04:30 Curb Your Enthusiasm
08:00 Greg The Bunny
08:30 Good Morning Miami
10:30 Veronica Mars
11:30 Veronica Mars
Curb Your Enthusiasm. Episode 1. "The Pants Tent" It's amazing how quickly things go wrong from poor Larry. Only a few minutes into this first episode (three scenes or so) and he's annoyed his best friend's new girlfriend, been offensive to his manager's parents and made his wife's friend think she caused him to have an erection. And from there it all spirals out of control. Much as I love the show, and love watching the show, I also love thinking about how the show is made (improvised dialogue from detailed scene outlines). It's clever. And it means we get a plot-driven show every week. There is always something happening in every scene. Every scene advances a plot, or allows it to collide into another plot, or something. Whatever. There is always something new happening. Often very funny.
Greg The Bunny. Episode 9. "Greg Gets Puppish" Another so-so episode. When this show is funny, it's very funny. And when it's not funny, it delivers episodes like this one: in which Greg embraces his puppet heritage. There are few gags floating around, yes, but a lot of the dialogue is just to drive the (boring) story and it leaves you unsure what to make of it all. Is it meant to be comedy with a message? Or are they just bad are doing satire? The ending is another one of those soft and fuzzy they sometimes do on this show: where friendship wins out over differences. An odd episode. I don't watch Greg The Bunny for touchy-feely crap.
Good Morning Miami. Episode 5. "Swan Jake" Pretty good episode. Important one for the characters: Jake finds out that Gavin isn't so bad and starts to feel guilty about wanting to steal Dylan away, Lucia tells Dylan that Jake likes her and suggests a little test. All of this advances the storyline and helps make Jake more likable than he was in earlier episodes. The supplot, meanwhile, is hilarious. Frank thinks that Penny has a crush on him, and acts accordingly. This being a sit-com "acts accordingly" means he drapes himself across her desk and invites her to feel his over-developed thigh. Lots of laughs.
Veronica Mars. Episode 1. "Pilot" I don't think I've ever seen a pilot with so much backstory, so skillfully delivered. Veronica is quite an interesting lady and - prior to this first episode - she has led quite an interesting life. Rob Thomas weaves her history into this first episode, and still manages to deliver a clever case-of-the-week which shows Veronica at her best: clever, gutsy, framing people, switching police evidence and derailing trials as she sees fit. It's fun to watch her in action. We like her because she is clever and good (and the best TV Heroes are clever and good) but we like her, too, because she is sad and full of pain. In rapid succession we see what happened to Veronica to make her this way: her mother leaving, her friend being murdered, her own rape and her boyfriend dumping her. All of this, plus her status as an outcast in Neptune society, makes Veronica who she is on the day we first meet her.
She reminds me of Harry O. Battered by life, but not beaten.
Veronica Mars. Episode 2. "Credit Where Credit's Due" This time out the case-of-the-week takes up many more scenes, and the backstory barely appears at all. The case (credit card fraud) is interesting, clever and it involves one of the regular characters. It serves to strengthen the bond between them, which was forged in the final scene of the pilot. Lots of other character stuff is carried over from the pilot. The animosity between Logan and Weevil is a perfect example. And it's not just the character stuff. We get to understand the world of Neptune a bit better. It's a vicious place. And justice in Neptune is rough. We saw that in the pilot, where Veronica played fast and loose with the law to get Weevil's guys off the hook for a crime they committed, as a means towards getting a better quality of life for Wallace. This time out we see the story come to an end when Weevil and his club have punished the person who committed the crime. That's how the story ends: with frontier justice.
Highlight? Veronica Mars (pilot)
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Sat, Aug 16, 08 - Curb Your Enthusiasm, Greg The Bunny, Good Morning Miami, Veronica Mars
