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Posts tagged as “Frenglish”

Medium: Can’t You See?

Medium: Can’t You See?
For this blog, I will talk about a veteran show that will return on CBS on September 25th. A show that mixes crime and paranormal elements, that garnered the lead actress an Emmy win in 2005, and was produced by arguably one of the greatest showrunners of the past 20 years.

That little show, you’ll have guessed, is called “Medium”, and was saved from cancellation by CBS, whose sister studio, CBS Paramount, also produces the show.

“Medium” is one of the rare shows that is barely recognized by critics, yet makes solid ratings and performs well in the key demographics. Even in France, where network M6 airs it, there’s barely any talk about the show. Granted, on the surface, it deals with familiar territory: a medium start having visions and helps the local district attorney to solve crimes and murders. Notice I didn’t elaborate on the visions. That’s because, at first, it was only dead people trying to communicate with her, either by showing them minutes before their murder, or actual clues about the identity of the murderer. But over the episodes, the creativity of Glenn Gordon Caron-who created one of the great comicbook-inspired shows of the last decade in “Now And Again”, and of course “Moonlighting”-is to play with the visions, and have them in a bunch of different ways: in a noir-from-the-50s way, in 3-D, in cartoon….The real treat is to see where those visions lead Allison, and how she interprets them. And even if the viewer can quickly expect some kind of routine, as Allison finds out soon she’s wrong about the visions, and someone is caught at the end of the episode, the show finds a way to defy expectations.

In a recent interview, Glenn Gordon Caron said: “This may look like a crime show, but it’s really about an American marriage”. And the heart of the show is the DuBois family. Actually, as other writers would introduce cheating, betrayals and other soapish devices to give drama and scandal to the DuBois life, Caron makes a point about keeping the DuBois family very much together and maintain their cocoon of joy they call “home”. One of the reasons may be to balance the depressing and scary visions perturbing Allison. But the show is kept realistic thanks to a honest portrayal by the tag team of Patricia Arquette and Jake Weber, who does a consistently great job every episode. Weber, and Joe DuBois, don’t look like the tanned, well dressed husbands with a good haircut, but he’s believable as an understanding and levelled father without sounding corny or plain weak. Actually, “Medium” may be pleasing to Denny Crane given how effectively the Republican values are portrayed in the show. But it never hammers the point home, no matter how the crazy family crises get solved. When focusing on the couple, “Medium” has released one of their best episodes, “Twice Upon a Time”, a beautiful take on alternate realities and a great exploration of what glues Allison and Joe together.

It boggles the mind to see that, in the span of a few months, two great shows watched by people over 50 were taken off the air of their networks: one being the cancelled “Boston Legal”, and “Medium” was fortunately rescued by CBS. In a TV world obsessed by young and sexy characters, “Medium” offers a couple who are grown and mature, with no troubles in their relationships, raising three adorable children despite consuming jobs. How boring, right?

So, “Medium” succeeds on three plans: the crime mystery, who actually manages to keep one guessing without falling in procedural traps- yes, there are investigations, but they are paramount to solving the mystery of the visions themselves-; the paranormal aspects, who give creepy, eerie visions in a variety of visual styles-what other show can give the viewer the impression that he’s choking in a plastic bag this convincingly?-; and the family aspect, which gives fuel to heart-warming scenes and entertaining banter, as well as a few choice zingers from Joe DuBois. But those three aspects are misunderstood by the critics, who’d rather see a routine crime show full of independent episodes, and no discernible or lasting character arcs. Let’s hope that the sixth season with a decent promo budget, and a good lead-in (in terms of ratings, of course) in “Ghost Whisperer” will solve those problems.

PS: The title of this post was brought to you by R&B group Total feat. The Notorious B.I.G.

True that

As the Emmy shift fallout is continuing to make waves (#emmysfail was yesterday the second hashtag on the Twitter trend topic list), this little post by theonetruebix on the Whedonesque forum sums it all up nicely with various links leading to other articles talking about the important issues at hand here.
Will there be a boycott of the Emmy ceremony when the time comes?

There’s also some new details that have emerged regarding Avatar day (August 21).

Well, it’s actually more about what’s going on in France for Avatar Day but I would assume the same thing is going to go down elsewhere, including the States.
Basically, the 3-D 15-minute preview will be shown for free every 30 minutes, starting at 6PM.
More info should come out around the 19th.

In the meantime, Time Magazine has a great piece by Richard Corliss on Thirst and how it shows that “Vampires Beat Zombies”.

There’s also a couple of TV announcements with Bryan Singer producing and writing another Syfy mini following The Triangle in 2005. This 6-hour limited series will be about the 2012 myth and the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world.
USA also revealed a huge list of projects, including a lot of cop shows.
Good Cop, Bad Cop, Busy Bodies, Gourmet Detective, you name it.
There was as well a show entitled Hotel Dix written and produced by…Tom Fontana.
Yes. A Tom Fontana show on the USA Network.

Better Off Ted: Better Living Through Comedy

Better Off Ted: Better Living Through Comedy

Hello, Blog Nation. My name is Lordofnoyze, alias Lordy, and I have the honor to be the first guest blogger of TV Calling, so I hope to be up to the task. Either that, or I’m off answering calls in a Madagascar-based hotline company. And nobody wants that, especially not the fellow employees there.

I’m a French (former?) student about to embark in a career of journalism. But as a side hobby, ever since my teenage years, I’ve developed an unhealthy addiction for all things TV and TV shows. Soon, the voices in my…..er, I’ve been compelled to write about the good, the bad and the ugly in the now-defunct website “Ligue des Téléspectateurs Extraordinaires”, where I was getting a kick out at reviewing shows like “Boston Public”, “X-Files” or “American Dreams”. But college life, and the aforementioned closure of the site, got in the way, and after a (mostly) failed attempt at starting my own personal blog, I went on hiatus. Until today.

Also, I love pop and hip-hop music, so if you see a few “clever” musical references in some of the blogs, it’s not by pure randomness. And I love inserting them, especially when Lex is not looking. So, without further ado, here’s my first, show-and-prove blog.

For my first guest blog, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about an underrated, and below-the-radar comedy of this year. It just happens to close its season on July 28, burning off the 5 last episodes in summer. A usual move for shows that are cancelled (hello, Pushing Daisies! Dirty Sexy Money! Eli Stone!) , but not when the show is being renewed. I’m talking about “Better Off Ted”, one of the many ABC’s midseason entries (remember In The Motherhood? Yeah, me neither.)

A show that premiered somewhere in March, with little fanfare, and was paired with “Scrubs” on Wednesdays, just before “Lost”. Of course, it attracted under 5 million viewers, and 7 episodes were aired during the “normal” season. The show was as good as dead, but Steve McPherson and his army of drones considered there was “something” there and decided to save the show until Midseason 2010, where it will be paired with the new, almost-JD-less “Scrubs: TNG”, a.k.a. “Scrubs: the Yung, Hip, Med School Years”.

So what was that “something”? Did McPherson lose his mind?

Well, as all network presidents, he’s already genetically insane. But he’s right to keep the show on the air. Here’s why:

Set in the headquarters of a fictional multinational company called Veridian Dynamics, “Better Off Ted” is barely hilarious. No, it’s not the second coming of “Arrested Development”, even if it features a top-notch, pitch-perfect performance of Portia De Rossi as the cutthroat boss, Veronica. But it slowly unveils a sense of absurdity and delicate lunacy that is welcomed.

The 7 first episodes are really solid, mainly thanks to a really good pace in editing and directing (CRUCIAL in comedy), and a very promising cast. The lead, Jay Harrington, is hardly recognizable, but he’s been seen in the promising thriller “The Inside” opposite Rachel Nichols, and with Tim Minear as his boss. That doesn’t tell us much about his comedy chops. But he was really good as the unlucky reporter in “Back To You”, the FOX comedy that never really delivered on its great potential. As things stand, his character, Ted, is a handsome everyman that has to handle daily crises alongside Veronica. He also has to deal with the sexual tension with Linda (comedy journeywoman Andrea Anders), and the everlasting disputes and ramblings of Phil and Lem, the scene-stealing tandem of the show.

Of course, it already seems like the comedy version of “Fringe”, with mad science aplenty. But the show works primarily because of the interaction and cracks between his characters, and the evil and outright absurdity that is Veridian Dynamics is kept in the second plan. Unless you wanna count the hilarious commercials, that illustrate the “theme” of each episode.

Plenty of credit goes to Victor Fresco, creator of “Andy Richter Controls the Universe”, another underrated gem that recently was released in DVD in the USA. But it feels like the show has yet to really deliver and free itself of the conventions, since it already has a universe of its own. For example, the lab rats that are partners of Phil and Lem, or Ted’s daughter, were barely used during the season, but are strong nevertheless.

So, if you want to check those out, the final episodes are being aired on ABC over the next few weeks. Definitely more worthy of your time than, say, the umpteenth season of “Entourage”.