Listen to the Kid: Two and a Half Men is a Horrible Show

I never thought to much of Two and a Half Men was much of a show, with or without Charlie Sheen, but I expected that those making millions from the program would be somewhat supportive.  Not so.  Angus T. Jones, who plays the "half man" Jake, attempted to steer all of us away from the series during his interview with Christopher Hudson from the Bible-focused Forerunner Chronicles. 

In an interview where Angus T. Jones discussed his new found christian faith, he went on to state:

Jake from Two and a Half Men means nothing. He is a non-existent character...If you watch Two and a Half Men, please stop watching Two and a Half Men. I'm on Two and a Half Men and I don't want to be on it. Please stop watching it.  Please stop filling your head with filth. People say it’s just entertainment...Do some research on the effects of television and your brain, and I promise you you’ll have a decision to make when it comes to television, especially with what you watch on the television.  It's bad news...You might not have heard it otherwise.

Angus T. Jones goes on to align the show with "the enemy's plan," and states that a "true christian" cannot be on such a show.  I am not sure what this means about his future with the series.  What is interesting is that Hudson seemed uncomfortable in the video as Jones was denouncing Two and a Half Men.  You can watch the video here on YouTube.  This is actually part two of a 30 minute interview.  Angus T. Jones' statements on his role as Jake are about 7.37 minutes into the second video.

While this was an authentic interview, I cannot say anything positive about the Forerunner Chronicles.  This is a paranoid "christian" organization that still has stories about black helicopters, the "symbol of the beast," and the coming doomsday.  What is scary is that Angus T. Jones stated that his is a fan of the organization and its ideas.  Maybe someone from the Forerunner Chronicles needs to be the next one to come out and renounce the organization's crazy statements.

Update:  So, after Charlie Sheen offered Angus a job on Anger Management, the producers of Two and a Half Men have taken Angus back for another season.  CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler said “He apologized and we’ve moved on.”  She added,“The kid is 19 years old. I've got a 24-year-old. Between the ages of 19 and 24, there's been plenty of things my kid has said that I wish he hadn't."  I guess filth has its benefits.

R.I.P. J.R.

I was sad to read about the loss of Larry Hagman (1931-2012) at the age of 81 from cancer.  While many will remember him as J.R. on Dallas, my favorite role of his what that of the befuddled astronaut Major Anthony Nelson in I Dream of Jeannie.  First broadcast in 1965, I Dream of Jeannie was part of prime time that included Bewitched, The Andy Griffith Show, The Lucy Show, and McHale's Navy.  Television was quite different then and limited to basically three channels, but when I look at the line up of shows I somehow think we are missing something today.

The new Dallas will continue without Mr. Hagman, but one of its essential cornerstones is missing.  And while I am not calling for a new I Dream of Jeannie (I know better since I expect the networks would flub it), it seems the Indians just recently created their own version of the show. Jeannie Aur Juju involves an airline captain who lands on a deserted island and finds a genie in a bottle. 

2012 Fall Season Deaths, Part I: Last Resort and More

Well, we knew it would happen.  The fall season is finally sorting itself out and some shows are winners while other are dying.  One show that will not make it past the first season is ABC's Last Resort, a show about a renegade nuclear submarine hiding away in a tropical paradise, or so it would seem.  I am not sure if they are going for Lost with nukes or something else, but I did not think the show's plot could last beyond a season (similar to NBC's The Event) and I was right.  ABC has cancelled Last Resort after its 13-epidose first season run.  That is better than the options, such as killing it mid-season and taking it off the air.  And while many may be unhappy, it seems the writers on the show still have time to tie it all up with a nice bow.  Maybe this should have been the plan all along. 

ABC has also cancelled 666 Park Avenue, a show with a great cast trying to support a lame plot.  What is sad is that this show, as with The New Normal, has been the target of the ever odd One Million Moms (has anyone really counted their number?).  The group quotes ABC's own publicity that this new show will be a cross between "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Shining."  If only it were so, then it might be worth watching.  Maybe we need a group called One Million Intelligent Viewers who can shout programs off the air when they no longer make any sense. 

History Programs on the History Channel and Showtime

If you need to take a break from all of the dramas, comedies, and reality shows, you can check out a few new history programs.  The History Channel has put together The Men Who Built America.  The four-part series started last month.  You can catch episodes via the website or iTunes.  From what I have seen, the show has plenty of historical clips as well as decent story-telling. 

Here is a quick summary of the series content:

John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan rose from obscurity and in the process built modern America. Their names hang on street signs, are etched into buildings and are a part of the fabric of history. These men created the American Dream and were the engine of capitalism as they transformed everything they touched in building the oil, rail, steel, shipping, automobile and finance industries. Their paths crossed repeatedly as they elected presidents, set economic policies and influenced major events of the 50 most formative years this country has ever known. From the Civil War to the Great Depression and World War I, they led the way.

Using state of the art computer generated imagery that incorporates 12 million historical negatives, many made available for the first time by the Library of Congress, this series will bring back to life the world they knew and the one they created. The event series will show how these men took a failed experiment in democracy and created the greatest superpower the world has ever seen. We see how their historic achievements came to create the America of today.

In discussing the episode on Cornelius Vanderbilt, The New York Times noted,

The episode recaps his career through the familiar combination of narration and re-enactment (with the re-enactments being of especially high quality for this type of series), but there’s a twist. Instead of using biographers and academics as talking heads, the series gets its color commentary from modern-day figures who have loomed large in the worlds of business and finance, like Mark Cuban, Jack Welch and Steve Wozniak.

And if you are eager for more, earlier this week (November 12) Showtime premiered a new 10-part mini-series Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States.  Stone has a knack for either discovering or creating lost pieces of history, depending on who you talk to.  Here is Showtime's take on its new series:

There is a classified America we were never meant to see. From Academy Award-winning writer/director Oliver Stone, this ten-part documentary series looks back at human events that at the time went under reported, but that crucially shaped America's unique and complex history over the 20th century. From the atomic bombing of Japan to the Cold War and the fall of Communism, this in-depth, surprising, and totally riveting series demands to be watched again and again.

The series, written with American University History Professor Peter Kuznick, was originally titled the "Secret History of the United States," but the stories being told were not classified but rather forgotten over time.   And the series itself has been in the works for many years, with various parties asking that it never be shown.  Back in 2010, controversy about Stone's comments regarding Jews controlling the media stirred up a storm of protests and requests to CBS to cancel the series.  Oliver Stone himself is Jewish and it appears apologies regarding the quote were eventually sufficient for the series to be shown (two years later).

That is not to say the series is no longer controversial.  While former Soviet President Gorbachev enjoyed the program, saying the creators "perspective is indispensable at a time when decisions are being taken that will shape America's role in the global world of the twenty-first century," others were slightly less impressed.  David Horowitz writes,

Even the title of Stone’s rant is a lie, since his narratives of the Bolshevik Revolution (idealists whose noble vision was thwarted by capitalist pigs), World War II (Stalin won it) and the Cold War (launched by American imperialists but ended by peace-loving Mikhail Gorbachev) are a twice-told story: the first time by Kremlin propagandists and their minions, the second by leftwing diehards who can’t handle the truth, and who have now been joined by the executives at Showtime in airing a miniseries that is malignant and unbelievable crap.

So what should you expect to be revealed in Stone's new show?  The Amazon book summary provides these hints:

-- The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militarily unnecessary and morally indefensible.
-- The United States, not the Soviet Union, bore the lion’s share of responsibility for perpetuating the Cold War.
-- The U.S. love affair with right-wing dictators has gone as far as overthrowing elected leaders, arming and training murderous military officers, and forcing millions of people into poverty.
-- U.S.-funded Islamist fundamentalists, who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, have blown back to threaten the interests of the U.S. and its allies.
-- U.S. presidents, especially in wartime, have frequently trampled on the constitution and international law.
-- The United States has brandished nuclear threats repeatedly and come terrifyingly close to nuclear war.

Okay, so you may hear a few new things and foam at the mouth here or there.  With this in mind, you cannot go wrong dropping some of the brain-dead dramas for a night or two to learn a little bit about American history or at least some of its more controversial episodes. While these shows will not have the final say, they may lead a few of us to crack open a book.  Yes, that dusty thing in the corner propping up your DVD collection.

Battlestar Galactic Lives!

If you are a fan of the Battlestar Galactica series (all three of them going back to Lorne Green), you will be happy to know SyFy is planning to broadcast a new movie called Blood & Chrome in early 2013.  However, you do not need to wait that long.  MachinimaPrime is showing the new program in 10 7-12 minute episodes on YouTube through November.  

The mini-series fills the gap between the prequel Caprica and BSG by covering the First Cylon war and the exploits of a young and cocky William Adama (no surprises there):

As the battle between humans and their creation, the sentient robotic Cylons, rages across the 12 colonial worlds, a young, talented fighter pilot, William Adama (Luke Pasqualino), finds himself assigned to one of the most powerful battlestars in the Colonial fleet: the Galactica. Full of ambition and in pursuit of the intense action that the Cylon war promises, Adama quickly finds himself at odds with his co-pilot, the battle-weary officer Coker (Ben Cotton). With only 47 days left in his tour of duty, Coker desires an end to battle just as much as Adama craves the start of it. Though they clash at first, the two men forge an unlikely bond when a routine escort mission with an enigmatic passenger (Lili Bordan) turns dangerous and becomes a pivotal one for the desperate fleet.

After watching the first two episodes I can safely say it maintains to quality of BSG and Caprica (we shall not compare it to the classic Battlestar Galactica since that would be unfair).  I hope we see more of these.  Just like with Firefly, I see no reason for such a well-told story to disappear from our television sets.

 

Renewal of Real Time

With the elections over, and thoughts turning to other issues, I want to say thanks to Bill Maher and his show Real Time for enlightening Americans leading up to the elections (not that all of them were tuned in).  Unlike many talking head shows, this is one that truly hosts individuals from the left and right to debate an issue for a solid hour.  Who would have thought an Irish-Catholic Jewish comic from New Jersey could be the serious voice in political debates? And I was happy earlier this year when I read his show had been renewed for another two seasons. 

Recent guests on his show have included James Carville, Andrew Sullivan, Rob Reiner, Michael Steele, Eliot Spitzer, Barney Frank, Ana Coulter, and Darrell Issa. It has been quite a cast of characters with informative and funny results.  If we needed anything this last political season it was a little bit of humor. 

Back in 2011, Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone wrote a column titled "The Last Flamethrower" where he called Maher "Don Rickles times Thomas Paine," which is very apt.  Sheffield went on to write, "He had nothing to lose, so he was willing to say things that nobody else was willing to say.  Now that he's been vindicated by history, he's got an even bigger ego - and in this case, that just makes him funnier."

I hope Bill Maher is around for many more years since we need both his humor and the ego that goes with it. 

If you do not get HBO, you can check out the audio clips on iTunes. 

Firefly: Browncoats Unite!

If you are a fan of the Joss Whedon's Firefly series then the upcoming Science television special, Firefly: Browncoats Unite, is for you. The program will broadcast tomorrow night (November 11) to satisfy the still strong Firefly fans around the world.  

Here is what the Science channel press release stated:

This summer, FIREFLY creator Joss Whedon triumphantly exclaimed to a crowd of thousands at San Diego Comic-Con that "the story is alive." Legions of fans across the world couldn't agree more, proving that a series which is comprised of only 14 episodes had endured the test of time. Guided by Entertainment Weekly senior writer Jeff Jensen, Science Channel re-created the set of the Serenity for this epic gathering capturing the insights and memories of space's most-rebellious flight crew — including the moment they realized they were canceled and where they believe the FIREFLY universe could live next.

Sadly, while the old story is alive, I don't expect we will be seeing any new episodes.  Of course, that did not prevent some from trying.  For example, the helpnathanbuyfirefly campaign was one effort by fans to revive the series, though it was quickly shut down.  And yet, fan pages can be found from Alabama to Wisconsin, and even overseas in places such as Australia and the United Kingdom.  Unlike many shows, Firefly hit a nerve and became more than a one season series in the minds of many, and a follow-up movie only increased its appeal.

If you miss the Science channel program, you can still catch up on the 10th anniversary Firefly discussions from the San Diego Comic Con.  During the conference Joss Whedon noted Firefly came about after he read the American Civil War book Killer Angels.  In a 2002 New York Times article, we learned more about this point:

And it was on a long-overdue London vacation with Kai that Whedon found the inspiration for "Firefly." When the jet-lagged couple read through the night, Whedon dived into "The Killer Angels," Michael Shaara's fictional recreation of the Battle of Gettysburg. "I thought, That's the show I want to make!" he recalls. "It was about the minutiae of the soldiers' lives. And I wanted to play with that classic notion of the frontier: not the people who made history, but the people history stepped on -- the people for whom every act is the creation of civilization. Then again, there's also gunfights and action." 

While I do not plan to join a Firefly fan group, I enjoyed the series when it was on and believe Fox was too dumb to know what it had (going so far as to show the series out of order).  I recommend the DVD.  You will not be disappointed.

Note:  If you are not familiar with the series, Wikipedia had a nice summary:

The series is set in the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new star system, and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity, a "Firefly-class" spaceship. The ensemble cast portrays the nine characters who live on Serenity. Whedon pitched the show as "nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things". The show explores the lives of some people who fought on the losing side of a civil war and others who now make a living on the outskirts of society, as part of the pioneer culture that exists on the fringes of their star system. In addition, it is a future where the only two surviving superpowers, the United States and China, fused to form the central federal government, called the Alliance, resulting in the fusion of the two cultures. According to Whedon's vision, "nothing will change in the future: technology will advance, but we will still have the same political, moral, and ethical problems as today".