Fuzzy's Media Consumption

It was a fun little experiment, but I've folded the content from Fuzzy's Media Consumption back into the main FuzzyCo blog and new updates will appear there, mixed in with regular posts.

I can't get enough of this show. I watched the penultimate episode of the season and should have gone to bed, but I just had to finish out the season and watch the last episode. This season veered a little back towards conventional television -- stuff like Colvin's tour of the Western for Carcetti just happening to be on the same day as a police/community meeting was a little bit of a stretch. And it probably had the most obviously happy ending of any of the seasons so far. But there's was so much going on, I forgave them that. And, oh, the drama! And the betrayals! And the redemptions! I can't wait to start watching the next season.

The Wire - Season 3.

Here are two Food Network shows that we've been sampling (damn you, Food Network -- it's so easy to get sucked in by your shows) and one has made it onto our Tivo SeasonPass(tm) list and the other has not.

In each episode of Dinner: Impossible Chef Robert Irvine is assigned a near-impossible culinary task. Like, make 7000 hors d'oeuvres for 4000 guests in 18 hours. I think a commonality in many of the shows I really like is skilled people doing a task well, and Chef Robert really delivers on that ground. Tivo thumbs up.

Throwdown with Bobby Flay might seem to fall into the same category: each week a cooking expert is told that they're having a Food Network profile filmed, but really Bobby Flay is going to challenge them in their area of specialty. Flay is rarely an expert in the same field (wedding cakes, for example, were very much out of his expertise) and there's some interesting stuff as he researches the style in his test kitchen. And neither Flay nor the show is at all mean-spirited. But nonetheless, these folks are set up to believe that they're simply being honored, when suddenly a famous chef shows up to challenge them. One episode we saw culminated at a woman's birthday party where she thought she was going to be cooking for her friends (and the cameras) and then she was faced with Bobby Flay and a guest judge of her cooking. We don't like innocent people getting suckered around here. Tivo thumbs down.

We've found ourselves unexpectedly charmed by the Food Network show Ace of Cakes. The show focuses on a custom cake bakery in Baltimore and each week follows Duff Goldman and his staff as they create 2 or 3 'extreme' custom cakes. The combination of the good humor of the staff and meeting design challenges is a winner for us.

Talking about this show is as good an opportunity as any to address something that's been brewing in my head for a while. I think we've reached the point where the term 'Reality TV' really doesn't convey much about a show -- within the supposed one genre we have everything from competitive shows like American Idol or America's Next Top Model, which really owe their lineage to game shows, to shows that approach documentary work, like Ace of Cakes or Miami Ink. I'm not sure what good replacement terms are, but I think we need them to speak intelligently about the different categories of TV shows.

There were just a very few moments in the second season of The Wire when I thought an acting choice or a camera shot was un-subtle, which is quite a testament to all of the other perfect moments that made up the show.

I didn't really expound on the show when I finished the first season, because I kinda figured everyone in the world but me had seen this show. Since recent conversations seem to proven that untrue, I'll summarize for you. The Wire is set in Baltimore and each season follows a single criminal case from investigation through whatever arrests and charges are made. It's not a mystery, because we get to see things from the criminals' perspective just as often as the cops. Both sides of the law are filled with politics, drama, personal issues, and lucky/unlucky breaks.

The first season delved into the world of a mid-level drug dealer and his crew. This season expands the scope to include the smugglers who are supplying the drug dealers, as well as smuggling human traffic and stolen goods.

Erica and I finished up the third season, and hence all of, Black Books tonight. It's not quite the marathon it might sound like as it's the standard Britcom 6-episode season. We're really sad that these 18 episodes are all we'll ever see of misanthropic Bernard Black, flighty Manny, and self-absorbed Fran and their improbable adventures in Bernard's book shop. However, we rest assured that we'll see these actors again since it seems there are really only 6 or 7 actors working in Britcoms (at least, judging by the number of times Simon Pegg, say, pops up in other productions).

The Office is one of the few programs that we absolutely have to watch every week, and usually within a few hours of when it was actually on TV (thanks, TiVo). This third season was awesome. Done and done.

"Erica made me watch" is my only defense, but I watched tonight's finale episode on my own while she was in Mississippi. Oh, it's trash, but it's such delightful trash that plays so well at aping the fashion industry.

It only took pretty much everyone whose opinion I respect recommending The Wire as "the best show on television, ever", or some variation thereof, before I decided to watch it. And, yes, it turns out, for dramas, it is.

Kate and Dan, why didn't you tell us about Ninja Warrior? It's your job to scout us crazy Japanese stuff like this! But thanks to the Telfer-Kallays' description and a single epsiode from Tivo, we're hooked on this slice of insanity.

On Ninja Warrior, one hundred contestants try to make it through an incredibly difficult obstacle course. But they're not all athletes -- they're comedians and dancers and gas station owners, too. And they all wear the outfit for what they normally do.

The show is on it's 18th season in Japan, and I think we're seeing the 17th season on G4. I think I could watch all 18 seasons.

My brother and Kyle convinced me to give the new version of my childhood favorite Doctor Who and I tore through the episodes of seasons one and two on the train on my PSP. (Erica can't stand any version of Doctor Who, so it was easiest to watch it out of the house.) And that led me to the spin-off series Torchwood, which is kinda like The X-files only with more having-sex-with-aliens-and-time-travelers. There are a number of foibles to each series, especially when you binge on the episodes, but I have to say that I enjoyed them both immensely.