Inexplicable TV Review: Gotham is bat ess insane

The Gotham season two crew.

Warning: Spoilers follow for seasons one and two of Gotham.

If you’re a fan of cheesy and pulpy-bad television, then do yourself a favor – Start binge-watching Gotham. Holy hell! It’s an incredible mixture of legitimately good acting and character portrayals, which is then contrasted with long, boring character arcs and over-the-top camp. The show is so up its own ass with Fake Seriousness, like a badly done version of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies,

Let’s start with the good – Individual characters and their respective story arcs on Gotham are compelling. There is (future commish) Gordon’s literally psycho ex-girlfriend Barbara Keane, Theo Galvin’s nutty sadist sister, the plucky teenage Selina Kyle (Catwoman), the Eartha Kitt-inspired Cat Mooney as played by Mrs. Will Smith, Ed the Riddler, and even one-shot characters like Pyro Girl and Girl With Bird Claw are more interesting than they need to be.

However, when it comes to the recurring appearances, two of them clearly have Boss status. Oswald Cobblepot, a.k.a. The Penguin, alternates between pathetic, pitiful and terrifying. He was played by Danny DeVito in Batman Returns, but Robin Lord Taylor just brings the creepiness in a much more plausible way.

Secondly, B.D. Wong is getting to ham it up wayyyy more than he ever did on Special Victims Unit. He plays Hugo Strange, the demented leader of Arkham in the second season. He’s always in control, and he’s a much more compelling puppet-master than Galvin, who functioned in that role for some of seasons 1 and 2.

Speaking of… The biggest fault of Gotham is that it is tied, unfortunately, to the Batman mythos, and at times, it feels more like an anchor. If you liked Muppet Babies, this show is essentially Gotham Babies. Bruce Wayne knows everyone he will fight as Batman at age 15ish, apparently. Also, Bruce Wayne at 15 is way less interesting than Bruce Wayne as Batman, similar to how Kermit isn’t awesome as a toddler frog. (Okay – Muppet Babies was still a decent show.)

The main lead of the show is Ben McKenzie as (future commish) James Gordon, and he’s just involved in too much ridiculous stuff. He’s broken out of prison, been framed for a slew of crimes, and basically just operates as a vigilante himself. One of the stronger points of the movie is usually that Gordon is portrayed as contrast to Batman, but in Gotham, his background and past activities are arguable way nuttier than whatever Batman is going to be involved in.

Also, while I like Donal Logue as Harvey Bullock – Gordon’s partner – he’s marginalized in this series. It’s hard for him to play the unhinged, “knows a guy” and stretches the ethics cop when Gordon is working as an enforced for a mob boss anyway. The police force in Gotham is so ridiculously crooked that it’s hard to take any plotlines involving it seriously.

So! Do your best to enjoy Gotham for the nutty, pulpy plotlines, but don’t expect it to dramatically rival any of the best superhero stuff. Nolan’s Batman movies are better if you’re looking for Super Serious Acting, or the animated series from the 1990s, and if you want camp, Adam West is your answer.

TV Review: The Grinder, the best legal show ever

Dean (Rob Lowe) with frenemy Timothy  Olyphant (Timothy Olyphant).

 In the past, I’ve heaped praise on Lookwell, the brilliant pilot by Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel that only got one episode in 1991. It starred Adam West as a wash-up actor who had played a detective on television, who now believed he had the skills to be an actual detective, with the help of his acting class. Spoiler: He did not have the skills, and hilarity ensued. (The full episode is available here on YouTube.)

It took 24 years, but a network has finally decided to run back that concept. The Grinder stars Rob Lowe as a successful actor, Dean Sanderson, finishing up his stint on an over-hyped, super sexualized show called… The Grinder. The show-within-a-show is awesome, and basically an over-the-top parody of things like CSI: Miami and NCIS. Each episode of The Grinder starts with a 30-second snippet of Dean’s acting, and the ridiculous situations of the show.

The actual show itself has Dean struggling to assimilate back to “real life,” with the main dynamic being the strained relationship between him and his brother, Stewart, played by Fred Savage. Stewart and his wife, The Waitress from Always Sunny (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), are seemingly the only ones not star-struck by Dean. Stewart is routinely exasperated by Dean attempting to practice law without a law degree, even more so when he manages to succeed (or at least, to succeed in his delusional mind).

Beyond the brothers, the main thing The Grinder has going for it is a deep and excellent ensemble cast. Dean and Stu’s dad, Dean Sr. (played by William Devane), is one of the standouts, as the small town lawyer partner of the firm they both work for. Natalie Morales from Parks and Recreation is another lawyer at the firm, who is annoyed and unimpressed by Dean. And Todd (Steve Little) gets laughs as being completely in the bag for everything Dean does. Even Stu’s kids are played by sharp, funny actors (Hana Hayes and Connor Halopsis) and have unique aspects, as opposed to being cloying and stereotypical.

The casting excellence extends to the guest stars. The show is only in its first season, but already, Maya Rudolph and Christina Applegate have stolen episodes as the therapist for the brothers and a single mother interested in Dean, respectively. Timothy Olyphant plays Timothy Olyphant on the show, a former friend of Dean who stabs him in the back by starring in The Grinder's New Orleans spin-off. 

Applegate and Lowe had my favorite meta exchange of the show, which can be seen here on YouTube. “You look exactly the same.” “So do you! Almost in a scary way, exactly the same.” (The other great meta moment: The latest episode is a flashback one to the early 1990s, with Jenna Fischer as Dean’s former girlfriend, and Dean complaining about how women get all of the great roles in Hollywood.)

If you’re looking for a satisfying, 23-minute weekly sitcom, then The Grinder is what you need to check out, especially since Modern Family has fallen off a cliff into a deep ravine, never to return to quality. As a result, The Grinder is my favorite network sitcom by far, edging out Mom, which is more of a mixture of comedy and drama.

Inexplicable TV Review: Tagteam, With Jesse Venture and Roddy Piper

[Left to right] Jesse and Roddy, and
the owner's evil wife and the owner.

So, back in the day, much like with Lookwell, there was an awesome idea for a television show that only had one episode and didn’t have anymore. This show was called Tagteam, and featured Jesse Ventura and “Hot Rod” Roddy Piper playing, what else, former professional wrestlers. A glorious YouTube clip of the pilot episode’s final fight scene is here.

The show is awesome for several reasons. First, wrestling is taken to be deadly serious. As in, these are real fights. When “Tricky” Rick MacDonald (Piper) and Billy “The Body” Youngblood (Ventura) refuse to purposely lose a match, the owner’s wife lies to him about the boys, saying they made a pass at her. The owner, who looks suspiciously like Vince McMahon, immediately fires them after the match.

This leads to a hilarrrrious montage of them trying to find work. They try furniture moving at first, but Billy’s back give out on him, and they drop a grand piano down a flight of stairs, through a window and on to their truck, destroying it. “I think we body slammed the truck…” Ha ha ha! What witty banter.

They find their true calling at the supermarket. Using just wrestling moves, they manage to subdue four would-be robbers, and this experience leads them to enroll in the police academy.

By the way, this pilot covers a lot of ground – probably because for some reason, there are only like three or four commercial breaks. Next, we see them at the police academy, which is also awesome. They have to complete an obstacle course, and of course, there is a nagging “funny” recruit, basically a homeless man’s Michael Winslow.

This whole police academy montage takes about 10 minutes, and then, the boys are on “plain clothes” detail, providing muscle for two fat older cops. They do an awesome job, the two fat old cops suck and let the witness get captures, and that leads to the fight montage in the linked YouTube clip above.

Just like Lookwell, this show is mostly awesome because it’s so incredibly dated, and because the concept is pure cheese. I’m not sure what they could have done for future episodes – I guess it would have been a straight police procedural, but geez, there isn’t much reason to watch one with two wrestlers over the other options available at the time.

The photos are from iMockery, which have their own awesome review of this show here.

Family Guy gets real in season premiere.

I love me some Family Guy. Although I feel like it should be required watching if you live in Rhode Island, it's still funny if you don't. I can understand how others might get sick of the show and its somewhat formulaic humor, but hey, what else am I gonna watch? And as Peter Griffin would say, what do you want me to do, read a book? ... you go read a book.

Anyway, last night's episode was another experiment much like the bank vault from last season. There were echoes of both Clue (which I'm a big fan of) and Twelve Little Indians (which I'm also a big fan of) throughout, so not surprisingly, I liked the episode. And unlike a typical show, there were barely any "manatee jokes," as South Park would say. I counted about four in the entire episode.

The premise: All of Quahog is invited to a late night dinner at a mansion at the edge of town. Once there, Family Guy villain James Woods reveals himself, but proclaims to have turned over a new leaf. The guests are skeptical, and the plot thickets as Quagmire's (very, very ugly) date gets killed during dinner, while Woods is out of the room.

I won't spoil the rest of the episode, since I doubt most of you watched it. However, while I liked the first three-fourths of the episode, the final quarter really fell apart for a variety of reasons. The episode itself it still worth watching because of how different it is from a typical Family Guy, but don't expect any sort of magic at the end.

At least Adam West is awesome throughout. And yes, he is heavily featured, along with Carl the Video Store Clerk (H. Jon Benjamin) and the other popular side characters. They definitely have the funniest lines in the episode.

Guilty Pleasures - TV Funhouse, Home Movies and Lookwell

The always classy Wonderman.

Lately, I've had three TV shows / shorts in heavy rotation on my computer / DVD player.

1) TV Funhouse, both the SNL skit and the standalone show that ran on Comedy Central for a year. Both are primarily created and voiced by Robert Smigel, aka Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. The SNL version is normally more political and related to current events, and generally of much higher quality. My favorite would be Conspiracy Theory Rock, which has an added level of ironic humor because it *was* edited out of future broadcasts by NBC / General Electric.

The Comedy Central show doesn't hit the highs of the SNL version, which is to be expected because it stretched Smigel to half-hour segments. The show is a combination of a crude mockery of Blue's Clues, with an incredibly docile host interacting with Truimph-like animal puppets, and Smigel's cartoons. The mock host segments are very hit-or-miss, and go so over-the-top with vomit and drug and animal testing jokes that they're hard to stomach at times. But the cartoons are consistently funny - Wonderman is a good example of the funnier cartoons.

2) Home Movies, which I've been putting in my away message like crazy. This actually lasted about four seasons, and focuses on Brendan, an eight-year-old making movies with his friends Jason and Melissa.

A lot of their skits are hit-or-miss, so Coach McGuirk (H. Jon Benjamin) really makes the show. Click here for his take on swearing, losing, women, prison and drugs.

3) Lookwell, a failed TV pilot by Smigel and Conan O'Brien, starring Adam West as a washed-up TV actor. A shocking stretch, I know. Only one episode was ever made, and it's on a lot of trackers and on YouTube. If you like Adam West on Family Guy, then imagine that for 22 minutes. I'll end with some good Lookwell quotes:

Ty Lookwell to a police officer: Perhaps if you watched a little bit more television you'd be better at your job.

Ty Lookwell: The working class mind is strange and unpredictable.

Ty Lookwell, as he's being arrested: I'm not a car thief I'm an actor!