Did The Sopranos do more harm than good?: HBO and the decline of the episode

Read it here (Onion TV Club)

29 HBO opening sequences, from worst to best

You can watch them all here.

In Theaters: Girl Most Likely

It's not Bridemaids II, but Kristin Wiig is back on the big screen in Girl Most Likely, a comedy that was released on Friday, July 19.  Unfortunately, the critics don't see a repeat success for this latest Wiig movie, with one suggesting it suffers from "quirky-overload."  Check out the reviews at the New York Times, Roger Ebert.com,  and Rotten Tomatoes.  This may be one to save for DVD rental. 

More on Difficult Men by Bett Martin

On Thursday, I mentioned Brett Martin's Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad.  While the title is mouthful, Martin, a Beard Journalism Award winning writer, offers a thorough analysis of the rise of the anti-hero in groundbreaking TV in what he calls the third-golden age of television.  Martin covers many of the shows we are discussing in this class, focusing especially on the  innovative and original TV programs produced by HBO, FX, and AMC.   

For more on this book, check out NPR's A Deeper Dive Into Television's Difficult Men.

  

Just a wee teaser for those who enjoy Sherlock on Masterpiece Mystery on PBS.  Martin Freeman (wearing his Hobbit ears) and Benedict Cumberbatch (not wearing a dragon outfit) made this little "film" to be played at Comic-con.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365049116/

David Lynch hates "It's A Small World"

Since we are going to be looking at his work this semester, I came across this funny interview between David Lynch and the Onion's AV club about why he hates the song "It's A Small World," you know, the one from the Disney ride.

The discussion comes from a segment by the AV Club called HateSong, which as they explain is where they talk to musicians, writers, comedians, actors, etc., to explain the song they hate the most and why. It features more musicians than anyone else, but it is an interesting look into the subjective, why someone could hate a song so many other love. (Sidenote: the most popular group being hated on is the Black Eyed Peas, something I could very much agree with.)

In his discussion of "It's A Small World," Lynch describes the first time hearing the song to having "a very traumatic experience," and even compares the song to "having a disease," similar to "the swine flu or something."

The discussion of "It's A Small World" and why Lynch hates it does progress into a more productive conversation about his own music making and the music he choses for his film. It's a quick light read, but entertaining and it can be found here.

A Highly Questionable Blog Post

If anyone’s looking for niches in television scholarship, y’all should check out some of the programming on sports talk tv. I know that might sound like going out on a limb that’s already attached to another limb, but there’s some really fascinating stuff happening with some of the smaller-budgeted shows.

A recent example is Dan Le Batard is Highly Questionable, which airs weekdays on ESPN 2 unless there’s a ball game. The show’s basic structure fits the mould of every other midday sports talk show: two or three columnists take different perspectives on a sports topic and engage in pretty predictable debates. The host, Dan Le Batard, is your fairly typical sports analyst. Articulate and animated, he possesses a respectable knowledge of sports history. Recently, the show added another popular columnist, Bomani Jones, into the mix. By themselves, these guys are pretty much indistinguishable from the likes of Tony Kornheiser, Michael Wilbon, Skip Bayless, and any number of big ESPN personalities.

The real draw to Highly Questionable is Dan’s father, Gonzalo Le Batard (a.k.a. “Papi”). Unlike Dan and Bomani, Gonzalo brings very little sports knowledge to the table. While Papi’s a sports fan, he doesn’t have to live up to any pretense of journalistic integrity. His personality is genuine. If he doesn’t like something, he says so. If he doesn’t know something about a subject, he makes something up on the spot forming very poor arguments, but also very funny sound bites.

(clip: On Papi’s honesty)

Everyone has an uncle, father, or grandfather like Papi, and the show does a good job evoking that tight-knit, quirky family atmosphere. This is a very welcome departure from the typical debate-fueled tirades of Pardon the Interruption, ESPN’s First Take, and Around the Horn.

(clip: Papi forgets to turn his phone off)

Papi’s age and heavy Cuban accent are often played for laughs, which might be viewed as exploitative were it not for the way in which Gonzalo and Dan interact so honestly as father and son. Dan often alludes to how his father defected from Cuba and supported his family by working manual labor jobs for minimum wage. And this personal history even informs some of their analysis of current events in sports – specifically Major League Baseball, which features a large number of Latin American players who don’t really have a representative voice in an overwhelmingly white-washed sports talk industry.

(long clip: Papi’s experiences in Cuba)

The excerpt above might not jive with your political stance, but when have you ever seen issues like this broached on ESPN? While obviously not representative of the show’s usual lightheartedness, this moment is remarkable for its restraint. No one is yelling, no one is debating – it’s just one man and his son offering a perspective which provides context to a larger cultural issue.

So check out DLHQif you need a laugh or if you want to see a unique approach to sports talk tv.