Category Archives: Must See TV

2012/06/06 · 4:00 pm

Gratuitous Search Term Bait of the Day: A New Hope

Today’s Search Term is “Johnny Dakota,” which, of course, means you readers out there are looking for the Saved by the Bell episode “No Hope With Dope.”  And sure, we could give you a clip from that episode featuring fictional mega-hunk Johnny Dakota, played by dancer/choreographer Eddie Garcia, but that would be the easy way out.  We prefer to present you with a clip that offers the biggest guest star in the episode, the truly special guest star, NBC Chairman Brandon Tartikoff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO73-WlOHhM

By this point  – 1991 – Tartikoff had a habit of popping up in NBC shows as himself, or as a version of himself, and this was a particularly meta appearance where he posited the idea of an NBC sitcom about a principal and his students.  He ultimately ruled the idea out, but of course, that very idea was the show that he was on, one of a string of a hits on NBC under Tartikoff’s reign.  It does say something special about Saved by the Bell’s specific success that it inspired the network chairman to appear on a Saturday Morning teen show, which is decidedly a different hosting SNL, which Tartikoff did in 1983.  But always adept at self-promotion, Tartikoff knew an opportunity when it presented itself.

And speaking of promotion, you can read more about Tartikoff’s tenure at NBC in the new book Top of the Rock: The Rise and Fall of Must See TV, just like we did last week.  Written by Tartikoff’s protege and successor Warren Littlefield (well, more curated than written by), the book takes a look at NBC’s dominance in the 90s.  And while most of the tome focuses on the post-Tartikoff era at the Peacock, he was an important figure in shaping the network and laying the groundwork (Cheers, Cosby, Hill Street Blues, etc.) on which Must See TV was built.  It’s that perfect gift for anyone who likes to read oral histories but hates anything of substance.  But, be warned, there’s no talk of Saved by the Bell in the book, so you’ll have to rely on Behind the Bell for that.

Remember kids, say no to drugs! Or you could end up like Dustin Diamond.

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2012/05/23 · 3:21 pm

Must Flee TV: Community – The Twilight of the First Harmon Dynasty

Today we bring you the final entry in our “Must Flee TV” series, our thoughts on the end of ‘Community’ Season Three, and, well, the end of an era. 

Full disclosure: when we wrote our Dan Harmon obituary earlier this week we had not yet had the chance to view the final three Season Three Community episodes.  We felt comfortable going ahead with the in memorial post because there would be nothing in those final episodes of the Harmon run to change our opinion of his work and influence on Community.  Unless one of the episodes was a shot-by-shot remake of an unremarkable episode of Friends, he could do nothing to tarnish his legacy, and, actually, they probably could pull that episode off (and by Season Six he probably would have gotten to that too).  But, as it turned out, the show had still yet another level to go, there were still recesses of our mind left to blow.

Perhaps only when Fox burned off the last four Arrested Developments against the Olympics has viewing a block of episodes felt so bittersweet, such a painful joy.  But unlike the Arrested finale night, the last three episodes of Community left us with little closure, and much uncertainty.  If anything, we’re sadder now than we were at the end of Arrested (obviously we could not know that it would eventually come back on Netflix, and we would have been foolish to pin our hopes on such a thing, especially since Netflix was in its nascent stages then).  We know our show is coming back, but we don’t know in what form, if it’ll continue on the same genius path, if it’ll forge something new and different, or if it’ll be a morbid a shadow of itself, a crushing reminder of what was.

Up far ahead: Our top 5 episodes of the Dan Harmon Era…

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2012/05/22 · 4:38 pm

Must Flee TV: ’30 Rock’ Season Six – The Penultimate Warrior

This is the penultimate entry in our series of posts looking back at the NBC’s Thursday Night comedies.  Still to come is a brief review of the ‘Community’ finale (not to be confused with our already published thoughts on the show’s move to Friday nights and the exiling of Dan Harmon), but today we check-in on ’30 Rock.’ 

30 Rock is a curious case.  We’ve contended for years that it often is the funniest show on NBC Thursday nights.  That is to say that it contains the most laughs per minute ratio (lpms) of the four programs.  However, that has never necessarily been a compliment.  In fact – and you might be smelling a “but” coming – that proclamation has frequently preceded our criticism of the show, or, more often, been the central tenet of our negative remarks.  For much of the show’s six seasons it’s felt as if Tina Fey’s creation valued the laugh above all else, and sometimes praying at the altar of the almighty chuckle does not pay the dividends one expects.

More: Does ’30 Rock’ use Idea Balls?

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2012/05/21 · 12:46 pm

Must Flee TV: Last Exit to Harmontown AKA They Call it Show Business Not Show Art

In our discussion last week about Community‘s upcoming move to Friday nights we confidently predicted that, despite swirling rumors, we saw no reason why Dan Harmon would not return as Community showrunner.  Perhaps we should have been more precise with our diction.  What we meant was that we saw no reason why Harmon would choose not to return.  The idea that NBC/Sony would not bring him back never crossed our minds.  So while we still stand by what we wrote last week we were shocked and dismayed (like everyone else) when we learned over the weekend that Harmon was replaced as showrunner and essentially fired from his own show (however, unlike everyone else, we read the news on our phone during a bachelor party in Chicago, after sleeping off the night before).

More: examining the body, looking for a motivation…

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2012/05/17 · 4:38 pm

Must Flee TV: ‘Parks and Recreation’ – We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes

This week we’re checking in on NBC’s Thursday night comedies as they finish their respective seasons.  Today: ‘Parks and Recreation.’ 

Perhaps the greatest compliment you can offer Parks and Recreation is that it’s no longer referred to as the quasi-Office spin-off (ignore the fact that we just did that in the first sentence).  We’re now multiple seasons into an excellent run where Parks and Recreation has cast off the chains of its origins, found its own voice, become its own show, and surpassed its progenitor by all metrics save for Neislen ratings.  We still maintain that Community is the best show of the night, but Parks and Rec has not been behind by much, outpacing The Office during its second season.

At the end of Parks and Rec‘s brief, unimpressive first season, we laid out a plan for how the show could not only improve but excel, and we revisited this primer just prior to the start of the show’s brilliant third season.  We also presented three more key points as the show moved forward and they were as follows:

More: What do you with a problem like Rashida?

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2012/05/16 · 4:09 pm

Must Flee TV: Managing Expectations – An Uneven Season of ‘The Office’ Comes to the Close

This week we’re looking back on the just completed/completing seasons of NBC’s Thursday night comedies.  Today we check in the senior member of the team, ‘The Office.’ 

For quite some time we were religious with our Office recaps, but then two things happened 1) we were working a paid job more than full-time and 2) the show became, well, inessential.  We hoped to check-in during Steve Carell’s final season, but analyses was few and far between.  But even though we weren’t providing regular reviews, the series was still required viewing.  We might not follow-up the next morning with our thoughts, but we were still going out of our way to watch it Thursday night, as much out of habit as desire.  But this season, with Carell’s Michael Scott off to Colorado, the show became the least appealing, least critical member of the lineup.  Wait til Friday to watch Community?  We’d rather not.  Skip an episode of Parks  and Rec?  No way.  But go a week without watching the latest The Office?  Sure.  View an episode of Robert California’s Dunder Mifflin out-of-order?  Fine.  We just didn’t care that much anymore.

But a funny thing happened at the end of The Office’s eighth season.  We were actually invested.  We almost felt things, things that just nearly came close to approximating the real emotions that the show’s best seasons elicited.  For the first time all year, the series seemed to find its voice.

More: How Andy Bernard got his groove back…

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2012/05/16 · 11:15 am

NBC: Requiring Shots of Earth From Outer Space Since 1966

Doing our due diligence we’ve been watching the trailers for the new series picked up by the big four networks for their respective fall seasons.  Some have been promising, some dead on arrival, and others just somewhere in between.  But there was one – NBC’s new JJ Abrams sci-fi thriller Revolution – that particularly caught our eye.  However, it wasn’t the premise or the cast or the special effects that piqued our interest.  No, it was the last few seconds of the trailer, an insert of the title over a grand wide shot of earth from outer space that stuck with us.  We couldn’t shake the feeling that we’ve seen this before on NBC.  In fact, it appears that this is a well that NBC has been returning to for decades.  You hear a lot these days about how there are no new ideas, but this is a little excessive.

We’d suggest that there’s some kind of corporate conspiracy, or at least mandate, owing to NBC’s ties with Universal (the gold standard in spinning globes), but they didn’t merge under the same umbrella until 2004, so perhaps it is just a lack of imagination.

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2012/05/15 · 12:47 pm

Must Flee TV: Friday Night Fits – About ‘Community”s Move to Friday Nights

We’ve admittedly, regrettably, been remiss with our recaps and analysis of NBC’s Thursday night comedies.  There was a time when we provided weekly thoughts on ‘The Office’ (luckily our neglect kicked in just around the time when Friday morning post-mortems on that show would have been unbearable) and periodic temperature checks on ‘Parks and Recreation.’  With the season already complete for half of these shows, and the other two concluding their runs this week, we thought it was high time that we put aside some real estate to check in on these programs, starting today with a discussion about ‘Community’ (whose season (and not series) finale airs Thursday night (preceded by two other new episodes and the ’30 Rock’ closer).  

NBC announced their Fall 2012 pick ups last week and, despite lots of rumors and hand-wringing, Community will return for a fourth season.  That much wasn’t quite a surprise to us.  Could NBC have axed the criminally low-rated comedy?  Sure, and they would have the cold, emotionless Nielsen numbers to back it up.  But, at the same time, they know what they’re getting with Community.  Will it ever break out into a Friends or even These Friends of Mine sized hit?  Unlikely at this point.  But does it have a devoted, die-hard fan base?  Absolutely.  Attractive cast?  You bet.  A smart, discerning, relatively affluent audience?  We guess.  Close to reaching enough episodes for lucrative syndication?  Definitely.  So the renewal, especially for the 13-episode order it received, is not all that shocking to us.  What was unexpected, however, was the announcement at the NBC Upfronts that come this fall Community will be found on Fridays, as the lead-in to…Grimm?

Read on: Go ahead and step back from that ledge…

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2012/03/15 · 6:09 pm

The Return of ‘Community’: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Hiatus

Tonight brings us the long-awaited return our beloved Community, the show that is, if you ask us, far and away the funniest, most innovative show on television (or off television, as the last couple months would have it).  While we still had Parks and Recreation, and welcomed back 30 Rock with open arms, Thursday nights just weren’t the same without the Greendale study group, just not as magical.

However, even though we dearly missed the show, and do worry about its chronically low-ratings and tenuous chances of renewal, we were not in panic-mode like some others were over its benching.  First off, the show was not canceled, and even though there was no definitive return date when the hiatus was announced, there was never a doubt that it would return this season.  Even if the show pulls in dismal ratings (which it unfortunately does), it wouldn’t make much financial sense for NBC to produce a full season and then never air the back half.  It’s not like Community will fare much worse than any of their other comedies, save for The Office.  So the hiatus was not a punishment, or a really even a threat.  Just a business decision, one that NBC scheduling has now applied to Parks  and Rec, as that equally wonderful show takes a break til late April.

Keep reading: Why the hiatus was good for Community and good for us

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2011/01/26 · 12:17 pm

You Don’t Know What You Got ‘Til It’s Gone: Quick Thoughts On Last Week’s NBC Thursday Comedies

 

That’s how we felt about The Office.  As much as we’ve harangued the show this year for underusing or misusing Jim, rendering him no more than the Greek chorus, it turns out that we really need him.  Absent for the entire episode, save the cold open, we kept waiting for the camera to cut to him, to confirm the absurdity of the situation.  But he wasn’t there (Jon Krasinksi off shooting a movie, we assume), and without Jim to ground Michael’s insanity it was a runaway train.  Now, they could still cut back on some of the Jim reaction shots, but as long as Michael is around, we’ll need that balance.

Speaking of Michael, we’ll wonder if we’ll feel the same way when he’s gone.  Because, right now, we’re eager for him to get moving out of Dunder Mifflin.  The act has finally grown tiresome, and it often suffocates the other characters and the show.  We’re sure we’ll miss him, but that doesn’t mean we’ll want him back.  However, Kudos to Mindy Kaling and Craig Robinson for continuing your MVP seasons.

Parks and Recreation, welcome home!  Thank goodness you gave us that season two recap to get us back up to speed (we could have used that for The Office and 30 Rock as well, frankly), and it seems like you haven’t missed a beat.  We think it got a little too broad at times (Andy with April’s new boyfriend, for example), and the overuse of things like the “Ron Swanson Pyramid of Greatness” worry us, but it’s definitely picking up where it left off, as the second best show of the night.

Which brings us to Community.  Oh how we missed you!  And you were only gone for six weeks.  Don’t stay away that long ever again!  You guys came back from the Christmas break without any rust, setting up what we can only assume will be an even better second half of season two.  Looking forward to it.  KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK.

Oh, and Outsourced was awesome (jk!  jk!).

 

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