Daniel's TV Blog

Labels: Glee

I loved Glee from the first time I saw the Pilot a little over a year ago. The show is the worst great show ever. The musical numbers are what we watch it for. But sometimes this show has worse writing than Jerry, Blairs cousin from Facts of Life. For instance, in the penultimate episode of the season the timeline was just completely off. The establish at the start of the show that the Cheerleading Nations are the upcoming weekend and that Quinn is going to sing her song on Friday. Then Will asks Sue on a date for Wednesday. After rejecting her he goes to school to find that Sue canceled the last two practices. The he convinces her to return, she does, they win nations. Next Quinn performs her song and then the group preforms their Funk song for Vocal Adrenaline, the end. So Sue canceled multiple practices after the Wednesday date? This would move the timeline to Friday at the earliest, but then they win the Nations before Quinn sings her song on Friday. And the obvious timeline problem wasn't even the worse thing about the episode. There was the way-too-mean egging of Rachel and the much-to-hard punishment for the tire vandalism. There was no way they should have been caught for that crime. It was just a bad-bad episode.

And they had some bad arc stories as well. The Rachel and her mother story was terrible. Yay we meet! No I don't want to get to know you right now! OK, I'll just adopt another baby and forget about you! It went way to fast and I never believed the characters (or any characters) would ever act like that. The worst thing about the show is Will Schuester singing Hip-Hop. He is on the bottom of the list of people I want to hear singing. Sue is better than him, and she clearly can't sing. She kinda talk-sings through Vogue and Physical and she's great. I want more.

But even with the numerous problems, this is one of my favorite shows ever. That's mostly because of the fun factor of the songs. I love the songs in the choir room (such as My Life Would Suck Without You), I like the fantasy numbers (such as The Safety Dance), I love the performance numbers (such as Don't Rain On My Parade) and I love the special guest numbers (such as I Dreamed a Dream). It's just very lucky this show has so much going for it I don't mind putting up with the foolishness.

Labels: Glee

Before the new season started there were two shows I was most looking forward to. Those were/are Glee on Fox Wednesdays and Flashforward on ABC Thursdays.

Glee has kept its promise of being the funniest new show of the season. The characters are wonderful, from the main kids, to the background kids, to the teachers, and even the crazy wife. The story is moving along very fast. They could easy drag things out but they are really pushing the story on with the Invitationals, the upcoming Sectionals, and the Regionals off at some point in the season. I'm super excited that Cindi Lightballoon is now directly involved Glee. I really hope she sings sometime. And I can never get enough of the mohawk guy. He is delicious. This show exceeded expections and kept its promise of being awesome.

Then there is Flashforward. This promised to be am engaging mystery show that the whole world wound experience together. After three episodes I'm ready to drop this. I'll give it another chance since Charlie is joining the cast in the next episode or the one after. So before I get to the whole causality problem, the show is just boring. As I always say, it's the characters that make a show interesting. None of the FBI characters are interesting. Dr. Penny isn't interesting. The alcoholic utility guy looking for his daughter isn't interesting. All boring. What happened to the babysitter and the suicidal doctor? They had potential. The black fiance seemed interesting but she's only been in one episode. The next topic is the disaster cleanup and recovery. First up I don't think every building would be slightly damaged. I think some buildings would be undamaged, some would have some damage, and some would have burned down. With the streets impassable and dozens of fires going, at least one high-rise would have a big fire that would have burned all day to the point of structural failure. Twenty years ago the tallest building in L.A. at the time had a fire that lasted four hours and nearly took down the building. It was in real danger or shearing off the upper floor. It took 64 fire companies to battle this fire. In the chaos in the day of the blackouts it's far more likely that dozens of fires would have destroyed a lot of buildings around the world, not just L.A. And the cleanup seemed to happen very quick. The alcoholic utility guy would be working 16 hours shifts to fix all the problems. He wouldn't have time to get fill out exhumation paperwork much less hang around a bar in the middle of the day. I lived in Northridge during the 1994 quake and there was debris (mostly from fallen cement fences) on the streets for months. The time it would take to clear up every single freeway and major streets in L.A. would take weeks. It's not just a big accident, it's every mile of every freeway and every block in every direction. There's no plan in place for that kind of cleanup. It would take a few days to just come up with a plan. On to the investigation. It seems like the only people in the government investigating the incident is a same team in Los Angeles. There should be every government and military agency working on it. They should be a small team, not the leaders in the investigation.

But the causality issue is the biggest problem. If I had a vision of the future I would be very interested in seeing if it came true or not. And as the date and time became more known from the mosaic experiences, I would be very interested in that date/time. I wouldn't go about as business as usual. I'd be hanging out at a party celebrating a flash forward party. I wouldn't be in the bathroom. I wouldn't be having an ultrasound (who has those at 10pm?). I wouldn't be in a morning staff meeting in London. I wouldn't be at my own wedding. So either the future is what it is because I knew it was coming or the future is a possibility that could change. I know I would try to change it just because I could.

If I was running the show I would have kept at least the first few episodes heartpounding exciting. I'd start each episode with different disaster scenes from the blackout. I'd have characters that were interesting. I'd make the causality more of an issue. I'd spend more time to the clean-up effort instead of the far to slow moving investigation. And then I make the investigation more interesting. I'll give the show one more episode before I drop it.

Labels: Flashforward, Glee

Today is the official start of the new fall season with the debut of Glee on FOX. Fox seems to always be the first one to start the season. Glee did have a preview back in May and it was great. I missed it and had to watch it on Hulu. I really love the idea of a preview and I really hope each network decides to run a preview of one new fall series during the season finale season. It really gets people excited for a show. In addition to the preview, Glee has released short episode clips all summer to tease us with. I missed a few but I did see Gold Digger which was hilarious.

Way back in May, I was visiting Paramount Studios with my friend Jason and our mutual friend Gary gave us a personal tour of the studios. They had several active sets going on, some back Nickelodeon sit-com, Nip/Tuck, and Glee. Nip/Tuck was shooting that day so we couldn't get in to see most of the sets. Glee however was clear and we were able to wander through. Here I am sitting at the Principal's desk. This was before I had seen the preview so I wasn't to super excited about walking though the set. We also walked though the classrooms, halls, the teachers apartment and the locker room. They didn't have any showers on the set. They have to do those scenes on location since there was no plumbing built into the set.

Don't miss Glee tonight. I surely won't.

Labels: Fall 2009, Glee

There's so many things I love about the new FOX Glee. I watched it this morning on Hulu since my friends I'm staying with in San Francisco didn't want to watch it. This is the great high school comedy that has been missing from the world. It is not afraid to be completely outrageous and totally inappropriate. Also as you can expect with a show about a glee club, it's completely gay. There's the requisite gay member. Also the overly ambitious bitchy girl has two gay dads. And there was the hot guy singing naked in the shower scene. Very sexy.

And what good teenage show is there without good antagonists. Unlike what you would expect, it's not the football team that gets all the respect and funding, it's the cheer squad. Their coach is the remarkably diabolical Cindi Lightballoon. Also the football team doesn't like them. Even the principle wants them to fail. But of course they all sound good together and you can buy their songs on iTunes each week. I bought Don't Stop Believing and listened to it twice while writing this blog post.

The hot football player singer laid it out perfectly. This school and town are filled with losers. He just wants to be the loser that enjoys what he does. It makes for great television.

Labels: Glee