I wanted to let everyone know my second edition of Rick’s Rants: Quips on Television’s Finest has hit the internet. It’s about last Wednesday’s night of television as a prep for tonight, specifically about ABC’s new show Pushing Daisies, Top Chef and South Park. I’ve put out a plea for folks to post their favorite episode of South Park on the article so I ask you all to think hard and comment with your favorite. Here is a link to the article: Rick’s Rants.
- Rich
Hello Trifecta readers. I’m sorry there haven’t been many updates on the site lately, although I did thoroughly enjoy Danny’s Soccer post. We’ve all been busy with school, but we’ll be back to updating the site regularly in the near future. I specifically have not only been busy with school, but I’ve also been busting my ass to impress the folks over at movieweb.com and apparently my efforts have succeeded. Today marks the start of Rick’s Rants: Quips on Television’s Finest, a column I’ll be writing for Movieweb every other week. It’ll always be under the TV features section of the main page and I implore you all to go check it out and post comments on the article. My first column is about Showtime, specifically about Dexter, Weeds and Californication. When I post articles for Movieweb I’ll always have a link on The Trifecta to the article. Speaking of which: Rick’s Rants
The Trifecta will hopefully be crossing the 1000 hit mark this week, and I just want to thank everyone who’s been checking it out and reading. Please post your thoughts about Showtime’s shows if you have any on the movieweb article. It’d be much appreciated. I’m off to see Lupe Fiasco, peace.
- Rich
Last week Rich wrote that MK was going to be on weeds this week. Logically, some sort of follow up article would be expected, but it is nowhere to be found. I am a pretty big fan of weeds. I think the funniest character by far is Uncle Andy, who has been weak this season until the incredible change channel to animal planet/see two lions having some fierce lion sex/hearing the narrator talk about how the male’s dick is so enormous that it gives the female so much pain she tries to bite the male’s face, so the male bites the female’s neck and holds her down to make sure she can’t/looks around/unbuttons pants to jerk off. For sure the funniest thing I’ve seen on TV in quite some time. So this week MK made her debut. Weird hair, looked very short and impish, did I mention the weird hair? It just looked strangely…wide. And she has horrible posture, my grandmother would be horrified. The short/crayon drawing hair/stooped look just wasn’t doing it for me. And then she opened her mouth. There are two distinct possibilities of theorizing Mary Kate Olsen’s performance monday night:
1. Mary Kate Olsen is an atrocious actress.
2. The character MK was portraying was so fictitious that it would be impossible for an actual person to represent.
Let’s examine. Option 1 could be true. I’ve never seen any Olsen twins movie except It Takes Two, and I didn’t watch Full House. Some people our age may find it a bit startling that I’ve seen maybe 3 episodes in my life. I certainly don’t. Maybe you were a lazy TV watcher as a kid that grew up into someone who watches The War At Home, but I wasn’t settling for Full House. From my brief, but interested viewing several years ago, this is what I hazily remember. The Uncles were so queer it still gives me the shakes. The scenes with the Olsens were equivalent to watching someone else’s baby vidoes. The one other girl, who wasn’t part of the family, was legitimately annoying. I’ll give you the theme song. And if you have some kind of argument, some sort of defensive thoughts that you are thinking right now, then I’ll give you this – it wasn’t “wrong” for you to be watching full house, but you certainly could’ve been watching something better. As for Option 2, what can I even say. 75% of the things she said were about jesus. The other 25 was about weed. Thats all the dimension there is to the character. She was in about 4 scenes and thats the only thing we know, as a result of, as they say in the rubrics, “telling”, not “showing”. And, disappointly, MK wasn’t appealing enough to carry it. If the girl was really hot it wouldn’t make a difference at all if she said some prayer on loop for the entire episode. With MK I wanted to stab myself in the face. Worth mentioning to all you freaks who stumbled upon this blog by googling “MK + photoshopped horsefucking pics.”
I wanted to write about Rescue Me also, but theres just too much to say. I started watching in the middle of season 3, and went back and immediately watched every one. I’d say I have a pretty good set of options when it comes to media, and I’d almost always drop whatever I’m doing to watch any episode. The main reason I like it, among many, is how badass the guys in it are, especially Tommy, the main character. Truly inspiring.
- Warsh
If you were born before 1990, chances are your television schedule was similar to mine when I was younger. It went something like this… Saturday morning cartoons, early morning cartoons / Sportscenter… Nickelodeon… and more specifically “Snick”. Snick stood for “Saturday Night Nickelodeon”, and was, not surprisingly, a block of TV shows on Nickelodeon from 8-10 PM. They included such classics as, Clarissa Explains it All and Are You Afraid of the Dark (Yes, I was in fact afraid of the dark. I never did and never will enjoy scary movies, TV shows, etc…). You might also remember such gems as What Would you Do, Pete and Pete, Salute your Shorts, and who could forget Wild and Crazy Kids. The list really could go on but unfortunately I would like to keep this post rather short.
You might say, Hey Dan! What about those shows like Guts, Double Dare, Legends of the Hidden Temple, and Nick Arcade (a show most people don’t remember where you actually went into a video game, very cool). Well, if you have digital cable you can still view those shows on Nick’s sister channel, GAS (Games and Sports). I’ll certainly watch GAS from time to time between episodes of Modern Marvels but, honestly, it could be so much better. What if I were to tell you that you that you could watch an episode of Wild and Crazy Kids every Wednesday at three in the afternoon. Is that something you might be interested in? Here’s my proposition. Hear me out.
Change the name of Nick GAS to Nick Classic (this isn’t my idea, it actually came from my roommate Dabrow, but I thought it was great) and cut the crap out of GAS by removing shows like; ehem…Figure it Out. Right now they are broadcasting T.V. shows that I watched as a kid but air commercials geared at today’s youth. They have it all wrong. Who do they think are watching these shows? Honestly, this channel has to be marketed to my generation because I know kids who are 8 or 9 right now aren’t watching it. Children of today have their own generation of pathetic television to watch, ever hear of Dora the Explorer? No one ever cared about learning another language while watching cartoons when I was a younger. Here is my sample schedule for a few hours of Nick Classic:
There you have it folks. 10 AM through 8PM of solid Nick Classic programming. The key here is that they need to market this to kids who are in the 17-25 year range. There is absolutely nothing on daytime television for a college kid to watch. I guarantee this would be an instant hit with the young adult crowd. When you see Nickelodeon introduce this in a few years remember this post. Did I miss anything? Would you make a change to the schedule? Did I miss any great ones? Let me know and post a comment!
- Dan
I just finished watching the newest episode of Weeds; I don’t think I stopped laughing once the entire half hour. After the first few episodes of the season dubious thoughts led to me to believe the series had peaked in season 2, but tonight convinced me otherwise. I think tonight’s episode was definitely the best of the season and perhaps the entire series. Andy’s military side plot has gotten funnier every episode peaking in hilarity tonight (turn on your vacume Ivan, now back off again, on again, off again); he gave up the cell phone but I’m pretty sure they sent the video of Rodriguez going down to some friends, so hopefully Andy’s discharge won’t mean we’ve seen the last of my favorite battle buddy. Doug’s entire power move to reclaim dominance over the Agrestic City Council yielded him a free golf membership tonight. Good for you Doug. After weeks of awful side plots involving Shane we get the funniest punch line of the night “Jill had an abortion.” And let’s not forget Nancy… Nancy has done some weird shit over the past couple weeks. She gave a pole dance, stripped off all her clothes and dove into a pool. Nancy’s portions of the episodes have seemed more dedicated toward pleasing horny Showtime viewers in love with the weed dealing hot mommy, then about comedy or character development. Tonight however, Nancy’s screen time was genuinely funny and actually reminded me of what I loved about the show originally: humor surrounding her absurd drug dealer life crossing over with her standard suburban life. The background music for the drive by shooting was perfect.
After seeing an episode that completely restored my faith in the series Showtime kept the good times rolling by reminding me of the monumental event that is going to occur next week in Majestic, the neighboring religious community. Mary-Kate Olsen is joining the cast as Tara, a devout Christian girl. This marks the first major project the actress has ever worked on without her twin sister (Just MK, no & A). It’s also the first project that isn’t an episode of Full House or some stupid goddamn twin sister gimmick movie where the girls go to some city or country and meet some boys and get in trouble but then get saved by the boys or their own twin sister powers. To be fair, the girls have come a long way since ‘Brother for Sale’.
Mary-Kate had a brush with anorexia (and maybe did a ton of blow) but as of next week she’s back in action in her first adult themed project ever. Silas, Silas, Silas… you lucky bastard. We all had that friend, or knew that guy who loved the Olsen twins and regularly checked the counting down until the Olsen twins turned 18 website, or would occasionally jokingly suggest watching one of their horrendous made for TV movies, but everyone could tell they weren’t really joking (Evan). Even the bassist of the band Tally Hall is one of those creepy Olsen twin guys. This is the chorus to their song called ‘Two Wuv’: “Mary-Kate and Ashley I hope you understand that I love you a lot and I want to be your man, and I think that it’d be totally cool if I hung around your apartments and enrolled in your school.” Well , guess what Evan, Tally Hall bassist, and all the Olsen twin obsessed guys out there? Next week Mary Kate will start getting her pure Christian ideals corrupted by the smooth drug dealing Silas, and I can’t wait. We can all finally live out our dreams of seducing an Olsen twin vicariously through Silas. Thank you Showtime, thank you very much.
- Rich
And so ends what might have been my favorite weekly night of TV ever, and I’m very sad to see it go. It reminds me of the time my two gerbils died, or when I first tasted pie; it’s all just very emotional stuff for me. I liked the season finale of Entourage but that is all I’ll say about Vinnie Chase and the boys. I’m actually hoping this post will entice Mr. Warshaw to give us his final thoughts on this season of Entourage. For those readers who have yet to enjoy the magic that is Flight of the Conchords, take an afternoon with HBO on Demand and give them a try. I know they’re not for everyone, but if they are for you, you’ll love them. If you didn’t like them at first, I urge you to try again; their humor ages like a fine wine. I’d like to invite all the diehard Conchords fans in for a private band meeting. For those of you who don’t like the show or who haven’t tried it yet, no need to continue reading. On to the season finale…
I had heard that HBO renewed the show for another season so I suspected the story of our two heroes would not end in success tonight. I was delightfully surprised though that Murray Hewitt Productions finally got its name on the map. While the story arcs for Bret and Jemaine are still wide open, Murray Hewitt has found his success. It took all season for Murray to stand up for himself and be heard and on the season finale his management ideas turned into serious bank. Oh Murray… you finally figured out the disturbing truth of the music business. It’s not about getting your band’s songs into greeting cards, (especially ones wishing your son a happy 80th birthday) or making CD deals with shady businessmen (who are possibly related to Quincy Jones) under bridges. It’s about being cool. Murray put that cool beer into Jemaine’s hands resulting in the hilarious ménage a few episodes back. I ask you: What’s more rock and roll then a man-man-lady threesome? Nothing. And to conclude season 1, he found a cool guy named Todd who plays the bongos. Murray puts Todd in the band, and he even suggests that the band plays the Doggy Bounce because he thought it was a cool song despite Jemaine’s hesitance (great managing Murray).
The one seemingly intelligent criticism I’ve heard repeatedly about the show is that it’s not ‘smart enough.’ I agree that a few of the episodes are very simple, but some of them also make very funny social commentaries in the subtext. The season finale was one such episode. Todd’s introduction to the Doggy Bounce was – “all you guys have to do is put down your guitars and basses and say arf arf like a little dog.” Instead of the intelligent, original and hilarious music of the Conchords getting some heat, the Doggie Bounce becomes a huge hit. Obviously no one was surprised. We all know that in the US the pop charts are dominated by musicians who don’t play their own instruments and have a song or two with a good chorus that gets stuck in all our heads. Shake That Laffy Taffy comes to mind. “Doggy dos and doggy don’ts, doggy wills and doggy won’ts… do the doggy bounce.” That quote was typed from memory. That damned Doggy Bounce is already in my head. Despite no new Conchords songs, (although Doggy Bounce technically is a Conchords song) I loved the finale. The physical comedy was the best it’s ever been: Bret doing Footloose, Jemaine fighting Todd, and every time Todd’s face went red with bongo intensity I lost my shit. Mel converting to a Crazy Dogs fan was not unexpected but was very disheartening. I can only hope Mel comes back for season 2, maybe a little rock and roll Bret and Jemaine ménage would bring her back to the Conchords side.
I really can’t say enough about how much I love the Conchords, even though Jemaine’s facial features are too deep set to be considered classically handsome. It has become more than just a TV show for me. The album rides in my car with me, making me laugh on the way to school. When I come home I throw on an episode for a pitch perfect half hour of comedy escapism. I sing the songs in my head day and night and they’re still funny after countless repetition. I really have to hand it to HBO; they have a wonderful eye for talent and employ amazing production teams. For all those as distraught as me that HBO Sundays have ended, fear not, Larry David’s 6th season of Curb starts up next Sunday. HBO is not fucking around; they really are worth the $12 a month. Quite oppositely to the TV versions of themselves, the Flight of the Conchords have garnered a huge cult following. Their first EP – ‘The Distant Future’ is out and available everywhere. You can also expect a full studio album in October as well as a new season of the show next summer. For now though, this particular flight of the Conchords has come to its end. I think I’ll end with a song, as the Conchords usually do.
(To the tune of Leggy Blonde)
Goodbye…
Goodbye Bret and Jemaine
Flighty flighty flighty flighty
Flighty flighty flighty flighty
Flighty flighty flighty flighty
Flighty flighty flighty flighty
Flight of the Conchords
Goodbye
Goodbye
I had two gerbils but they died
(Whoa – oh – Whoa)
I like pie…
He’ll never get
He’ll never get
He’ll never get
He’ll never get to say…
Oooh Conchords you got it goin’ on
Wanna see you wearin’ that thong thong thong
See you getting on to the break of dawn
(mumbling) panties on
Goodbye
Goodbye Bret and Jemaine
- Rich
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