Category Archives: TV

Jun 20 2012
2 Comments
TV

Stone-Cold Bunch of Crazies: Burning Love

You GUYS. This is the greatest thing that has ever happened. Stop everything that you’re doing and watch Burning Love (available here) immediately.

As established previously, we cannot stop watching The Bachelor despite knowing better. We just can’t, okay? We’re deep into this season of The Bachelorette even though literally no one on the show is even that interesting now that Alejandro is gone (and he wasn’t interesting on the actual show, just in real life. Did you know he is a cancer survivor and one of the 25 influential Hispanics under 40? Because he is).

So we are exactly the target audience for Burning Love, a new web series that’s on Yahoo. Okay, we were dubious too, but it is legit AMAZING. Ken Marino (from Veronica Mars and Party Down, two other amazing shows) stars as a fireman coming to find “true love.” He is hilariously dumb, just like some bachelors that we could name but shall refrain from doing so.

What really makes it, though, is the bunch of crazies that is masquerading as contestants. Kristen Bell appears, along with many other actresses and actors that you’ll recognized. Big names are getting on board this, but we don’t want to spoil them for you! Let’s just say that a Friends cast member makes a surprise appearance. Also just like on The Bachelor, the women are a mix of people taking the entire thing entirely too seriously and women who could not care less about any of it. On Burning Love, that translates to someone showing up without pants on.

The absolute best part, though, is the parody quality of it. Instead of giving the contestants roses, they are asked, “Will you accept my hose?” Get it? Because he’s a fireman? Whatever, it’s really funny. We promise. Also, one of the contestants saying, “If he doesn’t pick me, I’ll probably kill myself.” So wrong, but SO TRUE.

Seriously, this is the best web series ever, and each episode is only like 8 minutes, so you don’t even have to feel bad about watching one! Get on this asap!

Related articles

Tagged , , , , , ,
May 09 2012
1 Comment
Music, TV

The Voice: The Only Watchable Singing Competition

So The Voice crowned its second winner last night, but judging by the resounding (haha) success of its first winner Javier Colon, the actual winner doesn’t really matter that much. Let’s be real: while we’ve been obsessed with The Voice since last summer, the reasons don’t have much to do with the individual singers. Here are the real reasons that we love The Voice:

4. All of the other judges/coaches hate Christina. This is one of the funniest elements of the entire thing–Blake Shelton, Cee Lo Green and Adam Levine pretty clearly despise Xtina. Especially Adam. Xtina obviously has no idea and just keeps on keeping on being her diva self. Oh Xtina.

3. Cee Lo and that cat. Purrfect is the greatest thing about Season 2, no holds barred. That cat is hilarious and perfectly plays into Cee Lo’s desire to be seen as Dr. Evil… too funny. Also the fact that the show makes Carson talk about Purrfect and they even did a little retrospective on him during the finale. Ridic. This cat looks angry all the damn time and it is amazing. Blake can’t stand it, and Adam doesn’t like cats… We’re pretty sure that Cee Lo just got the cat to piss off the other judges. Cee Lo = maybe crazy but amazing.

2. How much Blake Shelton loves his team. Blake is pretty clearly the most supportive of all of the coaches. He has his teammates (the people he picked) come and perform with him all of the time. He’s having a bromance with Jermaine. He invites his wife to be one of the mentors on the show so that she can get to know his team. Basically Blake is probably going to invite all of these people over for Thanksgiving dinner, because he is that nice.

1. Adam Levine. Obviously everyone is already super aware of this, but Adam Levine is one of the most attractive people ever. See, look:

Mmmmm Adam Levine. So in addition to being crazy hot he screws with Xtina’s mind (that Team Xtina t-shirt was absolutely hilarious) and is overly competitive and super-invested in this competition. He might be a douchebag in real life but that sure doesn’t keep us from loving him on The Voice.

While we can’t sit through an episode of American Idol now that there’s no Simon and we’re boycotting The X Factor due to a lack of Cheryl Cole, we do love The Voice. At least they call their celebrities “coaches” instead of “judges” so we’re prepared for them not offering any real opinions!

Related articles
Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Apr 08 2012
Leave a comment
THINGS WE LOVE, TV

Reminder: We Do Actually Like SNL

Saturday Night Live, while an American institution, is admittedly something of a hit-or-miss proposition. As we saw with LiLo’s disastrous attempt, sometimes SNL just doesn’t know what to do with its hosts. Sometimes the musical guests… are Lana Del Rey.But sometimes, everything comes together and SNL creates a solid show that really brings the laughs and has a fabulous musical guest. This happened last night, with Sofia Vergara and One Direction! We’re not doing a full post on it, but here are some of the things that made last night’s show great.

Hunger Games Sketch

“Hunger Games Reporter” was absolutely hilarious. Spot-on imitations of everyone in the movie, while adding an element to The Hunger Games that made it a fabulous parody as well. Also Sofia Vergara was at her best! She did not seem self conscious or nervous at all – she just embraced being absolutely ridiculous in this sketch and it was AWESOME!

“Watch What Happens Live” Sketch

“Watch What Happens Live” was probably our favorite skit of the night. As established with his Robyn “Call Your Girlfriend” video tribute, Taran Killam is our favorite featured player on SNL and someone who needs to be moved up to a full member ASAP. He did a hysterical Andy Cohen impression, and in general SNL is always on point when making fun of Bravo. “Watch What Happens Live” was basically made to be parodied on SNL and we were glad that the task fell to Taran Killam!ONE DIRECTION!

To top it all off, One Direction (a.k.a. proof that Simon Cowell is a genius) appeared!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As the exclamation marks imply, we have totally fallen in love with this British boy band! Their outfits, their accents, and their cute boy-band-chemistry make them basically the greatest new band this year, and we were so excited that SNL booked them! They sounded good live, and as always were completely adorable. We just love everything about them! More of this please, SNL.Overall, we laughed more than we cringed while watching this episode of SNL. The writers churned out solid stuff, and they were lucky to have a host who was willing to be as crazy-ridiculous as Sofia Vergara was! This episode reminded us that while SNL may have its ups and downs, the potential for greatness is always there… and that’s what keeps us coming back every time.

Related articles
Tagged , , , ,
Mar 04 2012
Leave a comment
TV

The Return of LiLo!!!

Lindsay Lohan has been very, very busy in the last week… for the first time in a while. She has had interviews with Jimmy Fallon, Jay Leno, Matt Lauer, and a gig hosting SNL! And perhaps the most remarkable thing about all of her appearances is that they have been pretty, well, good. She looks poised, sober and professional, and says that she now wants to be known for her work, not her exploits. We’ll see how this goes. Here are our highs and lows of Lindsay’s hosting night! (Warning: This is a long post.)

Image Read more for Highlights and Low Points!

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Feb 05 2012
Leave a comment
TV

“Smash” Pilot: Please Watch This. For Us.

We love it when TV shows put premieres online early. For those of us who were lucky enough to catch the “Smash” pilot, it was 46 minutes of musical theater and television awesomeness! For those of you who couldn’t watch it – here are all the reasons you should when it premieres this Monday, February 6!

1. It feels so real. Despite its showy, musical theater trappings (which we love) the characters at the heart of this story are so real and heart breaking. Anybody who knows people in the theater world, has seen A Chorus Line or has auditioned for a high school musical understands how hard actors work and how difficult and emotional that kind of life is. While watching the pilot, we wanted both Karen (Katherine McPhee) and Ivy (Megan Hilty) to be cast as Marilyn because they both have compelling stories, and are phenomenally talented. (Okay, secretly, we wanted Ivy to be cast a little bit more than we wanted Karen to be, but that is just because one of us maybe saw Megan Hilty as Glinda the Good Witch in Wicked on Broadway…. ) In the actual show though, it feels believable that they’re having a hard time making the choice–there’s not one that’s demonstrably a better fit than the other.

2. Debra Messing: We are just so happy that she is back on television! She plays Julia, the likable, married, working woman who is trying to adopt a baby and write a Broadway musical at the same time. Along the way she has to deal with the overly dramatic personalities in the theater world, her husband nagging her about her job, and it appears that she also has a teenage son. Mostly Debra Messing is just delightful even (especially?) when her life is out of control.

3. Everyone loves musicals: Don’t front! We know you do! Broadway is just as American as jazz music, reality TV, baseball, and fast food. In creating a plot around a Broadway musical, “Smash” has tastefully built on Glee’s success and made a sophisticated show for an older, more mature audience. It also gives people insight into the difficult, political, emotional and dramatic behind the scenes process of putting on a Broadway musical! The potential for drama is endless AND (unlike in normal television shows) it will always end in a SONG AND DANCE!!! What is not to love about that?

4. Anjelica Huston: First of all, with an Academy Award under her belt, this woman is by far the most legit film actress on the show. Secondly, her character on this show is BOSS, and in the preview for the rest of the film throws drinks in people’s faces like 3 separate times! Drama! We love her so much! She is also one of our favorite actresses from one of our other favorite films – 50/50 where she played Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s overbearing mother and was superb, as usual. She is just an all around exceptional actress and choice for this show!

5. Lastly, dear God, NBC needs this. We want to encourage NBC to continue making quality programming, rather than exclusively focusing on reality TV. So let’s all watch it. Please.

Related articles
Tagged , , , , , ,
Jan 10 2012
Leave a comment
TV

Why Are We Watching This?: “The Bachelor”

There is a recurring pattern in our lives of us watching truly terrible TV and movies for no good reason. With movies, at least it’s over after a couple of hours and it’s like $10 wasted. With TV, it is literally hours and possibly months of our lives wasted by our inability to quit these shows that even we recognize are bad.

Prime example: “The Bachelor.”

“The Bachelor” just began its newest season with Bachelor Ben last week, and sure enough, we are still watching this show. Brad and Emily and their cuteness managed to convince us in the show’s ability to find true love… and then they broke up. And yet, we’re back for another round.

So Ben was the runner-up on Ashley’s season of “The Bachelorette” this summer, which obviously we also watched. He proposed to Ashley and wound up being shot down, which was truly painful to watch–so sad! However, that came after an entire season of us referring to Ben as “one of the Josh Grobans, not the Greek one, the other one,” so let’s just say that we were not the most enthused at his being chosen as The Bachelor. (Our hopes were obviously with Ames, he of the Ivy League degrees and shockingly red pants.)

Having watched the first couple of episodes now… Ben does have some good choices, but he seems to have really more than his fair share of crazy. Clearly the producers were worried that Ben would be too boring to produce anything interesting himself, so they cast the most insane women that they could possibly find.

Most insane, obviously, is Jenna. This girl! (Normally we would call her a woman because yes feminism, but her behavior thus far suggests that she thinks of herself as a girl.) Jenna actually believes that she is Carrie Bradshaw. She is a blogger in New York show writes about relationships or some shit, and she dresses how Sarah Jessica Parker did on the show.

Let us note, here, that Sex and the City has been off the air since 2004. Yes, movies since then, blah blah we don’t care. 2004! Can we all agree to move on from aspiring to lead these clearly impossibly fictional lives? Clearly Jenna cannot. No one liked Carrie anyway. Being “a Carrie” has never been something to aspire to, because it just means that you’re even more annoying than any of your friends.

Anyway. We need to work through our own problems, clearly. Jenna is thankfully not going to be a major part of this season, so we may at some point decide to notice some of the other, less crazy women featured on this show.

So why are we watching this? Still unclear. The premise of women all fighting to “find love” on a show that has never produced a single marriage (yes, “The Bachelorette” did, but not “The Bachelor’) is really absurd, the women are crazy, and Ben is frankly kind of boring. Nevertheless, we plan on continuing on with this franchise (although not “Bachelor Pad.” Even we only go so far.) until the bitter end… even if we don’t really know why.

Related articles
Tagged , , , ,
Dec 29 2011
2 Comments
THINGS WE LOVE, TV

Things We Love: “The Wire”

This blog could not be complete without a tribute to the GREATEST TELEVISION SHOW EVER MADE: “The Wire”. This show is just so good, like SO GOOD. And yes, it was cruelly cancelled in 2008, but that does not mean that we can’t still watch it. And re-watch it. And re-watch it again. Every time we do, we pick up on things that we have missed, or we laugh at something that we still think is funny. So everyone, do yourselves a favor, and go watch this show. You won’t regret it.
For all of you who have watched the show, we have ranked all five excellent seasons of “The Wire” below. It was difficult, but we managed.
1. Season 1: aka the Cops vs. Drug Dealers seasonThe first season is what got us (and everyone else) hooked on this show. It is our absolute, all time favorite season for so many reasons:
  • The Bro-mances
    • Bunk and Jimmy
    • Herc and Carver
    • Prez and Lester
  • OMAR. INTRODUCED EPISODE 3.
  • Wallace: he is by far one of the most likable and endearing characters on this show. When he dies I definitely cried a lot. He is one of the reasons that I re-watch the first season as often as I do.
  • Lester Freamon and his transformation from miniature furniture maker to super cop.

2. Season 4: aka the Baltimore School District vs. Insurmountable Odds season

This was a very close second behind season one. We just love it. In short, here are some of the reasons why:

  • The Character Development:
    • Prez finds his path for real this time and becomes a teacher!
    • Michael Lee: Tristan Wilds does an excellent job portraying the middle school character of Michael, who has a lot going on in his life: it is hinted that he was sexually abused by his step father, his mother is a drug addict, he basically takes care of his younger brother, becomes a hit man, and then a stick up artist to financially support him. All of this happens when he is EIGHTH GRADE.
      • Sidenote: we may or may not have even watched part of the CW’s 90210 because Tristan Wilds was cast in it…
  • When Bunny adopts Namond Brice!!! .. it is SO GOOD.
  • The scene where Bunny takes the middle school students out to a nice dinner is so great. It just is.

3. Season 3: aka the Drug Dealer Turf Wars season

This season is intense dude.

  • Marlo. Enough said.
  • Cutty, the former hit man turned community boxing coach is one of my all time favorite characters and provides a hopeful and heart warming story line. FINALLY.
  • Brother Mouzone + Omar = THE MOST EPIC THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED.

4. Season 2: aka The Port season

This is one of the most ill liked seasons of The Wire. But this is the sole reason why we like it so much:

  • Episode 6: Omar testifies against Bird in one of the most epic and awesome scenes EVER.
  • We learned a new word: Stevedore. They are the people that work on the dock.

5. Season 5: aka the Meet the Press Season

This is why it is our least favorite.

    • Omar dies. NOOOOOOOOOOO!
    • That weird plot with the fake murders…. what?
Related articles
Tagged , , , ,
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 29 other followers