New TV Thread: I Hear NNY Helped Break Stories for FNL

[elpollodiablo]

Cheer up Hamlet
Chin up Hamlet
Buck up you melancholy Dane
So your uncle is a cad
Who murdered Dad and married Mum
That's really no excuse to be as glum as you've become
So wise up Hamlet
Rise up Hamlet
Buck up and sing the new refrain
Your incessant monologizing fills the castle with ennui
Your antic disposition is embarrassing to see
And by the way you sulky brat the answer is To Be
You're driving poor Ophelia insane
So shut up you rogue and peasant
Grow up it's most unpleasant
Cheer up you melancholy Dane

[nonotyet]

Bill Simmons on Friday Night Lights

On Aug. 28, NBC released the American DVDs with a "satisfaction guaranteed" gimmick. Now if you continue to ignore FNL, it's only because you're trying to hurt me.

[Greg Nog]

Whoa hey!  Slings and Arrows!  All right, all right. 

I still haven't seen Friday Night Lights.  I guess I maybe should?  This doesn't really help, though:

Quite simply, FNL is the best date show ever, an improbable cross between The O.C. and every sports show you ever wanted Hollywood to make.

That's 0 for 2, right there.

[elpollodiablo]

I was thinking the same thing. Yikes.

[hannah]

Do you like any hour-long dramas w/o robots or cross lady doctors, Greg? Perhaps FNL is not for you. Or maybe it is! I will see if you give me something something. (Uh, i.e., what else you like.)

[nonotyet]

It's not, um, exactly like that, is the thing. That article was written for a pretty specific audience--half of dude's readers are Sports Dudes and the other half is me, ie, we are chicks who maybe don't get all of the intricacies of sports but know enough and love the way he writes and also think The OC was pretty legitimately good and not soap-opera good in the first season.*
Besides, we (and by "we" I mean Blucas) have been right about everything else re: TV, so basically you should just quit fighting it.
 
*wildly debatable statistic

[Greg Nog]

The OC was pretty legitimately good and not soap-opera good in the first season.*

Besides, we (and by "we" I mean Blucas) have been right about everything else re: TV

The dissonance created by these two sentences is strong enough to power a small city.

I'm certainly willing to give it a shot, since if it's well-written, the high-school-football setting isn't going to turn me away.   Though if I have to watch football games within the show, it'll probably make me as pissy as if I had to watch, say, a Gilbert and Sullivan parody within a show.

[RoyBiggins]

Boys becoming men.


Men becoming WOLVES!

[hannah]

Though if I have to watch football games within the show, it'll probably make me as pissy as if I had to watch, say, a Gilbert and Sullivan parody within a show.

Are you slamming Animaniacs?

[Greg Nog]

Oh man, no!  I was slamming Studio 60; I'd hate to think that could be interpreted as distaste for Animaniacs, a show for which I have nothing but fond memories.

[hannah]

Ah, phew. Well, here is something to cleanse your Studio-60-stained tongue, then: "I am the very model of the cartoon individual..."

[dieblucasdie]

Yeah, it's strange to me how everyone acts like The OC was a teen soap, when it was basically a comedy making fun teen soaps.  At least the first and last seasons.  In a way, I think FNL is almost more soapy, but it's all presented in such a compassionate, human way that no one notices they're watching a teen soap.  Also, let's face it, the acting on FNL is on such a higher level than The OC (and everything else not-the-Wire on TV, really).

But yeah, the two shows have almost nothing in common besides being about high school kids.

You would probably like it Greg, though you'd probably be less willing to look away from some of its flaws (Minka Kelly, never ever giving Smash a good plotline, the neighborlady.)

[Andrew_TSKS]

so i saw the first episode of heroes yesterday. what a cool-looking show. i'm excited to see more. also, i saw the first 15 mins of episode two, but then had to turn it off. but that was enough for me to see that nora zehetner from "brick" is on that episode (and may be turning into a recurring character), and i'm nothing but stoked about that.

[dieblucasdie]

It's good fun.  Heroes can be the best of shows, or the worst of shows.

Also, I'm sure people have seen this because it was mefi-ed, but long-ass, awesome David Simon interview/profile in the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/22/071022fa_fact_talbot?currentPage=1

[Andrew_TSKS]

i have NOT seen that, and simon is an AWESOME interview subject, so thank you very much for posting that!

[dieblucasdie]

Oh, I should note that it's laden with spoilers for anyone who isn't caught up on "The Wire," and a few minor ones for Season 5 as well. 


Still, though:

Simon said, he and his colleagues had “ripped off the Greeks: Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides. Not funny boy—not Aristophanes. We’ve basically taken the idea of Greek tragedy and applied it to the modern city-state.” He went on, “What we were trying to do was take the notion of Greek tragedy, of fated and doomed people, and instead of these Olympian gods, indifferent, venal, selfish, hurling lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason—instead of those guys whipping it on Oedipus or Achilles, it’s the postmodern institutions . . . those are the indifferent gods.”

[elpollodiablo]

Whoa, I can't believe I missed that. I paged through that entire issue on the shitter the other day.

[elpollodiablo]

I've seen that quote paraphrased in many different interviews.

[YojimboMonkey]

Once, a man pressed a package of heroin into the hands of Andre Royo, the actor who plays the sympathetic junkie and police informant Bubbles, saying, “Man, you need a fix more than I do.” Royo refers to that moment as his “street Oscar.”

awesome

[dieblucasdie]

I've seen that quote paraphrased in many different interviews.

Yeah, she's quoting an earlier interview at that part.

[elpollodiablo]

Well she can go sit on a tack

[DCDave]

BOYS BECOMING MEN,

MEN BECOMING WOLVES.

(Anybody else watching Sin City Law?)

P.S. Brian Williams does Stand-up sometimes for fun and it is apparently funny and also he is friends with Amy Poehler IRL.

[das kranke Tier]

Boys becoming men.


Men becoming WOLVES!

[DCDave]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdDZQCX-qRY

Brian and Conan

[hannah]

I remember thinking "Musings" was sweet when it aired... but I don't know, it's also kind of a little over-the-top.  They make him a little *too* powerful.  I mean, for someone who covertly controls the world he sure fucks up a lot.

I just rewatched "Musings" this weekend. You're wrong dude. One, the episode is sweet. Two, the whole thing is half-fantasy, based on the Raul Bloodsworth Frohike read in that cheeseball magazine; it's unclear whether Bloodsworth is indeed Cancer Man, or 3/4 Cancer Man, or what. Three, the thing is an extended Forrest Gump parody, hence:

"Life... is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable, because all you get back is another box of chocolates. You're stuck with this undefinable whipped-mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there's nothing else left to eat. Sure, once in a while, there's a peanut butter cup, or an English toffee. But they're gone too fast, the taste is fleeting. So you end up with nothing but broken bits, filled with hardened jelly and teeth-crunching nuts, and if you're desperate enough to eat those, all you've got left is an empty box filled with useless, brown paper wrappers."

Also, CSM fucking controlled the Rodney King trials, the downfall of the Buffalo Bills, the appointment of Clarence Thomas, and 1980 winter Olympics. How awesome is that? Hilarious.