Doctor Who: Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks (2007)

"That motherfucker had, like, 30 goddamn dicks."

Doctor Who is this great show about a dude named the Doctor who is an alien and is awesome and zips around space and time in his space-and-time machine, which looks like a blue box and is called the TARDIS and is also awesome. One caveat to the show's awesomeness, though: sometimes it sucks.

In this two-part episode, the Doctor (David Tennant, at this point) and his companion Martha (Freema Agyeman) visit New York during the Great Depression, because, you know, they figured that would be fun. Alas! Their quaint excursion to the breadlines is foiled by--who else?--the genocidal Daleks. The Doctor's mortal enemies are kidnapping people and dragging them to the Empire State Building in service of some evil plan.

Okay. Pretty straightforward. Also pretty boring. Neither the Doctor nor Martha does or says anything particularly interesting, and most of the guest characters are similarly flat. I do like the relationship between stagehand Laszlo and Adelaide-clone Tallulah. It's sweet and sad. Everything else about this two-parter, though--the tedious plot, the awful American accents, the idea of Human Daleks--is best forgotten.

For some reason, in new Who*, the presence of Daleks (or Cybermen, another classic enemy of the Doctor) tends to indicate crappy episodes. The big exception is the Ninth Doctor episode "Dalek," which is heart-wrenching and pretty dope. But while "Dalek" pulsed with an emotional core, most Dalek-centric episodes have been heavy on the "EXTERMINATE!" catch phrase (which--don't get me wrong--I love) and light on real feeling. The most recent season of Doctor Who was superb; to my mind, its only truly lackluster episode was the third one: "Victory of the Daleks." I'm going to idly speculate that Dalek episodes disappoint because 1) they're probably commissioned in an unimaginative way ("Give us Daleks in the thirties!" "Give us Daleks in WWII!") and 2) Daleks bring down the whimsy level, which means that the episode must compensate by being really dark or really scary. Otherwise, it's just really dull.

Looking back on season 3 of new Who, I'm sad for Martha Jones. She was a one-season-only companion, and she got shortchanged. First, her pining after the Doctor was not a particularly meaty arc. Second, she was in a lot of mediocre-to-bad episodes. In spite of those substantial handicaps, I find Freema Agyeman's performance completely winning. I love Martha and want only the best for her. But she did not usually get the best. She usually got "Daleks in Manhattan."

*There is "old Who," which ran from 1963-1989, and "new Who," which began in 2005. New Who is not a true reboot; it continued from where the old series left off. (More or less.)

- Didn't Like It (but if I were rating new Who as a whole, I'd give it 4 stars, and if I was rating the newest season of new Who, I'd give it 6 or 7)

Avatar: the Last Airbender, Book 1: Water (2005)

This show's okay, but I did feel like it had too few white people? You know how that is, when you're watching some mainstream Hollywood entertainment and you're just like, "Damn. So many people of color." It's not that big a deal, but if they were to adapt this into a movie, my one recommendation would be "more white people." If I were permitted to elaborate, my recommendation would be "more white people except make the Fire Nation genero-brown. A sort of South Asian/Middle Eastern/Latino group. I would find those racial politics more palatable--and current!" That would be my recommendation.

Just kidding, everybody! I am simply making a timely (nope) joke about The Last Airbender, a movie so nice that it has a lower RottenTomatoes score than Jonah Hex. Terrible though the movie may be (going off of conventional wisdom here; I haven't seen it), the Nickelodeon cartoon on which it's based, Avatar: the Last Airbender, is really good.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is about a kid named Aang (Zach Tyler Eisen) who's supposed to save the world. His world is made up of four countries: the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, and the Air Nomads. (I question the structure of these nation-states: while the Earth and Fire countries are contiguous, the Water and Air territories are far-flung, at opposite ends of the map and separated by Fire and Earth lands. How, exactly, did the widespread Water and Air cultures develop similarly? Did they start in one area, then colonize the others? Also, while the Earth Kingdom is multiethnic, the other three populations seem to be homogenous. Maybe?) ANYWAY: a small minority of each country's populations are "benders"--people who can "bend" one element to their will, using Chinese martial arts. The Avatar is the one person who can learn to bend all four elements.

At the beginning of the series, Aang has been frozen for 100 years (along with his giant six-legged flying bison Appa) in a huge ball o' ice at the South Pole. He's discovered by Katara (Mae Whitman) and Sokka (Jack DeSena), two teenage members of the Southern Water Tribe. Katara is a Waterbender. Sokka is a Xander--sometimes heroic, but lacking in superpowers and typically used for comic relief. The 100 years that Aang missed were pretty important, on account of the Fire Nation went genocidal and exterminated his Air diaspora peoples. The Fire Nation has also been waging war on the Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom for a century, but the Water and Earth people aren't as bad off as the Air people (i.e. they still exist).

The show follows Aang's quest to master all four bending disciplines and defeat the evil Fire Lord. He is accompanied by Katara and Sokka and pursued by the Javert-ian Prince Zuko (Dante Basco), heir to the Fire Nation throne. Zuko has been banished by his dick Fire Lord father, and he can only regain his honor and return home if he captures the Avatar.

This is a really fun show, and the second half of the season is especially impressive. I tried to make a list of my favorite episodes of the season but quickly realized that my favorites were pretty much "episode 10 through 18," which is too many favorites. Oddly, some of my favorite episodes are allegorical: "The Great Divide" explores conflict and subjectivity; it follows two feuding tribes as they are forced to cross a treacherous canyon together. That kind of story (especially in kids' TV) usually feels heavy-handed to me, but this one is thoughtful and interesting. Likewise "Jet" and "Bato of the Water Tribe"--two episodes that examine trust from different angles. These episodes could easily have descended into preachiness but don't. Avatar is notable for its strong plots and lack of condescension.

This show also has badass gadgets! In "The Northern Air Temple," the Fire Nation has these tanks where if you flip them over, the center bit where the humans hang out flips over, too. I'm explaining this poorly, but the way this goes down is the good guys manage to flip over a tank, and they're like YES but then the middle of the tank flips itself, the tracks keep on rolling, and the good guys are like OH SHIT. It is very cool! That whole episode is replete with steampunk insanity and delightful designs.

The one other thing I want to talk about in Avatar: the Last Airbender is FEMINISM. (Sorry this is so haphazard, by the way, but it is pretty hard to review a whole season at once, especially when you are not putting in the time and effort to write something well [see: me, right now].) FEMINISM is important in this cartoon, as exemplified by episode 18, which I think is called "The Waterbending Master," but I'm not going to double-check, and I don't know for sure because while I wrote down other episode titles in my notes, here I only wrote "118 - fuck you patriarchy."

The main conflict in "The Waterbending Master" is that Aang and Katara have traveled no joke across the fucking EARTH to study with this dude named Master Paku, but when they get to the Northern Water Tribe (which, incidentally, is Polar Venice--bridges and canals carved out of ice; it's great), Paku says he'll only teach Aang. "In my culture ladies are not allowed to learn to water-fight. Go learn how to water-heal, you vagina." Katara and Aang's shared position on this is "are you a fucking joke," which makes sense, because they traveled the entire distance of the world for this purpose and now sexism what the shit.

Katara gets mad, Aang says that he's not going to study with an asshole who won't teach ladies, and Katara says, "wait, no, that's a bad idea because the world will end if you don't learn waterbending." She resigns herself to not learning for all of 6 hours or something, but then she and Aang decide that, every night, he'll just teach her what he learned that day. Master Paku catches them immediately, gets super angry, and kicks Aang out of his class. Katara and Aang go before a tribunal or some shit to appeal this, and the chief says that maybe Paku would take Aang back if "you [i.e. Katara] swallow your pride and apologize." Through his shit-eating grin, Paku says, "I'm waiting, little girl." And a vein bursts in Katara's temple and instead of "I'm sorry," she is more like "FUCK YOU; P.S. PISTOLS AT DAWN." So then she fights this incredible master, right, even though she only knows a little waterbending. And she does such a good job! He still hands her her ass, but first she bends like she's never bent before.

The fight doesn't convince Paku that he's an ass, but his discovery that Katara's grandmother is his long-lost betrothed what ran away to the Southern Water Tribe does convince him because Katara seizes on the opportunity to say, "CLEARLY SHE LEFT YOU BECAUSE OF PATRIARCHY." Harsh? Yes, but Paku immediately shapes the fuck up and teaches her waterbending. Result! Now, what's interesting about all this is that before fighting Paku, Katara is a less capable waterbender than Aang. She starts the series knowing more, but his learning curve is much steeper. Post-Paku-conflict, Katara becomes the bomb. She is better at waterbending than Aang. She is the best. One could interpret this as an inconsistency, but I see it this way instead: her "come to Jesus" moment ("come to Jesus" = "feminist epiphany") has opened the floodgates and revealed her amazing latent power. POTENT METAPHOR YOU GUYS.

Party Down, S2E9: Cole Landry's Draft Day Party (2010)

Hello, America! I have not written in a while because I was very busy being sick and going to work and watching all of Sons of Anarchy (not available on Netflix Instant, I am sad to say). While I haven't watched a Netflix Instant movie in far too long, I did watch an episode of Party Down, so I'm going to write about that. Here we go.

Party Down is a very funny show, and if you are not watching it, you should start. It's about a group of cater waiters in Los Angeles. It being L.A., most of them aspire to be Hollywood somebodies (actors, writers, etc.). It being a darkish show, none of them ever get anywhere. It's fun, it's easy to get into, it's all available on Netflix Instant. Go forth and watch it.

That being said, I thought "Cole Landry's Draft Day Party" was a little weak (relative to the rest of the very good season). It lacked in three areas that make Party Down one of my favorite comedies on the air:

1) The crazy guest spots. Party Down has the most consistently delightful guest roles of any show I've ever seen. J.K. Simmons pops up twice as a foulmouthed studio exec who runs on rage. Veronica Mars' Jason Dohring and Alona Tal knock it out of the park as College Republicans. Kristen Bell plays Uda, an ice queen who works for our heroes' competition, Valhalla Catering. I thought I was going to injure myself laughing at Rob Huebel and Kerri Kenney-Silver's hedonistic community theater actors. Thomas Lennon plays a man desperately trying to organize an orgy... and I haven't even mentioned what were, for me, the two best performances on Party Down (and two of my favorite comedic TV performances in memory): Steven Weber as mobster Rick Sargulesh and Jimmi Simpson as a Marilyn Manson-esque rock star collapsing under the weight of his ennui.

2) The twists. That might be a weird thing to say; this show is no LOST, you know what I mean? (What I mean is that Party Down is not a portentous, frustrating drama that I gave up on in season 2.) What I really mean is that Party Down is a fun-times sitcom that is not about suspenseful plots. Still, episodes of Party Down frequently surprise me with some reveal--e.g. the end of "James Ellison Funeral." But the unexpected bit of "Cole Landry's Draft Day Party" was completely expected. Whenever I see "secret relationship" in a TV show or movie, I go, "Okay, gay." Maybe I wasn't supposed to be surprised? I don't know; that was a letdown for me.

3) The main characters' big emotional moments. Usually this manifests as acute disappointment in themselves (Roman in "Steve Guttenberg's Birthday") or in the world (Roman in "Joel Munt's Big Deal Party"). Very occasionally, the emotional moment is a happy one. I loved "Not On Your Wife Opening Night," in which Roman ditches his scorn for a night; at the end of the episode, he emerges from a van with a goofy grin and drunkenly exclaims, "Magnicifent!"* There wasn't a moment as blissful as "Magnicifent!" in "Cole Landry," nor was there anything as hopeless as, for example, Henry's response in "Precious Lights Pre-School Auction" to "you'll never work in this town again!": "I know."

Still, "Cole Landry" had its moments. It was a good episode for Lydia (Megan Mullally). For once, she knew more about the event than her coworkers did. Who's savvy now? Plus, one of the funniest lines of the episode had to be "You don't think I have to bite my tongue every time I carry a tray with Santa Barbara grilled eel beaks in a baby pinecone sauce?" (Sorry for the quotations, everyone. As Genevieve Koski has pointed out, the hilarity of Party Down's lines lies largely in the actors' excellent delivery.)

I loved Roman (Martin Starr) underestimating a pre-med football player's intelligence. This reaches its apotheosis when Roman starts--and persists--in explaining the concept of irony:

ROMAN: Irony is when you say one thing, but you mean the opposite. For example--
ZIGGY (the football player): I could stand here all night and soak up this knowledge.

The only character allowed to be really wacky in this episode was Ron. As per always, Ken Marino played it to the hilt. Ron's worried that he doesn't produce enough ejaculate, and the episode opens with him unloading (yeesh) his concerns on an unwilling Henry. Adam Scott's reactions are spot-on because of course. Adam Scott is always spot-on in Party Down. Everybody watch Party Down, dammit! Anyway, Ron's preoccupation lasts all episode, and it's pretty funny.

The Cum of All Fears

TO SUM UP: "Cole Landry" is good but not good enough for me because Party Down has spoiled me because it is a great show that you should be watching so it doesn't get canceled. If you are not watching Party Down, you are part of the problem.

*I guess all my examples of feelings come from Roman? Don't know what that's about. Maybe it's about how Martin Starr has gotten a lot of excellent material this season.