Daniel's TV Blog

Last week my favorite new show of the 2007 season came to an end. Pushing Daisies finished up after 22 episodes. The last three episodes were burned through on a late Saturday night time slot. But at least we didn't have to wait until the DVD release. If you didn't watch them or TiVo them, caution SPOILERS AHEAD. You can also catch them on ABC.com.

The final episode had the funniest death of the entire season as Nora Dunn was eaten whole by a shark during a synchronized swimming show. This gave way to the Darling Mermaid Darlings coming out of retirement. And the quirkiness of the show never ends with the fantastic aquatic show. Although for a touring show the set looked nice and permanent. At the end we were treated to some closure and happy endings as well as only a small cliffhanger. Olive Snook got over The Piemaker and started a life with David Arquette and opened a Macaroni and Cheese restaurant in a building shaped like a cow. Emerson Cod got his book published and his daughter found him. After a fantastic pan through the entire town the show ended with Chuck "coming out" as alive to her aunts, thus ending their biggest argument and bringing harmony back to the Charles family. Farewell Pushing Daisies. I'll miss you.

Labels: Pushing Daisies

JT has become the biggest friend of the show this season on SNL. He has popped in many times this season (including the unforgettable Single Ladies skit) and finally hosted for his third time on the penultimate episode of the season. I wanted to post the Single Ladies skit from the Paul Rudd/Beyonce episode but it is not on Hulu anymore. I'll have to rip that from the rebroadcast on 07/11. In the Immigrant's Dream skit, JT makes fun of his career, personal life, and numerous SNL appearances.

Labels: SNL

This was one of my favorite moments of the season. It's just so out there.

Labels: SNL

Sometimes the skits that make the least sense are the funniest. For instance an early season skit about Mark Walhberg talking to animals. I don't understand where it came from but it is hilarious. A few weeks later, Mark Walhberg came on the show and repeated the joke. He's a good sport.

Skits like these usually appear late in the show because not everyone believes they will be well received. Another great odd late-in-show skit was Gilly and that went over well. Another favorite of mine was Rocket Dog from Tracy Morgan's episode. This isn't even on Hulu. What's that all about? The Tracy Morgan episode will be on again on 07/25, be sure to look for that.

Labels: SNL

Tonight on ABC and new mini-series called Impact starts. Unlike the traditional every-night-of-the-week mini-series format, this seems to be on Sunday nights this week and next week. It's an end of the world story so you know I'll be watching. I love end of the world stories.

This one has a fully improbable premise which has a completely impossible solution. A chunk of a dark star or whatever you want to call a super-duper dense asteroid thingy hits or "impacts" the moon. This causes the moon to have a higher mass than the Earth and the two slowly start to collide. How can the possible move something with greater mass than the Earth? I guess we will see.

It looks horrible, don't watch it. Unless you're me.

Labels: Impact

I was talking at lunch with Friend of DtvB Sean last week about how funny SNL was this year. The season finale had one of the funniest sketches ever with the return of Will Farrell and Celebrity Jeopardy. It's a must watch with some great cameos.

I'll be posting about SNL all this week so stay tuned.

Labels: SNL

When an old TV show shows up in my life three times in one day, it is time to blog about it. Today it was Hawaii Five-O. This morning I was reading one of my moderately favorite blogs, dougsploitation, had a post about Hawaii Five-O as a tribute to recent death of the song writer of the theme song to the classic 12 season series.

Later in the morning I was hanging out with visiting friend Matt Yee and his husband Paul. They are visiting Seattle from Honolulu on the Mariner of the Seas. We went to the Museum of Flight. While looking at the very first 747, the topic of the opening sequence of Hawaii Five-O with the 747 landing in Oahu came up. I didn't realize how important the arrival of the regularly scheduled 747 was to the integration of Hawaii to mainstream mainland culture was until this conversation.

Later, while watching episode seven of True Blood, the inexplicably sexy detective Andy was fishing when his cell phone went off. His ring-tone: Hawaii Five-O theme song.

Labels: Hawaii Five-O, True Blood

As I write this I'm currently watching episode six of season one of True Blood. This HBO show was on last summer. Season two started up this week. First off, this show is awesome. If you have Netflix what you should do right now is put season one on your queue and move it to the top of the list.

After Buffy, The Vampire Slayer I was certain the vampire genre was done. That show was so well written, so well put together, and so funny, nothing else could ever do vampires as good. I watch the horrible train wreck of Twilight when it came out on DVD. This was such a crappy rip off of the teenage-vampire love affair of Buffy-Angel. And the stupid "sparkling in sunlight" instead of bursting in flame was beyond suck. Don't pay to see the sequels. And then the CW is having The Vampire Diaries this fall. This is an even worse rip off of the Buffy-Angel romance. Puh-leeze.

If you don't know what True Blood is about here is a short synopsis. It's modern times but a few years ago with the invention of synthetic blood, vampire have "come out of the coffin". In a small Louisiana town an old vampire had return to his original home around the time of a series of unexplained murders. The mystery is fantastic. But the most interesting thing is the integration of Vampires in the modern societies. As they push to gain acceptance the parallels to the push to gain rights and acceptance is an obvious parallel to the gay rights movement. The thing that makes it better than Buffy is the almost scientific look at the way vampires work. The vampire blood IS life and it has its own superior powers. In addition to the supernaturalness of vampires, there are other supernatural things going on. The main character played by Anna Paquin is a telepath. Her desire to have a vampire boyfriend makes perfect sense as he is the only love interest who she cannot hear thoughts. This show is very well written.

But the number one reason to watch the show is super hottie Jason Stackhouse (pictured). He is incredibly hot and a total brain dead man whore. As this is the south, he spends much of the time without his shirt on. I love it. He is played by the hot and brilliant Australian actor Ryan Kwanten. I love him. My three month free HBO subscription ends in two weeks but this show is making me consider paying for it for a few more months.

Labels: True Blood

It's on tonight on E!

Labels: The Soup

OK so IACGMOOH is really entertaining. I'm glad I'm giving over five hours of my week to this show. Lots of crazy things happened this week. (Caution, spoilers)

Heidi and Spencer came back. After spending the night praying in the stupid Love Shack, they were eligible to come back to camp. But first their return had to be approved by the other campers. They voted and Speidi was allowed to return. Yet it seemed like less than a day and they were gone again. This time was due to Heidi's illness which was most likely because she wasn't eating. She went to a local clinic who sent her to a real hospital in the Costa Rica capitol of San Jose. And thus they were gone for good. Thank the gods. As a happy atheist, I'm very happy they were on the show. They were the most typical new Christians from my experience and I think their retarded attitudes will turn some possible converts away from stupid organized religion. Go Speitards!

The "coming up" announcer is so lame. On Monday he said something like this. "Coming up, will Heidi and Spencer be allowed back into camp. And later, Heidi doesn't like was Janice is saying." Well if Heidi and Janice have an argument, of course that means they are allowed back to camp. Lame!

Holly is in, Daniel is out. Holly Montag, Heidi's sister was added to the show. She is nothing like her sister. I think she is possibly the most comfortable women in the jungle. And in the elimination this week, Daniel Baldwin was voted out. It's too bad I really loved the Steven-Daniel dynamic.

Sanjaya is straight? The show is setting up a love connection between Holly and Sanjaya. Is it real? Is it just a friendship? Is it a gay-fag hag relationship? Whatever it is it's cute.

Janice is a crazy kleptomaniac. She has no idea where the cameras are. So she was completely unaware they caught her stealing food on night vision camera. She is a huge waste of skin.

Patti is completely delusional. She went on and on about how their friends abandoned her husband. She is completely incapable of seeing any other point of view. If there was obvious audio evidence that one of my friend-colleagues was comically over the top corrupt, I'd abandon him/her too. Stop being a stupid emotional woman and think about your ridiculous over the top situation from an objection point of view for once.

In this post I coined the term "Speitard". It will be sweeping the nation very soon.

Labels: I'm a Celebrity, Speitard

New episodes of Phineas and Ferb resume on Friday. This replace SpongeBob as my favorite kid's show. The show is very funny and they've got songs in every episode. Here's a few good songs:

There's lots more one YouTube.

Recently my friend Art from Dallas suggest I watch a show on Cartoon Network called The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack. This show is rather silly and the animation is bad. It took me a few episodes to get into it. It's about a kid who was adopted by a big whale named Bubbie. It's kind of confusing because she is raising him to be and Adventurers yet she is very over protective. Helping out with Flapjack's adventure training is Captain K'nuckles who leaches off of Bubbie and usually gets Flapjack into trouble on his ever present quest for candy. Candy is a metaphor for booze which an old sea captain would really be searching for. The captain has had most of his body parts replaced with wooden artificial limbs. They live at Stormalong Harbor in the pirate/Victorian era. The docks seem completely disconnected from any land mass. All of the actual land are islands which have very specific purposes such as Maple Syrup Island, Pickle Island, Plague Island, and the always elusive goal of Candied Island. My friend Betsy from Sacramento hates this show. Sorry Betsy but I like it.

While watching Flapjack I saw commercials for a show called The League of Super Evil. I've been watching this all week. It has a great collection of bumbling wanna be super villains. Their leader is Voltar who never sets his evil goals high enough. For instance he aspires to change the city clock ahead five minutes so every thinks they are late. Muh-hu-ha-ha-ha! The super genius Doctor Frogg is constantly getting hurt while he tries to take over the world. The dim witted Red Menace doesn't really even know what evil is and mostly ends up doing good. The final member of the team is Doomageddon. He their pet who has actual super powers. He can teleport and hover and shrink in size. He's the only one who ever ends up doing any evil, usually against his fellow team members. In fact the super heroes in their city are usually the ones who do bad things, causing collateral damage or overzealously enforcing the rules. It's a fun show.

Labels: League of Super Evil, Phineas and Ferb, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack

Futurama is coming back to television. No the idiots at FOX didn't renew it. Comedy Central came to the rescue. They been running the existing five seasons and the direct to DVD movies. They have ordered 26 episodes the first of which will start next year. I'm going to assume they are going to run them in 2 seasons of 13 episodes which is how most cable shows are done. Futurama is one of the best shows of all time. I'm super happy it is coming back.

Labels: Futurama

This week The Colbert Report is broadcasting from Iraq. Last night he showed part of of his basic training in his home state of South Carolina. The Sergeant did not allow him to keep his Jonas Brothers poster. Then he interviewed the General in command of the multinational Iraq force. The General then proceeded to give Stephen a military haircut. I think he looks hotter this way. Catch more Colbert in Iraq all week.

Labels: Steven Colbert, The Colbert Report

Two new almost identical shows debuted within the last week. Web Soup on G4 on Sunday (rerun tonight on E!) and Tosh.0 on Comedy Central on Wednesday. Both are clip shows from stuff taken from the web. The only clip they both had on their debut show was the elephant fisting another elephant with its trunk. Which should you watch?

I find Tosh.0 funnier. The host, Daniel Tosh, is very funny. They have higher production values including a segment where guests get to redo something they notoriously screwed up on the Internet in the past. Last week was the Afro Ninja this week is Miss Teen "Such As" South Carolina. Tosh also recreates some Internet videos on his show himself like chopping coconuts and the cinnamon challenge. And he had the hilarious recreation of Keyboard Cat with Kato Kaelin as the cat. See below. However with the high production values and the retarded way Comedy Central renews shows, I doubt this will be on for more than the summer. Then it may be renewed many months later but its momentum will be gone and that will be the end. Remember The Showbiz Show with David Spade?



Web Soup follows the same format without any location shoots, guests, or recreations. I thought the show started out a bit slow but I think it ended very strong. The host Chris Hardwick had a great recurring joke with the sexy rib commercial. With lower production costs, two network promotion, and a show not tied to the name of the host, this is likely to run for a long time.

Labels: Tosh.0, Web Soup

Two words: Frangela. And two more words: Speidi. I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here is going to be the biggest guilty pleasure of the summer. All the shows will be talking about it this week and the next couple weeks. I watched the first episode today on Hulu and then the first 10 minutes of tonight's episodes. I'll watch the rest tomorrow. Frangela, a comic duo of Francine and Angela, are just hilarious. They are best known for their years on Best Week Ever. They are the perfect alternatives to the incredibly spoiled Spencer and Heidi from the Hills. Every day these two sleep through chores, skip the challenges and threaten to leave. The president of NBC/Universal had to talk to the biggest douchebag in the world to convince him to stay the first night. Spencer totally spazzed out at Francine (or Angela) for something she didn't even do which sparked a huge yelling war. Frangela just treat them like the children they are and get on. Plus they routines are great during the confessionals. Their bit this evening about the end of the trauma tank was hilarious. Don't miss out on the pop culture event of June.

Labels: Get Me Out Of Here?, I'm a Celebrity

Almost two months ago Susan Boyle stunned the world with a voice that didn't match her frumpy appearance on Britain's Got Talent. It quickly became the most watched clip of anything ever from the Internet. Several more clips from the show made their viral rounds through the blogosphere. Yet where can we watch Britain's Got Talent in this country? No where. I have like 300 channels on DirecTV and none of them carried the show, not even BBC America. What the pho? This past weekend the finals where broadcast live in Britain and Susan Boyle lost to a dance group called Diversity. It would be great to watch the entire show even if not live. Why didn't one of the music networks pick it up? Or any one of the lesser cable networks. It was a huge failure on the American centric networks. You can watch many of the clips online at: http://talent.itv.com/.

Labels: Britain's Got Talent