Category Archives: Flashback!

2010/10/29 · 4:27 pm

Remember Like a Year Ago When All We Did was Write About Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno?

Well, now there’s a book (not written by us).  Bill Carter, who chronicled the first Tonight Show War in The Late Shift, is set to release The War for Late Night, an in-depth look at last winter’s late night talkie drama, what many of us referred to as the Jaypocalypse.  With Conan, beard and all, set to premiere his new show on TBS in just a matter of days, the book should be a fascinating recount of how the late night landscape was perhaps forever changed, and how, in the end, the skirmish might have been the best thing that ever happened to Conan O’Brien.

Read an except from The War for Late Night on Vanity Fair

And since there will inevitably be a movie based on the book, let’s remember the last one:

(Fun Fact: did you know that the actor who played Jay Leno in The Late Shift, Daniel Roebuck, went on to play Dr. Leslie Artz on Lost?  It’s true!  I know, right?!  Oh, and Letterman was played by John Michael Higgins, who is just generally awesome.  Crazy!)

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2010/10/29 · 3:25 pm

Flashback: David Bowie’s Lego Crotch

A little over a year ago I posted a piece comparing the David Bowie avatar from Lego: Rock Band to his look as Jareth in Labyrinth, noting the obvious discrepancies between the groin-regions.  It went on to be one of our most read posts of all time, due in no small part to the frequent search term “Labyrinth David Bowie, ” a group of words that sees its most action during the Halloween season.  So, with that in mind, let’s revisit that post one more time:

Lego: Rock Band David Bowie Clearly Not ‘Labyrinth’ David Bowie

The first images and video of the David Bowie avatar from the upcoming Lego: Rock Band game hit the web this week.  Vulture posits that “Bowie’s penchant for androgyny makes him a perfect candidate for being immortalized in Lego form.”  However, while Ziggy Stardust certainly is the standard for androgyny,  the image of David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth has been burned into my brain, and I can’t help but feel that Lego Bowie is missing something.

Lego Bowie

(Hint: It’s not the gloves)

On a related note, great Halloween costume idea:  Slutty Hoggle.

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2010/10/29 · 2:47 pm

Kelly Kapoor Fashion Show at Lunch

A few weeks back we looked at the physical evolution of many of the employees at Dunder Mifflin.  Over at Vulture, the Fug Girls reviewed some of her best and, mostly, worst looks.

The Fug Girls Rate the Many Looks of The Office’s Kelly Kapoor

 

 

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2010/10/22 · 8:11 pm

No Clever Headlines, Just the Best ‘The Office’ in a While

Finally.  FINALLY.  This was the kind of episode we’ve been waiting for all season, that we’ve been waiting for since last season, and maybe even before that.   We’ve begun to feel like a broken record on this blog, constantly finding more negative than positive with The Office.  But, for the first time in a while, we can honestly feel good about the show.  Giddy even.  And it’s a nice feeling.

Continue: Tim Olyphant kills! As does the whole episode. But what does the future hold for Andy Bernard???

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2010/10/15 · 4:14 pm

The Many Loves of Michael Scott

We might never know from whom Michael contracted herpes, or if the unsightly sore on his face was in fact the nasty little disease (although, we can probably trust Meredith’s expert diagnosis).  But what we can surmise is that the unflattering blemish is perhaps the best thing that has ever happened to Michael, because it has put him on a path towards genuine self-reflection and, we can only hope, reconciliation with true love Holly Flax.  Who ever heard of an STD bringing two people closer together?

Read on: How Sex Ed is the answer to Casino Night. Plus: The return of the real Andy Bernard

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2010/10/08 · 2:00 pm

Justine Bateman Knows Way More About The Internet Than I Do

The legendary, lovely, luminous Justine Bateman appeared on this week’s Urly Show, the podcast hosted by our dear friend Eliot Glazer and his team over at Urlesque, and she basically blew our minds.  We thought we spend a lot of our time looking at Internet junk, but Justine has got us beat.  Sure, you could argue with all the money she’s making off of Family Ties residuals she has nothing but time to look at animals in casts Tumblrs and Cigar Guy memes and fake Christine O’Donnell broomstick Twitter feeds.  But she actually makes us feel like we’re not doing a good enough job of looking at Internet junk.  Like, she wants it more.  To us, her relative wealth would have led us to believe that she’d think of herself above the web fray, and instead of checking out the latest Sad Keanu photoshop job or post about spaghetti tacos she’d be using the New Yorker app on her iPad while sitting by the pool, possibly being fanned by a young Filipino boy.  Turns out that she’s not above the fray, but instead thoroughly in the midst of it, and we have a new-found admiration for her because of it.

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The best part is that Eliot played a few clips from How Can I Tell If I’m Really In Love, a full length PSA from 1986 that features Bateman (as well as Ted Danson) educating teenage girls about the evils tricks adolescent boys use get into their pants.  Eliot unearthed this time capsule when we were in high school, and we spent several nights watching the VHS in his parents’ basement, completely fascinated and confused (questions like: why did they insist everyone sit in such uncomfortable positions?  And: Is this a joke?), so it’s unbelievable to see Bateman watching and commenting on it now (although, she has little to no recollection of shooting it.  But we can’t really blame her for that).   See for yourself!

Speaking of Family Ties and things that blew our minds, let’s take this opportunity to remind you of this and this.

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Filed under Flashback!, Freak Out Control, Intersection of the venn diagram of things that I love, Interweb, Nostalgia Corner, Other people's stuff, Sha la la la

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2010/10/07 · 4:39 pm

Wait, Didn’t ‘SNL’ Do This Already? Like Twice?

EW reports that the lady ghosts of Saturday Night Live past will reunite on November 1 for “The Women of SNL,” a two-hour prime time tribute to such greats as Siobhan Fallon and Melanie Hutsell.  But wait, didn’t they already do this in May?  And then again two weeks ago?  Well, I guess SNL has shown time and time again that it’s never heard the term “too much of a good thing,” nor the phrase “You brought back Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch and Maya Rudolph for the Betty White episode last season and then again in this season’s premiere.  Don’t you think that’s enough?”  But we also know the show has no reservations about repeating itself.

Let’s hope the show, which will be comprised of old sketches as well as new material, will include some of these classics, and nothing with Gilly or Penelope or anything else terrible.

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Nora Dunn, Ana Gasteyer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Laraine Newman, Cheri Oteri, and Molly Shannon are also slated to return.  However, no word yet on Ellen Cleghorne.

But all kidding aside, where’s Jan Hooks on that Murderer’s Row-esqe lineup?  She was the best lady on there in the late 80s/early 90s and we’d love to see her go up against the youngins,  sort of like when Rocky fought Mason “The Line” Dixon.  And her appearances on 30 Rock weren’t enough to quench our Hooks-thirst, nor they did truly demonstrate her versatility.

Also crossing our fingers for Yvonne Hudson.

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2010/10/07 · 3:38 pm

‘The Office’: Who Are These People???

With a new The Office tonight, we wanted to repost, by itself, the Office then-and-now comparisons we included in last week’s recap. We felt it deserved its own moment in the sun.

The transformation of Dwight [in last week’s episode] reminded us of a troubling trend within the show itself.  While this episode showed Dwight being made over into a glasses-less, monochromatic tie-free aristocrat, The Office has to some degree been making over Dwight and its other characters over the course of its run.  Characters should grow and change and evolve, but it should always serve the story.  However, if you look at the physical appearances of the actors, they look more glamorous and polished now than they did at the start of the series, and not necessarily because the characters have improved their style.  It’s a concerning phenomenon, and we hope it doesn’t point to the actors themselves, the stars of the shows, objecting to the dour, depressing style that defined the early seasons of the show and its progenitor.  Behold, a side-by-side comparison:

Like we said, characters change, that’s a given.  Their looks, their hairstyle, their clothes, their personality all change.   We want that.  We don’t want static characters.  That’s lesson #1.  But, at the same time, it would be disappointing if the appearance of these characters is due in part to the actors’ vanity.  Are we seeing Jim Halpert or John Krasinski?  The UK original was known for its gritty look, an anti-network sheen, bordering on depressing.  And the first two seasons of the American version adhered to this (albeit in a less severe form), allowing for somewhat schlubby characters and grubby visuals (as much as network TV allows).  But over time that’s changed, and the show glistens now in a way it didn’t before.  And in some respects the storylines and tone have changed as well, gussied up and simplified.  Now the show doesn’t need to return to its original look, throw out the new wardrobe and ban make-up.  But it needs to remember where it came from.  And where it originally was going.

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2010/10/04 · 1:21 pm

My New Favorite Show: Don’t Cry For Me, Tony Danza

My new favorite show finally premiered this weekend, as A&E’s Teach: Tony Danza graced the airwaves after a year of waiting.  And it did NOT disappoint.

And, as we surmised, we were actually drawn in by Danza, because he’s taking this so darn seriously (now, that is a good thing.  The show would be no better than I Love Money if the celebrity teacher wasn’t taking his assignment in earnest).  We knew that he would approach his role with a total commitment, but we didn’t anticipate that he would be so emotional, so nervous, so insecure and fragile.  Here’s Tony Danza, star of screen, film and (tap) stage, former boxer, reduced to tears by a class of pimple-faced, metal-mouthed 10th graders.  It was hard not to feel for him, but it was as equally difficult not to empathize with the students, most of whom clearly feel that they’re smarter than their teacher (and we all remember enduring a teacher or professor who was obviously overwhelmed and over-matched, if we weren’t smarter than the instructor then we were at least more savvy and aware ).  But fortunately for Danza, and for the students, he’s not teaching math or science, or another subject where he could fumble the curriculum and critically damage their educational development.  Instead he’s teaching English, where it’s equally important to learn how to express yourself as it is to read The Chocolate War.  So, using his life experience, charisma, guile and tap-dancing skills, hopefully Danza can get his students to open up, to learn something about themselves.  Certainly, this is going to be a journey for Tony, and we’ll along for it.  The question is if his students will follow as well.  He should probably start by screening Who’s the Boss?, because apparently only Chloe, who is “a big fan of the 80s” is truly familiar with his oeuvre (also, chill with the hand sanitizer, Mr. D!).

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Looks thin though, doesn’t he?  And where’s that coif we’ve come to adore?  Does nothing stay the same?

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2010/09/30 · 6:25 pm

The Original ‘Jersey Shore’?????

A lot of television programs can take credit for somewhat inspiring MTVs STD-documentary The Jersey Shore – The Real World: Las Vegas, The Sopranos, The Real Housewives of NJ, Jon Bon Jovi, and, most notably, True Life: I Have a Summer Share – but is it possible that the show owes its greatest debt to an early 90s Fox sitcom?  Is Jersey Shore really just a reality show rip-off of Down the Shore?  Take a look and you decide:

Pretty open and shut case if you ask us.

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