We come now to our next section of awards: writing. Without writers, we would have no television programming, and boy do they love to remind us of this every ten years. During this most recent writers’ strike, I too grew a strike beard. By the end of the strike, I had developed a fine peach fuzz and a thin moustache deserving of any fifteen-year-old Trekkie. If you liked that joke, thank you. If you did not, it is because I don’t have a staff writer. Here are the winners of Writing of the Year Series and Episode.
Writing of the Year: Series - The Walking Dead (Charlie Adlard, Frank Darabont, Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore)
My first review on this website was for AMC’s The Walking Dead. The 6 episode season was received with critical acclaim and taken in with open arms by its fans. The Kirkman/Moore books were brought to life (no pun intended) by Shawshank Redemption director Frank Darabont and Charlie Adlard on Halloween night of this year. The first episode was a beautiful redesign of the books and matched the story panel for panel. However, the writers kept things fresh by deviating from the canon and building the story around characters less focused on by The Walking Dead’s author. Kirkman intended the books to be the story of Rick Grimes and not the zombies. Darabont has succeeded in retelling this story while also building interest in the other survivors. Congratulations to this team for earning the first Cappy for series writing.
Honorable Mentions: Wizards of Waverly Place (Todd J. Greenwald, et. al.), Dexter (James Manos Jr. and Jeff Lindsay), Boardwalk Empire (Terence Winter, et. al.), Community (Dan Harmon, et. al.)
Writing of the Year: Episode – The Walking Dead: Days Gone Bye (pilot) (Charlie Adlard, Frank Darabont, Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore)
The build-up for the premiere episode of The Walking Dead was not done in vain by AMC. In fact, for both those who had and had not read the books, the nail-biting story and tale of human survival and struggle was presented in full force. The beautiful retelling of the first few issues of the Kirkman horror series was not stale for those who’d already read the comics, and at the same time there was nothing needed for those who were unaware that this was even a book. The pilot’s abrupt ending as Rick Grimes is surrounded by undead ghouls left me begging for more. The writers’ ability to keep the opener honest to the story while deviating where needed has earned the pilot episode of The Walking Dead the first Writing of the Year award for an episode.
Honorable Mentions: Community – Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas (Dino Stamatopoulos and Dan Harmon), Boardwalk Empire – Boardwalk Empire (pilot) (Terence Winter), Glee – Never Been Kissed (Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan), 30 Rock – I Do Do (Tina Fey)
We have more awards on the way, including the award for Best Youth Programming which will be announced tomorrow at 10:30 PM
Good Evening,
Welcome to the first ever Captain’s Choice Awards for televisual excellence. During this week, I will be taking a look back at the year in television and honor those moments, characters, and shows that will be remembered fondly and familiarly (until we change the channel). We begin these awards by presenting Cappys to the characters because, let’s face it, you can deliver prose with the confidence of Don Draper, but it won’t matter for crap if you don’t look like him.
And our winners are…
Best Overall Character of the Year Male Character of the Year – Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi), Community
In naming the inaugural Male Character of the Year, I looked for someone who didn’t just garner ratings due to their exuberant good looks or their ability to rain hell on a horde of flesh-eating ghouls. I instead decided to honor a character based on the social impact he made in representing an individual with an oft-misunderstood condition. Within the first five minutes of the Community pilot episode, we notice that there’s something different about the hyperactive Abed Nadir. By the end of the premiere, we learn that Abed is living with Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism. However, Abed is not portrayed as weak or inferior to his classmates. It’s a non-issue in most episodes — viewers that weren’t there to hear it discussed early on in the show might not even know his character has it.
Abed’s Asperger’s often manifests itself in the form of movie references, which is a fun treat for fans of cultural humor. But among all of his movie quotes, it was a quote about his movie quotes that stuck out the most to me: “I don’t need movies to communicate anymore. I used to only use it to help everyday things make sense to me.” Abed’s awareness of his condition is brought to life once again in the holiday episode, “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”. His search for the true meaning of Christmas manifests in his visualizing the physical world in the form of a Rankin-Bass cartoon. Abed’s perfect suspension of disbelief and unprovoked self-confidence have earned him the first Brainrotting Male Character of the Year and Best Overall Character of the Year.
Honorable Mentions: Dexter Morgan on Dexter, Rick Grimes on The Walking Dead, Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock, C.M. Punk on WWE Smackdown.
Female Character of the Year – Lumen Ann Pierce (Julia Stiles), Dexter
There’s been a shortage of strong leading women on television in the past year, but Lumen Ann Pierce is a good start. Lumen Ann Pierce is the sole survivor of a brutal string of serial murders. She begins her run timidly afraid of her former captors. Then she meets Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), a police forensics technician and murderous vigilante who offers her freedom from her psychological torture. Lumen, however, takes this offer one step beyond by engaging in Dexter’s sociopathic methods. Her evolution from shattered victim to vengeful antihero is capped off, not by the successful murder of two of her former assailants, but of her knowing when to say when. By calling it quits, Lumen exhibits her moral strength; a trait necessary of all heroes. It is this moral strength that has earned Lumen Ann Pierce the inaugural Cappy for Female Character of the Year.
Honorable Mentions: Liz Lemon on 30 Rock, Margaret Schroeder on Boardwalk Empire, Alex Russo on Wizards of Waverly Place, Natalya Neidhart on WWE Monday Night Raw
Host of the Year – Conan O’Brien,The Tonight Show
Controversy creates ratings. However, in the case of Conan O’Brien, controversy can aid your already high ratings. In 2009, Conan O’Brien became the fifth host of The Tonight Show – the longest-running entertainment program in the U.S. Conan’s run as the host of The Tonight Show brought a new, youthful style of comedy to the late-night format while still respecting and preserving the classic styles of Carson and Allen. It was this combination that made him a superb choice for Jay Leno’s replacement on NBC’s flagship program. Unfortunately, O’Brien’s reign as the new leader of NBC late night would end on January, 22nd an abrupt end that caused his stay to last only seven months. After 21 years with NBC, Conan would leave the company not bitter and angry, but thankful for the opportunities presented to him. “If you work hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen,” he said on his final Tonight show. O’Brien’s kindness and hard work would pay off in the beginning of November of this year when he signed with TBS to host Conan. In my opinion, this Harvard grad is truly the smartest man in late night programming, and it is my honor to name him the inaugural winner of the Brain Rotting Host of the Year.
Honorable Mentions: Oprah Winfrey on Oprah, Chris Hardwick on Web Soup, Anne Hathaway on Saturday Night Live, Steve Martin & Alec Baldwin on the 82nd Annual Academy Awards
We’ll be right back after a few words from our Slanket-wrapped sponsors.
Hello Potatoes! (That’s my new name for y’all; our hypothetical readers. Potatoes, as in couch potatoes). Please excuse our sudden and mysterious absence. Not long after I decided to start this blog to give me something to do on long days of doing nothing at all, I got a job. A temporary one, but it was in a city 30 miles away and full-time, plus the Caltrain commute. Then last week I got the good news that they were extending my contract until April.
The Captain, as usual, has been working his very cute butt off looking for work, and is this close to landing a job with a very big, very powerful company that you’ve no doubt heard of and have probably spent more money on than you realize. But anyway, we’re sorry we’re not around as much, and we’ll try to crack the whip on ourselves in the coming year.
I thought I should put at least some sort of wrap-up entry before 2010 came to a close, so here are my picks for what to watch in 2011…
Lights Out, Jan. 11 on FX I am basing this solely off of the commercial they keep running for it. I don’t really care about sports, and I don’t really have any idea what this show is about, other than boxing. But something about this looks promising. It appealed to me, I guess, the same way the “On the next episode of Mad Men” trailers would. They would be composed of a collection of clips of characters saying things that were completely meaningless out of context — Don: “What?” Sterling: “That can’t be right.” Betty: “What did you do?!” Campbell: “He can’t find out about this.” — and yet I wanted to watch the next episode right then and there and absolutely could not wait. This one looks good; I will report back with a review.
Southland (season 3), January 4, TNT People! Watch this show! And not just because that dude from The O.C. looks very, very good in a uniform. I love my cop/doctor/figure-it-out kind of shows, and if you do too, you really need to be watching Southland. I will admit it’s a little tough to follow; it moves fast. But it always gets the adrenaline pumping and I’ve been waiting months to get back into the (very fast) swing of things.
I Used to be Fat, Dec. 29 on MTV This one’s a gamble. It could end up being a glossy account of extreme weight loss that barely begins to scratch the surface of all of the hard work, disappointments, second-guessing and self-blame that comes along with it, or it could end up being a superficial, “I used to be fat and nobody liked me, but now I’m skinny and OMG, I’m the prom queen!” Cinderella story. Or it could be incredibly meaningful and true-to-life. As someone who has been through serious weight loss, twice, I’m curious to see how it turns out.
(There was supposed to be a video here but MTV.com makes it very difficult to embed them. Just click this and watch the trailer.)
This most recent round of weight loss saw me kicking a full 50 pounds, and I work DAMN hard every day of my life to make sure it doesn’t come back. I am so happy to see that real, actual, weight loss that isn’t a game show is being represented in a warts-and-all way on a channel that is aimed at young people. If you’ll permit me to drag out the ol’ soapbox, I’ve been feeling lately that this country is getting just a little too comfortable in its role as the fattest, greasiest, unhealthiest country on the planet. It is the truth that we’re a nation of high cholesterol and clogged arteries, but that doesn’t mean we have to settle for that label. I’m starting to feel like, while there is this huge push to get kids to make healthy choices, many adults aren’t really doing anything to help themselves break out of that role. While I fully support being who you are and being comfortable in your own skin, no matter what you look like, I also support health and well-being. I am always secretly disappointed when I hear of friends of mine taking pride in eating things like this and being straight-up defiant about their love, nay, need for bacon. Come on, you guys. If you choose to eat yourself into an early grave, you still you need to get off your ass and put your running shoes on once in a while. All personal biases aside, I’m hoping this series will show the viewers, many of whom are smack in the middle of their most vulnerable, self-conscious years, that with some commitment and hard work, you can do pretty much anything.
The Vice Guide to Everything, MTV — I’ve always been a little wary of Vice magazine. As a journalism student, magazines like Vice and XLR8R were always the ones my more-than-moderately obnoxious, immaculately-dissheveled hipster colleagues cited as their favorites, which was enough motivation for me to stay far, far away from them in the newsstand section of the campus bookstore. But I caught Vice co-founder Shane Smith on Conan last night, and was captivated by the few stories he was able to tell in the time alotted. Or what I could hear of his stories, anyway; he had a really quiet voice and something was off with his mic. I was able to hear him say Heavy Metal in Baghdad, an incredible documentary I caught on TV a few weeks ago while I was home sick, was a Vice project, and saw him present Conan (or “Mr. Rainbow”, as he’s apparently known on that side of the world) with a war-torn guitar from the boys in the band Baghdad was about. I guess I will take this opportunity to grudgingly admit that if Heavy Metal in Baghdad is any indication, The Vice Guide to Everything could be the feather in MTV’s documentary cap. (edit: apparently this one has already premiered and now I feel kind of stupid. Oops.)
And of course, we are on pins and needles waiting for the next installment of The Walking Dead, but that kind of goes without saying.
And that’s it for me! Here’s to 2011. Stay safe on New Year’s Eve, don’t drink and drive. Call a cab, take public transportation, call a friend or very cool and understanding parent, walk if you have to. Seriously. I mean this. Don’t be stupid. Those, I’ve found, are good words to live by in pretty much any situation.
Age fourteen was the age when I thought I was going to be a writer. In the summer of 2001, I had a rambling novel I was working on, entitled “Prince Phoenix”, about a sixteen-year-old boy who leaves his privileged small-town life behind to try and make it as an actor in New York City. It was pretty fuzzy on the details. Seeing how I had been to New York City once on the eighth grade East Coast trip, I look back at it now and my grasp of big-city life, much less Manhattan life, is laughable. Needless to say, there were a few problems. Only a few, but they were pretty major:
The characters all lived in a house. Not an apartment, a house. An old Victorian. Good luck finding a Victorian in New York City.
I wrote a scene where he got drunk at a party. I had never been drunk and had no idea how many drinks it took to get to stumbling, slurring drunknenness. Two beers was enough to find Phoenix waking up with his head in the toilet bowl. What a lightweight.
Everybody drove a car. In New York. And found curbside parking every time.
Also, I didn’t really have a story. I just created a character one afternoon while bored at a high school reunion picnic with my mom and went home that day to put Phoenix on paper (or Word document) and see what I could squeeze out of him. 63 pages later, I still had no idea how it was going to end. So I wrapped it up by killing off his best friend and called it a day.
I would stay up late writing this novel. This was the last, possibly the only, time in my life where I could sit and write nonstop for hours straight. I would sit in front of my parents’ creaky old computer chatting on AIM with my cousin and “boyfriend” (I was fourteen, how can I not put quotes around that? If I think two beers is enough to get someone shitfaced drunk, how could I possibly know what a real relationship is?) with the TV on in the background.
This is how Conan O’Brien crept into my life.
Conan has always been near and dear to me, because somehow, some way, I felt like I had discovered him. He only came out when most of my street was asleep, and the sound of cars on the nearby freeway had all but disappeared. It sort of felt like I was the only one watching. At first, I would have him on just to have some sort of background noise, because our house is kind of old and throws weird shadows after a certain time of night. But either I started listening to the background noise, or Conan sort of seeped into my subconscious somehow. And I soon found out a lot of other people I knew had gotten to know him the same way.
And that was just it: it took me a while to get used to his sense of humor. It wasn’t outright funny. You had to get to know him before you realized how goddamn funny he was. He just went up there and was himself. His appeal stemmed from his willingness to let you in on every last thing he might have to hide from you. He was kind of like me. In fact, he was kind of like everyone I knew. Only funnier.
But besides the bit role he played in all my coming-of-age nonsense, the best part was that my parents didn’t get it. Nobody’s parents did. And when I’m old, the sketches and monologues that he and his writers put together, and that distinctly Conan kind of humor – the wholly madcap, vaguely vulgar, and mildly vulnerable vein of comedy he sparked — will seem outdated and cheap to my kids. What seems so outrageous (or outrageously stupid) to our parents now will soon make our thirteen-year-old kids roll their eyes. Our kids won’t get Conan, and I kind of like it that way. He is distinctly ours.
And now I’m 24, and people pay me to write. So I stay up late writing (except I call it ‘working’ now) on my laptop, in the same house that I met him in. Sometimes even in the same room and on the same TV.
Kind of funny the way life winds up like that sometimes.
Anyway, enough of my corny rhapsodizing, ruminating, and reminiscing for the evening. Just wanted to write a little something in celebration of his return to the airwaves this week, cause it really sucked not having him around. Glad to have you back, buddy!
Too Hot For TV is an ongoing series of Brainrotting posts naming the prettiest people on television, according to our fickle hearts.
When I was in middle school, I tried, almost totally in vain, to be a “rocker chick”, as they were known in the open-air halls of Monroe Middle School in San Jose, California. In order to maintain rocker chick status, should I ever attain it, my only boyfriend option, should I ever attain one, would certainly have to be my male equivalent. But, in my neighborhood, there weren’t really any rocker dudes. Only stoner boys. Most of them were pretty dumb, and I had to kind of convince myself that they were attractive, extracting tiny slivers of personality from otherwise dull, greasy-haired bodies. By the end of eighth grade, I had stumbled upon the biggest crush of my life, a boy named Joe who was not a stoner boy but still fit my criteria. He had a Who lyric scrawled on his backpack. I didn’t stand a chance. From Joe on, I realized I had much better options out there. Anyway, long story short, I left stoner boys and their shaggy, scruffy ilk behind a long time ago.
Until a few months ago, when I first set my sights on Andrew Jenks.
While he doesn’t really qualify as a ‘stoner boy’ — the whole stoner boy look has kind of morphed into a generic urban hipster image since I graduated from Monroe – he has that same mystique about him. Those light eyes and dark hair. The knit headgear. The sparse vocabulary and low chuckle. The kind of guy my mom would say, “He looks like the boys I went to high school with in the ’60s” about (she kind of says that about anyone with long hair, though). I never really expected to fall so completely in love with him.
I did, however, expect to fall so completely in love with his show. I’ve always been a big fan of MTV’s documentary programming (that’s documentary, not reality). I was a journalism student, and a common story in the halls of the 3rd floor of the Humanities building at SFSU was that many of us had been the only kids at our junior highs or in our towns that grew up watching and loving True Life. I’ve been a big fan of True Life for several years now, and I also really love The Buried Life (the cast of which I’m considering for an upcoming TH4TV). So when I saw the first promo for World of Jenks and could tell what it was all about, I kind of knew I’d dig it.
But there’s something about Jenks himself that really captivates me. He’s so real and, in that way, so scarily attainable, and that he’s exactly the kind of someone’s-older-brother I would have been in love with in eighth grade. He’s not simply nice to look at (though he is very nice to look at). He doesn’t say much, but you can tell he’s got a real heart and soul. No matter who he’s hanging out with that week, he treats them with the respect that anyone and everyone deserves. Which seems like an obvious thing to do, but you’d be surprised how many people are jerks. In fact, in last week’s episode I saw him defend a cheerleader’s honor after some catcalling, probably drunk skeezbag yelled some nasty thing at her. And even though I had a contentious relationship with cheerleaders all throughout my primary education, that’s when I fell in love. Now he just needs to make me a mix tape. Then my 13-year-old self will be eternally his.
Since our lives and lines of work are actually kind of similar, and there’s not really a possibility he’d do an episode on me (but was there ever a possibility, really?), I’ll have to simply admire from afar, which is probably the way it should be. Who knows what kind of a clumsy, nervous mess I’d turn into if we were ever face-to-face. Andrew Jenks, congratulations. You are simply Too Hot For TV.
Your life is simple. My life is simple. Except for today. Today you woke up and the whole world went to hell. This is the world Officer Rick Grimes has just awoken to. From the pages of the Eisner award-winning comic book series of the same name, The Walking Dead has the potential to be AMC’s next big Emmy contender.
Readers of the series will be in for several suprises along the way. While following the same storyline as its graphic predecessor, Frank Darabont, the show’s writer, producer, and director has promised changes that will keep the geeks viewing. While many squeamish viewers will turn away from this project, the show focuses, much as the books did, on the human element of the end of the world. With actual zombie screen time making up for a smaller percentage of the pilot episode’s total run time, the audience is initially presented with Rick coming to grips with the end of the world. Shortly after finding his home abandoned, Grimes encounters his first walking dead in a scene eerily similar to the opening sequence of George Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead. Rick is soon “rescued” by Morgan and Duane, a father and son who have survived by their wits in an abandoned neighboring house. In these characters we are reminded of what we take for granted, namely our loved ones. In one chilling moment, Rick witnesses Morgan’s undead wife approaching the front door through the peephole. It was moments like these that struck me with absolute fear. It wasn’t the grotesqueness of the undead or anything jumping out from dark corners. They were the simpler things; the motion and sounds, or lack thereof, of the undead’s approach.
All of this talk of simplicity and survival should not frighten away traditional zombie and special effects fans. AMC has set a new bar not only for what is the ugliest (in a good way) zombies but for what we can now get away with on cable television. The pilot is filled with enough headshots to more than appease an XBox achievement whore and brought to life by a makeup and visual effects team that have the potential to be front runners for technical awards at the Emmys. The dental work alone, from the braces on the little girl to the exposed chompers on the bicycle ghoul are bound to make any orthodontist cringe.
For several years since creation by writer Robert Kirkman, there has been discussion on how The Walking Dead could and yet sadly could not be brought to the big screen. However, the adaptation of the Image comic series will fit in perfectly at AMC, a network that has managed to be the forerunner in television drama for the past 3 years with its HBO-strength production and writing. With a second season already guaranteed, viewers can expect the dead to walk in 2011 and hopefully beyond.
One thing that’s probably good for you to know in this inaugural blog (inblogural, maybe?) is that Daniel and I are big horror people. Daniel moreso than me; I appreciate a good horror film (and several bad ones; you will also get to know my love for SyFy channel originals very well at this URL), but Daniel actively goes out of his way to find them; I just tag along.
Anyway, pretty much since I met him, one of Daniel’s favorite things about October has been the arrival of AMC’s ‘MonsterFest’ programming. I love that October allows me the chance to watch at least halfway-decent horror movies, old and new, on television. Sure, they’re always edited for content and you have to sit through about a thousand commercials, but if I don’t have to wait for Netflix to send it, it’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.
Instead, AMC replaced ‘MonsterFest’ with ‘FearFest’, a weak attempt to update it. Last week, they showed every single Friday the 13th movie ever made. Not only were some of them just, well, pretty lame, but they divided the series into small chunks over the course of the week, which meant they were showing the same movies all. Damn. Day. With MonsterFest they had a pretty large pool of monster movie/B-movie classics to choose from, which meant a good variety. Come on, AMC, now you’re just being lazy.
I, personally, have been completely disappointed in the lack of good Halloween programming this year. October always allows me to catch up with my more fervent horror-loving peers and watch all those movies that seemed iffy from the previews but that other people took and chance on and told me turned out to be pretty darn good. It also allows me to watch some serious classics that I really should have seen by now. Just like how I get hooked on Cadbury Eggs during the months of March and April and look forward to their availability every year around that time, once the leaves start changing colors I get really excited that for a whole month, I can pump myself full of corn syrup, sub-par dialogue, and gratuitous, blurred nudity, and not have to explain what I’m watching/why I’m watching it to anyone that might wander through the room. It’s Halloween, I’ve got a free pass. Last year I watched Hostel on TV. Hostel. Heavily edited, but still. Come on, TV, I know you can do better than you have so far this year!
And since I’m here, can I ask what happened to that ‘Scariest Movie Moments’ countdown they always show on Bravo? I could watch that all the livelong day. Last week I happened upon the ’13 More Movie Moments’ list, their more up-to-date add-on to the one they usually air from sunup to sundown, but due to the business-as-usual scheduling of most channels in the last few weeks, and since I haven’t seen the original list once this year, I actually think this might have been a mistake.
In light of this completely-average October, The Captain and I are both steadfastly awaiting the arrival of The Walking Dead on Halloween night, crossing our fingers that it will redeem one of the bleakest months in our couch potato-ing. We probably won’t be around to watch it premiere, but that’s what DVRs are for.
