TV Question Qorner: TV Midseason Report Card, I-P
Girl: please.
Jersey Shore. It’s sort of interesting to see how the relationships and interactions in the house have evolved from typical Real World-y “who ate my pickles”/”fuck you”-type fare to, basically, office politics among co-workers at a very weird job. The arguments and bonding moments seem to happen in professional and choreographed manner. I wouldn’t say it’s entirely contrived at this point, but it’s not very compelling anymore now that Ron and Sam have figured out how to conduct a relationship (quietly; mostly off-camera) and everyone else has figured out that the Situation is a shit-starter. I do enjoy most of them, though; I hope S5 is the last, so that I can continue to enjoy them.
L&O SVU. I like the addition of Giddish; I have liked Pino on other things, but I don’t care for him here. Something is visually off, like he needs to put on 20 pounds or something — and could the ouster of Stabler have come off any more abruptly? It’s almost irrelevant, because of course everyone knows the status of Chris Meloni’s contract and so on, but they couldn’t even arrange for one scene? Poochie returning to his home planet was less awkward than that exposition.
I still enjoy the show, though. Its quintessential over-the-topness still remains. I do have a quibble with the wavy hairstyle on Hargitay, which doesn’t suit her.
Mad Fashion. I wanted to like it, because I loved Chris March on Runway, but at only half an hour, it still draaaaaags. (And not in the fun way, heh.) And it’s weirdly unenlightening, too, in a way that suggests it would actually move faster with a full hour to work with. As it is, it’s like, here’s the brief, here’s how it’s totally impossible to execute, the client hates it; commercial; all fixed, client’s happy, wah wahhhhh. Like, what? I don’t really care about the particular guest star/client; I want to see how the sausage gets made, not drama with no backstory. Punted after two episodes.
Prime Suspect: The New Class. I gave it a chance, and I actually like it. It doesn’t try to copy the original, really, and it’s got some very good, under-sung actors on it (Acevedo is usually a sign of quality); Bello is in fact cast perfectly here. It can get heavy-handed at times — the sexism on the squad; the interactions with her boyfriend’s ex, who is a finely-drawn cartoon but a cartoon nonetheless — but the writing has wit and it generally holds up as a procedural. If the wardrobe department can find a way to phase out the much-pilloried hat, great, but overall the show is a pleasant surprise.
Project Accessory. It’s early yet, but I’ll probably stick with it, although the first elimination struck me as bullshit, and obviously engineered to create more drama down the line. If you want to find the best designer, you keep Cotrice, who had way too much going on, over Nicolina, who choked and didn’t do much at all. If you want to create the most drama, on the other hand…
And I hesitate to get into this, because I am as white and square as a bathroom tile, but between the response to Kimberly’s styling on Project Runway and the response to Cotrice, it seems like the judges (or producers, or whoever) don’t get urban style. It’s one thing not to respond to a given design element, like a color or a shape or whatever, but it’s like they just don’t acknowledge it at all, that so many people already wear (and rock) these things, whether it’s brights or big earrings or a ton of metallics piled on top of each other.
I for one would like to see that discussion: the tension between designs that reflect current urban trends, and the fact that editorial fashion is often aimed at the very rich. Do you necessarily want to try to go there in your capacity as a reality-show judge? No. But you could at least acknowledge that there’s a conversation to be had.
Project Runway. …Uch. I dug Anya at first, because she’s undeniably chic and pretty, and I liked her shaved-sides hairstyle and her stacks of bracelets. She’s cool, definitely. It’s not a reason to keep her, though, and as the season wore on and it became clear that the producers would do whatever they had to do, bend whatever rules they had to bend, and make whatever last-minute changes they had to make not only to keep her in the competition until the finals, but to engineer her victory, I started to despise Anya. It isn’t her fault that this is how it went down, but I do not believe for one second that she didn’t know what was going on, and the feigning of surprise every time she dodged another bullet that obviously was never going to hit her grossed me out.
Tom and Lorenzo made these points and others eloquently and repeatedly, so you can just step over there and read what they had to say about the season, but their overall assessment that the season unfolded based on personalities and backstage narratives, not on talent or achievements, is right on. As much as I loathed Wendy Pepper, I could understand how she got as far as she did. Someone else always sucked more than she did in a given week, then she had a couple of well-timed wins…it was annoying, but it read as fair. This is just disappointing, because, you know, we know the fix is in, and that in and of itself is not a big problem, but when it’s this obvious and this cynical, the show becomes boring.
I’ll watch the All-Star season, obvs, but Bunim-Murray needs to get their shit together with this.
Tags: Chris March Christopher Meloni Danny Pino Jersey Shore Kelli Giddish Kirk Acevedo Law & Order: SVU Mad Fashion Maria Bello Mariska Hargitay Prime Suspect: The New Class Project Accessory Project Rungay Project Runway TAKING IT PERSONALLY TV Wendy Pepper
Viktor was robbed! /rant
I am also a bathroom tile, but I am so with you on Kimberly’s stuff (I don’t watch Accessory). I actually would have given her the win–there were some clunkers in there, but “her girl” is not well-represented in fashion, and I thought Kimberly did the best job of making the idea for her collection into something real.
I’m writing down “white and square as a bathroom tile” for future use.
That is all.
The all-star season of Project Runway hasn’t gotten me excited yet. There’s hardly anyone in there I want to see again.
My big problem with this past season was that there was hardly anyone likable. I didn’t know who to root for. And while I can appreciate a catty comment, and I know reality shows thrive on them, I really didn’t need ten-minute segments of all the designers talking trash about each other every week. They should cut the show back to an hour, ditch all that crap, and focus on the designers’ talents.
I will join you on that same bathroom wall and in your PR critique. Kimberly had a few pieces I didn’t like, but she also had a lot of great stuff. Her clothes were things I haven’t already seen, and yet I could picture exactly who would be wearing them, and they would be looking fabulous. The judges just prefer to pretend vast segments of society don’t exist, I think. I don’t think they understand women who like more pizazz or who think having a little booty isn’t a terrible thing.
Anya seems cool and she’s probably fun to hang out with and can make of career of fashion, but no way should she have won. Her dresses were pretty, but they looked exactly like things you can already buy in any number of stores in warm beachy places. There wasn’t anything new or better about them.
Although, I also didn’t understand why the judges were saying “I couldn’t wear these things in New York” as a minus. Not everything has to be wearable in New York. There are millions of people living in warm climates or vacationing there and there’s big business in selling clothes just for that style and climate.
Gog, Jersey Shore. This season I told myself I wouldn’t watch it, and then I got horribly sucked into the episode where Jionni abandoned Snooki at the club and she flipped out and found it all so weirdly compelling that I couldn’t stop watching and the next thing I knew I had set up a season pass for it on my DVR. God damn you MTV.
Chris March is tangentially related to me — his brother is married to my aunt — and I have no motivation to watch his show, but I’m glad he has it, and I’m sorry that it apparently sucks. I have seen some of his old Halloween/Bay-to-Breakers/whatever costumes, and I thought they were great, so I was hoping he would do well on this show — but hey, if he has to go back to doing fabulous wigs, I just hope he gets over.
Hey, Nicolina: shut up.
I’m sorry: I’m completely distracted by the dreamcatcher/flyswatter thing that’s dangling from the woman’s ear *and* tossed ever-so-casually over her shoulder in the picture above. I assume this still is from Project Accessory, but I really have no idea. (Unless there’s a Project Stupid-Ass Asymetrical Haircut in the works, which there very well might be, for all I know. I can’t keep up with Bunim-Murray.)
@ Hoolia:
I like to call this the Centre Of The Universe Syndrome.
@Claire: right?
I tune in thinking I’ll fold laundry or do my nails, but I end up riveted.
Also, I want to go on vacation with Pauly D and Vinny. We’d have so many ‘best day of my life’s.
Tom and Lorenzo have been my gurus this season and they’ve basically nailed it. I liked Anya but she was like a low-rent Uli. I am so puzzled that the judges are willing to go along with such obvious producer shenanigans. What is IN the Kool-aid they are serving at runways shows? I was willing to put up with the Gretchen win because she was talented even if I hated her taste (and believe me I was on the MONDO WUZ ROBBED bandwagon) but to ignore the ONLY talented person the competition (Viktor) in favor of a bedsheet-draper? No.
The discouraging thing is that from what I gather, PR is still racking up the ratings and a lot of people who came to the show post-move to Lifetime don’t see a problem with the judging as it stands. (Whereas us TRUE, Bravo-era FANZ know better!) I just worry B-M/Lifetime are gonna run it into the ground and that’s the end of what has in the past been a truly great show.
Crossing my fingers for All-Stars.
I’ve been on the Prime Suspect hook since the beginning, and continue to enjoy it more every week. Well-done, witty banter; eye-candy GALORE; the excellent father-daughter work, especially with the spot-on smoking cessation woe. Really enjoying it.
I agree, it was crystal clear all season that the fix was in for Anya. She seems like a very sweet and lovely person, but when I think back on the talent from previous seasons, she should not have made it. I think that Victor gave away his win by putting out those dreadful black see-through pieces. The rest of his collection was miles better, and he should have won. Also, Josh was along for the ride purely for drama – who would wear neoprene other than a surfer?
I think Mad Fashion has gotten better – I really liked the Mardi Gras episode with Jennifer Coolidge. I think the real mistake is that we are spending too much time with Chris’s work team, and not enough time with him. They sort of shoved the crew at us without any opportunity to get to know them, and they all seem to be trying too hard to be ‘funny’.
Agree about Mad Fashion — really, really, really wanted to like it, but it just isn’t that entertaining to me, I guess. Can’t put my finger on what it is, but I have 4 episodes on my DVR that I keep passing up to watch reruns of Property Virgins.
Also have to agree about Project Runway, although I must add: at least they didn’t give the win to that spoiled, rotten loser Josh. And I will probably never forgive Nina for saying those disastrous, horrible neoprene shorts WITH HANGY STRINGS were “editorial.” No. I liked Kimberly’s stuff, even though I couldn’t pull off any of it.
Mmm I agree with you on the pleasantness of Prime Suspect. I disagree on the phasing out of the hat. I dig the hat. It’s her thing, like Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens’s hat is his thing on Justified. I dunno. It just works for me, I guess, on both characters. ‘Course I do have a thing for hats. For what it’s worth, Timoney’s hat doesn’t get nearly as much airtime as Givens’s hat.