CBS -- Real or Not?
Watching CBS comedies, you'd think all anyone ever did was drink microbrews, wear Ever clothing and play with their IPhones.
Does that keep it real or not? It sounds pretty good to me...
Watching CBS comedies, you'd think all anyone ever did was drink microbrews, wear Ever clothing and play with their IPhones.
Does that keep it real or not? It sounds pretty good to me...
You've seen these Sonic commercials, right? The ones where the two guys have what seems to be unbelievable chemistry and comic timing for a commercial? "Sorry.... Charlie". Heh.
Well, it is too good to be lucky casting. I watched Stranger than Fiction last night and those guys were in the movie, playing buddies, together again. Hmm. There must be more to this story.
A little research (hello IMDB and Wikipedia) shows that Peter Grosz and T.J. Jagodowski are both Second City veterans. Aha! Well that explains things. That's where the funny comes from. But I think the most interesting part of this story is that advertisers are getting more savvy, not just with viral marketing (see the site above and Make TJ Drink), but by turning over entire campaigns to funny people.
Good stuff, Sonic. I may just eat one of your 1500 calorie burgers soon as a personal shout out.
With it being May sweeps and all, it is a little more acceptable to be a TV addict this time of year. In fact, this is probably the only time of the year it is ok to come out of one's proverbial shell and admit a few things about partaking in the "opiate of the masses" (well, maybe November and Feburary are ok too).
[End wordy intro]... I was flipping thru channels in bed last night and ran across syndicated episodes of "Sienfield", "That 70's Show" and "Everybody Loves Raymond" that I had already seen. With the triple whammy of Tivo, TV on DVD, and massive syndication (2+ reruns a night of some shows), it is very easy to watch every single episode of a show. So I started a mental list. With that, I present a list of the television shows I have seen every episode of:
Gilligan's Island
Sports Night
Sienfeld
Friends
That 70's Show
Survivor
24
Lost
Alias
The Office (UK)
The Office (US)
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Ed
Saved by the Bell
The West Wing
I don't know if I should be proud or ashamed, but I challenge anyone to come up with a longer list.
What time is it? It's time to GET ILL! What time is it?...
Actually, no -- I don't believe I get ill. Not that I even know what that is. But I do know another answer to the question above. It's midseason replacement time at the TV networks! If that doesn't light your fire, well -- you probably have more of a life than me.
You know what midseason replacement time means around here, though. It means you'll be treated to one of my bi-annual or so TV reviews. So sit back and enjoy the ride.
Love Monkey vs. 4 Kings
Dramatically, 2 new comedys come storming out of the gate that hope to fill a niche in the male demographic -- the buddy show. Both of these shows are sort of a mesh of Friends and Sex in the City with a male perspective. Sounds terrible, right? Well -- yes. And no.
It's amazing how much these two shows have in common:
- 4 buddies hanging out in NYC
- One of them is obsessed with music
- One of them is too committed for the rest to handle
- One of them is a short guy trying to compensate
And where they differ:
Love Monkey tries to be Jerry Maguire for music. Guy (Tom Cavanaugh -- from Ed) loves music and his record exec. job. Guy gives inspiring speech about how it's not about the money. Guy gets fired and heads off to do his own thing. Guy has way too many annoying voice-overs. Unfortunately, there's no Cameron Crowe here to point the ship the right direction.
4 Kings tries to be funny. That's all. It seems pretty real -- 4 guys who have always been buddies share an apartment and rip on each other constantly. Seth Green (one of my short guy idols) is not the lead, but steals the show as the music junkie who can't score.
Case in point: Love Monkey attempts to portray Tom's yupster character as a music snob with a great ear. But he sits around dissing acts like Sting (what?) and Hanson (too obvious) while he dates the lead singer from a terrible band and tries to sign a poor man's John Mayer. On 4 Kings, Seth Green's character Barry gets invited to a show by another music geek and it's The Arcade Fire. A perfect example of writers that get it as opposed to writers that read 'Spin' and think that makes them hip.
Another: Male bonding. The guys on 4 Kings play a game called "chest". I just about fell out of my chair when I saw this, because me and my high school buddies invented a game called "chest" this summer. Creepy, right down to the references to a game of strategy, skill, etc. Luckily, the details aren't the same or else I might think they are channeling the greater Boise High School subconsious. (I'm intrigued by this collective subconsious you speak of). Our version of "chest" involves running full speed at someone's outstretched fists. You try to knock them backwards by hitting their fists with your chest. If you do -- it's a "chest-mate". On the show, "chest" is just a cheap-shot game where you sneak up behind your friend an punch them in the chest. Truthfully, I've never seen anything on tv closer to real-life male bonding than this running joke. In contrast, Love Monkey's answer for male bonding is talking about why marriage is good for a guy or not. What?!? Guys don't sit around at a bar talking about crap like that.
In closing (wait a sec, what is this -- my college entrance exam? IN CLOSING?), here are some lessons learned:
- Jason Priestly (short guy on Love Monkey) will never be anything but Brandon Walsh.
- Seth Green is *always* funny.
- Don't try to be cutting-edge hip and wear a fedora. Especially if you are Canadian.
- 4 Kings is now on my short list of comedies to watch weekly (with The Office and Scrubs).
I wanted to get this shot in before tonight's finale of 'Survivor'. I love this show and have been watching it religiously since season 2. The reason I like it isn't for the drama or the "reality TV" aspect, it's because I think Mark Burnett and co. have created the world's most complicated strategy game.
Think about it. Chess is 100% strategy, but is sufficently less complicated because of the finite movements. Hold 'em poker is more complex because of the human reading/betting/bluffing angle, but still has the pretty important luck factor (at least over the short run). "Survivor" has very little luck -- only producer controlled things like tribe placement and challenge selection (and the mysterious, never used 'purple rock'). It also has the very sophisticated factor of human deception and alliances. That factor throws the game complexity off the map (and really into the realm of game theory as I understand it).
It's too bad the producers always cast the show with a bunch of dimwits. The case could easily be made that the smartest/best player in "Survivor" history was Richard Hatch in the first season. Nobody since has shown a very good ability to manipulate people or use what I would consider to be a complex, well-thought out strategy. Maybe this is editing. Maybe it's exhaustion. But I think it's stupidity. It would be really great to get a bunch of (in shape) poker/chess/backgammon professionals on the show to see what happens.
All of which is to say -- Thursday night, "Survivor" contestant Cindy made what may be the worst decision in the show's history. Of course, nobody has been given the same choice as her before. For those who aren't fans, (but are still reading -- good for you!) Cindy was given a $25K Pontiac SUV for winning a challenge, with the choice of either taking the car or giving the other 4 contestants the same car each. She chose to keep the car. Of course, there are other reasons why she shouldn't have, as this article points out. But let me just take the tack of why it was a bad idea from the possible cash return alone.
Let's compare this to a poker tournament for a second. If you have 5 people left at the table and the prizes remaining are $100, $10, $8, $7, and $6; assuming everyone has equal stacks of chips and equal skill, there is $131 prize money left in the game -- approximately $18 a person. Advancing from 5th place to 4th place in this situation gets you from $18 a person 'game equity' to close to $31 a person. Getting from 5th place and still alive to 4th place and still alive isn't just the $1 difference in the guaranteed payout, it's the equity in having the shot at the bigger prizes up the ladder. The assumptions above are big, of course, even for poker. "Survivor" has a bigger complexity in terms of human elements, and there is no way of knowing (especially with questionable editing) how secure players felt or who is really a better player.
BUT, for the sake of this discussion, let's assume that all the remaining players are equal. And (this is a big one) -- giving the other players the car guarantees you'll stay around for one more day, is that a good call from a money perspective? I think so. Let me take some shots at the math, and vague assumptions about probability:
1) Giving up the car means they won't vote you out that night.
2) If you don't give up the car, your chance of elimination goes up slightly that night -- from 20% to 40% let's say.
3) There is no effect on subsequent votes (for now, we'll leave it at just this vote).
The numbers above for the hypothetical poker tournament aren't pulled out of thin air. If you add 3 0's to each of them, they are the "Survivor" prizes. So given that, getting from 5th place and still alive to 4th and still alive increases your 'game equity' from $187857.14 to $313750. A more than $125K difference. If you go home it's a differnce from $60K to $313750. A $250K difference. Divide this by 5 for the aforementioned 20% more chance you go home, and it's still more than the $25K value of the car. The only way it's not a bad decision from this standpoint is if either you think there is no negative effect on the other players voting, or you don't think you have a chance of winnning the $1M prize (if your upside is 2nd place, there is just a $40K difference in prize possiblity).
This brings me to the second reason this was a terrible idea. THE JURY. Assume you think you do have a chance to win. If you make it to the final 2, 3 of the people voting whether or not you should win are people you gave a car to. You need 5 votes to make the leap from 2nd place -- $100K to 1st -- $1M. Are those votes each worth $220K? Does giving them a car sway 3 of them to some degree? Does it sway the other 6 on the jury at all? Can we quantify that at all? Probably not, but it doesn't seem like a trivial consideration to me.
So what really happened? Cindy got voted out that night. It is easy to write all this in hindsight, that she could have saved herself and bought herself some of the shaky concept of 'game equity'. Maybe my knowlege of game theory is off. But either way, wasting your chance at 1 million dollars for a $25K Pontiac hardly seems worth it.
I just watched the last couple of episodes of Alias back-to-back and I noticed something interesting about the soundtrack. On both shows they showed Sydney in her kitchen (cooking dinner IIRC) and each time she was playing a track from Ray LaMontagne's album.
Generic mood music, maybe some character development, right? Well yeah, pretty much. It may not even be by design, but I think it's interesting to use the same album twice in a row. The first thing I do when I get a new album is put it on in the kitchen when we're making or eating dinner. If I like it, it'll be the dinner music for weeks at a time. So I can relate -- to have the same music (but different songs) playing in consecutive weeks was pretty realistic and creative AFAIC.
P.S. -- This album is good. It was on in my kitchen for a few weeks too :)
Watching the worst 1st round of tournament games ever, you actually start paying attention to the commercials :)
Update Sat. morn: We finally got some good games last night. I will now officially dial down my caustic attitude.
- The award for co-biggest sellouts goes to Darius Rucker (Hootie) and David Spade for their pimping of Burger King and Capital One, respectively.
- Those Saturn commercials are crazy. It seems like they have a certain person picked out for each of their cars, and they are selling it to just *that* person. Often what the character says has nothing to do with the car. Some examples:
1) Football Dad -- "I wanted to be that dad. That's why I bought a Saturn"
2) New Mom -- "He was 13 days late. That's why I bought a Saturn"
3) Can't Afford a BMW Guy -- "I could have spent more on a Z4, but I would have gotten a slower car. That's why I bought a Saturn"
4) Young Couple -- "I didn't settle for him, why would I for a car? That's why I bought a Saturn"
5) Biological Clock Woman -- "I don't have time to worry about what I drive... I'm too busy husband hunting and sniffing babies. That's why I bought a Saturn"
6) Hipster Kid -- "I really like my new way-too-tight jeans and vintage t-shirt. That's why I bought a Saturn"
7) Psycho Stalker -- "There is nothing quite as exhilarating as spending all night waiting in a parking garage for you. That's why I bought a Saturn"
...Ok I made a few of those up.
- CSI NY: Really? There is a CSI NY starring Gary Sinise? Lieutenant Dan -- has it come to this?
- Becky likes it when that geek in the Dancing Gecko Geico commercial pronounces via "vee-ahh" instead of "veye-ahh". These are the things you pick up on about the 247th viewing.
This Friday, on an all new NUMB3RS... a math concept you've actually heard of!
For the most part, this show is pretty good. It's got two "that guys" -- that guy from Northern Exposure and that girl from Sports Night. They seem set up nicely to do a whole Mulder/Scully thing for a while. The filming is better than the rest of the CBS dramas which all seem to look the same to me. And we are doing without the throwaway CSI one-liners that killed that show for me about 3 months in.
But I got to thinking last night as I was watching it -- I don't think the show is smart enough because I've heard of the math they use. Here's some of the stuff they've used so far:
* Reimann Hypothesis
* Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
* Occam's Razor
Now, I'm not saying I understand all these things fully (I had to look up a lot of spellings a second ago), but I've heard of them.
I am actually impressed with the math on the show (it beats the heck out of the technology on "24"). But my familiarity with these concepts does remind me of Groucho Marx's famous saying "I wouldn't want to join any club that would have me as a member". If I'm not an expert in a field, does a show/movie have to exceed my knowledge to really impress? Or are they doing the right thing by appealing to a bigger swath of the audience and not making obvious mathematical mistakes?