Week in Review, Oct 8 to 14

The Week in Music

While browsing the recently released CDs at Best Buy this weekend, I was surprised to find new albums from Brand New and Moneen. Brand New's "Daisy" was released on September 22nd and Moneen's "The World I Want to Leave Behind" was released on September 15th. In a way, I'm glad I stumbled upon them this way, rather than anticipating their release for months in advance, because I would have been even more disappointed with any extra build-up.

Brand New's "Daisy" feels more like a loosely assembled collection of B-sides and unreleased tracks than a follow-up to the powerful and impressive "The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me" (2006). Opening track, "Vices," is harder than anything Brand New has recorded to date and is awesome because of that (although the gospel hymn that opens the track annoys the shit out of me), and there are a number of good to great songs throughout ("At the Bottom," "You Stole," "Noro"), but there are also more songs on this album that do absolutely nothing for me than on any previous Brand New album. This album easily ranks at the bottom of Brand New's discography for me.

Moneen has always been a band that I like and respect, but not necessarily love. "Are We Really Happy with Who We Are Right Now?" (2003) is a great album, and 2006's "The Red Tree" is pretty good, but 2009's "The World I Want to Leave Behind" has left me feeling pretty indifferent. This album is so mellow in comparison to their earlier works that it almost sounds like a completely different band. Not that that's a particularly bad thing, by itself, but the songs are also lacking the pop hooks I've come to expect from Moneen. It's not a bad collection of songs by any means ("The Glasshouse" is awesome), and is a more enjoyable listen than Brand New's "Daisy," but I just expected more.

The Week in Television

I'm still experimenting with the format of this weekly blog post, trying to find a sweet spot of time spent vs. purpose vs. clarity. This week I'm breaking the shows into lists of Loved, Liked, Meh, Disliked, and Hated, and then if I have any specific comments to make, they will show up below the list. Hopefully no shows will be Hated, because then why am I watching?

Thursday, October 8th
Loved: The Office (6x4)
Liked: Fringe (2x4), It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (5x4), Parks and Recreation (2x4)
Meh: The Mentalist (2x3)

The Office's "Niagara," aka "The Jim and Pam Wedding Episode," was surprisingly satisfying for me. It's a little strange to think of this as the fourth episode of the season, since an episode with this much resolution is generally saved for the season finale (or even series finale) of most shows. This episode had lots of laughs, a few extremely awkward moments, some genuinely touching scenes, and good use of almost all of the primary and secondary characters. It is the delicate balance between the silly and the serious that makes The Office such a great show, and this episode was an excellent example of that.

Parks and Recreation and Always Sunny were both really funny this week, but Always Sunny will probably never be a Loved entry for me because it has no heart whatsoever, and Parks' characters don't resonate with me nearly as well as The Office characters.

Fringe's "Momentum Deferred" finally offered at least a partial reveal of William Bell's mission for Olivia Dunham, mostly confirming what the audience had already figured out for themselves. Nonetheless, this was a quality Fringe episode, despite the following nitpicks. There was a lot of suspense leading up to it, but the expected showdown between Charlie and Dunham was somewhat anti-climactic. And Walter's storyline involving a former test subject was interesting, but strangely pointless when you think about it.

The Mentalist actually did something interesting and unusual this week, having the murder of the week involve one of the principal characters as a suspect and having the murderer be a multi-episode recurring character. Unfortunately, despite this change up, the ending still came down to the same old, same old predictable Jane entrapment scheme.

Friday, October 9th
Loved: Dollhouse (2x3)

Oh no, getting Firefly flashbacks here!--Dollhouse is now airing out of order. This excellent episode, written by the always awesome Tim Minear, was obviously meant to air second this season, with the hilarious sequences introducing Paul Ballard to handling duties. This episode brought the funny and the creepy in equal measure, like any good Joss Whedon show should.

Sunday, October 11th
Liked: The Amazing Race (15x3), Bored to Death (1x4), Curb Your Enthusiasm (7x4), Dexter (4x3), The Family Guy (8x3)
Meh: American Dad (5x4)
Disliked: The Simpsons (21x3)

There was a lot of good and bad in this Sunday's TV, but not much awesome. The Amazing Race was entertaining, but the end result was the loss of my favourite team, damn it! Bored to Death was goofier than it's ever been, which is both a good thing--because it was different--and a worrying thing--because I don't want it to turn into that permanently. Dexter was distracted by suburban silliness and didn't kill anyone, but the season still has impressive momentum. The Family Guy actually had its best outing of the season so far, with a funny and completely nonsensical spoof of "Spies Like Me." American Dad somehow managed to be half hilarious and half completely awful.

Curb Your Enthusiasm's "The Hot Towel" took a break from the Seinfeld reunion storyline to have Larry David torment a poor doctor and destroy the self esteem of a teenager. As awful as it sounds, I can often empathize with Larry David's social difficulties, but here I was struggling. It was both hilarious and unbearably uncomfortable.

This week's The Simpsons was borderline for Hated. It was an awful Marge episode, and also completely derivative of many previous Marge episodes, some that were classics and some that were also awful. It's pretty depressing to think that The Simpsons has so many more shitty seasons (11 to 20) than classic seasons (2 to 8). Can I even consider this to be one of my favourite shows of all time anymore?

Monday, October 12th
Liked: The Big Bang Theory (3x4), Heroes (4x5)
Meh: House (6x4)

Heroes' "Hysterical Blindness" was the best episode of this season so far for me, not that that says a lot. I like the new characters better than most of the original characters at this point, so the more scenes with the deaf girl and the carnival crew, the better. I also liked the reveal of invisible girl--that was a good surprise in a show that is sadly lacking good surprises.

Both The Big Bang Theory and House were typical episodes this week, which basically means that The Big Bang Theory was funny and the characters were as endearing as ever, and that House was good when House was on the screen and lousy when he was not.

Wednesday, October 14th
Liked: Modern Family (1x4), South Park (13x9)

Modern Family continues to be a surprisingly funny and entertaining new show. Ed O'Neill steals the show each week, although Ty Burrell as Phil, the "cool dad," is my favourite character.

South Park's "Butters' Bottom Bitch" started off amusing, slowly building up to hilarious right around Butters' visit to a pimp conference. Because of the subject matter, I can't say I loved this episode, but I certainly laughed more than last week.