MY open letter to NBC regarding Chuck

Alan Sepinwall, Star-Ledger TV critic and blogger extraordinaire has written an open letter to NBC in support of Chuck. And he wrote it before last night’s episode, which he thought was awesome enough to give a Dayenu filled review. So awesome! Anyway, thanks to Sepinwall, I was inspired to write my own letter to NBC.

Dear smart people at NBC who were open-minded enough to air this show originally:

I used to merely like this show, but over the course of this season it has become my favorite program on tv! It’s funny, smart, full of things I inevitably want to buy (Awesome could have bought ME that television), and the characters exhibit genuine growth as a direct result of their experiences. I love that Chuck has these networks of peers, friends, and family who care about him, even if they don’t necessarily understand him, and who try to help him out, even if their idea of help doesn’t actually aid Chuck. I recommend this program to any friend of mine who is looking for a new program, and have successfully hooked at least 5 people that I know of this season. I could probably get more if Chuck wasn’t in such a competitive time slot. I know many people who would never dare cheat on Dr. House, Blair Waldorf, or Neil Patrick Harris, but would consider watching Chuck consistently if it was on at a different time. If Chuck was canceled, I would be more devastated than I was when Dead Like Me, Veronica Mars, and Joan of Arcadia were canceled. Combined.

Please don’t let Chuck be an addition to my “Gone too soon” dvd collection of shows that were taken off the air after their second or third season, before the writers had told all the stories they had to tell. This show gets better every episode and has a loyal fandom, bringing together sci-fi nerds, ‘shippers, young men, tech heads, espionage fans, and people who just plain like great programming. You’ve basically won demographic bingo here!

Please don’t break my heart,
Nicole

Belfast

So I’m having a pretty good time here in the UK. Northern Ireland is lovely, and it seems that I brought with me unexpectedly good weather. Lots of people commented to me how unusual the warm sunshine was. You’re welcome, Belfast.

For the most part, the people I met were awesome. A lot of them were really interested to hear that I was from the US and genuinely wanted to know what I thought of their fair city. Many expressed admiration and apprehension that I was on my own, and I felt like I’d traveled to a city of my own relatives. The first night, I met three older guys who showed me the local bars and told me all sorts of stuff I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. One wanted to grab dinner the next night, but I figured that it would be silly to tie myself up with the same parties two nights in a row, and nicely declined. A word of advice to anybody going to Belfast: eat early. I guess I was still in New York mode and thought that leaving my hotel room after 10 would give me time to grab food and hit the pubs, but that was absolutely not the case. I struck out at all the restaurants I saw, and was lucky to make it to McDonald’s before they, too, shut down for the night.

The next night, I learned my lesson and left to find food at 8:15 (and even that was too late to get food at some of the local pubs that served meals). I had a good dinner, went back to the hotel and watched Dollhouse and the first episode of Cupid (I’ll talk about that some time later), and then went to a couple of local bars. The people in the first weren’t really as outgoing, so I left after one drink and ended up talking with Ricky and Ian, two nice guys who work at the Belfast Telegraph. We chatted for a bit outside, but they were smoking cigarettes and I was kind of freezing, so I told them to find me when they came inside the bar.

As I sat waiting for them, this old, super drunk guy who was actually sleeping when I first walked by awakened and started mumbling to me. I have discovered that it is nearly impossible for me to understand a Belfast accent when the speaker is under the influence, so I gave him a vague smile, told him I was waiting for my friends, and went back to reading on my phone. He had just asked me to join him at his table when Ian and Ricky showed up. He scowled at us and all was well until about a half hour later, when the guys went to grab more beer and I stayed at the table. Then the drunken fossil asked me how much I would charge to go back to his home with him. At first I thought that I’d misunderstood, but he said it again and I realized that he thought I was a prostitute.

I was really hurt and wondered what I’d done to give him that impression. Later, I realized that being a single foreign woman alone in a bar, who then ended up sitting at a table and talking with two local men might give somebody the wrong impression, if that person was inclined to think like a pervert. But, while I realized it wasn’t worth disabusing him of his incorrect notion, I simply said no and decided not to stick around for the pitch. I went over to the guys at the bar and told them what the old dude had said. They were touchingly offended on my behalf, and when we got back to the table, the fossil kept yelling vulgar things at use. Ian, the cute one who looked like David Wright (he’s never really done it for me, but add an accent and I can start to understand the appeal) got up, looking pretty angry, and headed toward the old guy’s table, but Ricky stopped him from going over there, and we ignored the fossil after that.

We stayed at that bar until last call, then went to another one. On the way, I somehow managed to lose one of my pretty new dangly earrings, which made me sad. I pulled out the other one so I didn’t look deranged. Even though we went to another bar afterward, we got there after last call there, too, so I helped Ricky talk to a girl he found cute. Things were going well until she told him that she was 24 and he told her that she looked 28. It was not untrue, but that lost him major points, and it took him a while to recover his lost ground, and a lot of that was due to me. I guess I haven’t lost my touch and still make a pretty awesome wingman. The guys and I parted ways in the cab back to my hotel. I got out to find my earring and had no luck, but I went back out the next morning before leaving for the airport, and found it with no problem! It was a little crushed, but I think that it can be bent back into shape.

I had heard that there wasn’t a lot going on in Belfast, and I scheduled my vacation accordingly. If I’d known before booking how awesome Belfast is, and how relatively sedate Birmingham is in comparison, I probably would have spent 4 days in Belfast and only stopped over in Birmingham for the concert. I definitely intend to go back to Belfast and spend a lot more time there!

The first Jason Mraz concert is tonight, and I’m a bit worried. I’ve heard from a person who went to a concert in Brussels, and he said it was blah, and that’s exactly how one of the free London dailies described the Mraz concerts in London over the weekend. Maybe a day off will allow him to rev up and be on his A game for Birmingham. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Auf wiedersehen, Bravo!

Finally, after months of legal wrangling between NBC Universal, The Weinstein Co., and Lifetime Network, the sixth season of Project Runway is clear to air this summer on Lifetime. The Weinstein Co. had to pay an unspecified amount of money to NBC Universal, but the case is now settled and we are free to watch the first Los Angeles-based season of the original fashion design reality show (what ever happened to that knockoff that Bravo was hoping to air??). I wonder how good it will be, knowing that it was taped to air almost 6 months ago, and the fashion week that it surrounds has been over for months.

We’ll see, I guess, but I hope that the move to the West Coast energized this show, or maybe just that they had a more talented, less unnecessarily-obnoxious people this time.

Dollhouse is finally worth watching

I’ve been watching Dollhouse, Joss Whedon’s new show, since its pilot. I wanted for so many reasons to like it:

• It was created by Joss Whedon, who I will always love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• It stars Eliza Dushku, who played the complicated and interesting Faith on Buffy
• The premise sounded really interesting
• …

Okay, so maybe there were just three reasons that I wanted to like it. But when the show premiered, it became clear to me that maybe these things were actually liabilities. Joss Whedon is a god to a certain subset of television and movie watchers, but Buffy and Angel were a long time ago, and Firefly didn’t even last an entire season. Sure, he did well with Dr. Horrible (although I believe I made my feelings on that one pretty clear), but you’re only as good as your last show, and I’m not sure that Internet sensations count.

Second, Eliza Dushku is not a great actress. She was the perfect person to play the tough, conflicted Faith, but she’s much less convincing on Dollhouse when she’s supposed to be nice and harmless. It’s gotten to the point where casting her conveys the same message as casting Lucy Lawless: watch out for this one, she’ll hurt you bad. I never quite buy it when other characters look at Echo’s Persona of the Week and fail to notice the danger. For example, on tonight’s episode, “Echoes”, they had her running around a college campus in an outfit that screams “late 90s” (complete with a miniscule skirt and almost thigh-high socks!) and wearing high-heeled Mary Janes. Who else but a freakishly tough woman could withstand hours of kinky sex, motorcycle-riding, and sneaking around in those things? I know that I probably would have only had the fortitude to get around to the first two things on that list.

Third, the premise seems more ridiculous each week. The idea is that there is a group of beautiful people who are essentially blank slates and for incredible sums of money (usually), individuals, corporations, the government, etc. can have these blank slates imprinted with any set of memories or skill set they desire. So Echo the Doll can become sex-kitten Alice, and then go back to being Echo when the engagement is over. And aside from the fact that the technology seems to keep finding newer and more spectacular ways of failing (no spoilers, but if you’ve seen next week’s preview, you know what I’m talking about), some of the assignments just don’t make sense. Why would a couple use a Doll as a midwife? Why pay a boatload of money when a real midwife could be had for considerably less? Or as a hostage negotiator? Why shell out a lot of money on a fake negotiator when one would presumably soon also be paying a ransom? The given excuse of the need for privacy seemed pretty flimsy. I can’t imagine many negotiators make it a practice to blab about their assignments once they’re completed. And, anyway, what value did Echo add in that situation? Due to the way she was programmed, she actually kind of arsed it up before damage control and more Dolls helped save the day.

And why is Echo working in LA, when that’s where she became a Doll? Episode 6 revealed that there are 20 Dollhouses around the world (why is the LA house the only one that seems to have reached the status of urban legend?), so what sense does it make to have her stay in the city where she started out? She’s already been recognized while on an engagement, and the more assignments she does, the more likely this is to happen again. This 20 Dollhouse thing feels to me like Joss is already tweaking the established mythology, although I am glad that he did not wait six seasons to reveal that there are a lot of other Dollhouses, so this main Dollhouse is less special. It seems that I may be harboring a little residual bitterness about the Slayerettes that popped up in season 7. My bad.

I’ve said more about this than I thought I would, and this post is already excessively wordy, so I will save my thoughts on the Dollhouse staff and other Dolls for some other time.

I knew all that tv watching would eventually pay off

I asked Alan Sepinwall, tv critic for the Newark Star-Ledger and blogger, a question for his mailbag column, and he answered it for me! Maybe he answered my question first because it was the best (yay!), the worst (boo!), or possibly because I am from the state the paper is based in. Whatever, I found out what I wanted to know. It’s nice to be the one asking questions, for a change.

Where do you go from here?

There are a lot of shows whose premises make them seem like they’d make decent tv movies, but which don’t seem supportable over the course of a season. Amanda Bynes’s new show sounds like such a program. It’s called Canned, and it’s about a bunch of young friends who are all fired on the same day. Hilarious, right? Okay, not really. But still: how do you drag that out across a season (I say one season because, let’s be honest, right now nothing about this premise screams renewal)? I guess there must be more to it than that, right? Because otherwise, it’s pretty lame. Sounds like it may last as long Jerry O’Connell’s hotel show.

Chuck vs the Predator

Oh my goodness! Chuck has been getting so good lately, and really this whole season has been pretty amazing. I love how Chuck is being seen as a grown-up, as opposed to a screw-up who creates more problems than he solves. On the one hand, I’m sad that Chuck is being forced into these situations that are causing him to harden and turn into the spy he never wanted to be. On the other hand, I recognize that he is a smart, capable person who is given way too little credit and is definitely equal to the tasks before him.

I’m so so so excited to see the rest of this season, and hope that Tricia Helfer’s stint on Chuck will be less useless than her appearances in the first 8 episodes of Burn Notice’s second season (haven’t finished it yet, maybe there’s a reason for her to exist).

I appreciate that the General didn’t lie to Chuck; she absolutely does not want him to stop being the Intersect, and actually wants to pull him further into the spy lifestyle. I think that Sarah’s confusion over her duty to her mission and her feelings for Chuck was well-played, and that the story wouldn’t have been very believable if she’d taken a firm stand either way. And Casey totally came through. I knew that he was more of a softie than he admitted (the man keeps a photo of Reagan [which the General promptly mocked], for cripes sakes), but I’m glad that when he had the opportunity to expose the depths of Sarah and Chuck’s feelings for one another, he basically played dumb.

As always, Adam Baldwin totally rocked my world, although I must say that Zachary Levi has grown on me quite a lot in the last little bit of time. I guess I’m still fundamentally the same 16 year old who swooned over David Boreanaz’s Angel, because damn it all if this new, tortured Chuck isn’t the hottest freaking thing ever.

Two peas in a peacock-shaped pod

This is not the first time that I mentioned Chuck and Life in the same post. On the surface, though, Chuck Bartowski and Charlie Crews couldn’t be more different. Chuck is a 20-something wasting his life at a Geek Squad/Best Buy clone (I can’t believe that BB didn’t think of the name Nerd Herd first) and providing the US government with information that has been encoded into his brain. Charlie is a Los Angeles Police Department detective who was imprisoned for 12 years after being unjustly convicted of the murder of a friend, a fellow police officer, and that man’s wife and son. So how are these two men similar?

• They’re both on NBC, and the future of both shows are unclear. Chuck probably is in a less precarious position, but could still conceivably be ended after this season.
• They’re both named Charles. The fact that they both go by comparatively juvenile nicknames is not an accident.
• Both men had their lives derailed by false accusations; Chuck was kicked out of Stanford for cheating and Charlie spent a long long time in prison.
• They’re (mostly) kept in check by women who are better at focusing on the big picture and playing straightmen (as it were) the the guys’ sometimes excessively youthful behavior.
• Their lives are being manipulated by governmental forces that they don’t understand and can’t really control.
• They’re both in love with women who, for whatever reason, they cannot be with. Chuck’s in love with Sarah, his FBI handler, and Charlie is in love with his ex-wife, who divorced him while he was in prison. Awkward.
• They both accidentally shot people in the leg this year. Chuck shot the guy who made the Intersect that’s in his head (…maybe), and Charlie shot his dad. Well, the dad did refuse to identify himself when Charlie called out in the dark. Bygones?
• They both keep awesomely detailed charts of the players in their particular dramas. Chuck keeps his on the back of his Tron poster (loved that detail), and Charlie has a “secret” room in his house where he keeps his. That room has been broken into so many times at this point that I wish Charlie would use the walls to keep his grocery list or something.

Of course, the two men aren’t twins or anything. Charlie has a distant father and a dead mother, whereas Chuck as a sweet, well-meaning, but ultimately clueless older sister who loves him. Charlie’s friends all turned their backs on him when he was convicted of murder, while Chuck’s friends all stuck by him after his expulsion. Charlie’s stint as a guest of the state netted him millions of dollars, while Chuck is super poor and still lives with his sister and her awesome fiance. Chuck is a total baby about pain and Charlie got shot a while back. Charlie can hardly figure out how to use his cell phone, and Chuck is pretty much a tech genius. Lastly, the music on Life is out of this world good, and Chuck’s scoring is okay, but nowhere near as brilliant.

The other thing that these two shows have in common is how much I love them. These are the only two shows that I came into the season liking that I actually like better now. I really hope that both of them are renewed for season three, because I feel like they’re really starting to hit their strides.

I’m bummed that I won’t see Chuck again for two more weeks, but the previews look really exciting and I cannot wait!

Duh

Dear Burn Notice,

You cannot have a character played by Lucy Lawless and expect the audience to believe that she is some sweet mother who is suffering because her son was kidnapped. Lucy Lawless is visual shorthand for AWESOME ASSKICKING WOMAN. How is it possible that the casting people didn’t know this??? I was looking for the gun pretty much from her first scene.

Thank you, though, for putting Lucy Lawless and Bruce Campbell back together again. The fake emotional stuff between Evelyn and Michael made me, for the first time, understand exactly how this show could be on the USA Network, but the healthy dose of scary scary hitwoman made me remember why I love it so.

Your fan,
Nicole

Oh boo!

I’m really sad that this New York Times reviewer isn’t more charmed by NBC’s Life, and I find it interesting that she considers Sarah Shahi’s Reese to be more a product of sexism than a flawed character who happens to be female. I’ve never read Reese that way, and think that she gets to be tough and smart a lot of times. She’s obviously not the focus of the show in the way that Charlie is, but I don’t think that anybody who pays attention could mistake her for Charlie’s cheerleader (that would be Ted). I hope that Ms. Bellafante enjoys this week’s episode better than she did the earlier part of this season, which I found to be mostly awesome.

Oh, and mazel tov to Sarah Shahi and her fiance, Steve Howey, on the upcoming birth of their first child. That is going to be one crazy good-looking kid.