By Steve Rhodes

Recent observations from more TV viewing than should be allowed even in a democracy.
1. ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption has a segment at the end of every show where a young staffer corrects all the factual errors the host have made during the previous 30 minutes. I’ve always thought newscasts should do this too. Jay Black at TV Squad would extend the idea even further.
2. ESPN and its showcase SportsCenter have attracted some grumpy critics in recent years, but it’s still one of the smartest networks and shows on TV; if only my evening newscast could be as well-produced as SportsCenter.
3. I don’t think anyone has had as strong a run of commercials than GEICO and Comcast. See also: Caveman’s Crib and The Slowskys.
4. A lot of heel work.

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Posted on June 24, 2008

By The Beachwood Top Chef Affairs Desk

UPDATE/June 19:
Highlights from the reunion show:
* Stephanie won Fan Favorite.
* Tom Colicchio revealed that, indeed, the competition was Richard’s to lose.
* Colicchio also revealed that he did not agree with the decision the judges made on the episode he missed to keep Lisa and send Dale packing.
* Richard appeared via satellite from Atlanta where he was awaiting the birth of his child and said that he had opened a new restaurant – and by the tone in his voice, it didn’t appear things were going well.
–
I also came across this.

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Posted on June 19, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

I don’t think I have to remind readers how much I detest My Boys – okay, maybe I do, see the Kill Me Now Again item – but it’s back and it’s as bad as ever. And no, I’m not just thrilled to hear our teeny tiny burg mentioned on, gadzooks, TV! Oh my God, they mentioned the Billy Goat!
Last night’s season debut was a typical mish-mash of underdeveloped story lines (PJ’s here-and-gone-again attraction to Bobby; what happens when a bar regular sleeps with, in the show’s words, a cocktail waitress, though who would use such a term at a bar like – talk about trying too hard – “Crowley’s”?); underdrawn characters (can these guys get any more single-dimensional?), stale dialogue (“Enquiring minds want to know!”) and inane overexertion (er, um, a Chicago radio jock who wants to play “alternative” music and wears a different band’s t-shirt in every scene? Please.)

Believe me, the sneak preview is far better than the actual show. I mean, the sneak preview isn’t bad. But trust me, it goes very far downhill from there.

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Posted on June 13, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

Well, that was a great finale. Let’s re-live the drama. Here’s how I saw it from the judges table.
First Course: Stephanie won. Lisa second. Richard third.
Second Course: Lisa won the second round. Stephanie and Richard tied for last. Richard has to know right now that he blew it. Stick a liquid nitrogen . . . thingie . . . in him, he’s done!
Third Course: Stephanie won this round. Lisa took a step back. Richard is totally losing.
Fourth Course: Richard did better here, but he did a variation of a dessert he’s done before in this competition. Lisa did well here. Stephanie not so much.
Oh my god, Lisa won.
No, Stephanie won two rounds. But she was last in two rounds.
Lisa was second twice and first twice. Did she sneak in? I’m scared.
Richard: “I feel like I choked a little bit.” And you just did again by saying that!
You have to count past performance for something, don’t you? It has to be Stephanie, but Lisa won this round!
It’s really a tie. But the lamb and the snapper. Stephanie.
Lisa’s right: She won the first and third, Stephanie won the second and fourth. There is consensus!
Wow! Suspense!
They have to give it to Stephanie, don’t they?
I think Lisa finally won a round, but there’s no way she’s the best. Is this just who won this round, or who has been the best over the course of the season?
God, I’m hungry. How should I prepare my ramen?

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Posted on June 12, 2008

By Kathryn Ware

This installment of “What I Watched Last Night” should really be called “What I Didn’t Watch Last Night But Recorded on My DVR to Watch Sometime in the Next Few Years.” Yes, that’s right, years. There are programs recorded on my digital video recorder (DVR) that date back to the spring of 2005. Allow me to explain.
I live in a household of three distinct TV-watching personalities. If the three of us were to be illustrated by a Venn diagram, the littlest segment at dead center, where the three circles meet, would represent the sole regularly recorded program we all have in common: The Office. A slightly larger fraction of the recorded programs are enjoyed by a pair of us, but definitely not by the third. And the lion’s share of the DVR is taken up by a wildly divergent hodge-podge culled from all that our Comcast cable provider has to offer, recorded for individual viewing.
Our DVR is a constant juggling act of disc space and couch time. We’re forever flirting with the 100% maximum capacity mark, which for us represents dual tuners packing 120 GB of storage – that’s 60 hours of standard or 15 hours of HD programming. Some of us watch our shows promptly and remove them immediately. One of us likes to record everything in HD and why not? It looks great. The trouble with that is it makes for a heck of a lot of TV to keep up with on a weekly basis. With space at a premium, there’s no luxury of rolling over into the next week. You’ve got to keep up. We have our priorities.
And then, there’s a member of the household who if given a DVR quadruple the size of our current recorder could max it out in less than two weeks. There are movies in cold storage on the DVR that have been waiting for years to be recorded off onto the VCR, that ancient technology once held so dear and now gathering dust. As slick a set-up as we have (including a Sony PlayStation that we use to watch beautiful, vivid Blu-ray DVDs with visuals and sound even better than our beloved HD) we can’t manage to get the DVR and the VCR to communicate. I think it’s the VCR’s way of getting back at us for dumping it years ago.
So, I thought it might be fun to spin back through time to see just what’s archived on the most popular appliance in my house. This reverse chronological list clearly highlights the split personality currently residing on my DVR:

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Posted on June 6, 2008

By Stephanie Goldberg

I’m starting to think something’s really wrong with me. First, I dared to back Hillary while living in the land of Lincoln – a choice I’d encourage only if you have a burning desire to know who your real friends are. And, now, it’s my utter indifference to the Sex and the City movie, which almost all of my women friends seem to care deeply about, that’s made me an outcast. All weekend I’ve managed to avoid the issue by hiding out in my apartment but who knows how many more days I can hold out? Sooner or later, I’ll have to see the movie that everyone from Roger Ebert to the Times’s Manohla Dargis has slagged or else be shut out of conversations about Big as father figure or Carrie as modern-day Barbie doll.

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Posted on June 5, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

Recent observations from more TV viewing than should be allowed even in a democracy.
1. Spike got bounced from Top Chef this week, and good riddance. (Lose the hats, dude.) If only he took Lisa with him. (Gossipy irony alert here.)
Ever since Dale was unfairly bounced, I’ve thought Richard was the favorite. But the trusty and talented chefs at Flying Saucer in Humboldt Park tell me that Stephanie is going to win.
2. This commercial grated on me at first, but now I’m a fan. The lyrics are really good, especially when his posse’s getting laughed at instead of looking fly and rolling phat.

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Posted on May 30, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

Recent observations from the wonderful world of TV.
1. Top Chef: Dale got screwed.

Sure, Dale was the executive chef, but shouldn’t past performance count for something? I mean, Richard survived a week in which he left scales on the fish.
I’ve always thought that Dale – though difficult – was the best of the bunch. But now I’m thinking Richard, despite the scales. Richard’s Willy Wonka confection for the movie episode did demonstrate his ability to pull off an imaginative dish (I just saw that episode; I had been avoiding it due to the presence of Richard Roeper, ugh).
For more Top Chef commentary, this is pretty good: Blogging Top Chef: Chewing It Up and Spitting It Out!
Finally, did you know that Padma used to be married to much-older Salman Rushdie? It’s true!
I wonder if it was the fatwa that she found so attractive.

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Posted on May 27, 2008

By The Beachwood Turn On Your TV Affairs Desk

A guilty pleasure stew.
*
7:30 a.m.: Ab Coaster
8 a.m.: Reclaim
8:30 a.m.: Sheer Cover

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Posted on May 2, 2008

By Scott Buckner

For a brief moment Wednesday night, I thought about tuning into American Idol on Fox, but I would have just spent the hour planning an Internet petition drive supporting the euthanasia of Paula Abdul. A worthwhile project indeed, but something like that involves far more effort than I’m interested in. So I went with Magic’s Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed, a show which manages to magically return from the dead from time to time on lower-budget stations like WPWR/Channel 50.
As the program demonstrated, the ingenuity involved in pulling off some of magic’s more amazing illusions can be incredibly simple, so it’s no wonder why the magician community abides by the same code of silence still held sacred by tradition-minded cops and members of organized crime. That’s why Magic’s Biggest Secrets is hosted by someone known only as The Masked Magician, an individual clad in black and a full-head latex mask to hide his (or her) true identity. What might drive a magician to the depths of personal discontent responsible for Magic’s Biggest Secrets is less a mystery than what might drive a magician to show up in a Creature from the Black Lagoon mask that even Ed Wood would consider cheap and tawdry. When Mexican lucha libre wrestlers stuffed sausage-like into spandex go investing more thought into wardrobe, there are some things even Ed Wood would be justified bitching about.
Yet, it probably hasn’t occurred to the magician community that even if Jesus Himself showed up on a rerun-heavy commercial channel like WPWR directly opposite American Idol to give away the secret of turning piss into gold, the secret would still be safe from the world. (Then again, Jesus never went around sawing women in half or skewering them with big Knights of Columbus swords without a single drop of blood turning up on the blade, so there.)

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Posted on April 24, 2008