A Chandler without Monica

By Jaclyn Hutchins

Dear Chandler-

I have missed you so much since Friends went off the air. Let’s be honest – you were the funny one…not just because you were called the “funny one” or because you used humor as a defense mechanism, but because you genuinely made me laugh the hardest. TV critics are saying your new show where you’ve assumed the new name of Ryan King is what would have happened if you had never married Monica. As much I loved the two of you together, I’m ready to watch you alone. So I’ll be tuning in Tuesdays at 9pm for “Go On” with fingers crossed and an impression of one of your classic dance moves prepared to celebrate what I hope is a new hit. 

Sincerely, 

Jaclyn

Jaclyn Hutchins lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and teaches high school English. She is asked if her teacher knows where she is least once a month despite being perilously close to 30. Jaclyn’s latest rule for herself is that she cannot watch TV until she has completed her run for the day. She runs her first half-marathon in October.

Bachelor Pad Finale, or Why You Should Never Underestimate the Quiet One

Last night's BP finale totally made up for the snoozefest that was all seven previous episodes. The last few minutes were so incredible that I gave a standing ovation from my living room.

But let's start from the beginning.

We start by catching up with the contestants and their "relationships". Kalon and Lindzi are still together, although Eika Rose make things supes awks by announcing that Kalon has been a man about Austin Town with all sorts of ladies.  Michael called his relationship with Rachel a summer camp relationship. Rachel thought it was eternal love. Whoops. Jaclyn is still mad at Rachel for sending her home. No one cares.
Jamie says some stuff but I have no idea what  because I'm too distracted by her face:

The makeup artist hates her

Blakely has a new tat sleeve, and things with her and Tony The Rebound are "going well". With a forced smile she announces that they're moving in together. But when Tony has something more to say, she looks like she might wet herself. And after Tony proposes with a NEIL LANE diamond (courtesy of ABC, I'm sure), this is Blakely's face:

Poor thing forgot her bra

They are going to make it for sure. Remember how Tony did all this for his son? Lucky kid gets an emotionally unstable 34 year old Hooters waitress for a new mommy.

Rachel shows up looking like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman before the shopping spree. Big mistake, Rachel. Huge. She ignores her partner and cries about Michael. No one cares.

Chris claims that he's already taken some major heat from his family for his treatment of females, so leave him alone guys because he's already heard it and he's grounded until graduation. "I hear it from my parents and I've had enough" says the 25 year old man incapable of making good choices without Mom and Dad near.

It's no surprise that Rachel and Nick win the votes of their housemates over Chris the Villain and his partner Sarah. But then it's time to send them to their deliberation rooms. In these rooms, there are two signs. One says "share", the other says "keep." If both Nick and Rachel choose "share", they split $250,000. If both choose "keep," neither gets the money. If one chooses "keep" and the other chooses "share", the partner who chooses "keep" gets every penny. We have to assume that Nick and Rachel have discussed this before hand and reached an agreement. They spend five minutes in their separate rooms looking concerned and conflicted, never very convincingly. The two walk back on stage holding their concealed signs. Rachel says, "You can't win without a partner" and reveals her sign reading "share." Then Nick makes this speech:

"I think it's really funny...ironic...that nobody sitting up there in the cast, nobody sitting in the audience, and nobody sitting at him watching this ever would have put their money on me being here and winning this. I was on nobody's radar. Nobody was ever on my team, and I did this all myself. Nobody ever cared how I was going to vote, what my plan was. I feel like I'm an outsider. I got here by myself and I did this all by myself. Rachel never wanted to be my partner. As a matter of fact she told me that she backed into this partnership, and she tried to leave on me three times, knowing that it would screw me over. Never once did she say to me, 'I'm going to stick it out for your sake'."

And then Nick reveals his sign that reads, "Keep."I get chills. The audience stands and applauds. The jaws of the cast drop in unison. An irate Rachel spews profanity and claims he never would have made it without her. She cries. No one cares. She calls him a schmuck, and he replies with what might be the greatest line in television history, "I'm a schmuck with $250,000." Bravo, sir. 

Nick made it through Bachelor Pad in very much the same way I made it through middle school, saying as little as possible and staying out of everyone's way. He was looked over as the quiet one, the loner, the partner no one wanted. And for that he won a quarter of a million dollars. 

The producers try extremely hard to elicit our sympathies for a devastated Rachel using a melancholy piano melody as back drop to the limo interview with a slick-haired Nick with a sinister smile intermittently cut with footage of a crying Rachel. It doesn't work. I'm so proud of the quiet guy who played the greatest game television has every seen. 

The credits roll over footage of contestant dissing Nick. Chris says, "Nick doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't seem like the smartest guy." I hope his dad spanked him for that one. 

Doctor UGH

By Erin Jackson

Prior to this season's premiere of Doctor Who, we were told two things:

1. Rory and Amy Pond will leave the series

2. There will be a new companion, whose name is Clara Oswin and will enter the series around the Christmas special

So imagine my surprise when in a mere 45 minutes, Oswin was introduced and practically killed off and we were so chock full of brackish Pond drama that I wanted to be rid of them as soon as possible.

Amy and Rory pond have been fun companions and Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill and Matt Smith have wonderful chemistry onscreen, probably since they were chums in real life before being cast together. And the storylines involving the Ponds' relationship have been lovely at times. But honestly? Enough already.

Amy's an edgy fashion model who is too busy smiling with her eyes to make Rory feel loved? Rory has always wanted kids but Amy can't have anymore because of… some River related thing? Seriously? These are ridiculous problems to give them as an excuse for their divorce, and then you have them reconcile in this episode. This serves no purpose, other than to make me want them to leave as soon as possible and lead me to google "rory williams death scene montage" to remember the good times.

Then, then you give us Oswin, who is like a breath of snaky, soufflé-scented fresh air only to turn her into a Dalek a few minutes later. A really cute, crazy-smart Dalek, but, still pretty terrifying and deadly. There are a number of ways in which this could play out (a River-like "spoilers!" timey wimey situation, her being called Clara in the press releases but not in the episode indicating there are multiple Oswins, maybe the Doctor will travel with a Dalek (OH PLEASE let that be the one)). But we will have to wait and see how and when this will be addressed and will have to wade through the Ponds' relationship issues for a good part of this season. I'm used to companions leaving in heartbreaking ways (I'm still not over what happened to Donna Noble and don't get me started on K-9; I know they're not dead, it doesn't make it any better), but never outstaying their welcome. This is new and bad and I don't want it.

Erin Floyd Jackson has been BFFs with TV since she was a wee one when she would play TV Network Executive. She went to school to learn about how and why TV is the way it is and hopes to someday tear someone's creative vision down and re-edit it to her liking. In the meantime, she and her husband live in Huntsville, Alabama and they occasionally "blog" here (http://inappropriateapplause.tumblr.com/) when they are not geeking out over all the SCIENCE! in the Rocket City.

Aack!

To Tide You Over

By Megan Geilman

Labor Day is over, the leaves are just starting to change color, the children are back to school and our fall lineup is about to begin once again. Fresh episodes to see, cliff hangers to be answered, relationships with our DVR to be rekindled…it’s perhaps the other most wonderful time of the year. But alas, the new seasons don’t air for a few more weeks and you're probably out of ideas for nightly viewing. You want something engaging, but nothing that will get you sucked in (think LOST) and mess up your carefully manicured viewing schedule set to begin. I hear ya, so I've reviewed a few one season shows that for various reasons are fairly high quality but did not get renewed and would be easily forgotten if we were still living B.H. (Before Hulu).

The Finder (13 episodes, available on Hulu)

As miffed as I was that the series premier hijacked one of my precious Bones episodes, marketing it as a spin-off series (I wasn’t aware you could simultaneously introduce completely new characters in a locale 1,200 miles away and spin them off into their own show but apparently you can) the show actually ended up being fairly enjoyable. My husband found the witty banter more palatable than that of Psych (which has a very similar premise) while I enjoyed the quirky set and interesting characters.
White guy genius finder is a Major Walter Sherman (played by Geoff Stults) who, after a brain injury while serving overseas, magically develops the OCD-like need to find things for people. He is ultra observant (a similarity to Psych) and often disregards the law, which makes for funny one-liners from his black man partner, Leo Knox (played by the late Michael Clarke Duncan) who has to tell him exactly which laws he is about to break so that he can weigh his options.
Although the last episode had the characters doing some radically un-characteristic things, the writers did a fairly good job wrapping things up and not leaving TOO many cliff hangers. The ending leaves you slightly wondering, but able to move on…something I give credit for.

Flash Forward (22 episodes, available on Hulu and Netflix)

The show has a tantalizing premise that is set up in the first episode: everyone in the entire world blacks out at the same time and has a 2 and a half minute “flash forward” of their future on a precise date. After everyone wakes up, people try to make sense of what the “future” may hold and what exactly the “future” is. It played better than it sounds…sort of. After rave reviews on the premier, viewership steadily dwindled as the season progressed. Yet many, like myself, held on as the show was still an engaging and intriguing enough to give it my Friday nights and to hopefully find out what actually goes down on that fated day…this is where the news gets really bad:
Be prepared for what is perhaps the biggest and most agonizing cliffhanger in television history. Spoiler alert: the finale ends HALF WAY through the big day. BIGGEST. LET DOWN. EVER. Whether the writers did it in retaliation for being cancelled or just plain old-fashioned laziness spite I do not know—but it sucks a big one. My guess is they were probably relieved they didn’t have to wrap up the premise of THE ENTIRE SHOW. Clearly I’m still incensed about this, but it was a fun watch while it lasted and if you can handle the anger at being cut off, let er’ rip. It is fairly addicting though and at 22 episodes, it might cut into your fall viewership so consider yourself warned.

Awake (13 episodes, available on Hulu)

Perhaps not as engaging as the above mentioned shows, I left this one for last because it does the best job of doing a one season show: great acting, pretty good writing, interesting plot line, and A SOLID, NO CLIFF HANGERS ENDING.
Jason Isaacs does an amazing job as LA Cop who after an accident, can’t tell when he is awake and when he is asleep—experiencing two simultaneous realities where in one his wife is still alive, and in the other, his son. He uses clues from each reality to help him solve crimes in the other and at the same time trying to figure out how his family got in the accident in the first place, which I won’t spoil for you.
I was only slightly sad to see this show cancelled, but not really, because it had a finite premise—I mean, the guy can’t go on forever not knowing if he’s in a real reality or not, especially when he already starts having hallucinations in the first season. It just wasn’t sustainable—luckily the writers saw this and did a good, albeit somewhat silly, job of wrapping up everything nicely.

Megan Geilman has had an on-again-off-again relationship with television since she was young and her parents occasionally let her stay up to watch Star Trek and X-Files. She lives in a small artsy borough just outside Philadelphia, PA with her husband and unborn child. She is in the painfully slow process of getting her interior design business off the ground, but also does graphic design, if you're into that.

Do they see what I see?

It's a rare occasion when I completely disagree with the Project Runway judges. Thursday must have been a blue moon because I found it unbelievable that Elena's creation was a top contender:

A harnessed baby doll dress

While Gunnar's dress nearly sent him home:

The judges' ctiques were puzzling. Nina said, "you've done this very beautifully and it's very elegant, but I've seen this dress before. No such comment was made of Fabio's standard LBD, a garment we've all seen and worn many times.

Michael Kors said, "I think it looks like a dress that they carry at Lord and Taylor already." Remember the challenge was to create a dress that would fit in the Lord and Taylor collection. Michael's statement only affirms that Gunnar nailed it. Kors added, "It's kind of Mother of the Bride." As a bride, how would you feel if your mother wore a mid-thigh length, sheer topped dress? Yeah. Me too. 

Maybe Gunnar's dress wasn't the best. I think Christopher deserved to win with his lovely gown:

But Gunnar certainly did a better job than Alicia, who has met to make anything I've liked:

And is certainly a better person than Ven, the fat man who made a woman feel terrible about herself for not fitting into a model-sized belt:

Gunnar did not deserve to be the final man left on the stage, preparing himself to head to the workroom and pack up his stuff. 

Luckily the judges had enough sense to keep all the contestants one more week, saving Gunnar at the last minute, bless his heart. But I have to wonder, what poor judgments lie ahead? What are these people seeing that I'm not?

Smart is the new Sexy

By Allyson and Jon Hubner

I grew up reading the exploits of Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot (Shout out to my birthday buddy, Agatha Christie!). While I haven’t written any theses on the subject, I do have certain expectations for any adaptations of my beloved British mysteries- No! No! Bad Guy Ritchie, no more books for you!

Fortunately there are some adaptations that are both entertaining and intelligent, particularly the BBC’s ongoing Sherlock series. Remember Sherlock Holmes, the detective based on a doctor written by a doctor who also did some detective investigations?

Well this Sherlock series is the creation of the writers of Dr. Who, and it’s a 21^st century adaptation that’s fast paced, well written, and well acted, while remaining true to the spirit of Conan Doyle’s works.

Take for example our dear Detective Holmes, played excellently by Benedict Cumberbatch (his full name is Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch, and yes it’s almost too British). Our new Holmes is just as lank, intelligent, manic and egotistical as his literary counterpart, but he’s also more humorous, fallible and at times even playful. This makes him a more multidimensional, believable and likeable character than his predecessor.

The show allows us to experience the inner logic of a genius by using artfully depicted visualizations of Sherlock’s thought processes. Mind you this is without the constant voiceover of Robert Downey Iron Man that made each Ritchie movies about 30 to 300 minutes longer than they should have been.

We also get to see what it is like to be a genius who can be an ass, forgetting the names of his best friend’s girlfriends, intruding on dates, and robotically analyzing people to the point of tears.

Processing and participating in all of this is Sherlock’s best friend Dr. John Watson, Afghanistan combat-vet turned blogger. This Watson, played by Martin Freeman from the British version of The Office,  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the upcoming Hobbit, is no longer the subservient sidekick but a doctor with bite. This makes him a worthy best friend to the peerlessly intelligent Sherlock. We even get to see Watson do surgery…with a gun.

Then there are the familiar characters of Inspector Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes, Mrs. Hudson, Moriarty, and Irene Adler, all of them refreshing in their modernizations. I personally love it when Mrs. Hudson is paranoid that the cops will find her “herbal soothers…they’re just for my hip!”. When not worrying about drug busts or finding human body parts in her refrigerator, Mrs. Hudson is being held hostage by CIA agents- I wonder what she charges for rent.

Currently there are two seasons, with the first season available on Netflix. Each season is three episodes apiece, but a quality 90 minutes apiece making each closer to a movie than a TV show. Each episode is based on the more famous Sherlock Holmes stories, and we can expect that the three more episodes currently in production for fall 2013 will be as well.

Allyson Hamacher lives in Phoenix, AZ with her husband, Jon, her dog, and multiple projects in varying states of doneness. She is starting a Masters of Science program at Arizona State University, and looks unsettlingly smug in her student ID picture. She and Jon strongly disagree about whether the word "filthy" means "dirty" or "extra dirty." Jon Hubner is a student living in Phoenix, Arizona. He loves to hike and go on drives with his dog, Growlbert Einstein.