news
Televisualist: Flashpoint, Marxes, and Baseball Parkses
Each week, Torontoist examines the upcoming TV listings and makes note of programs that are entertaining, informative, and of quality. Or, alternately, none of those. The result: Televisualist.
Monday
You know what Televisualist likes about Drumline? The drumming. Why Bravo is playing this, we’re not sure. But hey: drumming. (8 p.m.)
People who enjoy the Marx Brothers often sharply disagree as to which Marx feature is the best. Some purists maintain that Duck Soup or Horse Feathers, examples of their early period with Paramount when the Marxes were allowed to go insane however they liked, are the greatest Marx films. And Televisualist will admit that the films the Marxes made with MGM gradually descended into mediocrity (not least because the MGM films always felt the need to include young, attractive romantic leads and to force the Marxes to be “the good guys”). All of that having been said, we still endorse A Night At The Opera, the first feature the Marxes made for MGM, as the single finest movie they ever made. It has an excellent plot, the young romantic leads don’t take up too much airtime (and can act reasonably well), and some cultural keystones (like the “there ain’t no sanity clause” scene and the crowded stateroom sequence). As a sidenote, it was later remade as Brain Donors, with John Turturro in the Groucho role. Isn’t that interesting? (Turner Classics, 8:30 p.m.)
Tuesday
By this point, you’ve probably already decided whether or not you will be watching the tenth season of Big Brother. Quick preview: this season’s casting gimmick is that there is no casting gimmick. Julie Chen is still expected to be a black hole where charisma stops existing. The show will still be a boring, third-rate knockoff of the European version of the show. Woo. (Global, 9 p.m.)
Alternately, you could watch this year’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game! A lot of home runs will be hit. The only Blue Jay who made the roster this year is Roy Halladay; fans were too busy voting for Derek Jeter to start on the team to get any more Jays on it, despite the fact that Jeter is having one of the most mediocre years he’s ever had. This goes to prove a longstanding theory of mine: namely, that baseball fans use statistics to hide the fact that they are stupid. (Sportsnet, 8 p.m.)
Wednesday
MTV Canada airs a new episode of The Real World: Hollywood tonight, and seriously, what the hell is up with that? The Real World: Hollywood? That’s like making a show called The Wet World: The Sahara Desert or The Hot World: Antarctica or The Really Interesting World: Edmonton. (10 p.m.)
The Simpsons rerun of the week: “Brother From Another Series,” where David Hyde Pierce shows up as Cecil, brother to Sideshow Bob. “You wanted to be Krusty’s sidekick since you were five. What about the buffoon lessons? The four years at clown college?” “I’ll thank you not to refer to Princeton that way!”
Thursday
Space airs the first part of the 2005 Sci-Fi miniseries The Triangle tonight, which is about Eric Stoltz and Lou Diamond Phillips investigating the Bermuda Triangle so they can destroy it. That sentence alone should sell you on the wonderful horribleness of this fine television adventure. (9 p.m.)
The problem with discussing any new episode of Fear Itself is that since the show is composed of standalone episodes with new directors and cast every time out, it’s impossible to say: “well, last week was excellent/bad, so it logically follows that this week will likewise be “excellent/bad.” That having been said, this week’s episode has a world overrun by zombies, so… hey, zombies! (NBC, 10 p.m.)
Friday
Classic Hitchcock: Dial M for Murder. It’s a little hard to watch nowadays because the plot twists have been so often imitated that the film almost seems predictable in retrospect. (This is actually why a lot of Hitchcock’s lesser-known work tends to hold up better.) Still, it’s a cinema classic and it has Grace Kelly in it, and Grace Kelly is like whoa, so watch it. (PBS, 8 p.m.)
Televisualist watched Flashpoint last week, which is the new CTV show that got picked up by CBS and that’s a really big deal for Canadian TV producers, who like to pretend that they aren’t in a backwards cottage industry dominated by networks more interested in simulcasting the shittiest American shows possible to earn a cheap buck than in producing anything of quality. And… it’s not bad! Enrico Colantoni, come on, he’s good! (10 p.m.)