Herculodge

Has Showtime’s Weeds Lost Its Mojo?

Set in the cookie-cutter nouveau rich suburbs of some nondescript southern California neighborhood with an Orange County flavor to it, Showtime’s Weeds has made for compelling television for the last 3 seasons.

Part of the show’s success has been the juxtaposition of a widowed mother making a living as a pot dealer juxtaposed with a community of infantile hedonists. This juxtaposition blurs the lines of “proper society” and immorality and has the effect of exposing the moral bankruptcy of middle-class consumer values in a way that is always pungent and entertaining. 

Now we’re in Season Four and after a raging fire the family has moved near the Mexican border, the mom makes a living trafficking drugs from Tijuana to a major dealer and we see the family acclimating to a cranky relative’s home. The cranky relative is none other than Albert Brooks, one of my favorite actors.

Having said this, I’m sad to say that after two episodes the show leaves me cold. Albert Brooks is to sensitive and neurotic to be a convincing crank spewing expletives. He seems miscast.

But more damning Weeds seems to run out of ideas. What is the show about? I hate to say this but it seems to be about nothing.

I’ll keep watching to see if I’m wrong. I hope I am, but I’ve got a nagging feeling that this is Weed’s final season.

Stephen Colbert Too Moved by Author to Employ His Usual Comedy Routine

Stephen Colbert is one of the funniest people I've seen in the last twenty years. His talent is evident enough, but his ability to make me laugh goes beyond that. What I mean is he's likable; there seems to be a moral core at his center; he is not merely a mercenary comedian eager to use any guest as fodder for laughs. This was evident a couple of nights ago when he had writer and zoologist Alan Rabinowitz on his show discussing his book Life in the Valley of Death: The Fight to Save Tigers in a Land of Guns, Gold, and Greed.

Usually, an author who tries to talk about his or her book will be greeted with unrelenting sarcasm and mockery as Colbert asserts his Bill O'Reilly-infused hyper-masculine charade. But the show took an unexpected turn when Colbert asked Rabinowitz the spark behind his mission to save tigers.

Without a trace of mealy-mouthed pretentiousness or self-aggrandizement, Rabinowitz explained that he suffered from acute stuttering as a child and retreated into a world of seclusion in which he only would talk to creatures that would not scorn and ridicule him--animals of various sorts. When he overcame his stuttering, he made a promise to the animals: I once had no voice like you and now that I have a voice, I am going to be your voice and I am going to do all I can to help you.

After explaining himself with great poise and lucidity, he received sincere applause from a moved audience. Colbert was at this point in no position to mock him. Instead, he lowered his head in humility and said that Rabinowitz had come closer to any guest to making him cry. He then continued his discussion with the author. The talk was humorous but absent of Colbert's  typical mockery.  Clearly, Colbert was moved by this man and he shifted the gears of his comedy act to accommodate that sympathy.

I think what separates a great comedian like Colbert from merely good comedians is empathy. An effective comedian is like a laugh machine, but a great comedian interacts with people and his empathy gives him a certain spontaneity that lesser comedians lack. And lacking that spontaneity, they have to stick to their "script." Colbert has no script. He improvises better than the best of them.

Stephen Colbert Ridicules George F. Will's "Free Market Terrarium"

The other evening Stephen Colbert had conservative political pundit George F. Will on the Colbert Report where Will, explaining his new book One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation, said that the difference between a conservative and a liberal is that conservatives want freedom—the opportunity for individual excellence unimpeded by government meddling. In contrast, a liberal wants equality—creating an even playing field by allowing government to extend its meddling tentacles into our private affairs resulting in the curtailing of our freedoms.

Will explained that liberals, unlike conservatives, have no faith in the free market to sort things out.

Looking at Will with strained credulity, Colbert raised his eye brows and casting mockery on Will’s piously blind faith in an unencumbered free market, said that Will was promoting a “free market terrarium” in which an enclosed world of diverse creatures, some bigger and stronger than the others, have free reign so that inevitably the stronger beasts prey on the weaker.

Indeed, Will’s blind faith in the free market would result in barbarism. Equally absurd on the other extreme, a society that allows government to engage in unlimited social engineering would be as barbaric and absurd as the world depicted by Kurt Vonnegut in his famous short story “Harrison Bergeron” from his short story collection Welcome to the Monkey House.

Rejecting both the free market terrarium and the government do-gooder totalitarians portrayed in Vonnegut’s story, I say we should balance freedom and equality in the light of Aristotle’s idea of the golden mean, as he describes in his Nicomachean Ethics.  

Why The Next Food Network Star Isn’t Even in the Same League as Bravo’s Top Chef

My wife and I had a friend, Sean, over last night and we watched The Next Food Network Star on our DVR. Like us, our friend Sean is a huge fan of Bravo’s Top Chef. We like cooking, obsessive food lovers, and shows about food. We enjoy some Food Network programs, but The Next Food Network Star isn’t one of them. We all agreed that we couldn’t stomach The Next Food Network Star anymore and that we would be deleting it and all future recordings from our DVR machine.

Let’s be clear: The Next Food Network Star is odious and unwatchable and its stink factor is more pronounced when it’s examined in light of the very compelling Top Chef. Let us look at the successful ingredients of Top Chef and see how those same ingredients curdle in the hands of The Next Food Network Star producers.

Top Chef clearly has better chefs than The Next Food Network Star’s  deers-lost-in-the headlights contestants. With superior chefs, Top Chef emphasizes food and the possibility for failure is devastating when chefs who are already successful stumble in the presence of Tom Colicchio whose expressions of disdain and incredulity are priceless and authentic. In contrast, The Next Food Network Star’s judges, most notably, Susie Fogelson and Bob Tuschman, come across as censorious prudes who are hell-bent with rebuking the contestants into being good little cookie cutter Food Network Stars. Exuding a pinch-faced humorless hauteur, Fogelson and Tuschmann seem unaware of how ironic it is that as they admonish the contestants for not “bringing out their star personalities” that they themselves have all the personality and appeal of sour dish rags.

Guest Alton Brown doesn’t help matters either. I once admired him several years ago on his show Good Eats. He was a stickler for details and his ability to show the history and science behind cooking made him unique and appealing. But over the years he’s become a self-parody whose amped-up ornithological head movements and persnickety shtick make him annoying.

No wonder one of my food show idols the edgy, humorous, self-deprecating and charismatic Anthony Bourdain is gone from the Food Network and is now a guest judge on Top Chef.

This isn’t to say Top Chef doesn’t have its flaws. Its beautiful hostess Padma Lakshmi, doesn't know enough about food to have such a high judging position, but I’m able to ignore her sufficiently to enjoy the show. After all, Top Chef is a gut-wrenching spectacle of ambitious, egotistical chefs sinking or falling on their own hubris and audacity. In contrast, The Next Food Network Star is a bunch of mediocrities scrambling to prove who can be the biggest sycophant. In the battle between big talented egos and groveling butt-kissers, I’ll take the talent every time.

Are the Lost Survivors Pawns in a Chess Game?

ABC's metaphysical thriller Lost makes no secret that it's influenced by such literary sources as Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman and Philip K. Dick's Valis. We see some Lost characters, such as Ben reading Valis, reading these novels and it is apparent that the Lost writers are teasing us with clues about the metaphysical components that make up the Lost world.

The influence of Philip K. Dick became even more important last night when watching Episode Nine, Season Four's "The Shape of Things to Come," it occurred to me that Ben Linus and his arch rival Charles Widmore are playing some kind of game with set rules and that Widmore broke the rules when he killed Linus' daughter, making Linus change his game. Linus also referred to his daughter, about to be killed by one of Widmore's minions, as a "pawn." What's interesting about all this is that Philip K. Dick envisioned human beings as being pawns in a chess game going on in the minds of two Other Beings.

Lost appears to be matching Linus' chess skills against Widmore's. I wouldn't bet my life on it, though. It's not unusual for the Lost writers to make us feel like we know where we're going only to find ourselves going in the opposite direction--just like the Lost survivors.

Is Gaius Baltar a Heroic Humanitarian or Smarmy Moral Relativist?

There is something ineffable and slippery about Battlestar Galactica's Gaius Baltar (expertly played by James Callis). He can be self-assured in his rhetorical lapidary powers; a neurotic wreck as he tries to untangle himself from his Id's web of conflicting desires and selves; a staunch humanitarian as he can draw upon the law and poetic legal rhetoric to justify his "rights" and various positions; he can be a wanton sensualist, vulnerable to a woman's seduction even when his surrender endangers himself and others; he can be a scientific genius, making inroads that no other scientist can; he can play the role of the populist or elitist as it suits him and he is indeed the consummate chameleon; he is in many ways a narcissist and a cunning self-preservationist; at times he can be downright odious; but he can also be touching, hilarious, and vulnerable. In other words, more than any character he is the most complex and compelling and while occasionally some of the Battlestar's scenes fall flat, there is not one flat scene--not one--with Gaius. He is the heart and soul of the show. He is the reason, above all else, that I--usually one who shuns science fiction--am a huge fan of Battlestar. I will even go out on a limb and say that a strong case can be made that Gaius, along with Benjamin Linus from Lost and Don Draper from Madmen, is one of the three most compelling characters in the history of television.

Christopher Hitchens Scorns Bill Maher Crowd

On the 8-25-06 airing of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher guest Christopher Hitchens was his usual surly rhetorically cunning self but because his rhetoric is not convincing on the Iraq fiasco, which he defends, he became more surly than usual, getting personal with Bill Maher, flipping off the audience, cursing, insulting and generally disdaining the audience and the other guests. There was no traditional lovefest after the show. Maher shook hands with Max Cleland, the only remaining guest. The camera did not show Hitchens, who presumably stormed off the stage without the patina of nicety. I wonder if Hitchens will return. Hitchens has a great mind but his hubris impedes him from seeing his mistake in supporting our involvement in Iraq. As Maher correctly pointed out, all Hitchens can do when confronted with the Bush Administration's failures, is provide red herrings, which Maher, a very smart man, is not going to succumb to.

The Twilight of American Culture in The Real Housewives of Orange County

Kitsch refers to tasteless art and decoration such as velvet Elvis Presley paintings, lava lamps, and tomato red Naugahyde bean-bag chairs. Often used for satirical purposes, it clutters the films of John Waters. It abounds in the Paul Thomas Anderson film Boogie Nights. It’s conspicuous in the underexposed Todd Haynes film Safe. It raises its ugly head in the Todd Solondz film Happiness. Kitsch can be used as a “character” or as an extension of a particular type of character. It speaks the language of decay and spiritual death. Therefore, when I was appalled at the kitsch as I watched The Real Housewives of Orange County, especially the episode featuring the horses with their hooves painted with glitter, the hubcaps studded with cubic zirconias and the rich real estate developer’s diamond and gold shaker, much of my gut response was the show’s vision of spiritual death. To refer to kitsch as spiritual death is not to indulge in hyperbole. To the contrary, spiritual death is the essence of kitsch. This idea is not my own. I came across the idea while reading Morris Berman’s  The Twilight of American Culture in which he traces the causes of a collapsing civilization. The first is “accelerating social and economic inequality.” The second is “declining marginal returns with regard to investment in organizational solutions to socioeconomic problems.” The third is “rapidly dropping levels of literacy, critical understanding, and general intellectual awareness. The fourth is explained as thus: “Spiritual death—that is, Spengler’s classicism: the emptying out of cultural content and the freezing (or repackaging) of it in formulas—kitsch in short.”

George Costanza Presaged by Tooter Turtle

The perennial adolescent, embodied so successfully by George Costanza, never knows what to do with his life. He’s always grasping for straws, passing revolving doors of different employment, because he has no real identity and, drunk on a vision of boundless possibilities, he can not accept his limitations and when those limitations become apparent he falls into a fit of rage. The tantrum-prone, dyspeptic Costanza was in fact presaged by a 1960s cartoon character Tooter Turtle. Never content with being a reclusive turtle foraging on worms and tadpoles, Tooter frequents the home of Mr. Wizard, a wise, bespectacled lizard who lives in a forest tree-house where we assume he lives a life of quiet contemplation. What’s striking is the contrast between Mr. Wizard’s thick European accent, connoting Old-World skepticism and a resignation to fate, and Tooter Turtle’s dopey all-American voice, suggestive of all that is gullible and Pollyannaish. Always wanting to bite off more than he can chew, the restless, discontented Tooter never asks the reptilian sage for words of advice that might quell his restlessness. Rather, he insists that the Wizard send him through his magic time machine, which will spit Tooter out into some other time and place. Perhaps to teach Tooter a valuable lesson, Mr. Wizard reluctantly capitulates and allows Tooter admittance into the machine. Not only is Tooter transported, he is given a new identity. A lumberjack, a taxi driver, an astronaut, an airline pilot, a sailor, a policeman, a football player, it does not matter. Every one of Tooter’s fantasy roles will end in disaster, compelling Tooter to scream, “Help me, Mr. Wizard!” Waving his wand and uttering some rhyming abracadabra, Mr. Wizard mercifully sends Tooter back to the forest and gently admonishes Tooter for his foolish longings. The show’s message is clear. Find success by accepting yourself for who you are and don’t follow your desperate whims and compulsions, which will surely end in catastrophe.

Do Android Sheep Dream of Lost Characters?

Fans of the ABC smash hit Lost have speculated that the island of castaways, survivors of a jet plane crash, are being experimented on by diabolical scientists. But we can infer from a recent article in the Los Angeles Times that in fact the fans of Lost are the subjects of a highly elaborate research project in which a team of scientists posing as television producers have created a highly addictive television show which generates hundreds upon hundreds of unofficial websites in which viewers speculate about thousands of possible scenarios including the possibility that the show is in many ways a retelling of Flann O'Brien's cult novel   The Third Policeman.

But the experiment is even more invasive and is in fact raising many ethical questions in the scientific community. For it has been learned that the fans’ addiction has now entered a more virulent stage in which the scientists have created an “all-encompassing experience” which will involve “other platforms,” not the least of which are clues embedded in commercials, jigsaw puzzles, the Internet, mythology, puzzle solving, the deciphering of anagrams, cryptic languages, enigmatic maps, a derivative novel. There will even be a separate but related story, with parallels to Lost, to follow, all part of “The Lost Experience.” And all being kept secret for the time being.

It has come to our attention that the scientists have many objectives, many of which they will not disclose in order to “maintain the integrity of the experiment.” But one objective that is self-evident is for them to see if Lost fans, after their long hiatus from reality, can integrate back into society, hold a job, thrive in a healthy relationship, etc.

Of course, other scientists, jealous of the attention that Lost scientists are enjoying, are copying this type of experimentation. For example, in Namibia there is a top-secret compound where two of the world's most beautiful people are giving birth to a race of super babies. It is being speculated that the beautiful couple and their offspring will live, like the characters of Lost, in total isolation and be subject to a variety of "tests." The expirement is so shrouded in mystery that scientists have surrounded the compound with a phalanx of lions to repel the nosey media.

Critics of the aforementioned experiments accuse them of redundancy for over ten years ago such an experiment, transporting people from reality for a proctracted period, was already conducted. It went under the secret code name "The O.J. Simpson Case."