Blogcritics Author: Charles Herold

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Are Our Presidential Candidates Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

Charles Herold — Tue, 8 May 2007 00:42:37 EDT

As the Democratic candidates for president wander from state to state speaking and debating, there is one question I would like to stand up and ask each candidate who voted to authorize the Iraq war: Are you a liar or are you an idiot? It’s a fair question. Because the explanations the candidates have given are hopelessly inadequate. There seem to be two basic excuses for voting for the authorization. “I was misled by the administration into believing Saddam had weapons of mass destruction” and “I voted for the authorization in order to give the president a stronger position from which to negotiate.” John Kerry used both explanations, and it worked out just great for him. I’ll take the second explanation first, because it’s the most absurd. Very simply, anyone with an I.Q. of over a hundred who was paying attention knew that Bush was going to invade Iraq the moment he had the authority to do so. I knew this, and I was getting most of my news from the <i>Daily Show</i> and from talking to my news-junky mom. Bush was jonesing for a war. Everything he did, every action he took, every speech he gave made it abundantly clear that he was determined to go to war at any cost. About the only way that wouldn’t have happened is if Saddam resigned and left the country, and there was zero chance of that. Now, if I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Bush would use that authorization for war the moment he got it, is it possible that canny Washington insiders could not figure that out? Am I really that much smarter than Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden? It is a terrifying thought, because honestly, I am not all that smart. And it raises the frightening possibility that Bush isn’t the only borderline moron in office. Dennis Kucinich, my favorite not-a-snowball’s-chance-in-hell candidate knew it. He voted against the war, and has been quoted as saying “It must be really tough for Presidential candidates to come before the American people and claim that they were tricked, deceived, misled…by George Bush?” Perhaps they are that stupid though. Kerry, for one, seemed to believe Bush’s lies at the time. Was the president taking senators into the oval office and hypnotizing them? The argument that candidates simply believed Bush’s lies about WMDs is arguably slightly more credible. They certainly sounded convinced at the time; in Hillary Clinton’s floor speech on the authorization she even declared intelligence about Saddam and WMDs “undisputed.” Of course, the WMD story was disputed at the time. And I myself was pretty sure the whole thing was a lie (once again I’ll mention that I was just barely following the news and am not especially brilliant or insightful). If you accept the basic premise that Bush wanted war at any cost it’s not hard to deduce that he was fudging information. And there were congressmen at the time, such as Kucinich and Jim Jeffords, who had enough sense to see through the charade. Some people were even in a better position to see the lies, as recently indicated by Dick Durbin, who said that as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee he could see how Bush was lying to the public. John Edwards was also on that committee, but that didn’t stop him from voting for the authorization, possibly because his political advisers told him to. Sure, they all regret the vote now, and Edwards has at least apologized for it (and put out a nifty ad telling congress to resend the vetoed Iraq funding bill), but the question is, why do they regret it? Is it because they have now realized that a preemptive strike against Iraq just to feel better about 9/11 is fundamentally immoral? I doubt it. Unless you believe that these seasoned politicians really did take Bush at his word, you have to accept the idea that they wanted to go to war. They just wanted it to be a quick, well-run war that would boost their popularity. The only thing I believe from these people are comments like Joe Biden’s “The thing that I regret [is believing] that this administration had any competence” or Clinton’s “"How could they have been so poorly prepared for the aftermath of the toppling of Saddam Hussein?" These politicians don’t regret voting for a war; they regret voting for a bungled war. Their only mistake, in their own minds, is that they misjudged the administration’s level of competence. (Not to blow my own horn, but once again poorly-informed, less-than-gifted me believed that Iraq was going to be a huge disaster along the lines of Vietnam.) All of which makes me think that people like Clinton and Edwards, when asked if their vote to authorize war was a cynical ploy to curry favor with the voters or a sign of their utter stupidity, should answer, “both.” They probably believed more than they should have of Bush’s lies, but they also probably knew this was a mistake and decided that the political fallout from voting against the authorization was worse than the possibility of tens of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians. I will consider the possibility that if they had crystal balls and realized exactly how much damage their vote would cause that they might have voted the other way, but this may be too generous of me. Of course, this makes Barack Obama look pretty good to the anti-war crowd, since he was at anti-war rallies in 2002. I give him points for that, although it does not actually guarantee that he would have voted against the war. In that bizarre, panicky post-9/11 period politicians were gutless and pandering, and who’s to say that with the hot and heavy breath of public opinion down his neck Obama might not have caved. Still, I am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt since he spoke so forcefully at the time. But the only two candidates I totally trust on the issue are Kucinich, because he did vote against the authorization, and Mike Gravel, because the guy’s as old-school liberal as they come. But the press has decided these two are joke candidates. I suppose Kucinich is hoping that his anti-war stance will seem prescient and get him some support, but being right when everyone else is wrong never gets you anything; all people really remember is you disagreed with them. Anyway, Kucinich will lose because he’s my favorite, putting him in the illustrious company of progressive losers like Paul Simon and Mo Udall. The only thing in Kucinich’s favor right now is Gravel’s candidacy. I like Gravel, but his abrasive, take-no-prisoners style and justifiable fury at the mendacity of the major candidates has the press pretty much writing him off as the “crazy uncle” candidate. This means the press has someone more fun to pick on than Kucinich, but since the press has decided there are only four (or perhaps three) real candidates it seems unlikely the public is just going to go out and decide for itself. Which means I’m going to have to vote for one of the other guys. Right now I’m leaning towards Obama if Kucinich and Gravel have dropped out by the time of the New York Democratic primary, but the election is long way off and the other candidates can still persuade me that they are the best choice. All they have to do is give a really thoughtful, well-reasoned answer to my question: Are you a liar or are you an idiot?

Charles Herold is a videogame critic for the New York Times but has opinions about pretty much everything.

TV Review: Charm School

Charles Herold — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:32:16 EDT

An entertaining British reality show called Ladette to Lady takes a bunch of obnoxious, overly sexualized women and sends them to a finishing school to teach them to be ladylike, so when I heard about VH1’s Charm School, I thought cool, an American version of Ladette to Lady. But I was wrong. Charm School is instead a disgusting, puerile, putrescent monstrosity that represents the very worst television can possibly offer. Words cannot even properly express the loathsomeness of this show; one would have to instead make vomiting noises and play the sounds of flies buzzing around carcasses and shit.The ostensible premise of Charm School is to take the vulgar, trashy women who vied for Flavor Flav’s affections in Flavor of Love and send them to “etiquette boot camp.” But in fact the purpose of the show appears to be to find new ways to humiliate these women, and the winner is likely to be the craziest, meanest one of the bunch.There is nothing charming about Charm School. First off, the mistress of the school is comedian Mo’Nique, who is funny in her standup act and quite presentable on the show but is hardly the epitome of style and grace (sorry Mo’Nique, but let’s face it, if you had any real class you would never have agreed to appear on this show to begin with). She is assisted by some woman who seems strict but basically decent, like Mo’Nique, and some guy who is just a prick who delights in insulting women. I can’t find their names on VH1’s website, which shows you about how important they are to the show.Charm School made its intentions clear in the first episode when the girls were forced to take a long hike and camp in the woods, then were divided into two teams that had to race through an obstacle course. What, you ask, does this have to do with etiquette? Nothing, although Mo’Nique makes some claim about measuring teamwork.The team that lost seemed to lose primarily (at least as portrayed in the show, which is of course edited for effect rather than truth) because one of the girls chosen to be a team captain chose weak girls who she worried would feel hurt if no one seemed to want them. She was roundly criticized for this shocking display of decency by the judges, who told her that this was a competition and she couldn’t be soft. I’m sure Miss Manners would completely agree.In episode two, which I foolishly decided to watch, some guy from The Bachelor got to decide which girl was most presentable. One stole another’s expensive dress to rattle her, then told her so right in front of the bachelor who, instead of being shocked at such creepy behavior, crowned her the winner. This is all particularly horrendous because Ladette to Lady shows it is possible to make a cheesy reality show that has a little honor to it.Ladette is not an especially classy show. Basically, they get a bunch of alcoholics, sexoholics, and tomboys together in an old etiquette school where they are taught skills that were popular for society women decades ago, like cooking and flower arranging. The show loves its drunken women. In season two, one woman is fond of flashing her breasts on every occasion (on English TV, and on the Sundance Channel, which shows it in the U.S., nudity is allowed, so there is none of the blurriness VH1 employs to hide the naughty bits), and not an episode goes by in which we don’t see an archival clip of her lifting her shirt. Ladette also is constantly sending the girls off to pubs or leaving them alone with bottles of booze just so they can go wild and then be chastised by the school’s teachers.At the same time, the show really does reward graciousness. It does teach these women how to speak more eloquently and carry themselves more gracefully. The women who keep causing trouble get kicked out, the women who work hard and improve stay. Ladette is ultimately a show about transformation, and while most of it is in thrall to drunken debauchery, towards the end the show seamlessly shifts into something positive about hope and possibility.But Charm School doesn’t want their cast to transform themselves; it wants them to abase themselves. The show seeks to find all the ways these women can be humiliated, and the women themselves are willing and eager participants in their own abasement.This is a shame, because these women need help. Obviously VH1 reality shows are all as unreal as you can get, heavily scripted and cast with people with no interest in anything except getting fame and fortune (I kind of liked some of these shows at first but the utter and complete falseness in every second of every minute of every show eventually drove me away). The girls of Charm School are all hoping that, like “New York” in the first season of Flavor of Love they can parlay their shame into a successful career. I’m sure they would argue that it’s just an act, that they’re playing for the cameras and that this is not really who they are at all, and there would be some truth to that. At the same time, people with high self esteem would never go on a television show in front of millions of people and grovel for success as these women do. The girls of Charm School could use some genuine lessons in etiquette and charm, but what they really need most is a good therapist.This is what makes Charm School so odious. It takes very screwed up women and tries to screw them up more for the entertainment of the masses. It is not an American version of Ladette to Lady but rather a serialized version of the Jerry Springer Show. Like Springer, Charm School thrives on sleaze, and just as Jerry would end each show with a smug, hypocritical lecture on how disgusting his guests acted, Charm School wants its women to be revolting so it can wag its finger in their faces and say, shame, shame on you. And just as with Springer, the most immoral participants are not the guests, but the producers who exploit them and the audience that revels in their degradation and in a self-righteous sense of superiority.

Charles Herold is a videogame critic for the New York Times but has opinions about pretty much everything.

The Imus Dilemma

Charles Herold — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:19:35 EDT

Interesting story in the New York Times on how, in a world where pundits are constantly saying moronic, outrageous things, Don Imus was the one who got torpedoed, in part, according to the Times, because it was a slow news week.I've got very mixed feelings about the whole thing. On the one hand, the offending conversation was pretty repellent. While the big quote is Imus describing the Rutger's women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos," the racism is really a sort of casual, throw away thing compared to the sexism represented in basically slamming these women for not being sufficiently stereotypically feminine.Yes, Imus is a racist, sexist idiot, or at least talks like one, and according to wikipedia this is not the first time he's gone over the line, but taken in a broader context, the ability for an outraged public to run a pundit out of town could be a problem.First off, people say worse and get away with it all the time. Bill O'Reilly said a kidnapping victim wanted it, yet he's still on the air. But then, racism seems to get people in more trouble than anything else nowadays, just look at Michael Richards. (Note to shock jocks and pundits: you're really better off being sexist or attacking victims of child molestation than uttering racial slurs. At least then Al Sharpton won't use you as part of his fame machine.)But the real problem with muzzling Imus can be summed up in two words: Lenny Bruce.Like Imus, Bruce used racist language. Of course, his purpose was very different, as discussed in an excellent article at semitism.net. Bruce used provocative language to comment on society; Imus uses provocative language for cheap, crude laughs and, at least subconsciously, to promote the status quo (be prettier girls, even if you play basketball).There's a temptation to throw in, "also, Lenny Bruce was funnier," but that's not the issue. The issue is that, you can't actually differentiate Bruce and Imus in any meaningful way in terms of law or the rules of censorship. They both used language many people found offensive and they both got in a shitload of trouble for it. So if we start saying, offensive language has to be kept out of public discourse, then we get rid of Imus but also lose Lenny Bruce.I tend to feel that what this country needs is a lot of dialog. By this I don't mean just quiet, politically correct academics discussing issues in a reasonable, moderate way. I do mean that, and I wish there were more of it, but I also mean people being outrageous, people saying abhorrent things, other people slamming people for saying abhorrent things, and basically the whole messy process of figuring out where we are and what we think by talking to one another.I can't feel too bad for Imus, who struck me as unpleasant when I saw him on TV a few months back (my mom's a regular viewer; she says he constantly slams George W. Bush, so she likes him for that). Imus will probably land on his feet somewhere, perhaps setting up on a satellite radio station like Howard Stern did. He's a popular guy, and I've read he does go out and raise money for worthy causes and good stuff like that. I tend to think his racism and sexism are so ingrained that he just can't see that's what they are; I don't think he means to denigrate other races or women, I think he just has this narrow view of how the world should be and he expresses it in unfortunate ways.But I do feel bad for discourse in this country. I don't think things are as restrictive now as they were when Bruce was doing stand-up in the 1960s - South Park was always able to cross lines with abandon, but Imus' firing looks like another bit of a slippery slope we've been sliding down for the last 10 or 15 years of trying to save the world from bad thoughts by shutting people up. And I don't think that's the way to do it. I just hope I will always have the opportunity to say that.

Charles Herold is a videogame critic for the New York Times but has opinions about pretty much everything.

TV Review: The Sarah Silverman Program

Charles Herold — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 13:27:38 EDT

Sarah Silverman is a truly horrible person. No, not Sarah Silverman the stand-up comedian and actress; she's smart, funny, and gosh darn cute. I mean Sarah Silverman, the protagonist of The Sarah Silverman Program on Comedy Central. She's just awful, although admittedly also gosh darn cute.In The Sarah Silverman Program, Sarah Silverman plays Sarah Silverman, the world's most self-involved person. During a public service announcement about starving children, Sarah discovers that her television remote won't work. She pastes all her money on the screen so she won't have to look at them, then goes out to buy new batteries, stopping to tell a homeless person how difficult her life is. Sarah poses as the mother of a young girl so she can enter a beauty pageant, but distraught over her own loss of the same pageant years ago, she winds up grabbing the crown and marching down the runway herself.It's not that Sarah is malicious - at one point she decides to prove she's a caring person by letting a homeless man move in with her (although she won't feed him because she doesn't want to enable him) - Sarah just has a childlike focus on herself. This naivete is what makes the character work; if she seemed smart and self aware then she'd be a monster, but instead she comes off as likably idiotic. Episodes often verge on the surreal, as when Sarah starts an AIDS group after deciding she has AIDS (and disbands it when her HIV test comes back negative a few hours later) or sleeps with God and then refuses to give him her number. She will often burst into songs on subjects like pooping at the mall. The show is reminiscent of the similarly offbeat Stella, but while that show died an early and unjust death, Silverman's show has already been renewed. Perhaps that is because there is no sacred cow she won't eat, making her a good replacement for South Park, which may still butcher sacred cows but which hasn't been funny for the last couple of years.While the character is self-absorbed, the show itself is generous to its cast, granting everyone some laughs. Most notable are Brian Posehn and Steve Agee as Sarah's gay friends, who turn up in goofy subplots (at one point each goes to bizarre lengths to prove they are a great fan of the soft drink Tab, although neither is). The cast is rounded out by Sarah's sister Laura Silverman (she voiced the secretary in Dr. Katz, but here she's nicer and thus doesn't get as many of the good jokes) and Jay Johnston, who along with Posehn used to appear on the bizarre HBO sketch comedy show Mr. Show. Everyone is good. The Sarah Silverman Program is one of those comedies, like Seinfeld, that likes to focus on our worst instincts; the show works because even though most of us wouldn't grab the crown from a little girl, we all understand wanting to. Silverman seems to have a special insight into the baseness of the human soul. Which makes me wonder: perhaps, Sarah Silverman, the smart, funny, gosh darn cute stand-up comedian and actress really is a horrible person.But at least she's not alone.

Charles Herold is a videogame critic for the New York Times but has opinions about pretty much everything.

TV Review: The Black Donnellys

Charles Herold — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 10:21:45 EDT

Doom hangs over the heads of the Donnelly brothers, four troubled young Irish Americans caught between the Irish and Italian mobs in the NBC drama The Black Donnellys. In every episode it seems as if there is no way the Donnellys can possibly survive another hour.The same can be said about the series itself; this is the sort of intelligent, complex long-form drama that is almost invariably canceled after three or four episodes, and every week I expect the show, and the brothers, to expire.It's sort of hard to describe the story of The Black Donnellys succinctly, because it's not a simple TV premise but an ongoing story that begins when Jimmy, the craziest Donnelly, kidnaps someone related to a mobster in the first episode. Tommy, the smart, artistic Donnelly who is the only one who seems able to make good, soon has to save his brother, and does so in a violent and surprising way. Each episode since has centered around Tommy trying to keep himself and his brothers alive, while the brothers often seem to be doing their best to get themselves all killed. The show seems to be telling an epic tragedy of an essentially good guy who gives up the life he deserves and the girl he loves (the very fetching Olivia Wilde) because of an overwhelming devotion to his undeserving brothers. I say seems, because unlike other series, The Black Donnellys doesn't bother to spell out exactly what it's about; it just shows you what happens and leaves you wondering what will happen next.The Donnelly story is told to a variety of cops and lawyers by Joey "Ice Cream," excellently played by Keith Noobs, a sleazily charming low-life who loves to talk. Joey's memory is shaky; at one point he describes an occurrence at a bar as taking place during a birthday party, and we see the people in party hats in a bar with balloons, then he says, oh wait, it was a wake, and we see the same bar with somber people in black. Joey is an amusing contrast to the darkness of the brothers' story, breezily tossing out comments like, "There are two things you have to know about the Irish. I forget the first."The story Joey tells may or may not be true. At times he describes some intense scene between the brothers and when asked how he knows, he'll say, "I was there." Then the show will cut back to the same location and suddenly we'll see Joey wave from the corner, at which point one of the Donnellys will say, "Where the hell did he come from?"The Black Donnellys is structured more like a crime movie like Once Upon a Time in America than like a typical TV show. It's co creator, Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning writer and director of Crash, tried a similar approach with the brilliant, short-lived series EZ Streets. Unlike other artists who desert television when they get a movie career going, Haggis seems to really believe in the possibilities in television. I hope Haggis is right in his belief that there is an audience for television as smart as The Black Donnellys. But I won't be surprised if one week Tommy and his brothers die in a hail of bullets and The Black Donnellys' time slot is filled with a soap opera about a bunch of randy teenagers with expensive cars who mope to top 40 songs. Watch it while you can.

Charles Herold is a videogame critic for the New York Times but has opinions about pretty much everything.

TV Review: Rules of Engagement

Charles Herold — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 07:46:49 EDT

When I heard about Rules of Engagement, a series about an old, cynical married couple and the young, idealistic couple next door, I thought wait, doesn't that show already exist? Of course it does, and it's called 'Til Death, and considering how poorly that turned out, it seems a little nuts for another network to make the same show. But Engagement proves that 'Til Death was not actually a bad idea for a sitcom after all.The main thing that makes Rules of Engagement work is star Patrick Warburton. While the cast of 'Til Death stank of desperation and flop sweat, Warburton doesn't seem to even care if anyone laughs at his jokes. He just sort of drawls them out as though he has all the time in the world, and if people happen to laugh well, that's cool. Pretty much everything Warburton says is funny, although the writing probably isn't any better than 'Til Death and the premises are just as dumb (i.e. Warburton tries to prove to his wife he can still pick up women or gets an erection when his neighbor gives him a massage). I've always liked Warburton from Seinfeld and The Tick, but I never realized exactly how good his timing was or how subtly he plays the jokes until this show.Warburton's main competition for laughs is the equally casual David Spade as a single friend of the two couples whose life is a continual series of one-night stands. Like Warburton, Spade has an easy confidence that makes even the weakest jokes amusing. His character's main purpose seems to be to give everyone else something to think about; the women see him as pathetic and lonely, the guys as free and happy go lucky (as a guy I'm inclined towards the happy go lucky idea).While less known than Warburton and Spade, Megyn Price is also quite good as Warburton's wife, exhibiting a dry sense of humor and the ability to typify a lot of the behavior that annoy guys while always seeming reasonable and likeable. As for the young couple, well, perhaps one day one of them will turn out to be a great actor, but on this show they come across as likable but bland, the sort of actors who lucked into a TV show that, if canceled, will probably be the only significant thing they ever do. While it's not a great show (after the cancellation of The Tick I'm sure Warburton realized that "great" does not equal "long-lived"), Rules of Engagement is a consistently good one. Let's just hope it outlasts 'Til Death.

Charles Herold is a videogame critic for the New York Times but has opinions about pretty much everything.

TV Review: Happy Hour

Charles Herold — Sun, 1 Oct 2006 02:01:59 EDT

Premise: Player decides to turn dweeb into a player.It's hardly worth referring to Happy Hour, Thursdays at 8:30 PM on Fox, by name. It is more appropriate to refer to it as, "the show that comes on after 'Til Death," because it's clearly one of those shows everyone knows isn't much good and hopes to survive by being on after another show people like. Although Happy Hour has the misfortune to follow a show the network had high hopes for but is only marginally better than Happy Hour.Happy Hour has “abysmal failure” written all over it. The premise is hopeless. Nerd, dumped by girlfriend, moves in with guy who never dates anyone for more than six weeks. Player decides to transform nerd into fellow Casanova, as he did with another nerdy friend whose carefree days are over now that he has a shrewish fiancée.It’s a terrible premise and the show executes it poorly. The only redeeming feature is Betch Lacke as this girl who keeps coming into the apartment and complaining about her life. I guess she’s Casanova’s friend, but she seems rather disconnected from the premise. She’s got a husky voice and a slouchy presence that makes her stand out, although she doesn’t have any more luck at getting laughs than anyone else in this sorry excuse for a sitcom. I’m not saying she’s great -- although she would probably do well if she got cast on something decent -- but unlike everyone else in the cast, I felt it was worth the bother of looking up her name so I could stick it in the review.This is not to say the show never gets a laugh. There are occassional laughs. But they're usually uncomfortable laughs. When you do laugh, you don't feel good about it. Fortunately there are few times you'll have to suffer through that uncomfortable feeling. This is the sort of show that, were it to follow a hit show, might hold on to enough of the audience to survive. Although this strategy is itself in danger of cancellation. People with digital video recorders like TiVo don't watch shows just because they're on after other shows. When everyone has a DVR, perhaps networks won't even bother trying to foist crap like Happy Hour on us. Conclusion: Not the worst sitcom ever made, which is a pity, because at least then it would be worth watching just to see the worst sitcom ever made. I refuse to believe this will go more than a few more episodes.

Charles Herold is a videogame critic for the New York Times but has opinions about pretty much everything.

TV Review: 'Til Death

Charles Herold — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 23:26:09 EDT

Premise: Cynical veterans of marriage inflict their bitter lessons on happy newlyweds.From the ads, this looked promising, as a young, happy couple would say something cute about being married and then they’d cut to the middle-aged married couple being snarky on a similar theme. Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where the folks making the commercial have a sharper sense of humor than the folks making the show.‘Til Death is about happy newlyweds who move in next door to a squabbling couple. In the first episode, the old married guy, played by that tall guy from Everybody Loves Raymond, tells the young married guy that when his wife says a pool table for the house is an interesting idea it means she will not allow it, which causes the young marrieds to have a big fight and then get a pool table. This, of course, turns out to be a bad idea anyway. In the second episode, the young wife tells tall guy’s wife she keeps him from meddling in her furniture purchases by offering sex in exchange for a sight-unseen approval. She tries the same thing and gets rebuffed, causing a huge fight and then gets the furniture anyway out of spite. There is something embarrassing about ‘Til Death. It’s not just that the scripts are pure hackwork and the whole setup is unpleasant; it’s also painful to watch a reasonably talented cast work with a desperation bordering on hysteria to pull some genuine laughs out of the show. Sometimes they succeed, but not nearly often enough. The show made me think of the last few years of Will & Grace, when a mix of obvious humor, familiar stage bits, and false sentimentality sunk most of the episodes.This sort of middling, dumb comedy can run for years, so ‘Til Death may, for all I know, become a big hit. But it’s really pretty worthless. You can decide for yourself by tuning in on Thursdays at 8PM on FOX.

Charles Herold is a videogame critic for the New York Times but has opinions about pretty much everything.

TV Review: Eureka

Charles Herold — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 23:26:33 EDT

The Premise: If you put all the geniuses in one town they can invent anything.Wacky small towns are a popular theme among Hollywood writers. You've seen it a million times before: big city character, stressed and confused by life, wanders into a small town of warm eccentrics and never leaves. It's such an unlikely scenario that when it comes right down to it the sci-fi series Eureka is actually no less likely than Northern Exposure.In Eureka, the big city character is U.S. Marshall Jack Carter (Colin Ferguson), who discovers a place called Eureka where the government has been squirreling away all the geniuses they can find to work on super secret technology. It's a cute premise, providing a nice setting for talking houses, scientists who can erase memories and mysterious artifacts. The stories are generally entertaining, but the show is more interesting around its edges than at its center. Ferguson is pleasantly bland and with the exception of Joe Morton as a wry inventor the rest of the main characters feel rather generic. The characters that most attract your attention have the least air time, ranging from Erica Cerra as the amusingly gung ho deputy Jo, who has a fairly big supporting role, to the brilliant Matt Frewer who shows up for a few seconds now and again as a nutty dogcatcher.The end result is a show that falls somewhere between the original SciFi Channel shows I find dull like Stargate SG-1 and Battlestar Galactica and the series I enjoy like Farscape and, uh, well ... okay, like Farscape. So far, Eureka keeps me watching but never gets me caring. Will Carter hook up with the sexy government liason who will she go back to that prickly science guy? Don't care. Will the show ever tell us what's going on with that innkeeper shrink? I guess, but so what. What is that big glowy thing in Section 5? Or was it Section 4? Whatever.Still, it's more interesting than a lot of those small-town series. I couldn't watch more than the first episode of Nothern Exposure, but this one's been stringing me along for a while now. My Final Analysis: I guess as long as they keep showing this I'll probably keep watching it, but if they cancel it tomorrow I'll have forgotten it existed two weeks later.Eureka can be seen on the Sci-Fi Channel, Fridays at 7 pm.

Charles Herold is a videogame critic for the New York Times but has opinions about pretty much everything.

TV Review: Lucky Louie and The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman

Charles Herold — Wed, 6 Sep 2006 05:34:56 EDT

Lucky Louie Premise: Roseanne, but starring a low-key blue-collar guy instead of a shrewish blue-collar gal. Lucky Louie, an HBO sitcom starring the oddly named comic Louis C.K., lets you know what it's all about in the beginning of the first episode, when Louie's daughter, Lucy, plays the "why" game, a game my sister used to torture me with in which every answer leads to another question. Lucy starts with generic kid questions, "Why is the sky blue?" and “Why do we eat cereal for breakfast?" As she keeps asking why with each answer, Louis' replies become more introspective. He begins to tell his ten-year-old kid that he failed to achieve a better life because he did too many drugs in college. It's a very human, real scene, and also quite funny. At its best, this is what Lucky Louie gives you.Louis is a screw up but he knows he is and feels guilty about it. But not guilty enough to stop being a screw up: that's what makes him just like us. His wife Kim (played by Pamela Adlon, who also does the voice of Bobby on King of the Hill) functions both as Louis' emotional support and inquisitor, keeping things together, but constantly berating Louie for his shortcomings. Adlon is terrific, funny, and, like Louie, very human. The standout of the show is Kelly Gould as the mercurial Lucy who will run out to Kim to excitedly show her something and then, when Louis enthusiastically asks to see it, rage, "I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to mom!" Children are, by objective standards insane, but also cute, and Lucy effortlessly shifts from one pole to the other. The rest of the cast varies. Kim has a mooching, half-witted brother who seems to be the show's attempt to create a Kramer. Louis has a co-worker who is rather like that sleazy guy who was on Becker and they seem to be on a different, wackier show than the one the nuclear family inhabits. Louis' boss and his wife are pretty good in the middle ground, but the family across the hall is the only other one who completely avoids the cartooniness of the show's bit players.Lucky Louie focuses primarily on two things: child raising and sex (my understanding is the latter leads to the former which leads to the end of the latter). Some of the sex stuff seems designed to make the show edgy enough for HBO (as do stunts like having one of the minor male characters appear completely naked with everything showing), but even then it tends to feel pretty honest and it's nice to see a show that has a semi-adult attitude towards masturbation. Final analysis: It's funny, the characters are likeable, and it's got the funniest and most insightful portrayal of a child I've ever seen on TV. Well worth watching. The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie WoodmanPremise: People in Hollywood are nuts. Nuts I tell you!One of the minor players in Lucky Louie is the brilliant standup comic Laura Kightlinger, a sexy woman inexplicably married to Louie's overweight boss. Kightlinger also has her own series, an eight-part miniseries that makes up for its short length with a long title: The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman. It's playing on the Independent Film Channel. In Accomplishments, Kightlinger plays a magazine writer and aspiring scriptwriter trying to make it in Hollywood. According to the New York Times review of the show, the first episode was hysterically funny. I didn't see the first episode, and honestly, I find it hard to believe it was that funny. Accomplishments doesn't really seem to be about being funny. It's about showing how horrible people are and how all of Jackie's shots at success are undone by the idiocy of the Hollywood system -- although Jackie's own cynicism and apathy could have something to do with it. There are very funny moments in Accomplishments, as when two security guards in an office building discuss a man they see masturbating at his cubicle or when Jackie interviews a crazy artist who insists the interview be done without words, leading to a series of weird stares and incomprehensible motions. Mainly the show is just sort of depressing. It's got that "everything-sucks-and-people-who-don't-know-that-are-fools" vibe (making it a good companion piece for the similarly dark, but not especially funny, animated British series Monkey Dust). Lucky Louie also portrays life as rather hopeless and full of difficulties that may well be impossible to overcome, but it is likeably human where Accomplishments is archly cynical. But that's not the problem; I myself am archly cynical as often as not. The problem is the series isn't all that funny and the characters aren't likeable enough to balance that out. I appreciate that the show is trying to be something more than a standard sitcom, but if you don't have strong jokes or relatable characters or a compelling storyline and your only target is the painfully easy one of Hollywood, well, you've got problems. Final Analysis: This one's keeping me watching, but just barely; it's got just enough sense of potential that I keep thinking the next episode will be really good. I do like Kightlinger, and I do think she could do something great one day, but I don't think this is it.

Charles Herold is a videogame critic for the New York Times but has opinions about pretty much everything.