The Unusuals: ABC Strikes Again

Dear ABC,

What’s the problem? Why can’t you lighten up and give a show a chance these days?

Wait, let me ask another question: If you’re willing to green-light so many shows with odd, fun plots and characters, why are you so willing to give up on them when they don’t build a quick following? Please don’t tell me that allowing Eli Stone and Pushing Daisies to move forward with their second seasons is you not giving up on a show; we appreciate you allowing them a little extra life after the Attack of the Writers’ Strike, but banishing the shows halfway through their returns, and maybe showing the final episodes at some point this summer doesn’t exactly redeem your decision.

This year, as we say good bye to Eli and Daisies, we also have already said good-bye to Life on Mars. Now, we’re forced to bid adieu to The Unusuals.

I won’t lie: I never watched Life on Mars. But you hooked me from the first promo for The Unusuals: Another cop show, yes (even though you had just canceled Mars … another cop show…), but with a slew of interesting, fun characters with fun cop names: Walsh, the hot detective and former baseball player with secrets and a heart of gold; Shraeger, Amber Tamblyn, the newbie and strong female character with her own secrets; Delahoy, secretly dying of a brain tumor as of episode one, with the best cop name ever; Leo Banks, played by Harold Perrineau and yet somehow, though he’s still whining as a character trait, he’s not nearly as annoying as he was on Lost, and has been, in fact, quite enjoyable; Detective Eddie Alvarez talks about himself in the third person; and Beaumont, a Latina detective who is tough, yet feminine. It’s always nice to see Latinas on television without it being a token Hispanic role, i.e. a maid or a criminal. A personal pet peeve of mine, so though I would have said Kudos to you, ABC, you cancelled the show anyway, so what’s the point?

Noah Hawley, the creator of the show, provided great ensemble characters, and the actors chosen to fill each role has been a perfect fit. The familiar faces (Tamblyn, Perrineau, Adam Goldberg) have made welcome returns to television, and the newer faces (Jeremy Renner, Joshua Close, etc.) provide further depth. Each person has been up to the task of their character and the chemistry between partners and among the squad is undeniable.

I wondered how the show would sustain a series of “unusual” cases every week, but so far in season one, not a single episode disappointed, with both outrageous criminals and realistic cases. There is nothing complicated in the crimes or the solving of them, which could be a negative – so far, however, this has given us an opportunity to explore the detectives and their interactions with one another.

The best stories are those that come naturally out of the characters themselves, and Hawley created characters with endless stories to explore:  Just to start, we have Banks’s fear of dying in the next twelve months, paired with his partner’s impending and unknown death. Does Banks die, or is it Delahoy’s death that Banks should be fearing all this time? How refreshing that the two “leads,” Walsh and Shraeger as new partners, aren’t romantically inclined towards each other. If that is the intention down the road, I’m already excited to see how the writers would handle that, since they have intelligently handled their previous storylines and sent both characters in different directions. And if that is not the intention, what a great opportunity to watch the two interact as friends as opposed to the stereotypical romance story.

However, my favorite part of the show has been the smart dialogue, the smart delivery, and the balance between the comedy (of which there is plenty) versus stories with a true emotional core: Delahoy’s tumor-induced visions of an old girlfriend and his forced acceptance of a possibly painful death are wonderful scenes. I’ve always remembered Goldberg as Chandler’s crazy roommate from Friends, but as Delahoy, that image has been forever erased, replaced with the memory of an actor who can deliver a much more layered performance. Even with that mustache.

And yet, it all means nothing, ABC, because you have abandoned yet another good show. I’ve yet to learn the reason. And why are you saying good-bye to a show in this time slot when Jay Leno is locking up NBC at 10pm, Monday through Friday? There are a number of David Letterman fans out there who never enjoyed Leno, and we’ll be looking for an alternative, every Monday through Friday. Why not give The Unusuals a second chance against a show you know some people are never going to watch? If I thought sending in boxes upon boxes of donuts to your offices, in honor of my Unusual cops, would help, I would, except we’re in a recession and I’m sure you’d enjoy the donuts more than you should.

So I choose to remind you, that if you’re not careful, audiences will stop watching all of your new shows, because you will simply cancel them at the end of the season anyway. Guess what? We like to invest in a show, even the ones which are a little goofy, a little off the wall, and maybe don’t have an immediate payoff. They can’t all be Lost or Grey’s Anatomy. There’s a whole slew of people who don’t want or need a never-ending mystery or soap operas or Katherine Heigl, no matter what she thinks of herself. A lot of the time, we just like to be entertained. And in that, ABC, you are failing miserably.

Until the next round of cancellations,

Yours truly.

For more television reviews, click here.

Wednesdays at 10/9c on ABC

Photographs courtesy of ABC and IMDbPro

The Amazing Race: Slumdoggin’

This week it was time to just say no to Novosibirsk and say jai ho to Jaipur, India. The seven remaining teams, including last place non-eliminees Christie and Jodi hit a Siberian airport bound for much warmer climes and god bless him, only lovable old Mel had the chutzpa to note the inherent humor of the Khaka travel agency. Mel & Mike’s minds are such a mixed up font of high class wit and 3^rd grade potty guffaws you just never know how they’ll entertain you next. I should have expected no less from the writer of School of Rock.

After passing through the outskirts of a Jaipur slum and witnessing all manner of men and beasts reduced to eating garbage, there was barely a dry eye left in the race. At the road block, things appeared lame at first, but got great in a hurry. One might assume that the job of toting buckets to a trough and carrying hay in a basket is as cut and dry a task as they come. But that’s assuming the luddites on the job decide to actually use the basket. Watching Kisha, Jamie, and Margie cram fodder down their shirts till they looked like human scarecrows made for some first rate television. Even better, their dunce move was Mel’s massive gain when he, using the proper freakin’ tools as clearly indicated in the clue and prominently displayed next to the feed pile, shot from last to first after a painful to watch performance on the bucket brigade.

Snug between the road block and the detour lay Christie & Jodie’s speed bump challenge. I’ve seen and created a decent amount of fill in the blanks art in my day, but never a paint by number elephant. Fun times.

In the choice of a task reliant on balance and observation versus showmanship and the kindness of strangers, everyone but Mark & Michael got their Broadway on with a traditional spangly camel suit dance and remained in servitude until successfully begging for 100 rupees. The highlight of the challenge came when the producers took the clever and thoughtful step of silencing the musical chaos of the city for a few seconds to give viewers a peek at things from Luke’s perspective. Classy move. Meanwhile, M&M chose to pedal a terrifying 20 foot tower of plastic drums strapped onto a bike rickshaw before riding a mile, unloading, and hunting through the literal haystacks inside to find a might-as-well-have-been-a-needle elephant charm. Their bad luck made for a marvelously suspenseful race to the pit stop (greeted by a dude rocking a three pound mustache and jamming a tune on dual nose whistles! Yeah!) where if not for Christie & Jodie’s speed bump, Mark & Michael would have assuredly come in last. But it’s buh-bye now for the flight attendants as the wee stunt folk live to race another week. Bring on Thailand!

P.S. Tammy & Victor? Came in first, still annoying.

Season 14, Episode 6: Alright Guys, We’re At War! (originally aired March 22, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out Painting by Elephant by Alana D.

For more on The Amazing Race, click here.

Sundays at 8pm ET/PT on CBS

Photographs courtesy of CBS

Life: Eval is as Evil does

Money, guns, evil with the convertible and the pointy red shoes…and deer stew. That’s the recipe for Life this week, which returned after a short hiatus. Crews and Reese are called to investigate the murder of the last sheriff on an Indian reservation. John Hawes stayed on as sheriff (and sole white guy) after everyone else left when the reservation population formed their own police force in response to the new casino being built on their lands. Now, our detectives find themselves in the middle of a turf war between the tribal police and the county sheriff’s office.

This is not an easy case. For one, Crews and Reese are outsiders in a very insular community that is suspicious of strangers. Also, the suspect pool is vast; a tribal policewoman explains that no one on the reservation liked Hawes. Well no one except Anna, a young woman who brought him deer stew and had a mysterious, surrogate father/daughter relationship with him. She’s also engaged to the prime suspect Tomas, the man behind the casino. Hawes was against the casino and Tomas has a mean edge to him. But alas, he also has an alibi for the night in question.

Crews and Reese have nothing until they discover that Hawes left a message right before he died warning about evil. Had he become superstitious? Eaten too much deer stew? No, because he wasn’t actually talking about evil but Eval, a non-native who was living off the reservation and building the casino with Tomas. The detective duo go to track him down only to discover that their car has been stolen. Lucky for them though, the reservation has taxis.

Turns out Eval has a whole garage full of old muskets. He claims they’re props for the casino, but he secretly plans to make them functional and sell them. There’s more involving ghosts and birth certificates, but the investigation didn’t really hold my attention this time around. It was a good setup, but it just wasn’t fleshed out in a particularly interesting way. Still, a lesser episode of Life is still better than most things on tv.

And again with the romance crap…too much with Reese and Tidwell. It was amusing and well-played for awhile, but the writers have gone overboard with it now. There is however a very funny scene when Crews hears unquestionable evidence that they are an item. Ted pops up for a while to tell Crews that Rachel didn’t come home last night (she was with some guitar twit) and to lament that he’s in love with Olivia…Crews’ soon to be stepmom. But he really has nothing to do this time around.

As for Mickey Rayborn, I have no idea what’s going on there. Last episode’s cliffhanger involving Rayborn ostensibly kidnapping Crews is sidestepped in the beginning of the show. I don’t really understand what went down and I’m not sure I buy it. He reappears at the end of the episode to tease Crews (and us) about what he’s really up to. He’s about to explain his agenda when…the episode fades to black and the credits roll. Damn it! But that’s the job of any tv show if it’s going to be successful: make you tune in next week to see what happens. Which I will definitely do, and I hope others will join me because too many good shows are biting the dust due to people not checking them out, and this is certainly one that is worth saving.

Season 2, Episode 10: Evil…and His Brother Ziggy (originally aired December 3, 2008)

For another take on this episode, read Cowboys, Indians, and Cops with Money by Elma Rahman.

For more on Life, click here.

Wednesdays at 9/8c on NBC
Photographs courtesy of NBC

JCVD Is Jean Claude Van Damme Good

I took two trains and walked a mile in the pouring rain to go see JCVD at a little specialty theater in Cambridge, MA. The film is only playing in select theaters across the country, but nothing was going to stop me from going to see Jean Claude Van Damme, the Muscles from Brussels on the big screen—an opportunity I never thought I’d get again, as the guy hasn’t had a movie not go direct-to-DVD in nearly a decade. (As soon as I saw Knock Off, where he plays a jeans manufacturer who gets embroiled in espionage when he discovers that bad guys are placing bombs in his jeans…and Rob Schneider plays his best friend who is secretly an undercover CIA operative…I knew it was the beginning of the end).

But miraculously, Van Damme has a movie back on the silver screen, and I can honestly say that it is like no movie I have ever seen before. You ready for this? Van Damme plays himself: an aging international action star whose career is in the toilet. The film opens with a virtuoso minutes-long action sequence that is all in one shot. Orson Welles famously attempted the same technique in 1958’s Touching Evil (I also heard Joe Wright had a six-minute warfare shot in Atonement, but I didn’t see the movie because reading the book for 12th grade English made me want to castrate myself with a fork). Van Damme is kicking the bejesus out of people and jumping and diving across the screen. He’s stabbing guys, shooting guys, throwing grenades, stuff is blowing up left and right and I’m about to wet my pants in excitement when suddenly…the set collapses and someone yells “cut!”. Yep, Van Damme is making a movie within the movie and clashing with the directors, two brothers who don’t speak English or French:

“I’m 47-years-old, and it’s very hard for me to do it all in one shot! It’s not working”
(Translator)
“He still thinks we’re making Citizen Kane!”

To make matters worse, Van Damme is due in court to fight for the custody of his daughter, where the prosecutor rips him to shred over his past drug problem and yells with a passion at the judge that Van Damme is egregiously unfit to be a parent because he has spent his professional life beating and killing people onscreen. In a hilarious moment, Van Damme asks if he can be excused from the stand to go to the bathroom as the prosecutor rattles off the myriad ways Van Damme has killed people in all of his films. But it itsn’t all fun and games: his daughter says that people make fun of her whenever they find out that Van Damme is her dad, and says that she doesn’t want to live with him. Ouch.

Then Van Damme learns from his agent that he just lost a role to Steven Seagal, who promised to finally cut off his ponytail. (This is a funny reference to the legendary real-life rivalry between the two martial arts action stars). Could things get any worse? Actually yeah. Van Damme discovers he’s broke and his credit cards don’t work, and if he doesn’t pay his lawyers a substantial amount of money by that afternoon, they will drop his custody case. Van Damme goes to a bank in his native Brussels to have money wired to him only to discover that the bank is being robbed by a trio of criminals, who proceed to take him hostage, along with several others! I don’t want to give too much away, but when their plan goes awry and the police get involved, the bad guys use Van Damme as their liaison, so everyone thinks that Van Damme is the mastermind behind the robbery! And like Dog Day Afternoon all over again, a large group of fans materializes outside the bank to support their martial arts hero. This is wild, surreal, awesomely fun stuff.

Will the real-life Van Damme break free, kick ass, and save the hostages like he’s done in all of his films? Will he get out of there alive? Will he get his daughter back? Will he resurrect his career? I found myself frantically asking these questions throughout the narrative, absolutely riveted to the screen. There’s even a bizarre moment where Van Damme floats into the sky, breaks the fourth wall, looks straight at the camera and the audience and delivers a really long monologue where he talks about all the mistakes he’s made and his regrets and apologizes for letting people down and CRIES! VAN DAMME CRIES, and damn it if I didn’t cry too. It’s insane how good Van Damme is in this movie as…welll…Van Damme. You won’t believe your eyes.

That’s not to say that the movie is good, because it isn’t. I never heard of the filmmaker before, and I often found his visual style distracting. No one else in the film besides Van Damme is really memorable, and although the script has an intricate little structure to it, I feel like it could have done more. And the ending, while oddly appropriate, didn’t quite hit it out of the park for me. Another thing: a lot of the shots are very bright white, almost intentionally overexposed, and the subtitles for the non-English dialogue are also white and blend together, so half the time I couldn’t fully make out what the subtitles said. Pretty stupid if you ask me.

But if you’re like me and grew up watching the B-movie goodness of Van Damme, you know you gotta see this film if it’s playing anywhere near you. It truly is a one-of-a-kind experience, and Van Damme gives a bold, daring, ballsy performance that most would call his best (I’d say it ties Hard Target and Sudden Death).

Top Chef: If You Can Make It Here…

Top Chef is back!  And so far, so good.  Already it feels like this bunch can actually cook, as opposed to last season, which was cast completely for personality and was still a dud.  I’m talking about you, Lisa.  Plus, everyone I dislike goes home in the first episode.  Can I ask for anything more? Read more

While you are waiting for Poptimal’s Podcasts to become available, check out three of our pop culture favorites.

1. KCRW’s The Business, hosted by Claude Brodesser-Ackner

2. Invisible Blog, hosted by W. Keith Robinson

3. Seen Unseen, hosted by Chris and Jimmy