Notorious: Throwing Words At Ya

Archive

A little late for this edition of Notorious, but with the lateness comes the ability to get caught up on my favorite programs…all of them. Unfortunately, this was made much easier with the fact that Family Guy and American Dad both did not have new episodes this week, but I digress.

The Dead Zone

Now we’re getting into the throwaway episodes of the season, as Johnny meets someone who can see the future too, but she gained the ability through getting attacked by bees, which is completely less cooler than being hit head-on by a big goddamn semi-truck. The storyline reeked of an episode I had to have seen earlier in the show’s stint, as it involves a sniper doing dirty deeds (done dirt cheap) and eventually getting caught before he can off a pastor. One thing that I do enjoy about the show, for whatever reason, is the whole thing with people assuming that Johnny can abuse his ability, when in truth it has been established in the first season that he is destined to see things that he can change, not necessarily seeing the future of someone who will only be drinking lemonade in a hammock all day. It gives me great satisfaction to know that I have stuck with the show so long that I understand Johnny’s predestined to see the future of important events leading up to Stillson’s reign of terror.

The 4400

Now this is where we adopt the idea of the throwaway story–which is neat nonetheless–and adding the main storylines behind it. This is what makes ensemble cast shows so strong: You can have a storyline with a “abusive” teacher who’s actually helping children being investigated by the NTAC agents, but when you surround it with the other great storylines: Shawn being unable to heal everyone’s pain, Kyle’s blackouts, Jordan seeming to creepy to trust around Isabel, and so on, it adds for really interesting episodes. The Dead Zone is one of those shows that is unable to do this, since they don’t have the depth of acting talent to have a throwaway story with a double vision and surround it with the growing popularity of Stillson. So yeah, here we go. I don’t trust Jordan one bit, but I’m not entirely sure how he managed to convince Isabel that his intentions were pure with her. Perhaps Jordan has a stronger mind than we thought, perhaps because Shawn’s healing is making him run at 100% capacity? This show continues to rise in my standards of television, and I’m waiting for it to get some more recognition.

30 Days

This show continues to pump out quality episodes, as we get another one this time with an American living in a Muslim household. It was amazing to watch this guy transform from a gung-ho American who knew nothing about the Muslim religion except the stereotypes forced upon him by–honestly–the American media, turning into a man who promises to defend the Muslim religion as one that is to be respected and be mentioned in the same breath as Christianity and Judaism. I even learned some things about the Muslim religion that I didn’t know before, which is yet another one of those features that comes along with making such a good show as Morgan Spurlock has. Watching Morgan play word association with other people and then playing the prayer music to their disgust was funny, astounding and shameful all at the same time. Despite the fact that I, myself, am an atheist, I understand the importance of religion in today’s society, so respecting someone else’s beliefs should be chief above all. I despise the lady who compared the prayer call to bells, saying that the call to prayer was “throwing words” at people. It’s all the same thing. Does anyone besides those who practice the Muslim faith even understand the words being thrown at them? Get over it and get used to it, and respect these people for cryin’ out loud.

Robot Chicken

Continuing the hit-and-miss trend with some stuff that works, some stuff that doesn’t and the usual “that’s f*ckin’ weird” stuff. “Try the hollowpoints! They’re groovy!” The fact that they decided to put a spin on the catchphrases just makes it that much more weird. They probably couldn’t get permission to use those slogans anyway.

Quick comments:

— VH1’s pimping of its Celebreality block has got me compelled to actually try and stomach Hogan Knows Best, even though I’m afraid it’s going to rot my brain like all the other reality shows that I force myself to watch (see below). Speaking of Hogan, I rather enjoy HBK turning on him, and I’m currently downloading RAW to get a chance to check out this turn that everyone is flipping over themselves talking about.

— So, it turns out Fire Me…Please! was hiring comedians to play as contestants in the game. I’m not that offended by that, and I’m not actually surprised because I wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face screwing up at my job, but I don’t understand the producers’ of the show’s decision to not recognize the comedy background of the contestants, instead of hiding it. They should embrace it, and simply present it as a skewered version of Candid Camera…only not nearly as good.

— Sat down and watched Million Dollar Baby the other night. Pretty damn good, and I would say that it was worth the Best Picture win, even though I’ve yet to see the other contenders such as The Aviator, Sideways, etc. I so very much enjoy Morgan Freeman, but everyone else was pretty sweet too, you know? I’m thinking about watching The Godfather Part I next–finally–but knowing me I’ll never get around to it. For some reason I feel like I’m going to be disappointed by it, even though some people refer to it as the best movie over.

— I’m happy to see that Crash, the movie that amazed me in theaters earlier this summer is going to get an original series going on FX. I’ll believe it when they say that this movie was originally pitched as a TV show, and it’ll fit in great with the other gritty TV shows on FX like The Shield and Rescue Me. Definitely looking forward to it.

— You haven’t heard “What You Waiting For?” by Gwen Stefani, until you’ve heard the vocals laid on top of the music from the Metropolis Zone in Sonic The Hedgehog. This further proves that that song is the only good thing about Stefani’s solo career so far, and she’s managed to bury this good thing in the ground with such fertilizer as “Hollaback Girl”. “Cool” sucks too.

— You also haven’t heard N.W.A.’s infamous album until you’ve heard it edited down to only the profanity. The most amusing 3 1/2 minutes of my life. I’m not going to link to it in here, but just look up Explicit Content Only in Google and you’ll find it with ease.

— Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. Not sure how I feel about it, since there are some episodes of ATHF when it becomes obvious the show is best enjoyed in 15 minute stints, but they might make something out of this. I won’t pass judgment until I see a trailer.

That’ll wrap things up for this week, but be sure to join me next week, where we’ll hopefully have some new Family Guy, American Dad, and maybe a good episode of The Dead Zone can be thrown in there for show. Please?