By Julia Gray

“Aren’t you a little fat to be a storm trooper?”
“Well stay here and rot you stuck up bitch!”
Upset that I still can’t do this pose in yoga, it became quite obvious that I needed a few big-time laughs. Especially after this pose caused a classmate to pass gas a little bit too close to yours truly. The season premiere of Family Guy helped put my yoga inabilities out of my mind for a bit. In its sixth season opener, Seth McFarlane and company outdid themselves once again by mocking episode IV of the Star Wars series. This episode was so chock-full of both obvious and obscure cultural references that I’ve decided to only touch on a few highlights.
The infamous opening crawl through space refers to Angelina Jolie kissing her brother and reminds Ms. Jolie that everyone saw it, including her dad, and that’s why they don’t talk anymore. “You can run away to Africa but you can’t run away from your problems.” Also, the viewers are strongly advised to rent the HBO film Gia, since Jolie is naked in it.

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Posted on September 25, 2007

By Kathryn Ware

Our tribute to the 35th anniversary of the debut of Maude continues.
*
Season 1, Episode 6
Episode Title: The Ticket
Original airdate: 17 Oct 1972
Plot: Maude tries to get out of a speeding ticket by racing into her home before the motorcycle cop can catch her. Try as she might, Maude can’t talk, argue or yell her way out of the ticket. Having the cop tote her groceries inside, telling him she really has to pee, calling him honey, baby and pussycat face – nothing works.
Maude now has enough moving violations to have her license suspended, a thought that strikes fear into the Findlay household; no one wants to be responsible for carting Maude around town and the last thing Florida wants is to be stuck with Maude at home all day. Arthur knows someone who knows someone and offers to “fix” the ticket but Maude will hear nothing of it. She wants her day in court. Right on Maude!

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Posted on September 21, 2007

By Ed Schwartz

Reality TV got a jump start in its dominance of the television schedule because of shows like Cops and America’s Most Wanted. Both deal with factual content and certainly do capture people in the “art of being themselves”.
The show Cops premiered in 1989. The simplicity of it is why it works so well and has run so long. Put cops and cameras together and as Seinfeld would say, “That’s a show”.
No attempts are made to conceal the cameras. Participating officers wear wireless mikes and the resulting footage from the streets of America is better than anything Hollywood make believe might conjure up for Saturday night prime time.

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Posted on September 20, 2007

By Scott Buckner

If you were wondering what all that cheering was about Monday night, it was the sound of overjoyed wardens of Turkish prisons thankful for Fox-TV’s third season of Prison Break. That’s because Monday’s night’s season opener shifted the show’s inside-prison environs to Panama and the fictional Penitenciaria Federal de Sona That’s Sona Federal Penitentiary to us gringos.
Break is one of those shows I never got around to seeing during its first two seasons because of its miserable 7 p.m. Monday time slot, so I always forgot it was on. It’s a serial show like Lost and Rescue Me, so if you don’t catch it from the beginning, you won’t be able to follow a damn thing.
During the first season, Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) sent himself to prison specifically to spring his Death Row inmate brother Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purcell), who had been framed for whacking the brother of the Vice President of the United States. A few other inmates went along for the ride, so the whole bunch spent the second season being hunted by FBI Special Agent Alexander Mahone (the somewhat creepy but always enjoyable William Fichtner). Lincoln was cleared of the charges, but now Scofield’s stuck in a Panamanian prison. And so is Agent Mahone. I’m not sure why (and it’s a new season so I probably don’t need to) they’re both there and how they got there, but there they are, and they really don’t think much of each other.

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Posted on September 19, 2007

The Beachwood’s Fall TV Preview

A while back, some insightful network executive decided audiences might like a little humor with their overblown drama, and thus the Dramedy was born. Still the same weighty themes, but explored with lightness and good cheer. Then, like some mad professor locked away in the cellar, writers began to tinker with the formula.
They upped the silliness, threw in extra yuks, and dared to crack wise about the soul-crushing themes that had weighted down traditional TV fare. And then the line got blurry. Did someone put a little funny in their drama, or did they get some angst in their comedy? Are we meant to laugh through our tears or feel bad about laughing? What are these programs, Dramedy or Comerama?

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Posted on September 17, 2007

By Natasha Julius

If new television dramas can be read as a meta-analysis of our cultural angst, there has been a sea-change in our nightmares over the past year. Gone are the naive innocents caught in twisting superspiracies, replaced with dark characters that are, if not the primary authors, then certainly complicit in the writing of their own tragedies.
There’s something refreshing about this honesty. In an age when our real-life heroes are the ones that cop to their dirty deeds, it would feel false if the network dramas trotted out a squeaky-clean roster. The trouble is there’s a fine line between gritty realism and a shiny pack of bastards. Not surprisingly, the networks seem to have strayed well south of that meridian.

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Posted on September 17, 2007

By Don Jacobson

If traditional network comedies are a dying species, it’ll be up to an old warhorse (Back To You), some sub-humans (Cavemen) and an overflowing A-V room full of nerds (Aliens in America, Big Bang Theory, The IT Crowd, Chuck) to save them from a permanent spot on the cutting room floor.
And given the clips and previews that have been made available by the networks, the prognosis is cloudy. None of the new shows seems like a sure-fire hit, while some – like Cavemen and the Return of Jezebel James – are high-stakes dice-rolls that could succeed wildly or put the last nails in the TV comedy coffin if they go down in spectacular, unfunny flames.
Oh, the humanity.

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Posted on September 17, 2007

By Kathryn Ware

Our tribute to the 35th anniversary of the debut of Maude continues.
*
Season 1, Episode 5
Episode Title: Maude and the Radical
Original airdate: 10 Oct 1972
Plot: Stand back. Maude is throwing a cocktail party.
The grueling pressure of playing hostess to thirty guests spins Maude from one panic attack to another. Even after two Miltowns (“the greatest tranquilizer known to man”) she’s as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers – a joke that’s used no less than three times in this episode. The guest of honor is Jim Chambers, “one of the most important black militant leaders in the country.” The party is a fund-raiser, a minor point Maude keeps from her guests, fearing no one will show if they think their pockets will be picked.
You can see where this is going.

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Posted on September 11, 2007

By The Beachwood TV Towns Affairs Desk

A Beachwood guide in-progress. Submissions welcome.
SOAPS
Show: All My Children
Town: Pine Valley
State: Pennsylvania
Where: Near Center City (Philly)
Popular Stores: The Boutique, The Glamorama
Popular Eatery: The Cluck-Cluck Chicken Shack
Show: As the World Turns
Town: Oakdale
State: Illinois
Size: Small Town
Amenities: Airport, TV Station, Luxury Hotel, 3 Major Newspapers, University, World-Renowned Hospital
Major Industry: Worldwide Enterprises

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Posted on September 10, 2007

By Julia Gray

Reflections upon watching the U.S. Open this week.
I’ve been into tennis for years. My dad is a great player and my mom was until her pesky knee gave out and got a bionic one. Nowadays, she’s fights rudeness and bad behavior with her knee. It’s quite the sight. Two of my sisters, Liza and Catherine, are solid players, but we hardly ever played together because the bickering got to be too much for players on the surrounding courts. I grew up playing on green clay courts in the western ‘burbs, where one had to wear white tennis togs and the Wilson T2000 was the racquet to have. My dad had one, but ended up ditching it for a Wilson Jack Kramer. What was great about the clay is we could do awesome Bjorn Borg-esque slides, and get green clay everywhere. Those were the days.

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Posted on September 6, 2007