A Very Grey's Anatomy Musical

If you're an avid reader of my blog, you know that I'm a big fan of Grey's Anatomy and I believe it too often gets ragged on by people who blow it off as your typical soap opera drama.  What you might not know is that I'm also a big fan of musicals.  I'm always a little bit excited but a lot skeptical when a musical episode of a TV show I love is going to come out.  Because as you may or may not have noticed, plot and character development are very important to me, and just throwing a musical episode in for no good reason takes one out of the story.

It worked on Buffy because there was a demon that got off on making people sing out their true feelings.  It actually moved along the plot in a very unique way, bringing out characters' thoughts and feelings without them being able to control it, causing them to let out deep dark secrets that would change the way other characters understood them.  It worked on Scrubs because a patient had a terrible brain aneurysm that caused her to hear life as a musical.  They were very cautious to make sure she was always around during the musical numbers, even if she was just kind of saddled in the background or passing by for a second.

Of course, what both of these shows also did was play to the actors' strengths to get the best musical numbers they could, and they included some very well-written songs that really added something to the show.

The Grey's Anatomy musical episode did very few of these things correctly.  The episode started off, and Callie (played by Sara Ramirez), a beloved, pregnant doctor at Seattle Grace had just gotten into a terrible car accident where she flew through the windshield.  By the way, her soon-to-be fiance, Arizona, walked away with seemingly little injury despite her face being covered in blood and bruises for the rest of the episode.  I find it hard to believe that a group of doctors would let their doctor friend go completely unexamined just because she was standing, but that's a mini rant for another day.  In the opening scene, Callie has an out of body experience and sings to her shocked and completely bruised and bloodied barely breathing self.  When it moves to the emergency room, Dr. Hunt and Dr. Bailey join the singing.

This is all very acceptable and actually kind of moving.  Callie was too shocked to feel her pain, so instead she heard singing around her.  The song was "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol, and it was extremely beautiful and I couldn't stop crying.  I thought, this seems promising.  But they were using only existing songs, songs that had been featured previously on Grey's Anatomy, and of course this makes the capabilities very limiting.

Because of the limitation of having to take an already existing song and making it fit a situation (Although Jersey Boys on Broadway does this sensationally...), things got a little hokey after this first scene.  There was even a scene where Callie hallucinated back to the moment where Arizona was about to propose to her, and so Callie started to sing a song a very happy song called "Running on Sunshine" by Jesus Jackson, about how Arizona made her feel.  As the song continued it literally cut to every single couple on the show singing this song to each other.  It really just came out of nowhere and had no business being in the episode.  First of all, this was an intense episode.  And there was no build to the happy feeling song, it was a quick switch.  One minute Callie was talking about how she's about to get hit by a truck, and the next she's singing her love.  It really felt out of place, and took me out of the intensity of the moment.  The second thing is, as you may have noticed, characters were singing when Callie wasn't around.  So it wasn't in her head... they were just singing?  This was one of quite a few times this happened in the episode.

Which brings me to my next point, by the end of the episode, every single actor had had a chance to sing.  And everyone sounded pretty great.  But it was abundantly clear who has a really good voice, and who was auto tuned to sound good.  As a music lover, I think that just bothers me.  But it also took me out of it a little bit.  I think Buffy and Scrubs had the right idea.  Keep their voices, so it's that character singing.  Play to your actors' strengths to make a good musical, don't mold them to the musical you want.  Don't mix some really beautiful organic singing with some crappy auto tuned shit.  It's tacky, and in a couple songs, it really threw off the balance.

Overall, I think this would have been an amazing, incredibly intense episode if there hadn't been any singing, or they just put in the first number.  Although, I do have to give a shout out to Sara Ramirez, who is an incredible singer, and at least made it so the majority of the songs sounded amazing.  Kevin McKidd who plays Dr. Hunt also has a surprisingly beautiful voice.

Parenthood: Why So Serious?

I want to start off by saying I really, really love this show.  Parenthood is an NBC dramedy ensemble piece about a large family.  It's categorized as a drama, but I say dramedy because I think if you disregard the comedy than you're missing out on a lot.  This show makes me laugh just as much as it makes me cry (until recently, but we'll get to that later).  Overall, Parenthood is a really realistic portrayal of family life and the way families interact with each other, through the good times and the bad.

This one big family is comprised of five smaller families.  There's the grandparents and their four children, and then each of their children (who are now fully grown adults) have their own families, each with at least one child.  Overall there are a whopping fifteen main characters, which I think might actually beat Grey's Anatomy, and every character has had their own fully developed plot line at points in the show.

Usually the show has a really good balance between comedy and drama.  When Adam was in a fight with his wife Kristina, his boss gave him an "edible", which he thought to be an ordinary lollipop.  An edible is actually a food item containing marijuana.  I learned that from watching Weeds.  Anyway, obviously things got wacky from there.  And they made up, in a hilarious scene.  That's just one example of how every episode of Parenthood has its fair share of drama and comedy.  It doesn't hurt that there are three adorable little children who say the darnedest things.

But lately there's been a shift.  The past three episode have been all drama, and sure, there was some pretty heavy stuff going on.  [If you haven't watched the recent episodes, and plan on it, here is your Spoiler Alert.]  Crosby got into a fight with his fiance Jasmine, and when she wouldn't talk to him his anger and upset escalated until he slept with someone else.  That someone else happened to be Gabby, the behavioral aid of Adam and Kristina's son Max, who has Asperger's.  Gabby has real feelings for Crosby, so she quit.  This lead to Adam screaming at Crosby about how irresponsible he is and how his nephew has Asperger's and he can't just think about himself.  Max overheard this screaming match and the episode ended on confused and quizzical Max, "I have Asperger's?"

The next episode was mostly about how to explain to your son that he has Asperger's and what having Asperger's means.  I kind of understood why these episodes got so heavy, and I found it appropriate.  I thought after that episode, things would start to lighten up again.  But it's only gotten worse.  Julia can't have a baby, Amber only applied to two colleges and didn't get into either of them.  Sarah wrote a play and even though it looks like it might get produced, there's something weirdly heavy about that plotline, too.

And it's not that I don't like the show anymore.  I still find it very interesting, I'm still very attached to the characters.  I just think if it keeps going in this direction, I'm going to get sick of it and it will stop being the show I fell in love with.  The show I watch twice every week because there were so many amazing highs and lows.  It will stop feeling so realistic, and I'm not the only one who won't like it anymore.  Parenthood gets pretty decent ratings, especially for its network and time slot (NBC at 10pm), so why start modifying something that's doing well?

Bring back some of your awesome comedic flair, Parenthood.  Or I'll miss you so much it'll hurt.

The Middleman: Is This About My Life?

Recently a friend of mine gave me the complete series of The Middleman to watch.  The complete series is only 12 episodes, which I have to say is a damn shame.  Although some of my favorite shows come in similar packages (Special mention:  Wonderfalls).  If you've never heard of this show, that's because it was on ABCFamily for a season in 2008, around the time Greek and The Secret Life of the American Teenager became popular.  But this show is quirky and fun and really really cheesy in the best way possible.

The Middleman, based on a comic book of the same name, is about Wendy Watson, a struggling artist who temps for a living, while sharing an over-sized illegal loft apartment with her best friend (also a struggling artist).  Her life is turned upside down one day when she discovers that much like in every comic book, villains and aliens and the things that go bump in the night really exist.  Plot-wise, this show is very similar to Doctor Who with some slight differences.  It really drives home the point that supernatural things happen all around us, and the majority of humans are too stupid to notice.  The Middleman (a man with no other name, who fights supernatural evils to ensure all is right with the world as well as the safety of the human race... Sound familiar?) comes in and seeing that Wendy can comprehend the aliens and shit, he takes her on, not as his lovable sidekick who he will have some form of sexual tension with (oh, Doctor, when will you learn to just recruit a man?), but as his apprentice. 

From the first minute watching this show, I was instantly enamored by the witty dialogue, the intelligent world views, and of course, the perfection with which it is corny on purpose.  A perfection which can only be trumped by Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical.  It also helps that as an aspiring writer who literally went for an interview at a temp agency earlier this morning, I identify with the main character.  This is a really smart, delightfully self-aware show with really cool characters that make you never want to sell out and earn real money.

I'd especially recommend it to anyone who has a brain.

Cedar Rapids

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  There is something oddly very attractive about Ed Helms.  That's not the only reason I enjoyed the movie Cedar Rapids, but I felt it just needed to be said.  :-P

I saw this movie last night.  It was late for me, I didn't really know what this movie was about, and I didn't know what to expect.  But I found it delightfully charming.  While I would probably only give Cedar Rapids 3 out of 5 stars, I would still recommend people see it.  There's something about it that makes it very different from a lot of other movies out there.

The movie cut to credits and my friend said, "Well that ending was a little off point, but okay."  And I realized, that's exactly what I liked about the movie.  A lot of the things that happened in the movie were "off point", but without taking away from the movie, in fact they mostly added to it.  And then when I really think about it, the ending wasn't off point at all.

This movie wasn't about a love story.  There really was no love story arc, which was one of my favorite things about it.  It wasn't a coming of age story (although it could be considered that loosely).  It was really just about a guy who needed to loosen up, make some friends, and stand up for himself.  And through drunken late night pool swimming, sex with a married lady, befriending a prostitute (Alia Shawkat from Arrested Development), and hanging out with cool people who make a lot of offensive jokes, that's exactly what he did.  He learned he could have fun, but still be a good person who did the right thing.

I think that made it sound cheesy, and most movies do have a little cheese, but it was seriously funny and I just thought it was a very original story.  Something you don't see in the movies often.  They didn't feel the need to throw in the normal cliches to make it something mainstream.  And it made for a good movie.

I'm not saying run out and see it, but...  There's so little good in theaters now, am I right?

Hall Pass

So, first of all I just want to make it clear that I have not seen this movie.  I hate that I love the people in this movie, and I hate the fact that there most likely is some funny stuff in there, but I don't even have the slightest inkling to go see this one.

Does anyone else find the concept for this film absolutely disgusting?

For those of you not in the know, Hall Pass is about two guys who get a "hall pass" from their wives to take a week off from married life and do whatever the hell they want.

The first reason this is a terrible idea for a film is that I can already tell you in the third act of this movie, the husbands and wives regret what they did, but it screws things up in their marriage.  They separate for a little while, and then at the end they get back together.  Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm 95% sure that's what's going to happen.

And that's kind of my point.  No one is that stupid.  Your wife tells you to take a week and screw some bitches and she won't care, that's definitely a test to hear you say, "No sweety, there's no sex like the great sex we have in this bed.  Let's make another baby or something."  Write that down, cause she definitely wants to hear those sentences word for word.

Actions have consequences.  Even if a woman gives you a "hall pass", somewhere down the line it's going to come back and bite you in the ass.  We like to think we could forget about these things, but they'll always surface somehow.  Even if it's five years later when you're having a big blowout fight about how you always leave the seat up, and through her screaming rage you find out she's been repressing a slowly growing resentment towards you for the week you spent in Cabo and came home with "no recollection of what happened."

So those are my thoughts on the movie Hall Pass.  It seems to be doing great at the box office, but then again, what's even out right now worth seeing?  I mean, I've already seen Justin Bieber: Never Say Never in 3D six times, so... really, I should just make it seven.

Traffic Light vs. Perfect Couples

If you're staring at your computer screen wondering what these shows are and when they were on, you're most likely not alone.  Both Traffic Light and Perfect Couples are brand new shows that just started.  They're also both poised to be great comedies, with Traffic Light taking Running Wilde's spot on Tuesday night Fox, on after Raising Hope, and with Perfect Couples being a new addition to the NBC Thursday night comedy block.

As an avid TV watcher (surprise!), I decided to give both of these a shot.  I mean, NBC hasn't gone wrong before on a Thursday night, right?  Wait.  What's that you're talking about?  Outsourced?  Oh, right.  I blocked it from my memory.

Anywho, I have now watched each of these shows at least three times.  And I've kind of noticed some similarities.  Both shows are about three couples (okay, in the case of Traffic Light, two couples and one womanizer, but it still counts as a "couple dynamic" to me).  The couples each have their own, "unique" dynamic, and yet together they all form one big group of best friends.

Both shows have kind of a forced, pointless feel to them, from the way the couples interact with each other, to the way the individual characters act, to the situations they get themselves into.  Really, what is there to care about?  A bunch of dumb, unrealistic people who hang out together a lot.

The first episode of Traffic Light was actually kind of cute.  Throughout the episode the three men refereed several times to the fourth member of their group, repeatedly saying, "But don't forget, we have (Name I Don't Remember)'s thing on Saturday."  It turned out at the end of the episode that that "thing" was a memorial service for their best friend who had passed away.  It was very moving and a really good twist.  I thought most of the episode was meh, but this really made it seem like it had potential.  Since then they have never again mentioned the friend or had any kind of touching moments.

Perfect Couples has much better characters.  While still forced, the couple dynamics are slightly more believable and well-developed.  I thought the characters were endearing in the pilot, but they haven't grown.  They just get less and less realistic as the show goes on.

If I had to pick one, I'd say Perfect Couples is the winner, but in like a race of 3,000 shows where Perfect Couples is in 2,789th place and Traffic Light is in 2,791st place.  Sorry shows!  You tried your best.  I guess?

Now.  Who wants to guess what place Two and a Half Men is in??

Grey's Anatomy: More than a Guilty Pleasure

It's interesting to me that I've actually become embarrassed to admit I still watch Grey's Anatomy.  I find it gets a pretty bad rep amongst those who have similar taste in television to me.  I'm not sure why that is.  I most often hear it criticized for being a medical drama that's more about the drama and less about the medicine.

Well, I say to those people, "A-duh."  Do you really want to watch a show about medicine?  I know I sure don't.  If you do you should be watching the Discovery Channel or  Dr. Oz.  If this is the big problem with Grey's Anatomy, how come no one ever says Scrubs sucks because they focus more on the comedy than the medical issues.

I've been watching Grey's since the very beginning.  Sure, it's had its ups and downs, but all shows have (Okay, all shows except Arrested Development).  And pretty much I've learned to groan when I hear the phrase, "A special two hour episode of Grey's Anatomy" because they tend to have a structure problem with those.  But altogether, I almost always find Grey's Anatomy to be thoroughly enjoyable.

It is a masterful ensemble piece that really knows the balance between drama and comedy.  The characters are all rich, full characters with real flaws and a real sense of humanity.  I could do an entire blog post on almost every single character, going into why they do the things they do, what they've been through, and where they might be going.  And furthermore, the one episode characters (patients, patient's loved ones, etc) are also easy to connect with and well-developed.  You generally get attached to them just for that one episode.  I think that really says something about the writing.

And then there was the Season 6 Finale.  If you don't watch the show, you may have heard of the Grey's Anatomy hospital shooting.  This two hour special (the only one I ever enjoyed) was so captivating, so well-written, so well-shot and edited.  It was a crazy, suspenseful, incredibly moving and beautiful two hours of television that was better than a lot of movies I've seen.  I honestly don't know how anyone can give this show shit after seeing that episode.

And the aftermath was wonderful.  This event really fucked up these characters and the entire hospital, and the tone of the show got really dark in a very Dexter-esque way at the beginning of the new season.

I decided to write this post because I was just watching last week's episode, and thinking how great it was, and how sad it is how many people poke fun at the show.  The new episode focused on how much can change in an hour, and had several plots going on at once that all changed realistically within the one hour.  I believe it was the first episode of the show that was done in "real time", and it was so well-done and really said something about the world and these characters.

Maybe I'm biased because I'm writer and the most important things to me are plot and character development.  But even if you don't pay so close attention to those things, shouldn't they affect your opinion of a show without you realizing it?  I think they should.  I'm be no means saying that Grey's is the best show ever on TV, but I'm definitely saying that more people should give it a chance and see how much thought goes into it.  It's not your typical shock value show.  They don't make radical decisions for the sake of creating drama.  They make compelling decisions that shape the characters and make them whole.  And I think that makes it worth watching every week.

Why Cougar Town is Awesome and You Should Watch it

Ignore the title.  The creator of Cougar Town Bill Lawrence sure wishes he could (but we'll talk about that later).  And ignore Scrubs:  Med School (Although I still stand by my opinion that it was a pretty decent show, and more people would have recognized that with different marketing and less character familiarity.)

Like most people, I shrugged Cougar Town off at the start, mostly because if its title and premise.  I don't really know how it started, I guess I just found myself needing another TV show to watch (which should be a laughable concept, but happens more than you'd think), but I watched the pilot.  And I didn't exactly like it.  But for some reason, I couldn't stop watching it.  I guess it had a certain charm.  The concept was terrible, but the characters were awesome.  And then somewhere in the middle of Season One Cougar Town figured out what its problem was and fixed it.

You see, Cougar Town isn't about cougars anymore.  Sure, it started out as a fed up recently-divorced Jules (played by Courtney Cox) trying to have a little fun by dating hot, young men.  But it kind of diverged into a show about cool winos who don't ever go to work.

Yeah, that's right.  They pretty much sit around all day drinking wine (and boy do they love their wine), making fun of people, and making up their own crazy rules of existence.  And yet, they're very real.  These people clearly love each other, and in doing so they compel us to care about them.  They also have awesome banter.

Bill Lawrence has managed to create a brand new show with the same feel and humor as Scrubs, and yet the characters and jokes are completely different.  Cougar Town is hilarious, endearing, and completely original.  It's what everyone wishes their life was like.

And yeah, the title's terrible.  But they acknowledge that.  It's actually one of the best things about the show.  They wanted to change the title, but they couldn't.  So instead they've started to make fun of it.

The first episode of Season Two when the title came up in the opening credits a small word appeared above the big Cougar Town logo where it used to say "Welcome to".  That word was "Still".

I wasn't quite sure if this was a joke or not, until the next week when it read, "Badly Titled Cougar Town".  Since then it has had something every week.  Some particular gems include:


"100% Cougar Free Cougar Town"

"It's Okay to Watch a Show Called Cougar Town"

"Regretfully, We Give You Cougar Town"

and my personal favorite...


"Titles are Hard: Cougar Town"

And that's why Cougar Town is awesome, and you should watch it.  QED.

How Chuck Lost its Mojo

Last year I wrote an essay on why I think Chuck is the best written show on television.  I stand by that essay, of course.  At the time, I believe it was.  I recently received a message from a friend, thanking me for encouraging them to watch Chuck.  They had started watching season three and they felt it was so good that every episode felt like it was sweeps week.

And that was Chuck: Season Three.  Every week I couldn't wait for Monday night, and every Monday night it was even better than I thought it would be.  It had romance, drama, comedy, and action, and every single one of those aspects was played out to perfection.  No areas were lacking.  It wasn't afraid to evolve and change.  In fact, I felt there were drastic changes to plot and situations from episode to episode.  And they were never predictable or unnecessary changes.  Unlike most TV shows, Chuck allowed itself a natural progression, never holding back for fear of what change might mean to the writing process and the fan base.  Just letting it happen for the sake of an amazing story.

But enough about why Chuck was great.  This is about why it's not so great now.  Now, this is a little bit of a spoiler alert, but this is really one of those spoilers that isn't really a spoiler, because you know it's going to happen eventually.  At the end of season three, Chuck and Sarah finally become a real couple.  Now, personally, I don't understand why this is the cause of so much downfall in television.  When the two main love interests finally get together in a series, why do the writers suddenly go, "Shit.  Whadda we do now?  There must be DRAMA!"  The fans love the couple, and want to see them together.  They love them for a reason.  They work together.  Their relationship really doesn't have to change that much.  Kind of like on How I Met Your Mother, Robin and Ted had an awesome relationship, which was most likely made possible because we all knew they had to break up.

But specifically in Chuck, the relationship really started to pull focus from the spy stuff.  In previous seasons, the show worked so well because the spy missions were really well though-out, and put the characters in real danger and real situations, which naturally allowed them to become closer and get to know each other, thus facilitating the personal relationships.  Now in season four I find that the missions are written around what is happening with Sarah and Chuck, to make some point or work out some problem in their relationship.  It's boring.

There was an episode a few weeks ago that completely revolved around when Chuck will propose.  He wanted to do it in the perfect place in France while they were on a mission, but he missed his moment. After they got home they were told the mission wasn't over and they had to go back to France, and it was so obviously a "We need a reason to get them back to the same place so he can actually propose."  And that's when it hit me.  Chuck has become one of those dumb romantic comedies that just expects that if you put two people on screen who are falling in love, the audience will care about them.  Often in those movies I find I am bored and angry because there isn't even a reason for the characters to like each other.  I love Chuck and Sarah, I do.  I was absolutely giddy when they became a real couple.  But why do I care about them?  The answer is a lot more complicated then he wants to plan the perfect proposal.

I will give Chuck this.  The past two episodes have actually been very good.  For the first time since the season started, I was excited again.  Sarah went undercover.  She had to pretend to kill Agent Casey and in the process she put him in a coma.  She couldn't communicate with Chuck so they had to use a tone system, which was impossible to understand.  The show regained a sense of danger and suspense.  There was a lot of talk about Sarah being prepared to stay undercover for the long haul.  To be honest, I started to get excited about the concept.  I felt it was just what the show needed to get its mojo back.  So what did they do?  They resolved it in two episodes.

This sadly makes me skeptical that Chuck will regain its former glory.  But I will remain a loyal fan, for now.

Anyone who hasn't seen Chuck, I highly reccomend watching Season 1 - 3.  It just gets better and better, I can't even tell you.

Off the Map

Okay, so yeah.  I watch Off the Map.  So sue me.  I brushed it off as crap when I first saw the previews, but it was recommended to me by a trusted friend.  And then I found out Caroline Dhavernas from Wonderfalls is the star.  And that makes it worth giving a shot.

To be honest, I find it interesting so far.  There's some very good setup happening and I think it has a lot of potential.  But that's not what this post is about.

Here's my beef with Off the Map.  It's about a hospital in the jungle.  In the pilot before the new doctors arrive, the established doctors who have been there for years complain about how newbies are so annoying to break in and hardly ever stay.

Dr. Ben Keeton (AKA the "hot" doctor.  I don't really get the appeal, but to each his own.  I'll stick with my McDreamy, thank you.  Actually, my hot doctor is more like Dr. Todd Mauer on The Big C.  But enough about my taste in men...)  replies positively, something along the lines of, "Yeah, but we just need one good one."

This to me is very realistic, and would make for an interesting show if it were actually followed.  However, at the time we are thrown into this world, on this exact day, this crazy jungle hospital that has so much trouble keeping doctors seems to have found not just one, but three "good ones."

These three new doctors are clearly being set up to be established characters, who we will grow to know and love as the series progresses.  Caroline Dhavernas is definitely the most grounded and important of the three.  Wouldn't it make sense to have just her turn out to be a "good one", and have the other two doctors rotate, constantly coming and going.  Some could stay for four or five episodes, and some only one.  Sometimes one just doesn't show up and they're short handed.

I think this would make for a much more interesting and realistic show.  Also, the false setup just really pisses me off.

And I find this promo pic absolutely hilarious:

Intro Post

My name is Marla Pachter.  I love television and I watch way too much of it.  I'm also very opinionated about it.  This is just a place for me to put my opinions.  Some about shows I'm just getting into, some about shows I watch weekly, and some might even be in retrospect about shows I've seen in the past.  Occasionally I might post about movies I've seen.

Really, it's whatever I feel like at the time.  Read, discuss, agree, debate, ignore.  Whatever.  Do what you must.  I'll still be here.

-Marla