Channel Surfing...

So, as I roast myself in the Vegas heat, I've done some channel surfing (trust me, it's part of the Phil Flores writing regimen), and I've come up with a couple favorites lately...Top Chef on Bravo (sadly, I don't get Bravo in La La Land) and The Next Food Network Star on its namesake channel. It's weird how surviving on turkey sandwiches can turn you onto shows with excellent looking food. Also, my favorite teeny tiny De Laurentis has a huge role on NFNS, and, man, is she a tough judge. There are people bawling their eyes out, and she just sits there and nods her disproportinately big head. Fantastico!!

On a side note, I've been watching The Wire: Season One, and I dig it a lot. One of the best cop shows I've seen. Dominic West as Det. McNulty is a real bastard.

PG

What's on the Tube?

Now that my summer officially started yesterday (a couple weeks of putting together a pitch package for a music video contest USC is sponsoring prevented a full-out Summer of Phil starting), it's time to catch up/rave on the TV shows I've either DVR'd from this last season or gotten on DVD in the recent weeks. And, no...no Sopranos talk here (not a huge mafia fan which explains why I haven't seen either Goodfellas or Casino in full) Here's a quick rundown...

Freaks and Geeks - The love for Judd Apatow has been rather astounding for the last two weeks. It seems every entertainment news outlet is running a story about the guy and how he's revolutionizing Hollywood comedy films. While I'm not the biggest fan of the critical darling that is "Knocked Up" (Not as funny as 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Seth Rogen is tad bit shaky as a leading man), I picked up Freaks and Geeks, a series he helped showrun in the late 1990's. From the first six episodes, I like the show. Great characters. Funny HS awkwardness. Good stuff.

Dexter - The only cop/procedural show that I'm watching. Combines a cool genre mythology (Cop trains his adopted sociopathic son to control his serial killer tendencies) with some real, funny character moments. Reminds me a bit of Buffy without the vampires, etc. Also, it's succeeding in fulfilling the void in my life that was created when my beloved Veronica Mars got cancelled. More on VM in a future entry.

Friday Night Lights - DVR'd this show this past season due to the critical acclaim it was supposedly getting and some love it was getting from Innes. Although the pilot didn't blow me away, I have to say that I've fallen in love with the soap opera. Sure, these HS characters are unbelievably better-looking than any HS kids I went to school with and deal with more emotional, familial, and social problems than you can shake a DeGrassi stick at, but they've grown on me. Of special note is the coach character played by Kyle Chandler. He's the star of the show, making this football melodrama as emotionally believable as network TV can get.

Three great shows. One unfortunately cancelled. Two coming back.