As we come to the end of another glorious year we’re given an opportunity to look back from whence we came. The best way of doing so, as evidenced by the countless TV shows and posts across the internet, is through a year in review. Like everything else around here, things are handled a little bit differently. So, without further whoop-de-do (it sounds better, go with it), I present the 31st Annual Justies.
Best Olympic Moment Not Involving Michael Phelps
The Olympics were two of the greatest weeks of 2008 and there were dozens of amazing moments ranging from the incredible Opening Ceremonies to the unforgettable I Love Beijing theme song. There were so many great moments this year it’s hard to choose just one that stands out. Ok, that’s a lie. There’s one moment that was far better than any other and is, quite frankly, the greatest moment in aquatic sports history. The Justie for the Best Olympic Moment Not Involving Michael Phelps goes to Jason Lezak’s amazing comeback in the 4×100 relay which won the USA a gold and created one hell of a story. There has never been a comeback quite like that nor has there been an instance of shear determination. Way to go Lezak, way to go.
Greatest Thing on TV
All in all, it’s been a pretty crappy year for TV. The Writers Strike cut a lot of seasons short and seemed to affect the quality of TV for this season as well. So the pool to draw from here is obviously pretty slim. But there were some stand outs. The Office and 30 Rock have been stellar and new shows Fringe and Life on Mars have been entertaining. But one show has been better than the rest, so the Justie for Greatest Thing on TV goes to Chuck. Chuck is consistently entertaining and just quirky enough to be endearing but it was “Chuck Verses Tom Sawyer” that pulled it in. Twin Galaxies, arcade games and Rush? Can’t get much better than that.
Best Unintentional Use of Keywords to Drive in Search Engine Traffic
People search for funny things on the internet. Some people spend tons of money and time trying to figure out the best combination of Julianne Hough, Will Smith, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, the Jonas Brothers and Wil Wheaton to get their search engine ranking high enough for people to notice. Around here I do things a little different. I write things and then see how people find them. If a Miley Cyrus mention gets slipped in, well, so be it. It was earlier this year while perusing my site logs that I came across this category’s winner. The Justie for Best Unintentional Use of Keywords to Drive in Search Engine Traffic goes to this post about Chinese food and Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno. I’ll let you figure out what people were searching for.
Crappiest Thing to Happen to Someone Other Than Me
A lot of crappy things happened in 2008 including hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, fires and a new Rambo movie. I jumped off a cliff and blacked out in the water, but I’m exempt from this category for obvious reasons. No, there was one crappy thing that unfortunately deserves this Justie; the Crappiest Thing to Happen to Someone Other Than Me Justie goes to the economy. Sure, I’m affected indirectly, but whatever. The economy pretty much sucked this year and have put hundreds of thousands out of work. Unfortunately it looks like it may get worse before it gets better but one thing is for certain, it will get better. Here’s to hoping that the economy earns the 2009 Justie for the Greatest Thing to Happen to Someone Other Than Me.
Most Addicting Social Media Outlet
Hello my name is Justin and I’m a social media addict. This year there were plenty of social media sites begging to earn an addiction: Facebook, Shelfari, Strands, and Last.fm just to name a few. But there was one that stood out far above the rest — possibly combined. The Justie for the Most Addicting Social Media Outlet goes to Twitter. I wasn’t the only one addicted either. Not only did twitt rank as one of the years ‘buzzwords’, but now CNN even takes comments — and in some cases breaking news — from Twitter.
Strangest Nuance in a City I’ve Traveled To
This one is a tough one to call. I’ve been a number of places this year including Seattle, The Bahamas, New Orleans, Key West, North Carolina, Georgia and Utah. In those various places I’ve seen a fair share of strange things, like the odd traffic lights on the highway in Seattle, but by far the Strangest Nuance in a City I’ve Traveled To goes to Utah. Why Utah? Their numbering of streets is absolutely ridiculous. Everything is laid out in a grid, which makes sense, but that grid is far too large. For instance, we had to turn from S 700 E onto E 10600 S. Does that make any sense? Then, thrown into the middle of that was State St which does make sense. I don’t get it. Way to earn that Justie, Utah.
Coolest Thing of the Year
Despite all the crappy things that happened, 2008 had it’s share of some pretty cool things. Myron Rolle won a Rhodes Scholarship and I read Snow Crash, both pretty cool. The Dark Knight made a ton of money while the Devil Rays won the American League without any. Tiger Woods had the comeback of his career and Bill Gates ended his. All of these things are pretty cool, but only one can win the Award. The 2008 Justie for the Coolest Thing of the Year goes to The Olympics.
It was going to be pretty hard to beat the summer games. They began with the coolest Opening Ceremony ever performed (no video links available, stupid NBC) and included some unforgettable moments, a lot of which occurred in the pool. Michael Phelps won a record setting 8 gold medals, which will probably never happen again. Countless records were broken, smaller countries shined and for a few weeks in August the world actually came together and enjoyed each others company. You can’t really get much cooler than that.
All the Justies have been handed out and I’ve got nothing left for 2008. The ball will soon drop and bring in 2009. Let’s see what happens.
The best storyline possible to write is that of an ordinary person put into an extraordinary situation. The original episodes of Heroes nailed that idea. There was the cheerleader who couldn’t get hurt, the congressman who discovered he could fly, and the geek who could bend space and time. All of these people didn’t know what it meant and thought they were completely alone. Because of this, I was a fan of the show since it debuted.
Then, once everyone was introduced, the Heroes writing staff decided it was time to show that all of these ‘heroes’ needed to come together in order to save the world. Visions of the future and the introduction of an villain lead to the season one slogan: “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” The ‘heroes’ found themselves, came together, defeated the villain, lost some people along the way, and saved the world. Then came season two.
Season two started out with yet another chance to save the world, what with the butterfly effect and all. Season two also showed that not only was the villain from season one still alive, but a ton of new ‘heroes’ were waiting to be found. However, instead of focusing on these ‘heroes’ being ordinary people in extraordinary situations, their extraordinary abilities became much more ordinary. Season two was also interrupted by the Writers Strike. Instead of pausing the storyline mid-season, the Heroes team decided to wrap up the storyline early leaving a few large plot holes along the way — Peter’s Irish girlfriend anyone?
Season three promised villains deeper and darker than any yet to be introduced. But deeper and darker villains brought many more characters into the fold — so many that keeping track of all of them grew quite difficult. The line between good and evil was blurred at the beginning of the season leaving questions about who was a hero and who was a villain. All of this was set against another vision of the future that required the world to be saved. Basically, season three was repeating season one.
In tonight’s episode the lines were finally clearly drawn between who is a hero and who is a villain. There is still that pesky ’save the world’ issue lingering about though it looks like it’s going to be taking a backseat — which, given season two’s decisions, isn’t surprising.
I’ll be frank, the show has gotten bad. Really bad. Possibly jumped the shark bad. So bad I’m tempted to give up on the show altogether. However, one thing in the preview for next week is going to keep me watching. Evidently an eclipse is coming that’s going to remove the ‘heroes’ powers leaving them ‘normal’. Considering them having abilities has become ordinary, it looks like they could once again be put into an extraordinary situation. If this is the case, they might have a good thing going. If not, well, the show is no longer worth watching. I guess we’ll find out what happens next week.
Has Heroes jumped the shark? Is there still some good in it? Let me know in the comments.
The WGA writers strike seems like so long ago but it seems we might still be feeling it’s effects. Since the new television season has started, it seems the quality of the writing has diminished after taking a half season off. I’ve watched three shows so far this season and all of them have had writing “issues” so far.
The first show is Saturday Night Live. To say SNL has writing issues is an understatement. The show has downright problems. In the two episodes that have aired so far there has been one sketch that was actually funny: the Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton season opener.
After watching the rest of the episode, and a majority of the one aired this past Saturday, it seems as if Tina Fey herself might have written this one. The SNL writing has been in trouble for a very long time and this season it just seems worse. It begs the question, will NBC grow a pair and clean out the write staff or *gasp* cancel the show?
The next show that makes me wonder what the writing team is thinking is Fringe. I’ve talked about Fringe before, it’s a great show that is part LOST and part X-Files. One of the main characters is a former mad scientist who has been locked up in a mental institution for the past 17 years. While most of the writing revolving this character is done well, there seems to be one “out” the team is using.
In the first episode Bishop, the character in question, wanted to use his lab from 17 years ago. Good thing it still exists! Harvard just decided to use it as storage. And by storage they meant cover the equipment with a tarp and put a few boxes in there. Convenient. In the second episode Bishop needed a file he left in his car. Well guess what? His car is in the same pad-locked garage it was 17 years ago! Again, how convenient? Finally, last night, Bishop needed a piece of equipment he hid in the wall of his former home. Well guess what. It was still there. But it wasn’t in a wall, it was in a dumbwaiter merely covered by a bookshelf. Do the writers really expect us to believe that the key to all of Bishop’s experiments are littered all over Boston and somehow completely untouched and right where they were left 17 years ago? Come on?
The final show I’ve watched so far this season has been Heroes. Cut to only 11 episodes last year because of the strike, it’s been a long time since Heroes has been on the air. But watching the two hour premiere on Monday, a few things struck me about one of the main characters, Peter.
Peter can absorb every power that he comes in contact with making him pretty much the most powerful “hero” of them all. Yet, somehow, Peter manages to constantly make poor decisions and, as a result, the world ends four to five years later. This season, future “Dark Peter” has come back from the future to prevent bad things from happening. But here’s what I don’t get: Dark Peter has a giant scar across his face. Lest we forget Peter has the ability to heal himself. Curious? Even more curious is that two of the powers Peter has absorbed involve being able to see the future. Given this, you would think Peter would know that his horrible choices have an effect down the road. Either that or the writers just assume we don’t remember these things.
None of these writing slips will cause me to stop watching the shows, well except maybe for SNL. But after waiting so long for good TV to come back on, I’d like to think the writers would be willing to not treat the audience like children and actually write the show without the sloppy “outs” they have been given themselves. Maybe it’s just been so long that I forgot this is the small screen norm and am being overly critical. If Toby shows up on The Office on Thursday I’ll know sloppy writing abounds.
What do you think? Have you noticed other instances of sloppy writing on TV so far this year? Leave it in the comments.
An open letter to the AMPTP:
This writers strike has gone on long enough. The networks may think they can get by on reality TV and game shows until the strike ends, but when TV viewership is already down across the board, how could worse programing possibly help? Give the writers the fractional percentage raise they’re asking for and let’s get Hollywood back up and running before real damage is done — like the entire support staff on every scripted television show being fired. With over a hundred people per show, that’s tens of thousands of people who could loose their jobs just in time for Christmas. So take a small cut in your already enormous profit margin from the $50 you’re charging for a season on DVD and give it to the writers, because without them there wouldn’t be television worth watching.