Hangin’ at The Office

By Mike Sadowski | Published: March 11, 2010 | 0 Comments

It’s safe to say Stroudsburg High School grad Danny Chun is living the life I would have loved to lead.

He’s been in Hollywood for six years, and in that time, he’s written and produced The Simpsons, and for the last year, he’s on the writing staff of The Office. He also had the honor of writing part 1 of last week’s Office, The Delivery, where Jim and Pam had their baby. Yes, it’s an honor to write something like that, and Chun knows it as a fan of the show before he started working there.

So if Danny will excuse me, I’d like to switch lives with him now.

No?

Can’t blame a guy for trying.

In addition to talking to me about the basics for a story that probably will be in tomorrow’s Pocono Record, he took some extra time to answer some insider-type questions, the things you want hear about but don’t have anyone to ask who really knows the answer. But Chun has the answers. Well, he’s got some of them. He’s pretty honest in his answers, so enjoy a quick minute or two with a local-boy-done-good:

It's hard to see, but that's the sign board for the building of Dunder Mifflin. You'll just have to trust me.

It's hard to see, but that's the sign board for the building of Dunder Mifflin. You'll just have to trust me.

Me: With the movie careers of many of the show’s stars taking off — Steve Carrel (Michael), John Krasinski (Jim), Ed Helms (Andy), Rainn Wilson (Dwight) — how long do you think the show can last with its cast intact?
Chun: That question is above my pay grade, but so far we’ve been pretty successful at accommodating the actors’ movie careers. There are production hiatuses where the cast is free to act in whatever movies they want.

Me: Do you think The Office would be able to continue with a new cast?
Chun: That’s always scary, but we’ve had great success with introducing new cast members. Ed Helms and Ellie Kemper (who plays new secretary Kelly) come to mind. So we feel that we’re a show that can phase-in new actors and keep the viewers interested.

Me: As a long-time fan of the show (he saw every episode before he started working there) you must have realized the importance of The Delivery to fans. How much of a rush was it to write that episode knowing how important it was?
Chun: It was certainly an honor, but I didn’t have much time to really relish it. The challenges were too pressing and the schedule was too tight. Baby episodes are notoriously difficult, so we really worked hard to do it well, in a way that was original and also consistent with our show.

Me: Was there extra pressure because it was so important?
Chun: Maybe, but for someone like me who imagines pressure even when it’s not there, it felt the same as ever.

Me: Do you try to take the fans into account when you’re writing?
Chun: It’s hard because the fans don’t have a consensus opinion. I wish they’d all just get organized and present me with one opinion; that’d be a lot easier. In reality I just listen to my own opinion, because I was and still am a big fan of the show

Me: Why is “The Office” the only show on TV where the stars are also the writers and producers? B.J. Novak (Ryan), Mindy Kaling (Kelly) and Paul Liberstein (Toby) and write and produce episodes.
Chun: Well, Tina Fey does it on 30 Rock. But for all its upsides (you get to have really talented people contribute to the show in multiple ways), the practicalities of the production schedule make it a really brutal thing to ask of a person. Paul, BJ, and Mindy work the longest hours of anybody. It’s amazing they aren’t huge jerks.

Me: Have you ever been asked to act on the show?
Chun: It’s been floated casually. I’m holding out for a really juicy role.

Me: Seth Gordon, who directed King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, one of my favorite movies of the last decade, directed The Delivery for you. Why does “The Office” attract such big-time directors? Jason Reitman, Joss Whedon and Harold Ramis also have directed multiple episodes. That’s extremely rare for a TV show. Why does “The Office” attract such big-time directors?
Chun: A lot of directors we’ve attracted have been fans of the show. And when they’re between marathon movie projects, the commitment we ask of them (a couple weeks) is probably a nice change of pace. Seth was awesome, by the way. Really great at interpreting the script and helping the actors deliver great performances. 

So there it is. Next time Chun writes an episode that makes the air, we’ll see if he’ll answer some questions about that episodes.

As long as we’re talking about The Office, we might as well throw in some Parks and Recreation talk and the casting of Adam Scottto show up at the end of this season and then become a regular. Faithful PopRox readers will know I’ve been a fan of Scott since he was on Boy Meets World in the 90s, and his career resurgence on Party Down, Tell Me You Love Me and in smaller parts of Step Brothers, Eastbound and Down and The Great Buck Howard has been more than welcome. He’s just a funny guy in a snarky way — that’s the humor I love. So getting him on to a show I religiously watch and am almost getting ready to call  the best comedy on Thursday nights is just plain fun.

maybe it's best to let jack go.

maybe it's best to let jack go.

Maybe this is something we all know should be done, we just don’t want to see it happen. And none of want to be coffin maker for Jack Bauer’s funeral. There isn’t a fan within Jack kill zone that won’t admit 24 is a shell of itself these days. The TV show that once kept us so glued to our seats you could see our butt prints in the couch is pretty close to a big 24 joke right now. You know where and how this show is going. Jack will reluctantly help, when he gets close to finding information his key witness(es) will die, then comes the twist, then comes Jack wrecking shop. It hasn’t been the same since he walked off into the sunset to close out Day 4. So instead of just trudging along and putting out an inferior product, maybe it would be best for everyone involved to just go their separate ways and let the next version of 24, whatever that may be, to enter the fray. We’ll always watch — but that doesn’t mean we should. It’s the Michael Jordan issue. Would you rather have seen his final image as the guy pushing off on Bryon Russell and winning a sixth championship, or would you rather see him chucking up 20 footers for the Wizards, getting beat like a drum on defense every other play. So start preparing yourself for life without Jack. It could be coming pretty soon. Then all we’ll have to look forward to is a movie – but not before Michael Madsen guest stars. Vic Vega and Jack? Together? The two greatest fictional torture experts of this generation? Sign me up.

If it weren’t for the great decision to delay Shutter Island from an October to a February release, I’d be all over Wall Street 2 getting bumped from April to September. But Wall Street 2 has the same kinds of credentials as Shutter Island — bankable opening, famous director, great cast. It also has something Shutter Island didn’t have — a built-in audience waiting 20 years for a sequel. This movie is probably going to open well whenever it gets released, so if you have a good reason — and I guess being accepted at Cannes is a decent excuse — then it’s probably best to wait. Opening it in the summer would be a disaster, this isn’t a summer movie. So September sounds just about right. Don’t be surprised if come June it gets pushed back another couple weeks to get it closer to Oscar consideration. Although the fact that it hasn’t been moved to October or November right from the jump probably means it doesn’t have Oscar potential.

I’ve never bought a Barbie in my life (as far as you know). But let’s just say I’m saving up some money for these new Barbies coming out. Let’s hope Joan is anatomically correct.

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The end of the Coreys

By Mike Sadowski | Published: March 10, 2010 | 0 Comments

Generation X hasn’t had one of it’s major icons that it completely owned die yet. Not really.

Michael Jackson rose to extreme fame during the 80s, but first tasted celebrity in the 70s. Maybe I’m missing someone, but all the members of Brat Pack are still alive, Madonna looks like she’s going to try to live to be 150 and Kirk Cameron is quoting Bible verses on TV every weekend. Kurt Cobain? Chris Farley? Who would have thought they would ever be in the same sentence with Corey Haim?

ah, younger days.

ah, younger days.

So when we found out that Corey Haim died this morning at 38, it stung a little.

No, it stung a lot.

It’s surprising how things like that hit you, especially when you can’t point to one good movie Haim had. He had some fun roles, yeah. License to Drive was a Sadowski household staple, but Lost Boys was a tad overrated, and I don’t even remember ever seeing Lucas. At least not all of it. If it’s possible for someone to actually ride Corey Feldman’s coattails, he did. Feldman was the one with iconic 80s roles from Goonies, Gremlins and Stand By Me — Haim didn’t have anything like that on his resume. The last time I really wanted to see something he did was Blown Away so that I could see Nicole Eggert naked. That’s it.

the best reason to see a corey haim movie

the best reason to see a corey haim movie

So why am I so broken up that he died, perhaps of an accidental drug overdose? And why did I first decide to refer to him as an “icon”? He’s fringe icon at best, tied to our memories only because he was part of “The Coreys,” whether they were good actors or not. Together, they were the teen movie idols of the 80s, much like Kirk Cameron and Michael J. Fox were on TV. In the first true age of Tiger Beat and teen magazines, they were on every cover of every teen magazine at every grocery store. Whether they were good actors or not didn’t matter — they had a cool name, they were attractive and teens latched on to them for whatever reason.

So call Haim one of the first teen idols of the information generation. It’s just too bad we couldn’t ever call him a major movie star. And if I’m missing someone who died who comes on the level of Corey Haim, leave it in the comment section.

There’s a couple things I hold sacred, or at least did at one time before they were trampled into the ground when Powers That Be realized there was money to be made. One Shining Moment, the song that traditionally ends the NCAA Tournament, was one of those things. I was all-in on the tourney by the time I was 12, when Indiana beat Syracuse in 1987.  Since 1987, it’s been my favorite sporting event. I usually take the Friday of the first weekend off and go to a bar to watch every game. In college, I skipped class for two days and bet on every game. It’s the best mix of sports excitement, betting tension, social interaction and alcohol consumption we have in America today. The original One Shining Moment typified the best parts of the entire tournament — great song, great highlights, the perfect way to end the best three weeks in basketball. When I was too young to stay up until midnight to watch One Shining Moment, I’d tape it and watch it the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next week, and the next month. Even the piano music before it’s played gives me chills and I used it for an audio project in college. It’s easily in my top 20 songs of all time. It’s become so famous that now, people pound their chest in the tournament just so they can be included in the clip montage in the hopes they can be the highlight during the “Feel the beat of your heart” lyric. Then around 1994, CBS realized that it was becoming one of the biggest things about the game, so they brought in new singers, changed some lyrics and now the song sucks. Well, not sucks, but it’s not the same. So Jennifer Hudson signing it this year-- I’m not on board. Why ruin it even more than they already have? Just go back to the original David Barrett version and we’ll all be happy. It makes me extremely angry that I can’t find the correct version of the 1990 version after UNLV beat Duke — the best verison after my favorite tournament -- but I know I have it on tape somewhere and I’m gonna figure out some way to get it on YouTube for every one’s viewing pleasure. Tell me you don’t get chills watching and listening to the original:

Or the version from after North Carolina won the 1993, a big moment in my life:

As long as we’re talking about the tournament, here is the daily reminder of what is going to be daily reminders over the next week to join in the Yahoo! bracket challenge group I set up for PopRox fans. Follow the link, go to “sign-up” then hit “join group” and enter the group ID 26876 and the password poprox and you’re joined up. I’m efforting some prizes for the winner.

Have you ever shushed someone in a movie? I go with long, piercing scowls instead of shushing, and that usually works. Let’s clear up one major misconception about people who talk in movies — it’s not young people. Young people talk before the movie. They talk to each other, they talk on their cell phones, they talk to the screen. But once the movie starts, they normally shut the eff up. Talkers are usually adults. Umm, older adults, who don’t realize they’re even talking as loud as they are. I go to a lot of movies, more than the normal person. Not as much as I used to, but a lot nevertheless. This isn’t a generalization or a stereotype, this is hands-on research and observation. So if you think you might be a movie talker, please stop. Now. Right now. It’s only two hours, you can talk about it as much as you want after. You can even email me and I’ll talk to you about it all you want, even if I haven’t seen it. Anything to keep from ruining someone else’s movie experience.

not a great track record these days

not a great track record these days

After pulling it from the schedule recently, ABC has decided to cancel its first-season show the fogotten. That’s 0-for-2 for Christian Slater in his TV comeback attempt after last season’s hideous My Own Worst Enemy. Never saw one second of it because it’s produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, but doesn’t seem like I was missing anything.

I thought the Oscar tribute to the people who died seemed a little thin for all the celebrity deaths we had in 2009. Now we know why — because it decided to leave people out like Farrah Fawcett. Hey, at least she was in the South Park Dead Celebrities episode. What more do you want? Put a gun to my head, and I can’t name a Farrah Fawcett movie. Wait! I can remember one, Cannonball Run. If that’s the reason her family thinks she should have been included in the tribute … well, that’s kinda desperate. In an effort to make sure everyone is mentioned next year, perhaps they should get Jack Nicholson to come out and just read a year’s worth of obits from the LA Times.

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Is your favorite show coming back?

By Mike Sadowski | Published: March 9, 2010 | 0 Comments

A couple quick PopRox programming notes:

--I’ve set up the official PopRox NCAA tournament bracket at Yahoo. I did it last year at ESPN, and it didn’t work out too well because I started it too late. This year, I’m getting the jump on it. It’s free to play, it’s just for PopRox bragging rights. You need a Yahoo! ID, but that’s free too if you don’t have one. Maybe I’ll be able to reach deep in the PopRox prize vault to find something for the winner. So to sign up, head over to Yahoo’s tournament page, click the “sign up” button, then click on the “join group” option. When prompted, the Group ID is 26876 and the password is poprox. Join in today! There is no limit on how many people can sign up. Plus, I’m just going to annoy you for the next week with constant reminders about joining, so just do it now and save yourself the trouble of hearing it over and over.

--Friday will be the fourth annual PopRox tradition of writing about the Scranton St. Patrick’s Day Parade. It’s the only guide I know of that gives a yearly assessment of what goes on at the parade every year, including a beginner’s bar guide if you haven’t been there before. It’s the only day of year I allow myself to talk about a non-Poconos-related regional topic. Yeah, it’s that big. Plus, I’m too excited about it to write about anything else. Look for it Friday.

that's danny chun on the set of the office. he took that for the paper yesterday.

that's danny chun on the set of the office. he took that for the paper yesterday.

--Yesterday I talked to Danny Chun, a Stroudsburg HS grad who is living my dream as a writer on The Office. There will be a story about Danny in Thursday’s paper, but I’m going to put some extra tidbits from the interview in PopRox either tomorrow or Thursday. Just some inside stuff any fan of The Office or TV in general would love to know. Look for it then.

Today’s links:

Maybe the first weekend in March is becoming the new July 4th weekend. Five out of the last six years and counting, a major studio release racked up huge money — including this weekend, when Alice and Wonderland scored the sixth-biggest opening weekend of all time. It’s the only opening weekend in the top 20 that didn’t happen in either the summer or the holiday movie season.

This first weekend of March is turning into quite the movie bonanza:

2005: The Pacifier, $30.6 million

2007: Wild Hogs, $39.7 million. Closer to the date (March 9-11), however, is 300, which surprisingly made $70.9 million and set the March record.

2008: 10,000 B.C., $35.9 million

2009: Watchmen, $55.2 million

the sad part is, this isn't the weirdest johnny depp has looked.

the sad part is, this isn't the weirdest johnny depp has looked.

2010: Alice in Wonderland, $116 million

The one constant in all of these release weekends — they’ve been the only major movies released. No industry copies more than Hollywood, so this probably will be the last year you see it with one release. Currently, there are no releases scheduled for that spot next year. That should last about a week until something gets moved out of an already crowded holiday season. Tron? Green Hornet? Red Dawn? Something big will be there within the next couple months.

Not surprisingly, Oscar ratings were up this year withthe interest in one of the most popular movies of all time in the running. The Oscar people should be careful not to come out and say it’s because of the 10 nominees, because it isn’t. Not unless Avatar would have been excluded withfive nominees, which I don’t think it would have. With five nominees, the best pic noms would have been Avatar, Hurt Locker, Up in the Air, Inglourious Basterds and Precious. That would have been a pretty interesting list without the superfluousness of The Blind Side.

The weirdest moment of the night apparently had somewhat local ties when the weird lady ambushed the stage and stole the podium from Roger Ross Williams, an Easton native. If this had happened during the best picture award, people would have gone crazy. Best documentary short film? Not so much.

That closes the chapter on 2009 movies, so it’s time to start getting excited for 2010 movies and I’m completely digging the new Iron Man 2 trailer. I was critical of the first trailer because it seemed like it was pretty much rehashing the first movie and was, for the most part, ignoring the new people and characters involved. But now we get longer looks at Scarlett Johansson, Mickey Rourke, Sam Rockwell and Don Cheadle in full War Machine garb. After watching it, I felt like I was on one of those Windows7 commercials because it felt like they listened to my complaints and designed the new trailer around me. Hey, wait a minute … is Jon Favreau a PopRox reader?!?!?! Just in case — “Am I the ultimate fighting champion yet?” He’ll know what that means.

Fringe fans, be happy. The sci-fi show, which has done nothing but gotten better in the season-and-a-half it’s been on Fox, has been renewed for a third season. Surprisingly, there were questions surrounding the future of the show past May for two reasons -- it’s an expensive show to produce and it’s gotten trounced this year in the most competitive night on TV. The expensive complaint is legit, especially when a show isn’t pulling in the big numbers. Every one is cutting back, and Fringe should be no different. The Thursday night thing, well, Fringe just can’t do anything about that. Fox couldn’t possibly have expected Fringe to just jump in to Thursdays and kick some Grey’s Anatomy tail, but because it didn’t, people started to worry. Fox did the right thing and made sure it would be back in the lineup next year. Quality wise, it probably deserves a renewal more than any other show on TV because of how much it’s improved.

get to know these guys. they'll be back next year.

get to know these guys. they'll be back next year.

Same goes for Community, which keeps getting funnier and deserved another season. You could easily call it the live-action version of Family Guy since its plots and jokes are so steeped in pop culture — really, Color of Money? — but it’s clever, quick and funny. Shows like this deserve time for people to realize just how funny they are. Office and 30 Rock also got their renewals for next season. That didn’t happen already? Guess I just assumed it. Weird that Parks and Rec got its early pick-up but NBC made 30 rock and Office sweat it out a little longer. Then again, Parks and Rec has made me laugh more this year than either Office or 30 Rock.

We already know where Brothers and Sisters is heading — and it’s not pretty. Despite the exit of Rob Lowe at the end of this year, the show got another year for the Walkers to fight and drink and talk too fast for an hour each week. This year has been better than the previous year, but that doesn’t make it a good year. The bar wasn’t set remarkably high. Is it even worth it if Lowe isn’t in the cast though? He’s easily the best part of the show this year, even if he’s being misused as a whole. When we’re left to deal with Walkers and only Walkers, it’s anybody’s guess where this show goes.

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bigelow’s big night

By Mike Sadowski | Published: March 8, 2010 | 0 Comments

Has anyone ever had a better Oscar night than Kathryn Bigelow?

The only thing she didn’t do during the four-hour telecast Sunday was cure cancer. Wait, did she? In the span of four hours, consider the following:

not a bad night for bigelow. not bad at all.

not a bad night for bigelow. not bad at all.

–She watched and smiled ear-to-ear and clapped profusely while her little movie about an American Army bomb defusing team in Iraq started nabbing awards it wasn’t supposed to, highlighted by a surprising nod for best original screenplay, an award everyone — including me — thought was destined to end up in Quentin Tarantino’s hands. She was getting more face time than Steve Martin and no one at last night’s show looked like they were having more fun than her.

–She became the first female director to win best director ever for a movie first scheduled to be released in 2008, but then pushed back to 2009. How close was it to being released in 2008? The movie was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards in 2009, for actors Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie. It’s one of the few movies ever that has been doing the award circuit for two years. It’s almost impossible for a movie released in the early part of the year to be considered for an Academy Award, but Hurt Locker did it on the strength of endless word of mouth. Neither she nor the movie was even nominated for a Spirit Award in 2009, but it won the Oscars a year later. That’s like LeBron James not being nominated for best basketball player, but winning best athlete.

–While she was still backstage after winning best director — clearly stunned and still trying to absorb the gravity of what just happened — Tom Hanks popped out of the background holding an envelope and in such a hurry he might as well have been wearing a track suit. Because of how long the show was running, he quickly opened the envelope and announced best picture belonged to Hurt Locker, the movie that so far has made just more than 2 percent of what Avatar has made at the North American box office ($15 million vs. $720 million). It was the biggest David vs. Goliath win in Oscar history. She was pushed back out on stage and forced to take another Oscar with a look on her face like, “You have to be effing kidding me, another one?”

–In doing all of it, she got to show up her ex-husband, James Cameron. Read any story you want to about how they’re still friends and they’re on great terms – but that has to be pretty dang sweet. You think Kim Basinger was OK with Alec Baldwin hosting? Did she, a former Oscar winner, even show up? Bigelow seems like too cool of a lady to get up on the podium, point to her ex and say “Neener neener neener!” and flip him the bird, but there is some kind of healthy medium in there somewhere. Like when she gets home and tells her boyfriend, “I got that dirty SOB. Linda Hamilton my butt crack!” And she deserves to. I wanted them to keep showing Cameron during the best picture acceptance so you could see him pulling out his cell phone and texting her, “Can I finally stop the alimony payments now???”

when did the granddaughter from Titanic turn into the grandmother?

when did the granddaughter from Titanic turn into the grandmother?

–But most importantly, she completely showed up Cameron’s current wife Suzy Amis, who has aged 40 years in the last 15 and currently looks like a grandmother. I absolutely cannot believe that’s Edie Finneran from Usual Suspects. If you put these two women next to each other, you’d say Amis was was 65 and Bigelow was 45. If they were in a hotness boxing match, the ref would have stopped it in the first round like Bigelow was Tyson and Amis was Michael Spinks. Truth is, Amis just turned 48 and Bigelow is 58. So the biggest director in the world traded down and just lost to his ex-wife twice in a span of five minutes on the biggest Hollywood night of the year. The King of the World is going to need some time to recover from this.

Which brings us to Cameron and the movie that obviously has major commercial appeal, but just didn’t seem to resonate with the Hollywood crowd. Now we’re left wondering — did his theatrics during the Titanic Oscars and his subsequent brashness about the quality of Avatar have something to do with him being left cheering for his ex-wife last night? Th guy already has a couple Oscars and has more money than God if God won the lottery, so he had no problem going home last night and sleeping on his water bed stuffed with million-dollar bills. But when Amis greets him this morning, she might have to wipe off the last bits of egg off the side of his cheek.

Here’s how the rest of my Oscar picks went:

Best picture: In early February, Avatar was a lock among locks. It certainly seemed like there was an “it’s too popular and not that good” backlash against it though. Then it started losing at awards shows — and didn’t even make the Orange Street top 20, a no-no for any movie in contention. Thoroughly happy for Hurt Locker, even though I picked Avatar.

Best actor, actress: Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock only had to show up and you knew what was happening. Picked them both.

i'm going to have to insist that this be the last time any hosts from a vh1 reality show win an oscar.

i'm going to have to insist that this be the last time any hosts from a vh1 reality show win an oscar.

Supporting actor, actress: Ditto, but at least there was a little more intrigue here since no one knows who Christoph Waltz is and Mo’Nique decided to stick it to the man while not campaigning for the award. Picked both of them.

Adapted screenplay: This was the one I thought would muck up every one’s office pool. I stuck with Up in the Air because I left the theater after seeing Precious and needed to go right to the bar. I hate when movies make me do that (Passion of the Christ and Requiem for a Dream were some others). Plus, I thought Up in the Air was a movie that would have been poison in lesser hands. Anyone could have adapted Precious. But it was a weak category, so I’m fine with Precious winning.

Original screenplay: My only complaint of the night in the big categories. I liked Hurt Locker a lot — but I didn’t necessarily love the script. It was pretty run-of-the-mill as a script, it was the execution of that script that made the movie great. That’s why Kathryn Bigelow 100 percent deserved her director Oscar. But Inglourious Basterds was a script that only comes along once every couple of years. Original, funny, tense, and emotional all at the same time, it was the one script this year that stood out. It deserved this award. Maybe Hollywood didn’t like the movie changing history, but isn’t that what made it great in the first place? Great original scripts take an easy concept — Jews hunting Nazis, anyone can think of that — and turn it on its ear. I’m an unabashed Tarantino fan, but he got suffered through a major screw job on this one.

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Oscar picks not as hard as usual — 10 movies or not

By Mike Sadowski | Published: March 5, 2010 | 0 Comments

Making Oscar picks is hard. Kind of like how hard it’s going to be for Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin to make a cohesive, thoughtful joke Sunday night.

5 or 10 ... doesn't matter

5 or 10 ... doesn't matter

First, you have to see all the movies. Then you have to formulate your own opinions on those movies. Then you watch all the other awards shows to see who wins. Then you have to read — and be confused by — every two-bit Joe Six Pack making their own lame-brained picks. By the time you finally get around to making your own picks, you might as well be coming out of a half-hour spin cycle. Your brain is spinning, deteriorated mush.

Those of us who enjoy making Oscar picks every year and sacrificing their minds to the washing machine treatment were worried this year they’d be thrown in the dryer this year because of extra five movies tossed into the best picture race.

At least that’s what we thought.

What we forgot to realize is that there is a reason there were only five best picture nominees in the past — because there are only five movies that can possibly win. Usually, you can eliminate two of the five. Did anyone really give The Reader or Frost/Nixon a chance last year? So even though there are five new movies, that doesn’t make it any harder. It only means you use more ink easily crossing off an extra five movies in a heartbeat.

BEST PICTURE

my life's goal to be the last one to see avatar is working so far

my life's goal to be the last one to see avatar is working so far

In politics, the thing the favorites fear most is splitting the vote. No favorite wants to see more than one opponent in any race. Usually, one campaign makes a deal with another campaign to make sure it doesn’t happen. That’s what Avatar has to be worried about right now, more candidates effing up its path to the Oscar. Here’s the good news — there’s no way District 9, the Blind Side, An Education or A Serious Man have any shot whatsoever of winning best picture, and there isn’t a person in Hollywood that would vote for any of them. At least there better not be. There isn’t even much competition from the semi-contenders like Up, Up in the Air, Precious and Inglourious Basterds. This comes down to two movies: Avatar and Hurt Locker. It’s setting up perfectly for Avatar to get best picture but for Kathryn Bigelow to get best director. And that’s how you split the vote. NEXT IN LINE: Hurt Locker.

BEST DIRECTOR

Bigelow just seems to have the juice right now. There’s no way it’s getting best picture over Avatar, and there is no way it’s getting best original screenplay over Inglourious Basterds. This movie just can’t go home empty-handed, so Bigelow gets her due here. NEXT IN LINE: James Cameron.

BEST ACTOR

hey honey roy, was that the guy from hurt locker in your movie or what?

hey honey roy, was that the guy from hurt locker in your movie or what?

Congratulations to Jeff Bridges, the winner of the fourth annual It’s His/Her Time Honorary Oscar won by Martin Scorcese in 2007, the Coens in 2008 and Kate Winslet in 2009. The Oscars have started this strange trend and it appears they have no plans to stop it. I still haven’t seen Crazy Heart yet so I have no idea whether he deserves the Oscar or not, but somewhere in the last three months, Jeff Bridges became the most popular actor in movie history who “deserves” this Oscar, apparently for his career body of work. I love The Dude as much as anyone else does, but let’s remember this is the same guy mucked up Blown Away, one of the top 5 most disappointing movies I’ve ever seen in the theater — and I only paid a dollar to see it. NEXT IN LINE: Jeremy Renner, Hurt Locker. Am I the only one who keeps thinking Renner was Robby Gillon in Diggstown? Just thought I’d ask.

BEST ACTRESS

Can we have two It’s His/Her Time Honorary Oscars in one show? Sandra Bullock hopes so, even though she should be disqualified for making All About Steve and The Proposal this year too. Don’t think voters don’t know this, but she’s too well-liked to have that count against her. If there was any legitimate competition the rest of her yearly career choices would hurt — but there’s just no one there to step up and take her spot. NEXT IN LINE: Gabourey Sidibe for Precious, and the chances of a 17-year-old in her first movie winning are about as good as the Academy holding a recount and giving Clerks II best picture for 2006.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Here were my exact words after the opening 20-minute scene of Inglourious Basterds and Christoph Waltz’s performance in that 20 minutes: “Jsdgfmgnbdgzz!” Little did I know he was only getting started -- he trumped himself for the rest of the movie. Now that’s a winner. NEXT IN LINE: Uh oh, we could be talking an unprecedented THREE His Time Oscars if Woody Harrelson can score the upset for The Messenger. But it seems like he’s got about 10 years before that talk when he stars in Ron Shelton’s movie about the seamier side of backgammon.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

The talk lately is that Mo’Nique isn’t campaigning enough for the Oscar, instead staying in Atlanta. You know, where her job is and all. So if she doesn’t win, you know why. Then you can officially boycott the Oscars for the rest of the your life because you’ll know it’s political garbage. Far and away the best performance I’ve see this year regardless of gender or category. In fact, she should bring Becky Buckwild as her date so if she doesn’t win, Buckwild can storm the stage Kanye-style and steal the statue. Cuz dats how Buckwild rollz! NEXT IN LINE: Anna Kendrick was pretty good in Up in the Air. But because you can’t get enough Becky Buckwild:

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

My only regret about this category is that they don’t say where each movie finished because I’d like to see the looks on the Coens faces when A Serious Man finishes sixth out of five movies. The more I think about A Serious Man, the more it makes me angry. It was like Barton Fink all over again, expect it wasn’t in any way funny. Barton Fink was crazy weird and plodding like Serious Man, but at least it was funny. I laughed more watching Precious than A Serious Man. Bad one-two punch of Burn After Reading and A Serious Man for the Coens. You always wonder why the Coen Brothers don’t make more money with their really brilliant stuff — Fargo ($24.6 million), Big Lebowski ($17.5 million), Miller’s Crossing ($5 million), even No Country for Old Men ($74.3 million despite winning best picture and staying in theaters for about three months) — but it’s because of movies like A Serious Man. People don’t want to pay for a Coen Brothers movie because they don’t want to take the chance it might be another Serious Man. Anyway, this is Quentin Tarantino’s award to lose. NEXT IN LINE: Up, because that would open the door for Fantastic Mr. Fox to take the lesser award of best animated feature.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Jason Reitman is working on one heck of a resume right now. Three major movies directed, three home runs (Up in the Air, Juno, Thank You for Smoking). He’s making his way up the list of directors whose movies you have to see no matter how silly the premise. There was probably ridiculous amounts of pressure on him to make Juno 2 and 3, but to his credit, he decided to adapt some unknown book about a loner who loves being a loner. Good times! Somehow, he turned it into the most interesting of the year. It didn’t hurt that he grabbed the guy in Hollywood who seems to have written the book on good career decisions, George Clooney. NEXT IN LINE: Would it be too hacky if I said this category is “up in the air”? Yeah? Whatever. Anyway, it’s the one category where I can easily see any nominee winning. If you’re in any Oscar pools, this is the category that’s most likely going to make or break your picks. I’m sticking with Up in the Air, but Precious could make a push, and even District 9 has an outside shot because of its populist, politically correct undertones, a la Crash a couple years ago in the best picture race. If District 9 had been staged in Los Angeles, it would be the winner. Seriously.

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Final Nip/Tuck thoughts …

By Mike Sadowski | Published: March 4, 2010 | 0 Comments

Oscar preview tomorrow!

Some lingering thoughts from the Nip/Tuck finale (all spoilers, stop RIGHT NOW if you haven’t seen it yet and proceed right to the screen shot of Jim and Pam):

c'mon, guys, just sleep together already

c'mon, guys, just sleep together already

--I liked it. There were only two ways the show could possibly end. Either Sean and Christian would hope the first flight to Vermont to get married and finally consummate their relationship, or they would have to part ways amicably. They couldn’t stay together — that wouldn’t be realistic. They couldn’t get in a big blow up where one storms off without the other as the credits roll — that wouldn’t be satisfying and would leave fans without closure. There couldn’t be a McNamara-Troy murder-suicide, even though that would fit in the outrageousness of the last few years of the show. The only way fans would get the money’s worth for six seasons of zaniness is if there was total closure. Nothing else would be acceptable. It delivered. I said the finale would be weird yesterday, and it was for the sheer fact that it wasn’t weird.

--A finale of a successful series will always going to refer back to its glory days and as a gift to the fans who have seen every episode and have developed genuine feelings for the characters. It’s the fans’ reward for sticking with the show, an inside joke only they know. But sometimes, you can do it too much. Like Christian telling Julia he’ll still be sucking the caviar and champagne of life the next time he sees her, a line from the first episode. Eh. I was completely on board with Christian’s final scene — the identical way he picked up Kimber in the first episode. It was the perfect example that Christian will always be Christian. That’s why he had to tough-love Sean into going to Romania, because sooner or later, Sean would be a worse person for staying with Christian and his never-ending pursuit of youth, glamor and the next piece of tail that walks down the street. But using Art Garfunkel’s All I Know for the family dinner scene and the final minutes of the show — the same song the show used for the second season finale in a much more powerful way — is almost sacrilege. Didn’t like that.

--Matt had gotten to the point where nothing he could have done would feel right to close out his character. Chasing after Ava and using Jenna as a pawn in his game to win her back would seem dirty and have an ick factor of about 42 on a scale of 1 to 10 for most people. For Matt? Seems about right. The guy is doomed to live a life of misery, but at least Jenna is getting a shot at having a mom. So like everything Matt’s been through in the last three seasons, he gets a big, fat, “Whatever.” Even though John Hensley and Kelly Carlson — the actors who play Matt and Kimber — hated it.

now that's the christian we all know and love

now that's the christian we all know and love

--Interesting that when Sean and Christian left each other at the airport it was Sean who looked back to see Christian walking away without looking back. I would have seen it the other way around when Christian finally realized, “Oh crap, I just pushed my meal ticket out the door.” But the Christian we were left with was the one we loved — cold but caring, smart but sleazy and 100 percent confident. That should be the way we always remember him. FINALE GRADE: B+

The Nip/Tuck portion of the blog is now complete, likely forever. Tear.

One quick local note: The Sean Kingston concert scheduled for tonight at the Sherman Theater has been postponed. The new date is March 17.

Another local note — a Stroudsburg High School graduate wrote tonight’s episode of The Office. At least that’s the tip I got, and I’m in the process of trying to get in touch with him, Daniel Chun. That’s all I know, but the info seems legit. That’s a pretty big deal, since it’s a two-part dealy where Pam gives birth. Not too shabby for a local guy. Here’s the promo:

Now to the links, where the childhood of every Gen X-er is about to get replayed in the next few years!

Don’t believe me? Then do I have some links for you …

the moooovie star ...

the moooovie star ...

There has been a Gilligan’s Island movie discussed for about 40 years ever since it got canceled. Nothing ever materialized, but now it looks like it’s on its way. OK, so Gilligan’s Island wasn’t technically a Gen-X show, but I know where I was every afternoon at 2:30 until I was about 10 — watching this show on WPIX. This is wayyyyyy too much information, but growing up, the introduction of Ginger in the opening credits was the first thing that gave me boy-girl feelings. So here’s the dream cast if it came out right now: Michael Cera as Gilligan, Jonah Hill as the Skipper, Steve Carrel as the Professor, Amy Adams as Ginger, Sandra Bullock as Mary Ann, Rip Torn as Thurston Howell III and Betty White and Lovie. Whew! That was hard. Or you can just go full Frat Pack: Ben Stiller as Gilligan, Will Ferrell as the Skipper, Steve Carrel still as the professor, Vince Vaughn as the Professor, Amy Adams still as Ginger, Tina Fey as Mary Ann, Bill Murray as Thurston Howell III and Jane Seymour as Lovie. I should be a casting agent.

If I’ve ever seen an episode of 21 Jump Street, I’ve forgotten about it. So I’m not sure if Johnny Depp is trying to make a joke about his character or what. I actually hope he is, because if he’s just making a general comment, he’s not very funny. If they do make a 21 Jump Street movie, they should make sure it’s like Starsky and Hutch, not taking itself seriously at all. Because I don’t remember 21 Jump Street being anything but pop candy. If they made a Hill Street Blues movie, then it should be serious. 21 Jump Street? Not so much.

Monopoly was a summer stable in the Sadowski household growing up. It was weird to see it as a slot machine, and it will be even weirder to see it as a movie. I suspect the movie will look absolutely nothing like the game, but rather be Ridley Scott’s picture of the American dream and the financial crisis we’re going through. One hint — make sure the movie is set in Atlantic City. It NEEDS to be in Atlantic City, where the game was originated. Or at least inspired. It’s the perfect mix of depression and big business the movie will probably be looking for.

Somewhere, some fledgling Hollywood scribe is getting ready to pitch his Pitfall movie. It will come to that soon since Space Invaders and Asteroids are on the way. And when the studio passes, that same writer will say, “Well what do you think of River Raid …”

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The end of Nip/Tuck

By Mike Sadowski | Published: March 3, 2010 | 0 Comments

It won’t be as big as when Lost ends in May. It’s nowhere near the level of a Seinfeld or Friends finale.

It won’t even be as big as a Two and a Half Men series finale.

holy crap these three have aged

holy crap these three have aged

But when Nip/Tuck ends tonight after six tumultuous seasons that redefined how TV — cable stations specifically -- could construct a primetime soap opera, you know one thing: It’s going to be weird.

Weird because the story will be goofy, most likely. Weird because of the sloppy way it’s tried to wrap up some of the bigger story lines over the last few weeks. Weird because it’s introduced new ones at the last minute that can’t possibly have a fitting resolution. How can they possibly end the Matt and Ava thing in one hour and still dedicate the last 15 minutes or so to a rousing, suitable conclusion to the Sean and Christian fiasco of a relationship? And is that 15 minutes really enough for them to get into bed finally?

Mostly, it will be weird because it won’t be around anymore. The show that peaked years ago and hasn’t been the same since 2004 — when it won the Golden Globe for best drama — has been a mainstay of the FX schedule since it premiered in 2003 and personally, has been a big part of my TV-watching life. As fans, we’ve put up with every conceivable — and inconceivable — plot twist and ridiculously sublime problem the characters have dealt with. We’ve seen every one of the seven deadly sins 10 times over, and even dealt with incest, threesomes, foursomes, murder, serial scarring … forget it, it’s too long a list. Fans have dealt with EVERYTHING following this show.

We’ve put up with it because every now and then, the show still knocks one into the upper deck. We put up with it because like Terence Mann said, it reminds us how good Nip/Tuck was, and it could be again. So here are the best Nip/Tuck episodes we’ve seen during its run, a run that deserves to be mentioned in the best shows of the last decade:

Cara Fitzgerald, season 1: If you didn’t know by now after seven episodes that this isn’t the normal, run-of-the-mill TV show, then after this one, you knew for sure. Not only would it constantly push boundaries to places and feelings no other TV show would touch, but it would do it with heartfelt emotion, great acting and superior scripts. This wasn’t just for shock — it had heart and long-ranging ramifications for the characters involved. Christian is forced to deal with his inner-most past traumas as an abused foster child in this episode, confronting a priest in a confessional about the priest’s penchant for molesting young boys. This is probably Julian McMahon’s best work on the show.

Agatha Ripp, season 2: One thing Nip/Tuck always has done well, no matter what state the show was in, is melding the B-story plastic surgery portion of each episode with the overall tone of what was going on between the main characters at the time. It was never so deftly done as in this episode, where Sean must come to accept Agatha Ripp’s claim of stigmata, only to have his final belief crapped on when she admits she made it up. Moments later, he’s confronted with the news that Matt is not his biological son, and his beliefs and values are crapped on again. It leads to the most tense moments of the show’s history, with Sean first attacking Julia, then attacking Christian with “You were my brother!” a year before Obi-Wan used the same line in Revenge of the Sith. I think it’s obvious George Lucas copied off Nip/Tuck.

Rose and Raven Rosenberg, season 2: Back-to-back episodes! The fallout from Julia’s revelation leads Sean and Christian to New York City to help separate a pair of conjoined twins — see where this is leading? But the tension between the two is gut-wrenching, leading into one of the show’s all-time best sex scenes — a threesome between Sean, Christian and a hooker played by the smoking Jennifer O’Dell. In a weed-induced haze, both imagine the girl is Julia to the perfect merging of the Todd Rundgren diddy Can We Still Be Friends. As much as Sean wanted to break it off with Christian forever, he realizes he can’t. And even though they’ve done this whole plot line to death this past season, fans know from this scene that they’ll never leave each other.

Joan Rivers, season 2: The finale of what always will be, to me, one of the best seasons of TV ever. And this was the show’s complete and utter peak. A 90-minute special with guest stars Alec Baldwin — now dead, according to Ava last week — and Joan Rivers (duh), the show has never reached this incredible apex again. It’s not fair to say it set the bar too high, because this was just one of those lightning-in-a-bottle moments that made the show what it was. It got even better in every fan’s mind when it took FX a ridiculous 13 months to air any new episodes, only making its legend grow. Yeah, I’m piling on season 2 episodes, but they were that good. It’s also the episode that started the show’s impressive run on A-list guest stars. The last five minutes of this episode is some of the best TV that’s ever been made:

Quentin Costa, season 3 finale: The most anticipated episode of the show, we find out finally that Quentin is the Carver, and that he had help from his secret sister Kit. Just hearing that, it doesn’t sound like much. But the episode epitomized the future of Nip/Tuck for its next four-plus years — a fast-paced roller coaster ride that requires some of the biggest leaps of faith in TV history, but ultimately it’s disappointing. That doesn’t mean this isn’t a good episode, it’s great. It makes your head spin when they intersperse Sean and Christian’s torture scene with Matt’s torture scene. I remember watching it and thinking, “I think I need to throw up. But in a good way.” Like how you throw up during an all-day drinking session just so that you can drink more. Oh, c’mon, I can’t be the only one who does that. Er, I mean did that.

ba ha! whatever.

ba ha! whatever.

Dr. Griffin, season 6: And so goes the dark ages of Nip/Tuck, when nothing was off the table. No plot was too ridiculous, no scheme too stupid. It lasted for about four years. It was still entertaining, but you couldn’t defend it to people who weren’t fans anymore on the argument that it is great TV. When Matt announced he had become a mime and he started robbing stores in full mime garb, we just shrugged, even though it would have sent most people running scared from any other show. We’d become immune to it as Nip/Tuck fans. But every now and then — very rarely — the show makes a comeback and approaches its former greatness. The last evidence we have of that is the couples therapy episode from a couple weeks ago. Apparently, the show’s creators don’t think we ever got the hint that Sean and Christian not only love each other like brothers, but are closet homesexuals who were meant to be together intimately. So instead of beating around the bush any longer with things like wedding cake tastings, the writers just threw caution to the wind and put them in couple’s therapy. It easily could have been the hackiest idea in the show’s history — but a brilliant script and some exceptional acting from all involved made it one of the best ideas and best shows the series ever produced. If we’re lucky, the finale will approach the quality of this episode.

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Buy a T-shirt! And the hottest DWTS cast. Ever.

By Mike Sadowski | Published: March 2, 2010 | 0 Comments

One quick plug before we roll into a super-sized edition of PopRox to try and make up for slacking lately:

these shirts are cool. so buy one.

these shirts are cool. so buy one.

Buy a T-shirt! Now! Seriously, we’re selling these T-shirts in conjunction with the Great Pocono Weight Race. They’re $15, and all the proceeds will go to the Diabetic Education Program at Pocono Medical Center. We’re trying to raise $1,000, so that means we’re trying to sell 200 T-shirts. If you’re interested, e-mail me or call me at (570) 420-4485. We can only accept cash or check (sorry) and we’re only taking orders through Friday, so hurry up and order one! We expect to have them in by March 15 at the latest.

Good luck to NBC in its quest to restore some normalcy to its schedule now that Jay Leno premiered back on The Tonight Show last night. Not that I watched/cared, nor will I ever watch/care about Leno. This isn’t something new, and it’s not like I ever needed it to be policy or anything — the guy just isn’t funny. He wasn’t funny in his prior Tonight Show run, he wasn’t funny at 10 p.m., so unless the Funny Fairy visited him in the last month and sprinkled him with her magic Funny Dust, I’m not watching. And I won’t watch until I see some kind of YouTube proof that the Funny Fairy actually broke into Leno’s bedroom and physically dropped Funny Dust on him. ’Til then, forget it. The 10 p.m. NBC landscape is going back to normal, with regular TV shows taking Leno’s spot:

Monday: Law and Order, the regular one. Gold star to you if you knew it was still on at all anymore. I’m taking that star away if you still watch.

Tuesday: Parenthood. The TV show, not the Steve Martin movie shown every week. Although that may have a better chance of succeeding.

Wednesday: Law and Order: SVU. A double shot, no less, because the weekly marathons on USA and the syndicated reruns on every channel other than Cinemax isn’t nearly enough Ice-T for my taste.

Thursday: Once the hallowed residence of groundbreaking TV like Hill Street Blues, LA Law and ER, it will now be home to The Marriage Ref. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be back in a second after I go breathe into a paper bag for about 30 seconds.

In, out. In, out.

OK, I’m back.

Friday: Dateline. The only shock is that Dateline doesn’t occupy more real estate than this.

It should be noted that in the week that NBC is ushering out its new schedule, new episodes of Southland are premiering on TNT tonight. It’s just a coincidence since TNT had this schedule set up months ago and NBC had to scramble to cobble together this lineup within the last month, but it’s quite the unfortunate coincidence for NBC that the show that should have been anchoring its 10 p.m. real estate somewhere is now on cabler TNT with the episodes it paid to produce. Ouch.

so this is nicole? then it's nice to meet you.

so this is nicole? then it's nice to meet you.

Twice a year, I say it’s OK to talk about Dancing with the Stars — the two days the casts are revealed. That’s today. I gotta say, this might be the most interesting set of dancers they’ve had so far, and if it’s not the most interesting, it’s the one with the hottest girls. Pamela Anderson and Erin Andrews cement that without even looking at the rest of the cast. Throw in Shannen Doherty — still hot enough to do Playboy last year. Then I looked up Nicole Scherzinger, who I wouldn’t have known before if she dropped out of the sky, fell on my face and started to wiggle, and found out she’s a Pussycat Doll. Sold. When you add Chad Ocho Cinco to the mix, DWTS may have the highest male audience it’s ever had. Still not enough for me to watch, though.

I’ve still never even seen all of Zoolander, it just never interested me. So making a sequel doesn’t interest me either, but I recognize its status as a seminal Frat Pack movie that people my age hold somewhat sacred, so I figured I’d mention it. Good career move for Stiller, he’s kind of exhausted his value to this generation, unless he goes back to his more famous characters.

I love getting halfway through a movie description and saying, “Geez, didn’t we just see something like that earlier this year?” and I love it even more when the writer talking about the movie says the same thing — Angelina Jolie’s new movie sounds pretty close to the little movie Moon this year, which I wasn’t a particular fan of. It didn’t make my top 20, and seeing as I only saw about 35-40 movies this year, that’s pretty telling. So I’m not sure why I would like Jolie’s movie any more. But why would they get rid of Wanted 2, seeing as Jolie shouldn’t even be in the movie. She got killed at the end! I probably should have said spoiler alert there, but the movie is three years old now, get over it. I thought I read last year they were thinking about a prequel, which would have kept Jolie in the playground, but how could she have been in a sequel? Would she have come back as her twin sister, a la Dr. Drake Ramoray? Anyway, of course the sequel isn’t dead yet, and it doesn’t have to be. Paging Megan Fox …

we could probably do without justin long in the next one.

we could probably do without justin long in the next one.

The good thing about the ridiculous, never-ending stream of publicity tours an actor has to do is that big stars are asked questions about their better-known characters. Harrison Ford can’t promote Extreme Measures without talking about Indy 5, and Bruce Willis can’t talk about something as dumb as Cop Out without talking about Die Hard 5. Looks like it’s coming for summer 2012. That’s a risky, risky play since the fourth was lucky enough to make good money, relying on an all-out PR assault by Willis that even included spots on SportsCenter. It was a great action movie all the way, but played on ridiculous, predictable jokes and didn’t have the overall “feel” of a Die Hard movie. That was probably because it was rated PG-13 and we didn’t get the full John McClane vibe until the DVD included the unrated version that had all of McClane’s trademarked F-bombs. I don’t want to go through that again.

Glee is never going to get a top-20 audience, and these days, unless you have a top-20 audience, you better have something else to offer your company in terms of revenue streams. Glee is going all out with two soundtracks for the first half of its season, a DVD set of the first half of the season and now, a singing tour. More power to them — whatever keeps this show on the air is fine by me. I’ve already been broken in by the corporate dealings of TV with the Friday Night Lights/DirecTV deal, so anything you throw at me now pales in comparison. The second I write that, I’m sure there will be some kind of deal to have Don Draper wear a Coca-Cola patch on the back of his suit next season.

Wow, I was not a fan of any of these Simpsons guest voices expect for John Waters and Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin. Are you kidding? No one from Homer at the Bat? No Kelsey Grammer for Sideshow Bob? No David Hype Pierce for Cecil? No Michael Jackson or Dustin Hoffman under their assumed names? No Kathleen Turner for Malibu Stacy? I know there are close to 1,000 celebrity Simpsons guests at this point, but that list is plain B.S. and looks like it was made by someone trying to be too underground.

it's much easier to remember julianne moore this way

it's much easier to remember julianne moore this way

Nice going, James Franco. You’ve started this thing where big stars can appear on daytime soap operas. Can’t we please just remember Julianne Moore as Amber Waves and move on with our lives? Please?

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Our salute to the Crazy Friend

By Mike Sadowski | Published: March 1, 2010 | 0 Comments

There is a tradition in the TV sitcom formula called the Crazy Friend.

Crazy Friend rarely gets anything better than fourth-or-fifth billing, if they even make the opening credits at all. Sometimes it’s a neighbor (Wilson from Home Improvement), sometimes it’s a classmate (Millhouse in Simpsons) or it could be a co-worker (Morgan from Chuck). They have about five lines per show, and every one of them is designed to be a home run. As soon as they deliver those lines, they disappear again. They’re never, ever more attractive than the leads, and they’re entirely disposable. If they left the show, you’d barely know they were gone. It’s only after a couple weeks go by that you realize, “Hey we haven’t seen Crazy Friend X in a while! I miss him!” Invariably, then they show up, deliver their five lines and disappear again.  

We want one thing, and one thing only from Crazy Friend — to make us laugh. Hard.

That’s why it hurts to know Andrew Koenig, who made us laugh as a Crazy Friend for years, had trouble making himself laugh. In honor of Koenig, here are five of the best sitcom Crazy Friends of the last 30 years we couldn’t do without*:

ooooo, fish fry!

ooooo, fish fry!

Richard Millhouse Stabone, aka Boner, Growing Pains. As Mike Seaver’s best friend, Boner was the epitome of Crazy Friend, showing up every third episode or so, and creating hijinks when he did. He even had the perfect name — Boner — so that as soon as his name was mentioned, you knew funny things were going to happen. He was stupid, falling for Mike’s schemes and ploys on a weekly basis, but isn’t that what Crazy Friends are for? Good luck finding a smart Crazy Friend. Best episode: The Long Goodbye, season 2. Mike cons Boner (shocker) into painting his room, and he thinks the Seavers call God “Jimmy.” His love for fish is also shown as his weakness (again).

Buddy Lembeck, Charles in Charge. The evolution of Buddy Lembeck from his first appearance to the end of the show remains one of the biggest mysteries in TV history. He starts out as the typical Crazy Friend, the devil on Scott Baio’s shoulder, convincing him to do the things he wants to do, but doesn’t want to shirk his responsibility for. Buddy always had dates with twins lined up when Charles should have been watching the Pembrokes or the Powells or whatever interchangeable family they wanted to bring in. He seemed to be just as smart as Charles, just with a higher-level libido living the typical college life Charles wanted to. Think Arye Gross as Gordon Bloomfield in Soul Man. They were basically the same character. Then, sometime in season 4, things started to change. Buddy’s IQ started to drop precipitously to the point where he’d be considered somewhere between a drooling fool and Forrest Gump.  It culminated in the show final season with Buddy turning completely turning into a blubbering idiot. No reason was ever given for the transformation — Was he kicked in the head by a mule? — but it was that change that turned him from forgettable syndicated TV character to legendary Crazy Friend status. Best episode: Brain Man, season 5. Buddy gets ESP and starts predicting the future. It’s one of the funniest, if unknown, half hours of TV ever and sums up the Crazy Friend stereotype completely. Here’s the first part, they’re all on YouTube:

the prototypical loveable loser

the prototypical loveable loser

Irwin “Skippy” Handleman, Family Ties. Fulfilled two tried-and-true sitcom stereotypes — the Crazy Friend and the Crazy Neighbor. As Crazy Neighbor, he didn’t come close to The Fonz or Larry from Three’s Company. But as the Crazy Friend who chased after Mallory and usually got roped into whatever crazy scheme Alex was cooking up, he had few equals. You didn’t need Skippy to have a good episode of Family Ties, but his appearance usually made the episode better. It helped that he was pretty dumb, so it was easy to see why he and Mallory had all the same classes together and why Alex — and even Jennifer, for that matter — could bend him to his will. Best episode: My Brother’s Keeper, season 5. Skippy interviews for a fraternity Alex was a member of.

Jazz, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. If you want to take the Crazy Friend thing to a different level, get yourself a gimmick. Jazz had two of the best Crazy Friend gimmicks ever — his entrance handshake with Will and his inevitable exit from the Banks house courtesy of Philip after he hit on Hilary or made a fat joke to Philip. He wore the same shirt every day, because they only taped the throw once and he had to keep wearing it or else it wouldn’t make continuity sense. So when he came in wearing that ugly brown tribal shirt, you could get excited because you knew he was going to get thrown out the door somehow screaming the always hysterical “Ahhhhgggggggg!” What makes Jazz so interesting is that he’s not an actor, he’s Jazzy Jeff. As weird as it seemed to give a rapper his own TV show 20 years ago, it seemed even weirder to give his best friend a role in said show just for the heck of it. Best episode: Eyes on the Prize, season 2. Will chooses Carlton for a TV game show over Jazz.

did he do that?

did he do that?

Season 1 of Steve Urkel, Family Matters. The Fonz created the mold for how to make a secondary Crazy Neighbor/Crazy Friend break out to a major character on a sitcom — and the people behind Family Matters perfected it with Steve Urkel. This was a show going absolutely nowhere — it looked and sounded like every other family sitcom on TV, only toned down to fit in ABC’s Friday night family comedy block. It was an urban Full House. Then the little nerdy kid from next door started hanging around. He would come around for two minutes, annoy the crap out of everyone, push up his huge glasses, do his signature snort-laugh and take off, not to be seen again for a month’s worth of shows. Only he was the only funny part of the show, so he started showing up more. And more. By the second season, he was in every episode and even started appearing on the credits. That began the Urkel phenomenon, one of the darkest periods in sitcom history. But there’s a reason it started — because in that first season, he was arguably the best Crazy Friend this generation has ever seen. Best episode: The Party, season 1. If you’re looking for evidence of what Urkel was before he broke out, this is it.

*High-profile, every-week characters — Jack from Will and Grace, Joey from Friends, George from Seinfeld, Lowell from Wings, Lenny and Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley -- aren’t eligible for the list, this is only about secondary characters we only see part of the time.

Feel free to discuss your own favorite sitcom Crazy Friend:

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Leno-Conan fire still flaming

By Mike Sadowski | Published: February 25, 2010 | 0 Comments

Stay off those roads if you can!

You’d probably feel bad for Conan O’Brien until you remember that he’s being paid a hefty sum to stay away from television. Good for him for figuring out how to get to his fans, and shame on NBC for not adding a social networking clause to the agreement it had with O’Brien to stay away from the world. That just seems to be indicative of the way NBC does business — haphazardly, short-sighted and like they were living in 1965.

Wow, Ben Harper, that was fast! Just a couple weeks after joining in Conan O’Brien’s farewell show — what seemed like a show of solidarity against the Jay Leno takeover — you’re signing on the dotted line to appear on Leno’s version of The Tonight Show next week. Harper can’t even wait til the body is cold! If Jay Leno went to Will Ferrell, who sang Free Bird in the all-star band to end Conan’s last Tonight Show and is a Conan buddy, and said, “Look, Will, we need you. We need you to come on the show early so people can see there are no hard feelings. Whaddya say, buddy?” Ferrell would pull down his pants and fart in Leno’s face — twice. But Harper is cool jumping right on the bandwagon. That’s distressing. But it was still a great way to end the show:

What’s even dumber than not banning O’Brien from social media? Not banning a live tour. When they were drafting up this agreement, it was probably the wine-drinking scene in Princess Bride. As O’Brien’s team was laughing under their breath, the NBC people got scared and said, “What’s so funny?” Conan’s people probably hit each other under the table and said, “I’ll tell you in a minute” before NBC ripped up the contract.

A couple summer concerts already have started selling tickets when they usually don’t even announce their lineups until the middle of March. But in this economy, you better get people’s hard-earned money before anyone else does. That’s what Dave Matthews is doing — tickets are going on sale tomorrow for his Scranton, Philly (two shows) and Hershey shows. At the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden, there already are seven major summer tickets on sale now.

Proof that when there is money to be made in the music business, someone is going to make it — Aerosmith will tour with Steven Tyler this summer in Europe. A money machine like Aerosmith knows not to say anything bad about each other, but they did anyway for the last couple months and even kicked Tyler out of the band. They were set to tour without him. Then some sniveling accountant got a hold of them and showed them revenue projections with and without Tyler — and I’m guessing they weren’t too good. So hello, Steven! Feel free to drink your way through the tour, now you know they need you.

Still not down with the dual Oscar host thing. Why bother? Steve Martin has done a well-received job a couple times, so you’re telling me he needs help? From Alec Baldwin? It would be much easier to understand if they brought in a younger comic to host with Martin in a changing of the guard type move. You can even make up some kind of skit with Martin passing the torch to the younger comic, maybe Jimmy Fallon or something. But instead, the Oscars somehow believe that bringing in Baldwin — known to anyone under 25 as a TV star, not the star of Beetlejuice I know his as --

-- is the right move. This is the year the Oscars needed to make a splash to keep people coming back, with audiences expected to be huge because of the 10 best picture nominees and Avatar fans all tuning in. So Baldwin is who they came up with? Do they think Avatar fans are over 45 or something? Last time I checked, I don’t think they are.

It’s easy to pile on NBC these days for the ridiculousness in how the network does business. But give them credit — their Olympic coverage has been pretty good. Yeah, tape delay sucks, but what would you like, exactly? Everything be carried live? How would that even happen? What they have carried live has been pretty good. They’ve already arranged it so that the big sports are on at East Coast friendly times, which means the big events like ice skating start at about 5 p.m. Vancouver time when they’re supposed to be at 8 p.m. Hockey games are starting at 10 a.m. so we can at least catch them live if we wanted to. That’s insane. And of course NBC wants the Olympics past 2012. It’s going to be the showcase for Versus, the Comcast-owned station that will be part of the NBC family when the Comcast-NBC sale is completed. No way DirecTV keeps Versus off their system if it has the Olympics.

I always wondered why Comic-Con was still being held in San Diego. That doesn’t exactly jump out at you as a place where dorky cool guys hang out. You might even think dorks would be a little intimidated in San Diego, the town with is believed to be some of the hottest women in the world. Disneyland seems more appropriate for these people. I’d be scared of the Disney influence at something like Comic-Con though, instead of seeing clips for the new Batman, you’d get a panel discussion on the ABC fall lineup. Let’s just keep it in San Diego.

steve carell as the red skull?

steve carell as the red skull?

You can safely argue that the character Jim Halpert is the idealized version of the American working man in 2010. Brash, able to move up in the company, puts up with a douchebag boss he knows more than, but still self-deprecating enough that at 30 he already knows his life is over. So then maybe it isn’t as clueless as you think to put him on the Captain America list. He went against type in Away We Go and knocked it out of the park, but it’s yet to be seen whether he can bring a tentpole type movie to a mass audience that knows him only as Jim Halpert.

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