There won’t be nothing new on our schedule until September, and the August slate is pretty thin, so I’m counting on our beloved commenters to pick up the slack for a while.
Digman! – “A Sari Sight” – Rip Digman and crew have two plots that are tied together but are slightly separate. After a Zane Troy (TV special) expedition undercovers the real Cleopatra, the world is stunned to discover… she’s mid. And looks almost exactly like Saltine. Well, Saltine is also running for president of the Assistant Arky Union, as part of her goal to become a full-fledged arky one day. Elections, of course, are popularity and attractiveness contests, and being branded as mid is making it tough for Saltine to gain headway against her opponent, the much hotter Carl Crunch. Agatha remembers an artifact she learned about in her youth, a sari crafted in a color never elsewhere seen by humanity, that makes whoever wears it immediately appear as a 10 to everyone. Guess what the team is going to get up to (if today’s featured image didn’t tell you already).
Meanwhile, Quail Eegan’s secret society of museum owners is trying to push a bill through Congress that would outlaw permission slips, but there’s an obstinate Senator from South Dakota (Amy Sedaris!) who’s only willing to vote for the bill if Zane Troy will sleep with her.
This was pretty fun. I tried to keep the best jokes and plot twists out of this writeup, but as I recall it was full of good lines.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – “Overage Drinking: A National Concern” is the kind of episode you can only do when you’ve been on the air for twenty years. Calling back all the way to the show’s third episode, the Gang once again finds teenagers drinking in their bar, except this time two parents come to pick up one of the teenagers… and those parents are Trey and Tammy, the high-school stars of “Underage Drinking: A National Concern.” (Just as impressively, the same actors are back, and they’ve had pretty steady work since, although Jaimie Alexander being a lead on Blindspot and playing Sif in the Marvelverse is surely the more notable career arc of the two.)
Naturally, Dee picks up on some marital tension and she and Dennis decide to pick up where they left off and try to bang Trey and Tammy. Meanwhile, Charlie enlists Mac to help him track down Frank, which Mac is happy to do because he’s bored with the underage-drinking rehash. A lot of meta-commentary in this one about stories and what’s entertaining, framed as the adventures the Gang is either getting themselves involved in or spectating on. (“Teen drama’s forged in lust. Adult drama’s forged in sadness.”) There’s also a final twist at the end that may be surprising, or may not if you’ve seen the season promos (or just picked up on the subtext of Frank’s tape). Anyway, I think we’re heading into two more episodes, and having seen the titles, I’ve been waiting for this since I saw said promos and I’m actually excited for where this is going to go.
Bob’s Burgers, “Mr. Safebody” – The titular plot involves Arnold, a boy in Louise’s class (voiced by Damon Wayans Jr.), who just got his green belt in karate and wants Louise to help him film a promotional video advertising his bodyguard services. Louise is reluctant, and then the kids find themselves in trouble and alone at an abandoned high school with some high school bullies, and Arnold… does not exactly rise to the occasion, although ultimately some clever thinking from him saves the day.
The B-plot involves Teddy’s fixation on a “90s mainstream alternative rock” radio station in town and Bob’s annoyance with it, and the biggest disappointment to me is that they didn’t use real songs for this plotline.
And there’s very little for the next four sections, so I’m gonna skip straight to…
I put on a few Simpsons season 5 episodes with commentary. I’m a big fan of David Mirkin’s general sarcasm and the ridiculous comments he adds; for example, let’s take “Bart Gets an Elephant.” After Barney walks out of the tar pit, lights a cigarette, and catches fire, with nothing more than a simple “Ow,” Mirkin comments “That’s a lesson we like to teach children, that fire is actually not that dangerous.”
I’ll just turn it over to you at this point.
About the writer
Captain Nath
Born on the bayou, thriving in the mountains. Writer, gambler, comedian, singer-songwriter, bon vivant, globetrotter, and all-around Renaissance Man with perfect opinions about TV and music. Pronounced with a long A and with the H.
It's a gaming ship.
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Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Andor S1E3 – Yup, this is what I wanted, compressed, tight plotting and a sense of what is exciting and terrifying about revolution and fighting totalitarianism. “Don’t you wanna fight these bastards for real” gave me chills as did the citizens sounding the alarm. (The fascists immediately assume it’s about intimidating them when it’s really a quick, clever way to give information.) I also liked how as much this is a show called Andor, it could also be called Cyril and is this guy revealing who he is: a petty, aggressive jerk, and for all his talk about order and loyalty to the company and empire, at gunpoint he gives up his dudes in about thirty seconds. Great acting there at the end where he doesn’t even seem capable of recognizing that he’s lost and all of his men have been mercked.
King of the Hill – “Find the man with the terrible smell!”
The X-Files, “The Calusari” and “F. Emasculata”
It’s shooting fish in a barrel to pick out plot-related loose ends, badly set up red herrings, and questionable choices in “The Calusari,” but I like it despite its flaws. It’s got good horror instincts, and it stages several good sequences and gets a great assist from a surprisingly gifted child actor: Michael-as-Charlie hits on some genuine menace when he’s tormenting his mother with faux-innocent, sugary questions about the Great Day Out they’re going to have, all designed to recall her other son’s horrific death (“Can we ride the train?”). Still, while I enjoy it, it’s patchy and not well-worked-out, and it also suffers from being too obvious with its Exorcist homage.
This did make me think about how Skinner must react to some of Mulder’s reports. I need a bonus feature of him saying, “I’m drawing a line in the sand here, Mulder. At no point does an official FBI report need to contain the phrase ‘the howling heart of evil.'”
“F. Emasculata,” on the other hand, slaps. Lots of satisfyingly gross makeup/prosthetic work here, to the point where I try to crawl out of my skin to escape the sight of these massive, pulsating, bursting boils. I also really like the way a traditional, Fugitive-style thriller plot acts as the stake the vine of the SFF/horror plot grows around, with Mulder and Scully at first thinking that they’ve been drawn into an ordinary (if off-brief) investigation for once before realizing what’s going on. Wonderful appearance from the Cigarette-Smoking Man (“How many people are getting infected while you stand here not doing your job?” he says to a crusading Mulder). Beautiful moment where Scully needs to pause–and maybe say a prayer–before she looks in the microscope to find out if she’s been infected.
Overall, the combination of the plot’s urgency and the depressingly believable cover-up–and Mulder and Scully’s futile efforts to dismantle it and reveal the truth–really worked for me. Their defeat on that last front hits harder than usual, because it’s not the alien conspiracy, which we effectively know won’t be revealed to the public; there was a chance here. But money and power were against them.
Live Music – Alan Sparhawk, formerly of Low. Wasn’t really sure what to expect from this, I liked Low very much indeed but Sparhawk’s solo debut was a bizarre electronic record full of pitch-shifted vocals. The live show touched on both sides of his sound, he started out with the electronic stuff, dancing shirtless and oddly resembling Iggy Pop. Then after about 6 or 7 songs he picked up a guitar and the band* pivoted wildly into his more traditional slow, haunting sound, ending up with a couple of classic Low songs as the encore. This gig was a last-minute decision as a friend’s band were supporting and we got on the cheap list, but it turned out to be pretty great and I’m really glad I was there.
* the band features his son on bass, which is quite sweet
Woo live music! Yeah kids joining their parents in playing music is always cool, like Jeff Tweedy’s son drumming for him.
Wooooooo live, laugh, Low!!
M*A*S*H, Season Two, Episode Twelve, “The Incubator”
This episode really gets across the individual character of this show by virtue of the plot being theoretically cliche – it’s a classic case of characters wanting a specific thing and having to continually escalate who they’re asking it for. Hawkeye and Trapper need an incubator (giving us the show’s intricate medical knowledge) and pass through a series of corrupt officials (giving us the satire of military procedure, although the scene of Hawk and Trap confronting a general is the low point of the episode), with Radar giving us a Shaggy Dog solution that builds on the satire.
Also, Hawkeye remarks the war has been running for two years (“It must be turning a profit by now.”), beginning the show’s elastic timeline.
Police Squad!
Watched this for the first time in preparation for the new Naked Gun movie – it’s up on the Internet Archive, if you can believe it!
Sometimes a work of art comes along that reduces a genre or medium to its essential salts, one simple action over and over and over. This reduces the comedy down to its simplest idea: one absurdity, one at a time, over and over. It even boils that down to its most essential, where it’s simply something incorrect happening. There’s no character, no ideology, nothing at all to distract from things happening that shouldn’t happen. It’s actually more useful at articulating how to do comedy than any of my old faves like The Simpsons or 30 Rock, which use the same principle but have much greater complexity in character, theme, or even emotion – that is to say, they take the bedrock of principles that Police Squad! demonstrates and use them to explore more ambitious content.
But there’s definitely a specific appeal to a show that has nothing higher or lower on its mind than just showing funny shit. I don’t think there’s a show where the actors are more clear-eyed on their shared goal; absolutely every performance is exactly, perfectly what it needs to be, right down to the extras. Leslie Neilson is a god, of course, committing to Frank Drebin without so much as a wink, acting and moving exactly as necessary (or not moving, in the case of the end credit jokes). Interestingly, he still comes off as having the time of his life here. I’m also a big fan of Alan North as Ed, coming off completely gormless as he accepts everything happening, as well as Peter Lupus as Norberg (the closest this show comes to having a Johnny).
This comes mostly from the show having a committed reality to it. Earlier this week, there was a discussion on Nath’s Discord about realism in fiction, and there was some discussion on comedy realism; this isn’t realistic, but it does have the basis of normal cop shows holding it up, to the point that the actual plots of every episode would make for functional, if boring cop stories. If everything everyone does is wrong, the show still gives you a sense of how it would be right, and thus can create laughs.
When Leslie Nielsen died, a lot of people recalled how he had a great sense of humor and loved whoopie cushions, stuff like that, which makes it even more amazing that he’s so good at playing Frank “straight” like there’s no actual joke on screen. (Same with Neeson in the new Naked Gun. “But Ronald TRAINED Bill!”)
One of the neat things from the show commentaries– I don’t remember who said it– was a remark that Nielsen is so funny in person and off camera, that when someone asked the speaker if they were surprised he could play comedic roles, the answer was “Honestly, I’m surprised he ever played serious roles.”
I thought Johnny was the closest the show came to having a Johnny. That is to say, I don’t know what you mean.
Norberg is the closest equivalent to Johnny in Airplane!, where he’s wackier and less serious – not to the self-aware extent of Johnny being silly on purpose, but he has so many weird preoccupations outside of the job (like getting very invested in his fake locksmith job), compared to everyone else doing very serious jobs in a very silly way.
Ah, yes. There are so many Johnnies in fiction. (“He’s like Skinner’s Vietnam buddy who gets massacred?”)
Normally I write these up immediately after finishing the work, then edit them, and usually post them hours after writing them. This time I skipped the second two things, which led me to forget to write the word Airplane!.
General, non-X-Files viewing:
Recently played a little bit of catch-up with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and watched “Mac and Dennis Become EMTs,” “Thought Leadership: A Corporate Conversation,” and “The Gang Goes to a Dog Track.”
All three feel like instant classics and episodes only this show could have made, nailing the way the gang quickly descends into very specific absurdity (the microdosing of hot peppers, with coked-up effects), their total commitment to a newfound bit (complete with Charlie’s limitations in following it because his reality is slightly askew even to theirs; loved his ineptness at the corporate-speak in “Thought Leadership”), and their ability to instantly descend into criminality (I’m going to constantly be referencing “fingerprint situation” from “The Gang Goes to a Dog Track” now). This show truly is a gift.
Howled at Charlie’s botched graph and the Gang’s reactions to it.
Year of the Month update!
This August, we’ll be covering 1959. Check out all these movies, albums, books, et al
TBD: Bridgett Taylor: Pillow Talk/Some Like It Hot
Aug. 15th: Gillian Nelson: I Captured the King of the Leprechauns
Aug. 20th: John Bruni: Shadows
Aug. 22nd: Gillian Nelson: Khrushchev Goes to Disneyland
Aug. 25th: Sam Scott: Imitation of Life
Aug. 27th: Lauren James: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Aug. 28th: Cliffy73: Sleeping Beauty
Aug. 29th: Gillian Nelson: The Monorail
Aug. 31st: Tristan J. Nankervis: North by Northwest
And in September, we’re covering these movies, albums, books, from 1938!
TBD: Cori Domschot: Bringing Up Baby
TBD: Bridgett Taylor: Rebecca
Sept. 22nd: Sam Scott: Holiday
When does Digman reach Paramount+? Also, I need to stop subscribing to Paramount+, so how do I get my Digman?
Uh… great question. They’ve been putting up the new South Park episodes every week, but still only have season 1 of Digman!, so I don’t know. (The torrent sites haven’t been very useful as far as actually getting an episode out in anything like a timely manner, either.)