Anger Management Premiere

Anger Management: Charlies Goes Back To Therapy, Charlie and the Slumpbuster

Charlie Sheen plays Charlie Goodson an ex-ballplayer turned therapist for an anger management group. Now putting my dislike for Sheen aside the show has some funny moments most from the cast few from Sheen. 

The cast is made up of crazies or playing crazy. His daughter has OCD. His ex-wife is played by Shawnee Smith from Becker fame. Brian Austin Green is the exes new boyfriend. Selma Blair plays Charlie's friend with benefits. Brett Butler from Grace Under Fire fame is the local bartender. Michael Boatman from Spin City fame plays his friend. Barry Corbin from Northern Exposure fame plays an old fashioned bigot that is seeking help in group therapy.

Charlie is seeking therapy as his anger is back out of control in first episode. The second episode has Charlie making up for sleeping with an ugly girl back in his ball playing days or slumpbusting.

Adam Carolla vs The Unfunny

Adam Carolla made several jokes about women and the homosexual community. They were jokes and intended to mix truth with humor. Unfortunately media whores like Perez Hilton and half of The Talk staff used their best parasitic tendencies to try and make it a big deal.

Sheryl Underwood in the same breath calls Adam's wife a bitch without a hint of shame. Great for a daytime talk show when the child of Mrs. Carolla can watch and wonder why some unfunny woman is calling her mom a bitch. Julie Chen talked about women who gather and make jokes while guys don't laugh. She thinks it is because the guys are jealous not even thinking for a second that maybe men just don't find their brand of humor funny.

Any who has followed Carolla for the last 30 years knows he is a good man of honor who would stand up for any person being bullied or offended. He is also a comedian who will make jokes about anything and everything. Seriously listen to old Loveline episodes and even the worst tragedies can solicit humor.

Parasites like Sharon Osbourne and Perez Hilton who create nothing original and just live off the drug addicts in their lives should take a step back and see how the world really works.  These two combined had made fun and straight out lied about many celebrities and facts to the point they had to issue official apologies.

I would add they spent the next segment saying how women are better liars since the are psychologically more developed. Which they all accepted as true. BUT WAIT. If that is true then men are more immature and find more things funny that would make Carolla's statement about female comics also true.

Holly Robinson and Leah Remini were funnier, keep Aisha and get rid of the rest.

Burn Notice is Back

It is all about Fiona this season. She is in prison because of lies while the gang tries to figure out ways to help her. The overall feel of this season is depression as Michael cannot stop the evil Anson and must betray the CIA or work with them reluctantly.

They announced a big death for the first episode but that did not happen. I expect this to be the last season and hopefully it will end with all the loose ends tied up.

Dallas Is Back

Dallas: Changing of the Guard

Do you remember May 3, 1991? Of course not but apparently TNT is betting on it. Most people just think "Who shot JR?" after that they forgot that Dallas turned a bit ridiculous.

Now the Ewings kids are grown up and each one wants to be king of Ewings. Unfortunately the old men of South Fork Ranch are not letting that happen.

JR's clan wants to suck up that last drops of oil using new technology. Bobby's clan want to ranch and use alternate energy to keep their  mom/grandma's dream alive.

Most noticeable is how they raided the Desperate Housewives cast for the new blood. At the end of the day it is a solid show but still a primetime soap. Maybe it should of stayed gone because I do not the young people watching this.

And Good Riddance

So TV continues to be less than thrilling but they are making room by canceling a bunch stuff. I will give my opinion on each and why they tossed. I do this in hope that someone listens and adjusts how they write.

"Are You There, Chelsea?" (NBC)
--The horrible and evil Chelsea Handler is played by sweetie Laura Prepon. No surprise a person with no redeeming qualities cannot get an audience. Hopefully Prepon will not get tarnished by this and will continue to work.

"Ringer" (The CW)

--I watched the pilot and it was one of the worst acting and special effects for a network I ever seen. I could no get into the storyline since everything else was so bad it was distracting.

"Alcatraz" (Fox)

--Lost the prison years. Everything was good except the lack of answers. The time traveling criminals were never shocked that they were in the future. Add to that they became super-villains. Stop making simple show complicated and then refuse to give answers. Giving wrong clues does not make the show clever it makes the show unwatchable.

"Harry's Law" (NBC)

--This was a good law show with great acting and good story lines. The problem was that everyone had too much attitude but I can see if this show had another season they would have mellowed out a bit.

"Pan Am" (ABC)

--2010s attitudes in the 1960s. Nothing realistic or nostalgic about this time and the people on this show.

"Awake" (NBC)

--Great acting and almost unique premise (BBC's Life on Mars and Canada's The Odyssey did it bettter). Trying to avoid the sci-fi label they made this show more of a medical drama. Hints of something bigger going on kept popping up but again with no resolution.

"Breaking In" (Fox)

--Never saw it was Megan Mullally being her same character on some other show.

"Bent" (NBC)

--??? what was this? I guess I'll never find out.

"GCB" (ABC)

--No!

I liked this show although thinking that all the women went to school together was completely ridiculous. I hope to Leslie Bibb in some other comedy soon. 

"The Secret Circle" (The CW)

--Teen witches that take life too serious. Typical teen melodrama no big loss.

"A Gifted Man" (CBS)

--A doctor sees his dead wife. She in turn tries to make him a better person. Like Ghost Whisperer expect just one ghost and less bouncy.

"Missing" (ABC)

--CIA agent tracking down her son that was kidnapped. Sounds great except Ashley Judd's head was so enormus that it became distracting and impossible to watch. Sorry but having a person fit the role is part of a TV show.

"The Finder" (Fox)

--Bones awful spin-off about a guy who finds anything if he tries. The premise was silly but the execution was worse. The cast was cool but that was not enough to get over the weak premise.

"Best Friends Forever" (NBC)

--Kind of sort of heard about this but not really.

"I Hate My Teenage Daughter" (Fox)

--Ads for this show were so annoying I think they stopped after two weeks. Never saw it but it looked low class and not funny.

"The Firm" (NBC)

--John Grisham was rolling in his grave when this unnecessary continuation of his great book and movie was announced. Leave the man alone he's dead.

"The River" (ABC)

--A ghost story and magic mixes with reality TV except scripted. In other words to many genres mixed together and no clear escape. The fact that everyone on the boat was not absolutely shocked by the supernatural made things unrealistic beyond the norm. 

Like It Was

Gil Noble was the host of Like It Is a community based talk show that was created in response to the 1960s racial turmoil. Today Mr. Noble died at the age of 80.

Everyone in New York City growing up would run to their TV on Saturday or Sunday morning looking for cartoons instead got this talk show. It was not until I was older that I really got to appreciate this unique show. Noble would talk to those who did great things and got little recognition on the nightly news shows.

One of the best episodes was a tribute to Paul Robeson that showed how one intelligent man went through so much for recognition and yet many people still got his motives wrong.

Gil Noble will be greatly missed and sadly many people will never get the chance to see a man who tried to show the complete history of America.

Why is this funny?

Bridesmaids was an okay movie I had about two or three chuckles. What I do not get is why so much hype? I remember laughing so hard at the second Austin Powers film that I could hardly breath. But Bridesmaids went to the Oscars and it had a few smile moments and a nice message but that is it.

Luckily I did not spend a dime to watch it in theaters instead I waited for my cable to show it. Reminded me of There's Something About Mary which also was much hyped and did not even get me to laugh once.

Yes I know humor is subjective and I watch lots of comedies like The Big C which have few laugh-out-loud moments but I get the humor. With the exception of Wiig and McCarthy doing SNL skits I saw little attempt at being funny.

At first I felt I am getting old. These kids today and there slapstick comedies and YouTube are not as good as in my day. Yet there were a slew of years in the late 1970s-1980s where the movies were horrid too, thanks to reruns I saw most of them. Somewhere in the mid-1980s Steven Spielberg changed it all and great movies like those in the 1940s came back.

Then came Titanic and I found nothing great about that movie yet everyone else was entranced. That ushered a teen driven mess of unwatchable hits. All the Harry Potters, Twilights, and Dark Knight movies  are among the worst movies ever yet no one seems to notice. Christian Bale is great in Empire of the Sun but in the Dark Knight he is completely not believable and The Joker is ridiculous.

Not that the past two decades have been lost but most of the entertaining movies have been romantic comedies. Honestly I know my taste are unique but in the past ten years I went from watching 20 great movies a year to less than 2 great movies a year, and these few are not even hits. I just went through the list of 2009-2010 top 50 movies according to Moviefone and I only found 2 were good.


Here is what I enjoyed recently:
Something Borrowed
Vanishing on 7th Street
The Hurt Locker
Up

Please any other recommendations will be appreciated.

Preparing for Nothing

Doomsday Preppers

This National Geographic Channel series documents people who live in constant fear of everything. They choose not to address their own paranoid schizophrenic behavior and instead they prepare for the alleged upcoming chaos.

Since mankind first tried to predict the future there has been cries of "the end of the world". While people should be prepared in case of emergency these folks take it to extremes.

Preston White
A seed collector fears the radioactive fallout from Fukushima-Japan disaster will poison our food supply. Ignoring all science and reasoning he hoarded seeds and began growing plants in tents, his neighbors must be thrilled. He is also looking to form a collective. Granted when he tried it devolved into a desert shootout that had no legal actions as everyone involved had wacky versions of what happened. No psychiatrists were involved although they should be.

Becky Brown
This lady believes the government will set up Martial Law throughout the land because of high unemployment and debt within the next 2 years. She has an apartment next to the Salt Lake City capital building and has a ton of long lasting food with her at all times. Again she ignores the fact that it has been over 100 years since the U.S. used Martial Law within the U.S. borders. Not to mention that if the government was that powerful that she would be hauled away in a flash and all her supplies confiscated before she can taze anyone.

I do enjoy the engineering and science used to make all these shelters and supplies. The problem is the reasoning behind their actions is completely flawed. Whatever global disaster that is powerful to need a doomsday shelter will leave most preppers dead. Were they to survive even a fifty year supply would eventually run out. Disease and dental problems are so common but with a society it can be fixed. Without a society simple infections will kill you and cancer with a 90% recovery rate will become fatal.

Then there is the gun aspect. These people know that they will be targets but again the wrongly think that they can defend their homes and shelters. If a large organized group attacks them they will have missile and tech that can slice through any bunker within seconds. Unorganized and non-preppers will overwhelm them like it was The Walking Dead. Seriously in Los Angeles gang members of 10,000+ per gang have held feuds for 50+ years. Do you think one family with guns who shoots at them will win?

The show is entertaining for the bits of information that you can pick up and use in real life. Also staring at these characters is scary because these are the types who will cause problems in your neighborhood not the ones who will save it. I lived in New York City through several terrorists attacks, several blackouts, government shutdowns,and poverty & wealth rates that rival any other place. But guess what most people survived and thrived despite the headlines. Reminds me of this book where the abusive father hoarded coins and gold while his paranoia about the end of days got worse. He died and the family left the property never finding the hoard and needing therapy to live day by day.

Note: I did learn that Heirloom seeds means they will grow fruits and vegetables that will bear seeds like the original.

Find Our Missing

Find Our Missing

This docu-drama series on TV One is shedding light on people of color who go missing with little press or legal recourse. Hosted by the great actress S. Epatha Merkerson each episode is a mix of real life interviews and re-enactments.

Watching five episodes in a row was quite depressing. How can adult Americans with varying backgrounds can just disappear without a clue is amazing.

The particular problem with these missing people is the cultural racism in America. The first 24 hours that a person goes missing is important but local and federal authorities tend to label missing people of color as "runaways". Once this term is used priority shifts to more important cases.

Second is media bias which tends not to show missing people of color since they are not as considered photogenic. Third is the years of prejudice faced by people of color make a portion of them reluctant to "see something and say something". The term snitching is what is often used. Snitching is what criminals label people who help their communities in order to intimidate and continue their criminal ways. If you ever here someone say "no snitching" they are criminals or support criminal activities.

All this combined makes Find Our Missing a very important show. Hopefully this show will find a national audience. It is well done and the stories are very moving. I know I will keep an eye out and hope others do as well.

Game of Thrones Marathon

So after a year of hearing how great this show was I finally saw it. HBO had a marathon on one of there many channels. Watching back to back thanks to TiVo made it better, pausing to sleep of course.

Houses of the Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones is a fantasy drama  about waring lordships. The families are quite dysfunctional and tend to do the worst. The Lannisters are the worst. They are a bunch of power hungry, incestuous, tyrants who are winning politically. The Stark clan are the good guys who do not want the throne but are forced into the middle of everything.

While the families are distracted something evil is lurking in the far north. In the novel the things in the cold north are known as "the others" but it was changed to White Walkers for Lost reasons. Apparently there has been nine years of summer and the winter is coming. The winter may be long and with it will come the White Walkers and the possible end of the world. Oh these Walkers can make zombies so that is kind of bad.

Overall the show is okay. Season one of True Blood and Rome was much better. I do not see why so many people love this show. Yes it is well acted and the filming locations are nice but it lacks heart. The good and bad people lack dimension I am not emotionally involved. I root for the good guys only because the bad people are awful not because I care for them.

Game of Thrones: Is an epic, dynastic power struggle, set in a mythical kingdom, where competing families spin a web of conspiracy and betrayal in a feud to control the Iron Throne.

GCB

GCB: Pilot

Based on the book of a raunchier name. They already changed the show from the commercials. First they dropped all references to the B word. Then in the repossession scene they cut out the part where the repo guys take the coffee out of Amanda's hand.



The show is about the hypocrisy of Christian-middle of the country people. Amanda lost her criminal husband and is forced to go back to Dallas. Since Amanda left she has grown and evolved as a person. Unfortunately the ignorance and pettiness of the past remains, watch a Republican rally for real life examples.

Acting is well done and the little jokes are good, Bridget Sanchez-Fong had me rolling. I have been a big fan of Leslie Bibb since Popular.