Friday, May 19, 2006

Television, etc

I spent Thursday night watching the series finales of both Will & Grace and That 70s Show. I am not really a fan of either show, but I am always interested to see how shows end their run.

Will & Grace never really grabbed me as I always found the characters more like broad characatures more than real people. Plus, the constant "stunt" casting was just silly. Michael Douglas plays a gay cop who hits on Will, Britney Spears plays a televangelist, Kevin Bacon plays himself. It just goes on and on. Plus the secondary characters Karen and Jack just grew tiresome as they're consistent ability to both irritate and be self-centred made it difficult to believe that the main characters would still remain friends of them.

But I have to admit, once every show, there is always one killer line. The funniest ever was when was Jack was criticizing Will for not being gay enough. He said, "You are about as gay as Tom Selleck in In & Out." The killer line last night was with Jack and Karen talking about how hard it was to deal with the drama of the main characters Will and Grace. Jack says, "Yeah, it's like we are secondary characters on the Will and Grace show."

That 70's Show also never really grabbed me during it's run. I think that the biggest issue is that there were too many "dumb guy" characters that were played for laughs. Always the sign of lazy and desperate writing. At times either or all of characters from Jackie to Fez to Michael (and even little known sister Laurie Foreman) all had "dumb guy" punchlines. Though the show was always at its best when the characters sat around in a circle and smoked up (off camera-though the smoke haze would still be in the air). The camera would whip around from character to character as they discussed whatever people do when they are high. It might have been better if the whole show was like that.

One of the best seasons of the Amazing Race ended on Wednesday as the hippies (due to their ability to remember flags) were victorious over the frat boys and Ray and Yolanda. As most of you know, I had Ray and Yolanda in the Amazing Race pool at work. I chose them because Yolanda was the strongest woman among all the groups and Ray must have been smart as he was a lawyer. I definately bet on the wrong horse as neither of these two were all that brilliant. It was only big mistakes by other groups that had them last as long as they did. I should have just bet on Danielle and Dani, at least I would be cheering on the best looking of the bunch.

One more week of American Idol. I should have entered a pool for that as my early favourite from the audition phase of the show, Taylor Hicks is among the final two. I think he should easily defeat Katherine McPhee.

Getting back to Tom Selleck, is there another actor on the planet that I could feel more sorry for. First off, he is offered the role of Indiana Jones but the producers of Magnum PI refuse to let him out of their exclusive contract. Then he is offered the lead role in No Way Out. This would have been the perfect post-Magnum role for him but he turned it down as it was too unamerican. The role then went to Kevin Costner and the film was a huge success. And Selleck is now doing TV movies such as Stone Cold and westerns for TNT such as Monte Walsh.

Top 5 Tom Selleck movies.
1. An Innocent Man
2. Runaway
3. Three Men and A Baby
4. Mr. Baseball
5. Quigley Down Under

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1 Comments:

Blogger Cogs said...

Good article, and good call on Innocent Man. Although I am glad he didn't get the indiana jones part...

10:03 AM  

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