How Archer became the funniest show on TV

Archer, Lana, Pam and Carol in "Lo Scandalo," one of the many brilliant episodes of the show's third season. Source.

After last week's terrific Archer season finale, "Space Race, Part II," I was perusing the AV Club's recap of episode. I was struck by the final line, in which Todd VanDerWerff - one of my favorite TV writers and, more importantly for the purposes of this article, a die-hard fan of Community - said that FX's absurd spy series was "the best comedy on TV."

Then I started to think about it, and I realized that Archer might, in fact, be the best comedy on TV. At the very least, it's the funniest comedy on TV.

You might think that, for a comedy, being the funniest show on TV would automatically equal being the best. That sort of depends what you want out of your comedy. As I have mentioned before, I am a big fan of comedies that give the viewer big emotional payoff, a quality that is often at least somewhat at odds with the business of being funny. Thus, while Community is not as consistently, hysterically funny as Archer (the only show that can give the spy series any competition is Happy Endings, which is slightly less consistent), it gets me because it aims for the heart in addition to the funny bone.

A brief history of the New York Times' hatred of Game of Thrones

Daenerys' dragons might have something to say to the New York Times.

After Ginia Bellafante's incredibly sexist (not to mention poorly written) original review of Game of Thrones sparked backlash and controversy from the many women who resented being told that they were supposed to like Sex and the City and dislike Tolkien, you would think that maybe the New York Times would have taken a moment to rethink its editorial stance on the show. At the very least, you might think that the Old Gray Lady would allow a critic who doesn't have such an obvious dislike of fantasy to review the show.

You would, sadly, be wrong.

Bellafante, who wrote the paper's official review of HBO's fantasy epic (and who has replaced The New Yorker's Nancy Franklin at the top of my list of most-hated TV critics), somewhat infamously said that Game of Thrones was "boy fiction," and implied that, weirdly enough, instances of incestuous sex and violent rape had been added to the series to appeal to women, because apparently we as a gender are into that sort of thing. More than that, however, Bellafante refers to the show's setting as "the universe of dwarfs, armor, wenches, braids, loincloth," a remark that is just plain wrong (There are not "dwarfs" in the sense of Tolkien's separate race, since Tyrion Lannister is a dwarf in the scientific sense of the words, and I wasn't aware that braids were reserved for unreal worlds) and that demonstrates a deep-rooted dismissal of and disdain for fantasy as a lesser genre.

Cliffhangers aren't cowardice (but catharsis can be)

James Gandolfini, Edie Falco and Robert Iler in the series finale of HBO's The Sopranos.

A few days ago, historian Andrew Roberts wrote an absolutely confounding piece for the Daily Beast calling for an end to unresolved movie endings. (The piece can be found here, but be warned; there are spoilers for The Grey, Rampart, Footnote and The Italian Job, among others). Roberts begins his article by calling unresolved endings "a curious malaise born of cultural decadence," and ends it by accusing those cavalier, amoral directors who film movies with cliffhanger endings of "sheer directorial moral cowardice" in their apparent quest to deny the good people of the moviegoing public "the catharsis they've paid their $13 to experience."

First of all, who the fuck is charging $13 for movie tickets?! I thought my local theater was gouging me with $11 tickets, but apparently it could actually be worse if I, like Roberts, lived in London. It's enough to make me want to move back to Utah, where ticket prices are hanging out around $8.50 (which, of course, I thought was totally unreasonable when I lived there. Times change.)

More importantly, however, Roberts' claim that directors who choose to end their films without resolving the plot are moral cowards is wrong-headed. He claims that endings that are unresolved are "shortchanging the moviegoing public, which has the perfect right to see good behavior rewarded and bad behavior punished." For good measure, he adds that "all the great filmmakers of the past" understood and respected this supposed audience "right" to a happy ending.

Comedy is evolving, and you have to keep up.

Photo courtesy of The Awl.

I wrote this piece for Splitsider about the evolution of comedy, the conundrum of cutting-edge humor and, of course, Community. (It always comes back to Community.) It's pretty awesome, so you should go check it out!

The Doctor meets... Robocop?!

On the heels of Stephen Moffat's announcement that Doctor Who's titular Time Lord is getting a new companion, the BBC has released a trailer for the as-yet-unscheduled seventh season. The awesome clip doesn't show any footage of Jenna-Louise Coleman's new character, but it does feature plenty of Amy and Rory, some clever jokes, and an antagonist who looks strikingly similar to Robocop (or KickPuncher, if you prefer).

I love Amy fumbling with the gun, and the cowboy requesting that anyone who isn't American put their guns down. On a related note, Doctor Who, after spending most of its existence confined to the British isles (well, the whole of time and space, but mostly Britain) has been coming to America rather frequently in the last couple seasons; last year's two-part season opener marked the first time the series had ever filmed in the U.S. (and in my home state of Utah no less!), and now the Wild West is making an appearance.

In addition to a villain who looks like Robocop (seriously), I also caught a glimpse of Mark Williams (Arthur Weasley), and have begun to to suspect that appearing on Doctor Who is a requirement for BAFTA membership, along with a role in a Harry Potter movie and an appearance in a BBC adaptation of either Dickens or Austen. And, as always, there is an enormous amount of running involved.

I'm really hoping that the shot of an eyestalk emerging from the snow, accompanied by a mention of the Daleks, doesn't foreshadow that species' return. I agree with Moffat that the sheer number of defeats they've suffered at the hands of the Doctor invalidates them as enemies. What I really want is the return of the scariest baddie in the Whoniverse, the literally unmemorable and yet absolutely unforgettable Silence. But I'll deal with the Daleks if it means the return of the Doctor, Amy and Rory. Season seven can't come soon enough!

The greatest tree in cinematic history (is on TV)

Brother Justin's tree from Carnivale (photo courtesy of Dauntless Media), and a tree in Brookgreen Gardens, Pawley's
Island, South Carolina.

A few weeks ago, Slate ran an article about the greatest trees in cinematic history and the obsessive directors - Terence Malick, Alfred Hitchcock, Lars von Trier - who spent their time, money and sanity searching for them. I was reminded of this when I saw the above tree on a tour of a former rice plantation in South Carolina and, because I am the sort of person who is constantly pretending that I am in my favorite TV shows, immediately started to compare it to the actual greatest tree in cinematic history: Carnivale's tree.

Carnivale has the greatest pitch in the history of television

Those who are already fans of Carnivale already know that Daniel Knauf's head trip of a series provided viewers with the coolest opening credit sequence on television, one of the great cinematic tattoos, and the most complex mythology since... well, ever. But did you know that Knauf's original pitch to HBO is, in its detail, style, and inclusion of enough mythology to melt your brain, one of the all-time great TV pitches?