Family Guy's Quagmire puts Brian in his place
Last night we had comedy done the wrong way (The Cleveland Show) and comedy done the right way on Family Guy. It also showed that Quagmire has some sense and a heart, as he unleashed a very effective rant on Brian (he doesn't like Brian and that view was only worsened earlier in the ep when Brian insulted Quagmire's sister). Here's the scene in its entirety.
Adult Swim lets you build your own DVD online
This is the age of personalized entertainment on demand. It's also the age of talking wads of meat and animated fart jokes. Finally, all of that can now come together on your home DVD player.Adult Swim fans can now go online and create a disc full of their favorite episodes from the channel's top shows with the Build Your Custom DVD tool.
For $20, you get 110 minutes worth of space to build a DVD. You can choose any of the available episodes from such series as Venture Brothers (right), Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Sealab 2021. After arranging them in your preferred order, you give your DVD a name, description and cover art before paying for it and burning your unique creation.
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Sundays with Seth: Auntie Momma, Jerome and My Morning Jacket
The "All Seth, All the Time" block of animation on FOX is getting stronger every week. I think this may have been the most wholly satisfying episode of The Cleveland Show we've had yet. The show finally knows what it is, the characters are settled in and established, and it even knows where it's going to derive its humor.There's a sweetness to The Cleveland Show that is more reminiscent of King of the Hill than either of MacFarlane's established shows, and I'm glad to see it. My biggest fear was that Cleveland's star vehicle would be nothing more than Family Guy-lite, but after a very rough start, I'm able to see and appreciate it for what it is.
Family Guy may have found their replacement for Cleveland in this week's episode. I hope the boys do find a new "fourth," and I don't think I'd mind if it's the guy they find themselves hanging out with this week. On American Dad, Stan discovers rock music, and he'll do anything to hang out with his new favorite band: My Morning Jacket.
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Review: The Venture Bros. - Self-Medication
(S04E06) This episode was a rare star-studded treat for Venture Bros. Really honing in on the idea of adult aftermath in the lives of boy adventurer types, Jackson Publick introduced a robot boy, boy detective brothers (Seth Green and John Hodgman), former Wonder Boy (Patton Oswalt) and the return of Action Johnny (Brendon Small). Never before have so many guest voices (okay, four) been crammed into an installment, bringing the entire audience to an immediate nerdgasm.
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What You Missed Last Night: the most disgusting TV episode of the year
It's episodes like this that make me think the Parents Television Council has a point.*I watched The Cleveland Show last night, and since it's from the same people who bring us Family Guy and American Dad, I know it's supposed to be edgy and daring and a very adult cartoon. But jeez, does it have to go this far? The plot had to do with Cleveland's dad falling for an older woman who came for Thanksgiving whom he later found out was a guy. Not only did we have to endure endless farting by the woman, Cleveland's dad had sex with the her (not knowing it was a guy) and we had endless jokes about fisting and oral sex. Oh, and let's not forget the three minutes of vomiting that Cleveland and his dad did.
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Review: The Simpsons - Pranks and Greens
(S21E06) This was a pretty well-structured episode, in that it might even give Bart some hope and direction for his own life. Who knew that Skinner and Willie were once cool and beloved, and that Willie was the swim teacher for Springfield Elementary? Okay, as most of you know I've been out of touch with The Simpsons for years prior to this anniversary season, so if this was already revealed, it's new to me.The bulk of the episode dealt with Bart learning that there was a prankster before him, and one who was even his superior. So of course, Bart seeks out this 19-year old malcontent to learn from the master and come back stronger and better than ever. Too bad, as Lisa is so quick to point out, they're both still losers.
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Holiday gift ideas keep coming from 'a galaxy far, far away'
Black Friday is less than a week away, and if you're stumped for gift ideas for a boy anywhere in the family, you could do worse than going with Star Wars: The Clone Wars merchandise.The show remains one of the highest rated programs for males aged 12-25. That's no surprise since boys have always been the cash cow of George Lucas' $3 billion empire (no pun intended).
Hasbro is the emperor of Star Wars toys (at least those for kids), and the company has a couple of new, higher end items for the 2009 holidays.
The Clone Wars Remote Control R2-D2 is pretty much as advertised. For about $30, you get a replica of a Death Star comm-link that controls the droid's movements, sounds and lights. A kid will have fun driving him around the house. But, the toy is more fun for adults if you imagine that every beep he makes is really a rude, digitized curse word.
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Mike Henry and Daryl Hall on a Cleveland Show Thanksgiving
A year ago, before there was a Cleveland Show, when the Family Guy spinoff was still just a possibility, the show's first guest stars, Daryl Hall and John Oates, were brought aboard. They'll finally make their debut, playing an angel and a devil, respectively, on Cleveland Brown's shoulder on the Thanksgiving episode which airs Sunday at 8:30PM on Fox. According to show co-creator, producer, and voice of Cleveland Mike Henry, the appearance came out of a trip to Las Vegas where a casting director arranged for Henry to meet the guys backstage after a show. When they showed interest, that was that. "We wrote the part and sent it on over," says Henry, speaking at a conference call with media.
"You planted the seed a year ago saying, hey, would you like to be on the show that's not on TV yet?" says Hall.
Whatever big decision Cleveland is making in the episode, Henry is a bit cagey. "Maybe Auntie Mamma has got a penis," says Henry. "Let's just say that. There. I've given it away."
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Aqua Teen Hunger Force to air new Christmas episode in December
With the holidays fast approaching, it's good to know that Adult Swim is thinking of you. According to their online schedule, Aqua Teen Hunger Force will return on December 13th at 11:45 p.m. ET with an episode elusively referred to as "ATHF Xmas."In true Adult Swim fashion, there's been absolutely no indication as to what this episode might be about, however it's likely that it somehow ties into the recently released Aqua Teen Hunger Force Christmas CD, Have Yourself a Meaty Little Christmas. If you haven't bought it yet, do yourself a favor and get it now. Trust me when I say that you haven't lived until you've heard Meatwad croon his own version of "Silent Night" or Carl cackle his way through "I'll Be Home for Christmas."
Anyway, regarding the episode, it's the only one listed on the schedule, so it's probably not the new season premiere, but it'll hopefully have some sort of performance aspect with songs from the album. That and maybe The Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from the Future will show up. Please let the robot turkey be there.
Gone Too Soon: The Critic
Before The Simpsons begat Futurama, current executive producer of The Simspons Al Jean, along with Mike Reiss, created a short-lived animated series about a film critic who hated almost every film he ever saw.
Starring Jon Lovitz in some brilliant voice work, The Critic ran through two networks in two seasons. Like Futurama and Family Guy, it found some success with reruns on cable -- in this case, Comedy Central -- and a subsequent DVD release. But unlike those series, The Critic remains but a distant memory.
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Review: The Venture Bros. - The Revenge Society
(S04E05) This episode was certainly a surprise in many respects. It was one of the funnier installments of the season so far. It also brought back a lot of old themes and cleared up some incomplete storylines that had started to gather dust. On one hand, I'm glad that those have been resolved, because most of them were revealed to be kind of irrelevant anyway, but I also felt as though it was rushed, like, five loose ends from old major arcs had to be hastily tied up in twenty-some minutes. Well, it's better than continuing to string us along, right?
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Chris Rock has a Merry Madagascar with the family
Chris Rock has the kind of status as a comedian that allows him to work on any project he wants. He produced the documentary Good Hair, he's writing a book, and he has been working on back-to-back film shoots. Tuesday at 8 PM on NBC, you'll hear his voice in Merry Madagascar, playing Marty the zebra for the third time, along with returning regulars Ben Stiller, David Schwimmer, and Jada Pinkett Smith. He's confident it's not the last time he'll voice Marty, either, with Madagascar 3 in the works.
So why does a guy who can do anything he wants spend time in front of a microphone pretending to be a cartoon animal?
"Money," he says jokingly, speaking on a conference call on Wednesday. "No, no they're good. You realize as you get longer in this business, the only thing that keeps you working is doing good stuff. You know, I mean the box office is great, too, but if people don't like what you do the moment the box office isn't fair, they don't want to work with you anymore."
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The Simpsons: The Devil Wears Nada
(S21E05) I've been waiting all season for this episode. As a long-lapsed fan of The Simpsons, it was beginning to look like someone had sucked the heart right out of Springfield's first family. Maybe they have, for the most part, but everything that made The Simpsons such a great show 20 years ago was there tonight.Maybe it was that we finally got to see Mr. Burns again; he was always my favorite. Yes, he only had a bit part, and in fact the part of maniacal boss was played by Carl instead of Burns, but his presence set up the stories of the entire episode. I'll go so far as to say everything about that episode worked, from Marge's sexy calendar to Ned Flander's role in the final moments.
Even the brief encounters with Bart at school fed the main story, and were handled perfectly. This is what The Simpsons is capable of, and despite a few moments that were a bit more crass than I recall the Simpsons of yore being, it was classic Simpsons all over again.
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Sundays with Seth: The problem with wives ... and babies
It was nice to cut back Seth MacFarlane's domination of Sunday nights to only three shows. As much as I enjoy all three shows in a general sense, two-and-a-half hours of MacFarlane's brand of humor was a bit much. I continue to enjoy the growth of The Cleveland Show more and more; I'm beginning to see why FOX went ahead and gave it an early season two pick-up.After a shaky start, we're starting to get a better feel for all these new characters, and I'm finding little things about them to enjoy. It's little things like Arianna's love of confetti that add layers to the character. And while I'm sure it's politically incorrect of me, I find Kendra tooling around in her Rascal absolutely hilarious. That and the over-eating, but all with such a sweet disposition and voice.
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TV's G.I. Resolute outduels big-screen Rise of Cobra
Director Stephen Sommers might want to discourage the production of animated lead-ups to his feature films. They keep outdoing the movies they're supposed to set up for audiences.Before his Van Helsing reached theaters in 2004, Universal released Van Helsing: The London Assigment. Written by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, the animated half-hour was clever and action-packed. Van Helsing? It was not clever and action-packed.
Now, the DVD release of G.i. Joe: Resolute, an 11-episode series of animated shorts that originally aired on Adult Swim before the release of Rise of Cobra, brings a cooler and more visually compelling "Yo, Joe!" to screens.
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Andy Richter: The TV Squad Interview
Have any questions for Vik Sahay of Chuck? Ask them here!
Mike Henry and Daryl Hall on a Cleveland Show Thanksgiving
