Posted Nov 18th 2009 11:29AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Things I Hate About TV, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
When
Lewis Black went off at the Emmys a couple of years ago about TV becoming obnoxious with the amount of information splayed on the screen, he hit the nail right on the head. Sad to say, things have not gotten better since that rant. In fact, they're worse. I don't know what's worse,
the annoying pop-up ads on the television screen or the annoying pop-up ads on the computer screen. At least in the case of the latter, it's the equivalent of a commercial and -- somewhat -- understandable.
But when you're watching a television show and have to ignore the bug in the corner, then be subjected to a variety of pop-up promotions and reminders for shows you may or may not be interested in watching it's enough to make you turn off the set. I'd say it's enough to make you switch channels, but where can you go to avoid the intrusion? PBS?
Continue reading Things I Hate About TV: Pop-up ads
Posted Nov 16th 2009 9:02AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
And so
Jane After Dark has come to the end of
The Wire. I need to watch it again to catch more than the one-eighth I caught the first time around. But after watching all five seasons, spanned over most of this year, the thing that keeps popping into my head is that the bureaucratic end of things is really no better than the drug dealer end of things.
In some ways, the drug dealers have more ethics than the suits. At least when a druggie does something that wrongs others in the system, there's no messing around. They're shot. They know they have it coming, and they step up and take it, just like Snoop did, asking if her hair looked ok before being gunned down. Just like Proposition Joe did when he closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable bullet to the head.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: The Wire, season five (part two)
Posted Nov 2nd 2009 8:03PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, TV Royalty, TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
Ah, how good it is to get back to
The Wire. I've been steered off track by other DVDs landing on my doorstep for
Jane After Dark, so season five of
The Wire has been a while coming. One again, the show blows me away with the writing, characters, cinematography and realism. I'm just part-way into season one, but I love all of the references to everything that's happened thus far in the series, and the crew's continued attempts to bring down Marlo's organization. And, apparently, Omar is still in the game ...
Continue reading Jane After Dark: The Wire, season five (part one)
Posted Oct 25th 2009 3:03PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
It's always interesting when you've been hearing about a series for years and then finally sit down to watch it. All the little pieces and pop references of
Ally McBeal are starting to come together, like Fishisms, The Biscuit, dancing babies and Vonda Shepard. I have seen the light. Well, at least season one of the light.
I mentioned in
my preview last week that
Ally McBeal seems like a mix of
The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd and
My World and Welcome To It. Having reached the end of season one, I still feel that way, with maybe a little
Buffy the Vampire Slayer thrown in (hey, don't throw things at me, Ally looks like Buffy).
Molly Dodd because Ally is funny, desperate, strong and cute.
My World because of all her fantasies, though not always in cartoon form as was the case with John Monroe / James Thurber.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Ally McBeal, season one
Posted Oct 21st 2009 2:03PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Programming, TV on DVD, OpEd, Video, Music and Variety, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
I'm watching season one of
Ally McBeal for
Jane After Dark this week, and will give a full review this weekend. But I have to say, I'm just a few episodes in, and I'm already hooked. It's a weird blend of
The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd and
My World and Welcome To It.
And it's very weird seeing Calista Flockhart, whom I mainly know from
Brothers & Sisters, and all of her co-stars, whom I know from other current shows, on
Ally McBeal. What's even more amazing is all of the musicians featured on this show: Elton John, Tina Turner, Mariah Carey, Al Green, and many more.
Continue reading Jane After Dark preview: Hooked on Ally McBeal
Posted Oct 18th 2009 11:02AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
I've been hearing about this little show called
Legend of the Seeker since it debuted last year. Season one was just released on DVD, so I checked it out for
Jane After Dark this week. It's a great show. In my neck of the woods, it airs Saturday afternoon at 4 PM, which is a perfect time. If it aired during the regular primetime schedule, I'm afraid it would be eaten up by other shows, but the weekends are a nice home for it.
I've heard that
Legend of the Seeker, based on
The Sword of Truth novels by
Terry Goodkind, is similar to
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and
Xena: Warrior Princess. As with
Legend, both of these shows were produced by Sam Raimi and Robert G. Tapert.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Legend of the Seeker, season one
Posted Oct 11th 2009 10:02AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, Animation, Children, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
Like most people in the known universe, I grew up with Charlie Brown. In addition to watching all the TV specials, my family amassed a fairly large collection of the paperback Peanuts books and even a few nice hardcovers. Family friendly graphic novels, you might call them.
So I was pretty excited to learn that Warner Home Video was releasing a lot of the TV specials, both individually and in collections. On Oct. 20, the
Peanuts 1970's Collection, Vol. 1 will hit store and cyber shelves in a 2-disc set. A nice publicist sent me an advance copy, so I'm happy to devote this week's
Jane After Dark to this lovely set.
I'm always harping on all the sex and violence on TV right now -- often in shows that bill themselves as family friendly -- so it's really nice to have something you can watch with your kids that you
know won't contain anything offensive or off-color. Not only that, the stories usually have a moral lesson, but they don't whack you over the head with it. It's more subtle, wrapped up in the humor and innocence of the stories and characters.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Peanuts 1970's Collection, Vol. 1
Posted Oct 4th 2009 10:00AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, Grey's Anatomy, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
With
Grey's Anatomy and its spin-off
Private Practice starting new seasons, I decided to refresh my brain with the previous seasons of these two ABC shows. So this week's
Jane After Dark was all about the dreamy doctors.
I've been on board with
Private Practice since the beginning, and was especially interested to see
what happened with Violet and her baby in the season three premiere. Happy ending there, thank goodness! And while
Grey's Anatomy has certainly ebbed and flowed since it began in 2005, I've stuck with it because I've grown to love the dysfunctional characters with all their baggage. It makes my life seem just that much better.
Grey's Anatomy, Season Five
There were parts of this season that drove me a little nuts, like Izzie having "mind-boggling sex" with dead Denny. That whole storyline made me want to jump off a roof, but there were plenty of highlights to the season, as well...
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Grey's Anatomy season five; Private Practice season two
Posted Sep 27th 2009 3:01PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, TV Squad Lists, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
This week in
Jane After Dark, I caught up with season one of
Castle. I'm a sucker for fun whodunits, especially when they feature great male and female characters who've perfected the art of the snappy banter. Specifically, here are five reasons why I'm loving
Castle:
1. Nathan Fillion is boyishly charming. I've been a big fan of this Joss Whedon favorite since seeing him in 2005's feature film
Serenity. I finally completed that awesome circle by watching
Firefly last winter. Fillion has the ability to be goofy one minute and deadly serious the next. In
Castle, he plays Richard Castle, a best-selling mystery author who's raising a 15-year-old daughter Alexis (Molly C. Quinn) -- and, in many ways, his free-spirited live-in mother Martha (Susan Sullivan), as well. Having killed off his latest fictional character, Richard found inspiration in NYPD detective Kate Beckett, after being called in to advise on a case. Now they're working as pseudo-partners.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Five reasons I'm loving Castle
Posted Sep 21st 2009 9:00AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Fringe, Jane After Dark
In anticipation of the season two premiere of
Fringe last week (read my review and your comments
here), I revisited season one to refresh my brain. There are so many subtleties that connect seasons one and two, and it was good to go back and watch it again.
While there were a few creature-feature episodes that appeared to be stand-alones (but who really knows with this show?), for the most part, much of season one was devoted to weaving an intricate mystery and setting things up for season two. It's too much, really, for one small blog post, but a few things sprang to mind ...
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Fringe, season one - pudding, ZFT, and The Observer
Posted Sep 13th 2009 10:00AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, Scrubs, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
Several DVD sets came my way this week, so I did some marathon viewing sessions for
Jane After Dark. I'm brand new to some of these, so you'll get the stark, raw newbie version. But I'll start with one I've watched since the beginning ...
Dirty Sexy Money: The Complete Second and Final Season. I really liked this show at the beginning. It had all the elements of a great series, including excellent actors (starting with Donald Sutherland, Jill Clayburgh, and Peter Krause) and intriguing storylines with rich people, sex, murder, and mystery. But by the time they got to season two, the storylines just seemed to fizzle out. I would love to hear your thoughts on why
Dirty Sexy Money didn't work. Crummy writing? Poor use of great actors? Too many characters to keep track of? Poor timing with the writer's strike occurring in the middle of its run, resulting in ten months between seasons?
Bonus features: Directing the Darlings (behind the scenes with director Jamie Babbit); A Total Knockout (a day in the life of Natalie Zea, who played Karen); Dirty Sexy Crafty (a featurette about the food on the set); Faux Pas (bloopers); deleted scenes.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Sexy Samantha talking Greek in Scrubs
Posted Aug 30th 2009 3:12PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark
I've been hearing about an awesome new show on FX since it aired last year, and finally got around to watching season one of
Sons of Anarchy this week for
Jane After Dark. Being a motorcycle babe myself, I love any show where bikes or gangs are the central focus.
But even if you've never mounted a bad chopper, there are plenty of reasons to love this badass show about the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Originals (SAMCRO). They run a legal automotive business while dealing arms, battling rival gangs, and working with the cops (sometimes) to keep their town of Charming, California a pleasant place to live. You can see all the irony at work here.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Sons of Anarchy - bikes, guns, sex and Katey Sagal
Posted Aug 24th 2009 5:03PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, Video, Reality-Free, Gossip Girl, Jane After Dark
Having just watched all of these scenes this past week (read my yammer in
Jane After Dark), I found this gag reel for season two of
Gossip Girl pretty hilarious. I always wonder what wacky hijinks take place behind the scenes, what the actors are like during filming, and how things can go horribly wrong with the cameras still rolling. So I love watching the outtakes on DVD sets.
My favorite here is the scene where an ultra-dandified Chuck is on the Yale campus, and the dudes grab him and stuff the sack over his head. Or rather, TRY to stuff the sack over his head. And then there's Leighton Meester, who is so indelibly "Blair Waldorf" in my head that it's weird seeing her crack up and talk in funny voices. I can't imagine trying to compose myself for a scene after cracking up take after take.
Continue reading Gossip Girl's gag reel makes me laugh
Posted Aug 23rd 2009 11:17AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, TV Squad Lists, Reality-Free, Gossip Girl, Jane After Dark
I'm almost to the end of
Gossip Girl season two, and frankly, I couldn't be happier! It's been quite taxing watching rich snobs backstab their best friends night after night. I'll need a short break before season three premieres on The CW on Sept. 14.
But, as with everything, I try to glean some small bits of wisdom here and there, things to help me in my quest for peace, serenity, and large amounts of cash. Here are a few things I've learned from
Gossip Girl:
1. Never tell the truth. Apparently, this is the first thing they learn in finishing schools. Never tell the truth, whether you're lying to your best friend about getting into Yale, lying to your girlfriend about where you've been for the past three days, or lying to your kids about their sibling you gave away at birth. Keep a spreadsheet handy to keep track of all the various lies you've told and plan to tell.
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Eight things I learned while watching Gossip Girl
Posted Aug 16th 2009 5:04PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: TV on DVD, OpEd, Reality-Free, Gossip Girl, Jane After Dark
As is often the case lately, I watch the first season of a show, fall in love with it (see
my Mad Men post from last week), miss the second season on TV, and have to wait for the DVD to be released. By then, I've all but forgotten what happened in season one and have to do a little refresher course.
Such is the case with
Gossip Girl, season two of which I've been watching this week on DVD. But, really, it's only taken me a few episodes to get caught back up ...
Continue reading Jane After Dark: Gossip Girl, season 2 - sex, lies, and ... more sex
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