Break away from the traditional tea experience and discover with me some alternative ways to enjoy Matcha. Easy, nourishing, and delicious!

Don’t forget to check out http://therescue.invisiblechildren.com

http://facebook.com/pages/Tea-Time-Tuesday/72715766293

“Alright Guys, We’re At War!”

March 22nd, 2009

The worst kind of Amazing Race leg are the ones where nothing happens: the good teams are good, the annoying teams are annoying, and everything goes according to plan with the weak teams lagging behind and the strong teams rocketing forward. On the surface, this could seem like one of those episodes, where the leading teams don’t really change and where the outcome is one we could have predicted before the leg began.

But there’s been some subtle changes that have made this a better race to watch, and this leg continued that trend: teams that seemed to fade into the background before are becoming more distinct, while a team that was once impossible to watch has become more charmingly than frustratingly annoying. It’s not that the poverty and chaos of India immediately makes teams more likeable, and there’s a few instances of Ugly Americanism, but something about these teams are making them a really competitive and interesting group to watch.

So, despite nothing major going down, a building leg for the race.

India always brings out the tears, so it’s no surprise that after the bunching at the airport (teams left in the middle of the night, and were on the same flights all the way to Jaipur) the teams began to encounter things they hadn’t seen in Siberia. The extreme poverty was one of the recurring themes of the night, and while there’s been enough seasons of the Race that we’re used to seeing it the players aren’t, and it shows. Luke in particular breaks down at what they’re seeing, and I really wish that Margie’s logical but annoying insistence on narrating his emotions would have been edited out: he doesn’t need speech to explain those feelings, period.

It’s no surpise that Mel and Mike are the ones who seem to interact best with the culture, or at least with the most awareness: they observe during the Detour, as they are shaking their way for money on the streets, that there is a sad irony of such generous and energetic people being so wracked with poverty. Jaime and Cara are similarly shaken by the thought of livestock without anything to eat, but those attitudes didn’t ring true to their actions: doing the roadblock, Jaime is angry that the local won’t explain to her how to do the task because he doesn’t speak English (as opposed to, you know, because she should be capable of reading the clue she was given).

Mel and Mike just keep skyrocketing up my list of favourite Amazing Race teams – Mel’s “brains before brawn” conquering of the Roadblock, suffering mightily through the water portion of the challenge before surging ahead by being the first to realize that a bucket is not a traditional method for transporting hay in any culture on Earth, was one of those moments where we’re seeing genuine human perseverence, and Mike’s pride in his father was downright empowering. Yes, Mike had been doubtful of his chances, but so was Mel: they were being realistic, which is what Mel notes he likes about Mike. He knows his father struggles, but rather than getting angry he accepts the speed they need to travel and warns him about sand or about any potential concerns. Their moment at the mat, when Mel notes how his son’s descriptions of his Roadblock performance was worth more than a million dollars, pretty much guarantees that win or lose I will tear up when their race is done.

Christie and Jodi’s loss here was predictable, but I felt they took it well: both admitted that this wasn’t about the money, with one trying to prove capable of adventuring before having a family and the other proving to her daughter that she could do anything, which is how you want teams to leave. We’re getting to the point where teams can honestly say the Race changed them in a way, so the narratives are becoming stronger. We never got a really strong personal sense for Jodi and Christie, but they fought to the end and didn’t lose because of sheer stupidity – that’s something to be proud of. The Speed Bump was ultimately their undoing, coming too late in the leg for there to be transportation issues to stand in their way.

Tammy and Victor’s dominance of the leg makes them out to be another Nick & Starr, and while I found last season’s winners more fun to watch I don’t actively dislike this team as I did in Romania, or even the week after. They are not a great team, being a bit sheltered, but their narrative of coming out of their ancestral shadow and into more diverse life roles is emerging, and Victory is certainly being better to Tammy even if I want him to be less obnoxious at the same time.

The other teams, even, are just becoming easier to watch. Kisha and Jen are the type of team who never complains about a task, which is better than those who whine all the time, and I see them continuing to do fairly well as the Race continues. Mark and Michael, meanwhile, are becoming a laughing stock: choosing the physical task in that instance made absolutely no sense, considering it combined physicality and “elephant in the haystack,” and the fact that they took that long doing it shows a fundamental problem with their race strategy. They need to pick up the pace, as this is not the first time their struggles have placed them near the bottom of the pack.

So, a close leg (more caravans of idiots than you could count!), and one that brought the teams into clearer view, makes for a good leg at this stage of the Race.

Cultural Observations

• Jodi and Christie got unlucky early (having the only cab to stop for gas on the way), but that seemed to be the only thing that put them behind – they were actually 6th coming out of the Detour, though, so it’s not clear whether their cabbie was just slower or whether Mark and Michael’s Detour finish point was at a more accessible location compared to the Pit Stop. Either way, it was close, so the Speed Bump being gone would have likely kept them in the Race.
• Enjoyed that Tammy went against the grain in being excited about India; somewhat less enjoyed that it was only because she knew it would be warmer there.
• I’m with Jaime and Cara: if I moved to India, I would too buy the “Rockinest” horn ever. If that was Cara who said this, it was her second madeup word of the episode, so I’m glad they’re starting to become kind of distinct personality wise.
• Not much major camel drama, but did you SEE the guy in the background of a shot get kicked like three feet by a camel? It was awesome. The only other major camel shot was the rather great shot of Kisha standing directly beside the camel reading her clue, and then reacting to the camel’s insistence on a personal space bubble.
• I may have thought Margie’s narration ruined Luke’s emotional moment in the cab, but have to note that the editors did a great job of giving some idea of what it would be like to complete the “Shakers” part of the Detour while deaf. The dialogue about Luke dancing by using his eyes, holding back while his Mother handled the task, was one of those things that I hadn’t thought of going into the task, and made me reconsider things – I like that it was a small moment, and not an entire episode’s narrative, which is the way it should be presented – kudos, editors.

“316″

February 18th, 2009

“We’re all convinced sooner or later, Jack.”

There is a point in “316″ where Ben tells Jack the story of Thomas the Apostle, a man who is best known for doubting Jesus’ resurrection. What we take from Ben’s explanation is that Thomas was a brave man, who stood up for Jesus during his life and was unwilling to back away from threats against him. And yet, he isn’t known for that: he is known for not believing, for not welcoming Jesus back into this world under circumstances that he couldn’t grasp immediately. While he did eventually believe once he felt Jesus’ wounds with his own hands, that doubt has defined his existence.

In many ways, “316″ is a study of Jack Shepherd’s willingness to believe, and whether or not fate and history will remember him as the person who rebuffed John Locke when he first came to Jack off the island or as the person who eventually became a believer and got on Ajira Airways Flight 316 in order to return to the island. The same pattern goes for the rest of the Oceanic Six: are the decisions they made, the sacrifices they take in order to go back to the island, enough to overcome the fact that they ignored Locke when he first came to them? They were all convinced, sooner or later, to return, but where they sit on that timeline could be very important to their futures.

What this week’s episode, scripted by Lost overlords Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, doesn’t do is give us the ability to answer these questions, presenting a labyrinth that is complex not because of some sort of twisted time warp but rather because we are still missing parts, human parts, of this story. While we got to see what brought Jack to the end of this episode, we do not yet understand the context of the letter he receives, or how the rest of the Oceanic Six resolves this conflict. These questions aren’t going to be solved by Mrs. Hawking spouting off techno-babble, but rather an investigation into these characters, their motivations, and the kinds of questions that have formed the foundation of the series since its opening.

Perhaps its fitting, then, that we begin this episode the same way we began the pilot, a close-up of Jack’s eye as he wakes up in a whole new world for the second time.

There is no question that, if there is any character that has no surprised left in him, it is Jack Shepherd. He’s always been shockingly consistent as a character, driven by a need to help people but tormented by the demons of addiction. For that reason, it might seem strange to follow the journey of the Oceanic Six back to the island from his perspective, when he for the most part is completely on board: we have seen Jack as the believer all this time, so while he has his reasons to question Mrs. Hawking’s elaborate explanation it isn’t surprising that he ignored Desmond’s warnings and got on that plane. While the connection to his late father was still a source of some trauma for Jack, leading him to drink when he returned to his apartment, it was something that he almost had to do: you feel like Jack actually leaves his life in something approximating equilibrium when he leaves for the island, his off-island existence never offering him an alternative powerful enough to make him torn between the two.

While Jack’s journey might be the most simple in the episode, it is nonetheless one that requires further explanation: while he might now be Jack the Believer, willing to follow Ben and Mrs. Hawking to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, he wasn’t at one point. He, like everyone else, rebuffed Locke when he came to them, and the revelation that Locke committed suicide and left Jack his suicide note raises a lot of questions for Jack. The content of that letter, “I wish that you had believed me,” is like Locke speaking from beyond the grave, telling Jack that unlike Thomas the Apostle he shouldn’t have had to see Locke dead in that coffin before waking up to the truth. We have yet to see what it was exactly that went down between these two that would lead Locke to leave that letter, but Jack seems to have turned a corner, and is more than willing to hop on that plane.

This wasn’t actually supposed to be so much of a mystery in reality: this was actually supposed to be the season’s seventh episode, as opposed to its sixth, before Lindelof and Cuse switched them around in post-production. The reason isn’t yet clear, but this is perhaps its biggest immediate impact: as next week is going to tell us of the many adventures of “Jeremy Bentham” once he got off the island, if those had come first perhaps we would have seen this as less of a mystery and more a sort of tragic question of blame that came over Jack. The element of mystery worked for the episode, though, because it kept Jack’s story from being all pieced together nicely.

Because, as Jack says when Sun shows up at the airport, he didn’t expect that she or anyone else would be there, them having reconsidered the insanity of it all. When he sees Kate come around that corner, he seems relieved; when Sayid is escorted through security by what we can presume to be a U.S. Marshall, Jack is perplexed. When Hurley is at the gate, Jack is downright confused. The only person he seems actively prepared to see is Ben, who even then was a possible no-show considering his last minute phone call (although we’ll get to the reliability of Ben in a few moments). Jack, then, really isn’t a true believer at all: while he’s forcing himself to believe, he doesn’t believe enough in it to think that everyone else will be able to come around in the same fashion.

Who can blame him, though? When we last left Kate, for example, she was rushing away from Jack and Ben at the docks, Aaron in the car beside her. When we see her next, she is curled in the fetal position in Jack’s bed, having broken into his apartment, asking that he never ask her about Aaron ever again and then sleeping with him after informing him that she is coming with them to the island after all. The last we saw of Sayid, he was walking away from Ben and Jack with similar feelings about this entire scenario, and yet all of a sudden he’s on the plane recreating Kate’s role from Oceanic 815, arrested and being escorted to Guam. Hurley was in jail when we last saw him, and yet now he’s here with a guitar in hand and a spanish-language copy of Y: The Last Man in the most blatant attempt at recreating the scenario of that fated flight.

The episode is ultimately about one giant leap from the Point A of reality to the Point B of the metaphysical, time-sensitive location of the island, a trip planned by Eloise Hawking from The Lamp Post, another Dharma station built in Los Angeles that was designed by a man (unidentified in the episode) who believed that searching for the island was fruitless unless they could predict where it was going to be. The opening of the episode is a boatload of exposition about this new Dharma station, with Mrs. Hawking explaining the rules to everyone involved: there is a flight from Los Angeles to Guam that travels through the coordinates that the pendulum, operating on an electromagnetic anomaly much like the Swan and the Orchid, and the series of equations has predicted, and they are to get on that flight and recreate their initial journey to the island as closely as possible. If they don’t, of course, things will get mighty unpredictable.

One of the episode’s best elements is Desmond’s speech to Hawking, an angry and justified frustration with her entire spiel. He knows two things about Hawking: that he was told by Daniel Faraday that the people on the island needed her help, and that she was the one who told him to go to the island initially and as a result was responsible for much of his own life’s turmoil. Reconciling these things isn’t easy, and when Hawking’s plan actually appears to place his friends into danger as opposed to lead them to safety, Desmond quite rightly questions her. Her message to him does little to eliminate his concerns: she tells him that the island isn’t done with him yet, not exactly the answer he was looking for, and he gives Jack advice that Sayid gave to Hurley earlier this season about Ben. He tells Jack that they’re all pieces in her game, in “their” game, and that he shouldn’t listen to a word that she says.

But I get the sense that the reason all of these people eventually get onto that plane has very little to do with Hawking’s confusing, equation-filled plan, and much more to do with the depths of human nature and their own personal struggles. Desmond’s warning is to us as much as it is to Jack: we’re not just supposed to get caught up on the time travel aspect that has thus far driven this season, but rather focusing on what it’s doing to these characters and what it takes for them to become believers, for them to take the leap of faith (as Hawking puts it) in order to get on that plane. We’ve already seen what it took for Sun, he decision to get on the plane having everything to do with a chance to see her husband again, the belief that he could be alive powerful enough to make her into a believer.

The episode, however, quite purposefully leaves out what drove the others to be there. We are missing four pieces of this particular puzzle, and none of them will be solved by complicated algorithms or anything of the sort. The thing which drove Kate to be on that plane is an unseen force of human nature, some sort of trauma or event that has very little to do with the show’s mythology and much more to do with her character’s journey. How, precisely, Sayid was driven to become a believer and get himself arrested in order to get on that plane is a total mystery that likely has more to do with his own personal drive to avenge his wife’s death or his reasons for joining with Ben in years past than it does with the current events at hand. And we’re still entirely unclear how Hurley, who clearly had no idea that Ben was even involved in these plans, managed to have the memo about recreating the flight so clearly defined that he packed all of those things, bought all of those seats, and was so calm and prepared for what was about to happen.

I think this is definitive proof, at the very least, that we’re returning to a format for the show that will strike many as much more familiar. We were once fascinated with what happened to these people before they got onto Oceanic 815, what their lives were like, and now we’re preoccupied with many of the same questions. This time around, however, the solutions are far more complicated: there were a lot of huge leaps there, and the tantalizing questions are much less broad and open to interpretation. While some of the backstories did eventually become tedious, feeling for some characters that we were out of interesting periods of their lives to investigate, I don’t think anyone will argue that the 36 hours we’re missing from these people’s lives aren’t an extremely compelling question on which to focus the next stage of the season.

Of course, we must remember that Ben is not the same as everyone else, and that his missing period of time is even more intriguing in some ways. How did he become injured: was it in an attempt to kill Penny, successful or unsuccessful? Regardless, he was a bag of lies in the entire episode: I loved the moment where Hawking responded to Jack’s question of whether Ben was lying about being aware of the Lamp Post’s existence with a very simple “Meh, he’s probably lying.” When he asked Jack to go pick up Locke’s body, was this actually because he couldn’t do it himself or was it just because he wanted Jack to have to completely recreate his journey with his father on 815, and he didn’t trust Jack enough to do it when someone else could? If Jack is the character we understand the most, predictable and reliable as ever in situations like this one, Ben is the one whose only predictable quality is his dishonesty, making his missing hours perhaps the mystery I most want to see solved.

As a whole, though, the episode operated as a crescendo, beginning with what seemed like a fairly mundane Jack story (his trip to his Grandfather’s retirement home, in particular) but by episode’s end we felt what we were supposed to feel: sure, we knew from the very Abrams-esque opening that Kate, Jack and Hurley were going to reach the island, but was anyone who has watched this show for five seasons not in some way affected when that plane began to shake, and when Michael Giacchino’s score began to rise as that which happened before happened again? As the action on screen called back to the very first episode, you begin to realize that we are in many ways circling back to where we began: by the time you factor in the little nods to the show’s legacy, including the rather great realization that Frank Lapidus (Jeff Fahey) is piloting Flight 316, we’re experiencing Lost as its most effective and perhaps even its most thrilling.

By the time they got to the end of the episode, as Jin emerges from the VW Dharma van wearing one of the Initiative uniforms and pointing a rifle at our heroes, I began to realize just how complicated this is all going to become: we now have a whole new host of mysteries to flash back to, periods of time that are lost, but it is clear that there is also time that we’ve missed on the island itself since we left our castaways in last week’s episode. But it’s not a science fiction complicated anymore: the island appears to have settled itself, everyone is back in the same zip code, it’s just that the reasons they’re there, and how those reasons came to be, now becomes the question.

And, much like Thomas the Apostle, we have to decide whether they will be defined by their initial doubt or whether, in the end, their own personal process for becoming believers is enough to define them differently in our eyes. Or, for that matter, in the island’s.

Cultural Observations

• I’m really curious to see what we learn next week as we flash back further to the final days of Jeremy Bentham, and I’m even more curious to reconsider the events in this week’s episode with that knowledge. Will the knowledge of how/why Locke killed himself change how we view Jack in this episode? And will it perhaps give some foundation to the eventual reveals of why everyone else ended up heeding his advice and returning to the island? Those are questions we’ll have to ask next week, as “316″ really doesn’t give us many hints considering it was always meant to play after it.
• Not only was the spanish comic book a call back to the original flight (Walt having found the comic book with the polar bear amongst the plane’s wreckage), but it was also a copy of Y: The Last Man, the comic book written by current Lost staff writer Brian K. Vaughan.
• My brother points out that Ben was even lying in one of his witty retorts: when he sarcastically responds to Jack’s question of “how can you read?” with “My mother taught me,” it’s impossible considering that his mother died in child birth.
• Another definite callback: the magic show at the retirement home with its rabbit was certainly referencing Ben’s previous magic tricks with white rabbits.
• One would have to presume that the other first class passenger, who was actually given lines in the episode, might well survive and become another castaway: I haven’t read any casting noticed to know for sure, but he both got to talk to Jack about his dead relative and had Hurley remind him to buckle his seat belt.
• Speaking of those final moments, Jack and Hurley have a conversation where they question something: they didn’t seem to crash, as far as they can tell, just suddenly emerging from the white light into their various positions in the jungles of the island. If the plane didn’t crash, what happened to the rest of its passengers, and how exactly does this whole re-entry thing work? The episode backgrounded these types of questions in favour of more human-driven ones, but methinks they’ll come back into the forefront in two weeks time.
• Anyone else enjoy the irony of Ben, faced with the stress of waiting to see whether this highly convoluted and complicated situation works as planned, finds light reading material in James Joyce’s Ulysses?

Rock Out at Staines

Overthrow
Feb 12 2009
Hobgoblin
Staines
With: MR KAMIKAZE + THE NEW ASSASSINS

Overthrow are a 4 piece band from Guildford in the UK. They have been playing together for about two and a half years. Throughout the last year they have been gigging across the country, and also recording a new six track EP “So Much Power, So Little Time” which is OUT NOW!!

Lots of energy and motivation is guaranteed… so come and see ‘em!

————————————————

See the ADPONTES Review of the NEW ASSASSINS here…one of STAINES favourite bands!

2.

Classic Rock & Heavy Metal – Staines

Raw Glory
Feb 15 2009
Dog & Partridge
Staines

Raw Glory is Ronnie Garrity (bass), Paul Manzi (vocals), Mick Underwood
(drums), Cosmo (guitar)…

Over many years Mick Underwood has played, toured and recorded with a host of artists as diverse as  Paul Rodgers (Free and Bad Company). Some of the bands he was a member of include The Outlaws, The Herd (with Peter Frampton), Episode Six, Quatermass, Peace, Strapps, Gillan (with 4 Top 20 albums, 2 of which were Top 3), Quatermass II and so on… as well as far too many recording sessions to remember, let alone list in their entirety.

Cosmo toured extensively in the UK and US with The Heavy Metal Kids, and then Curtis Knight & the Squires (a former member of Jimi Hendrix’ pre-Experience band). He has also worked with Frankie Miller, Andy Fraser (Free), Lionel Morton (The Four Pennies), David Jack (East Of Eden), Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy), Brian Connolly (Sweet) and the legendary Jordanaires (Elvis’ backing group) – the list is endless!

www.myspace.com/rawgloryrock

3.

Rock, Soul & Country  - Shepperton

Micky Kemp
Band
Feb 14 2009
Barley Mow
Shepperton

Micky Kemp writes the songs, plays rythmn geetar and sings,

His devastating good looks and charm have made him a big hit with the over 70′s and under 5′s, it seems to have failed miserably on all points between.

He is ably assisted by One of the UK’S great guitarists, Ex Ian Hunter etc etc Darrell Bath. Darrell sings a bit too and plays lead guitar, a master of understated playing and tone perfection, Dazza loves playing guitar, drinking and british sitcoms, he can be found most evenings watching George and Mildred.

Link:

www.myspace.com/mickykempband

4.

Stunning Jazz & Latin Singer – Live in Ascot

Trudy Kerr
Feb 15 2009
Jagz
Ascot

Trudy has been singing at JAGZ for more than ten years. A very versatile singer who has entertained our Saturday revellers as well as the more serious jazzers on a Sunday. She now prefers the more serious side of the business and is only working the major jazz clubs in town or on tour.

Her musicians with her at the JAGZ show are Michael Garrick, piano, Geoff Gascoyne, bass, and Sebastion De Krom, drums.

Sunday, 15th February
Show will start at 1pm to 3.30pm
Ticket cost: £6.00
Special offer, entrance and roast lunch £12

Link:

www.myspace.com/trudykerr

5.

Awesome Classic Rock Covers Band – in Windsor

Netherworld
Feb 13 2009
Old Ticket
Hall
Windsor

Fronted by the amazingly talented Jason Stretch on vocals and guitar, backed by the brilliant bass playing and vocals of Paul Smith and the dynamic drumming of Ian Roberts, NETHERWORLD ROCKS. Covering the best classic rock songs known to this planet, you will not fail to be impressed by the superbly tight musicianship of these three heavyweight players … Previous gigging and recording credits include; Steve Harris(Iron Maiden) Hal Lindes(Dire Straits) Neil Murray (Whitesnake/Black Sabath/Queen)… check the ADPONTES-STAINES live review here.

THE OLD TICKET HALL, WINDSOR, SL4
Cost: £3
+ DJ PLAYING 80’s & 90’s HITS – BAR OPEN TILL 2AM

Link:

http://www.myspace.com/netherworldrock

Other local dates for NETHERWORLD fans:

Mar 1 2009      5:00P The Dog & Partridge     Staines
Mar 7 2009      8:00P  Hounslow Staff Social Club    

-Visit AdPontes-Staines Regularly for Staines Arts-

Raw Glory have uploaded some new tracks onto their MySpace site, including Only the Night, Man’s World, White Lies…

They also have some new West London / Middlesex / Surrey dates:

Feb 14 2009      10:00P  The Rising Sun, Slough

Feb 15 2009     6:00P      The Dog & Partridge, Staines

Apr 10 2009     9:00P     The Cardinal Wolsey, East Molesey

May 30 2009     9:00P    The Windsor Castle, Carshalton

Raw Glory is Ronnie Garrity (bass), Paul Manzi (vocals), Mick Underwood
(drums), Cosmo (guitar)…

Over the following years Mick Underwood has played, toured and recorded with a host of artists as diverse as  Paul Rodgers (Free and Bad Company). Some of the bands he was a member of include The Outlaws, The Herd (with Peter Frampton), Episode Six, Quatermass, Peace, Strapps, Gillan (with 4 Top 20 albums, 2 of which were Top 3), Quatermass II and so on… as well as far too many recording sessions to remember, let alone list in their entirety. Cosmo toured extensively in the UK and US with The Heavy Metal Kids, and then Curtis Knight & the Squires (a former member of Jimi Hendrix’ pre-Experience band). He has also worked with Frankie Miller, Andy Fraser (Free), Lionel Morton (The Four Pennies), David Jack (East Of Eden), Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy), Brian Connolly (Sweet) and the legendary Jordanaires (Elvis’ backing group) – the list is endless!

www.myspace.com/rawgloryrock
Stumble It!

Learn about Beuteltieres Marketing activities. How Beuteltiere will be attractive for their cients.

Individual episodes cost £1.89 to download, or £11.34 for all six. (To use the service, you will need to download the free iTunes client and register an iTunes account).

Survivors - available for purchase on iTunes

The series one DVD will be released for sale on 26 January 2009.

(2 January update: Although all Survivors episodes have now been withdrawn from the main iPlayer, episode six is still available from the BBC Survivors mini-site until 5 January. This version is the one with in-screen sign-language).

The release is listed for pre-order on Amazon; the BBC shop, and on other online retailers. The listed price is £29.99, though several retailers are discounting this to less than £18.00 (for pre-order).

The (unconfirmed) list of ‘special features’ on the release are as follows:

• Making of Survivors
• Character Profiles
• Survivors Special Effects Featurette
• Easter Egg

***SPOILERS*** Please note that this link reveals significant plot spoilers

“Oh Oh Oh…It’s Magic”

November 19th, 2008

With production on the thirteenth episode of its second season completed last week, Pushing Daisies has officially completed all episodes ordered by ABC. This is an alarming fact that hasn’t been lost on fans of the series, and they’re (justifiably) hoping that tonight’s episode brings a solid ratings bump and a chance for a third season (or, even, the order of more episodes for the Spring). As someone who is very much a fan of this series, I count myself amongst them: my fingers are crossed for tomorrow moning. Call it a cliche, but we’re hoping for a little bit of magic.

“Oh Oh Oh…It’s Magic” is actually a really interesting study for the show, and poses a question to this particular critical eye: is it the fanciful locations and atmospheric qualities that give Pushing Daisies its magical quality, or is it the characters who populate this world who have such pure and human emotions that magic spontaneously erupts when they’re on screen? While Fred Willard’s guest appearance as an illusionist (“The Great Herrmann”) and the world of magic offer some points of interest, the season has had better locations (in particular, the monastery and the circus exploded off the screen in ways that the claustrophobic stage just doesn’t).

Instead, this first episode back from a three week hiatus finds the show leaning on its characters, finding its emotion in their humour (Emerson and Olive) as well as their own tragic pasts (Ned and Chuck’s parent troubles). While there have been some who have called this one of the show’s best episodes yet, I felt somewhat more lukewarm about it. Until it kicks into gear in the third act, where the emotions finally overflow into a very exciting and meaningful conclusion, it was what Pushing Daisies always is: a show that finds magic in procedural mystery, and one that we hope continues to do so for a long time to come.

I think what turns me off about this episode (And, to be honest, parts of “Dim Sum, Lose Some”) is the claustrophobic sense of scale that is often employed by the show. While I know that budgets need to be controlled, and that this episode’s real interest was in its characters, there are times when I feel like we’re never given time to breathe. This isn’t to say that the sets were bad, or that the episode’s setting wasn’t within the show’s wheelhouse, but something about it didn’t feel as visually appealing as some of the show’s other episodes.

It made up for it, however, in terms of our magic specific jokes, especially those from Emerson and “The Great Herrmann” (“My foot will disappear up your-,” the CEMENTIA pun, etc.) Amrie over at MyTakeOnTV has an interview with Fred Willard about the role, and it’s clear that he got to have a lot of fun with it. Headlining at the Conjurer’s Castle, Hermmann is a surrogate father for Ned’s half-brothers, and therefore a point of contention in Ned’s own navigation of his father’s departure (and his acid reflux-causing magic flashbacks). That someone is planning to kill him didn’t really offer anything to the storyline, to be honest: his death is more a device to make Ned consider his half-brothers and what happened to them in a new light, and to realize that he would have to take on the responsibility that the Great Herrmann had (although, of course, setting some boundaries early on for his own sake).

But there’s just something that didn’t click for me, and I don’t know what it is. Chuck had her great storyline of crank calling Lily trying to get her to admit to being a mother (including some great accent work by British-born Anna Friel), Emerson had plenty of great magic-related one-liners, Olive was placed into mortal danger and had that great moment where she looked over her shoulder for a reciprocal moment of cuteness and found Emerson instead of Chuck, and we even got more Digby than we’ve had in a while (and who was especially charming when in between the twins as they were talking to Ned about their father). What’s not to like about an episode that does all of this, you ask? Well, I can’t tell you, because I don’t have the answer either.

The one thing that really fell together for me was the final act, but getting to that point didn’t feel particularly novel to me. Mr. Dixon’s arrival to find Lily and Vivian felt natural enough, but the pocket watch excuse was in and of itself quite contrived in order to reach the quite compelling final scene as we realize that he is going to dig up Chuck’s grave and find no one inside. While Olive’s great pose after our perpetrator (whose name I don’t even know) was flung down below the stage, were exciting, and I thought that how it was achieved (and the foreshadowing with the magnet) was quite clever, I guess it felt like it was so lacking in meaning compared to the actual storyline with Ned and his brothers that I never really felt it.

And perhaps I felt the same about the moment when Chuck finally gets to hear the story of her birth, an absolutely stunning scene as Ned gives her what she’s always wanted, and they meet each other through their car barrier and have a highly emotional moment of love without being able to touch one another. This is the show’s emotional calling card, and isolated from the rest of the episode it was decidedly memorable. However, something about the rest of it just never clicked with me: it was clever, there were some great one-liners, but I never felt that it was there conceptually.

This being said, I’m fully aware that this is not the concensus, and I’m willing to chalk this one up to being exhausted when I watched the episode last night; please, enlighten me on its genius, I hope I will come around eventually.

Cultural Observations

• My one absolutely gleeful moment was when the phrase “Sorry about your Next Best Thing Magic Dad” was uttered; it was such a brilliant obsernation, and I’m hoping someday that someone will give me a magic card with that phrase on it.
• My other favourite moment was probably Emerson’s entire interactions with Herrmann – these were the two that really worked well together, especially Emerson’s half-assed volunteering. I also greatly enjoyed Hermmann’s “I’m not made of hugs” rebuffing of Olive’s attempt at human contact. You know, the more I think about individual moments the more I thought of this episode as a whole.
• It didn’t make a lot of sense for Olive to be in a lot of this episode, but it was great to have her and Chuck be the chorus of excitement and belief in magic while Ned has his “Father-related bodily fluids isues” and Emerson gets to be his cantankerous self. I think I wanted the balance to be found between the personal tragedies and this kind of playful banter, and it was a bit out of whack in this episode.

“It Ain’t Easy Being J.D. McCoy”

November 5th, 2008

In our new era of highly serialized television, we have vilified predictability. We want to be shocked, surprised, knocked off our feet by revelations and swept up in complex storylines that twist and turn every which way. However, evidence shows that execution becomes a much larger concern when one gets caught up in walking off the beaten path: look at what has happened to a show like Heroes, one that is so obsessed with being unpredictable that a lack of logic has become, well, predictable.

So when I say that Friday Night Lights’ third season has been preditable, I don’t want you to look at it as something with negative connotations, at least not entirely. See, I won’t argue that predictable can be bad: last week’s episode of Friday Night Lights, even, was predictable to a fault, retreading old storylines that were not all that interesting to begin with. I speak more of the fact that, now almost halfway through the shortened 13-episode season, I don’t feel as if anything has snuck up and surprised me yet.

But do we really need to be surprised when a show is operating at such a high level? While the various events of this week’s episode have been long foreshadowed by the show’s trajectory, the payoff was exactly what we were looking for; the fact that I “called” the character of J.D. McCoy during his silence of early episodes does not mean I didn’t enjoy seeing it, and the sheer inevitability of the episode’s romantic climax was handled with such grace that it’s yet another powerful emotional moment for a season that’s had more than a few.

The real surprise for Friday Night Lights these days is that it isn’t trying to surprise us, and yet here I am sucked in more than ever; I just hope that, considering the show’s past attempts to surprise us with homicide, they’re content with dramatically satisfying predictability and don’t feel the need to shake the boat too much.

I have been convinced from the very beginning that there was no way the show was going to portray J.D. McCoy as anything but an oppressed, soft-spoken, socially inept freshman clearly unprepared for the non-athletic qualities of playing as QB1 of the Dillon Panthers. The way they built up to this moment has been, for me, a clear sign of this: by not giving him any screentime at all, and letting his father do all of his talking, we as the audience are able to empathize with the situation he finds himself in. Here’s this kid whose father is bribing the coach to get him some playing time, and who bursts into the locker room (the LOCKER ROOM) in order to escort him out so that he can go to Applebee’s (APPLEBEE’S [Beads?]) with his parents. I know that he’s only fifteen, but at the same time I think that the show has demonstrated through a slow build that being J.D. McCoy, success be damned, is not in fact easy.

While it would have been possible for the show to then reveal that J.D. was a complete jerk who has no respect for his father, Jeremy Sumpter just doesn’t look like he could play that kind of character. With really his first acting showcase (hell, speaking showcase) of the season, Sumpter was strong at displaying in J.D. a crippling level of self-awareness. It’s not that J.D. is naive – he knows what the normal high school football culture is like, and I think he knew what happened at parties. Rather, J.D. is so consumed by what his father has told him, what his father would think of him, and what he knows people expect of him that he isn’t willing to accept any alternate paths at first glance. When Riggins dropped him off at home after their awesome tour, he knew that Coach Taylor had put Riggins up to it, but he (for perhaps the first time) chose to believe that Riggins was befriending him.

I’ve read from both Daniel Fienberg at Zap2it and Alan Sepinwall that this storyline echoes quite carefully a story of a father who conditioned his son (Todd Marinovich) to be an NFL Quarterback and that his son proceeded to rebel strongly against him (Wikipedia for more information). I don’t think that the show has time to get to that point this season, but I do think that we started to see some actual real-life choices made by J.D. in this episode. At what point that could start affecting his play on the field, though, is something we haven’t seen yet: one episode does not give us a clear indication of how much we’ll be focusing on J.D.’s personal life in the future, but I do have to think that we’ll be seeing more of him in the weeks ahead.

I thought, though, that his scenes with Riggins were really strong, and made me forget how ridiculous it seems that Tim has gone from being competitive for college scholarships to being able to handle football, buddying up to J.D. and his house remodeling project while still in school. Riggins has been asked to do a lot this season: he’s taken over the role as leader on the Panthers, he’s struck up a meaningful and mostly drama-free relationship with Lyla, he’s been helping his brother out of numerous financial jams, and he’s helping Street with this big project. There’s no other character so central to the narrative right now, and Taylor Kitsch continues to have a lot of fun with the role: the tour of Dillon, especially his insistence that he is to be known as Toby the injured Iraq war veteran at one of the bars, was a comic highlight for the episode.

In the end, though, the episode belongs to two stories designed to tug at the heartstrings, although in slightly different ways. Once it was clear that Smash was going to be going four and out early in the season, it was pretty easy to presume that Jason Street would be getting the same treatment. And we’re even following the same trajectory: images of the unfortunate post-football reality for these former stars who missed their big hance, followed by them facing a pivotal crossroads in their lives, and then Coach Taylor swoops in and begins to reconnect with them in the way that only a coach can. Sure, we only got a bit of paint in Eric’s hair, but it’s clear that he is going to help Street get out of this situation.

This is a pattern that can work very well for the series – Kyle Chandler and Scott Porter nailed almost every scene in this episode, and the coach’s off-field relationship with his players and their families is one of the show’s most charming aspects. And I mean charming literally: how else can we explain how Taylor manages to calm down Grandma Saracen at the grocery store? While I know that last season had a lot of problems, one of the biggest ones was attempting to turn Eric Taylor into a bad guy with the whole TMU debacle – it created a culture of abandonment that felt false, and I’m glad that we’re to the point where we just get to see the coach, well, be a coach. In fact, one of the real tragedies of J.D. McCoy is that, for all of his father’s reasoning that he moved to Dillon for Taylor’s expertise, Eric isn’t actually able to coach him because of the iron grip that his father has on his daily life. Coaching, for Eric Taylor’s key players, goes beyond the field, and even when they’re off of it for good.

Scott Porter is a great actor, and one gets the sense that the added focus of Street’s storyline is giving him some added incentive. He knows he only has a few episodes to dig into, here, so he’s making the most of it – while I was skeptical about the baby storyline when it (oddly) was our endnote in the show’s second season, it’s giving us a very definitive quarter-life crisis for a kid who has already gone through too much crisis in his young life. Between his speech to Buddy last week, and his struggles with his hired help in this episode, Porter is bringing that rushed sense of maturity and independence that was necessary in the wake of his accident in a way that is effective but damaging – you can tell that his attempts at optimism wear him down, but that he is able to find solace in the love of his son. That final “Hole in My Bucket” moment was not saccharine but tragic: he is driven by his emotional attachment to his son and his quasi-girlfriend, but that isn’t enough for him to be able to be with them and find a life together. I don’t know if flipping this house will get Street a happy ending, but my fingers are crossed.

In terms of happiness, though, we got what we were all waiting for: Matt Saracen and Julie Taylor finally had sex. Well, okay, it sounds a bit creepy for me to be happy that two fictional characters had sex, but it means they’re back in a relationship, and I think that’s a more acceptable level of emotional attachment here. Either way, it’s another sign that if this ends up being the show’s last season (fingers crossed, but forgive the realistic view here) that it will have felt historically meaningful to the show’s legacy. “I Think We Should Have Sex” was one of the best episodes of an amazing first season, and it makes complete sense that two years later these two characters would be in a much better place to investigate this side of their relationship. The season hasn’t exactly been coy about this possibility: as soon as she came out of that Applebee’s door and found him there kicking boxes, it was painfully obvious that this pairing was in the cards.

But that doesn’t take away how right it feels. Both of these characters are individually sound, but they spent the second season wrapped up in storylines ranging from frustrating (While Teegarden rocked it acting wise, her annoying brat phase went a bit far) to downright illogical (If Grandma Saracen gets another nurse I am going to throw things). Just everything about this point makes sense: Saracen suddenly has free time in which he isn’t consumed by football, Julie is more mature and ready for this, and the show feels like it was in need of a moment of happiness for these characters in particular. The way the moment was framed was even more perfect: their coy flirtations at the grocery store, the playful teasing in the lake, their discussion about the merits of hot dogs, and eventually their almost carnal realization that they are still madly in love with one another and greatly desire to have sex on the sand.

I’d like to blame Daniel Fienberg over at Zap2it for bringing up even the idea that this could lead to a pregnancy scare for Julie – while even he admits that it would seem out of place for this show, especially this season, it does seem like it could happen. But, personally, I think the moment was too perfect, and attempts to defile that image of Julie, in the early morning glow and wearing Matt’s sweatshirt, with her head on his shoulder as they drive up to the Taylor homestead seem ill-advised. Even the episode itself let the image stand: we didn’t get her parents flipping out over her sneaking into the house in the early morning, or even Julie attempting to be stealth in her entrance. Similarly, while Tami definitely noticed her daughter was glowing, and that Saracen’s grin seemed odd considering his recent demotion, there was no conversation that took place: the episode let us stick to that look on Julie’s face as she stares in the mirror and can’t stop grinning about it.

Any attempts to ruin this would feel wrong to me – I’m not saying that the show needs to start making everyone completely happy, but this Matt and Julie relationship is one thing that I think went through too much in the second season for it to be placed into grave peril in the span of the next seven episodes. Much as they have been treading carefully with many other characters (Coach Taylor and Landry in particular) in the post-Murder period, I think that Matt and Julie’s relationship has finally reached a point of logical reconcilation. So while I know better than to presume it’s going to be all sunshine and lollipops, I nonetheless expect that the worst is behind these two.

Overall, the episode didn’t do anything surprising: we knew Matt and Julie would get together, we could presume that Coach Taylor was going to enter into Jason’s storyline, we expected that J.D. was perhaps ore of a victim than a perpetrator, and I think we all saw the “Deadbeat Cash” (Which I’ll discuss below) coming from a mile away. But that didn’t keep the episode from leaving a smile on my face, and from just being darn emotionally impactful. This was the show’s pedigree in the first season, and even if I could choreograph it a mile away I’m never unhappy to find myself rooting for or against these characters.

Cultural Observations

• If I can draw an allusion to Mad Men for a second (I’m going through Mad Men withdrawl), Tyra is the Joan of this universe – I won’t go into spoiler territory as it relates to Mad Men, but there are a lot of parallels that continue into this episode. With her mother pushing him as a “good man” for supporting her college application drive, Tyra feels pressured to accept his reasoning even though we all know it is more than likely a lie. It’s a bad situation that we know is going to backfire on her, and we’ve seen Tyra go through a lot, so I do hope that she might finally find some solace at some point this season.
• That being said, though, I don’t think that solace should be with Landry – random new bass player love interest is right in that he needs to get over Tyra (a relationship that I never bought, and that was predicated on the event that shall not be discussed), and I don’t think that pairing has any life in it. But I loved the little moment where Tyra noticed that what Julie said sounded like something Landry would say – the two kids just need to be friends, darnit.

“Customer Survey”

November 6th, 2008

My complaint about The Office recently was that it felt inorganic: that between the concerns over Pam and Jim’s future, and the sad departure of Amy Ryan, and the battle between Dwight and Andy feeling like something we’ve dealt with too often in the past, last week’s episode just felt “off.” This week, things are less momentous but, to be honest, more consistent with what I come to expect from the show.

And on all of the fronts involved, we just got a more full-featured storyline: while removing the focus from Michael is rough when Holly brought such a great new dynamic to his character, we got to see Jim and Pam move to the center of the narrative even while entirely apart. The episode’s gimmick seemed like it could be quite lame, but it was used in a couple of charming ways and proved a potent device for the conclusion. Combine with some smart use of Michael and Kelly Kapoor, and you have an episode that just felt more natural to me, even with a bug in its ear.

Stephen Merchant, Ricky Gervais’ creative partner on the UK Office, directs this week’s episode, and it felt very sharp. This was most clear within the show’s central gimmick, filming Pam and Jim reacting to one another and having a conversation over their “World’s Smallest Bluetooths.” What could have really bombed kept getting used smartly: the writing of the episode was also strong, but it really was sold in Krasinski and Fischer’s performances. Jim was mostly sedate in those moments, but Pam got some really great reactive scenes: in particular, her exuberant and vocal “That’s what she said! That’s what she said! That’s what she said!” was one of the best parts of the episode.

It also worked because we got to see a good story for Dwight and Jim, and one that was more in line with general office behaviour as opposed to a vendetta. Watching as Jim began to discover why, precisely, Kelly would be out to get them was not amongst the funniest storylines of the season, but we got some great interactions between Dwight and Jim, as well as Michael getting to play a much more indirect role. Steve Carell is great in this role, don’t get me wrong, but I do sometimes like to see Michael as more of a supporting player. His ill-advised training exercise, which quickly devolved into an actual delusion in regards to a million dollar sale, was the kind of charming little scene that just works better for me. Watching Michael’s best intentions entirely melt away due to his own ineptitude is better than the quick shotgun mood shifts that sometimes define Michael, so this worked for me.

Interesting that we get our first showcase for Kelly in quite some time, although it’s admittedly a limited story: the two biggest gags (Michael’s hideously inappropriate Schindler’s List parody and the eventual insinuation that Kelly has used the “rape” excuse before) were more or less Michael’s as opposed to Kelly’s, and the end result that she was screwing with Dwight and Jim felt a little flat. There just wasn’t enough explanation of her motivations, but at the end of the day I don’t think it really hurt the episode overall.

This is mainly because of the three developments that have more ramifications for the future. First and foremost, we have the complication of Angela ensuring that their wedding would be held in a two-story tent (with a bridal suite for Andy’s bridal sweet) on Schrute Farms. Considering that the wedding seems like it is going to be a recurring device, and that they’re going to drag out this storyline for at least a while, I like that we’re getting a more direct intervention of Dwight into the proceedings after last week’s storyline never went beyond passive aggressive. Whereas Dwight and Andy’s fight seemed more or less forgotten this week (perhaps further proving the lack of resonance in that part of last week’s episode), this feels more long term.

And the other two developments were certainly more long term as they relate to Jim and Pam. After last week’s anvil of a storyline, as Jim’s brothers teased Pam to the point of cruelty about how hard it is to become an artist, we get a much more protracted and interesting investigation into their future. We learn that Jim is buying his parents’ house in order to help them retire, to his own financial detriment, and that Pam’s friend Alex (Rich Sommer, returning from his brief appearance in the premiere) is pressuring her to stay in New York in order to truly follow through on her potential career in art. There were a lot of emotions flying around in that scene, and Jim being in Pam’s ear the entire time made it resonate in a unique way.

I’m not suggesting that this week’s episode was better than last week’s, but I think it fits in better with where I feel the show needs to go: while last week forced us to say goodbye to a great character that really shook up the formula and had an honestly uncomfortable attack on one of the show’s most likeable characters, this week felt much more realistic. It wasn’t that Pam has no future in art, but that Pam’s future in art might not work in Scranton. It isn’t that Dwight and Andy are entering into a complicated measuring contest, but that Andy is oblivious to Angela’s feelings for Dwight manifesting themselves in her plan to get married at Schrute Farms. These are actual lines of story, as opposed to trifling moments: it’s just a better place, I feel, for the show to be.

Cultural Observations

• The entire phone gag might be a bit bizarre, but just allowing for their witty banter to run through an entire episode reminds us that this period of separation would have been entirely unbearable if we had not had Michael/Holly to tide us over.
• In a rare development, this week’s Cold Open actually led into the episode – it was a bit strange that Michael would tell them all he was engaged, and the phone call to his mother was great, but I was shocked to see Kelly come in with the receipt in the following scene. It was the start of a number of great Kelly/Michael moments, including their final commiseration over people not coming to their parties.
• Also: love that Kelly, again, was going to wear white to a wedding. A great callback to Phyllis’ wedding.

“Please Hold While I Singe My Skull”

November 2nd, 2008

Returning from the grave we hoped he had stayed in, tonight’s sixth leg of The Amazing Race saw the return of obnoxious, demanding, and in many ways downright unreasonable Terence. In a season where villains are luckily in short supply, it is very clear that he is the one exception, his bullying of Sarah reaching some new lows tonight.

And I don’t think he’s an awful human being by any stretch of the imagination: I just think that these two are in a new relationship, have very different personalities, and are discovering that this race is not meant for his demeanor in particular. As he fights to get Sarah to do exactly what he wants at a well-planned roadblock, at no point do we get the desired moment of self-realization: instead, he only shuts up when Sarah asks him to, and only for a few moments.

It’s a relationship that is being tested to the limits by this race, and even if it makes me cross my fingers for them to be absent from the finale it does demonstrate that the human qualities of this race are still in full effect.

From Cambodia to India

For the second week in a row, we get no airport related drama: teams have to buy their tickets direct from a travel agency, so everyone is both on the same flight and bunched together buying tickets. This brings us to the showmance between Dallas and Starr, one that they both acknowledge is kind of awkward considering the presence of an older brother (who, for his part, finds it kind of cute since it’s his little sister) and a mother (who, for her part, doesn’t desire to completely step on his son’s game). As far as awkwardness goes, it’s fairly low on the scale, but there are limits: during the roadblock, Nick has to wrangle his sister into focusing on her own task instead of helping Toni and Dallas.

The other bit of interesting development comes from seeing what impact Terence and Sarah’s penalty had…apparently zero, since they’re in the same position they were in before unless I’m terribly mistaken. As the teams learn they’re traveling to India, they began to wonder what they’ll find: mostly, they expect crowds, heat and confusion. Shockingly, they’re going to get their wish.

Roadblock: Moonlighting

When they arrive in Dehli, dusk is beginning to descend on the city and it makes for an ominous series of events. Their trip to Moonlight Motors, where they are tasked with repainting auto Rikshaws green to show that they’re running on natural gas, seems fairly innocuous at first, but a few teams have some serious traffic troubles and all teams discover that this is the worst type of roadblock: the backseat kind.

With the team members able to hover around the cars, as opposed to being off in some sequestered area, the impact is immediate: there are lines drawn between those who are supportive (Dallas, to his mother Toni), directive (Nick, keeping Starr focused), and just downright vindictive (Terence, who can’t help but criticize Sarah’s technique, and Tina who is convinced Ken is wasting too much time with ripping individual pieces of tape). Andrew and Dan, meanwhile, just do the task: Andrew is quick, and shows some promise emerging out of the task in first despite arriving second.

Ken and Sarah have very different trajectories, though, despite being the last two to arrive: Sarah gets bogged down by Terence’s comments, while Ken powers through Tina’s forceful direction to pass two teams and burst into fourth place. Either way, the roadblock was a demonstration of the race’s ability to bring out these things in people: that teams like Nick/Starr and Toni/Dallas made it through without incident shows one thing, and that Terence/Sarah couldn’t tells us quite another (I’ll get to Ken and Tina a bit later).

Detour: Launder Money or Launder Clothes

Now, as far as detours go, this was a weird one: one task seemed really strange and obscure, but in reality offered a pretty simple if exotic experience, while the other was a mundane task that took a particularly interesting twist within Delhi. It’s clear that they are not ready to enter fully into this cow-filled culture, because the lead teams all immediately balk at the money challenge, which really just boils down to exchanging money with people. They choose instead to do some laundry, a task which is a bit challenging with their charcoal-powers irons.

There’s some fun stuff here: Toni teasing Dallas that the laundry challenge was calling his name, everyone trying to figure out where Nick and Starr got gloves (Answer: they brought them themselves, a very intelligent move), Andrew and Dan arguing with their judge launderer and then having their clothes blow off the table, plus whoever said this week’s episode title (Which I, admittedly, missed completely). It wasn’t an interesting challenge to watch on either end, but at least the ironing brought out the best snark in most contestants (Nick and Starr, for example, noting that their mother would be shocked to see them excelling).

The other side was more visually interesting, and much more about cultural stimulation: explicitly, teams ended up in a throng of wedding revelers who were jumping, swaying, crushing and more or less suffocating our racers as they searched for a groom on whom to bestow their necklace. Making the necklace was much less interesting, what with the haggling with street people being their primary motive, but the end result was visually interesting and allowed Terence and Sarah and Ken and Tina to launch back into the race despite being behind due to some rough gameplay. It ended up making for a tense race to the finish, and one that (even considering the lack of apparent consequences).

The Pit Stop

Yes, Ken and Tina finish in last place, sadly almost entirely based on a poor taxi driver. Why they stuck out with this guy so long is kind of unknown, but they probably thought that there was a chance (with the hotel as their next location) that he would improve. The guy just didn’t know where he was going, and that it was taxi problems that killed them after the Detour was just the icing on the cake. Regardless of how one feels about the team, I’m glad they’re sticking around: their tear-filled interview was part of this, not wanting to lose this chance to redefine their marriage, but even then they’re good racers and better competition than Terence and Sarah would be.

As for the other teams, it’s more of the same: Toni and Dallas are creeping up to being one of the most successful parent/child teams since the first season, Nick and Starr win their second leg in a row and continue to show their promise, Kelly and Christy are gritting their way into the race, and Andrew and Dan very nearly went from first to worst despite their aggressive hope not to. How the Speed Bump will affect the next leg will be interesting, but I’m still kind of excited about this group of racers.

Cultural Observations

• Kelly and Christy are going to make one heck of an outtake reel: them trying to escape from the airport through the glass wall of sorts was one more in a long list of moments where karma has cut them an unfortunate fate.
• I miss having time at the Pit Stops to see eating, sleeping and mingling – especially with Dallas and Starr’s little flirtations, or SportsBraGate, seeing a bit more of that would actually be quite cool. I don’t know if it’s an editing issue, or a factor of having lost a few minutes of airtime with more commercials, but the show misses something without them.
• Dallas is a really nice guy, but he was such a doofus at the mat: “You have fire on your head. That’s insane!” It was a total jock moment, but the two of them are really charming so I’m not complaining.
• Creepiest moment of the episode: Sarah, fighting her way through the throngs of people, smiling like McCain as if it was going to keep people from attacking her. Constant happiness is not a defence mechanism, Sarah.

“Episode Four”
Premieres: Sunday, November 2nd at 10pm
The crew visits a local farmers market where they must taste various types of fresh foods, including seafood, which does not sit well with a few of the crew members. Then Chef Jeff informs them that they must cater a charity event at Dodger Stadium for ThinkCure!, the official charity of the Los Angeles Dodgers. One of the crew members gets into an altercation at home, which results in Chef Jeff making a house call.

“Episode Five”
Premieres: Sunday, November 9th at 10pm
The crew receives a big surprise when Chef Jeff brings them to his hometown of Las Vegas! Once they arrive, the crew is told they have to cater for KÀ, a popular Cirque du Soleil show, live at the MGM Grand. As a treat, Chef Jeff invites the crew to a surprise birthday party for his mother at his house the next day. Then they roll up their sleeves to deliver a delicious barbeque meal for Chef Jeff and his family.

“Episode Six” – SERIES FINALE
Premieres: Sunday, November 16th at 10pm
In the season finale, Chef Jeff takes the six crew members to The International Culinary School at The Art Institute of California – Los Angeles, where they create résumés, cook for some of the top chefs in Los Angeles (including Chef Jeff’s first mentor, Robert Gadsby) and interview for admission. The crew is pushed to the limit when they are tested on how far they have come both personally and professionally.

That’s right . . . The Collective once again headed back into the studio on Saturday for a few hours to record the very final episode in this season. (Why do we call it a season and not a series? Well, cause we can and it just sounds right for this project) Recording was great. It’s really weird to once again get up and find yourself saying the words or doing a characters voices after a such rest. It’s really not been that long a break, but it certainly felt it . . .

I wanted to write this post and answer a few questions I’ve been asked about the last Episode :-

1) Why the wait for the last Episode?!

Well, this is my fault and the collective’s decision. Shortly after we recorded and released Episode Five we were to finish the series with six and put it all to bed with warm coco. It became apparent to though that if we went to Ed Fest and people came to the site (and therefore the radio show) cause of the live show then there would be nothing new up for months after! So we took a decision to focus on making the Ed show the best it could be and give people something to come back to once we’d torn the final ticket.

2) Okay, so am I going to have to wait this long for the next series?

It won’t be anywhere near as long for series two to start! I am not going to confirm exact dates at the moment but the plan is to release Episode Six then follow it the month after with some exclusive behind the scenes out takes and interviews etc. After which we hope to amaze your ears with something very special indeed. I’m going to keep it under wraps for the moment but lets just say it will be longer, it will be bigger and it will be just as silly if not sillier! Then shortly after that Season Two will start with a regular release date through the site . . . Now I’ve just got to write the bloody thing!

3) Well Jon that’s made me a little happier, but what about another live show?

Jesus! Calm down! I’m working my nuts off here! We do have plans for another live show but at the moment a few things are in flux (news when I have it) and until they are finalised we won’t be returning to the rehearsal room. Lets just say the new year brings new things . . .

So that’s about it guys. Thank you all for your patience and for the support you offer us and I’ll post again as Episode Six launches!

Lots of love,

Jon Cooper

Time Line
00:00 Intro
01:30 Show starts
02:00 In regards to classes
04:18 The last time I’ll mention the bonus content
06:50 Cohost on my youtube account
09:00 Music that might make people think you’re gay with Ben
22:00 “Tropic Thunder Controversy” vs “The Ringer”
23:20 Ben has a meltdown
24:15 The war in Georgia
27:00 Steampunk Abney Park Website, Abney Park Myspace
33:00 F-Missiles of the week: Crazy ex girlfriends, Hillbilly Deluxe, and People not knowing what they’re doing
41:16 Michael Jackson
46:09 Thou shalt not have fun
50:43 Swift Enterprises researches alt. fuel sources and the Chevy Volt
54:43 Soulja Boy got hacked
Promos
58:20 The Rookie
59:41 Playing For Keeps
61:01 Outro
63:43 End

Music kindly provided by Libertine Leech.

Thanks to Spaztastic Sara for the iTunes cover art.

Biggest thanks to all of you for listening.

If you like the show let me know. You can leave a comment on the blog, a review on iTunes couldn’t hurt either. And if you’re not afraid of your voice sounding like shit over the phone you can always call the voice mail line and that’s (206) 339-5825.

If I get enough voice mail I’ll do a listener appreciation show.

That’s all for now and as always I’m Eldon K.R. saying I don’t have cancer, so I’m not stopping.

“Life’s a Drag”

August 20th, 2008

You know, I’m starting to wonder if there’s some sort of psychological condition which takes the most obvious pieces of logic and totally twists them the second you enter the Parsons work room. I’m not saying that the intensive Project Runway schedule (where they’re constantly working, constantly not getting enough sleep, etc.) is not in some way going to be detrimental to their state of mind, but when they’re ignoring even the most obvious ways to succeed in the contest I do have to wonder what exactly is in the water.

When Project Runway gives you a drag competition, you do one of two things: you either go full-out into that fantasy drag outfit you’ve secretly always wanted to make or you adapt parts of your own aesthetic into a drag concept in order to show the best of both worlds. The former gets you into the Top 3, a fact shown as Korto, Terri and Joe all just throw caution to the wind in creating “fabulous” garments that their models seem to adore. And the middle of the pack all create dresses that seem like they are that mediation, of their own ideas with the ideas of drag, in a way that deems them inoffensive while competent enough to understand how this show works.

But the Bottom Three perplex me, and they’ve done it a lot this season: two of them, in particular, just don’t seem to understand that this isn’t just an opportunity to prove you have taste, or to prove you know how to cut out pieces of fabric and attach them to other pieces of fabric in a seemingly random pattern. Instead, this is an opportunity to prove that you’re capable of listening to a single word of the challenge put before you.

And when they can’t do that, why are they even still there?

There’s a lot to like about a drag queen challenge: it’s one of the most energetic runway shows we’ll see, we get the return of the lovable Chris March, and we get a guest judge in RuPaul who actually has a lot to say about the designers’ efforts and is completely willing to talk back to them. It was also quite interesting to see the fashion challenges they represent: hiding what needs to be hidden (for obvious reasons), accentuating each individual queen’s features that should be highlighted, and even the whole difficulty of adapting male mannequins into female ones in order to fit the dress. Plus, seeing them all come in without makeup was one of those little moments where you feel like you’re seeing something you’re not supposed to see, peeking behind the curtain at the inner workings of the process.

That process was with its usual pieces of character fluff, mostly revolving around Blayne being annoying and Keith being really, really full of himself. The stage was set for a potential exit for Keith as soon as they opened the show on Joe noting what we all did, that Keith’s outfit had no business winning over Jerell’s last week (I’m presuming that Shields liked it better, and had a veto as part of her performance). Keith spent the entire episode talking about how great his win was, and how he wished he had immunity, and it was the kind of thing that had me wanting to see him packing fast. Add to this yet another week of Blayne “licious”ing everything that moves, and you’ve got a bit of a bitter taste in your mouth.

And yet, when we reached the conclusion, I was oddly fine with Blayne moving on: yes, his outfit was tacky and ridiculous and almost fell apart, but he at least bloody well tried. Daniel and Keith both completely failed to understand the whole concept of doing a drag outfit. Yes, Daniel was building off of the flamenco theme of his model’s dress from the start of the competition, but it was a half-ass attempt and he actually ended up just giving Tim the finger by putting NOTHING at the top of the dress even after trying some sort of ruffled trim on it. And Keith wasn’t paying any attention to the challenge, so caught up in how awesome his fringe technique was going to be and how it was clearly different from every other identical looking fringe technique. Riiight.

I felt bad for Jerell, since he was just a victim of standing on the fence: he designed a dress that fit her personal, less flashy style, and his collar was his way of making it more drag-esque. In the process, though, he became their example of well-meaning mistakes, like length or fit, and it meant that he was selected despite a dress that seemed to have more effort than say Kenley’s. But he was never going home: Daniel and Keith were both repeating past mistakes, so one of them was going to get the boot. That it ended up being Daniel is fine, but I would have rather seen Keith totally get his ass handed to him for showboating over an undeserved win last week and then completely botching this one.

Regardless, though, that’s one more piece of dead weight down – I’m actually really looking forward to the prospect of having a group of people including Terri (Whose Kimono outfit totally reminded me of something out of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney video games), Korto (Whose structural work on the fire flames has me convinced she has what it takes to win this thing) and Joe (Who used a smart eye to make the outfit exactly what his client wanted) battling it out without the distraction of the, well, people who just don’t have it in them.

Cultural Observations

• While, as noted, I enjoyed RuPaul as a guest judge, kind of disappointed that Chris didn’t want in on the action for the Runway. Maybe he felt, understandably, that he had been in their position before and didn’t want to have to be the bad guy (He’s not good at that, never will be). Clearly, based on the previews, Season Three contestant Laura Bennett has no such problems, which is not in the least bit surprising.
• Leanne is very monotone, and very bland in many ways, but I love her little Talking Heads more than any others. She is just really good at boiling down annoyances in small little packages that are quirky without being trite. Maybe it’s just that it came right after Keith’s odd “I’m looking off camera every two seconds” delivery, but it was quite charming.
• I really enjoyed how Project Runway Canada, in its first season, did an auction challenge and then actually had the auction during the show, where we got to see how much each dress earned, etc. I’m disappointed they didn’t do that here.
• And to answer the question that’s been in my mind about showmances, after it was reported somewhere, it appears that it was Daniel and Wesley who made the connection (Or so Bravo’s site seems to presume considering they’re on the after show together). Mystery solved.

“Episode Seven”

July 14th, 2008

Yes, I am aware that I am nearly a week late writing this review, and as a result it will be fairly short. However, I want to note for the sake of posterity that I continue to be enjoying this season of The Mole. Yes, the ratings are extremely low, and based on comments at the recent TCA Press Tour the show won’t be returning to the air in the future. However, the season we’re getting has been one where the central mystery has stayed intact while the tasks have remained interesting.

I really enjoyed both tasks in the last episode, particularly the vineyard challenge wherein there were plenty of chances for both sabotage and just outright failure. It was great to see the challenge take on so many levels: how Nicole seemed to be slow in answering puzzles, how Craig only actually really solved one of them, how Paul messed up a few of his radio calls, how Mark had a great chance to NOT look like The Mole playing double duty while on the treadmill, etc. Yes, it was a bit of a cheap way to inflate the pot (Although Mark being on the treadmill for that long is very impressive), but it allowed us to focus less on the bickering (Although there was plenty) and more on the strategies.

The same goes for the second task, although this was really more about testing each player individually. The bridge jump was an easy fix for The Mole: they just had to miss. That the game went so poorly is no surprise, as it seemed a huge psychological challenge for most of them to do math let alone use hand eye coordination to throw the tea at the right angle. I thought the exemption game was a good way to trick them (To put them into harm’s way before asking the question), but one thing I don’t understand is how Nicole didn’t win the game.

I know the whole “standing on a board thing” would screw you over, hence why I can somewhat forgive no one going the price is right rule and betting $0, but Nicole going last seemed to have been following everyone’s throws and therefore knew that they had no chance of getting more money than $14,000 or so. Or, she could have said what they’d won so far, presuming they had been able to see how much Alex got, and then miss intentionally. Maybe I was misunderstanding how aware they were of their progress, but didn’t the game get much easier as it went along? I’m against this constant exemption spree as it is, but that just seems prejudiced towards the later players.

As for who the Mole is, I always knew that Alex was never a contender, which in my mind leaves Craig and Clay. I think Paul has been too obnoxious to be the Mole, and Nicole taking no notes would be too much of a giveaway (The producers would have metaphorically slapped her silly and forced her to take notes so as to not draw attention to herself). In that case, it leaves Clay and Craig. I’m more convinced it’s Craig every day, especially how much he stood back during the vineyard challenge and let others do his work for him.

But all in all, this is what we should be discussing this late in the game: Mole behaviour and not interpersonal conflict. I do wish either Paul or Nicole would go home next, as it would just make everything easier, but we can’t always get what we want. For now, I remain most interested, and look forward to tomorrow night’s episode.

Cultural Observations

• I was convinced Nicole was going home when she first started taking notes. She clearly must either know who the Mole is or have the best strategy for answering the questions for multiple candidates. The one thing she does benefit from, presuming she isn’t the Mole, is that she is guaranteed to get the first question right.
• While he started off slow, I’m really enjoying Jon Kelley in the hosting role. Felt he really came into his own while he was torturing the contestants on the bridge, just cold enough with a slight smile.

Episode 5

Episode 6

Episode 7 Part 1

Episode 7 Part 2

Episode 7 Part 3

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