problem.

I’ve been so dis­ap­pointed by the fourth sea­son of “Big Love” I’ve taken to send­ing jeer­ing e-mails to a friend who still likes it. My lat­est said I’m start­ing a peti­tion to send it back to Uni­vi­sion and restore the orig­i­nal Span­ish dia­logue, because surely this allegedly pres­ti­gious HBO drama was kid­napped from its ances­tral home in the telen­ov­ela big house.

But then, watch­ing it, I real­ize it’s been like this since at least the third sea­son, although that one stopped just this side of the line between incredible-but-entertaining and ridiculous-and-insulting. This sea­son is turned up to 11.

What hap­pened? In the first sea­son, the story of a polyg­a­mous Utah busi­ness­man bal­anc­ing a house­hold of three wives was promis­ing and inter­est­ing. It raised ques­tions: What is fam­ily? How do we inte­grate reli­gion into our Monday-through-Saturday lives? What do we owe our com­mu­nity, and what do they owe us? When we’re pulled in more than one direc­tion, how do we keep from being pulled apart? And so on. The sec­ond sea­son was even bet­ter, once the pro­duc­ers fig­ured out that sex with three women on con­sec­u­tive nights isn’t all that inter­est­ing, even by HBO stan­dards, and started look­ing at the toll polygamy takes on women, both in the sub­urbs and in the creepy rab­bit war­ren of Juniper Creek. It was in many ways a replay of Carmela and Meadow Soprano’s tango with the mob in that other show, but it was still worth explor­ing, and raised another ques­tion: Why do we cling to the chains that bind us? (Answer: Because they make such pretty jewelry.)

If anyone’s ask­ing ques­tions now, they’re right out loud and in the script: Don, will you take the bul­let? Was that baby you’re car­ing for kid­napped from an Indian reser­va­tion? Could it be because you’ve never really dealt with the mis­car­riage you suf­fered in Sea­son 3? And so on.

I swear, if it weren’t for David Simon, HBO would be toast with me. “Entourage” moved from ridiculous-but-entertaining into just-plain-offensive vir­tu­ally overnight; when­ever I land on it now I stay long enough to see whether they’re still serv­ing the same tired salad of misog­yny sprin­kled with screech­ing homo-hatred (“Ari: Keep your eyes on Andrew Kline. Lloyd: Keep my eyes on him how? Ari: Pre­tend he’s Zac Efron’s ball sack.”), with a side of sure-I-believe-Jamie-Lynn-Sigler-likes-short-fat-penniless-guys. Look, one of the gang has a new girl­friend! She’s tall, beau­ti­ful and anorexic. Look, Ari’s on a ram­page! He’s insult­ing his gay assis­tant again. Actu­ally, Ari’s the most inter­est­ing char­ac­ter on the show, in the sense that it’s inter­est­ing to watch the blackly self-loathing Jeremy Piven deliver lines like this:

Mrs. Ari: What time is it?
Ari: I don’t know. My cock doesn’t wear a watch.

And he ran away from a David Mamet play? I’m not the world’s biggest Mamet fan, but he’s William Shake­speare com­pared to this.

Hurry hurry hurry, “Treme.” Which is sort of a nice segue to the blog­gage. (Yes, I know, a bit early, but I’m hav­ing a bad morn­ing, peo­ple. I am Ari Gold today.

Any­way, I’m told the par­ents of this young actress will be fea­tured extras in “Treme.” Although now I’m look­ing for­ward to their daughter’s career:

And for any­one who’s ever had a rel­a­tive whose last words were “Hey ever’body, watch this,” the sad tale of one man’s attempt to top his last wacky party stunt. Must read­ing. For once, the com­ments on a Free Press story are worth a look: He’s GOTTA be a white guy. Well, hell yes.

The cock crows 10:30. Time to start the day.

Posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 10:32 am
in Television.

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59 responses to
“My HBO problem.”

  1. Jeff Borden said on February 2nd, 2010 at 10:49 am

    HBO made it easy for us to leave when it can­celed “Dead­wood” and “Rome.” We’ve missed “Curb Your Enthu­si­asm,” but have been catch­ing up on it via DVDs.

    I don’t know how many years it has been since Bruce Spring­steen sang “55 chan­nels and nothin’s on,” but it remains as appro­pri­ate now as it was then. All those cable chan­nels still pro­duce very lit­tle that demands reg­u­lar view­ing. We came late to “The Office,” so we are mak­ing time for those episodes in syn­di­ca­tion, but that is the extent of our “must-see TV” these days.

    It’s kind of inter­est­ing occa­sion­ally catch­ing an episode of “The Sopra­nos” on A&E, which scrubs the lan­guage. Hear­ing Tony and the other thugs say “frig­ging” all the time is jar­ring. Even heav­ily edited, how­ever, it is still an insanely watch­able show.

  2. paddyo' said on February 2nd, 2010 at 11:09 am

    Jeff B — BET did the same thing with “The Wire,” which of course made watch­ing that famous first-season scene of McNulty and Bunk re-investigating the scene of a fatal shoot­ing — the one in which every word of dia­logue was a vari­a­tion on the F-word — quite funny to watch. Silent movie …

    And thanks, Nance, for say­ing the Emperor Has No Clothes (or the Prophet, any­way)– I thought it was just me re: “Big Love,” and I’ve been a big fan of HBO series since for­ever. The telen­ov­ela com­par­i­son is apt. The shark has been jumped.

    Ditto, sadly, for “Entourage.” Bring on “Treme,” and soon …
    (And, in a plug for pseudo-HBO, “Break­ing Bad” on AMC is just a month or so away!)

    Over the week­end, my girl­friend and I watched the entire six episodes of that somewhat-forgotten ground­breaker of an HBO minis­eries, “The Cor­ner,” of which I’d only seen half-an-episode or two back in the day. What an amaz­ing (and hard-to-watch) pic­ture of the junkie side of what would become the Bal­ti­more turf for “The Wire.” Except this one based on true sto­ries. Nat­u­rally, David Simon’s book was the gen­e­sis of it …

    And boy, if you’re a “Wire” fan and you haven’t seen “The Cor­ner” or have for­got­ten, re-visit it if for no other rea­son than to glimpse numer­ous “Wire” actors who were in that pre­cur­sor show. It’s, like, half the reg­u­lar cast …

  3. Deborah said on February 2nd, 2010 at 11:17 am

    This week­end I bought the first sea­son of “The Wire” after hear­ing you all rave about the show. It was worth the price. I’ve only watched the first episode so far, look­ing for­ward to the rest. I may rent the fol­low­ing sea­sons though. I don’t watch enough TV to jus­tify get­ting HBO, I’d rather pay for DVDs of shows I know I like.

  4. Jeff Borden said on February 2nd, 2010 at 11:29 am

    Pad­dyo,

    It’s note­wor­thy that my wife detested “Dead­wood” for its con­sis­tently blue lan­guage, but she never had any prob­lem with it on “The Sopra­nos.” Despite all the foul lan­guage, how­ever, it was one of the most amaz­ingly lit­er­ate and well-written series I’ve ever enjoyed. And for a kid who grew up on cow­boy shows, where the streets never betrayed a smidgen of cow­plop and all the cit­i­zens were always clean and combed, “Dead­wood” seemed more in touch with what life in the the Wild West must’ve truly been. Dirty faces, greasy and stringy hair, the same set of clothes worn day after day after day, muddy streets and rough-hewn buildings.

    I still miss it.

  5. MichaelG said on February 2nd, 2010 at 11:30 am

    There is an ad for “The Office” (I think it’s “The Office” — somebody cor­rect me) that has a sup­pos­edly preg­nant guy going into labor, stand­ing over a waste bas­ket claim­ing his water just broke while the laugh track howls in the back­ground. I took it as an absolute warn­ing to stay away from the piece of shit they were advertising.

  6. coozledad said on February 2nd, 2010 at 11:38 am

    You won­der if the guy with the explo­sives strapped to his back isn’t suicidal.Obviously he isn’t ter­ri­bly famil­iar with rocket sci­ence; it’s some­what sur­pris­ing he hadn’t torched him­self ear­lier.
    There was a guy who came to one of our par­ties who stock­piled explo­sive chem­i­cals and pre­scrip­tion pain med­ica­tions. We’d been try­ing to light a bon­fire in the after­math of a heavy sum­mer down­pour, and it just wouldn’t go. He told us he could get it lit. His actual words were “Step aside. I am a chemist.“
    He pro­ceeded to try and light it with gaso­line he’d siphoned out of the other party guest’s cars.
    My wife and I still use that phrase when nei­ther of us has a clue what we’re doing and there’s poten­tial for griev­ous bod­ily injury.

  7. alex said on February 2nd, 2010 at 11:45 am

    And for a kid who grew up on cow­boy shows, where the streets never betrayed a smidgen of cow­plop and all the cit­i­zens were always clean and combed, “Dead­wood” seemed more in touch with what life in the the Wild West must’ve truly been.

    And the women of ill repute always looked rep­utable. Miss Kitty should have been a tooth­less, hag­gard syphilitic, no?

  8. Julie Robinson said on February 2nd, 2010 at 11:47 am

    Last week I was in a hotel for five days and I didn’t turn on the TV once. I enjoyed this enor­mously, kind of the equiv­a­lent of a cleans­ing diet. Instead I lis­tened to music since I had brought along my MP3 player and portable speakers.

    TV is just noise accom­pa­nied by pic­tures to me, and I don’t find most of it good for my soul. We still don’t have any ver­sion of cable, and though this puts us out of water­cooler gos­sip the good stuff is always avail­able later. Net­flix and the local library ful­fill our needs. Well, I guess the DH would really like to see his IU bas­ket­ball games live, but there are good alter­na­tives there too.

    These days I only watch Glee and if I don’t for­get, 30 Rock.

    Edit: I lost any urge to set off fire­works when a neighbor’s son was blinded by a late fuse. His vision even­tu­ally returned but after that they just didn’t seem fun anymore.

  9. Sue said on February 2nd, 2010 at 11:56 am

    MichaelG — The Office can’t be judged based on a com­mer­cial, or even an episode. It’s just one of those shows you need to see a few times before you decide. I watched and enjoyed for awhile but quickly got sick of the Jim and Pam thing (we were sup­posed to love Jim and Pam because they’re so nice, with­out rec­og­niz­ing that they’re both door­mats), and I also felt that the show was unin­ten­tion­ally misog­y­nis­tic.
    Hav­ing said that… “Save Bandit!” — hilarious.
    And I knew I would never be able to watch the British ver­sion. Ricky Gervais’s humor can be bru­tal and hope­less; his stuff is described as “cringe­wor­thy”. “Extras” is a good example.

  10. paddyo' said on February 2nd, 2010 at 11:57 am

    Michael G — if it had an actual laugh track, it wasn’t “The Office,” which has none … but there WAS an episode a cou­ple or three sea­sons ago where the des­ig­nated office dork Dwight(Rainn Wilson’s pitch-perfect por­trayal) was coach­ing office boss Michael (Steve Car­rell) on the upcom­ing birth of not-his-own-child to Michael’s girlfriend/ex-boss where if mem­ory serves Dwight did some­thing along those lines … “Office” fans out there, did I get that right?

    Jeff B– I totally mourn the short, sweet, “SWIN­N­gin cock­sukka!” life of “Dead­wood.” And I’m still smart­ing from that unful­filled promise from HBO et al. of two more 2-hour movies to wrap it up. Then again, the actual Dead­wood, SD’s hey­day didn’t last much longer than the series did, so maybe some poetic jus­tice or something.

    It was the dia­logue of “Dead­wood,” apart from the C-word-filled rants, that enthralled me … it was absolutely Shake­spearean. Remem­ber Swearingen’s solil­o­quies with that ghastly Indian-chief’s head-in-a-box? Talk about “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Hor­a­tio .…” And there were many more such touches.

    Maybe the dia­logue grabbed me, too, because of Ian McShane (Swearin­gen), he of the astound­ing and amaz­ing voice and deliv­ery and dic­tion. Man! I was really pulling for “Kings,” last year’s short-lived NBC dra­matic series (12 episodes). Sure, it was prime-time-soap-meets-the-Bible, but sev­eral notches above the usual and with McShane at the core, some­thing else.

  11. ROgirl said on February 2nd, 2010 at 12:15 pm

    I went HBO-less after the Sopra­nos ended. I miss Curb Your Enthu­si­asm, and I liked Dead­wood, Rome and the Wire, but the good stuff only rep­re­sents a small per­cent­age of what HBO broad­casts, while most of it con­sists of the same bad movies shown a mil­lion times.

    Ian McShane was great in Kings. I would have loved to see more.

  12. beb said on February 2nd, 2010 at 12:28 pm

    I haven’t seen a sin­gle one of the shows men­tioned today. A show about gang­ster I tink is anti-American. A show about foul-mouthed cow­boys? Who needs it. A show about dope addicts? Inter­ven­tion is painful enough. thank you very much. Mor­man? Even if I had free HB O (which I don’t) I would not have watched any of these shows.
    Just call me Cranky­old­man today.

  13. jcburns said on February 2nd, 2010 at 12:28 pm

    Ian McShane’s also not bad in Love­joy, which he pro­duced, way back in the big-ish hair late 80s. There’s a com­plete set at the Atlanta Ful­ton County Library’s Ponce de Leon branch…tell them I sent you.

  14. Sue said on February 2nd, 2010 at 12:33 pm

    jcburns — apart from the actor, how is the Love­joy series? Worth watch­ing if you like the books? How do they do all the his­tory of antiques and how to fake them — just a lot of dia­logue?
    I looked at my library sys­tem web­site and they list six seasons!

  15. nancy said on February 2nd, 2010 at 12:33 pm

    I can’t believe more of you aren’t dis­cussing the rocket-sled guy. Trust Coo­zledad to know this guy’s first cousin.

    Oh, and hey, beb? You’re a cranky old man. There, I said it.

  16. Bob (not Greene) said on February 2nd, 2010 at 12:45 pm

    Cooze,

    That’s my new line — “Step aside. I’m a chemist.”

    As for The Office, I like the British ver­sion bet­ter, pre­cisely because it’s so cringe­wor­thy. Extras was equally cringe­wor­thy (the David Bowie scene is clas­sic). The Amer­i­can show is, I don’t know, trades too much in stereo­typ­i­cal behav­ior. And while Ger­vais is a com­plete pompous creep loser in the lead role, Steve Car­rell is more of a sad sack who you don’t actu­ally hate but just feel pity for.

  17. ROgirl said on February 2nd, 2010 at 12:47 pm

    You would expect some­one who pulled the rocket sled stunt to be in his 20’s or 30’s, but this guy was 62. Why isn’t he dead yet?

  18. John said on February 2nd, 2010 at 12:53 pm

    Off topic, but today is my wife and my 30th anniver­sary. It has been a fun ride, but usu­ally with­out the explo­sive fire­works strapped on the sled.

  19. Dexter said on February 2nd, 2010 at 1:05 pm

    I think last year’s “Big Love” lacked sus­tain­abil­ity until the last four episodes, but then it kicked it up a notch and even though I was call­ing for this to be the finale of the series this year, it is now can’t-miss TV again.
    Gin­nifer Good­win con­tin­ues to steal every scene, and the sub-theme of her and young Ben’s mixed-up feel­ings makes for good TV, and Margene’s melt-down dur­ing her live TV com­mer­cial was a good scene.
    I like to watch how Bill has turned into a real schiz­o­phrenic, half evil and half good, so ambi­tious , so self-centered, and still try­ing his best to keep his fam­ily together, even with Nikki’s infi­deli­ties and Barb’s ambi­gu­i­ties and half-truths and Mar­gene get­ting all wet over his son Ben.
    I still love HBO and just roll with the shows. I can’t stand Entourage but I watch all the other series and enjoy them. They’re all good. Alan Ball lit my fire with Six Feet Under in 2001 and Simon and Burns blew my mind with The Wire. Dead­wood, Rome, all of them were great, and Larry David just cracks me up.
    I watched a Johnny Depp movie in the mid­dle of the night…“Blow”. I had never even heard of it. Being in a per­fect time and life sit­u­a­tion to become involved in the cocaine lifestyle circa 1980, I never once cut a rail or spooned a snort, but I remem­ber it well, and this movie was sort of a his­tor­i­cal trip through the years when blow dom­i­nated US soci­ety, the disco era and all that shit. When I quit drink­ing in 1992 the rooms were full of “cross-addicted alco­holics” who detailed their strug­gles with crack and pow­der — jeezuss, made me glad I never bumped that first rail.

  20. brian stouder said on February 2nd, 2010 at 1:25 pm

    Con­grat­u­la­tions, John!

    So — prime rib at the best restau­rant in town tonight?

    (that’s what we nor­mally do on anniver­saries; and for one end­ing in a zero, cheese cake crem brulee for dessert!)

  21. crinoidgirl said on February 2nd, 2010 at 1:26 pm

    “Before the mishap, the man had been drink­ing, he said.”

    Now, THERE’S a surprise!

  22. John said on February 2nd, 2010 at 1:28 pm

    We leave for Negril in 15 days so tonight is prob­a­bly just a quiet evening a small restaurant.

  23. Deborah said on February 2nd, 2010 at 1:35 pm

    Nancy, What more is there to say about a 62 year old party guy who straps a muf­fler on his back filled with gaso­line and lights it while sledding?

  24. paddyo' said on February 2nd, 2010 at 1:42 pm

    Muf­fler­Man sounds like a can­di­date for the Dar­win Awards, but that doesn’t explain how he lasted 62 years … sur­vival of the fittest? Methinks not

  25. Julie Robinson said on February 2nd, 2010 at 1:48 pm

    Con­grats to John, and wishes for many, many more.

    Thanks beb, I felt like cranky­old­woman until I read your post! When will we learn that just because the TV is there, we don’t have to turn it on?

  26. Scout said on February 2nd, 2010 at 1:56 pm

    As soon as I read the rocket sled piece I knew Coo­zledad would come through with a true life account of a col­or­ful local acquain­tance. As always, C-dad does not disappoint.

    I might be the only per­son on earth (besides beb) who has never seen The Sopra­nos, but I have enjoyed Curb Your Enthu­si­asm on dvd and am a big fan of The Office.

  27. Colleen said on February 2nd, 2010 at 3:01 pm

    I still watch Big Love. I love Gin­nifer Goodwin.

  28. maryinIN said on February 2nd, 2010 at 3:10 pm

    I won­der if any­one here besides me watched and enjoyed the HBO series “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detec­tive Agency.” Cer­tainly was a change of pace for HBO. The (I think) seven-part series was beau­ti­fully done and mostly faith­ful to the books, and while some would say they are very light enter­tain­ment, some fans, myself included, just like how the pro­tag­o­nist is por­trayed — opti­mistic, gen­tle, want­ing to con­tribute to a soci­ety (Botswana) that she feels indebted to and respon­si­ble for. There is a dark side and you know it’s there lurk­ing, but it’s held at bay as life goes on. I’m hop­ing for a sec­ond sea­son, but haven’t heard yet if it will hap­pen. If it does, I will re-instate my HBO.

  29. Dorothy said on February 2nd, 2010 at 3:14 pm

    I’m still watch­ing Big Love but there’s not the same vibe for me this year. I miss Harry Dean Stan­ton. We burst out laugh­ing at one of the insult­ing lines he threw at his son Alby on this week’s episode. I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing Claire Danes in “Tem­ple Grandin” this weekend.

    No one has com­mented on the video Nancy posted. I con­sider myself pretty open minded, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when peo­ple have lit­tle kids swear like that. It’s just not right. And espe­cially not funny. Now it’s my turn to be Mrs. Crankypants.

    Happy Anniver­sary John and Mrs. John! We had our 30th back in October.

  30. Sue said on February 2nd, 2010 at 3:27 pm

    Dorothy, then you don’t want to watch Will Fer­rell and Pearl:
    http://​www​.fun​ny​ordie​.com/​v​i​d​e​o​s​/​7​4​/​t​h​e​-​l​a​n​d​l​o​r​d​-​f​r​o​m​-​w​i​l​l​-​f​e​r​r​e​l​l​-​a​n​d​-​a​d​a​m​-​g​h​o​s​t​-​p​a​n​t​h​e​r​-mckay
    From what I hear, Pearl retired from act­ing once she started under­stand­ing what she was saying.

  31. Dorothy said on February 2nd, 2010 at 3:29 pm

    Now see, here’s the con­tra­dic­tion, Sue. I find that clip hilar­i­ous. My son showed it to me a few years ago. Maybe it’s because Pearl is so tiny and prob­a­bly won’t remem­ber what she said. Those other kids look old enough that you would not want to set bad exam­ples by hav­ing them say ‘fuck’ for the camera.

  32. Lex said on February 2nd, 2010 at 3:33 pm

    Down here, the cor­rect last line is, “Hey, hol’ my beer ‘n’ watch this!”

    This guy’s epic adven­ture belonged on YouTube as a cau­tion­ary tale. I’d thought by now that Amer­i­cans knew to have their phonecams rolling when the poten­tial for such boun­teous serv­ings of Fail heave into view.

    And I like, “Step aside! I’m a chemist!” Some­how, “Step aside! I’m an Eng­lish major!” just doesn’t have the same oomph to it. Although “First, we’ll need to be heav­ily armed!” can help make up for that a little.

  33. brian stouder said on February 2nd, 2010 at 3:43 pm

    “Step aside; I’m in Inside Sales” just doesn’t have the same lilt, y’know?

  34. MarkH said on February 2nd, 2010 at 3:46 pm

    Con­grats, John; hope you have a great cel­e­bra­tion. And, Dorothy, whoa! Did you men­tion that back in Octo­ber? If so, I spaced it. (Belated) Con­grats to you and Mr. Dorothy.

    Jeff B. said it at #1; all those chan­nels and noth­ing on. We don’t get any of the pre­mium chan­nels (although I debated regen­er­at­ing HBO just for “Big Love”), so our reg­u­lar fare is AMC, TCM, Dicsovery, His­tory, Nat­Geo, PBS and cable news (yes, all of them, when the remote is in my hands). I know that sounds really bor­ing, but when some­one waxes on about some “won­der­ful” stan­dard TV drama or “com­edy”, I go, “what the f*** are you talk­ing about?!”. I can’t believe all the chan­nels I get from DirecTV that go unwatched.

    I don’t know how Brian feels about it, but SPEED has been com­pletely destroyed by NASCAR. Any­thing else, like motor­cy­cle rac­ing, or Ger­man and British tour­ing car races are all on at odd times. For­mula One is still shown live, but they don’t repeat the races later anymore.

    I may have men­tioned this before, but Deb and I watched Big Love when we could and were enthralled. Her first hus­band was Mor­mon and her then-father-in-law was Roman himself.

  35. Jolene said on February 2nd, 2010 at 4:05 pm

    A pro­fes­sor friend of mine used to say that he was wait­ing for a sit­u­a­tion in which he could say, “Let me through. I’m a deci­sion ana­lyst.” I haven’t talked to him for a while, but, so far as I know, he’s still waiting.

  36. crinoidgirl said on February 2nd, 2010 at 4:15 pm

    Not as cud­dly as the pup­pies, but still inter­est­ing — live video feed of a bald eagle nest:

    http://​www​.wvec​.com/​m​a​r​k​e​t​p​l​a​c​e​/​m​i​c​r​o​s​i​t​e​-​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​e​a​g​l​e​-​c​a​m.html

  37. Joe Kobiela said on February 2nd, 2010 at 4:36 pm

    I have been watch­ing men of a cer­tain age. It started off slow, but I gave it a few weeks and it just kept get­ting bet­ter. There is a new show on Cana­dian his­tory chan­nel called Ice Pilots, I have looked all over the net to try and find it, but no luck.I can get pre­views but not full episodes. Any one else seen or heard of this?
    Pilot Joe

  38. Dexter said on February 2nd, 2010 at 6:13 pm

    Some­how I missed this, but The Acme Bar is back in busi­ness now. I didn’t even know it had been sold to folks who cared enough to fix the place up and carry on.
    You damn-betcha I will be going there the next time I get to FWA.
    http://​www​.wane​.com/​d​p​p​/​n​e​w​s​/​l​o​c​a​l​-​w​a​n​e​-​f​o​r​t​-​w​a​y​n​e​-​a​c​m​e​-​b​a​r​-​r​e​o​pening

  39. jcburns said on February 2nd, 2010 at 6:15 pm

    To answer Sue at com­ment 14, the Love­joy TV series is, well, dated, to say the least. Big-haired 80s women, a grainy film look, But McShane can sit there and stare at another actor for 30 sec­onds, and he com­mands the screen, even rel­a­tively early in his career. But the show is, hey, an enter­tain­ment. I’m con­cerned that Joe has been watch­ing men of a cer­tain age. Doing what? OH! Men of A Cer­tain Age, the TV series with the Homi­cide detec­tive, the star­ship cap­tain, and the sit­com guy every­one loves.

  40. ROgirl said on February 2nd, 2010 at 6:29 pm

    Off topic, but if they make a biopic of the John Edwards story, Matthew Brod­er­ick should star.

  41. paddyo' said on February 2nd, 2010 at 6:42 pm

    Love the sway of the nest-tree in the eagle-cam, crinoid­girl — quite cool

  42. LAMary said on February 2nd, 2010 at 7:28 pm

    Step aside, I’m in Tal­ent Acqui­si­tion. (I used to be in recruit­ing, but things change.)

  43. alex said on February 2nd, 2010 at 8:01 pm

    Step aside, I’m a Toy­ota driver.

  44. MarkH said on February 2nd, 2010 at 8:36 pm

    That’s funny, mary. Here, one of the local banks was run­ning a series of ads tout­ing their per­son­nel. One ad had a pic­ture of their recruiter/HR honchess, who actu­ally has the title VP of Tal­ent. Now , we could take that (and your depart­ment name) a cer­tain num­ber of ways, couldn’t we…

  45. brian stouder said on February 2nd, 2010 at 8:39 pm

    Hah! And the thread-Oscar for Best Line goes to Alex. (Actu­ally, I’d leap out of your Toyota-drivin’ way)

    Some­one upthread men­tioned com­ing to these sit­coms late. Over the years, that’s how I came to appre­ci­ate Sein­feld and Every­body Loves Ray­mond. Lately, my lovely wife is quite taken with The Office, but I’m with who­ever expressed a doubt or two about that show.

    Hon­estly — C-SPAN/Book TV is good stuff more often than not. A num­ber of books on my shelf are the result of see­ing the authors there (Demon Under the Micro­scope, Mel­lon, IBM and the Holo­caust, Dread­naught, and The Yard leap to mind)

    edit: Mark — regard­ing Speed; that chan­nel jus­ti­fies hav­ing a dvr. I can catch all the British and Ger­man Tour­ing Car races*, and all the F1 stuff — and I’m happy as a pig in mud. NASCAR could learn a thing or two from the euro-sedan races. Two races on race day? Why the heck not? And — lose the ovals, right?

  46. Deborah said on February 2nd, 2010 at 8:39 pm

    Another great post at Sweet Juniper. Jim com­plains about his family’s lack of singing skills. He writes this about his 2 year old son’s inabil­ity to carry the tune “Happy Birthday”:

    “He learned the words quick enough, but there’s some­thing about the way he sings them that makes the sim­ple tune sound like an Eston­ian funer­ary dirge per­formed by an in-bred goatherd into the mer­ci­less winds of the Baltic Sea”.

    Hilar­i­ous.

  47. MarkH said on February 2nd, 2010 at 8:49 pm

    OK, so I’m trolling through imdb and decide to go to “Treme” and look for cast updates. Did we know already that John Goodman’s Ash­ley Morris-based char­ac­ter is named Creighton Bur­nette, and his (I assume) wife, Toni is played by Melissa Leo? Does any­one know if Leo bears any resem­blance to Ashley’s wife? I may re-up HBO just for this series.

    EDIT — yessir, Brian, a dvr is required for us more gen­teeeel SPEED view­ers. I don’t know if NASCAR could learn a lot,as they are mak­ing plenty of dough now. But their rabid fans cer­tainly could. And, yes, a week­end, or even a day at any road course event with mul­ti­ple races is worth more than any roundy-rounder event. Except maybe the Indy 500.

  48. deb said on February 2nd, 2010 at 9:31 pm

    rocket-sled guy reminds me of an aunt’s hus­band who once enter­tained the assem­bled extended fam­ily by grab­bing an aerosol can, shoot­ing out what­ever was in it, and then flick­ing his lighter under the stream to cre­ate a big fire­ball. in a big kitchen filled with many, many peo­ple, includ­ing about a dozen kids. i can’t believe he’s still alive; nat­ural selec­tion should have weeded him out long ago.

  49. Bill said on February 2nd, 2010 at 11:35 pm

    Step aside. I’m an (ex) adman and I can tell you how great it’s gonna be.

  50. Odds and ends for 2/2 « Blog on the Run: Reloaded said on February 3rd, 2010 at 12:01 am

    […] muf­fler, gaso­line and gun­pow­der. Police say he had been … wait for it … drink­ing. (h/t: Nance) Leave a […]

  51. Dexter said on February 3rd, 2010 at 2:52 am

    Everyone’s for­got­ten the 2003 HBO series “Car­ni­vale”. That one got a bit weird at the end, coin­cid­ing with Pro­fes­sor Lodz’s esca­lat­ing usage of absinthe. There’s an inter­est­ing cock­tail , but I had quit before I heard about this mys­te­ri­ous worm­wood drink.
    http://​www​.how​to​drink​ab​sinthe​.com/

    One of my faves was “John from Cincin­nati”, which didn’t last long. “I got my eye on you”…“NO I GOT MY EYE ON YOU!!”

    Some investors are going to refur­bish the Loew’s The­ater in Brook­lyn, NY, a 3,200 seat palace neglected since 1977. Good for them. I still can’t believe The Embassy nee “Emboyd” still has a vibrant life in Fort Wayne. I love that palace. It seats 2,477 with the newer seats.

  52. alex said on February 3rd, 2010 at 6:44 am

    Slightly OT, but here’s an inter­est­ing video clip show­ing deter­mined jour­nal­ists who refuse to let a politi­cian evade their line of questioning:

    http://​salon​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​w​a​r​_​r​o​o​m​/​2​0​1​0​/​0​2​/​0​2​/​f​ox_bow

  53. Dorothy said on February 3rd, 2010 at 7:37 am

    MarkH: they must be updat­ing imdb daily about TREME. I looked at it a week or 10 days go and they didn’t even have John Good­man listed as part of the cast, despite evi­dence to the con­trary (pic­tures from the set posted online). Then a day or two after that check I did, I found John listed as part of the cast but no char­ac­ter name was attrib­uted to him yet. He and Melissa Leo should make a pretty good pair on screen. She’s a ter­rific actress. And con­sid­er­ing her his­tory as part of the cast of HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREETS (and it’s con­nec­tion to David Simon), I’m not sur­prised she’s been cast in the show.

  54. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 3rd, 2010 at 8:30 am

    Still wait­ing for a word on Love­joy the telly ver­sion cf. the books — can any­one tell fans of the print series how the film approach does the antiques history?

  55. Dorothy said on February 3rd, 2010 at 8:49 am

    In yesterday’s mail guess what arrived? The Feb­ru­ary 2010 issue of National Geo­graphic. And what’s on the cover? Polygamy in Amer­ica: One Man, Five Wives, 46 Chil­dren. The beam­ing old dude is wear­ing a hat just like the one Roman wore in BIG LOVE.

  56. MichaelG said on February 3rd, 2010 at 10:08 am

    Brian, MarkH, you two couldn’t be more right about Speed. It’s been ruined by low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor shows the same way the Food Chan­nel was. The British and Ger­man tour­ing cars are lots of fun, F-1 guard­edly so (the whole pro­gram and Bernie E piss me off so much I can’t really get into F-1) and last weekend’s cov­er­age of the Day­tona 24 hours was superb. I miss the Aussie V-8 super­cars and the Rally cov­er­age. Do we really need a thou­sand hours of watch­ing iden­ti­cal ’69 Camaros auc­tioned for obscene prices? NASCAR was good twenty years ago but I don’t like the spec rac­ing series for a few hyper rich own­ers into which it’s devolved. Bring back real cars. Also, Brian, don’t get rid of all the ovals. I like a few of the big ones where the cars can really get out and roll. Over the years I’ve seen them at Sears (now Infi­neon) a half dozen times. Watch­ing those big cars bump­ing and grind­ing their way around a road course is a great show.

  57. Jeff Borden said on February 3rd, 2010 at 10:21 am

    MichaelG,

    Bless you for your call for a return to more nor­mal vehi­cles in NASCAR. When I was a much younger pup, I bought a copy of stock car mag­a­zine every month and pored over every page. The race cars (this is in the mid-1960s) looked like the same cars you saw on the street. Richard Petty’s blue Ply­mouth Belvidere wasn’t much dif­fer­ent than the car Mr. Bod­kins down the street owned. Today, they are all fiber­glass shells bolted to exotic chas­sis and dri­ve­train com­bi­na­tions. I miss the sheetmetal.

  58. Sycamorebaby said on February 4th, 2010 at 8:38 pm

    It is inter­est­ing how far these com­ments have come — I am about to can­cel HBO…though I’ve enjoyed aspects of some of the newer pro­gram­ming (if you’ve seen it, you’ve repeated Ted Danson’s whine “I want a colonic”), but most seem to become shad­ows of them­selves fairly quickly. I am either get­ting 1) too old, 2) too jaded, 3) too dif­fi­cult to enter­tain, or all three. Plus, I want all the chan­nels in hi-def now and Com­cast doesn’t offer that. Oh, well.…Red Sox sea­son will be here soon, thank goodness.

  59. nancy said on February 4th, 2010 at 8:55 pm

    KB! You’ve found us!

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