My annual TV roundup is a little late this year – I’d intended to do this as a Preview, but Premiere week has come and gone and I got slammed with work, so it’s here now. The good news is, that allowed me to see a good number of the shows that I didn’t have screeners for.

Screeners? Yes, this year I was actually able to get hold of a few early versions of pilots for NBC and CBS, so I’ll indicate which pilots I saw that way. I’ll also note when I saw them, since the earlier I saw them, the greater the chances that there have been significant changes made since I saw them. I’ll also note which shows I’ve been watching since they premiered.

Anything with an asterisk is something I would recommend based on whatever version of the pilot I saw. I’ll probably be watching a couple more shows than that, but those are the ones that really stood out. Anything not listed here, I haven’t actually watched and thus do not feel qualified to give an opinion on other than “that looked stupid enough that even I wouldn’t watch it.”

After the jump, the full list.

Read the rest…

Note: I’m linking to pictures individually as they’re relevant, but if you’re interested in seeing my full photoset for Madrid, please check out my Flickr. I may also do photo slideshow posts at some point, let me know if you’re interested.

Previously: The preface.

GETTING THERE

The flight. Oh, the flight.

Not one, not two, but THREE screaming children in the row behind me. They shut up for a while after dinner, but there aren’t enough sleeping pills in the world to have kept me asleep once the youngest woke up with a hideous coughing fit.

Fog at the airport when we finally made it to Madrid meant circling for half an hour, an aborted landing attempt, then circling for another half hour before actually landing.

And since there had been multiple international flights held up by the fog, passport control was a total shitshow. I also managed to pick the line in which everyone wanted to chat with the customs agent for 10 minutes apiece, so it was past noon by the time I finally got out of the airport.

Luckily, things improved vastly from there.

MADRID: DAY ONE – HITTING THE GROUND RUNNING

Got to my hotel, Hostal Santo Domingo, and was very pleased to discover how nice it was for the equivalent of about 80 bucks a night. Right outside was a big plaza with a holiday shopping area and a temporary skating rink.

The whole city was actually very nicely done up for the holidays, which attracted completely batshit insane crowds. Imagine Michigan Avenue during the holiday shopping season, then about triple it. It was absolutely bonkers.

Anyway, after dumping my backpack, I went to Palacio Real, the old Hapsburg era royal palace. It’s very cool – quite a bit less “let’s gild EVERYTHING!” than Versailles, but with every ceiling in the joint immaculately painted to make up for it.

There was an interesting temporary art exhibition comparing old world and new world art from the Spanish colonial period (surprise! Everyone loved painting religious iconography), and there was a very cool little tour of the Farmacia Real, but the highlight for me was the Armory.

Really, really amazing old suits of armor – I really wish they hadn’t been such sticklers for the no photo rule, because the detail work on these things was absolutely spectacular. Lots of old weaponry too, including the largest musket I’ve ever seen that didn’t require its own little cart to carry it.

Read the rest…

Warning to regular readers of this blog: SEVERE Nerd Alert.

A lot of folks I know who started their blogs out on Blogger have used HaloScan for commenting since before Blogger implemented comments. Since HaloScan is shutting down in the next few days, you’d think you might want to move all your old comments to Blogger.

Good luck.

There’s really no practical reason why someone at Blogger can’t write some sort of comments parser to handle the XML files that HaloScan spits out, but so far, they haven’t. If you want to get it done right now, the only way I found to make it work is a ridiculously cumbersome process.

Basically, that process is to import everything into a WordPress blog where it can all be properly combined, then re-export it, run it through python script, and upload it back into Blogger.

I’ve decided to write up the entire procedure I went through both as an exercise in writing documentation and in order to help anyone else who’s crazy enough to want to try this. If you think you have the patience for this (or would just like to see exactly how insane I am), hit the “read the rest” link that follows.

Read the rest…

Until I was about 21, I thought I was going to be a rock star.

Until I was 28, I thought I was going to make movies and TV for a living.

Until I was ____, I thought I was going to be a professional computer nerd.

—

Life has taken a lot of twists and turns for me since the writers’ strike of 2007-2008. Since that strike began on November 5, 2007, I have spent almost twelve of these last 24 months unemployed.

Part of that was the strike. Part of that was my decision to move into the production line and out of working directly for producers, which is an inherently more volatile career path.

But much of it has been the way the bottom has absolutely fallen out of filming in L.A. The combination of the strike starting a rearrangement of the way the business works and the economy in general going down the tubes has contributed to a precipitous drop in filming here. There’s just no work.

I realized a couple months ago as I was making my bajillionth phone call looking for work that I have not received one phone call back since June. June was also my last interview, for a job I had locked down until an actor decided to put in a good word for his niece, and then she had it locked down.

I’ve offered to take PA jobs again, but they’re not looking to take someone with as much experience in higher-up jobs as I have. In some cases, they think it’s because I think I’m above the scut work (which I don’t, I wouldn’t be applying for a PA job if I did), and in some cases, it seems they think I’ll outshine them (with the people who are insecure enough to actually worry about this, that might be a more valid concern).

Everywhere I look in terms of what my skills can get me in the entertainment business, I either see jobs that are so severely overworked and underpaid that I would rather work at Starbucks again than take them, because at least at Starbucks I would get health insurance, or nothing at all.

And frankly, the way things are going right now with the economy and the out-of-state filming incentives and the studios and networks freaking the fuck out about every last penny, I don’t see that scenario changing in the next 18-24 months at the absolute earliest.

Sometimes, you just wake up and realize that the universe is trying to tell you something. And the universe is telling me it’s time to do something else with my life.

—

And now, a brief comic interlude:

Click to enlarge.

From Amazing Super Powers.

—

I’ve always been a pop-culture nerd, but I wasn’t a serious computer nerd until the last 3-4 years. I learned some HTML programming in college, and really enjoyed it, but the complete time-sink that is working in entertainment pulled me off the track that would have kept me learning more about programming.

While the primary technical things that I’ve done in the last few years have involved technical troubleshooting and working as an ad-hoc IT Guy, what I really want to learn about is how to make computers do what I want them to.

And to do that, I need to learn how to program. I need to learn about architecture and C++ and the vagaries of programming for different platforms. I really want to learn how to take some ideas I have for programs and turn them into reality, from start to finish.

This, however, will require a fair amount of school. Right now I’m on step 0.1, taking some very basic classes at the community college level, trying to figure out exactly where my interests take me in terms of how I want to program.

My ultimate goal is a Masters’ in Computer Science. I’m in the middle of a choose-your-own-adventure bit of figuring out how that’s going to happen, but I do know that I’m sure as shit not going back to school just to get a second Bachelor’s.

I’m putting together an application to Stanford to start next fall, since a) they have an extraordinarily strong program and b) they are one of the only well-respected Graduate-level CS programs that will actually accept people who don’t have a CS undergrad background as long as they’re willing to learn.

It’s an extremely competitive program, so I have a fairly comprehensive backup plan standing by. I’ll get into it at some point down the road if need be.

If I do somehow manage to get into Stanford, however, I expect to hear a lot of this [note: mp3 link].

—

I’ve talked to a fair number of you guys about all this in differing degrees of depth, but I felt like I really needed to try and bring everything together in one place, almost more for my own purposes than to try and clarify it for everyone else.

I certainly won’t say I’m never working in entertainment again. If someone offered me a job right now that would help me keep my union health insurance even a bit longer, I’d take it in a second. But I don’t see my future in production anymore, and that’s where things have changed.

This is a path that’s been slowly coalescing over the last few months, and has picked up a lot of steam since about Labor day, when I finally accepted that I probably wouldn’t work in entertainment for much of the rest of the year.

It took a long time for the pieces to come together well enough for me to see them, but once they did, my way forward became much, much clearer. I’ve got a plan, or really a bunch of plans all leading in the same direction.

Now all I have to do is try and figure out how to get there from here.

Here’s the long review I promised earlier this week. Bunch of mini-reviews for the pilots I’ve already seen will be up later today.

Many people have been asking me, “What the fuck has happened to HBO lately?” I call it Albrecht’s revenge.

Chris Albrecht, the former head of HBO who was unceremoniously booted after getting arrested for beating his girlfriend (and after a previously covered up incident of the same nature was revealed shortly thereafter), really left his former employers in the lurch with the slate he greenlit just prior to his departure. It’s almost as if he knew the jig was up.

John From Cincinatti was an impenetrable mess, chosen to debut in the timeslot following the head-scratching finale of The Sopranos (my mom’s reaction was fairly typical). It flopped spectacularly, and now the next of Albrecht’s hand-picked successors is here to shit all over HBO’s once-pristine reputation.

Someone asked me earlier this week via text message to explain what happens on Tell Me You Love Me, and my 160 character-limited reply was, “boring conversation, boring conversation, fucking, then boring conversation.” In other words, another serious disappointment.

The premise, at first glance, is right up HBO’s alley. A realistic look at marriage that would strip away the layers of bullshit that constantly surround relationships, complete with lots of envelope-pushing sexual situations? It must have sounded like a home run during the pitch.

The problem is in the execution. The scripts shoot for honest but wind up at excruciating. There’s a very fine line in film and television between being really honest about how life is really lived and presenting people with rehashed versions of arguments that they had this morning, and that they’d really prefer not to relive.

The best example I can find of the former is Friday Night Lights, a show that infuses even the angriest arguments with love and humor. Tell Me You Love Me just infuses everything with deep bitterness, and it makes the show incredibly obnoxious.

The other problem with the show is a bit more endemic to its premise than to its specific execution: Dramas about troubled relationships, particularly those which are shooting for realism, are particularly difficult to do well because of the deeply boring nature of most fights to people not actually IN the relationship.

The couple having fertility difficulties might resonate with other couples having fertility difficulties. I, however, have seen this story line one too many times, and the exact same beats are covered in every treatment of it:

“This is my fault for having dried up eggs, this is your fault for having dried up sperm, let’s schedule sex to meet my ovulation schedule, let’s throw out the schedule and just be romantic, this is our fault for not trying hard enough, this is nobody’s fault so let’s just love each other.”

That’s just one example of the mind-numbingly boring plot recycling that goes on between sex scenes in the show. Sadly, in some plotlines, fights aren’t just boring, they’re actively irritating.

Take, for example, the engaged couple of the show. Their troubles begin after she overhears him talking about how he doesn’t think, even though they’re engaged, he’ll ever spend the rest of his life only sleeping with one woman. This sends her into an almost psychotic tizzy, freaking out that because he can’t commit right then and there at that very second to not sleeping with anyone for the next forty to sixty years, he doesn’t really love her enough.

Now, this is a stupid enough premise on its own, but the acting and the writing really turn it into the single most asinine argument you’ve ever heard. Halfway through the second episode I wanted to scream at this poor guy, “Oh my God, RUN! Dump this lunatic before it’s too late!”

And then…there’s the sex. It’s an unavoidable part of the show in a “Wow, did they actually just show that guy’s balls? I think they did. Oh look, there they are again!” sort of way. They also think they’re pushing the envelope by showing a 60-something woman giving her husband a blowjob, but I was simply left with the rather creepy feeling that I’d just walked in on someone else’s parents having sex.

The graphic nature of the sex is supposed to be daring and show deeper levels of a relationship than you can show without it, but if the characters are so annnoying and/or underdeveloped as to leave the viewer completely unable to connect with any of them, the sex can’t come off as anything other than pornographic and prurient.

And believe me, if you’re watching this show for the 2-3 brief sex acts that take place over the course of an hour, you need to go take the $14 a month you’re paying for HBO and go buy some actual pornography, because it’d certainly be sexier and a far more effective means to an end than anything shown here.

The whole thing is just unfortunate, because there are a couple good actors who are wasted in horribly bland parts: Tim DeKay from Carnivàle just can’t do anything with the colorless sad-sack husband who’s lost interest in sex, and Ally Walker as his wife who goes to couples therapy without him is hilariously passive-agressive.

Overall, it’s another serious dent in HBO’s once-impenetrable armor. I won’t even give this the chance I gave John From Cincinnati of watching the whole season, partly since the highly awesome Dexter is starting up in the same timeslot in a couple weeks. I gave JFC that chance because it was so fucking weird and David Milch is so fucking brilliant that I thought maybe, maybe there’s a point to continuing to watch this and it will eventually turn awesome, despite the fact that it never did.

That hope doesn’t exist with this show. For the first time in a while for an HBO show, the season pass is getting deleted from the TiVo tonight. Thanks, Albrecht.

I haven’t been posting much because I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work and in the new fall season of television. I love that my job gives me a nominal excuse to actually watch all this shit.

For those keeping score, brief updates on all the shows I’ve been testing out for the fall season, sorted roughly by airdate/time:

Heroes – Extremely entertaining, and a lot better than I thought it would be. First two episodes show a lot of promise, but I’m not sure I buy that the production values and writing quality can be kept up long-term. Series television is harder than hell, especially when it has to look this good every week.

Vanished – Stopped watching after two episodes. Utterly preposterous with horrible acting, and totally wasted its Atlanta setting. If you’re going to bother to set a series somewhere other than New York or LA, then actually set it there. Don’t just intercut some stock footage of the city and call it even.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip – Major disappointment. As has been astutely pointed out by the TV critic at the Akron Beacon-Journal, a huge part of the failure is that the sketches for the comedy that’s supposed to save the world? Are exceptionally weak (and the Gilbert and Sullivan bit is a rip-off of a Saturday Night Live bit with David Hyde Pierce, which in turn was a rip-off of Animaiacs).

Friday Night Lights – Just watched the first episode, and it was fucking awesome. Gripping, well-acted, extremely well directed. If the rest even come close to the pilot, this show is going to be fantastic. My favorite new show of the season.

Knights of Prosperity – Hasn’t premiered yet.

Standoff – Dreadful. The pilot was just awful, though the second episode (which I watched because the TV was still on after my show finished) was at least slightly better, but the only reason it was watchable was because of Tim DeKay as the unhinged air traffic controller. When your guest cast far outshines your leads, you have a serious problem.

Smith – Better than it has any right to be. Way better than Heist and probably better than Thief. Again, another one I’m unsure can keep this up for 22 episodes, but I’m a lot more open to it than I was when I heard the premise.

Jericho – Unexpectedly and morbidly fascinating. Poor Man’s Johnny Depp (aka Skeet Ulrich) isn’t bad, and Gerald McRaney stumbles onto his second great part of they year after playing George Hearst on my late, lamented Deadwood. However, the post-apocalyptic premise is what makes this worth watching. The only question that remains, as it does for so many other shows, is: For how long?

20 Good Years – Hasn’t premiered yet, but I’m hearing horrible buzz.

30 Rock – Hasn’t premiered yet, but will at least be funnier (if not necessarily better) than Studio 60.

Justice – Interesting concept, headache-inducing execution. The first show I’ve ever stopped watching because of the style in which it is shot. I thought all the jump cuts were going to give me a seizure. There’s a line at which your special effects drown out your plot, and this show was about thirty feet over it.

Kidnapped – A hell of a lot better than Vanished, but didn’t grab me for some reason. I meant to TiVo the second episode, but when I forgot, I realized I just didn’t care. That’s never a good sign.

The Nine – Premieres tomorrow. Will at least be better than Six Degrees (see below).

Ugly Betty – Been done before, totally clichéd. Still really great, mostly because America Ferrara owns the title role. This is one of the few shows I don’t see having any problem whatsoever mining years of material out of its premise.

Shark – James Woods is great, but they keep trying to give him a heart of gold in the scenes with his kid, and it robs the character of any resonance. I’m going to keep watching for a few episodes in the hope that it improves, but I’m not too optimistic.

Six Degrees – The pilot committed the worst sin in television: It was completely and utterly boring. Didn’t even watch the second episode.

Dexter – Michael C. Hall is spectacularly creepy as a sociopathic serial killer whose day job is as a forensics expert for the Miami Police. Way better than the concept sounds. Also way better than anything else on Showtime, though I admit that’s a somewhat low bar to clear.

Brothers and Sisters – I don’t know why I even bothered. Sally Field has always irritated me, and I knew I’d never buy Calista Flockhart as an Ann Coulter-type conservative ballbreaker. I heard the second episode was better than the pilot, but not even Rachel Griffiths could bring me to keep watching it.