TFC Journal at TheFilmChair.com

True Blood is the hottest show on television, scoring the highest ratings HBO has seen since The Sopranos. I doubt that the execs at HBO are looking to tweak the two-parts-sex, one-part-blood (with a pinch of weirdness) recipe. Still, there’s something very wrong in Bon Temps.

At the end of season two’s penultimate episode, I had that itch I get when a show is no longer the show I fell in love with. It happened with The X-Files when the alien conspiracy became the show’s focus. It happened with Weeds when Nancy moved to Ren Mar. It happened with The West Wing when Aaron Sorkin left. Now, with weak love triangles, one-dimensional characters, and ridiculous storylines, True Blood feels like the life has been sucked out of it.

So as the second season finale approaches, here are three ways to fix True Blood.

Read the rest of this entry »

As we established earlier in the year with the Watchmen title credits, I’m a sucker for anything with a little Bob Dylan in it.  It helps when that anything is worthy of the music God’s assistance. That’s what makes this True Blood season two promo so great.

True Blood got off to a rocky start. But by the episodes where Jason Stackhouse started hitting the vampire blood and the serial killer plot line begins to take shape, damn it if this show didn’t become a must watch every week. I’m already counting down the days to June 14 when season two premieres on HBO.

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

Gossip Girl is one of those shows that is really bad when it’s bad, but so good when it’s good. Yesterday’s GG episode was another make or break episode, at least for me.  It started to take itself too seriously. It tried to make you care for the characters like they were real people or something. Please. Gossip Girl’s appeal is in its scheming, its bitchitude, its scandal and its wars.

Rufus and Lily searching for the kid Lily secretly gave away 20 years ago… boring. Serena ripping that bow off Blair’s head… brilliance. Nate Archibald and Vanessa’s on and off relationship… boring. Chuck Bass doing pretty much anything… brilliance.

Gossip Girl is most fun when its characters are pit against each other in epic gladiatorial battles. I literally cheer when I hear Blair Waldorf say things like, “It’s what’s going to happen that you should worry about.”  And when Dan gets a little hot for teacher, I anticipate the fireworks like it’s dusk on the Fourth of July.

The escapades of the Upper East Siders make for are delicious drama, and yesterday’s episode brought some change I can believe in. The tired Uncle Bass storyline finally flamed up and was quickly (and thankfully) extinguished. Dan and Serena’s relationship is now headed toward disaster thanks to Serena’s dishonesty and, of course, a certain young female English teacher. And Blair. Oh, Blair. She’s going to do some serious damage to that same teacher who doesn’t seem to know her place.

But I’m begging the GG writers to do a couple things to get back on track. 1.) Kill Vanessa. 2.) Send Jenny Humphrey to boarding school. 3.) Have Nate show up only for aesthetic purposes. Easy enough, right? But don’t forget to give me sex, scandal, scheming and a little figurative blood. I’m hooked again. Don’t let me down.

Just got an email from TheWB.com, Warner’s ad-supported streaming video website.  Looks like the paltry selection of TV shows on the potential Hulu.com (News Corp and NBCUni’s site) competitor is adding some fan favorites to the mix.  The titles that will be added starting on Aug. 27 include:

-Everwood (!)
-Veronica Mars
-Roswell
-Angel
-In Living Color (clips)
-MadTV
-Firefly
-The Loop

At first, I was just excited to see Everwood on the list, but then I noticed something.

Angel, MadTV, Firefly and The Loop are already offered on Hulu.  Does that mean Warner is pulling the plug on the Hulu distribution of its shows?  TheWB.com already launched with Warner’s mega-hit Friends, which was televised on the NBC Network.  

If that’s the case, bad news for Hulu.  TheWB has its fingers in some big TV shows, including ER (not currently streaming) and Nip/Tuck (on Hulu).  And what about ABC’s Pushing Daisies and CBS’s Cold Case, also Warner shows? 

Granted there are deals all over the place that I’m in no position to be aware of.  And TheWB.com may choose to maintain some sort of brand integrity, catering to a teen-to-twenty-something audience.  

Time Warner also has AOL’s In2TV service, which caters to a Nick-at-Night audience and is about as user-friendly as a tight pickle jar lid would be for an arthritic. In2TV is another potential place for more TV distribution on the Net.  Could we be in the early throws of a battle for content among the Networks and major production houses?  We’ll see.

I guess it’s good thing ABC kept Lost and Desperate Housewives under the Touchstone label though. 

Jericho fans will make one concession when it comes to their favorite post-nuclear drama. That is the first half of the show’s debut season, the Everwood-wannabe, sci-fi, family-drama half, wasn’t good.

No, it was bad.

Why then did fans send 20 tons of nuts (a reference to what was the “Jericho” series finale) to CBS? Because the second half of the season, starting with the show’s return in February, was stellar TV.

For most of the audience, the show was dead in November after months of petty, soap opera-esque drama. A three-month hiatus, however, reorganized the show’s priorities, focusing on the spirit and sacrifice of a community in the face of threats to its very existence. A sense of urgency was created as the conspiracy behind the nuclear explosions in U.S. cities unraveled with renewed fervor.

That’s what makes the rebroadcast of Jericho this summer a great introduction for the fans lost or the ones who were never found. Starting Friday, July 6, CBS will air Jericho season one, but without episodes two through 11. After it airs the pilot on July 6, a recap episode at 8 p.m. on July 13 will fill the audience in on the essentials from the first part of season one. “The Day Before,” or the episode that changed everything, airs at 9 p.m.

The rest of season one airs until Jericho’s prodigal son Jake Green famously utters the word that started a fan revolution: nuts.

The recap is the smartest move CBS could make (after resurrecting the show, that is). With only the great episodes on the air, the fate of “Jericho” lies in the hands of its mobile fan base. In a letter to fans announcing a mid-season order for seven additional Jericho episodes, CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler said, “We will count on you to rally around the show, to recruit new viewers with the same grass-roots energy, intensity and volume you have displayed in recent weeks.”Lucky for Jericho, these fans know they’ve won the battle, but haven’t won the war. Here are a few things you can do to make sure Jericho is here to stay:

WATCH:
Jericho will rebroadcast season one on Fridays at 9 p.m. starting July 6
Every episode (though I recommend skipping two through 11) is available through iTunes, Amazon.com UnBox and for free on CBS.com.

BUY:
Season One comes out on DVD September 26.

TELL:
Let all your like-minded friends know about Jericho. CBS.com makes it easy to copy and paste HTML code into emails or blogs letting people know where they can find Jericho online.

Here’s the HTML code for the pilot. Cut and paste it into blogs, myspace or wherever else you think people will click.
View Jericho Episode 1: Pilot on innertube now

HELP:
NutsOnline.com, the web store that made it easy to send nuts to CBS, isn’t taking orders for Jericho nuts anymore. But you can help another Kansas town, this one devastated by a real life disaster, with their Save Greensburg, Kan. campaign.

Pre-Order Heroes

CBS announced that one of my favorite shows, Jericho, will not be returning for a second season, which really sucks.  All things considered, the final episode last week wasn’t a bad place to end the show.  There are loose ends (like a nuclear weapon still buried underneath someone’s tool shed), but I’m not too distraught.

What does burn me is the CBS decision to replace Jericho with a new reality show titled Kid Nation.  In Kid Nation, 40 eight- to 15-year-olds are charged with creating a community in an abandoned ghost town.  Now before you go comparing the show to Lord of the Flies, let’s point out that the producer of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is behind the kiddie city show.  That means Piggy doesn’t get killed, but whines a lot to the camera.  Is that good TV when compared to a post-apocalyptic western? I don’t think so.