Up the Dosage

*Spoilers*

Did you see Hopkins?

I asked that question to a lot of different people, and no one I asked had heard of it. I was about to say, "sorry ABC marketing folks", but as it turns out, Hopkins kicked Swingtown's ass in the ratings, so I guess they managed to hook in more than I thought.

Anyhoo, they did manage to get to me, and I watched on Thursday night. If you haven't seen it (and if you fit with my random sample, you haven't), it's a prime time 'real life' medical drama set at Johns Hopkins, complete with doctors' personal lives.

I want it to be good. I want it to be great. And not just because there is nothing, and I mean NOTHING to watch. I've resorted recently to stockpiling old Friends and Sex and the City episodes on my DVR just to have something to do.

(Perhaps now might be a good time for me to come up with some sort of a hobby.)

Hopkins is basically your typical TLC doc-style series, but with way better music. It's trying hard to be the real life Grey's Anatomy, but has way less attractive people and uses what I imagine are low-paid camera people doubling as producers to shoot the thing. Just a hunch.

It's entertaining. It's not awesome. I think it might get better. Please, if your story about the poor guy with the brain tumor is going to be your major cliffhanger, can'tcha go a little more for the jugular with the resolution? I know you tried. Try harder. I want to cry, dammit!

Now, the cute doctor who may or may not be going for a divorce is for sure their Central Casting McDreamy. His story is seriously mc-good. I felt his angst. I'm stressed for him. And somewhere, some casting person is super psyched they got this hot doc to agree to talk about his marriage woes on national television.

And so I'm going to keep watching. I want to love it, and I have a little Chicago hope that it's going to be worth leaving Grant Show and his swingin' porn-mustache in the dust.

Blondes Don't Always Have More Fun

Grey's Anatomy's Katherine Heigl apparently withdrew herself from Emmy nomination consideration because, and I sadly quote, '“I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organization, I withdrew my name from contention,” she said. “In addition, I did not want to potentially take away an opportunity from an actress who was given such materials.”

Now, I'm not sayin' that Grey's has bowled me over this season, either, but homegirl, learn to keep your mouth SHUT! You had no problem cashing those checks, right? Did you give those back?

Rumor has it that blondie's got her eye on the big screen and is trying to get out of her tv contract. Oh David Caruso Katherine. Don't you remember what happens to ego-possessed blondes who leave the shows that make them a star?

I'm sure Shelley Long would be happy to sit down with you and give you some pointers.

But, you're right. You belong on the big screen. Let us stroll down memory lane and remember your movie career pre-Grey's Anatomy, shall we?

You were like, TOTALLY awesome in "Bride of Chucky". Killer even.

And, remember your star turn in the TV movie prequel of "Romy and Michelle"? (Seriously, this movie had a prequel?)

My fave though has to be "Bug Buster". I love the simple plot outline "Killer cockroaches swarm a small lakeside community." This has got to be your golden ticket out. Now THAT screams prequel.











I suggest you clean up your act QUICK, girl. Or you just might find yourself selling Thighmasters to get you through those inevitable upcoming lean times.

Swing Out Sister

I finally got around to watching the premiere of Swingtown that had been beckoning to me from my DVR. If you hadn't heard, CBS just rolled out this new series about swinging couples in the 70's.

It's so nice to have former Melrose Placer Grant Show back on television. I was wondering what he had been up to, and a quick spin through Wikipedia revealed that a few years ago he married someone named Pollyanna Macintosh. This sounds to me ironically like one of those porn names you come up with by using a Disney character and your street name.

Or whatever that game is.

Anyhoo, Swingtown didn't really excite me, but I did notice the following random, and not so random things:

1. The creator of this show realllllly likes Boogie Nights. So much so that he borrowed some of the soundtrack and cast fake-Julianne Moore, Molly Parker, in one of the leads.

2. Sometimes, it was so self-consciously trying to pepper this pop culture-palooza with little reminders that we are in the 70's that it was distracting. She's drinking a TAB. I GET IT.
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3. And sometimes, I suspect some writers with a bawdy sense of humor wanted to test the limits of what they could sneak past the censors. Like when someone ordered a Harvery Walbanger. Or when one of the characters was watching $20,000 Pyramid...and the clue was "Things that are Spread".

Ahem.

There was also a montage at the end that lingered on a fried egg image just long enough for me to wonder if perhaps it was yet another pop culture homage, this time to the famous "This is your brain on drugs" PSA's. Then again, that was an 80's thing, so maybe it's just me.

Well, Swingtown won't fry your brain, but it might show you how to be over easy.

The Rose Parade

This week, VH1 has decided to run a Bachelor/Bachelorette marathon. All week, hours upon hours of retro Bachelor. So, if you don't work, and you really dig broken engagements, your dream has come true.

On Tuesday I happened to catch a fair amount of the Trista re-runs (I swear I do work occasionally), including the Pepto Bismol infused wedding spectacle that was Ryan and Trista's nuptials. I had forgotten how ABC dragged this thing into what seemed like 80 hours of television, about all the hyperbole ("the most anticipated wedding since Charles and Diana!"..."the wedding of the decade!")...and how Trista's squeaky baby voice is like nails on a chalkboard.

It's all especially intriguing to me. In recent months, I've started to investigate the business side of this here blog and I learned how to track the way strangers arrive on my site. The #1 Google search that lands people on my blog? Trista's diet. Trista's diet that I mocked and ridiculed mind you, but this is apparently what the American pop culture public yearns for.

Now, lest I be a total hypocrite in my mockery, I admit a weakness for the Andrew Firestone season, which is on for a good chunk of the day/night Wednesday.

You can relive it with me (time to call in sick!), the innocent days when Jen Schefft captured that hottie Firestone's heart.

And, by the way, what was Jen thinking letting Andrew Firestone slip through her fingers? She could've been rich and drunk on a vineyard for the rest of her life! I'd travel to an island with Ricardo Montalban for that fantasy....

Warts and All

*SPOILERS*

My mouth is still agape from reading bitchy Rex Reed's review of the Sex and the City movie in the NY Observer. I hate to give him any more ink (Is it really ink when you write a blog? Screen time? Blogosphere-time? I digress...), but I suspect the vitriol laced tirade by this hack was motivated by something OTHER than his hatred of the movie.

He begins his 'review' with the following: "There’s nothing wrong with Sarah Jessica Parker that couldn’t be cured by wart-removal surgery. That growth on her face just gets bigger with every close-up, and in the full-length movie version of Sex and the City it’s so distracting you can’t concentrate on anything else. It’s not a beauty mark. I guess you can’t tell a co-producer anything, but listen up, girl. At this point, you would make a wonderful Halloween witch. Unfortunately, to fix all the things wrong with Sex and the City, you need more than a scalpel."

Rex Reed, obviously known the world over as a supermodel, apparently doesn't like his actresses to look real. God forbid any chick in Hollywood doesn't iron out and carve themselves into Demi Moore a perfect specimen.

What's even more infuriating is that there's so many inaccuracies in the article, I am highly dubious that he even saw the movie. He refers to the ladies as "predatory 40-somethings" and "cougars". Um, how do they fit this description exactly? All four characters are in monogamous relationships in the film.

He also says the ring Smith bought Samantha is $ 5,000 (wrong, not even close), that they sit around and whine about orgasms (don't remember that conversation), that they play poker with "$300 Hermes playing cards" (never happened) and "they all march off to Lenox Hill Hospital" after Charlotte gets pregnant. Say what? That. Did. Not. Happen. Did this dude see the same movie or what? Next he'll be discussing how crooked Mikhail Baryshnikov's pirouettes were.

It's easy to beat up on Sex and the City. As I waited in line for my ticket Friday night, I was amongst hundreds of 20-somethings dressed like dime-store whores. These are the gals that make hetero men the world over who don't watch Sex and the City think that it's only about cosmo-fueled one-night stands and weird fashion. But, at its best, it actually was an emotional roller coaster about relationships.

Kind of like life.

Now, did I think the movie was as good as, say, the "Carrie cheats on Aidan" years? No, I didn't. But, I thought it was pretty good, and I think that if a film critic is gonna beat up on a movie, they better have the goods to back it up.

Perhaps the most telling of Reed's statements? "Miranda dumps Steve for staging a meaningless (but understandable) one-night stand with somebody else".

"But understandable"??!?!!

Mirror Mirror on the wall, who's the most misogynistic of them all?