You guys… Mad Men came back. Just in case you haven’t seen it yet, I’ll put this entry after the jump. read more…

On the whole, last spring’s scheduling announcements were much less painful than I was expecting. Chuck and Dollhouse were both teetering on the edge of extinction before they were yanked back into the land of the living (for now), so other than those shows that were blatantly DOA (I’m looking at you, Kings), there really weren’t that many heartbreaks.

Part of my sensation of pleasant surprise came from the renewal of a show called Better Off Ted, an ABC sitcom I initially dismissed as unfunny and then gradually grew to love. Better Off Ted is a wacky, occasionally pointed send-up of corporate culture, set in the sterile headquarters of a massive, ethically ambiguous company called Veridian Dynamics. The main character, the eponymous Ted, is a well-dressed, well-liked, well-meaning guy trying to balance the demands of his heartless boss and his hapless underlings. The humor revolves around the absurdities of bureaucracy, with a healthy dose of silly lab projects. Not every joke hits, and Ted’s on-again-off-again thing with his colleague Linda gets pretty tiresome. (Linda is cute, but not that bright, and her role as the conscience of Veridian Dynamics drags down the fun of the satire).

But Phil and Lem, the nerdy heads of Ted’s research division, were what won me over from my initial doubts. Phil and Lem are where Better Off Ted indulges in its silliest and most disturbing jabs at corporate science, as they struggle to weaponize pumpkins, use themselves as jetpack test subjects, cure baldness (that one goes pretty badly, actually), and keep Ted happy. The absurd projects are hilarious, but the relationship between Phil and Lem is what makes it really work; their bond is a study of that relationship that all too often goes unexamined on television today – the love between lab partners. Phil helps Lem try to get dates, they participate together in a secret Medieval Fight Club in the basement, and Lem goes off the deep end when Phil agrees to be cryogenically frozen as an experiment. They’re partners, they’re friends, and although there is a little hitch when Lem discovers Phil didn’t attend MIT as he had claimed, they ultimately support each other.

Phil and Lem; some problems with an unbreakable dinner plate

Ted as Don Draper

As the whole television world is now acutely aware, Mad Men is returning for its third season this Sunday night, and it’s not inappropriate to think about Better Off Ted in that exalted TV company. The tone, the content, the scope and ambition of Better Off Ted is, of course, completely different than something as subtle and finely tuned as Mad Men, but there are a few hints of influence that are worth thinking about. Women’s clothing and role in the workplace may have changed since the days of Sterling Cooper, but Ted is a veritable Don Draper doppelganger, complete with suit, slicked hair and sharp tie. He is Don without the dark side, and strolls around the uncannily similar office space with the same sense of mastery. To put it in SAT analogy terms, Better Off Ted is to Mad Men what Scrubs was to the best of ER – it takes the intense atmosphere, the psychological portraits, and the complex workplace relationships and punctures them, finding humor and satire inside the oh-so-serious setting. This week, the last two episodes of this season of Better Off Ted aired. I’m sad it’s gone, but I’m glad it’ll be coming back.

(And next week, Mad Men!)

Last night I watched a show that is a strong contender for the single stupidest thing currently on television. Forget the religious debates of Secret Life of the American Teenager, forget the absurd mishmash of genres on Defying Gravity, forget the ethically ambiguous voyeurism of Jon and Kate Plus 8. Let’s just set all of that aside and boil a show down to its most crudely entertaining element. Let’s find a form of humor that is universal, impossible to mess up, and cheap to produce. Let’s make an entire show about watching people hurt themselves, and then make fun of them while they do it. That’s right, the premise of this show is to watch “ordinary Americans” run through an impossible, absurd-looking obstacle course, and then mock them as they crash and burn. Join me as I narrate this gallery of screenshots from last night’s episode of Wipeout.

“The epic competition begins right now, to see who will emerge victorious, and who will…Wipeout.” Spoiler alert: they will all wipeout.

The most reliably cringe-inducing segment of the course is without a doubt this one, the “Big Balls.” No one ever makes it across, so the goal is to fall without hurting yourself. Few people succeed.

THREE POUNDS OF LOVE!!

Although the course produces most of the humor, the participants are also sources of entertainment. The wackiest one last night was this guy, who was trying to win the money for his bunny rabbit Yams. When he was interviewed before running the course, he shouted “LOOK AT HIM! THREE POUNDS! THREE POUNDS OF LOVE!” While on the spinner, he talked into the camera about the proper care and feeding of rabbits. (“Rabbits are lagomorphs, you know what lagomorphs means?”) Jumping across the Big Balls, he yelled, “All right Yams, I love ya!” It was…weird. And he didn’t win.

This guy came in a close second for wackiness. He did an Irish jig every time he finished a challenge.

This guy won. But after all that, did he really win? Or do we all, viewers and participants alike, end this experience a little worse off than we started? Perhaps I’m missing the point. Maybe what’s going on here is actually a form of brilliance, a focused, concentrated work of hilarious humiliation, meant to make us question our own solipsistic understanding of the universe and the essential nihilism of human existence. If that were the case, then Wipeout would have to enter the canon of great works of human achievement, a post-modern globalized vision (it was adapted from Japanese game shows) of mankind as united by the ultimate fragility of our bodies and the central cruelty of our basest selves. Maybe it reminds us that we are all equal in the face of the unmerciful, undiscriminating Big Balls.

But I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure it’s just awful.

I was going to write about Better Off Ted today, but I can’t. I can’t write about what I haven’t watched, and I haven’t watched it because I can’t stop barreling through this season of True Blood. For the uninitiated, True Blood is another entry in the current cultural obsession with creepy supernatural monsters, particularly vampires. The show’s premise is that vampires have lived secretly for centuries, but the recent Japanese creation of a synthetic blood product (True Blood) has allowed them to “come out of the coffin” and exist openly. One especially genteel and tortured vampire, Bill Compton, falls in love with a mindreading waitress named Sookie Stackhouse, and things go from there.

On True Blood, everything is literally and metaphorically fluid – death and life, male and female, human and monster, youth and age, all of these rigid binaries break down and death slips into life as easily as the drag queen/short order chef Lafayette straddles the gender line. The slippery, liquid flexibility that defines True Blood’s thematic content permeates the landscape as well, and Sookie’s Louisiana hometown perpetually oozes moisture. True Blood is wet, from the lakes, creeks and swamps in the surrounding forest, to the sweat glistening on every un-air-conditioned body, to the blood streaming from puncture wounds, smeared on bed sheets, and dripping from vampire fangs.

The show’s full embrace of this sodden aesthetic allows it to also slip across seemingly impenetrable binary lines: True Blood is as high-concept and politically conscious as it is completely, utterly, and shamelessly trashy. The opening credits carefully cut together images of religious zealotry and toothy monstrosities to establish vampire-hatred as a form of bigotry, most concisely expressed in a road sign that reads, “God hates fangs.” Particularly in the second season, as Sookie’s brother Jason joins the anti-vampire Light of Day Institute, the dangerous, corrupt forms of Christian extremism come under intense scrutiny. It’s a reasonably sophisticated examination of the changing American debate on homosexuality.

God hates fangs, an anti-vampire board game, and Steve Newlin of the Light of Day Institute appearing on cable news

At the same time, it’s no wonder the most recent episodes have had record-breaking audiences, because True Blood is about as explicitly, gleefully sexual as you can get without actually requiring a

Um, this was the safest orgy screenshot I could find

government ID to buy it. Every character spends an implausible amount of time without clothes on, and the whole premise of vampire feeding has been essentially a mask for sexual activity going all the way back to Dracula. The second season manages to push the limits of reason even further by building an entire plotline around a character who entrances everyone into a nightly, county-wide orgy. To accuse True Blood of sexual obscenity is like accusing the earth of being a little roundish looking. And it’s not just sexy – it’s really, unremittingly trashy. Blood and gore spray the set like a classic drive in horror movie and Sookie, with her Barbie body and curly blonde hair, cheerfully bounces through the worst of it, naïve and smitten with Bill the Vampire.

The whole project is also pretty damn fun. The second season has done a great job of expanding the supernatural world beyond just vampirism, and now the whole American South seems to be teeming with shapeshifters, demigods and mindreaders. It is ridiculous, and campy, and sometimes as sharply pointed as a well-made wooden stake.

EDITED TO ADD:

Okay, so I wrote this before I had finished the most recent episode, and I’d like to throw out a few public service announcements, just in case they would be useful for anyone. If someone serves you something called “Hunter’s Souffle,” and it looks like this, a few notes:

First, clearly what you have here is some form of shepherd’s pie. Rather than a fluffy custard all the way through, the crust on this dish is lying on top of a stew-like substance – definitely not a souffle. So that’s your first red flag. Second, THAT IS BLOOD YOU IDIOTS, STOP EATING IT.

Slate.com published an article yesterday reviewing two books about the changing landscape of television advertising, describing the splintering television audience and the problem it poses for advertising and television production. With the classically alarmist Slate title “Is Television Over?,” the author Seth Stevenson points out that without the revenue from advertisements, studios cannot afford to produce high quality shows with large talented casts, good production values, and a decent script. The splintering cable networks mean a smaller concentration of eyeballs on any one show, which means less ad revenue, which means less incoming money, which means more shows like Dating in the Dark and fewer shows like Kings.

What Stevenson’s article doesn’t mention is the new frontier of television advertising, in-program product placement. By any number of accounts, the relationship between NBC’s Chuck and the in-show advertising from Subway helped save Chuck from cancellation this spring. 30 Rock endlessly mocks the need to creatively incorporate sponsorship, but of course the mockery is always also just a funny way to creatively incorporate sponsorship. (Just how many McFlurries did Alec Baldwin and Salma Hayek have to eat last season?)

Alec Baldwin and Salma Hayek enjoying delicious McFlurries on 30 Rock

I’ve written about this before in relation to Eureka and Degree for Men Deodorant, and this newer system of advertising is so pervasive that it’s hard to think about monetizing television without considering the ubiquity of product placement. In Eureka’s most recent episode, Deputy Lupo shows off her new car to Sheriff Carter, and Fargo’s car drives up to congratulate her:

Deputy Lupo with her new car; Fargo's car Tabitha, who has a little Knight Rider thing going on

Deputy Lupo: 265 horsepower, track-tuned suspension and all-wheel drive. Totally high performance but completely under my control.

Fargo: Hot wheels, Jo.

Deputy Lupo: Thanks, 6 weeks on the wait list!

Fargo: Small price to pay for awesomeness!

Fargo’s car: Congratulations on your new vehicle, Deputy Lupo. The Subaru Impresa WRX is an excellent choice.

Of course that kind of absurd product placement causes eye rolling, and it does create a distinction between the kind of show that can easily point to a Subway sandwich (like Chuck) and a show that could never plausibly incorporate a Subaru (like Deadwood). I love Deadwood, and hope there are always people trying to make shows of that calibre, but for shows that aren’t on premium subscription networks like HBO, there are ways to think outside the 30 second ad format. It’s not a solution for everything. But am I resigned to roll my eyes as Big Mike takes a bite out of Chicken Teriyaki sub if it means I get another season of Chuck? Sure. Is television over? No, it’s just occasionally more stupid.

Mr. Monk

This weekend saw the return of two major USA crime procedural shows, Monk and Psych. In a New York Times piece from last week, Mike Hale writes about Monk and its role in establishing the humorous hour-long crime genre, and he also mentions the similarities between these cable programs and shows like CBS’s The Mentalist, which was wildly successful last year. Hale points out that the season premiere episode of Psych mocks The Mentalist for ripping off its premise, but suggests that The Mentalist owes much more to Monk (and further, detective fiction all the way back to Sherlock Holmes).

Hale is right, of course, to point out the incredibly tight-knit chain of influence in crime drama television and the mystery genre more broadly. In wanting to reach farther back into television and literary history, though Hale ignores a crucial shared quality of Psych and The Mentalist that speaks volumes about the evolving figure of the detective.

Shawn Spencer on Psych

The premise of Psych is that a goofy guy named Shawn Spencer and his sidekick Gus help solve crimes for the Santa Barbara Police Department, except Shawn pretends to use psychic power to glean information about the investigation. Shawn’s impressive intellect allows him to scan the room for clues and then guess information accurately enough to persuade his clients that he can actually read their minds. In order to better sell the ruse, Shawn and Gus close their eyes and try to access magic spirits, speak in tongues while translating for ghosts, and use any available form of psychic-y nonsense to distract their clients while figuring out the crime. CBS’s show The Mentalist is essentially the same, except Patrick Jane doesn’t pretend to use ESP and instead relies on tools like hypnotism, behavioral science, and psychology to provide uncanny hints about the murderer’s identity. While Jane claims not to use psychic powers, his hunches and suggestions are as accurate as they are frequently inexplicable.

Patrick Jane on The Mentalist

The connection here is much more than just “quirky detective notices things you don’t,” which is essentially the legacy left by Sherlock Holmes and Monk. Fictional detectives like Shawn Spencer and Patrick Jane play with the idea that intelligence is a form of magic, accessible only to those with otherworldly gifts. While Sherlock Holmes perpetually scolded Watson for failing to see what was right in front of him, Psych and The Mentalist reward incuriosity by building a wall between our faulty observational abilities and the detective’s supernatural skill. The pretend psychic power is a classic misdirection – while we laugh at the poor saps who think the detective has actual magic power, we actually fall into that very same belief, substituting intelligence for mystical muscle.

Detectives have always been figures of impressive mental strength, and Sherlock Holmes enjoyed flaunting his towering intellect, but the best of them have always been relentlessly human. When Colonel Hastings clucked in amazement at a stroke of particular genius, Poirot always reminded him that it was merely “the little grey cells,” the same brain as anyone else. Peter Wimsey was certainly intelligent, and would often come to a conclusion after dramatic moments of pacing the floor, but he was always plagued by doubt regarding the morality of his actions. Adam Dalgliesh does a good job, and nearly always gets his man, but success comes more from careful interviewing and forensic footwork than an uncanny acumen. The problem with a detective whose intelligence morphs into magic is that he is in danger of no longer being human, not a psychic-detective but instead a computer-detective. As fun and entertaining as a computer-detective might be to watch, a sharp spectacle of diagnostic and investigative skill is nowhere near as absorbing as a portrait of a human detective.

Slings & Arrows deserves much more thought than I gave it yesterday, because it really is well-made and smart and funny and dark and ambitious and all of those lovely things. I wouldn’t call it particularly fun, because it’s uncomfortable to watch the main character go mad and carry on full conversations with the theater’s former, deceased artistic director. Still, it’s uncomfortable in a sharp, intelligent way, which allows the viewer to feel certain that the unpleasantness is worthwhile, and will be made up for by a deeper satisfaction in the end.

Aside from the show’s incredible writing, the large and talented cast, and its dedication to praising Shakespeare at every turn, my primary impression turns out to be way more trivial. Every other minute, I am just blown away by how Canadian it is. The whole fictional New Burbage Festival is self-consciously engaged in the perpetuation of culture in a way that seems incomparable with any single American institution. There is actually a Minister of Culture who shows up every few episodes and has to be convinced to continue funding the festival. The perception that New Burbage Festival has a responsibility to Canadian citizens extends throughout the inner festival workings, so that every decision about what play to put on, what actor to cast, what it means when Americans are on stage, and whether or not to dilute the festival with musical, becomes a gesture of Canadian selfhood.

A popular New Burbage hotspot: Yong's Canadian and Chinese Food

Plus, everyone constantly apologizes for everything. Okay, it’s an easy and possibly unfair point to make, but you would not believe how often these characters say “sorry!” to each other. Ellen Fanshawe, the diva lead company actress, goes on stereotypical actress rampages, shows up late to rehearsal, and has knock-down blow out fights with her directors, but still finishes each tirade with “Sorry, everybody. Sorry!” Not only is it sort of a revelation to watch a show where people manage to disagree while also being decent human beings, the constant focus on civility highlights one of the show’s most interesting themes – the relationship between art and business.

New Burbage Festival's leadership: Artistic director on left, business director on right

One of the original things about Slings & Arrows’s depiction of the New Burbage theater company is the focus on acting as a profession. The characters are all artists, devoted to the stage and constantly feeding off the emotional intensity necessary to perform well, but they’re also business colleagues who have to live and work with each other year after year. The art vs. business theme continues into the sillier side of the show, which involves many clashes between the festival’s business director and the artistic director and frequently revels in the business director’s secret love of musical theater. The debate adds a real-world component to the fancy literary premise, and I think it’s a debate Shakespeare would have been engaged in himself. In an American show, it would seem disingenuous for art to win out in the end, but from the Canadian perspective, where culture has its own dedicated minister in the government, it’s almost believable.

Warehouse 13 has not grown on me. It’s not entirely Warehouse 13’s fault – I’ve been watching Slings & Arrows this weekend, a completely great, super-literary drama about a troupe of Shakespearean actors from Canada. Each season is about a Shakespearean tragedy (Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear), and about the surrounding culture of theater, the arts, actors and directors, stage production, madness, mortality, comedy, sex, etc. etc. etc. As you’d expect, whatever happens onstage influences the tone and themes of the other plotlines, and there’s a nice collection of compelling minor characters to round out the less subtle main character arcs.

It’s not just that a show like Warehouse 13 looks petty and fluffy in comparison. They’re completely different shows, and it’s unfair to force them into an apples/oranges situation. The bigger problem is that Slings & Arrows has made it clear for me why exactly Warehouse 13 doesn’t work.

Let’s look at season two of Slings & Arrows briefly. Don’t worry if you haven’t seen it; the point is going to be reasonably superficial. Okay, so we’ve got a Canadian theater troupe putting on a Shakespeare festival, and this year they’re doing Macbeth. It’s a big show, everyone’s freaked out about it and whether or not it’s cursed, there are major conflicts between the probably crazy director and the actor playing the lead role, and everything’s hanging by a thread. On the small stage, a different director is putting on Romeo and Juliet. He’s doing all sorts of torturous things to the production and yelling stuff like “they’re not characters, they’re signifiers!” and in the middle of it all, the actor and actress who play Romeo and Juliet fall in love. (Romeo started the season thinking he was gay, but whatever).

Joanne Kelly on Slings & Arrows

Look at that cute young ingénue playing Juliet. Isn’t she adorable, ridiculously nervous and happy? Okay, she looks a little weird in that last shot, but in the context of the episode, she’s feeling moved by her co-star’s sexual awakening. Anyhow, she was great in Sling & Arrows.  Haven’t I seen her somewhere else?

Joanne Kelly on Warehouse 13

Oh right! Here she is, Joanne Kelly, playing the lead actress in Warehouse 13! Except now she’s all dressed in official jewel-tone lady-FBI-agent-wear, and she looks much less happy. Sure, her character’s not really supposed to be happy, but there’s so much less sparkle and effervescence. This is really my problem with most of Warehouse 13: I get that it’s a fun show about wacky historical artifacts causing trouble in the modern world, and I love the steampunk aesthetic, but I don’t get nearly enough sense of the capability and teamwork from the two main characters that makes these buddy-cop genres work. She’s straight edge and he’s all instinct, and together the idea is that they make a great team. In reality, though, any conflict between them falls flat, so that when they do manage get on the same page, it doesn’t feel special.

Honestly, my favorite thing about Warehouse 13 at this point is still the opening credits, which almost single-handedly rescue the show by including this gem:

Wouldn’t that just make an excellent blog banner?

In all that I’ve written about the programming on ABC Family, I haven’t actually mentioned the one show I’ve actually been watching every week. Along with 10 Things I Hate About You and Ruby and the Rockits, ABC Family also premiered a new show this summer called Make It or Break It, about the world of competitive gymnastics.

Not until after her gold medal

On the one hand, it is basically what you’d expect. Girls form cliques and alliances, parents are overprotective or abusive or inattentive, one girl is too poor for new workout clothes, one girl is super focused but risking injury. It’s a watered down, poorly-written, much less aesthetically pleasing version of Friday Night Lights. Except, of course, that it’s on ABC Family, which means that the gym rules require no dating so the cute couple has to sneak around late at night. The most egregious moment of ABC Family-ness is when the super focused girl, more competitive and driven than anyone else, finds out one of her teammates lost her virginity. “Aren’t you afraid having sex will stimulate your hormones or something? You get big boobs and big hips. It could kill your gymastics. How can you take a risk on something like that? Our bodies are everything we have, everything we work for. I’m not having sex until I have a gold medal, and maybe not even after that.” Marriage or gold medal, either way, it’s always better to wait.

Candace Cameron returns!

On the other hand… it’s not… gahh, all right, I’ll say it. It’s not awful. While the nostalgia of the Cassidy brothers on Ruby and the Rockits completely fails to capture my attention, I do get a kick out of watching Candace Cameron (DJ from Full House) play a sickly earnest Christian secretary who falls in love with the dad of one of the gymnasts. And it’s hard to go wrong with the full-on absurdity of this scene, wherein the girls go on a road trip, are menaced by some hooligans at a gas station, and scare them off by doing gymnastics at them. I know, hilarious! And I think the difference between the ridiculousness of this show and the painful sincerity of The Secret Life of the American Teenager is that at least Make It or Break It has a sense of humor. So, I guess what I’m saying is, if you were stuck on a desert island and the only channel you managed to get with your scrap-metal antenna was ABC Family and Greek wasn’t on… you could probably watch this without gouging your eyes out.

As a follow-up to my post last week about Michael Pollan and food television, it seems only fair to talk a little bit about Julia Child. Thank goodness for PBS, which currently has a few episodes of The French Chef available to watch on its website. No joke, I want the entire The French Chef DVD set now.

The episodes are certainly remarkable in comparison with their contemporary Food Network counterparts. Julia does everything in just a few long takes, occasionally tripping over words or knocking things over, and narrating cheerfully as she goes. The most obvious effect of this more improvisational style of television is that the food doesn’t always work, a horror never to be contemplated on Rachel Ray. One of the episodes currently up on PBS features an upside-down apple tart (“Apples! Cream! La Tarte Tatin!”), and Julia actually pulls one out of the oven, flips it over, and the whole thing completely falls apart. Never fear, Julia just piles it all back together, covers it in powdered sugar, and reassures viewers that it’ll taste delicious anyhow. It’s unbelievably comforting to be shown how to cope with disasters when they arise. Every time Giada de Laurentis flips something over, it looks like the cover of a magazine, so there’s never an opportunity to discuss everyday imperfections.

Tarte Tatin disaster: just scoop it all back together, cover liberally with powdered sugar, et voila! Bon appetit!

"Just plunk! Down into the souffle!"

And amazingly, these normal mundane mistakes can exist in the same kitchen as somewhat ambitious cooking. Don’t even worry about that cheese soufflé – you’re completely capable of pulling it off, it’s less complicated than you think, and you can actually do it a little bit ahead of time! Julia has a great time cooking, she wants her viewers to be educated and confident, and then at the end of the show, she brings everything over to a table, sits down, and pours herself a glass of wine. This last segment, while mostly for show, is actually one of my favorite parts. She often talks about how to serve the meal for company, or what else should be on the menu for a lunch with some friends, but at the end of every episode, there she is, sitting by herself with her wine and her spinach tart, ready to enjoy a meal. Maybe friends are coming for lunch, and if so, that’s great, but Julia’s also cooking just because she wants to. It’s inspiring, it’s reassuring, and you finish the show knowing a little bit more about butter than you did when you started.

Watch The French Chef on PBS