Max Blum, Toyota, and quiet acceptance

Jeffrey Songco's excellent piece about Toyota's "It's Reinvented" ad over at the Huffington Post really crystallized my thoughts about last night's Happy Endings. The ad, which features Toyota reinventing various mundane objects and making them better, has been praised as a step away from the heteronormative culture of advertising due to a moment early on concerning a "reinvented couch." The narrator describes the reinvented couch, which is made up of girls in bikinis, as a schlubby Everyman comes into his apartment, looking excited. The narrator then notes that the couch "also comes in guy," the camera cuts to the everyman, and he shrugs, as if to say "That works too."

Songco's excellent analysis notes that the real, radical message of the ad comes through not in the inclusion of the male reinvented couch, but in the guy's nonchalant reaction to it: "It's amazing to see Toyota's "It's Reinvented," not because it showed gay sex, but because it showed a reaction to gay sex as oh, cool, OK. In other words, the gay sex in "It's Reinvented" is a big deal because it isn't a big deal.

Songco's piece clarified, for me, why I liked this ad so much. It also clarified what I found so refreshing about last night's episode of Happy Endings, not to mention the series as a whole. Last night's episode, "The St. Valentine's Day Maxssacre," ended with the show's resident gay bro, Max, reuniting with his ex-boyfriend Grant in romantic scene that was the site of one incredibly hot kiss.

The great thing about the moment wasn't really the kiss itself - although it was an awesome kiss - but the fact that the kiss wasn't treated as anything more than a kiss. It wasn't endlessly hyped or controversial or the subject of self-aggrandizing promotion, and by being none of those things, it was more progressive than any other show on television.

That kind of quiet radicalism is par for the course for Happy Endings. The best element of the show is Max, and the best thing about Max is that he's, as Hulu said when they named him the best character of 2011, "just one of the guys - who happens to be one of the gays." Max is just a regular, well-rounded character. He's not a gay man, but a man who happens to be gay, which is a very important distinction. Unlike, say, Glee's Kurt Hummel, or even Modern Family's Mitch and Cam, Max's sexual orientation is not his entire identity. It doesn't define him.

The very fact that the show doesn't draw attention to Max's sexual orientation, instead treating him just like everyone else, makes Max Blum revolutionary. (Similarly, the show never draws attention to the relationship between Brad, who is black, and Jane, who is white. If you think that's not boundary-breaking, read this and think again.) Instead of celebrating Max for being different, the show just lets him be Max, just like the guy in "It's Reinvented" nonchalantly accepted the male version of the reinvented couch. So let's be more like Happy Endings and Toyota, and just give an oh, it's cool shrug to gay sex. After all, if Max doesn't define himself by his sexuality, why should anyone else?

Who is David Neher?

Clockwise from top left: David Neher in New Girl, Modern Family, How I
Met Your Mother and Community. Photos courtesy of sorozatjunkie.com,
tumblr.com and CBS.

That Neher is some kind of something. Boy, this Neher is all anybody's ever talking about. So sick and tired of hearing about how brilliant that Neher is. Overrated.

Alright, so maybe you're not yet tired of hearing about how brilliant David Neher is. That's probably because you don't know his name. However, if you're anything like me, looking at the photos up there is tickling your brain. You're wrinkling your forehead and desperately searching IMDb to figure out just where exactly you've seen that curly head of hair and outrageously proportioned forehead before. You just know he looks familiar, but you don't know why.

To answer your question: you haven't just seen David Neher somewhere, you've seen him everywhere. Did you recently check out a show by the great sketch comedy group Upright Citizens Brigade? Or maybe you checked out an episode of Funny or Die's "The Amazing Adventures of David and Jennie"? Or, most likely, maybe you saw Neher in one of his four (!) guest appearances on network sitcoms this fall: he obnoxiously berated Schmidt in the pilot episode of New Girl; was tortured by the study group in Community's "Competitive Ecology"; stole Haley's money in exchange for a promise of fake IDs on Modern Family's "Hit and Run"; and, most recently, offered a pregnant Lily his nachos and some advice on facial hair in "Tick Tick Tick," the ninth episode of How I Met Your Mother's seventh season.

You would think that appearing in sitcoms on each of the four major networks would keep a guy plenty busy, but Neher isn't about to stop. He was just cast opposite Jay Malone as one of the leads on Conan O'Brien's as-yet-untitled comedy pilot for TBS (which is currently referred to as BFF, you know... in case you were interested). Neher will be playing the childhood BFF (and there's why the tentative title is relevant!) of Malone's character, a husband and father who quits his job and moves back to his old neighborhood. BFF may not be the Community spinoff, Todd!, about a young veteran's journey to honor his dying father's wish of finishing college (copyright Alex Israel), that we were all hoping for (and by "we all," I mean only me), but here's hoping the show succeeds anyway. After all, I'd love to be able to remember Neher's name without looking it up on IMDb. Such a hard-working guy deserves that much.

You say "absurdly self-referential," and I say "conceptual artist"

Danny Pudi and Gillian Jacobs in Community. Photo courtesy of fanforums.com.

This fall, many media outlets are trumpeting the resurgence of comedy on TV, based on the enormous ratings pulled in by The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Modern Family and New Girl and seeming fatigue with reality shows and heavily serialized dramas. Reality shows like The X Factor and expensive sci-fi dramas like Terra Nova have been pulling in solid numbers, but they're a far cry from their smash predecessors American Idol and Lost, while a number of underwhelming dramas (The Playboy Club, Charlie's Angels) came and went with barely a whisper. Compared to the enormous buzz surrounding comedy offerings like New Girl and 2 Broke Girls, dramas and reality shows are looking weak indeed.

It was a little shocking, then, to read a recent headline on Splitsider.com that asks if the 2011-2012 season is the worst season for sitcoms in a decade. (For the record, the author ultimately concludes that it's only the third-worst season for new comedies since 2000; apparently the sitcoms of 2002-2003, 2000-2001 and 2007-2008 were worse). After completing the list, it becomes clear why the author chooses to bash himself against the impenetrable wall of the TV pundit elite. The top three TV seasons for comedies are, in order: 2009-2010 (the premiere year of Community, Cougartown and Modern Family); 2001-2002 (Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Scrubs, The Tick and Undeclared); and 2008-2009 (Better Off Ted and Parks and Recreation). In other words, the "best" years for sitcoms were the years that spawned low-rated critical darlings like Parks and Rec, Community, Scrubs and all the short-lived, too-edgy-for-primetime series that premiered in 2001. The 2003-2004 season, meanwhile, falls midway down the list, because apparently the reviled Two and a Half Men cancels out the genius of Arrested Development.

This piece brings into sharp relief the divide between critical adoration and popularity. Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory aside, almost all the shows the author categorizes as "good" spent most of their existence with the fear of cancellation hanging over their heads (if they even made it far enough to worry about being cancelled). If you were to look at The A.V. Club's TV page on a Friday morning, you could be forgiven for thinking that Community was the most popular show in the history of television. Meanwhile, out in the real world, The Big Bang Theory pulled in four times the viewership of Community, while Rules of Engagement (which is apparently a show that appears on television) had triple the viewership of Parks and Recreation.

There is a really fascinating dynamic at play here between the opinions of critics and what's popular with the masses. Unfortunately, this dynamic is often reduced to a simplistic game of childish name-calling, with the fans of quirky, low-rated shows maintaining that only old racists and uneducated, NASCAR-loving hicks could ever stomach Two and a Half Men, while those who chuckle at Jon Cryer's antics on those shows are bewildered by the fact that anyone could find the absurd, self-referential antics of the Greendale study group funny. It's oddly reminiscent of the "dialogue" (read: angry shouting) between the pansy-assed, liberal, Obama-supporting commie bastards and the prejudiced, out-of-touch, heartless capitalist pigs. (In the immortal words of Liz Lemon, "Yeah, suck it, I do read the paper!")

A disconnect between what is considered "good" by the critical establishment and what is popular is nothing new. There's a reason that the most critically acclaimed movies of 2010 (ranked by Rotten Tomatoes) were Waste Land, a documentary about a Brazilian artist photographing garbage pickers, and Into Eternity, a "meditation on human folly, punctuated by philosophical and historical references" by conceptual artist Michael Madsen. They may have gotten 100% good reviews, but the words "conceptual artist" make me want nothing more than to watch robots smash each other in Transformers 5: Planet of the Earth (once again, with much thanks to Liz Lemon). And it's not just The New Yorker passing out these reviews; the Philadelphia Enquirer and The Washington Post were among the publications that endorsed these films.

To be fair, Waste Land and Into Eternity are probably great films. They're just not appealing to a large demographic of people. And, as much as it pains me to say it, the self-referential absurdity of Community and the inside-showbiz jokes of 30 Rock might not interest a lot of people either. I like to think that if more people tuned in to these shows they'd find the following they deserve, and I could certainly be right about that. Of course, the three people who saw Into Eternity probably think the same thing, and they could be right too. So let's not be too mean to the people who choose to watch Two and a Half Men; they might just be turned off by descriptions of the show as "absurdist" and "experimental" in the same way hearing "conceptual artist" makes me want to curl up on my couch and watch reruns of Saturday Night Live until my brain rots. And even if I love Community and you love Rules of Engagement, we can probably agree on one thing: a half-hour comedy, no matter which comedy it is, is still more consequential than Jersey Shore can ever hope to be. Oh, wait...

Review: "Up All Night"

Christina Applegate and Will Arnett in Up All Night. Photo courtesy of tv.com.

Up All Night was, as you may recall, one of the new shows that I was most excited to watch this fall. It has a killer cast - Christina Applegate, Will Arnett and Maya Rudolph - and, based on the early trailer released during the upfronts, it managed to be funny while also being honest about the struggles of being a new parent. Having now seen the first episode, which aired Wednesday night on NBC, I still see a lot of potential in the show. There are, however, a few kinks that need to be worked out.

Let's start with the good. Applegate and Arnett give excellent, likable, grounded performances as Reagan and Chris, new parents who are struggling to balance jobs with their new baby while denying that they can't party like they used to. Arnett in particular gives a charming performance that, unlike so many of his great past roles (GOB Bluth and Devon Banks, to be precise), eschews over-the-top caricature in favor of a realistic portrait of a new stay-at-home father coming to grips with his obligations.

This isn't to say that the show is unfunny. It's definitely funny, although I found few laugh-out-loud moments and more sly, chuckle-inducing humor (this could be due to the fact that many of the pilot's best jokes were in the trailer that I had already seen). One of the funniest moments came when Chris, on a desperate search to find normal cheese, as opposed to "that fancy cheese over by the salad bar," happens upon an old lady who wants to tell him how cute his baby is. Twice. The fact that this innocent woman has "come after" baby Amy more than once sends Chris into a hilarious and believable spiral of paranoia about his child's well-being. Maybe it's just the fact that I grew up with an overprotective mother (hi Mom!), but this scene rang particularly true to me.

Some of the best scenes of the pilot, however, weren't really about baby Amy at all. They were about the  struggles that Chris and Reagan face as later-in-life parents, both of whom have successful careers, who are suddenly forced to face the fact that their entire life is about to change. To me, the character's ages really puts a fresh spin on what could be a fairly standard series about coping with a new baby. Chris and Reagan are very modern parents; they've been married for seven years in the pilot episode, they both already have fulfilling lives, and they still love to party. Their decision (or not - the first scene of the pilot shows Reagan taking a pregnancy test, but we don't really get a sense of whether the baby was planned) to have a baby at this time in their lives is an increasingly common one in a world where many people spend years getting advanced degrees and finding success in their careers before deciding to have children.

To me, Chris and Reagan are symbolic of the sort of delayed adulthood that is common these days (and I'm not criticizing - my fiance and I are both eagerly putting off full adulthood by getting advanced degrees - a trait that sets them apart from the previous generation of television parents. Their delayed adulthood also explains a scene that, I suspect, might strike some in the audience as an example of very bad parenting. On their anniversary, Chris and Reagan end up going out late, getting drunk and singing karaoke, only to wake up the next morning with hangovers and a crying baby in the next room. This is the sort of behavior that, in the different context, would come off as negligent; here, however, it serves as an example of the kind of sacrifices that new parents have to make in order to raise a child. The inane fight that Reagan and Chris have in the same scene is similarly realistic, and allows the show to express, through Chris, the anxiety that someone with a career can have when they leave to take care of a child.

This kind of fine-grained realism, however, is shattered in any scenes that involve Maya Rudolph's Ava. Part of the problem seems to be that Rudolph's character was originally conceived as a publicist rather than a Tyra-esque talk show host, and the quick retooling of the pilot allowed for cracks in the scenes involving Ava's talk show. The bigger problem, however, is that Rudolph's scenes play like they're from a completely different show - their aesthetic is the cartoonish surreality of 30 Rock rather than the realism of the other two-thirds of the episode. The thing is, Rudolph is a wonderful naturalistic actress - see Away We Go if you don't believe me - who has clearly been directed here to behave like one of her SNL characters rather than a real human being. Ava's cartoonish, party-all-the-time vibe makes her a counterpoint to Chris and Reagan's new life, but her diva antics also make it difficult to understand why Reagan is such a close friend of hers. I would like to see the writers humanize Ava by delving into her friendship with Reagan and allowing Rudolph to take her performance down a notch.

Up All Night has the makings of an excellent, realistic-yet-comic look at a subset of parents that hasn't been thoroughly explored in popular culture: older, married couples who are firmly established in their "adult" lives without really being adults, and who find that parenthood completely changes their lives by, in some way, forcing them to finally grow up. The show needs to retool the talk-show portions of the story, and add its very realistic perspective to that underdeveloped story thread. The tension between parents and their childless friends is a very interesting one to explore, and if Up All Night can convincingly portray that tension, it could become a great show instead of a merely interesting one: a Modern Family for the almost-adult set.

Emmy Awards 2011: Who should win

Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones. Photo courtesy of mamapop.com.

The Emmy's are almost here, which means it's time to start prognosticating about the winners. The nominations this year were not as all-out terrible as they generally are (although I certainly had some complaints), and I feel like throwing in my two cents. So, here are my picks for the shows and actors who should go home with statues on Sunday night, as well as those who should have gotten a nomination. (I'm not going to pick the likely winners; if you want someone to help you place your bets, there are plenty of other options out there for you.)

Best Drama Series


Should win: Game of Thrones
Should have been nominated: Fringe


I know that there are plenty of people out there who turn away in disgust at the sight of fantasy, preferring instead the gorgeous, ponderous stillness of Mad Men or the fine-grained realism of Friday Night Lights. I'm not trying to belittle those people. I just happen to think that Thrones' first season was a triumph of writing, acting and directing that managed to sate both fans of the books and newbies who didn't know the difference between a Lannister and a Stark. Not to mention that the show killed off the central character in episode nine, which means they should get an award for biggest balls on television. As for Fringe, the excellent third season provided viewers with a desperately needed dose of trippy yet emotionally grounded sci-fi, as well as a showcase for the excellent cast. How many other shows have you seen where every actor had to play two roles, and managed to play them convincingly?

Best Comedy Series


Should win: Modern Family
Should have been nominated: Community


Community is the single funniest show on television right now, and the fact that the folks at Greendale lost the nomination to the wildly uneven, offensively bad second season of Glee is a travesty. Of the nominated shows, however, I give the edge to Modern Family, which takes what could be a cliched, sentimental drama and makes it fresh and slyly funny without losing its heart.

Best Actor in a Drama


Should win: Steve Buscemi, Boardwalk Empire
Should have been nominated: Sean Bean, Game of Thrones


Buscemi is probably going to be a controversial choice, but the spin this non-leading man put on his leading-man role of Nucky Thompson kept the character from being just another mob boss. Buscemi embodied the contradictions inherent in the honorable yet criminal Nucky in a way that made him seem genuine and, despite his many terrible actions, sympathetic. Bean gave a solid performance that may not have stood out among his flashier costars, but which provided a moral center that helped anchor Thrones many, many plot threads. Plus, the man got beheaded on camera!

Best Actress in a Drama


Should win: Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men
Should have been nominated: Nina Dobrev, The Vampire Diaries


I, unlike so many other TV connoisseurs, am not a huge fan of Mad Men, but Moss' performance as Peggy Olsen has always been one that drew me in on a show that kept me at a distance. Peggy's journey may represent the struggles of all women in the 1960s, but Moss ensures that the audience never loses sight of the very real girl at the heart of the character. As you know if you read this blog regularly, my love for Dobrev knows no bounds, and she really upped her game in the second season with dual portrayals of the tough, determined, kind Elena and the devious-with-a-heart Katharine.

Best Actor in a Comedy


Should win: Johnny Galecki, The Big Bang Theory
Should have been nominated: Joel McHale, Community


I love Jim Parsons' Sheldon as much as anyone, but when it comes down to it Galecki's Leonard is the most identifiable character on the show. Galecki makes the character nerdy without being incomprehensible, awkward without being pathetic, and just cool enough that you believe he could really attract a girl like Penny. As for McHale, he uses his coolness to his advantage while making sure the audience doesn't get so sucked in by Jeff's sardonic charm that we forget what a jerk he can be. At the same time, he manages the occasional moment of sweetness that makes all the snark seem worth it.

Best Actress in a Comedy


Should win: Melissa McCarthy, Mike and Molly
Should have been nominated: Aisha Tyler, Archer


McCarthy's natural comedy chops were put to great use in this summer's Bridesmaids, and her sharp, likable performance elevates Mike and Molly above its mediocre premise. Tyler may not physically appear as sexy, sassy secret agent Lana Kane, but without her magnificently funny line readings the character would be only a shadow of herself.

Best Supporting Actor in a Drama


Should win: Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones
Should have been nominated: John Noble, Fringe


Dinklage is a standout among a superb cast. His Tyrion is funny and charming even when he's scheming - especially when he's scheming - without sacrificing the pain that Tyrion constantly carries. He's a freak and a disappointment to his father, and Dinklage, even in his lightest moments, never lets us forget that. Noble is another standout in a great cast, and his performances as the harebrained Walter Bishop and the desperate, icy Walternate are some of the best work happening on television right now. Hell, they're some of the best work happening anywhere.

Best Supporting Actress in a Drama


Should win: Kelly MacDonald, Boardwalk Empire
Should have been nominated: Emilia Clarke, Game of Thrones


MacDonald helped to humanize Boardwalk Empire with her character, the kind, conflicted Margaret Schroeder. Margaret was a woman in a difficult position, and her character's moral dilemma over becoming Nucky's kept woman in order to provide for her family was beautifully acted by MacDonald. Clarke - who barely had a screen credit to her name before Thrones - was superb in showing Daenerys' journey from frightened girl to badass dragon. Plus, she was nude. A lot.

Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy


Should win: Ed O'Neill, Modern Family
Should have been nominated: Donald Glover, Community


O'Neill's costars Eric Stonestreet and Ty Burrell may have the flashier parts, but gruff, loving dad Jay is the real heart of this family. Glover's case is similar; his costar Danny Pudi may steal the attention, but Troy is just as funny while still managing the occasional mature, heartfelt moment. Glover's performance in Mixology Certification - one of my favorite episodes - was subtle and nuanced in a way that few sitcom actors ever manage. Then, several episodes later, he spent most of the runtime paralyzed (literally) in the presence of LeVar Burton.

Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy


Should win: Sofia Vergara, Modern Family
Should have been nominated: Alison Brie, Community


Vergara is a very funny woman who makes sure that Gloria Delgado-Pritchett is a fully realized character, rather than letting her slip into the hot-younger-foreign-wife caricature. As for Brie... I love Alison Brie. Annie is often the most vulnerable, least comedic member of the study group, and Brie gave some excellent, vulnerable performances in Mixology Certification and Cooperative Calligraphy. And the she turned around and anchored what may be the single funniest scene in the history of television.