Find out who won this week’s competition and who was the overall provider this month of the best pictures of David Tennant sitting down after the jump…
Continue reading “Tuesday’s Sitting Tennant (week 22, 2012) + the results of the May competition”
In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, TBS
Oh no. Just as you thought it was all over, a cable also-ran has decided to fan the embers of a dying trend. You may recall that the big trend of the Fall 2011 was “sitcoms that deal with the (alleged) difficulty of being a man in the 21st century”. We started with the rapidly cancelled How To Be A Gentleman (which CBS is currently burning off), before slowly moving down through the various circles of Hell that were Last Man Standing and the rapidly cancelled Man Up!. Eventually, we hit rock bottom with ABC’s rapidly cancelled Work It, with unemployed men dressing as women to get jobs (rather than getting additional qualifications at evening classes, etc).
Now we have Men At Work, which follows the misadventures of four “hip young professionals” who work together – “the four serve as each other’s wingmen as they help each other navigate work, friendship and women.”
“Give me strength,” you might think. You might think you need a wingman, too, to help you navigate through lame sitcom ideas.
But, as we run through Men at Work‘s qualifications, our hearts can only sink more. For starters, it’s on TBS, the only channel the tagline of which needs to be said in a sarcastic tone of voice: “Very funny.” In case you don’t believe me on that, you clearly watched neither Glory Daze nor 10 Items or Less (although I understand some of you might have liked My Boys for some reason).
Then there’s the writer/creator. It’s Breckin Meyer, who was of course the stoner in Clueless and is one of the stars of TNT’s misogynistic Franklin and Bash. And certainly, Men At Work has shares that show’s poor attitude towards women. It even has a new vocabulary to abuse women with. How innovative.
But despite all this, the first two episodes of the show weren’t actually that bad. In fact, in a couple of places it was quite clever and made me laugh.
I’m still not watching any more of it because it’s a misogynist buddy comedy, but colour me surprised all the same.
Here’s a trailer. Incidentally, it’s all set at a magazine and is mainly about journalist. I wonder if I’ll have anything to say about that as well after the jump.
Canadian TV
UK TV
US TV
Last week, NBC’s Awake had its season and series finale. If you want to have it all explained to you, you can find out here.
But there have been varied reactions to the finale. Depending on how you look at it, there was either a definite answer to the central question of the series – which of the two realities is real and which isn’t? – or there wasn’t?
Equally, the ending of the season was always intended to be the ending to the first season, whether there was a second season or not. In other words, it was deliberately intended to be both open-ended and closed.
Now some people have been frustrated by the fact there’s no definite answer to the question, while others have been frustrated that there are no more episodes. The creator of the show, Kyle Killen, has argued that by leaving some areas open, it allows people to imagine more episodes if they want.
A similar attitude was taken by the creators of House, who had House and Wilson ride off together at the end of the final episode so that the show could live on in people’s imaginations if they so wanted. To have killed off House would have upset too many people, they argued.
Even in cases where there is an apparent finality to everything – for example, Blakes 7, in which everyone was shot dead – fans have continued to write stories about what happened next (and indeed there was an official book by Tony Attwood continuing the story) and others have petitioned for more TV episodes.
So today’s question is:
How do you like your series finales? Do you prefer them to tie everything off with neat bows, giving you a definite end to the story being told? Or do you prefer them to be open-ended? And does it depend on whether a central puzzle has been answered or not?
Answers below or on your own blog, please
Time to announce the winner of the Fry’s Planet Word competition. The Internet random number generator has spoken and the winner is…
Continue reading “And the winner of the Fry’s Planet Word competition is…”
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