Borderline Fantastic

The Marriage Ref finally debuted on Sunday. After endless promotion during the Olympics that gave me no sense of what the show was going to be like. The only thing I got out of those ads was that Seinfeld was involved. The ads made it sound like it was all him, all the time. I knew he was just a producer and would appear on a few of the episodes. But that doesn’t sell tickets.

I didn’t actually DVR it on purpose. I was just in my habit of recording everything after the Olympics, just in case something ran over. Last night I finished the Closing Ceremonies and decided I’d rather watch How I Met Your Mother (it was an outstanding episode and is a topic in itself, if I wasn’t scared to analyze myself). I had seen that Megan posted how horrible The Marriage Ref had been, so I didn’t think it was pressing to watch. Shortly after starting HIMYM, my sister txt’d asking if I had watched it. She then said that it was good and was something that Evan and I could handle hosting. Well, I had to watch it then.

I watched it, it was good, I really cracked up a few times. Still, I felt like it had some issues that could be easily addressed.

Tom Papa – The Host. I saw him open for Seinfeld at PSU and I’ve seen him on many a late night show. At least with the late night shows, I can skip over him. I was actually surprised that he was decent. However, I’m not entirely convinced that a host is needed apart from the panel.

The Panel – In this format, with little time, and lots of cuts back and forth, three is too many. This could easily be accomplished with two people. Or have the host be part of and leader of the panel, rather than him lurking off to the side.

The Topics – If you watched, the topics were just outlandish. They weren’t things that might happen to any couple. These were issues where there was no question who was correct. I was hoping for some serious discussion to go along with the funny. Instead it was joke after joke. I was struggling to come up with an alternate viewpoint to at least make it interesting. Seinfeld hit on my point for the first one but he did it quickly and at the end. Sure, these topics are funny, but you have a panel of very funny people that could make a toothpaste cap issue hilarious. These topics didn’t need help being funny.

Now I’m upset. They settled for a good show but it could have been great. They did show clips of future shows and I’ll be in with guests like Larry David and Ricky Gervais. I also think it will usually be an hour long, which hopefully will allow for more depth. However, with a different panel every time, they won’t get a chance to settle in.

I started DVR’ing CBS Sunday Morning a few weeks ago. I know, when did I get so old? My parents have DVR’d it for a while and I’d usually catch an interesting story or two each week and then just burn through the other stuff.

I wasn’t aware of this guy, Steve Hartman, who threw darts at a map of the US, then would travel to that city, get a phone book, and randomly point to a name and do a story on this person. It’s very cool and disappointing at the same time. I had this almost exact idea not too long ago. It had been a while since he did that, this time around he had NASA find spots on the globe and he did the same thing all over the world. He went to three places: India, Latvia, and Oman. All three were amazing stories. I guess this proves his theory is true all over the world.

I wanted to mention how it doesn’t make any sense that I can easily find the clip I want from CBS Sunday Morning, but when I see something hilarious on Letterman that I want to share it’s no where to be found. Wouldn’t want people to easily promote The Late Show.

Kimmel played the clip from Oprah where she asked Leno about when Kimmel went on The Jay Leno Show. Leno said he was ’sucker punched.’ Kimmel takes exception to that and said he was going to tell the story of what happened. From watching Kimmel, I thought a joke was coming. Not true, Kimmel told exactly what happened. How Leno expected him to come on and completely ignore everything that was going on. Watch, it’s fantastic …

The last few years he has just seemed so strange. Yet, this is the second time that he showed up on Kimmel and went all out for a bit. Last time, after the Oscars, he did an elaborate fake trailer for The Colonel. This time he did an elaborate fake trailer for a movie about the late night wars where he play Kimmel. Hilarious, but I’m still confused by him.

I was watching some of my South Park DVDs today. Season 10 to be specific. I didn’t remember this part. Mrs. Garrison really simplifies evolution in under 90 seconds. Quite impressive.

Make sense?

Today, Kristin asked what show she should start watching now that she is almost done with True Blood. This is along the lines of something I’d wanted to do. Currently I’m working my way through Dexter and have Six Feet Under and some other shows lined up to watch next.

Here’s my list of shows you should get in to that you might not have seen. I’m leaving off obvious ones and things like Arrested Development, which everyone who is going to see, has seen, multiple times.

I’m going to do my best to rank these.
1. The Wire – The best show of the decade and one of the best ever. It takes a few episodes to get in to and moves slower than almost every show. You’ll realize that every scene is important and you want it to take as long as possible, because you don’t want it to end.
2. Veronica Mars – You have to watch because the premise doesn’t grab you. A high school girl detective? The pilot will hook you. Like AD, there were only 3 seasons and people want a movie. Everyone who has listened to me and given the show a shot tore through the entire show in no time.
3. Breaking Bad – Like Dexter, the premise is a little out there: Chemistry teacher starts cooking meth to pay his health bills. I watched Season 1 in just a few days, it hooks you right away. 3rd season starts in March on AMC, so get moving. You might have seen Bryan Cranston win the Best Actor Emmy and wondered what show he was on. Once you watch you will wonder why anyone else was nominated.
4. Friday Night Lights – You don’t even have to love football, but if you do then you have no excuse for not watching this yet. Don’t think of the movie, I don’t even remember anything from the movie. It’s sad that NBC is sharing the costs with DirecTV and not airing this in the fall, during football season.
5. Sports Night – If you like Sorkin (West Wing and Studio 60) then you’ll like this. The problem with this show when it was on is that people that like sports didn’t like it and people that don’t like sports didn’t watch it.
6. One Tree Hill – If you are just looking for pure entertainment, you love ridiculous high school drama, and need to kill some time, this is it. You won’t believe any of it. The acting is terrible. But for some reason you grow extremely attached to the characters.

Other possibilities
Ed – Not on DVD. I would have mentioned this first if it was. If you bring me a hard drive, I can give you the shows.
Ally McBeal – This one disappeared after it ended, although it may have popped up on Lifetime or WE (is that still a channel?). I think it’s on DVD now, it took a while, probably because there is a ton of music. I was a big fan, my whole family watched, and I convinced at least two people to watch in college. It was really funny, so many quirky characters. Again, hard for some to get past the premise of a female lawyer and her relationship troubles. I didn’t rank this one because I haven’t seen it in so long. Plus, the last season wasn’t great so it has probably been 10 years since I was able to enjoy it.

Not quite established shows that are on now (everyone watches Modern Family, so I left it off) …
Better Off Ted – The 1st season is on DVD. I’m going to keep talking about this show even though I doubt there will be a 3rd season.
Men of a Certain Age – 1st season is on TNT now. It’s excellent. It’s a drama but the humor is everywhere.
Parks & Recreation – You might have watched it last year and it wasn’t any good. This year’s premiere blew me away, I couldn’t believe how good it was. The 1st season is short, so you can watch that to get the background and then get into the good stuff.

I’m glad I saw this online before I watched last night’s Conan on Hulu. Hulu did a weird fade to commercial when this bit came up. If I didn’t know better I would have assumed Hulu was just being dumb.

Every one of these Olympic segments on Colbert has been amazing. Here he tries speed skating. I’m not sure which Winter Olympic event I’d be worst at, but speed skating is up there (at least behind figure skating).

Who knew the ice squeaked so much?

This morning I was on Hulu trying to check out last night’s Jay Leno Show. To be fair, I usually tear through them at the end of the week, just watching any guests that I care to see. The amount of time I watch gets smaller and smaller each week. So why was I so anxious to watch? Megan had told me that he had explained his side of the story during the show.

The show wasn’t posted yet but I decided to scroll down and see if anyone had any good comments. Not much there but at the bottom I found the tags that people had given the show and they were outstanding.

I sent this to Megan this morning and she also posted it.

Dave is upset with what Dick Ebersol said. From what he says, he blames NBC, not Jay. It’s just that making fun of Jay is so easy.