News-y Update! Bryan Fuller's Munsters Is On!

As we "reported" about a year ago, Bryan Fuller of Pushing Daisies fame has been developing a reboot of the classic TV show The Munsters. News came in today that it's now official: NBC has picked up the Pilot. The full story is here.

I've said before, I'm completely in favor of this. Bryan Fuller is kind of like the family-safe version of Tim Burton; an alternate reality version of the man where instead of growing up hiding in his room because he was frightened of suburbia, he actually had a circle of friends in high school. Fuller has proven himself really adept at mashing up sweet and innocent with a really wicked dark streak underneath it all. I'm looking forward to seeing how "striking visuals mixed with classic archetypes" plays out for him in this case.

Fuller, seen here accepting bets on how often the word "kooky" gets used in the first episode.

The natural question to ask, obviously, is who is the world could possibly take the role Herman Munster and do it seriously. Fred Gwynne was that role for so many people and there just aren't a lot of actors out there with the right physicality because Hollywood is convinced for some reason that every person must be between 5'5 and 5'10. Although I could see Christopher Lloyd doing a pretty awesome Grandpa.

And seriously. Hire Betty Draper as the scary one. We all know it's a perfect fit.

What the world needs now...is more Carl Kasell

There are many reasons to love BBC America: Doctor Who, Top Gear, all those crack-tastic British tv shows they bring to the airways. But now there's another one.

They are broadcasting a live telelvision version of NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me.

Apparently, BBC America is working to create more shows in cooperation with American networks (radio and television) so we get a very special holiday tv version of Wait Wait right before Christmas. December 23 to be exact.

I'm a pretty devoted listener of the Wait Wait podcast (although I have fallen a bit behind, I must confess). I love hearing Carl Kasell try to impersonate women's voices, and it's nice to know that Paula Poundstone has still found work after her hey-day passed in he 1990s. I'd say it's the kind of show that people from all generations can enjoy, but then you'll think it's fussy and boring and won't listen or watch...but yeah, it really has cross-generational appeal.

So I'll be tuning in December! But I'm a little nervous to see what two of my favorite radio personalities actually look like (Peter Sagal and Carl Kasell). I remember when I found out what Ira Glass looks like...I was shocked as hell.

Ok, well Carl Kasell pretty much looks exactly like I thought:

Maybe some day he will record the message on my home phone answering machine! Too bad I don't have one of those...

Everything's bigger in Texas

For years people have been telling me that I should watch Top Chef. "It's so gooood," they all say. "The challenges are really great and the food they make is amazing." And yet I was reticent. Oh, yes I was reticent. Primarily because I didn't understand how watching a show about cooking could really be enjoyable, since as an audience we were unable to fully appreciate the final product. You can't taste it, you can't even smell it, so what's the point?

But then I realized that was a really dumb argument. Mostly because I had been watching (and enjoying) shows on the Food Network for YEARS. I may not be able to stuff cupcakes in my face from Cupcake Wars, but that doesn't mean I don't love the show and seeing all the cupcakes.

So when I saw that Bravo was kicking off a new season of Top Chef in Texas I thought, "this is my chance!" And I tuned it.

Ok, ok, you were all right.

Top Chef is most excellent. As someone who really enjoys cooking, it's really neat to see all the skills these chefs have put into play. Which leads me to another point: you're not going to get on the show or very far in the competition if you don't have some serious skills. The chefs may not have skills chicks dig (like nunchuck skillz) but damn if they can't cook. The requirement that people actually know what they are doing in the kitchen seems to cut down a bit on the famewhore type personalities.

I also like seeing demonstrations of personal creativity. Much like Project Runway, some of the challenges have been of the "take this ingredient and impress us." It's up the contestant to take a small idea and run with it and the results can either be spectacularly brilliant or spectacularly terrible. I much prefer this type of drama to the Top Model-esque bitchfights with occasional beer-pouring on weaves. Not that I don't enjoy Top Model, because y'all know I do, but sometimes you want to watch genuine talent.

We're not far into the Top Chef season yet, and from what I've seen they make everyone live in a communal house so I am sure we will start seeing some claws soon, but in the meantime I'll be watching (and drooling).

OMG please tell me they will have knife fights! We've already had one knife-related injury, but how about people who are on the bubble have to go up against each other Thunderdome style?

Recapping AHS: Tate Doesn't Like Mondays

We begin in 1994 – Students in a school library are typing on old Apple IIs and wearing lots of grunge. Hey, it’s the Undead Breakfast Club, of course they’re in the library. Someone is shooting students and coming after them. The shooter then breaks in and, unsurprisingly, he is Tate, looking exactly like he does now 17 years later. Tate kills each of them. As a side bar, holy shit 1994 was 17 years ago. Jesus I’m old. Back at the house, a SWAT team pushes past Constance and corners Tate in his bedroom. Tate mimes pointing a gun at his head while Constance screams in the background. Cue the theme music!

Act I! Violet is googling the Breakfast Club and how they died and sees a picture of Tate as the killer. Violet becomes the first person on the show to have a sensible reaction and immediately starts calling for her mom. I love a good girl power demon hunter as much as the next guy, but let’s be honest – most of us are not Buffy Summers and if the person we’ve been dating turns out to be dead, we would go running to our mothers. Violet finds Constance instead, who tells her that the house made Tate lose his way and gives a whole “more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio” speech. Constance brings in a medium who says Tate doesn’t know he’s dead. Violet disbelieves, but the medium asks her about Mary, which prompts Violet to remember an old woman in a hospital who says, “I don’t understand you” to Violet. Cut to the house, where Vivien is MASSIVELY pregnant and listening to Bach as the baby moves inside her stomach but then it’s just a dream. She is shaken and booty calls the Security Guy. They bond because he also had a spouse cheat on him. Ben interrupts the flirting. He’s there because even though no one wants him around, he is using the house as his office and they need the money. Viv wants to bash in Ben’s face. We all do, darlin’. Ben continues seeing patients, including a new one who is terrified of urban legends, particularly “The Piggy Man”, the ghost of a butcher who wore a pig mask. If you call his name in front of a mirror, he kills you and then the show SERIOUSLY creeps me out by showing a man with a pig’s head suddenly jumping out of a shower and killing someone with a knife and it’s honestly really frightening.

Seriously. Just...GAH!!!

Act II! Vivien is trying to track down the nurse who fainted when looking at her ultrasound. Constance shows up with a plate of offal, apparently because it helps with morning sickness. I can’t tell if this is because Constance is a horrible person who once tried to give everyone poison muffins or if she’s really trying to help. Moira agrees to cook up the pancreas and other organs for Vivien as she used to do for Constance. Moira says Ben will cheat again if given the chance, now shut up and eat your offal with sea salt and lemon. Viv gives it a whirl and apparently likes it. Offal, btw, looks like chicken nuggets. Back in therapy, Ben is trying to get his patient to look in a mirror and call for the Pig Man. I have no idea why Ben thinks that desensitization therapy involves invoking a heart attack. The patient makes the call when shut into the bathroom alone, but nothing happens. UNTIL! A dead person suddenly appears in the shower. When Ben looks, natch, there’s nothing there. Violet is talking with the girl that she and Tate punked back in episode two. The girl rattles on about the Bible and Revelations and some reference about a red dragon trying to kill a pregnant woman. Devil girl offers Vi some pills to help her sleep. Or maybe they’re just pharming. I hear kids are into that.

Act III! Violet visits the library where Tate killed everyone. The librarian is still there, although Tate’s gunshot paralyzed him. Violet asks about Tate, saying good people don’t just up and kill people. The librarian suggests maybe Tate wasn’t a good person. Back at the house, Vivien tries to fire Moira, but Moira offers to work for free until they sell the house and then gives Vivien another treat, a brain in bowl that’s garnished with a decorative sprig of mint.

Don't worry - it's organic.

Violet comes home and sees something in the shadows, leading her to the basement. Tate? Pig man? Gimp? Nope, try all of the dead people together! It’s unclear if this is really happening or the result of those pills, but she’s back up in her room with the stereo playing and “I love you” written on the wall. Tate, buddy, the sparkly undead stalker thing is so 2009. Violet downs some more pills and lies down, but Tate appears and drags her to the shower, forcing her to vomit up the pills.

Act IV! Ben is with his fearful patient again and spying on Vivien flirting and having sexy coffee with the Security Guy. Vivien later goes to church and finds the fainting nurse, who doesn’t want Vivien getting too close. The nurse quit her job after seeing Vivien’s ultrasound in which she saw The Beast, the Unclean Thing, hooves and all. She also quotes the segment of the Bible on the Whore of Babylon. Man, Vivien just cannot get a break, considering it was her husband who did the cheating. In his apartment, Ben’s patient tries out the Pig Man thing to test his courage. Then a man leaps out and shoots the patient dead. Turns out it was less Pig Man, more common robber. Constance has tea with medium, who offers to let her talk to Addie. Constance says she’s proud of Addie and apologizes for being a single mother, even though she kind of did that to herself. The medium says that Addie is on the other side and she is a pretty girl at last, but that she’s grateful for not making it back to the lawn because then she’d be stuck with Tate, whom she’s afraid of. In the house, Tate and Violet cuddle on the bed.

Next week, the sexy times return!

Recapping AHS: We Found We Are Each of Us A Zombie, A Ghost…

Sorry for the delay, everyone – stupid work travel. We pick up right where we left off with Burning Man knocking at the door while Violent sensibly is staying inside and looking too horrified to notice the Gimp standing behind her. When she turns around, he has promptly vanished. Typical Gimp. Violet later narrowly misses a hand coming from under her bed to grab her. All things considered, she’s pretty much coming out on top of this particular haunting. Tate is downstairs and presents her with a black rose because she doesn’t “like normal things.” Then he asks her out. Guess that flower was pretty accurate. Ben and Vivien arrive home like before with Violet gone and the alarm blaring. Cue arrival of Hayden at the door! How does Ben get out of this one? By slamming the door in her face and fetching a knife from the kitchen. Vivien is understandably flummoxed by this and tells Ben he needs to move out. It’s not that I disagree with Vivien, but I’m wondering why this was the proverbial straw to the camel’s back for her. Ben, however, swears that he won’t give up on his family DO YOU HEAR ME!?!? Because threats are scientifically proven to show how reasonable you are.

Act I! Ben goes outside and, running into Burning Man, smacks him across the face with the shovel. I literally LOL’d at this. Ben accuses him of working with Hayden to run some kind of extortion racket, though since Ben did the burial himself, I’m not sure how that works in his head. Burning Man says threats don’t work and he wishes he could die so that he could haunt Ben too, suggesting he’s maybe more quick than we have been led to believe. Back in the House, the handsome security man from last week shows up to answer the house alarm, granting Vivien another plot point to flirt with. At the beach, Vi and Tate are making out. Violet says she “wants to”, but Tate pulls off, saying he never felt this way about a girl before. But adds he’s not gay and maybe it’s just the meds he’s on. Uh huh. Tate says he used to come to this beach all the time to hate on high school and not have sex with girls. The tender moment is interrupted by the Undead Breakfast Club, a group of teens cut from the very fabric of cliché cloth. The Club has been looking for Tate, but he’s been hiding out at his mom’s house “for years”.

"Don't You Forget About Me" is totally their song.

Back at the house, Vivien tries to take a bath but gets a phone call from Hayden. Vivien tries to be all, “hey, we’ve all had illicit love affairs with married men when we were in grad school but then we get older and things aren’t quite as high up as they used to be, you know?” but Hayden goes right for the jugular saying Viv should ask Ben about Boston and making the words “ask him” appear in the increasingly steamy mirror.

Act II! Vivien wants to call the cops on Hayden but Ben thinks having cop cars in front of the house on Halloween may be a deterrent to prospective buyers. You have to give him credit, he pretty much took the first excuse that came up and ran all the way to the bank with it. Ben finds Hayden in the basement and she tries to come on to him because there’s a contract clause stating someone must hit on Ben in every episode. The seduction fails, leaving Hayden to take serious issue with the fact that Ben built a gazebo over her, which frankly is an understandable complaint. She calls him out on his treatment of women, but before the audience can deliver an “amen”, Burning Man knocks him unconscious with the shovel. Payback, she is a bitch. Outside, gay Spock is back, trashing Vivien’s pumpkins and yelling at her to get out of his house. Unnerved, Vivien calls the security company, but then gets another call from Hayden and it’s coming FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE! Yes, again. Viv goes looking in the kitchen in time to see something blow up in the microwave, likely the family’s little dog that the writers almost forgot about. Gross.

Act III! The Breakfast Club has followed Tate and Violet home. Vi confronts them, but they’ve got some beef with her being all alive when they’re supposed to be in college or something. I’d say it’s all emo, but honestly they’re actually being pretty true to life for teenagers. In the basement, Ben is tied up (not in a sex way for once) but is freed by Lady Macbeth, who clearly doesn’t think much of Ben but warns him to save the baby. Upstairs, the dog is alive (yay!) and Vivien confronts Hayden. The two confess what the other didn’t know –they’re both pregnant by Ben. This news doesn’t go down well for either of them. Ben arrives, coming clean about his affair. After everyone is crying, Handsome Security Guy shows up to “save” the day.

Act IV! Constance is in her kitchen with Violet, having taken her in after Tate led the Breakfast Club on a chase away from the house. Constance followed Addie to the morgue and, sobbing, did Addie’s makeup and hair to make her into the “pretty girl” she wanted to be. And then the bomb drops – Constance is Tate’s mother. Constance demands that Violet not tell Tate about Addie because he “doesn’t react well to certain things.” Tate, meanwhile, has led the Breakfast Club to the beach of no sex where they continue to taunt him. They want to know why he did the things he did, but Tate genuinely doesn’t seem to know what they’re talking about. Through flashes, we see bits of scenes that strongly suggest that Tate went on a school shooting rampage and killed a whole mess of kids, though it’s fuzzy when this all happened; one of the girls says that she would have been in her 30s by now. As the sun starts to rise, the ghosts converge at the house. Moira tells Spock her mother is dead while Spock says his boyfriend was out having sex all night. Dead boyfriend lamely apologizes for this and we get the sense this is going to happen a lot for these two guys. Hayden is driven to the police station by the security guard but vanishes from the car, surprising no one except the guard while Ben silently moves out of the house. The only question now is how long until Vivien totally makes out with the security guy?

Insert your own "Protect and Serve" joke here.

Hell on Wheels

AMC is making quite the name for itself with hard-hitting drama. First Mad Men, then The Walking Dead, and now Hell on Wheels. But you know what? It might be nice if the channel explored something a little lighter or maybe even (gasp!) a comedy. Because honestly, their shows are all kind of a bummer.

Hell on Wheels looks good, I'll give it that. Set in 1885 in the post-Civil War midwest territories, it tells the tale of a man seeking vengeance on the Union soldiers who murdered his wide during the war. But this is also the tale of the railroad and how it connected the two sides of America in the era of Manifest Destiny. The people are all appropriately dirty (and mutton-chopped!) and in many cases stumpy--from the war.

The show is working for that Deadwood vibe, and comparisons are going to be inevitable--but I think the problem is that the show doesn't go far enough. Deadwood certainly didn't have that problem and that's why it was awesome. Sure, the main character of Hell on Wheels is clearly an anti-hero, he shoots a guy in the face in the first five minutes after all. But he has a reason. It's all for love, you see. And sure he was a confederate soldier and former slave-owner....but he set all his slaves free before the war and becomes besties with the black guys he oversees on the railroad. Maybe I'm spoiled by HBO, but I feel like this character needs to be more anti and less hero.

See, he's the good guy but he's also bad. Well, kinda bad. Well, occasionally he does something naughty. Like a shoot a dude in the FACE.

A lot of other reviewers have complained that the show is boring but I disagree. It might have been paced a little more slowly than some other shows, but those random acts of violence sure kept me interested. But I might be a little blood thirsty. You'll need to judge that for yourself.

For now I am going to keep watching. If nothing else, for the utterly enjoyable Colm Meaney who definitely goes all the way with his villainous railroad mongol persona. Get that man a mustache to twirl, stat! Although I have to admit, everytime I hear him talk without his Star Trek Irish accident I get a little confused. He's really Irish so let him talk like it, dammit!

Hell on Wheels airs Sundays at 10:00pm on AMC.

Checking in on the freshman class

Now that we are well into the Fall season I thought it might be a good idea to check in on how some of the new shows are doing--especially those that have been reviewed here on the blog. Is it just me or has this been quite an impressive new fall tv season? After YEARS of wallowing in lackluster offerings, it seems the networks have started making shows that people actually want to watch again. That's a nice change.

Loving It:

--American Horror Story: there's been a lot of coverage of this show here on the blog, especially with Clovis' most excellent recaps, but it's well deserved IMO. It's nice to have a genuinely scary, genuinely perplexing show on tv again...it seems with the loss of LOST there have been too few WTF moments on network television. American Horror Story fills that gap quite nicely. Also, it's EFFING SCARY.

--Suburgatory: suburban snark never looked so good. And who knew Jeremy Sisto was so funny?

Revenge: delicious, soapy fun. It's twisty and turny and just great. And thank god Madeline Stowe is back...she gives Victor Garber a run for his money in the ability to convey emotion while barely moving her face. That could be the botox though.

New Girl: still the funniest new show of the season.

Enjoyable:

2 Broke Girls: It's still pretty funny, but it's over-reliance on gross sexual humor is starting to get to me. Can we maybe try to get through an episode without a vagina or rape joke, please? But still, cucpakes and mocking hipsters never get old.

Up All Night: Christina Applegate and Will Arnett are great in this show as two former heavy party animals dealing with their new baby...and new lifestyle. The show hasn't quite figured out how to integrate Maya Rudolph's tv talk show diva into the mix, but I am confident they will get there.

Once Upon a Time: three episodes in and I am still liking it. However, I find the fairytale land flashbacks much more compelling than the modern storylines.

Pan Am: There's promise of a great show here, but I'm not sure the writers will get the chance to find it if the ratings continue at their current level. And please, give Collete and Maggie some more awesome storylines, ok? They are the best characters.

The Secret Circle: This one actually occupies a spot between Loving It and Enjoyable as it ramps up The Vampire Diaries aspects of the show--meaning if the plot continues to move along and they continue having high stakes by killing off characters it could really take off for me.

Ringer: This is still better than I expected and hey, it's got Jason Dohring...but come on guys. Let's bump it up a level. A good start would to have more of Bridgette plotting (as she has in recent episodes) rather than just reacting when things go to shit around her.

Dead to Me:

Playboy Club: CANCELLED THANK THE LORD.

Charlie's Angels: DITTO.

Terra Nova: Sorry. Too boring.

Grimm: Remember when I fell asleep in the middle of this? I took that as a sign and haven't made an effort to make up for the lost time.