Why couldn’t I finish watching Sleepy Hollow?
I had no intentions of watching Sleepy Hollow. I mean, the premise alone is ridiculous: Ichabod Crane is brought back from the dead and he has to help solve crimes and the Headless Horseman is one of the Four Riders of the Apocalypse?
Oh, and they had to go with the most obvious joke, of course.
So, yeah, I was going to give that one a gigantic pass.
But then:
But THEN!
I learned that John Noble (a.k.a. Walter Bishop, the maddest scientist ever) will have a guest-starring role on it!
“John Noble?!” I cried. “He’s wonderful!”
God bless you, sir, I will always love you.
And that’s how, last night, I ended up trying to watch Sleepy Hollow.
The cast, from left: Head Cop, Witch, Reanimated Dead Guy, Lady Detective.
And OHMYGOD it is TERRIBLE. And not, like, Siberia terrible, which was quite hilarious in its ineptness, but more like sad terrible, like you feel bad for everybody involved, especially John Noble, because they deserve better. Especially John Noble.
Like silk suits and alternate universes.
Now, mind you, I completely missed the first episode, so I don’t know how that one was (I can only assume bad, though), but here are some highlights of the second episode:
First off, there’s an interminably long dream sequence, like, I knew it had to be a dream sequence because Ichabod Crane is running from four horseman (and one of them doesn’t have a head, of course), and he’s running and running. And then he’s running some more. And also? He’s still running. Finally, he gets caught by some trees. Like Evil Dead-the-original caught. Except instead of getting tree-raped, he gets pulled into the ground. There’s a woman there (apparently his wife? Who was a witch? I guess?) and she says a bunch of annoying, prophetic things, and Ichabod Crane STILL hasn’t woken up, and then she keeps talking while walking backwards, because prophets are always doing that in dreams, and then he doesn’t wake up some more, and then FINALLY he wakes up and it’s like, UGH LEARN PACING GOOD GOD.
Also, how did you manage to make a beheading BORING, Sleepy Hollow?
Then we get a bunch of flashbacks to the first episode, which I didn’t even see, but I was like, yeah, got it, let’s move on, although the best flashback was Daniel Cho in prison, which is best described by Lady Detective:
“There was something in that cell with him and it popped his head like a Pez dispenser!”
And, yeah, it totally did. And it was hard to tell if it was supposed to be serious and spooky, or silly, but it turned out to be neither, and just kind of stupid.
Also, yes: Daniel Cho DID play a character in Evil Sherlock Holmes in Space: The Movie.
Then they went to a funeral, which was also boring, and then somebody remembered Ichabod Crane is from the past, so he said things like “Take heed” every once in a while, and then there was a shot of a morgue and I said, “OK, unless Dana Scully shows up, the person in that body bag is going to start — oh, look, he’s moving now,” because nobody shows autopsies on TV unless they’re done by Dana Scully or some CSI character, I guess.
“If the corpse wasn’t dead before I removed his liver and spleen, he definitely was afterward.”
And after that was Daniel Cho coming back to life, and it was stupid, and I finally decided that it was never NOT going to be stupid, and I don’t love John Noble enough to wait and see if he ever showed up.
At least if it’s canceled, it’ll free Mssr. Noble up for other roles.
Siberia just gets stupider and stupider
You guys, there are only two episodes left of Siberia! Possibly forever, possibly just for the season, but omigod, you are missing out on all its awesomeness!
Siberia: Not actually a normal reality show.
First off, one guy has been talking to totem pole, except he doesn’t call it a totem pole, he calls it a “weird-looking tree,” because not only is he crazy, he’s also a bit stupid.
“It’s a tree!” – Siberia characters
Then there’s the awesome soldier lady, who drops, like, a metric ton of exposition, because saying a bunch of things all at once is just like character development! Then there’s the dead chick with the annoying earrings, and Stupid Cowboy Johnny (it’s his whole name, I swear) climbing up a tower and getting electrocuted but not dying, because Darwinism is not a thing.
“Well, shucks, I reckon I’m just too pretty to die.”
But the stupidest thing of all, the thing where the show almost got too stupid, which doesn’t seem possible, is the mysterious two-toed horror monster tracks. They actually belong to a guy wearing some really terrible shoes, and there’s this awesome camera pan down to his feet, because people were the monster all along.
Yup, people, and not a mutant sloth of some kind, like I was hoping.
I’m calling it now
So I’ve been seeing previews for NBC’s new show The Blacklist, starring James Spader as an evil criminal mastermind who’s working with the FBI for some reason, except he’ll only work with one FBI agent, this terribly wooden brunette who’s on her first day on the job.
Why would he choose a newbie, you wonder?
Because she’s obviously his secret daughter, of course.
“Daddy?”
If I’m wrong, feel free to inform me, because I really have no plans to watch this show.
Bear Grylls is a wicked, wicked man
So, sandwiched in between American Ninja Warrior and Siberia (which wasn’t as funny as last week, but still had the fakest amputated finger EVER and a two-toed giant horror monster print) is a little show called Get Out Alive with Bear Grylls.
I have to assume that “Bear Grylls” is a pseudonym.
Anyway, Get Out Alive takes a bunch of regular people (semi-regular? An over-large quantity of them seemed to have been in car wrecks recently, or had loved ones fall down the stairs, bad) and drags them into the big, bad outdoors to rough it like they’ve never roughed it before.
I suspect everyone entered because they wanted to impress him and/or ask him to prom.
And it’s terrible. Oh, God, it’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen. First, there’s dead-deer carving, and then there’s fish-eyeball eating and then there’s your-own-urine drinking and then I missed the rest because I was too busy vomiting my guts up to watch.
Bear Grylls, meanwhile, was busy putting his fingers together and declaring the entire state of affairs to be excellent.
Yeah, so, I’m sure this is a wonderful show for people who are into wilderness adventures (or, more precisely, into watching other people have wilderness adventures), but I highly recommend you don’t watch it because OH GOD PEOPLE HAD TO DRINK THEIR OWN URINE IT WAS THE WORST GAAAHHHHHHH.
Nobody was smiling like this after drinking pee.
Everybody needs to watch Siberia, all the time, right away, forever
You guys. Siberia is the BEST!
Pictured here: The future of television.
So it’s this reality show or something, and they take the contestants by helicopter to Siberia (although I didn’t realize Siberia looked so much like Idaho) and then they’re like, “Ha ha, we kept your luggage, have fun in the wilderness for six months! Also, you’ll be staying at a HAAAAAAUUUUUNTED cabin where THE EXACT SAME NUMBER OF PEOPLE AS YOU (once we eliminate two of you) DISAPPEARED UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES. HAAAAAAAAAUUUUUNTED!!!!”
And then they get to the haunted cabins of doom and, along the way, reveal that they’re all a bunch of stereotypes: The computer geek with thick glasses, the taciturn bouncer with a short temper, the cocky cowboy, the leader, the backstabbing model who’s not here to make any friends, the flamboyant DJ, the shy one, the quirky one, the helpful hippie, the Asian girl….
Huzzah! I’m a stereotype!
Then there’s your typical reality show hijinks, like there’s seven people of each gender, but only six beds per two cabins, and the backstabbing model who’s not here to make any friends refuses to sleep on the floor, so she’s going to share a bed with the flamboyant DJ, who actually is kind of cute when he’s filmed at the right angle. Then they make a fire using the computer geek’s thick glasses so that, for the rest of the series, we can just pretend we bought that really worked. Then they’re sitting around the fire and they hear strange noises (Actual exchange: “Is that a bear?” “It doesn’t sound like a bear.”) and they run to the safety of the cabins, which is good, I guess, because then they’re leaving the camera crew out as bait.
After that, morning happens, and we’re supposed to pretend it’s not obvious they were all whisked away from the cabin and bathed and re-makeuped.
Then, you guys, oh THEN: The computer geek finds a toad. WITH THREE LEGS. A THREE-LEGGED TOAD. So he runs and shows it to the cocky cowboy, who, up until this point, had been all like, “yeah, we should kill and eat the computer geek because Darwinism and all,” but when he sees the THREE-LEGGED TOAD, he’s like “My mind is BLOWN, y’all, could this mysterious competition get ANY MORE MYSTERIOUS?”
THREE-LEGGED TOAD!!!
“Pretend I have three legs, and then get ready to laugh and laugh.”
Then the quirky one (you can tell because she’s got these giant feather earrings, like, how many swans died for your fashion statement, you know?), the goth girl and the helpful hippie go looking for mushrooms … AND THE HELPFUL HIPPIE NEVER COMES BACK.
Oh, Helpful Hippie! We hardly knew ye!
And they get back to camp and everyone’s like, jeez, how could you leave the helpful hippie behind, he was the nice one, and they’re about to go looking for him, when suddenly ONE OF THE CAMERAMAN COMES STUMBLING OUT OF THE FOREST COVERED IN RED PAINT. Possibly it’s supposed to be blood.
It would’ve been better if they’d just hit the cameraman for real. METHOD ACTING, people.
“Oh my god, y’alls,” quoth everyone, while the HAAAAAAUUUUUNTED cabins lurk in the background. “Could this mysterious competition get any more MYSTERIOUS?”
Yes! Yes, it could!
The host comes out of the forest and is like, “Yeah, so the helpful hippie, accident, fatal, I’m going to keep this brief because this is the 27th time we’ve filmed this and someone laughs every single time.”
Then the backstabbing model who’s not here to make any friends forgets her character and starts crying, and they’re all so worried, and they realize the producers just don’t care and then BOOM, episode’s over, but we get some really exciting clips for the upcoming episodes (Oh, and I forgot, they actually have a sequence where they show the helpful hippie’s last minutes on this mortal coil, which is a terrible Blair Witch rendition, and someone drops the camera and runs away, because they do not have the budget for realistic looking blood on this show).
Anyway, in the coming episodes, our cast of stereotypes will realize: They’ve been completely abandoned (except for the camera crew filming their every move)! Something Strange Is Going On! Everybody Run!
In conclusion, please watch this show, because if it gets canceled, I will never laugh at anything that hard, ever again.
Nobody thought that, screen grab. Nobody thought that.
Do some harm, why not
I was going to give Do No Harm a try. Really, I was. I like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and sometimes modern-day takes on classics can be … not horrible.
Right? That poster’s pretty clever, except for the stupid tagline.
So I was going to watch NBC’s tale of a surgeon with an evil alter-ego (who comes at 8:25 p.m. and leaves at 8:25 a.m., like just because you’re an evil alter-ego, it doesn’t mean you can’t be punctual and reliable, right?), but then I saw this.
So I went to bed instead.
I think probably I won.
No, 666 Park Ave. really does suck
So, this weekend, after finding out a dear family friend had died, I did that thing I always do when someone I love dies: Waffle between wanting to do something productive and important with my life while there’s still time and stagnating in a pool of my own misery.
Like this, if the pool was filled with vodka.
Guess which I chose?
(Hint: Did you guys know there’s a drink called the Vicious Sid? It’s got Southern Comfort in it!)
Whilst stagnating, I ended up watching 666 Park Avenue again. (I’d missed it the week before because sleep seemed much more important than a mediocre TV show.) And it was much worse than the pilot episode. Which was odd, I thought, because TV shows usually improve a bit after a pilot. Not 666 Park Avenue, though.
Way to buck the trend and suck harder, guys!
This week’s episode had the creepy little girl in the haunted cellar room, plus Boring Male Main Character falling deeper into the machinations of eeeeevil Terry O’Quinn, plus some stupid side-plot about an obit writer. The rest of the episode was no great shakes (like, why did they have Clark Johnson [aka Homicide’s Meldrick Lewis] even bother to show up if they were just going to shove him down an elevator shaft right away?), but the obit writer plot was OH SO ANNOYING.
Like, this chick is bitching about writing obituaries (which, yeah, as a former obituary clerk, I realize it’s not the most fun job at a newspaper) because she wants to write important stories that mean something. Right then, I began to hate her and root for her eventual trip to hell. Because who cares about stories that mean something now that the Internet, right? Anyway, after speaking with eeeeevil Terry O’Quinn, she decides to completely lie in an obituary. I’m not sure how she came to this decision after her talk with eeeeeevil Terry O’Quinn, but she did. Because everyone respects a journalist who makes up stories.
“But I’m pretty sure eeeeevil Terry O’Quinn told me to do it or something.”
And, to her surprise, the lies she wrote about this guy come true! So she makes her mom’s obit better and then she’s all of a sudden assigned an article about this bad guy she made up for the first obit, and that makes him come to life somehow and he comes to 666 Park Ave. and hurts her a lot. Which, kind of abrupt, no? Like, she barely had time to descend into eeeevil. More like stuuuuupidty. But the important thing is, she’s probably dead, so her storyline won’t be stinking up my TV anymore.
Which brings me to my next point: Why don’t any of the storylines not suck?
And why can’t their promo dept. create a better photo than this?
We’ve got the failed playwright who maybe wants to have an affair with his wife’s assistant, aka the yoga chick who strips in front of her window in the apartment across the way. We’ve got the mystery death of eeeeevil Terry O’Quinn and botoxed Vanessa Williams’ daughter. We’ve got the Boring McBoringsons, who are boring and still refuse to just hurry up and go to hell already. We’ve got NO MELDRICK LEWIS BECAUSE THEY THREW HIM DOWN AN ELEVATOR SHAFT DAMMIT.
“Not Meldrick, too!” I cried.
All of this adds up to a lot of stuff going on at 666 Park Avenue and none of it worth watching.
(Also, where was Dr. Dave this week? Did he get dragged off to hell in that episode I missed?)
“God, I hope so.” – Erik Palladino
Why don’t I (still) like Once Upon a Time? Or: Stop ruining Robert Carlyle, show
So, last night, rather than watching the Grammys because, like my local Burger King, they don’t realize that adding an s changes the y to an ie, and also because they are boring, I decided to give Once Upon a Time another shot.
Grammies, you bastards. GrammIES.
This was no random decision. Earlier in the week, while watching a show that I just can’t get enough of for some reason, I saw a commercial for this week’s Robert Carlyle-heavy episode of Once Upon a Time, which I shall now abbrievate as OUaT, until I forget to.
I like to pronounce it like “Out,” but with a long “ahhhh” sound in there.
“Robert Carlyle?” I said. “I love that guy. Also, nobody tell me I’ve been spelling his name wrong all along, like I do with Ian McKellan and Dan Akroyd. (Or, you know, like I just did.)” (I swear, someday I’ll get them right without googling! I love you, Ian McKellen and Dan Aykroyd! I just suck at spelling your names!)
Back on point, though: Robert Carlyle is awesome, and he’s on OUaT right now, which it turns out is really irritating to abbreviate like that, so back to spelling it out it is.
Just a superficial little note, but isn’t this picture so tasty, y’all?
Anyway, Robert Carlyle (who is awesome) plays Rumpelstiltskin on Once Upon a Time, and this particular episode was set up in a sort of “Beauty and the Beast” little dealie, with Emilie de Ravin, who is just sooooo pretty!
Photographic proof. Soooooo pretty!
So I was like, OK, Show, if you can’t win me over with Robert Carlyle’s awesomeness and Emilie de Ravin’s prettiness, then you can’t win me over at all.
And, apparently, it can’t.
There were some good things about the show, like Jennifer Morrison wasn’t in it a lot, because every time she was in it, I was irritated by her character. Also her annoying little son only had a few minutes of screen time, so that was good.
Awwww, how boring.
But ROBERT CARLYLE IN LEATHER PANTS.
You guys! ROBERT CARLYLE IN LEATHER PANTS.
They were so tight, you guys. Oh, God, *sob*, they were so tight.
Also, the show was predictable and a bit boring, and why did Emilie de Ravin fall in love with Rumpelstiltskin anyway? Because he didn’t let her fall on the ground that one time?
Eh, it’s probably because he’s Robert Carlyle.
Also, did the directors tell everybody to be so campy just because they’re fairy tale characters? Ughhhh, and why with the “Girls Night Out” storyline?
So, yeah, Once Upon a Time did not redeem itself in my eyes and, also, I can’t stop thinking about Robert Carlyle in leather pants.
Like, how many people did it take to cram him in those things? Did he get butt sweat? I don’t want to think about Robert Carlyle and butt sweat. Damn you, show!
I could be happier, but this’ll do me, I guess
Yea! Somebody finally decided to take House out behind the back shed and shoot it in the head! I’m so happy, but I could be happier, like, if they had done this four years ago when the show first started to suck.
Hey, remember when all these people were on this show? And not just the ones who were, like, too lazy to find new jobs or something?
I mean, look, I love seeing Hugh Laurie on my television screen as much as (if not more than) anybody, but this show was doddering along like a senility-stricken elephant.
Show, when you can't convince me to watch you, even for HUGH LAURIE, that's when it's time to throw in the towel.
It’s the show’s time, you know?
God bless you, Fox.
Now, please, let Fringe end on a good note.
Like, all the Observers come over and they have a dance party with them and their alternate universe selves and Walter finds the perfect recipe for a strawberry milkshake.
(Officially) A breakup letter to Chuck
Dear Chuck,
Look, I want you to know I’m sorry I stood you up the last three Fridays. It’s not that I didn’t want to see you, it’s just that … well, I kind of assumed you’d be on holiday break, like all the cool kids. Also? I didn’t want to see you.
No matter HOW awesome everyone's hair looks this season.
What? No, don’t cry. It’s not you, it’s me.
*Sigh*
You know what, Chuck? I can’t lie to you. Not with your big pleading puppy dog eyes. Not after what we had together. It is you. It’s very definitely you. I mean, sure, I’ve changed and grown, but there could still be room in my heart for you, if you hadn’t started to suck so damn bad, that is.
I can't forgive you for MORGAN WITH THE INTERSECT.
No, please don’t cry. It’s not your fault.
I blame myself for this. Oh, sure, I never signed an online petition to keep you on the air, and I never bought Subway sandwiches to keep you on the air (I’m sorry, but they’re just gross, I don’t care what Big Mike says, and I love that guy!), but deep down, I always kind of hoped you would stay on the air.
Big Mike, I'm sorry you've been reduced to being a shill for Subway. I hope they are compensating you with piles of cash and beautiful ladies. Who are also in piles.
But just through the fourth season, because everybody’s fifth season sucks and, dammit, Chuck, you are ruining all the good feelings I had for you. I tuned in to you because Chuck Bartowski was a sweet, cowardly little ball of fluff who was working on becoming a better person! Because John Casey and Sarah Walker were genuinely terrifying people who were willing to stop at nothing to complete an assignment. And now what do I see? Everybody’s a big cuddly ball of fluff and no one’s just flat out murdering anybody for the good of the country anymore and I really miss that dichotomy.
You hardly ever kill anybody anymore, John Casey, and I miss that about you.
Also, bring back Anna Wu!
And not just to be dumped by Morgan AGAIN because that was ridiculous.
In conclusion, it’s over. For reals this time.
Good luck in your future endeavors, show. I’ll never forget you. Except for the fifth season so far, because I really really don’t want to remember that.
I think we'll ALL be happier if we can forget.
Hollywood Hates Me 