Badmouth » television

What the Hell Is Wrong with Us?

John Marcotte — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 05:51:04 +0000

America's not-so-secret love affair with Steve Urkel Related posts:

Animated Spider-Man Is Simply Spectacular

Patti Marcotte — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:18:41 +0000

Returning the character to his roots pays big dividends in new series. Related posts:

Global Frequency

Brian McDonough — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 06:06:28 +0000

You're not alone -- you're on the Global Frequency

Global Frequency was a 12-issue comic book series, released in 2003, now collected in two volumes. The concept? When the world, or the chunk nearest you, is about to be destroyed by something way beyond normal, members of a 1001-member worldwide network are summoned—whoever's nearest or most needed. A special cell phone rings, you answer it, and a woman you'll never meet says, “John Doe ... You're on the Global Frequency.” And you put down your bacon double cheeseburger and help your ad-hoc team save the world. Global Frequency is also a television pilot produced in 2004 and rejected by stupid, stupid TV executives in 2005. Then someone with the true spirit of the property leaked the pilot onto the Internet, where it became the hot BitTorrent of the early summer. The show is creating enough buzz that there's the dimmest hope it can pull a Firefly -- getting its still-warm corpse defibrilated by rabid 'Net fandom. Related posts:

reality television?

Keith Lowell Jensen — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 09:14:34 +0000

Larry Elder rules the Moral Court

The call came at about noon.

�Hey Keith, wanna be on TV?�

It was Brett, my old roomie who�d gone to Hollywood to achieve his dream of being a starving actor. He�d failed horribly at the starving part and was getting gigs regularly, so I knew he was serious.

�Hell yeah! What do I got to do.�

�A woman named Sara is gonna call you and ask you about a conflict you would like to resolve on the Moral Court. Describe a conflict. She loves it. She brings you to Hollywood.�

�Great, what�s the conflict?"

�You�ll think of something. I gotta go.�

Brett had previously set me up with a gig pretending to be a series of weird characters who call in to morning DJs. I�d always wondered where they found such bizarre people and was a bit disillusioned to know they were just big fakers like me�getting up at 4 in the morning for a quick fifty-dollar phone call.

I tightened the screws on my thinking cap, but no conflicts were coming to my mind.

The phone rang again.

�Hi Keith, this is Sara with CDC productions.� (All names have been changed to protect myself.)

I had to think fast. OK, I�d gone to a record store with my roommate Patrick; and he found a rare Partridge Family album that some idiot had marked fifty cents. Patrick didn�t have any money. So I bought the record and we shared it. I now had an opportunity to sell the album for two grand. But Pat�s furious that I�d even consider selling it, and is now not speaking to me.

�So he moved out over this?�

Wow! Talk about leading the witness... Sure, so he moved out.

The story was fake, of course�all but the record and Patrick�s passion for it. The record came with a plastic Partridge Family shopping bag�the name of the record being �A Bagful of Hits.� Patrick�s copy was in mint condition and included the shopping bag.

Knowing she was deciding if we were �television worthy,� I gave one final push.

�Patrick will be great on the show. He dresses like a cowboy�rope tricks and all.�

�He dresses like a cowboy?!�

�Yep.�

�Keith, I�d love to have you on.�

No related posts.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Complete Second Season

Brian McDonough — Sun, 09 Feb 2003 21:33:36 +0000

Buy it at Amazon

After the 12-episode first season, this show really hit its stride. The original formula of making the horrors of the evil undead a metaphor for the hell that is high school never worked better here. Spike and Drusilla are introduced, and the Kendra and Jenny Calendar plotlines play out. Buffy falls in love, and Angel goes insanely evil. Related posts: