In Bluth We Trust

In these harsh and depressing economic and political times, Americans look for some place to rest their dreams of a brighter future, and apparently we've chosen....Arrested Development. For the past few years the cast and crew seem to have been under some sort of "play with the public's emotions" pact in which anytime they were asked in an interview, they would say just enough to help you believe the show would get revived as a feature film. Yesterday, at an Arrested Development reunion at the New Yorker Festival, the cast and creators took a bold new step in making promises they may or may not be able to keep. If the many many headlines, Facebook statuses, and tweets are to be believed, not just a movie, but a new run of TV episodes are as good as done. Call me a pessimist, or just call me someone who's actually taken the time to read what was actually said at this Festival appearance, but I don't believe the supposed AD second coming is a sound place to invest my hopes for the future entertainment of myself, my children, and generations to come.

Before you start accusing me of not being a true believer, of not being a true AD fan, let me state that I am still one of the only people I've ever met that watched the show when it aired - from episode one, to the end. I did not just jump on the hipster 'watch it on DVD/IFC years later' bandwagon. I was there from the start, watching it in whatever out-of-order/ different time slot every week capacity Fox forced us into. I was already watching everything else Fox was offering on Sunday nights (Oliver Beene anyone?), so it was natural for me to check out the new kid on the block. I liked it and I stuck with it until the end, and have spent the years since nodding knowingly as the rest of the world caught up with the Bluths. So don't tell me I don't really love AD - while the rest of you were watching NFL on Fox then turning off the TV to fall into a drunken nacho & buffalo wing induced stupor, I was waiting patiently for the game to end so I could stay up until 11:30 getting my fix of Fox's too often pre-empted Sunday night line-up. So yes, I'm a long-time fan, and I'm even hesitantly excited about the prospect of a movie and more TV episodes, but at the same time I'm old enough to know that some things are best appreciated for what they were, and not everything we love needs to be revived or go on indefinitely, as often longevity or revival can cast a shadow on something we once loved (The Simpsons anyone?).

So what are the real "facts" pertaining to the Arrested Development revival?
Fact #1 - The cast and creators are creatively on board. This is a long time coming and admittedly should not be downplayed. If you want to get something like this off the ground, obviously you need buy in from all those who should be involved. Any future AD projects would be sorely lacking without any one of the main cast. Except maybe....
Fact #2 - It could be really hard to see Michael Cera as George Michael now, and not just that Michael Cera character he's played in 50 movies since AD. I only recently started rewatching AD (Netflix Streaming) and have been asking myself the question - did AD create Michael Cera's trademark persona, or was it already a reflection of who young Michael Cera was? It doesn't really matter I suppose, but I don't think I can believe in George Michael anymore - there's just Michael Cera being Michael Cera.
Fact #3 - The cast being on board can be both a help and a hindrance to making this happen. Will Arnett is on another show that could very possibly get picked up for a full season and beyond. Jason Bateman and Michael Cera have launched significant film careers since the show ended and certainly require much larger paychecks than they once did. Their star power can make the project attractive to the studios, but it can also make it financially difficult.
Fact #3 - Creator Mitch Hurwitz has clearly said, even yesterday at the New Yorker Festival, that there are still a lot of stumbling blocks to overcome to get this made. No studio has announced backing of this project or plans to distribute it. Show me where the money is coming from, give me a website or a teaser trailer, and I'll become considerably less skeptical. In the meantime, I'll believe it's going to happen because the the cast and creators want it to like I believe my 7 year old daughter when she says she's going to save up enough money to buy herself a 3DS.

So while the rest of America seems ready to will this project into existence by ignoring the disclaimers and pretending that it's all green lights from here, I remain here sipping coffee from my Bluth Company mug, cautiously optimistic, but ultimately content to leave it as it is - a pretty perfect show that given the circumstances we're pretty lucky we even got three seasons of.

A list

I thought a list might be a nice way to ease myself back into a bit of blogging after a long dry spell. It's that or I just start posting all the 1/2 written drafts I have saved...

Things I'm Currently Midly (or more) Addicted To:

1. Coffee

2. Starbucks Toffee Almond Bars (it's always nice when two or more addictions can feed each other)

3. The Decemberists "Hazards of Love" I have a tendency to put one CD in my car and listen to it over and over and over...this is currently it. An album I expected to hate, but was so so wrong.

4. Picross DS - a little like Sudoku, but you get rewarded with a picture

5. Darrell Lea Soft Strawberry Licorice (found at World Market)- I thought I'd be sick of this by now. Nope. My favorite candy of the moment by far. The raspberry is no slouch either...

6. Brothers K Vanilla Lattes. Metropolis and Intelligentsia get all the attention, and are both fine coffee purveyors in their own right (and Brothers K uses Metropolis beans), but no one makes a better vanilla latte than Brothers K. Not to mention having nicest baristas ever and being walking distance from my apartment.

7. Dollhouse - It started shaky but has turned around into an incredibly compelling and nuanced show with an emotional center....much like other great Joss Whedon shows. It's so good Fox will surely cancel it.

8. Catan on Xbox Live - A console version of the hipster board game. E & A can take all the blame for getting me hooked on this.

9. Twitter - I'm still a Facebook junkie and unashamed of it, but Twitter is compelling for completely different reasons. It took me awhile to "get it", but I think the moment it clicked for me was when Amanda Palmer was requesting people tweet her questions because she was bored on the tour bus.

10. 30 Rock - I was slow getting to this one, and I have to admit its been incredibly uneven, but I still find myself referencing it way more than could possibly be cool.

Proof That My Tivo Knows Nothing About Me

I come home sick from work today and what do I find my Tivo doing? Taping a 1989 College Bowl game off ESPN Classic.

I've had this Tivo for 4 or 5 years now and it is supposedly constantly gathering data about my viewing habits and using that to choose what it records as "suggestions" for me. I think this proves a critical flaw in their software.

Things I Learned From TV - "Moonlighting"

So kudos to this new channel on Comcast (I think it's basic cable), "Ion", that seems to show only episodes of the "Wonder Years" and "Alice".

I've been strangely obsessed with "Alice" lately in spite of still not having watched a whole episode of the show in, oh, 20 or more years. I think it began some weeks ago when I caught a bit of the movie "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" and discovering for the first time that the show was a spin-off of this film. (I also just learned that Cheryl Ladd played Flo in the film version, then played Flo's short lived replacement "Belle" on the tv show, before she was replaced by Jolene, who seems to show up - the actress, not the character - every few months lately in movies or a TV guest spot)
I caught a few minutes of an episode last night that reminded me that I can say with certainty that this show introduced me to the concept of "moonlighting" (working a second job, presumably in the evenings). Mel was staunchly against his waitresses moonlighting, and Alice was always trying to do it. So I grew up thinking this was a huge deal and that if I ever got a job I better not do it or my boss would be very angry. Little did I know much of the country works 2 jobs to get by...and I actually moonlighted during my first real 9-5 job, working some evenings and weekends in the sky boxes at Wrigley Field.

As a side note - some new (to me) observations on the "Wonder Years":
The show was good because it was first a show about growing up, and second a show about a specific time period.
The later shows (I'm pretty sure the episodes I've been seeing are all from the last season) weren't very good. They were pushing too hard for sappy and forgot the funny.
They never really gave Danica McKellar (Winnie Cooper) much to do beyond react to Kevin. She never really had much dialogue beyond these little monologues meant to awaken Kevin to the ways of women.
Anyway....later seasons aside, here's hoping they someday manage all the music licensing issues and get some season sets out on DVD.

A Picture Can't Replace 1000 Words : Review - This American Life the TV Show

(Warning to LM - pee is mentioned repeatedly in the following blog. I'm not joking).

I see today the Tribune Magazine's cover story is on Ira Glass and the TAL TV show. I've been meaning to get my thoughts out on this and figure I should do it before I read the article.

I called Comcast to pay a bill a few weeks ago and they made me an offer on Showtime that I couldn't refuse as I was anxious to see the forthcoming television version of my favorite radio program, This American Life. Though the show doesn't officially premiere until later this month, I was pleasantly surprised to find the first episode available on demand. Even though it was very late and I needed to get to bed, I couldn't resist watching it right away.

Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly/Serenity) has made the accusation in a number of DVD commentaries that TV is too often just radio with pictures - talking heads spitting out a script. So what is the expectation when radio becomes TV? I wonder what people expected and how they reacted when their favorite radio programs made the move to TV in the 50s?

There's not much about the TV version of TAL that won't be familiar to fans of the radio version. The show opens with a humorous mini-story to introduce the weeks' topic. The story, a woman's reminiscence of a school field trip in which she urinated on the bus ride, is re-enacted. Stories that involve puddles of urine are, in my opinion, best left to the imagination - but there, in the first 5 minutes of the first ever television episode of TAL, is a puddle of pee (or some appropriate facsimile). Not a good start in my opinion.

Skip to Ira Glass sitting at a desk in in the middle of a rural road. He introduces the show and the topic, much like he always does on the radio, but this time we get to see him. And he's sitting in the middle of the road. This may be the most interesting visual of the whole show.

Now to today's show in 2 acts (it was late and I sadly don't remember the topic). First act - a beloved bull that was cloned, only to be not much like the first bull. Wait, I've heard this one before. Yes, this story was previously aired on the radio program. Well, there must be something interesting to see then right? Well, we all know what a bull looks like right? We can all drum up a mental image of a salt-of-the-earth rancher and his wife. The only visual that really could not be replaced here is of the dead bull's hide being pulled out of the closet. The rancher even got mauled by the cloned bull while the crew was with him, but if they got video of it, they've spared us the sight (why couldn't they also spare us the sight of a puddle of urine on a bus floor?).

Act 2 - a group of performance artists in NYC pull one off on a struggling small time rock band by learning all of their songs and filling the room at one of their gigs and singing along and acting like they were really into it. Wait, I've heard this one before too. Oh, so that's what the band looks like. Is this footage someone took from the actual gig, or a re-enactment?

It all feels a bit like cheap History Channel re-enactments (why is this even on Showtime?) and I'm afraid the TAL folks have really blown it here. It's the existing TAL fans that are most likely to watch the show initially and create any kind of buzz about it. It's an insult to the fans to just repackage previously aired stories. I'm not sure who the producers of this TV version are, but it seems like they've put video cameras in the hands of radio people rather than putting a great concept into the hands of experienced filmmakers. I hate to say it, but at least as far as the episode goes, TAL on TV really is just radio with pictures.