Last night’s SNL: astonishingly solid.

Posted: February 25th, 2007 under Television, Video.
Comments: 3

Can we talk about The Office for a minute?

Last Thursday’s episode = strongest episode of the season.

I felt like the show was wandering a little too much these last few episodes, drifting too far away from the cores of the characters and their milieu in the office. This episode brought them right back to their essential traits while still offering something new and inspired.

For instance: Pam is pathetic, yes. We know this. But in this episode, her pathos is just so … head-on and total. It’s like it grew five extra dimensions. Her scenes at the art show made my face crumple.

Michael is on some of his worst behavior ever, and yet he ends up being the hero of the episode. I vascillate between hating him and feeling serious empathy for him so quickly it makes my head hurt.

And, he’s at least partly responsible for one of the episode’s handful of genuinely touching moments (and not just of the “aww … Jim and Pam are pining for each other again” variety to which we’ve become so accustomed).

Because my love for 30 Rock is fresher and more crazy-big right now, The Office had been sitting in the backseat for a while. But this episode reaffirms my conviction that it’s the smartest show on television* right now.

* Remember, HBO isn’t television. It’s HBO. (QED.)

Posted: February 18th, 2007 under Television.
Comments: 5

TRACY JORDAN: I’m gonna make you a mix tape. You like Phil Collins?
JACK DONAGHY: I have two ears and a heart, don’t I?

After 3+ years and a lot of abuse, my old iPod recently gave up the ghost. So the other day I got an impossibly cool new 80G. Nothing lends credence to the unfortunate suspicion that men are really just larger versions of boys as much as the way I behave when playing with, talking about, or acquiring a new gadget.

Last night I watched an episode of “30 Rock” on my iPod, on the bus, just because I could. I remember when I was a kid and I first saw one of those little portable Sony TVs (probably on a bus) and was convinced that allowing a person the opportunity to peer through fuzzy reception at a football game on a 2″ black-and-white screen was easily the best and coolest thing humankind would ever achieve. (And the device probably cost at least twice what my iPod did.)

Now that I’m much older and wiser, I know that, in fact, allowing a person to peer at a crystal-clear color image of Tracy Morgan and Alec Baldwin riffing hilariously is easily the best and coolest thing humankind will ever achieve.

Posted: January 19th, 2007 under Television, Music.
Comments: 2