I'll be the first to admit that I do not love my father's shows (for those of you who don't know he's a television producer). I mean, The Commish was great, but I think I was just too young to really connect with it, the Millennium pilot freaked me out and made me cry, so needless to say I ignored the rest of the series, The Twilight Zone was just plain bad and Night Stalker was way too esoteric for me (Besides, Gabrielle Union has been going downhill since Bring It On).
There are exceptions, of course: I loved Strange Luck very intensely and I want it back, mainly because it fed my insatiable appetite for mystery and perhaps formed my love/hate relationship with that elusive bitch coincidence. Then there was Wolf Lake, which was way too insane for it's own good. Hello? An entire Pacific Northwest village of ACTUAL werewolves?! Yes, please! It's a damn shame it got canceled, let me tell you. Ugh, and a brilliant cast headed by Lou Diamond Philips!
Well, good news for Papa, I can add another show to the latter list. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present Swingtown! Two parts The Ice Storm, one part The Wonder Years, half a shot of autobiography, add six amazing actors (dressed in mind-blowing garb), shake well and serve totally chilled.
As the name implies the show is about, simply, swinging. Meet Susan and Bruce Miller (Deadwood's Molly Parker and Peter Smith-Kingsley himself Jack Davenport) a married couple who break into the swinging scene in a Chicago suburb in the summer of 1976. Lana Parrilla (the chick from the underwater station on LOST) and Grant Show (omg, Melrose, much?) play the Deckers, little devils sitting on the right shoulder of the Millers, urging them further and further into their sexy wife-swapping world. On the left shoulder sit Janet and Roger Thompson, old friends from the old neighborhood stuck in their old ways. Watch as Bruce and Susan feel their way through this strange and morally dynamic world of orgies, quaaludes and the best soundtrack you've heard in years!
Without taking itself too seriously Swingtown deeply explores the importance and relevance of relationships in a time that is not too unlike our own. Political unrest, sexual revolution, pop-culture booms: all still happening in this advanced new millennium. The writing is quick and witty, while still maintaining a thoughtful if not leisurely pace. And the quality of the production is superb, with a staff lead by Alan Poul, of Six Feet Under fame, Mike Kelley, who lends his own personal experience to the show's narrative, and of course, my dad!
I understand that I may be biased, given that the show employs both my father and myself (yup, you're lookin' at the post production assistant himself!), but I liked this show a lot even before I worked on it. And I love it now that I do. It sucks, yes, that I have access to scripts, dailies and full episodes all the way through to the finale (which will happen at the end of the summer, and is great!) but, despite the spoilers and seeing the same scenes over and over, the show still makes me laugh. And it makes me think. And I really feel for these characters. The six main actors weave so effortlessly in and around one another, it's so compelling! (Janet's my favorite! Miriam Shor is truly a talented lady. I knew it years ago when she played a dude in Hedwig). And take it from me, someone who KNOWS what's going to happen on this show: you don't want to miss it!
Three episodes have aired so far, but you can catch up online at the link above. Make sure you catch this week's episode; the show really picks up from here. Swingtown will be on all summer, Thursdays at 10PM on CBS.
Update: Swingtown's been moved to Fridays at 10PM
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
I Think I'm Lost: Oh My Oceanic Six!
Every season has had it's overarching mysteries. Season 1 had the hatch door, Season Two had the discovery of the tail end and the discovery of the Others, Season Three had pregnancy issues, Charlie's prophesied death and what exact the Others are doing. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we have the Oceanic Six.
Six of our castaways have been rescued, but you have to wait to find out who! What a brilliant structure it was! We eventually find that Dr. Jack goes back to both spinal surgery and denial, Hurley goes nuts (but not really because he's just been to the island and you can't really blame him), Sayid's living up to his potential working as a globe-trotting assassin for "the good guys," Sun's halfway across the world from the other five and doing whatever the fuck she wants, because she's a woman scorned, and Kate was absolved of her heinous crimes, only to go on living a luxurious life with a fabulous wardrobe! Oh, and Aaron is her son.
Poor Kate. Yikes. Is she not wracked with guilt? "You're not even related to him!" Are we actually supposed to believe she likes playing Mommy?! Oh god, there's that horrific moment when the O6 get off the plane and everybody has their own special "Mommy Moment" (even Sayid gets a smooch from Hurley's mom) and then there's Kate, just looking around seemingly terrified, overwhelmed and, yes, lost, having her own little "Mommy Moment!" It must haunt her. I mean, it does. When you got Others waking you up and then calling you in the middle of the night to distract you so that Claire can sneak in for a peek of her own baby and then you run in wielding a gun and screaming at her to not touch her own freaking baby that YOU helped deliver, you're being haunted! Sheesh, Future Kate! Get it together. She's clearly ready to get back to the island, otherwise the apparition wouldn't have told her not to bring him. Something about the way she said it. "Bring" somehow implies that Kate's resolved to go back to the island.
I dunno. Maybe it wasn't an apparition at all. Maybe it was actually Claire. Is Claire even dead? People have expressed this thought to me, and I'll admit it, I was 3/4 of the way to coming to terms with her death after Keamy and his team shot a rocket into her new 2 bedroom - 2.5 bath rancher in "New Otherton," BUT I believe her to be alive and safe and well but changed. Claire somehow must have easily given into the idea of the bloodline when Christian/her dad/"Jacob" told her whatever he had to tell her about the Shephard lineage.
Jack is meant to be on this island. Everyone knows it but him and he keeps making mistakes, on and off the island, present and future, all of this is clear. The brilliant move was presumably made by Jack's father and his (half)sister who left his little old nephew in the woods, so that the baby would be found by Sawyer and protected by Sun and ultimately raised by Kate (and Jack), as Kate's. This child must weigh heavily on Jack's mind, now that he is burdened with the knowledge of his relation the child. This child, the next heir to the Shephard Island Dynasty, becomes a huge catalyst for Future Jack's lament. That and the fact that Kate's still sharing part of herself with the idea of Sawyer. Geez Dr. Jack, get over yourself. (i just remembered when my friend dave told me he had a dream where dr. jack literally stabbed him in the back. typical...)
Selfless Sawyer emerged as a really pleasant component of this season. All season he's been filled with compassion, care, thoughtfulness. propositioning Kate, carrying Claire out of burning buildings, attending so tenderly to Hugo. The man jumped out of a flying helicopter into the middle of nowhere in the South Pacific for the sake of his fellow man!! Thankfully he got back to the island (all shirtless and dripping, out of breath and dashing as ever). Methinks he and Lady Juliet shall be quite the formidable duo.
Sun's alliance with Widmore will undoubtedly weigh heavily on the fate of the Oceanic Six and their return to the island. Seems Paik has been doing business with Widmore for some time and I wouldn't be surprised if Sun comes back with A LOT of power and a lot of vengeance. The woman is forced (by Kate) to carry this baby to the freighter, to protect him and when she finally gets a second to find her own husband, the father of her unborn baby, Kate (again) forces the baby upon her and confines her to the helicopter. Kate goes after Jin, but what happens? Oh, Dr. Jack swoops in to take her away and she bats her beautiful lashes and gets whisked away, maybe forgetting that she just PROMISED to get Jin. God, you'd think after being marooned with someone for two months you think they'll respect you enough to follow through! Ugh! No wonder she's pissed! The second of the "two people...responsible for his death" must be Kate.
What are these confrontations going to be like?? Kate and Jack, Hurley and Jack, Sun and Kate, Aaron and Jack! I feel like I'm in the first act of a Cheaters episode and I'm sizing up the craziness of the cheatee to see how buck wild it's going to get in the last ten minutes when she and Joey Greco storm a Dave & Busters to catch some trash with a fake ponytail and a blur over her face having dinner with her man when he said he was at the gym!
What are they even going to do, the O6? I assume Ben's rule of everyone coming back also applies to Walt? At least they found a way around the fact that the Future actors actually have aged three years. Oh and poor Jack, yet again he's going to have to drag a dead body back to the island. Maybe that means John Locke will be the next "Jacob." That would be cool.
Season 5 bodes well. I'm mainly curious about where exactly Daniel is, because last time we saw him he was on a dinky zodiac with a bunch of nameless extras. Maybe he'll find Jin. Strong points include Charlotte, the "terribly things" that happen on the island now that it's moved, the islands current "location," anything to do with the island and, of course, the wrangling of the O6! I'm hoping we don't leave Des and Penny for a long time. I like to see them in the fold. And it will be absolutely and undeniably unacceptable if they do not address the Life and Times of Danielle Rousseau! That woman deserves more than a bullet in the back and we all know it! She was a warrior and a survivor, a changed woman with a story to tell. She survived for 16 YEARS on the island ALONE! That was a seriously disappointing moment. Perhaps the biggest in the series for me.
But also some of the greatest Lost moments have been this season: Desmond's time loop, the discovery of Flight 815, the castaways finally achieving their goal of rescue, however tainted it may have been. And seriously, going into the future launched the enjoyment and storytelling of this series into the stratosphere! This is a television show with an actual timescape. It's unlike anything ever on television and they prove that now more than ever.
Kudos to you LOST!
Six of our castaways have been rescued, but you have to wait to find out who! What a brilliant structure it was! We eventually find that Dr. Jack goes back to both spinal surgery and denial, Hurley goes nuts (but not really because he's just been to the island and you can't really blame him), Sayid's living up to his potential working as a globe-trotting assassin for "the good guys," Sun's halfway across the world from the other five and doing whatever the fuck she wants, because she's a woman scorned, and Kate was absolved of her heinous crimes, only to go on living a luxurious life with a fabulous wardrobe! Oh, and Aaron is her son.
Poor Kate. Yikes. Is she not wracked with guilt? "You're not even related to him!" Are we actually supposed to believe she likes playing Mommy?! Oh god, there's that horrific moment when the O6 get off the plane and everybody has their own special "Mommy Moment" (even Sayid gets a smooch from Hurley's mom) and then there's Kate, just looking around seemingly terrified, overwhelmed and, yes, lost, having her own little "Mommy Moment!" It must haunt her. I mean, it does. When you got Others waking you up and then calling you in the middle of the night to distract you so that Claire can sneak in for a peek of her own baby and then you run in wielding a gun and screaming at her to not touch her own freaking baby that YOU helped deliver, you're being haunted! Sheesh, Future Kate! Get it together. She's clearly ready to get back to the island, otherwise the apparition wouldn't have told her not to bring him. Something about the way she said it. "Bring" somehow implies that Kate's resolved to go back to the island.
I dunno. Maybe it wasn't an apparition at all. Maybe it was actually Claire. Is Claire even dead? People have expressed this thought to me, and I'll admit it, I was 3/4 of the way to coming to terms with her death after Keamy and his team shot a rocket into her new 2 bedroom - 2.5 bath rancher in "New Otherton," BUT I believe her to be alive and safe and well but changed. Claire somehow must have easily given into the idea of the bloodline when Christian/her dad/"Jacob" told her whatever he had to tell her about the Shephard lineage.
Jack is meant to be on this island. Everyone knows it but him and he keeps making mistakes, on and off the island, present and future, all of this is clear. The brilliant move was presumably made by Jack's father and his (half)sister who left his little old nephew in the woods, so that the baby would be found by Sawyer and protected by Sun and ultimately raised by Kate (and Jack), as Kate's. This child must weigh heavily on Jack's mind, now that he is burdened with the knowledge of his relation the child. This child, the next heir to the Shephard Island Dynasty, becomes a huge catalyst for Future Jack's lament. That and the fact that Kate's still sharing part of herself with the idea of Sawyer. Geez Dr. Jack, get over yourself. (i just remembered when my friend dave told me he had a dream where dr. jack literally stabbed him in the back. typical...)
Selfless Sawyer emerged as a really pleasant component of this season. All season he's been filled with compassion, care, thoughtfulness. propositioning Kate, carrying Claire out of burning buildings, attending so tenderly to Hugo. The man jumped out of a flying helicopter into the middle of nowhere in the South Pacific for the sake of his fellow man!! Thankfully he got back to the island (all shirtless and dripping, out of breath and dashing as ever). Methinks he and Lady Juliet shall be quite the formidable duo.
Sun's alliance with Widmore will undoubtedly weigh heavily on the fate of the Oceanic Six and their return to the island. Seems Paik has been doing business with Widmore for some time and I wouldn't be surprised if Sun comes back with A LOT of power and a lot of vengeance. The woman is forced (by Kate) to carry this baby to the freighter, to protect him and when she finally gets a second to find her own husband, the father of her unborn baby, Kate (again) forces the baby upon her and confines her to the helicopter. Kate goes after Jin, but what happens? Oh, Dr. Jack swoops in to take her away and she bats her beautiful lashes and gets whisked away, maybe forgetting that she just PROMISED to get Jin. God, you'd think after being marooned with someone for two months you think they'll respect you enough to follow through! Ugh! No wonder she's pissed! The second of the "two people...responsible for his death" must be Kate.
What are these confrontations going to be like?? Kate and Jack, Hurley and Jack, Sun and Kate, Aaron and Jack! I feel like I'm in the first act of a Cheaters episode and I'm sizing up the craziness of the cheatee to see how buck wild it's going to get in the last ten minutes when she and Joey Greco storm a Dave & Busters to catch some trash with a fake ponytail and a blur over her face having dinner with her man when he said he was at the gym!
What are they even going to do, the O6? I assume Ben's rule of everyone coming back also applies to Walt? At least they found a way around the fact that the Future actors actually have aged three years. Oh and poor Jack, yet again he's going to have to drag a dead body back to the island. Maybe that means John Locke will be the next "Jacob." That would be cool.
Season 5 bodes well. I'm mainly curious about where exactly Daniel is, because last time we saw him he was on a dinky zodiac with a bunch of nameless extras. Maybe he'll find Jin. Strong points include Charlotte, the "terribly things" that happen on the island now that it's moved, the islands current "location," anything to do with the island and, of course, the wrangling of the O6! I'm hoping we don't leave Des and Penny for a long time. I like to see them in the fold. And it will be absolutely and undeniably unacceptable if they do not address the Life and Times of Danielle Rousseau! That woman deserves more than a bullet in the back and we all know it! She was a warrior and a survivor, a changed woman with a story to tell. She survived for 16 YEARS on the island ALONE! That was a seriously disappointing moment. Perhaps the biggest in the series for me.
But also some of the greatest Lost moments have been this season: Desmond's time loop, the discovery of Flight 815, the castaways finally achieving their goal of rescue, however tainted it may have been. And seriously, going into the future launched the enjoyment and storytelling of this series into the stratosphere! This is a television show with an actual timescape. It's unlike anything ever on television and they prove that now more than ever.
Kudos to you LOST!
Call Of The Wild
Geez, when I was in Australia I thought the strangest things were the bird sounds. Never had I heard (or seen for that matter) such exotic sounds as part of the urban and suburban landscape. It was seriously insane.
Now that I'm mindful of it I've realized the birds also sound absolutely nuts here in Glendale too! I've spent the last hour with a bird outside my window. Wanna know what it's call sounds like? It's seemingly random, the bird never makes the same call twice! chuck chuck chuck, whi-stle whi-stle, twit twit twit twit twit, one after another, constantly changing tone and pitch, almost like they're imitating every noise they've ever heard in their lives. What could they possibly be saying?
I guess it's just all bird calls that are seriously insane, I just never noticed.
Now that I'm mindful of it I've realized the birds also sound absolutely nuts here in Glendale too! I've spent the last hour with a bird outside my window. Wanna know what it's call sounds like? It's seemingly random, the bird never makes the same call twice! chuck chuck chuck, whi-stle whi-stle, twit twit twit twit twit, one after another, constantly changing tone and pitch, almost like they're imitating every noise they've ever heard in their lives. What could they possibly be saying?
I guess it's just all bird calls that are seriously insane, I just never noticed.
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