Glee - Season 1b

The extra nine episodes that were added to Glee's first season really feel that they should have given room to breathe as its own complete season. In fact, I spend a bit of time musing about how different the storyline would have developed if it was the proper 2nd season. These episodes "add on" status forces the various plots to rush themselves and squander their potential. The back nine episodes have certainly given us some great episodes of television - "Dream On" and "Theatricality" are probably the series' strongest hours, with "The Power of Madonna" coming out as the most fun. But overall, the conclusion to the show's first season is a bit uneven. The mid-season premiere Hell-O left a lot to be desired as it quickly undoes all that characters had accomplished in the prior run, while a great arc about Rachael finding her mother is rushed to hell and back. I mean, they have a small build up to it, the reveal tied nicely to the main arc, and then their relationship is quickly explored and wrapped up in one episode...as a B-story (well, as a b story to a really good main plot, but still more time could've been given to the story).

Perhaps, even worse is the revelation that the writers have no clue how to handle relationships. Will and Emma are somewhat tolerable. But the season's main triangle between Rachael, Finn and new boy Jesse St James. For one thing, The thrust of Jesse's relationship with Rachael is that he's exactly like her...without all the quirks that make Rachael enduring to watch. Also their relationship wasn't believable as Jesse's intentions weren't clear. The writers just kept flip-flopping about whether Jesse was actually in love with her or was just using her, so when the big betrayal comes along and Jesse starts going on about how he's the victim in the all of this, it extremely difficult to buy into because their relationship was poorly developed. It really really was the worse relationships I've seen played out on television in some time.

Anyway its not all bad. As I said, The back nine episodes have some of the season's best episodes. Sometimes, the show amazes me by bouncing great humor off of strong dramatic moments. The songs here are even more infectious the the last batch, the dancing is fun and the drama is both what you would expect from a high school show, while also making fun of the genre. The writers can do a great job when they put their minds to it and I guess they'll have had more time to plan the entirety of season two as it's produced. They get some good guests like Kristin Chenoweth and Neil Patrick Harris, and it's mostly enjoyable week in and week out. It definitely walks a fine line every time out, but I don't think they've really stumbled yet. I'm definitely interested in seeing more.

Family Guy - Season 8

With its eighth season, not only has Family Guy aired double the amount of episodes it aired before it was initially canceled, but it also reached it's 150th episode. I noticed that quite a few animated shows that I watch reached some kind of milestone episode this year: South Park reached 200, Simpsons reached 450, Aqua Teen made it to 100, and now this show has 150 under its belt. At this point the show has gone full on insane, trying everything in its power to show that there's still life in this show and that they haven't run out of ideas. This tactic actually works as this may be the strongest season since the 4th, when the show originally returned to television. They finally reduced their reliance on cutaway jokes and started to focus more on telling weird stories.

The season started off really strong with their traditional "Road To" episode that had involved traveling through a bunch of parallel universes. Its may well be the best episode of the show in years. The episodes only get more bizarre from there and I really liked that started to get the other characters more involved in the plotlines as opposed to using them solely for a quick joke. The 150th episode is one of the more notable episodes as its a completely character driven show that has Brian and Stewie trapped in a bank vault, and mostly focused on their unique relationship. It was surprisingly dramatic and while not entirely entertaining, I'd say it was one of the better efforts the show has ever put out. I don't know how much longer the show is gonna gone on, though Seth MacFarlane had stated that he has expressed ending the show after at least 2 more seasons, but we'll see if the promise of more money doesn't change that.

The Cleveland Show - Season 1

This show confuses me. For one thing, does Seth MacFarlane really need an hour and a half of television every Sunday night? I mean, I could see this show appearing if Family Guy or American Dad were finished, but to have three series in production at the same time seems to be overkill. Second, I can understand why Cleveland was chosen to have a spin-off, he's was (depending on who you ask) the most developed of Peter Griffin's entourage and would have the most to gain from having his own show...but why has his personality become so negative? They basically completely changed his personality to make him having his own show work and that may be one of the bigger faults for the show. He was the sanest member of Peter's group and was a likable supporting character, but here they keep trying to play up the idea that he's a horrible person and it just doesn't feel right. This personality swap became more apparent when in an latter Family Guy episode, Peter and the gang pop up at Cleveland's house and Cleveland acts more like his old likable self.

The best thing I can say about The Cleveland Show is that its at least better than what the promos made it out to be. The show is decent but while Family Guy and American Dad specialize in bizarre story lines, Cleveland is just a straight up sitcom with harsh jokes thrown around every couple of seconds. The only real standout moment from the season was a rap battle between Cleveland Jr. and a rapper played by Kanye West. Sure, there were funny jokes here and there, but nothing I can remember off the top of my head. There's room for improvement and I assume that the show did as well as the other Seth MacFarlane-produced shows. I guess I'll see what they can do with their second season.

The Simpsons - Season 21

Yep, The Simpsons are still doing their usual thing every Sunday night. And as usual I'm there to watch it when there isn't anything better on. The 21st season is ,of course, just more of the same. While it's a no brainier that the season is no where near as good as the show's early runs, I'd have to say overall this was one of the shows slightly stronger years. Some of better episodes this year saw Bart getting his teacher fired and getting a younger, more modern teacher as a replacement, Marge entering the Ultimate Punch Kick and Choke Championships in an attempt to get it to end, and Homer wins a million dollars through the lottery but can't tell Marge because he ditched her at a wedding reception to get the ticket. The strongest episodes appeared at the end of the season, among which, was an admittedly touching episode where Lisa tries to save a beached whale and a Sideshow Bob episode that was a huge improvement over the last episode to feature my favorite villain (which was over 2 years ago, I need more Sideshow Bob, please...). Sadly, the season ends on a pretty weak American Idol parody that continues the shows tradition of wasting their celebrity guests. Oh well, the show's neither purely hilarious nor incredibly terrible at this point. It's just middle of the road, but it has just enough going for it that its never too much trouble to check out what the Simpsons are up to.

Best Shows Of 2009

Its that time of the year where people talk about what their favorite shows, movies, etc were this past year. I decided to do the same. I don't watch a lot of the most popular television series because they don't interest me, so most of my picks are based more on my own personal interests than what everyone else is watching. Shows qualify by having a season that ended during the year of 2009 and at least one of my picks are of a show I haven't talked about yet. But first...

Notable Exception

Futurama (Comedy Central/Direct to DVD)

The direct to dvd features of Futurama are officially considered the fifth season of the show. Each movie is divided up into four parts and aired on Comedy Central which ran from roughly mid 2008 to late this year (the dvds were released late 2007 to early this year). As a whole the movies never reached the peak of excellent that the series did, but they're still at least 3 times better than most of what's on TV now-a-days. Their exclusion from this list is largely do to the fact that despite airing on television, these films count more as dvd releases then television premieres (if that makes sense).

Best Television Shows of 2009

5. The Real World: Brooklyn (MTV)

Yeah...you know I haven't watched a lot of television shows when The Real World manages to make it on a best of list. The Brooklyn season managed to do everything that the series has failed to do in the past decade: Interesting cast members with interesting stories to tell and people who could make valid arguments without being intoxicated. There were still a lot of those trivial fights over dumb crap but it was actually really entertaining. The show proved that reality shows can still have conflict but have enough brains to respect each other and remain great television...it's a shame that the Cancun season couldn't follow suit.

4. Glee (FOX)

The season's not over due to Fox extending the season, but it's clear that what has already aired was supposed to be a contained season. I'm not as big of a fan of the show as the self proclaimed "Gleeks", but it's still a very good comedy/drama with a great cast, music, and production values. I can't tell where the story is going to go when the season concludes in April, but as far as being a well put together program, it succeeds.

3. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX)

As I stated before, Sunny's fifth season didn't reach the peak of genius that's come before, but the show is still pretty funny every week. I guess they're just running out of sensitive topics to make fun of, but I'm glad that the writers have at least been trying to come up with new ideas for the cast the work with. Despite all that, this show still made me laugh out loud.

2. The Whitest Kids U'Know (IFC)

Much like Sunny, the Whitest Kids 09 season wasn't as fresh as the previous years, but it was still a lot of fun to watch. The new shorter running time of the episodes allowed the show to run the same amount of content in a longer time period. Something I love about the show that other skecth comedy shows don't do very well is the ending of the skits. The cast often find a good punchline to end things on, and when they don't they're not afraid to just let a bit end or completely turn it on its head to finish it. A fourth season is coming and I can't wait.

1. Dexter (Showtime)

I haven't talked about Dexter on this site yet and I haven't talked about it's newest season because I wanted to talk about the first three beforehand. Just know that the fourth season of Dexter is extremely strong and the storyline reaches an extremely tense conclusion. The cast really up their game, Julie Carpenter in particular, and there are moments in the season that rank among the most emotionally affecting things I've seen on television in a long time. The season seems to indicate the series is finally setting things up for the show's grand finale and I eagerly await more greatness.

Glee - Season 1a (Review)

FOX extended this season by nine episodes that will air in the spring, but it's clear from the mid-season finale that these past 13 episodes were envisioned and written as a full season on it's own so I'll talk about this first part of the season as such. I really hadn't planned on watching this show at first, but the previews and the catchy songs they played during them got me interested enough to check it out. The show details Spanish teacher Will Schuester's attempt at forming a Glee club at his high school and that club's attempt to win at the sectionals competition, while cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester tries to disband or just outright destroy the club. Meanwhile all the students and even some of the teachers have to deal with their own problems; mainly multiple love triangles and multiple pregnancies. Oh...and all of this is a musical in the sense that we watch the glee club's performances and some of the characters have fantasy musical numbers (all pop-culture songs by-the-way).

Anyway, after the fairly ingenious pilot episode, the show kinda spends a few episodes trying to set an identity for itself. The show initially presented itself as a musical comedy, but at first it steered a bit too far into a musical drama with some fairly crazy storylines. The songs chosen to be preformed were odd (though preformed well) as most seemed to be done more for weak laughs than narrative progression. Luckily, the show finds its feet and plays to its strengths. The storylines becomes tighter and even the odd story arcs become interesting if just to see where they're going with them. The songs become stronger and fit into the various storylines much better and the characters have also developed a complexity rarely seen in high school series.

The characters are more likable than I initially expected. The pretty attractive Matthew Morrison makes the lead character Will Schuester loveable and relateable, while villainous Sue Sylvester is played to near perfection by the always hilarious Jane Lynch. Just as attractive and talented is Cory Monteith and Lea Michele as the student leads Finn and Rachel and Michele in particular shows considerable singing talents (taken from her years on Broadway). The rest of the cast all have their moments to shine (gay guy Kurt and wheelchair bound Artie are probably my favorites) and can all carry a tune pretty well. The show features some pretty good songs and performances from show-tunes to more recent popular music. The only real problem with the performances is the over abundance of auto-tune and at times flat-out piss poor lip syncing. That aside, Glee is pretty good and I'm curious to see where the remaining 9 episodes that will air in April will take the series.

King of the Hill - Season 13 (Review)

And so one of the longest running animated sitcoms comes to an end, even though there’s still four episodes left unaired...I guess it doesn’t matter as long as the series finale was aired. King of the Hill had been facing impending cancellation since season 10 and with knowledge that the show wouldn’t have much time left, the creators spent the last few seasons wrapping things up and showing major changes in the lives of the Hills and their Arlen friends. Luanne got pregnant and married in season 11, while Hank’s father, Cotton, passed away in season 12. This final season was a nice send off for the show and Hank and Bobby’s characters in particular.

The series has always been relatively consistent in its quality over the years, although the last few seasons were somewhat weaker than what came before. This last batch of episodes are surprisingly and thankfully stronger and feature some pretty funny and engaging outings for the Hills, most notable being Luanne finally giving birth to her daugther and Hank performing the degrading tasks featured in his father’s will. Something else that was real treat was all the callbacks to previous episodes, The Order of the Straight and Arrow reappear, Luanne resurrected her Manger Babies act(my favorite episode), and we finally meet Buck Strickland’s son. The final episode is wonderfully heartwarming as it sees Hank finally discovering that he and Bobby have something in common: A love for good beef. The finale didn’t try too hard to tug on the heartstrings, it just kept the characters honest and true in their own unique ways and even though we won't be seeing these characters anymore, they'll continue to grow and live their lives like normal people. I generally liked what they did with everyone, and it seemed like a natural way to wrap up the show. King of the Hill has been a great series, and while it's declined in the last few years, I'm going to miss it now that it's gone.

The Simpsons Movie (Review)

The Simpsons finally hit the big screen in 2007 and although it really wasn't worth the nearly 20 year wait, it was still one of the funnier films I saw that year. The show is nowhere near as good as it use to be and that's okay, it's hard to keep that amazing high quality going past a decade. With the movie, Matt Groening and company showed that spark the series had in it's early years...in sizeable chunks. There are some pretty good bits like Bart's nude skateboarding sequence, the family's conversation about Grandpa's vision, and Homer's relationship with Spider-Pig/Harry Plopper. There were even some pretty good inside jokes about the television series.

I did feel that the movie was kinda crushed under the weight of the series though. Although they did a good job of creating an interesting and larger scale storyline, it still feels a bit less "epic" than some of the stories from the series and the plot treads the same old "Homer screws up and has to fix it" story that show has run into the ground at this point. And while I'm on the subject of Homer, one has to wonder how many times he can just about completely destroy his friendships and his marriage before he finds a way to save them at the last second.

Oh well, the movie is pretty good, easily ranking in with episodes from the 8th or 9th season. The movie is unusually short, which I found odd considering how long they were working on this. It's a shame that the episodes made after the movie went right back to the usual mediocre rut it was in before, but whatcha gonna do?