TV Review: Flight of the Concords – Sally
Flight of the Conchords – Sally TV Review Flight of the Conchords is so naturally performed and so inexpensively produced it’s hard to see why it belongs on HBO at all. The show from the kiwi folk comedy duo Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement is an offbeat, but not irreverent single-camera sitcom that lacks the scale, substance and sensibility of most HBO series. That’s not an indictment, but a warning. Flight of the Conchords isn’t Entourage or Sex in the City or even Extras. It’s different. And sometimes different is just good. Sometimes, different also means breaking into spontaneous song. Flight of the Conchords boasts three musical numbers, all fitting into the storyline of a New Zealand band trying to make it in New York. That’s not how we first meet Flight of the Conchords, though. We follow them...
Read MoreTV Review: Meadowlands – Pilot
Meadowlands: Pilot TV Review It’s refreshing to learn that Meadowlands, a series about witness protection program families living in the ultimate gated community, isn’t simply a show about the idyllic, mysterious suburban locale. In fact, we learn more about the town of Meadowlands in the pilot episode than we’ve learned about the island in all three seasons of Lost. No, Meadowlands doesn’t get caught up in forcing the audience to play guessing games about a bizarre community. Instead, we are thrust into the sublime weirdness of the residents. There is a difference between Meadowlands and the usual TV series or movie about suburbia. It’s not darkly comical; it’s dark. The resident’s aren’t Picket Fencesodd; they’re Arkham Asylum odd. An undercurrent of madness makes the melodrama seem more dire and the residents more interesting. Four of those residents just moved...
Read MoreTV Review: Head Case
Head Case (2007)–**1/2 After his therapy session with Dr. Goode (Alexandra Wentworth) in the first episode of Head Case, Jason Priestly, dressed in women’s tank and wig, exits into the waiting room. There he runs into sportscaster Rick Eisen who asks Priestly if it’s his first time with Dr. Goode. It is, but Eisen ensures, “It gets better.” The pushy, judgmental Dr. Goode has a slew of celebrity patients who go to her out of an apparent emotional masochism. The first three episodes feature appearances by Andy Dick, Ione Skye and Shelby Lyne, in addition to Priestly and Eisen. Later episodes feature Tom Sizemore, Jason Silverman and the karate kid himself Ralph Macchio. It’s not the celebrity A-list the similarly-themed animated show Dr. Katz could claim, but it’s not bad for a therapist who can force an unwilling Priestly...
Read MoreThe Black Donnellys review
The pilot episode of The Black Donnellys, a new series from Crash writer/director Paul Haggis, is not good. It’s a lightweight, CW-quality episode that doesn’t do justice to what this show will with any luck achieve. But the potential makes the pilot invigorating. This episode, and hopefully only this episode, is told from the perspective of Joey Ice Cream (Keith Nobbs). His galling narration, which he gives as part of an interrogation, rushes the story of the Donnelly brothers along with only the episode’s final moments in mind. In 40 minutes that could have filled nearly 160 minutes we get a shallow history of the four Donnelly boys. Most importantly, though, we meet Tommy (Jonathan Tucker). He’s the Michael Corleone of the Donnellys who is supposed to be better than his thug siblings. He’s going to art school while his addict brother Jimmy...
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