Betty White takes on SNL; Glee takes on Auto-Tune.

Betty White on SNL

If anyone doesn't believe that May 8th episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Betty White is going to be the best episode in at least a year... you obviously haven't been watching SNL much this past year. :)  "Thanks to the Internet," or at least the 500,000 Facebook users who rallied around the "Betty White to Host SNL (please?)!" group, she will finally take the stage in Studio 8H for the one hosting gig she's never been asked to do before.  As far as I'm concerned, it's been way too long.

Glee


OK, I often become very unpopular (not to mention surprising a lot of people) when I criticize the FOX hit show Glee.  Being the music and musicals fan that I am, people expect me to be a die-hard fan, like seemingly half of the world is these days.  Truth be told, I think the music is generally good, catchy, and entertaining.  I just can't stand the stereotypical high-school situation comedy-drama storylines that they use to string it all together.  Not my genre of television.  (Not to mention, I don't think I've had any FOX series on my DVR list in years.)

But that should be irrelevant compared to the music.  Thanks to Pandora, I've had occasion to hear a large chunk of the various Glee soundtracks, and for the most part I am impressed with the catchy tunes.  Then something rubs me the wrong way... the rampant abuse of Auto-Tune, the late-90's software invention for computer-aided pitch correction.  The result is to music what airbrushing is to glamorous magazine cover:  obvious imperfection obviously over-corrected.

Joal Ryan of E! Online captures my sentiments almost exactly in his blog (if you read the comments, he gets much the same reaction from indifferent Glee fans as I do):

"For every too-brief moment of Lea Michele sounding raw—and lovely—on a "What a Girl Wants," or Monteith singing a perfectly credible REO Speedwagon in the shower, there's Michele and Monteith sounding like 1990s-era Cher on "No Air," or Monteith sounding like the Monteith XRZ-200 on the out-of-the-shower version of "Can't Fight This Feeling.""

As he mentions, one of the absolute most PAINFUL examples of the auto-tune is "Can't Fight This Feeling".  [Note especially the trailing ends of phrases, as that tends to be the most difficult part for any singer to keep in tune and thus gets the most pitch correction.]

Ugh!  If parts of this don't remind you of Cher's 1998 hit "Believe", you either need your ears cleaned out, or you're in denial.  Now don't get me wrong, these are obviously talented singers.  But as with most singers, they are imperfect.  I don't object to imperfection... I cringe at the use of auto-tune to try to correct it.  LET the songs stand on their own!  The show is about a group of talented high-school students in a glee club... NOBODY would expect perfection out of that, as amazing as they might be.  Stop the madness.

Blog Roundup

My blog articles tend to all come in groups, today is no exception. So you get three completely unrelated items of interest today:

Inauguration Excitement

Well, yesterday was probably the most excitement and fanfare I've ever seen for a Presidential inauguration. Being a big fan of the pageantry of such events, I'm always excited to watch these things, but this was even more exciting than usual. Most of my office gathered in a conference room to watch the webcast. Though I did find it somewhat funny that we were requested not to send out an e-mail about it, but we could still do it. I think some people don't understand now that the Inauguration is not political, it's patriotic. Democrat or Republican, like him or not, Obama IS the President of the USA. If you're an American, he's YOUR president. There's nothing political about it. You respect the position, even if you don't agree with the man in it. The same goes for the recently-departed President Bush. Like him or not, agree with him or not, he was President, and you show the position the respect it deserves. Somehow, I think so many people don't share my sentiment in that regard. But I digress.

Of more interest to me was the musical piece performed by Perlman, Ma, McGill, and Montero right before Obama's swearing in. This was a new composition by John Williams, "Air and Simple Gifts," borrowing the classic shaker melody most popularly used in Aaron Copland's Appalchaian Spring. Music geeks of the world unite in enjoying this, not only because it was great, but because it's nice to see John Williams write something that doesn't sound like everything else he writes. :)

Husky Stadium - To Fix or Not To Fix

Now, I'm biased. Having spent literally thousands of hours in Husky Stadium over my college and post-college career, I've been in every ominous corner of that stadium. From the terrifying restrooms, to the press box with its long, narrow hallways seemingly hanging by a thread from the roof. And if I didn't have such a sentimental attachment to it, I'd probably be saying "why bother?" But my journeys have also taken me to dozens of other college stadiums around the country, and I can honestly say few if any rival the gameday experience at Husky Stadium. As such, I'm greatly concerned with preserving that in any stadium improvement plan. Imagine my surprise when I found the latest artist rendering of a "new Husky Stadium" (above). It's spectacular! They took the rundown look of the current stadium, and wrapped it in a beautiful new layer. But it still LOOKS like the Husky Stadium we know and love. Absolutely amazing. I can only hope the UW can scrape up the money to make it a reality.

The Unit

And finally, I don't think I've fully extolled one of my newest favorite shows on television: The Unit. I started watching it this season, only to get hooked and find out this is Season 4! Where have I been the last 3 years?! In my own defense, its first season was a mid-season replacement, with only 13 episodes, and its third season was cut short by the Writer's Strike that left it with only 11 episodes. But for Christmas, I was fortunate enough to receive the first 3 seasons on DVD in order to catch up, and last night finally finished them to get me all the way to this season. What a spectacular show! If you've never seen it before, I highly recommend it (Sundays at 10pm on CBS). One nice thing is that it follows a semi-serial format (as did one of my other all-time favorites The West Wing), where story lines do continue throughout the season, but each episode individually contains its own distinct plots that wrap themselves up nicely by the end of the episode, so you don't have to worry about having not seen previous episodes in order to keep up. (Lost and Battlestar Galactica could take a lesson in that. One of the biggest reasons I've never really picked up either of those shows.)

And that's all the news that's fit to print for now.

Name that Show!

If you've never flipped through the TV listings on the digital cable, you've probably never noticed some of the funny descriptions for classic (and not-so-classic) television shows. Rather than just highlight some of my favorite, try yourself with one of my random quizzes. Try your hand at figuring them out and I'll post the answers in a future blog.

1) Book 'em, Danno. This is one of the longest running crime dramas in TV history.

2) Elite special agents undertook top-secret assignments in crackerjack episodes.

3) A landmark series set in an ethnically diverse urban neighborhood where every day is a sunny one.

4) A hip, Emmy-winning daily scrapbook of homers, touchdowns and slam dunks.

5) Exotic locations and unapologetically shameless adoration of celebrities.

6) Grandpa Simpson's favorite series: a courtroom drama about a cagey Atlanta defense attorney.

7) CBS reworked its successful "Hawaii Five-O" formula into a hit spun around a charismatic private investigator.

8) Ludicrously costumed contestants from the studio audience "dealt" with host Monty Hall for prizes.

9) A former cop gets a new identity and teams with a talking supercar to fight crime.

10) An adventure series about soldiers of fortune with bad attitudes and firepower to burn.

TV Commercial Roundup

For the benefit of those of you with a Tivo, here's another roundup of great commercials that you may have skipped over. One advantage of being forced to watch live TV occasionally is that you get to see some of these really great commercials that themselves are worth watching. Today we have two more you need to see:



Who doesn't miss the days when Lou Piniella was the Mariners' manager? Even when the M's couldn't win a game, there was still a reason to watch!



Great commercial, especially with all of your favorite Discovery Channel stars. I could watch this over and over... which I do, because Discovery replays it constantly. I guess that's what you do when you get a winner.

How I Met Your Mother

I just got around to watching Monday's episode of How I Met Your Mother on my DVR.

This is the funniest sitcom on television. Certifiably. End of story.

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Tomorrow morning I'm off on a plane to Birmingham, AL, via San Francisco, CA and Charlotte, NC. Expect some great blog entries coming up this week for you avid readers. :)

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

Ever since The West Wing finally wrapped up and went off the air, I've needed some other compelling show that keeps me waiting in anticipation of the next week's episode. I had high hopes for "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." With half of the cast coming straight off the set of The West Wing, and Aaron Sorkin writing the show, I was definitely expecting a great show. The pilot had me hooked... but apparently not so much for the rest of the world. The show has been in a steady ratings decline ever since the optimistic pilot episode. I was a devoted follower for the first 5 shows of the series... really getting interested in the characters and following the usually compelling story lines... but somewhat disappointed overall. Something was missing... I wasn't finding myself yelling at the TV, rewinding the episode to watch an amazing scene over again, dying to know how it's all going to work out... until last night. Seven episodes into the series they finally hit the mark. Last night's episode finally fit together. They didn't need to waste time developing characters, didn't waste time trying to convince people that the show is about writing funny sketches for a late night comedy show, and didn't have any "space-filler subplots" that nobody really cares about. It helped that they had the amazing actor John Goodman (who I think has been a guest star in every show on television these days), and to top it off, the sketch that the plot centered around was actually funny! My only complaint was that it was the first part of a two-part episode that just left me screaming for more. This is the show I was waiting for.

The show is finally good -- one problem: nobody knows this anymore, and no viewers means the show is doomed to end up in the land of lost shows. Apparently NBC has contracted it for 13 episodes and just bought 3 more for a total of 16. Usually that's a good sign, but the ratings need to increase if it's ever going to stay on the air as long as it should. The one thing going for it is that it's pulling in a very profitable demographic. It's a huge draw in the rich and well-educated audiences, which means big money from advertisers. That alone seems to be enough to keep it on the air through the season... it just can't seem to shake off CSI: Miami in the same timeslot over on CBS, which means it will probably get shifted out of Monday 10pm into some other slot (Wednesday perhaps). My guess is that if people who watched the pilot give it a second chance and watch it again now, they might have a more favorable view. Regardless, I think it's a show worth watching... especially for anyone who was a fan of The West Wing, or just likes a good dramedy. We'll see if it survives... but if you haven't watched it yet, I recommend it. At least throw it on the Tivo or DVR and keep it around when you can't find anything else good on TV.

State of Confusion Address

The pagentry, the mystery, the excitement that is the State of the Union Address. Do I really care what President Bush has to say? No, not really, but it's still fun to watch. In fact, this year I created the Modified State of the Union Applause Scoring system.

The final score of the address:
46 full applause breaks
13 half applauses (12 from only the Republicans, and 1 from only the Democrats)
7 interruptive applauses
1 joke
1 wagging finger

Of course, the wagging finger was in response to the half applause from the Democrats which was actually one of the more entertaining parts of the show (I say "show" because the whole thing is so scripted it's hard to believe it doesn't have theme music).

That's probably about all the time that's worth devoting to this.

The West Wing... dead after 7 seasons

As I was watching The West Wing last night on TV, I thought to myself, "this show will be cancelled at the end of this season". Lo and behold, it was announced that indeed The West Wing will end on May 14th with the inauguration of the new president, still to be determined.

Now I don't think I really became a dedicated watcher of the West Wing until its third season. Fortunately through the miracle of DVD, I've watched straight through the first 3 seasons to catch up on everything I never saw. Unfortunately, my DVD viewing habits are sketchy, and I still haven't completely finished the 3rd season shows... with the complete 4th and 5th seasons sitting on my shelf vastly untouched except to be removed from their Amazon.com packing box. Though I must say, they are excellent for long flights when you need to kill time with some quality DVD viewing. That's how I made it through so much of Season 3.

Why am I not surprised the show was cancelled? While I think the writing was not so good after Aaron Sorkin quit writing the show at the end of Season 4, it seems to have improved vastly this season, especially in the plots surrounding the election of the new president. Perhaps that's just because they found something to write about. But the show itself had one necessary flaw, a president can only serve 8 years... and once that's done, you're out of luck. Could the show survive with an almost completely new cast? Could ANY show survive with a completely new cast? Perhaps, but doubtful. The only way to stay true to a show that prides itself on keeping true to the reality of American politics, is for the show to end and the characters fade off into their post-White House lives where nobody even remembers their names.

Certainly it didn't help that NBC decided to move West Wing out of it's traditional 9pm Wednesday time slot for a cursed 8pm Sunday time slot. The last show I think I ever remember watching on Sunday at 8pm was Murder, She Wrote. It still baffles me why TV executives haven't figured out that moving shows out of their well-established time slots always signals the show's demise. Maybe they know this, and move them to help speed along the process.

Whatever the reasons, at least I'll have my 7-seasons of West Wing DVDs to watch whenever there are terrible new shows on TV that aren't worth watching.

In related television news, a few interesting lineup changes will be coming too:

For the past 14 seasons, Law and Order (the original, not SVU, CI, or the ill-fated Trial by Jury) has been in the Wednesday 10pm timeslot on NBC. But no more... NBC shakes things up by moving it an hour earlier to 9pm. I think this one will be able to survive the minor shift, but I'm no expert. It goes up against Mythbusters, which is the same problem I had when West Wing was on Wednesdays at 9, but fortunately I have a DVR now. Problem averted. :)

Las Vegas continues it's tour of the NBC schedule, after being moved from Sunday to Monday it makes its way down to the Friday night time slot. Might work, since there's nothing else good on Friday nights, but also who watches TV on a Friday night unless you want to see Dateline (which is moving to Saturday) or 20/20?

Las Vegas' move to Friday clears the way for that epic sensation Deal or No Deal to have a permanent spot on the Monday at 8pm timeslot followed by the Donald. I've said my thoughts on Deal or No Deal before... I give the show 10-weeks before it gets the axe and is buried in the gameshow graveyard along with the short-lived revived classic "21" with Maury Povich, and the Weakest Link (which was only entertaining to hear Anne Robinson verbally berating the contestants).

In the meantime, Food Network probably has plenty of episodes of Emeril Live, Good Eats, and Paula Deen stocked up to satisfy your TV viewing needs... with extra butter.

And the award goes to...

It's that time of year again... the time of year where we "honor" the best of the best (or the best of the worst) from the previous year. Last night was the People's Choice Awards, apparently the kickoff to the awards show season.

First a recap of last night's People's Choice Awards: ZZZzzzzzzzzzzz. What an action-empty, non entertaining show. Hosted by TV's Craig Ferguson, who I usually find quite funny, he was not at all funny on the show. I blame it on bad writing, but perhaps it's his own lack of humor. Plus, who shows an awards show on a Tuesday night? Isn't that just a blatant declaration that the show is not important enough to even bother to watch? Tuesday night is when you show made-for-TV movies that you don't expect anyone to watch, not award shows.

As far as "award season" goes though, there seems to be a lot of wasted bandwidth there. How many award shows are there that all give away awards for the same things? Obviously they're all given away by different groups of people, but does anyone really pay much attention to which organization is giving the awards away? Probably not. Most people would tell you that the Emmy's are for TV, the Oscars are for movies, the Grammys are for music, and the Tonys are for theatre. Beyond that everyone's mystified. The People's Choice awards are given to nearly all of the above (except theatre, obviously the people's opinion isn't worthy about the theatre). The Golden Globes? both movies and TV. Screen Actors Guild? Also movies and TV (but they actually only have 13 award categories which is nice.) The Emmy's are apparently so important that they break them into two pieces, one for daytime television and one for primetime television. Though I think only people who have no lives care about the daytime awards.

Actually, I think people care far less about the awards themselves, than they do about the celebrities and how they dress and who they're with and... well, it's just a big celebrity paparazzi event if you ask me. But for my own benefit to know which to avoid, or for your benefit if you need to mark your calendars, the major award shows of the year:

32nd Annual People's Choice Awards - Tuesday, January 10th
63rd Annual Golden Globes Awards - Monday, January 16th
12th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards - Sunday, January 29th
48th Annual Grammy Awards - Wednesday, February 8th
78th Annual Academy Awards - Sunday, March 5th
33rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards - Friday, April 28th
60th Annual Tony Awards - Sunday, June 11th
58th Annual Emmy Awards - Sunday, August 27th

Now I'll go back to not caring again.