Gilmore Girls and Obama

Some talking heads were talking about how long this presidential race has been. Two years! says john oliver of The Daily Show. Another way to figure it out:

In the finale of Gilmore Girls, Rory gets a last minute job offer to cover Barrack Obama’s campaign. Back then, he was a long shot candidate, at least compared to Hillary Clinton.

The finale was in May 2007.

In the article i linked to, the comments show that i’m not the only fan who remembered where rory spend the last year and a half!

I like Michelle

Michelle Van Eimeren, i think is a nice person. I am also impressed with her filipino. I’m sure she didn’t have to learn it, i’m sure she doesn’t need to use it — but she did it anyway. Nice.

Death of the Sitcom

Nice NYTimes piece on the sitcom. Is the sitcom dead? The best quote:

There are lots of reasons, including competition from comedy channels on cable and the Internet, but a fundamental one is that network sitcoms are still seeking broad appeal at a time when writers can no longer rely on common values or widely shared forms of inhibition.

I love Betty La Fea is ok, Kim Sam Soon as Screwball Comedy

The Philippine version of Betty La Fea premiered last week. It’s said to hew closely to the original mexican version.

I can’t help but compare it to the american version, the only version i know. Betty La Fea has similar elements, but i have my reservations.

What of the pinoy version? I have yet to see the interesting side of her. All i’ve seen so far is that she’s not confident, and can’t defend herself in her neighborhood and at work. She isn’t strong. She doesn’t have any good lines. She isn’t funny. It’s obvious that we should be rooting for her, because as the show suggests, she’s unattractive. But nothing in the story makes her sympathetic. She’s got no pluck.

Whats cool about Ugly Betty (the character) is that, she is the HERO of her series. Her character is contrasted to her vain and power hungry officemates, and they are the better because of her. This was established since episode one, and its clear that our affections ought to lie with the bespectacled protagonist.

Maybe the reason her character (everyone’s, quite frankly) is so slow to develop is because of the format: a daily soap.

Also, and this is minor, i wish they didn’t start with Betty in love with her boss. Which leads me to Kim Sam Soon, the Philippine version:

It takes a while for the main plot to develop (i.e. the fake relationship)… a week and a half i think. But once it does, it becomes a great example of a screwball comedy,– they don’t love each other, but because of each character’s goals, finds it convenient to maintain their fictional relationship.

Its not a perfect show, but i love the screwball elements, and the comedy that naturally ensues. In contrast to the betty character, kim is spunky, has loads of self-esteem, and has the lions share of the funny lines, with the Cyrus character (Mark Anthony) being the straightest of straight men.

Its the closest thing to a 30 minute sitcom the country has ever had.  I only wish it were an original philippine creation, after all, nothing in this is intrisically korean.

Fringe thoughts…

Thought fringe was a comics style, pseudo-science based, watered down X-files, kind of show. A review at thetvaddict.com was spot-on, because the show uses alot of the old comics sterotypes (determined agent, mad scientist, evil corporation, etc…) . While that can be a bummer (I found it to be disappointing), it can also accelerate the communication a show needs to do with its audience. Also, it allows a the show to be serialized enough, but new people can always come in at anytime and understand the show (ah, mad scientist, i get it!).

The effects are great, and the floating location letters gives it a cool, lets-not-take-this-too-seriously, feel.

Its obviously expensive and i wonder if they’ve the budget to keep it up. But if they do a reasonably good job (to be known after a few episodes), there is no reason not to have a season 2.

Final analysis: fun, escapist entertainment with only the faintest ambitions to be more than that.

PS: Anna Torv looks like Cate Blanchet, amazing!

Pinoy TV rant: No Heroes

No i don’t mean the TV show “Heroes”, i mean there are no characters in Philippine TV that succeed because of wit, daring, intelligence, or grace. Why is that? Is there no demand for these kinds of heroes? all we’ve got are super heroes. The problem w superheroes is that they never make mistakes, or aren’t really affected by them.

Hahaha…

I wish he’d come back, but his correspondent days are over.

from vodpod.com posted with vodpod

Maid of Honor

This is surely a sign of the times. The movie Made of Honor features a man as a comic lead, in the kind of role usually alloted for women. The first time i’ve seen such a thing. Its quite revolutionary actually. Women now have shown that they can invade traditionally male roles (action/fantasy/adventure hero). Now its the the men’s turn to take over as a lead in a romantic comedy, typically the bastion of women. In fact, he’s more than the lead, he is tasked to carry this movie as everyone else in this movie has a lesser profile. Basically Patrick Dempsy plays a ‘Julia Roberts’ kind of role; an otherwise successful person driven to desperation by love.

What has made this possible? Well, Grey’s Anatomy is one obvious factor. But this isn’t the first time there has been a breakaway leading man from TV. I think its Judd Apatow — he’s shown more than anyone that the male point of view of relationships is every bit as interesting as the female’s.

Why “The Return of Jezebel James” isn’t good

“The Return of Jezebel James” premiered last week. I saw it, and i thought it was bad. I checked the interwebs; reviews are mostly bad. Metacritic aggregates reviews and gives it a 29, one of the worst reviewed TV show in the Fall 2007/2008 midseason, beat only by the super-short lived “Cavemen”. There are many complaints. Alot of people, myself included, hate the laughtrack. But i believe that the uncomfortable laugh track is only a symptom of the true problem with the show.

Evidence for the Colbert “Bump”

A paper by a UC San Diego professor on the effect of an appearance of politicians on the show’s segment “Better Know a District” on their fund raising. The show gives a significant bump to Democratic congressmen who appear on the show — they earn 37% more than similar democratic congressmen who didn’t appear on the show. The analysis is merely suggestive of a causal link. The paper is written in ‘colbert style’ and is quite entertaining to read, and is a great resource about the colbert and its “disproportionate influence” in politics.

Another blog by juice analytics studied colbert’s influence on book sales. their analysis indicates that on-average, books sales increases by 10%, and that this effect comes from the increase in sales of pop intellectual book and liberal book authors that guest on his show. I’m pretty sure that if they study “The Daily Show”, they would get a TDS bump result as well.

I wonder how powerful this effect is vis-a-vis the authors’ other opportunities to market their book? From a professor in my school, i know that an appearance in either show was heavily encouraged by his agent.

Here is a video from AP about the same phenomenon and some choice words from the man himself.