SVU makes me cry.

Law & Order SVU tonight at 8PM EST. This episode features a mildly retarded delivery man who rapes one of his elderly female clients when he discovers her tied to her bed after a home burglary. Insisting both that he believed the woman's posture to be an invitation and that he is "not retarded," tonight's perp flips out at the episode's close, as Dr. Emil Skoda escorts him to a state mental institution.

Tonight's episode started out slow. But nonetheless, I cried.

Last Comic Standing 6/27/06- Adam Carolla Has Vagina Slits Where His Ears Should Be

On this week's installment of the NBC alternative series resurrected, we said goodbye to Joey "I'm What Happens if Gilbert Gottfried and Donny from New Kids on the Block Had A Baby" Gay and Bill Dwyer.

This week, you could tell the comics wanted to go for the gold even MORE than usual. That's because the fillet mignon of all standups, Adam Carolla, was the moderator of their challenge. Oh, Adam Carolla. More than ever, I realize that when Jimmy Kimmel cut the umbilicle chord, he forgot to breast feed.

The comics were woken at 2:30 in the morning to be guests on Adam Carolla's morning, L.A. based radio show. Each were given a random magazine and twenty minutes to stew up sixty seconds worth of material on said magazine. As comedi-testant (haha I'm clever) Ty Bennett quipped, and I paraphrase, (open Britney Spears inappropriately used air quotes) I would rather swim across the ocean with Roz on one arm and Gabriel on the other than do this challenge. (close Britney Spears inappropriuately used air quotes) See below for images of Gabriel and Roz, respectively.



Well good thing the comedians were being judged by a fellow funny man slash mentor who could appreciate the challenge. That way, when Carolla told them they sucked, they knew it was TRUE! I mean, he WAS the host of TLC's "The Adam Carolla Project" in which he refurbished his childhood home. FUNNY STUFF! And he DID take his morning gig since he was already awake after staring longingly in the window of Jimmy Kimmel's after parties. Ziggy zaggy, Ziggy zaggy, hoi hoi hoi!

If Adam Carolla sucking is too much for you to wrap your brain around, then let this week's episode teach you something else: Anthony Clark is a puppet. Gone are the days of Jay Mohr's self deprication (although he does serve as a consultant to the show's fourth season). Instead we have to watch what happens when a down and out Charo is hired to do stage makeup for Clark, using nothing but an tomato paste and q-tips. The show cleverly made it seem as if Anthony Clark was getting a standing ovation as he introduced this week's elimination round, but what we couldn't hear was the edited out audience direction: go bananas if Anthony's a douchebag.

The Real World 6/27/06 - Paula Walnuts

Last night on The Real World: Well, I wasn't really paying attention, because this shit is garbage. G-A-R-B-A-G-E. But this seems to be the pattern for every episode: There is a hurricane. The roommates evacuate. The roommates go out and get drunk in [insert Floridian city here]. Two or more roommates fight. They make up and go home to a miraculously unharmed house.

This show is now in its seventeenth season. Stop and think about that for a minute. It hasn't been good since Seattle, and yet here it still is. My favorite season was London. God, I loved punk rock, spiky-haired, tongueless, America-bashing Neil. And I couldn't wait to see how long it would take for him to get it on with Lars. Dear readers (are there any of you?) which do you think was the finest season? Keep in mind, nothing will compare to the hypothetical one Jeanette and I dreamed up one night: The Real World: Glasgow, a kind of super-season featuring old cast members, including the ghost of Pedro and a hybrid of Boston's Montana and her boyfriend Vaj, named Vajtana.

Anyway, I want to talk about Paula Walnuts. Do not confuse her with Paulie Walnuts, the gun-toting, prostate cancer-having, silver-templed capo of The Sopranos. Now, it is typical for your garden variety Real Worlder to have one of the following "real world issues": eating disorder, substance abuse problem, deeply troubled romantic history, depression, poor self-esteem, history of self-mutilation, unnecessarily provocative behavior. Our Paula Walnuts, however, embodies all of these fun traits! She's like the party pack!

It may sound entertaining, but it's actually totally un-funny to watch the distressingly thin Paula suffer panic attacks, pick at her skin, gulp diet pills, drink excessively, weep excessively, and moon over the boyfriend who once beat her so badly he PUT HER IN THE HOSPITAL. This is a woman who should be institutionalized, not thrown into a party house with six immature brats to be broadcast on national television. I suspect that the Bunim-Murray production company took a cue from Hurricane Katrina, as it has reached FEMA-level recklessness for the sake of riveting television. Way. To. Go.

SVU makes me cry.

Law & Order SVU makes me cry. I will post occasionally to reflect these crying incidents, when they happen.

Today I watched the original Law & Order, instead of SVU, at 8 PM EST. Not surprisingly, it did not make me cry.

6/25 Deadwood - What is "Major Dad" Doing Here?

On last night's Deadwood: Flamboyant theater impresario and old buddy of Al's, Jack Langrishe (Brian Cox), arrives in Deadwood; Mrs. Ellsworth makes an offer to Hearst on her gold claim, which he viciously rejects; a miner trying to organize learns that unions are frowned upon when Hearst arranges to have his legs chopped off; Bullock wants to act but Al is reluctant, considering the last time he met with Hearst he lost a finger; Wu's back!

Mad genius / showrunner David Milch has proven to be Tarantino-esque in his casting of random old dudes as total badasses on this show. Where Quentin gave David Carradine new life as the titular assassin in Kill Bill, Milch figured his brother, Keith Carradine, might work out as another Bill: Wild Bill Hickok. (He worked out great.)

This season will feature the formerly flamey Gale Harold (of Queer As Folk) as Wyatt Earp. Even more notably, a psychotic, power-hungry version of George Hearst (daddy to William Randolph) is played by Gerald McRaney, known best for his virtuosic performance as... Major Dad?

That's right, the star of the early 90s family-friendly sitcom about the man who could control entire platoons but was no match for a hippy-dippy wife and kids! Tell you what, it's a little disconcerting to watch the once-paternal figure drop multiple "n" and "f" bombs in the space of a few moments. But surprisingly, McRaney is downright sinister here and makes a believable foil for the hardest of hardasses in Deadwood.



At this rate, I wait in earnest for Dave Coulier to guest star as Butch Cassidy.

And Jeanette, Deadwood has nothing to do with Sartre. If anything, Alexis de Tocqueville's insights on the development of American capitalism would be more relevant here. ZING!

Lucky Louie 6/25/06 - An Ode to THIS Guy

In this week's episode of Lucky Louie, we are exposed to more lower middle-class family dynamics as Kim (Pamela Adlon) actually defends herself against a "crackhead" mugger. Louie's (Louis CK) negligent landlord leaves his apartment doorless in order to repair the lock. Nick DiPaolo is cast in this part, probably because of his real life negligence...towards not sucking at stand-up (ba dum CHING).

Sure, the third out of the gate episode of this fledgling sitcom boasts its now expected wrong-side-of-the-track Full House morals. But once again, the Danny Tanner meets Hell's Angels moment is not the take home point. Instead it's the penis:



Oh come on, I can't ACTUALLY put a picture of a penis. Well, I could, but then Alanna and I would have to kiss our oh so precious 5-10 year old target demographic goodbye. But Gonzo's face sure does LOOK like a penis. Just imagine Gonzo's face, in pure view for a full sixty seconds in the groin area of this guy, actor/comedian/full frontal extrordanaire Rick Shapiro:



Now, don't get me wrong. I want as much out of my pay TV as I can get. If there is a partial in front of the nudity before an episode of The Sopranos, I am the FIRST one to accuse the Bada Bing dancers of slacking. Last week, America met Louis CK's schmeckel for the first time. But because it was post coitus, we could construe it as partially necessary to meet the little pink devil. Just like it is necessary for us to watch a Jersey chick sliding a banana in and out of her DDs while Tony makes a business deal. But the jury is still out on whether or not seeing Rick Shapriro's unkempt manhood was a quality way for me to begin my television viewing week.

Are you a groundbreaker, Rick? Will penis in primetime become so en vogue that Little Howie Mandel will pop out of suitcase number 14 next year, making the ULTIMATE deal? Or are you a simultanous trendsetter AND trendbreaker, Rick? Will Ryan Seacrest's balls retreat deeper inside his body in relief that peen on TV is not what Americans idolize? TUNE IN TO FIND OUT!!!

Oh, and if you actually like reading anything of substance, I am sure Alanna will be comparing Deadwood to the cumulative musings of Jean Paul Sartre for you really soon.

-Jeanette

Entourage 6/18/06- An Ode to This Guy

On last Sunday's "Entourage," Vince (Adrian Grenier) was up to his usual, really, really, ridiculously good looking shennanigans; "Aquaman" was about to make eleventy schmaazillion dollars during its opening weekend, the low quality LA air still managed to have zero effect on Vince's tossled locks, and Vince still had no plans in the forseeable future to sleep with me (shame, becuase I could think of a thing or two that WOULD have an effect on those locks...).

Really, I'm not complaining. If you continue to read this blog (which you will, you WILL continue to read this blog, READ THIS BLOG! READ THIS BLOG!) you will probably catch on to the fact that all's well that ends well is fine with me in TV Land (God my first post and I already used that horrific nickname). If we have a low key season where the worst that happens is Turtle accidentally sleeps with a butterface, then fine by me!

So with our NY gang hanging out in their own Shangri-LA (HA, see what I did there?) what stood out to me most on last Sunday's episode was this guy, playing one of the high school losers taken under Vince's wing:



His real life name is Adam Wylie. His TV Land name is that awkward looking, skinny, freckly white kid who start out well on a critically acclaimed series (Picket Fences) and has now stooped to Sylvan Learning Center Commercials*.

My proverbial hat is off to you, Adam. When you were little, it was endearing to compare your ears to Dumbo's and say how distinguished you will look when you grow into them. Now that you are in your early twenties and never did, kudos to you for having steadily worked. Seriously, IMDB this bloke and not a calendar year has gone by where he isn't at least guest starring in your cousin's bat mitzfah video.

Take 1997, for instance. Adam crossed his fingers and toes for Emmy as he bit off some roles that made Olivier jealous in "Crayola Kids Adventures," a short lived Saturday morning institution that piggybacked "Wishbone's" success in recreating literature for a boob tube-matized crowd of younguns. I, personally, boycotted out of dismay that Crayola had rejected my new crayon color name: Anal Sex Orange.

There was a faint glimmer of hope for Adam in 1999 when he guest starred on MTV's scantily clad primetime soap, "Undressed." Ah, I can just imagine the conversation with his agent now:

Adam's Agent: Adam, baby, talk to me...
Adam: yeah?
AA: Undressed, are we doing this, yes or no?!
Adam: Undressed? Awesome! I haven't been keeping at teeball all these years for nothing! Check out my muscles! Why, I bet I could beat Jonathan Taylor Thomas at everything by this point!!!
AA: Haha EARTH TO ADAM! You clearly will be playing Innuk, the naked, sexy teens' Inuit Friend from the north. Apparently MTV needs some diversity in their programming for some FCC regulation. Oh wait, I gotta take this call...It's Jonathan Brandis, and you KNOW how he gets when I don't find him work.

Oh Adam, the last time the kids at school thought you were cool, they were also hitting each other with slap bracelets. But that's okay. Hopefully Adrien let you at least rub his belly on set for enough time to get some career luck before he called the cops


*Note: I don't think he was ever in one of these commercials, but I just wanted to take the opportunity while I had somewhat of a forum to point out how nauseating this ad campaign is. If my kid ever gives me a "good" report card for a birthday present, I will rip it up and shove it down his Ninja Turtle boxer briefs.

Welcome to fucking Boob Tubers

...it can be combative.

I'm Alanna and you can get acquainted with my thoughts on the television tour-de-force that is Deadwood here, at my good friend JJ's film site. In the future, I'll post such ramblings here instead, but I figured I'd get a nice cross-posting, blogger community vibe going first.

Let's play a game to get us warmed up, shall we? In my intense examination of Deadwood's IMDB page, I've noticed something. Many of the actors' names would make quite passable, roguish Old West names, to the extent that I think you must have a Victorian moniker in order to get cast on that show. Guess I'm out of luck, since I have pretty much the Jewiest name in the world. Anyhow, below is a list of names of Deadwood characters, and names of Deadwood actors, and your job is to identify which is which. No cheating!

Fake person or real person??

1) Dayton Callie
2) Sofia Metz
3) Anna Gunn
4) Bree Seanna Wall
5) Dan Dority
6) Titus Welliver
7) Joanie Stubbs
8) Jim Beaver
9) Whitney Ellsworth
10)W. Earl Brown