FuzzyCo

Erica's family often communicates through pop culture references, impenetrable to the uninitiated. You know, Darmok*. And it seems like half the references are from Seinfeld (the rest are from Waiting for Guffman). Erica will be trundling along in a conversation and she'll just throw in a "pancake-ville!" and then when I stare blankly she'll say, "you know, from Seinfeld". Now, I've lived in the United States and turned on the television, so I've seen some episodes of Seinfeld. And some of the references I get even if I had never seen the episode. I mean, "man hands" is pretty straight-forward. But enough was enough and we decided to watch Seinfeld. All of it. Start to finish. So we joined Netflix to get the discs and got started in October of last year. And almost exactly one year later I sent back the last disc of season nine.

So after 172 episodes, what have I learned? Nothing, of course. Also, that I made up "pancake-ville".

* You know, Darmok.

Dead Set is quite a good zombie apocalypse movie tv series -- hewing close to the traditions of zombie movies*, albeit very well done, with the twist that our plucky band of survivors are located on the set of the reality TV show Big Brother. But mainly it's freaking scary -- watching one of the episodes on the train on the way to work in broad daylight I was getting pretty spooked.

* Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) came out against the speed of the zombies in Dead Set, but Charlie Brooker ably defended his choices by calling Pegg a racist.

FuzzyCo grade: A

OK, here's what I've realized about old TV shows -- they're slow. Which is great. If I try to watch a modern TV show, with fast cuts and/or good writing, I get sucked in and I can't get anything else done. I can watch Columbo and, say, Photoshop all night long, however.

The Wire is, as I'm sure you're tired of hearing if you aren't already a fan, one of the best shows that's ever been on TV. It's also one of the most realistic police shows that's ever been, and with this season focussing on four kids in middle school, it was very hard to watch -- I just knew that any good thing that happened to anyone was sure to be followed by something horrible happening to someone. That's not 100% true -- it's not that show is without hope, it's just very honest.

FuzzyCo grade: A+

Erica and I are both big Project Runway fans. A few years ago, we tried to feed our addiction with the British version of the show, Project Catwalk. We couldn't even make it through the first season -- the show focused way too much on personal conflicts between the designers back at the house, and the Brit version of Tim Gunn, Ben de Lisi, was far more an egotistical designer himself than a mentor to the neophyte designers. PC has gone on to have two more seasons, but we're too gunshy to check them out.

This year we discovered two other foreign versions of PR -- Project Runway Canada* and Designerspirene* from Norway. Designerspirene is not in English, but it's easy enough to follow along both because we know the structure of the program and because the focus is on the designs produced. Perhaps it's been a bit harder to become attached to any of the designers, because we don't really know any of their stories. (Beyond, say, the fact that Pål André seems to have a hard time getting started on any of his designs.)

But the real discovery was Project Runway Canada -- the designers were all talented, Brian Bailey looks like Philip Seymour Hoffman in a bad fake mustache, but he's a great mentor, and the focus was firmly on the clothes. It's Canada after all -- there was one bit of name-calling that was followed by, I'm totally serious, the name-caller apologizing with a sincere "that was out of line, thanks for calling out my bad behavior." And Erica said that the final collection of the winner was her favorite set of designs over all four seasons of PR.

Oh, and Iman hosts the show and she's crazy.

* Don't click these links if you don't want spoilers. Do people read footnotes? Is it too late?

We couldn't resist using part of our long weekend to get through the last half* of the third season of Arrested Development. I'm almost sad we finished, because now there's no more (unless the oft-rumored movie ever gets off the ground).

FuzzyCo grade: A+

* "Last half" being less impressive than usual since there were only 13 episodes in the third season.

Sometimes when you power-watch a television series you really start to notice internal cliches of the show or repeated jokes or so on. With Arrested Development it's exactly the opposite for me -- I'm really noticing how intricately crafted each episode is and catching subtle call-back jokes that I might have missed if it had been weeks since I'd last seen an episode.

FuzzyCo grade: A+

A couple weeks ago I decided that I should finish up the third series of Doctor Who because Torchwood season 2 has started and the whole "What Captain Jack did between the seasons" story is told in the last few episodes of Doctor Who. So I started charging through the episodes and I came to a realization -- Doctor Who is totally skating on my childhood nostalgia. As a child, I loved Doctor Who because of the sense of grand adventure. The writers of the current series seem much more focused on exploring the Doctor's "humanity" (as such) where "humanity" seems to mean to them a certain soppy sentimentality. And crying. There should not be so much crying in Doctor Who!

And then, of course, the last few episodes of the season, "42". "Blink", and the three stories of the final arc, were all pretty darn good. Darn you, Doctor Who. Now I'm going to have to actually watch the next season.

FuzzyCo: grade B

* Oh, how my inner fan rankles at that designation. Because, of course, it's Season 29. Gah.

Erica and I really only have time for about two regular TV shows -- usually that's The Office and whichever of ANTM/Project Runway is on at the moment. With the writer's strike taking our Michael and Jim and Pam away from us*, we've been catching up on some quality television of the last few years. Specifically, right now we're powering through Arrested Development and we just finished Season One.

Do I have to tell you all the ways the show is great? You've all already seen it, right? I mean, Christopher kept looking at us like idiots when we didn't respond to his cheery "Annyong!"

FuzzyCo grade: A

* Don't get me wrong -- we support the strike. But I can still be first-world-inconvenienced.

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.

Waiting for our take-out dinner tonight (oh, Hellas Gyro, we love your greasiness so) we got the treat of watching 10 minutes of Fox News' The Lineup. First up, the correspondent they had on to talk about how kerazy and librul Rosie O'Donnell is was wearing the same outfit as the host. Embarrassing...

Then, their riveting* "internet correspondent" came on with a story that I read debunked four days ago. Which, in internet-time, is a hundred years ago.

* More sarcasm. He was a walking sleeping pill.

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.

If you've been watching Ninja Warrior on G4, but aren't up to date, look away!

Of course, it's not that much a spoiler, since it actually took place in October 2006 and I already saw the results on the Wikipedia page and all. Anyway, above is Makoto Nagano's complete winning run from the 17th edition of Sasuke. I'm not sure it's quite as impressive if you haven't seen the hundreds of people failing at each stage (when Bunpei Shiratori wiped out in the 16th edition, Erica and I both let out shrieks of dismay) but it's definitely better without G4's terrible editing.

(via Dan Telfer)

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.

I agree with everything Dan wrote about how G4 is squandering Ninja Warrior. It's a testament to how awesome the show is that we love it despite G4's editing.

(And, hey, Dan -- can I help you set up some real blogging software so I can, say, link to individual entries and leave comments and all that fun stuff?)

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.

The only must-watch TV show in our house right now is Project Runway. (Well, and The Show and The Office Webisodes. Regularly-released-internet-video counts as TV, right?) In fact, while we were in Santa Fe, the only nod we made at all to the rest of the world's schedule was to hunt down a near-empty sports bar on Wednesday night at 8:00 MDT and convince them to change one of their big screen TVs to Bravo (stupid hotel limited-cable).

But even weekly episodes, Tim Gunn's blog, Tim Gunn's podcast, and Katy Gerdes' blog where she's still doing all of the challenges even though she was kicked off only satisfy the urge so much. So when I found Project Catwalk, the UK version of Project Runway, which has already done a full season, I figured that might be a nice time-filler between Wednesday night episodes.

And a time-filler is, I think, all it's going to be for us. One of the reasons I like Project Runway is that the designer/contestants have to be actually talented and actually able to make things. Project Catwalk spends an awful lot of time on personality issues. "Show us the dresses," I was shouting at the TV, which is not something I normally find myself saying. And Ben de Lisi is no Tim Gunn, that's for sure. "And I'm absolutely not here to do your work for you," he says to the whole group, and then next thing you know he's practically designing someone's dress for them.

There's also a significant difference in the presentation of the programs. Catwalk is narrated by the host, Elizabeth Hurley. Runway uses a lot more designer interviews to convey the same sort of information. The Runway technique is probably a lot more artificial (as the designers have to be pulled out of their working process in order to do those interviews, and are probably coached and prodded by the producers to get them to say what the producers need to shape the presentation of the show) but it feels more natural, to me anyway.

We're inconfident enough of our predictions for the new season of Project Runway that I won't share, but I can tell you who we're rooting for: Katherine Gerdes. Because she's family*.

* She's probably not family. Gerdes is a not-uncommon German last name and there are Gerdeses scattered around the US. In fact, it's the 6037th most common last name in the US.