The Office

I’m actually excited about streaming something on Netflix!

/ Jared / Leave a comment
Netflix Instant Queue

Don’t let the title of this post fool you.  It’s not that I’ve never enjoyed streaming something through Netflix; that’s a feature I use regularly.  It’s just that it seems like nothing I’m ever really, really excited about watching is available.  I always decide I want to kill some time by streaming something and then struggle to find something worth watching, as opposed to deciding what I want to watch and then being pleasantly surprised by its instant availability.

That changed today with NBC Universal’s announcement that they’re going to allow Netflix to stream a ton of their content, including Battlestar Galactica, 30 Rock, The Office, Friday Night Lights, and, the kicker…

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The Office Lipdub

/ Jared / Leave a comment

Excited for tomorrow’s return of The Office? Not even a little bit? Man, you guys are a tough crowd. What about after watching this video?

[Update: The video I put up from Hulu expired, like, immediately after I posted it. And I can’t figure out how to embed from NBC.com. So here is a basic link to a worse, shortened version on their website. This is what failure feels like.]

[Second Update: I finally figured out how to embed video from places other than Hulu and YouTube!  So the video is now available below.  Plus, NBC put up the full version.  It’s like a pot and pan set double bonus!]

Vodpod videos no longer available.I have to admit that it makes me feel sort of sad and out of touch when The Office parodies an internet meme that I wasn’t even aware existed. At least with the wedding dance I got the reference.

The Emmys, 2010

/ Jared / 1 Comment

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Here we are again.  Another award show, another winner-picking competition between me and my new wife, Johanna.  And after slogging through a few shows that, while fun, were ultimately inconsequential (The ESPYs, The Daytime Emmys, and the MTV Movie Awards) we finally have a big one: The Emmys.

This has traditionally been my award show of choice; I’ve always been more of a television guy than a movie guy, I guess.  Plus, I don’t usually get around to seeing many of the nominated films before the Oscars, whereas I’m always pretty invested in the Emmys and opinionated about the categories.  It feels like the recent golden age of television has faded a bit, and my interest has waned slightly, but this remains my favorite masturbatory Hollywood event.

Tonight is big for Johanna, too.  My friend Alex, in anticipation of tonight’s competition, asked me if Johanna had won any of these.  I quickly said that yes, she had.  While I knew I had taken the last few, I thought we were actually pretty even.  Having gone back to check, though, I’m surprised to report that I won The Grammys, The Academy Awards, The MTV Movie Awards, The Daytime Emmys, and The ESPYs, with Johanna only claiming the Golden Globes, the first one of these we did.  I’m up five to one!  She needs a win.  In preparation, she’s been scouring the internet for expert predictions.

As always, we choose for the most part whom we think will win, not whom we want to win.  Never is that more true than with the Emmys; trust me, I’m no fan of The Good Wife or, heaven forbid, Glee.  Categories and winners are in bold.  Johanna has concocted an Emmy cocktail containing peach vodka, Sprite Zero, and a splash of grenadine.  She’s named it the “Leading Lady.”  It’s better, both in name and taste, than the drink she fixed us for the Daytime Emmys.  Let’s do this.

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7:41 – Taco night is over, the red carpet has begun, and I’m filling out my ballot.  All of these interviews are so unbelievably awkward and cringe-worthy.  I instinctively reach for the mute button.

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8:00 – Here we go.  We’re opening with a shot of the director’s booth.  This is such an ego move; it’s like they think we’ll assume the show was put together by elves if they don’t show themselves.  Johanna just thinks it’s hacky and compares it to starting a school paper with a Webster’s definition.

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The Office, Steve Carell, and Viewer Fatigue

/ Jared / 1 Comment

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News broke earlier in the week that Steve Carell is considering leaving The Office when his current contract is up at the end of next season, presumably to make more movies.  The reactions were swift, numerous, and oddly full of surprise.  Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch blog called the possible departure “notionally earth-shaking.”  I don’t really understand this.  The Office had only aired six episodes when The 40-Year-Old Virgin came out in 2005; I’m surprised they’ve managed to hold on to Carell as long as they have.  Whether or not he should leave, career-wise, is a different argument, but I’ve been anticipating his departure since season two and feel lucky to have gotten six seasons with a seventh to look forward to.  But this does raise a few questions.

If he leaves, will the show go on without him?

Short answer: without a doubt.

Alan Sepinwall has a great post about the situation, in which he points out that The Office, relatively modest hit that it is, is one of the few things NBC has going for it at the moment.  We all love the rest of the Thursday night NBC lineup, but those shows just don’t consistently pull ratings, and would be doing even worse if they didn’t surround The Office.  Take a look at NBC’s primetime schedule; it is pretty bleak.  They will milk The Office until it absolutely can’t go on.

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Characters, 2000-2009

/ Jared / 4 Comments

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This is sort of a vague list.  I’m not really sure what the qualifications were.  And it seems wrong that 19 of my 25 favorite characters of the decade are from television shows.  I obviously need to read more.  But, for whatever reason, these are the ones that really stuck with me.  Here are my 25 favorite characters of the decade:

25) Borat Sagdiyev (Da Ali G Show)

Frat guys turned Borat into this decade’s Austin Powers, and no one is really clamoring for Borat II at this point.  But the character is brilliantly conceived and led Sacha Baron Cohen into comedic territory that he never could have reached as Ali G.

24) Brian Griffin (Family Guy)

Even I am sitting here thinking this is a strange, possibly unworthy, choice for this list.  But I can’t stop laughing when they have Brian actually, you know, behave like a dog.  Like when he is afraid of the vacuum cleaner, or uncontrollably wags his tail.  A rare talking animal character that still, albeit rarely, acts like an animal.

23) Coach Eric Taylor (Friday Night Lights)

This character’s appeal is helped quite a bit by his relationship with his wife, but he’s on the list alone because he does just fine in the football scenes without her.  Friday Night Lights seems to have learned from the mistakes of past shows (I’m thinking specifically of The O.C.): when you have a married couple that serves as a solid foundation upon which to build everything else, do not screw with it.

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Television, 2000-2009

/ Jared / 4 Comments

This has been a great decade for television, so much so that the list of my favorite shows of the decade pretty much doubles as the list of my favorite shows of all time.  Other than Seinfeld and the nineties-era Simpsons, I’m struggling to think of a pre-2000 show that would make the cut.  It’s amazing how far television has come as a medium over the past ten years.  Anyway, here they are, not the best, necessarily, but my favorite shows, 2000-2009 (clips when available and appropriate):

30) Sealab 2021 (Adult Swim, 2000-2005)

A bizarre show for a bizarre decade.

(I couldn’t get the embed code from Adult Swim to work for my favorite clip for some reason, so here’s the link. If I can figure it out, I’ll fix it.)

29) Extras (HBO, 2005-2007)

It’s not The Office, obviously, and parts of the series finale were painfully earnest.  But Ricky Gervais (on television, at least) is always worth my time, and about half of the guest stars were hilarious.

28) The “House” Series (Frontier, Colonial, etc.) (PBS, 2000-2006)

It’s almost always entertaining to watch the types of people who sign up for reality television on PBS.  For instance, Michelle Rossi-Vorhees, of Colonial House, is simultaneously attempting to recreate the life of a female pioneer in 1628 while staying true to her 21st-century ideas about feminism and atheism.  In doing so, she basically undoes the premise of the show, but it makes for great drama, and the PBS veneer allows viewers to pretend that it’s not just a higher-class Wife Swap.  Very sad that there hasn’t been a new installment since 2006.

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