Episode 427

Well, wow. LOST is over. I think I speak for everyone -- regardless of how you felt about the finale -- when I say that it was extremely emotional coming to the end. I know many people were disappointed that we didn't get many answers, but the feeling I had in the last few minutes of the series made me think that that didn't really matter. Whatever it was that happened in that last scene -- I don't want to say anything for the sake of my most loyal reader who is currently only on season 3, and I'm not even sure I could describe it if I tried -- I want that. But I also want LOST. And that's what DVDs are for.

Despite the incredible impact that LOST has had on American culture, especially recently, there's something about dramas that don't allow them to seep into daily life as much as comedies. When someone says "yadda yadda yadda" or "that's what she said" or bangs the insides of their fists together in anger, we kind of just know what it means. Somewhere in the back of our heads, we might be thinking Seinfeld, The Office, or Friends, but it's not our first reaction. Contrarily, if I were to respond to two friends arguing with "live together or die alone" they would -- after rolling their eyes -- hear it as a quote from LOST.

Speaking of finales, I'll blame my blog absence on the abundance of them these past few weeks. Some just for the season (and mostly successes, I must say) and some forever (goodbye 24 and Law & Order...and I know you'll all miss the critically acclaimed 10 Things I Hate About You). We've seen hopeful cliffhangers (Holly coming back to Scranton?) and touching heart-warmers (Modern Family's family portrait). And to put a silver lining on an otherwise terrible season, we saw a humble, deserving, and stand-up guy take the American Idol crown as we bid Simon a fond farewell.

So as the last few series (e.g. The Mike O'Malley Show...oh, I mean, Glee) come to their season finales, we now finally have an excuse to watch truly crappily awesome and usually reality TV: summer programming.

Recap

You know when your favorite show advertises an "all new episode" and then it's a recap? Because of how much I hate that, I'll give it to you straight -- this post is not an original. I just want to link you to two of the most insightful things I've read about my favorite Tuesday night shows this week:

1) Perfect interpretation of LOST's "Across the Sea."

2) Pure Glee ecstasy: I'm glad someone else agrees.

Episode 426

Someone writing for How I Met Your Mother has been reading my blog. Either that, or they've been a graduate student in the humanities. In the most recent episode, Ted embodied exactly what I wrote about in my very first blog entry -- basically, people who name-drop Foucault, or, as we saw last night, recite Dante's Divine Comedy in the original Italian at parties, have a great tendency to be douches.

In this episode, Ted finds himself at a snobby gala attended by such random hysterical figures as Will Shortz, editor of the New York Times crossword (and in another moment of HIMYM brilliance, we find out that Ted was right: Ulee is a common crossword answer "because of all the vowels"). In any case, at some point in the evening, Ted begins pontificating on the concept of Hell and decides to recite the opening lines of Dante's Divine Comedy..."if you'll allow me, in the original Italian..."

He has not yet gotten through the first three verses when it strikes him: "You know, I actually sound kind of douchey." Three lines. It takes most people three decades to realize the douchey-ness of discussing 14th-century Italian literature at social gatherings -- and by then, they're so pretentious that they don't mind.

Ted's thought that follows -- while he continues to delve into the opening of the Inferno -- sums up my entire hypothesis about intellectuals:

"I'm the biggest douche on the planet!"*

And all it took was TV to prove it.


*I could have linked to so many other things right there, be thankful that I just chose to show you the clip at hand (which is highly worth watching, by the way).

Episode 425

My first two ideas for blog topics today were self-vetoed for the following reasons:

1) If I have to relive Jin and Sun's beautiful departure, I might die of a broken heart.
2) If I were to link you to this clip, several of you might un-friend me.

So instead, I'll start by telling you about a friend I have. He is one of the best people I know, but (or maybe therefore) we have very little in common. We disagree about so many things, from coffee to political leanings to how to tell someone it's "ten of" the hour (or "ten till" according to him). But there's one thing we agree on: Modern Family.

I know I've written a good amount about this groundbreaking-but-not show, but as the first season comes to an end, it is becoming more and more clear that this show appeals to nearly everyone.

I have two theories as to why, one more complex than the other:

Theory #1: This show has managed to take the genre of voyeuristic comedy to a completely relate-able level. While not everyone works in an office, not everyone is involved in their local parks department, and not everyone attends community college (sorry, I'm excited about NBC's line-up tonight), everyone has a family of one kind or another. And while Arrested Development ushered us into the era of not-your-normal-family-family-sitcoms, let's just face it: we sadly cannot actually relate to Gob or Buster. I think that's the point, but for that reason, some people (terrible people, I might add) may find the show alienating. Modern Family, instead, makes us feel like part of the family.

Theory #2: Sofia Vergara. Male or female, ten till or ten of, we all want to gawk at 22 minutes of that.

Episode 424

Well, Glee had to flop eventually. I'm surprised it happened so close to the second-half-season opener though -- with all of the hype and expectation, I thought the first few episodes back would be killer. Last night, though, Glee forgot its name: the focus came off the show choir and their always fun, if cheesy, performances and instead went to some highly awkward and unfortunate solos and duets.

While the Kurt-Finn-parents drama panned out into a nice display of emotion by the end, so many of last night's twists and turns came out of nowhere. Within the course of an episode, Mercedes went from proud and curvy to insecure about her weight and then back to empowered and empowering. Finn's father-issues went from 0 to 60 (but quickly stalled) and Kristin Chenoweth returned with some major drama in her life that was completely irrelevant and un-relatable. And who was Schu even singing about -- his ex-wife or Miss Pillsbury? The fact that it was unclear was a symptom of what the rest of the episode was lacking.

You know something's off when Mike O'Malley pulls of the best performance of the cast. The only main cast member who had success was Chris Colfer as Kurt, who managed to draw some emotion from the out-of-the-blue plot points. Let's just hope Neil Patrick Harris can bring some spice back into things (unfortunately not until May).

Episode 423

People care a lot about TV.

Case in point: The other day, I got into a conversation / disagreement over what word Ted calls Lily on How I Met Your Mother that upsets her so much. (The audience never actually hears the word because Bob Saget narrates it as "grinch".) In any case, we couldn't come to a consensus, so I decided to Google it and see what everyone else thought. And I found the most amazing thing: there were hundreds of discussion threads about it and everyone had different pieces of evidence to back up their various hypotheses.

In addition to people caring a lot about this obviously important issue, I also found that the viewers of How I Met Your Mother seem to be tamer, not to mention more intelligent and sane than the general public. Take a look at this amazing thread on the topic. Never before have American strangers had such a civil conversation about what is considered one of the more offensive words in the English language. Usually, it's the opposite: take a look at any YouTube video and without fail, the posts will devolve into some strange and unnecessary argument on a completely irrelevant and offensive topic.

I admit that a few hundred discussions about an episode of TV isn't that outrageous, so how about this? Over 12,000 people have voted on the People magazine online poll "Gossip Girl: Are Chuck and Blair Meant to be Together". Twelve thousand people (and counting) care about this. And more proof that the TV watching public is clearly of superior intelligence: 11,450 voted yes.

Episode 422

Last night, the final Jeopardy question, under the category, "New Sports," was as follows:

"In 2008, Middlebury College in Vermont won its 2nd straight championship in this sport introduced in a 1997 novel."

Perhaps not as exciting as the Middlebury shout-outs on 30 Rock, but we'll take it. However, I do want to lodge one complaint: Middlebury has so much more going for it than its damn Quidditch team. If I remember correctly, though I'm not sure I want to, one of our own actually won the College Tournament of Champions on Jeopardy not so long ago.

In any case, two people got the answer right, and one person missed it. But I would like to argue here that the person who missed it, choosing "snowboarding" as her answer, is perhaps the smarter Jeopardy player. Here's why: The only way you would know that Quidditch was the answer is if 1) You followed New England liberal arts schools' club sports or 2) You had read Harry Potter (which the Jeopardy demographic is not guaranteed to have done, unfortunately).

At first, I scoffed at "snowboarding" as an answer, but then I realized it was pretty intuitive. This woman thought, okay, what sports are played in Vermont? Something with snow. Well it's not skiing, obviously, so what could be new enough that it was created in 1997? Snowboarding! Although 1997 seems too recent to have been the birth date of this now Olympic level sport, that was, remember, thirteen years ago (scary). For all I know, snowboarding didn't exist when I was 12 years old. And for all someone this Jeopardy woman's age knows, it didn't exist until last year.

So in the end, it turns out that the people who knew the answer just had some dumb luck, while snowboarding woman was using her smarts. (And she actually wasn't that far off.)

The point of this story is for me to reiterate how obnoxious Jeopardy can be. It's like Trivial Pursuit -- half of the questions have the answer right there in them, and it has nothing to do with actual knowledge. I without fail guess more answers correctly on that show than I actually know. Last night's stupid-question winner? The category was "Bad break-up lines" and the question: (this is from memory -- I didn't take the time to pause the DVR on this one because of how livid I was) "It's not me...it's this homophone for a female sheep."

You know what, Alex? It's not me. It's YOU.