Category Archives: television

Girls: 2 Broke and One New [Pt. 3] – Race

Posted on February 23, 2012 by | 3 comments

As you may have guessed by the title, this is the third and final part of my observations about the relatively new shows 2 Broke Girls and New Girl. To read the first two posts about cast and humour click on the respective words, or just scroll down if you’re already on the front page.

RACE

For the most part, I’ve already gone into great deal about this topic and 2 Broke Girls in my post titled “Michael Patrick King, Definitely Not Being Racist.” To summarize a lot of what I’ve already written in a few words, the show is not great when it comes to boiling people of different ethnicities down to their bare bones stereotypes. Or they’re really great at it, depending on your point of view.

Per episode the show has a much greater number of new characters as its stars find themselves stumbling into such locales as a thrift store and a pharmacy in a Jewish neighbourhood. With that being said, they’re given countless opportunities to put different spins on people from different cultures and backgrounds, but fall flat again and again. I’d recommend that you turn to the post I linked to in the paragraph above to get a more in-depth look on the matter.

The show’s approach to race has made it the recipient of a lot of flak, and their most recent decision to alleviate said criticism is to bring in a “hot Asian guy.” A casting call was put out last month which sought to find an attractive male of Asian descent to act as a love interest to Beth Behr’s Caroline Channing. While this may seem to be a dictionary definition for “affirmative action,” it may be a step in the right direction.

On the other hand, we have New Girl, a show whose approach to race is summed up quite nicely in the following video clip:


Just like Morgan Freeman and his approach to Black History Month, New Girl tackles race by not making it a big deal. And it does so flawlessly in the first few episodes. The pilot has Zooey Deschanel’s Jess meet a perfectly nice Asian guy who later stands her up on their date. Yes, he’s made out to be a douchebag, and no, that’s not particularly flattering, but you know what else it’s not? A stereotype.

Similarly, in the third episode, “Wedding,” the newlyweds are an interracial couple, with an Asian groom and a Caucasian  bride. There is not a single character who makes a big deal out of it, and everyone on the show takes it as completely normal. Because it is. This is not a situation I can see the writers of 2 Broke Girls passing up for comedy, and the fact that I’m 100 percent certain of that is a sad thing.

Since it’s not plumbing the depths of New York City for people from different ethnicities and the like, New Girl has less diversity than 2 Broke Girls. That being said, its treatment of nonwhite characters is, well, nothing special, which is great. A mixed race group of students might show up, or an Asian judge [“Bells” and “Jess  & Julia” respectively], but no one makes jabs or even hints at ethnic stereotypes. The closest thing the show gets to a joke about race is Winston’s one-liner about Black Friday [I had a YouTube clip but it doesn’t work now; sory].

I’d seen that video of Morgan Freeman years ago, but it never struck me until recently how true it is. If the media simply acknowledges that we live in an incredibly diverse world and stops calling attention to details as nongermane as ethnicity, then we can live in a world where racism truly ends.

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Girls: 2 Broke and One New [Pt. 2] – Humour

Posted on February 22, 2012 by | 3 comments

This is the second part of a three-part series on CBS’ 2 Broke Girls and Fox’s New Girl, both shows that premiered in the fall of 2011. In yesterday’s post I went into some detail about the cast of both shows, and this time I’m going to address the element of both that, hopefully, helps them put the “com” in sitcom.

HUMOUR

2 Broke Girls was created by Michael Patrick King, the openly gay writer whose claim to fame is HBO’s Sex and the City [he wrote all of the season premieres and finales, and was responsible for its adaptation to the big screen], and Whitney Cummings, comedian and star of her own NBC sitcom, Whitney.

Cummings has, for the most part, been preoccupied with her show, and because of that it’s King who takes the onus for much of the show’s writing. Now I do want to save a lot of potential content for tomorrow and the final part of this series, so what I’m going to share are a few of his words about where the show is coming from:

I think our show is a big, ballsy comedy, but it has a bigger heart than it has balls.

I feel that it is broad and brash and very current.

I consider our jokes really “classy-dirty.” They’re high low-brow. I think they’re fun and sophisticated and naughty and I think everybody likes a good naughty joke.

“Ballsy” is a pretty accurate statement for a show on a broadcast network that has, by my count, averaged nearly two rape jokes per episode. It also describes well the decision to include in this week’s episode, “And The Kosher Cupcakes,” a 13-year-old Jewish boy implying he’d soon be receiving oral sex from one of the show’s female leads.

Edginess aside, do I think it’s funny? As evidenced by the video proceeding this paragraph Kat Dennings has her tone down when it comes to delivering dry, deadpan lines. Beth Behrs’ Caroline has a knack for visual humour [see last week’s: “And The Broken Hearts”] and even Oleg, the lascivious fry cook, has his moments where you can’t help but grin at his audacity. Whether it’s funny throughout, however, is a different story.


Continuity and pacing aside, a lot of the times lines fall flat. “And The Broken Hearts” featured a joke between Jennifer Coolidge’s Sophie and Jonathan Kite’s Oleg where the two riffed on the variations on the word “come,” a scene so horrid that I’m cringing as I rewatch it. The show may not shy away from dealing with topics like masturbation and drug abuse, but “shock and awe” doesn’t always equal “amuse” or even “entertain.”

New Girl was and is created, produced, and written by Elizabeth Meriwether; her largest claim to fame is the 2011 Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher-driven comedy No Strings Attached.

Now I don’t have the public uproar that surrounds 2 Broke Girls available to create articles about New Girl, so I’m going to have to address its humour with largely my own words. Though the show began with the passable premise that a quirky female teacher moving in with three men was going to create conflict, the show has since moved beyond that in leaps and bounds.

Zooey Deschanel was, without question, the reason many tuned in, but I don’t believe it’s why they return. Jake Johnson’s Nick and Max Greenfield’s Schmidt both own their roles, and are arguably even funnier when clashing with each other. Case in point:


Where King’s show relies on a lot of wordplay and snarky jabs, courtesy of Kat Dennings, Meriwether’s is one that puts the “domestic” and the “comedic” in “dom com.” In addition, the characters all bring their own brand of humour to the table, with Schmidt’s douchiness, Nick’s freakouts [see above], or Jess’, well, Zooey-ness.

It’s not even that the show shies away from sex and the like. An entire episode revolved around Jess seeing Nick’s penis [much to Schmidt’s curiosity], and her willingness to have a threesome is strangely adorable. The difference is that it’s not overly-raunchy or in-your-face; for the show sex is another part of life, and one that’s plainly funny as opposed to darkly so.

I realize that there are significantly more clips from New Girl, but the fact is that I think the show is funnier overall, and you can always look for more stuff from 2 Broke Girls on YouTube if you’d like. As the head writer, King has a pretty decent cast of characters [again, see last post] available to him, and if he wants to give them lots of sarcasm and whatnot that’s entirely up to him. It’s fine to be “ballsy” or “classy-dirty” but the intention should be to have your audience laughing, not shaking their heads and saying “I can’t believe they just said that.”

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Girls: 2 Broke and One New [Pt. 1] – Cast

Posted on February 21, 2012 by | 4 comments

This academic year has been the beginning of many new shows for me, with 2 Broke Girls and New Girl topping the list. I say “topping” of course to mean the most recent televisual acquisitions, as opposed to the highest quality among programs that I watch.

To be honest, this post has been a long time in coming due to the fact that a) I can’t resist the fact that the shows have such similar titles, and b) I’ve been comparing them ever since they both premiered last fall. With that in mind, I will be writing a total of three posts, Tuesday to Thursday, with each concentrating on a particular aspect of the two shows.

So, without further ado:

CAST

2 Broke Girls stars Kat Dennings and Beth Behr as Max and Caroline respectively, the former a jaded city girl and the latter a penniless heiress. The two work at a diner, accompanied by owner Han Lee, fry cook Oleg, and cashier Earl. Recently Sophie, the Polish owner of a house cleaning business, has become a recurring cast member.

In spite of the seemingly large main cast, the focus is primarily on the titular characters [if anyone jokes in the comments about a particular character I suppose I could’ve chosen my wording better]. The show mainly revolves around Max and Caroline, regulating everyone else to the sidelines at best.

New Girl stars, of course, the ever-cheery Zooey Deschanel as the titular [there’s that word again] character Jess. Alongside her are her roommates Nick, Schmidt, and Winston. Joining them is her model friend of indeterminate ethnicity Cece. I’m not counting Lizzy Caplan because, well, she’s going to leave the show eventually [a thought which makes me cry].

From left to right: Cece, Winston, Nick, Jess, and Schmidt.

It would be near impossible for the show to solely follow the Jess’ zany antics, and thankfully, it doesn’t try to. Her three roommates have more than once carried their own B and C plots, with Nick even competing for the central storyline in the episode “Jess & Julia.”

At first glance the two casts may appear shockingly similar: two females, three males, a single black man in both groups. As mentioned earlier, however, the difference begins in who the camera focuses on. 2 Broke Girls is very much a show about two girls in New York trying to make a living, and their exploits specifically. New Girl is about four [sorry, Cece, but you’re not always around] people and their lives, regardless of whether or not they’re with each other. A subplot in the latter could be all about Schmidt and his attempts to sleep with his boss, but there are no opportunities in the former for an episode that switches back and forth between Max and Caroline trying to make money and Earl, sitting behind his desk at the diner.

The reasons for this could vary pretty greatly. 2 Broke Girls has a traditional three-camera setup, and as a result is filmed on sets resembling a diner, apartment, et cetera. This gives New Girl an upper hand in featuring its various characters being in different locales given its single camera format. The real reason, however, is the amount of characterization given to each cast member. We know that Max is street smart and snarky and kind of bitter, Caroline is naive yet strong and persistent. The characters on the edges, though, are a lot more two-dimensional. Early is a father figure of sorts. Oleg is a womanizer. Han is . . . Asian. I would go into what the characters of New Girl are all about, but I don’t have room. It’s not to say that they’re immensely deep, multi-faceted character, but compared to much of the cast of 2 Broke Girls, yes. Basically, yes.

Not to deride the acting talents of Kat Dennings or Beth Behrs. The two have great comedic chemistry and, when given the right lines, are very funny. And that’s not to say that Jonathan Kite as Oleg and Garret Morris as Earl don’t have their moments; there have been episodes where I regard the Ukrainian fry cook with something akin to warmth. The fact is that these are talented actors who have been relegated to supporting roles, taking up ten to fifteen percent of screentime per episode.

These three posts weren’t meant to be a competition, but New Girl definitely wins in terms of cast. This also isn’t meant to go into how funny the characters or writing are [that’s for tomorrow], but simply an observation of how a full cast can be well utilized. Come back tomorrow afternoon for Part 2!

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This is how The Office Ends: Not with a Bang, but with a Spinoff

Posted on February 2, 2012 by | Leave a comment

It being a Thursday morning and all, I felt it an appropriate time to wax poetic on the fall [and fall] of NBC’s The Office. It doesn’t take a die-hard fan to realize that the show was on shaky ground once Michael Scott moved to Colorado, and like a newborn giraffe it had to struggle to get to its feet. Unlike a newborn giraffe, however, it was not ready to start running within the first few hours.

The first nail in the coffin came in the form of talks about a Dwight Schrute spinoff in which Rainn Wilson’s character would headline a show set on his bed and breakfast/beet farm. Apparently executive producer Paul Lieberstein and Wilson have been “joking for years” about this concept, and they’ve finally decided to do something with it.

The second sign that the show is on its way out is actress Mindy Kaling [who plays Kelly Kapoor] and her move to Fox to star on her own show. The program would feature Kaling as a “Bridget Jones-type OB/GYN doctor balancing her personal and professional life,” which sounds like yet another title to add to the list of shows revolving around a single woman and her zany existence [See: New Girl, Whitney]. So we have that to look forward to too, I guess.

Reasons we know the show’s coming to a close aside, I suppose the question to ask is why the show fell. It can’t simply be because of Steve Carell leaving, because the writers have demonstrated time and time again that they have a solid cast, with over a dozen well-rounded [funny] familiar characters. What they haven’t always demonstrated is the ability to use them.

Andy Bernard as boss is a great choice, but his having to compete for the spotlight with Robert California is uncomfortable at the best of times. Pam has been gone on maternity leave for weeks now and has a brunette replacement whose name doesn’t come to mind because she has no personality. Angela is still married to the supposedly gay senator, and no one really cares. I could go on, but I think you get my point: the show has stagnated.

While there have been good episodes this season, they’ve been few and far between. My only hope is that this season doesn’t become remembered as the new Scrubs: Interns, the ninth season of an excellent show reviled by both fans and people of good taste alike. “Goodbye, Michael” was a fantastic episode that ended well, and actually the fourth to last of this past season. If things end up the way they have been I’m going to have to consider it start considering it the last of the series.

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Product Placement, and/or Wouldn’t an Ice Cold Pepsi Really Hit The Spot Right Now?

Posted on January 26, 2012 by | 2 comments

After a long day, I plan on sitting back and finally watching the last episode of CBC’s Being Erica, a show I began last summer and have yet to finish. While skimming its Wikipedia page I was reminded of Season 4 Episode 8, and the product placement that the video below accurately describes  as “egregious.”


It’s difficult to be immersed in a show that shoves advertising down your throat, and I definitely remember being disturbed by it. A car that can park itself is impressive, but watching two characters you’ve grown familiar with ooh and aah as a car salesman lists its features is not. As I watch the clip again and hear the back and forth of “No way” and “Way” it’s hard not to feel a little sick inside.

As was to be expected, the Canadian press was far from thrilled by this. An article on the National Post titled “How Being Erica took product integration too far” cites this episode as the one that caused the author to “break up with Erica.” She also referenced a the following point I had already been planning on making:

Is there anything 30 Rock can’t get away with? The clip above features product placement that is far more in-your-face than what was found in Being Erica, yet manages to pull it off. It’s both meta and very funny, and as a result as viewers we can laugh it off and even respect what the show is doing.

How much, then, can we put up with? I fully recognize that Dr. Pepper plays a fairly prominent role in the first three Spider-man films, and the ridiculous amount of BMWs in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol was impossible to ignore. Phones, more than ever have gotten a good amount of screen time in music videos, with so many examples out there I’m not even going to link to one.

Product placement [or integration, which definitely has more positive connotations] has, and will continue to be around, but is this something that we should take for granted and accept? That particular episode of Being Erica sparked an uproar of sorts, with audience members feeling offended that the network would think so little of them. The message behind their complaints seems to be: You can advertise to us, but be subtle about it.

The economy’s not in great shape, and TV shows and movies and music videos can only be made if there’s money to fund them. Since we’re going to keep getting logos flashed in our faces, what should we do? Can we do anything about it? As consumers of the media we should all have standards we expect to be met, but the question now is when do we draw the line?

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Media in 2011

Posted on January 5, 2012 by | 2 comments

This past year I had a resolution, of sorts. It was to log, day by day, the amount of media that I experienced. For the sake of convenience, music, YouTube videos, and comic books were all exempt from being logged. TV shows, movies, and books were the main focus here.

In picking a month to show you, I chose September in that it was a month entirely spent at school, without any breaks. All media was experienced in the free time I had outside of classes and schoolwork. Breaks tend to severely skew the average amount; an example of this is my watching five seasons of 30 Rock in January during the Christmas break.

Media in September

Television

  • 8 episodes of Deadliest Warrior [40 minutes each]
  • 1 episode of Futurama [20 minutes]
  • 1 episode of The IT Crowd [20 minutes]
  • 5 episodes of Cromartie High School [10 minutes each]
  • 2 episodes of Regular Show [10 minutes each]
  • 2 episode of Adventure Time [10 minutes each]
  • 7 episodes of Breaking Bad [45 minutes each]
  • 4 episodes of How I Met Your Mother [20 minutes each]
  • 1 episode of The Office [20 minutes]
  • 1 episode of Community [20 minutes]
  • 2 episodes of The Big Bang Theory [20 minutes each]
  • 2 episodes of New Girl [20 minutes each]

Film

  • Scott Pilgrim vs. The World [112 minutes]
  • Helvetica [80 minutes]
  • Paul [104 minutes]
  • Batman & Robin [125 minutes]
  • Hot Rod [88 minutes]
  • Ironclad [121 minutes]
  • Terminator Salvation [115 minutes]

Books

  • Part of The Odyssey
  • Most of The Aeneid
Totaled, that’s (if Google didn’t fail me on the math part), 965 minutes of television, 745 minutes of television, and about 3 or four hours of reading. After some fancy addition, that’s 28.5 hours spent watching in the month of September. A month I also partially picked because it had significantly less than others.
As an English/Writing Major, this is very unsettling to think about. Over a day of September was spent staring at a screen [not including YouTube or daily browsing], and even though comics were omitted my reading total still pales greatly in comparison. I justify my excessive viewing in a way, citing the study of plots and character progression in both television and film as a way of improving myself as a writer. Apart from this blog, however, I did little to no personal writing whatsoever in that time period.

The average American [which I am not, being neither] watches more than 151 hours of TV a month. With that in mind, I feel strangely validated. We don’t have a television in our house, and instead hook our laptops up to a monitor in the living room. This means that there is no casual turning on of the TV, no languid channel surfing. Apparently this has contributed greatly to my watching 80% less than most people.

I began this blog post with the intent to depict exactly how much media I consume in a given month, and hold that up as a shocking example of a 21-year old’s usage of his time. Contrary to that, I’ve discovered that I’m not doing too badly compared to America. At 28.5 hours per month, I’m actually doing really great.

Does this mean that I should continue to do what I’ve been doing? My answer is no. As I’ve mentioned, September was actually a low month in regards to media viewed. The month after I watched easily twice as many shows. The fact that this still ranks me as watching 40% as much as most has inspired me not to watch the same amount, but less. I’m doing better than average, but better doesn’t equal good. As someone who says he cares for literature, I need to at least pretend that that’s true in my actions. And that’s as good a resolution as any.

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