Still Fixated on Television - Now With More Accents!

God bless and keep you, BBC America1, for bringing to your subscribers Coupling (the American version? Total crap. The British version? A near-consistent delight until the last season, which was mostly crap.) and, what we're-a gonna discuss today, MI-5. If you happen to be on the side of the Atlantic where the show's produced, it's called Spooks. But that little colloquialism doesn't translate appropriately on the sinister side of the pond. But now you know what you're looking for if you're off to stalk Lucy Davis or something2.

This post catches you up, then, as an experiment, we're going to try recapping an episode of something that TWoP doesn't recap. Josh wants to make our own recappy site for... reasons passing understanding, so that might happen. If anyone else (like there's more than 3 other people that read this site) want to do that, we could do that. It might be fun until our brains melt.

Click the thinghy to continue.

Here's the deal: perhaps you've heard of England. Land of people who are, on the whole, more articulate than you, have funny names for things (bubble and squeak, anyone?), and whose imperial yoke we threw off a zillion years ago in favor of some stuff that seemed like a really good idea at the time. But we have things in common! Things like English, beer, and that terrorists want to kill us. Our story is about the good guys who sneak around, beat up bad guys, foil plots, and have Issues with their significant others because they have to be sneaky all the time, and tell people that they work for the International Peat Bog Preservation Society on the off chance that someone listening works for Al Qaeda3.

So. Series One found us joining Tom Quinn (Matthew Mcfayeden) and his intrepid team of secret agent men and women. He immediately starts hanging out with a wet-blanket girlfriend who has a cute daughter. She figures out that he doesn't work for an import/export firm when he comes back home lightly perforated with gunfire. They deal with can-they-can't-they know who he actually is, and WBG sadly doesn't get blown up at the end of the first season when terrorists plant a bomb in Tom's laptop. Though, she certainly doesn't survive because she was able to defuse it. Oh, no, she's completely worthless at that, and it's only because that bomb's a decoy that she survives. She would've been able to get out of the house if her stupid kid hadn't put peanut butter in the super-secure-door-lock mechanism that they had to install in Tom's house because Tom wanted to make WBG feel safe. She's crappy, and she breaks up with Tom in the beginning of Series Two, because she makes him choose between her and England, and of course, Tom chooses England, because she sucks and England doesn't.

But the cool part is the foiling of terrorists, which happens thusly: pro-life carbomber foiled by the team when they fuck up her cell phone so she can't detonate her bomb. She's American, they give her to the CIA, she's in deep doo-doo, even though Tom and the Gang tell her she won't be if she gives up her accomplices. Oh well, sorry bomber, sucks to be you. Enjoy Florida and the thumbscrews the CIA'll probably put you to. Race Riot Instigator, who's some sort of muckety-muck in the business world gets the attention of Tom and the Gang, but unfortunately, Helen, posing as Tom's wife for this mission, whiffs on a question from RRI's wife, which is overheard by RRI, who sticks her face in a deep-fryer and kills her. For reals. It's awful, and unexpected, and MI-5/Spooks would like you to know that they will be refraining from pulling any punches, thankyoverymuch. Please don't get comfortable, as the captain will not be turning off the fasten seatbelts sign, and will in fact be diverting into a cyclone. Enjoy. Hugh Laurie joins the cast briefly as the best MI-6 officer since Bond, being kind of a dick to our MI-5 clan whilst enjoying an opera and running super-triple-secret-agents against everybody. Good times. One of the 5's, Tessa, gets caught running phantom operatives and pocketing the money herself. Needless to say, this doesn't go over well, so she's not on the show anymore. Mostly. MI-5 foils a plan to make Air Force One land on top of another plane rather than somewhere conventional like a runway at Gatwick. Stuff like that.

While everybody was worried about Tom's stupid girlfriend maybe blowing up at the end of Series 1, they weren't paying attention to the real bomb that blew up the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Whoops. Stupid girlfriend. On the plus side, they figure out that the bombadier is going to blow up a COBRA meeting (This COBRA, not this), foil the guy, and instead of sending him to The Hague for trial, they fool him and send him to Egypt. And tell Egypt that he's also a pedophile, so he'll get the special pedophile treatment. Good for you, Harry Pearce. (Tom's boss, and basically the only guy who's not dead yet. (SPOILER!)) Let's zip through this some more, eh? The possibility of bombs at a mosque introduce us to Dr. Bashir who grudgingly joins the team in return for... something, immunity or whatever, to stop the imam from using children as suicide bombers. For a while, everyone thinks Doc's double crossed our MI-5 guys, but he's just doing things his own way. Of course, he gets his ass blown up for his trouble, just when it looks like he's talked Li'l Boomy out of taking his exploding vest out clubbing. I mention this at length, because it's a really extraordinary episode that doesn't get preachy about Muslim relations in England, AND you get the fake-out of "Oh, everything's all right, now. He's talking to the little kid on the playground, and they wouldn't let anything happ- OH DEAR CHRIST!" So, yeeeeah. There's that. Oh, meanwhile, we're introduced to Christine Dale, who's going to eventually be Tom's new love interest. She works for the CIA, and is able to not be a simpering wreck much. Which is good. Other good times from Series 2 include: mystery bomb goes off in Parliament Square, which turns out to be VX gas and everyone is super-screwed. EXCEPT, it's totally an exercise, and nobody knows about it, making everybody lose their freaking minds and reach the point where they're going to shoot each other. I recommend it. The season ends with everybody being kidnapped and drugged by some freaky-deaky ex-CIA guy who decides that it's time for a spot of revenge and not only kills the defense minister with a bad-ass sniper rifle, but frames Tom for it. Everybody and their mother believes that Tom's somehow lost it and is playing for the bad guys, so the only thing left to do, of course, is to end up in some house in Dover or whatever, and have Tom shoot Harry in the shoulder with a shotgun to escape. He then re-enacts the end of The Awakening, and we're to assume that he's dead by North Sea poisoning.

Season 3! Tom's been washed away to wherever, and Her Majesty's Government is not amused. Nasty Bastard of the Joint Intelligence committee will be a thorn in Harry and co.'s side for the most of the season, until Harry tells him to cram it. Our Gang has some delightful clandestine meeting scenes while they try to prove Tom's innocence (oh, right, he's not dead. Sorry.). Some raving loon (Adam - not a loon, and soon-to-be New Tom) shows up on a bicycle and lets them know they're being surveilled, and they scatter in a thousand directions as people we don't care about arrive in trench coats, and talk into their sleeves about how pissed they are that Section D got away. So Tom's in good standing, until he has to get Emperor Palpatine to be a spy, and has so much fun with it that he doesn't notice that Palpatine is now electrocuting people with his fingers and is building a Death Star in Shropshire. Or, he just can't handle the strain, and the entire operation goes pretty much pear-shaped, but Adam fixes it in a way that's not as interesting as watching Palpatine and Tom lose their collective mind. Harry tells Tom that they can't hang out together anymore.

Zoe meets a charming photographer (aren't they all), who becomes useful to the plot when his no-good brother outs Zoe as a spy with incriminating spy photos of spy stuff. Or something. Whatever, it's no good, but Zoe's real problem comes when an operation goes wrong and a policeman gets killed, and she's put on trial. Found guilty, she's going to go to jail, but Harry can't just follow the rules like normal, and sends her to Argentina, instead. They can't hang out together anymore. And she and Danny certainly can't pork, like Danny wanted to, and I forgot to mention. Oh, and Mr. Photographer has to think that she's in prison, but he's clever, and Danny decides not to keep that secret, so, Mr. Photographer is all "What's new, Buenos Aires," and they can't hang out together anymore. But Zoe and Mr. P can hang out with ex-Nazis4. Danny's not handling things well. Even though Cute Scottish Agent Sam wanted to be all up on him at some point in the season, that doesn't seem to go anywhere, and he gets all snippy with her, and she writes about it in her journal. I don't know. I just wanted to mention Cute Scottish Agent Sam, and I couldn't think of another reason to do it. She's cute and Scottish. Ruth (who I haven't mentioned, but she massages data) has an episode of her own where she falls for (and ultimately poisons awesomely) some computer guy who wants to send a magic algorythm to... essentially make it not secure to use your credit card on Amazon.com anymore. They're having dinner, she figures out that he's the bad guy, and keeps his algorythm in a suitcase, he gets poisoned awesomely, and she's okay. Danny chucks the suitcase into the Thames, because that's what you do.

Adam's wife was MI-6, but now she's MI-5 so she can work on stuff, mostly doing a shocking amount of blow undercover with some rock star and his wife whose baby is kidnapped. Nasty Bastard wants Harry and Co. to work on the case because it's vital to National Security, even though Harry thinks it's a load of bollocks and the police should handle it. Nasty Bastard disagrees. In any event, things aren't going so well for Mrs. Adam, and subsequently, Adam wants her out, Harry wants her in, Harry wins. In the "the show did WHAT?" category, it turns out that the baby was kidnapped at the request of Mrs. Rock Star, and the kidnappers were so incompetent that they thought it'd be a solid idea to put the baby in a duffel bag and toss the duffel bag over the fence to their confederates. Moral: don't toss babies over fences. Dead babies result, and by extention, stabbed fake kidnappers, stabbed MI-5 agents, really violently stabbed Mrs. Rock Stars, and a Mr. Rock Star who relocates the majority of his brains onto a wall that he painted in a club when he was was Mr. Rock... Guy. Not star, is my point.

We're almost caught up.

Bad guys have figured out where Mr. and Mrs. Adam live, and have bugged the place. They're pissed off at Freedom, and so they're going to set up Mrs. Adam (Fiona). They capture Danny and Fiona while they're bugging some house, and bring them off to the countryside for fresh air and torture. Danny and Fiona engineer a daring (and way-cool) escape, but they, sadly, do not succeed. Adam's on the phone with the bad guys, after being hijacked by some terrorist lady. Terrorist Leader tells him to pick who lives and who dies, because Danny and Fiona committed the faux pas of killing a henchman on their (failed) way out. While Adam looks like he's going to vomit, Danny sacks up and tells Terroist Leader that he's a damn dirty facist and that Danny questions his parentage, and that basically Terrorist Leader can go fuck himself. Shockingly, this doesn't go over very well with Terrorist Leader, who shoots Danny. Nobody can hang out with Danny anymore. Except Helen, and maybe Dr. Bashir. Oh, yeah, everybody hears Danny's (quite bad-ass, to be perfectly honest) speeh, and subsequent shooting, because a nice bit of fieldcraft hooked Adam up with a two-way radio. MEANWHILE, Terror Lady has talked Adam into getting her into some dinner with the Prime Minister. Presumably, if he does this, she'll get Terror Leader to let Fiona go. All she wants to do is talk to the PM, really. She doesn't have a bomb SEWN INTO HER ABDOMEN or anything. Whoops. Good news: she has second thoughts about going from Terror Lady to Tiny Bits Lady, hesitates, and tells Adam. Bad news: Terror Leader has control over Terror Lady's detonation. Good news: Adam calls an audible, and makes sure the PM doesn't enter the building. Bad news: this understandably makes Terror Leader unhappy, so he's going to light Fiona on fire, and then maybe blow up Terror Lady anyway. Good news: the SAS crash through skylights, windows, walls, and the space-time continuum, and shoot the bejeezus out of Terror Leader.

Bad news: Danny's still dead.

SO! Things I wanted to mention:

• Harry Pearce = Everybody's Boss. Better get his ass knighted for all the shit he has to put up with.
• Tom Quinn's Useless Girlfriend #1 (w/Maisy) = "Hey, Tom, choose between England and me." "Well, you suck, but Maisy's adorable.... Ah, Maisy'll probably grow into a shrew like you. I choose England."
• Tom Quinn's Useless Girlfriend #2 = Batshit insane. I didn't even mention her above, but she tried to get revenge on Tom for dumping her by putting up flyers in the women's restroom that essentially said "For a good time, call this SECRET AGENT OF HER MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT". This didn't go over very well, so I think she got shipped to Scotland or something.
• Tom Quinn's American CIA Girlfriend = Christine was delightful. Kicked ass, took names, became kind of a sissy when Tom became a sissy. This is right about when they started having Secret Agent Sex. Anyway, when Tom got set up, it was kind of her fault. Neither Uncle Sam nor Aunt... Queen Elizabeth was particularly pleased, so she went back to the United States, never to be heard from again.
• Hugh Laurie used to be a Big Deal MI-6 Agent. This was awesome. He then became a crippled doctor on Fox in America, so now infinitely less cool MI-6 agents show up. They will all be known as "Not Nearly as Awesome as Hugh Laurie Agent."
• Malcom and Colin are tech guys who are really great, but didn't figure into that recap up there. Sorry. I want to mention them now.
• Tom = Canned. Zoe = Chilean. Danny = Corpse.
• Adam = New Tom. His wife is Fiona, and they're a Spy Couple, which is, you know, nice.
• Sam = Current Hotness. Stupid Danny never got around to making his move because he was too busy wanting to have the hook-ups with Zoe. I disagree with his choice.
• Oh, yeah, Danny and Zoe shared a "flat," which is British for "apartment." I hope it's still available to rent, because it was really swanky.

Wow. Them's a lot of words5. I also stopped linking to interesting things - I probably should go back and find some interesting links, if I ever edit this. Eventually, I'll recap Series 4 of MI-5, because I have the DVDs from Netflix, I'm excited about the show, and I hate work. I hope you read this far.

1 Apparently, I'm wrong, as it shows on A&E. Whatever. I Netflix it, anyway.
2 This was originally to be Emma Watson, with a link to one of those creepy "countdown to legal age" clocks, but I was too creeped out after actually finding one. Eew.
3 Hello, NSA! I'm just writing about a television show. Nothing to see here.
4 Apparently, they actually went to Chile. Whatever.
5 A lot = 2,681.

This is the Jump.

Studio 60 (or: A Slave to Duty)

Now, I know I touched on this before, in the letter to Mr. Sorkin, but I feel it bears repeating. Studio 60 is a... show with a lot of wasted potential. This week's previouslies reminded us of the following things:

• Reality shows are for dumb people. Didn't you hear? If you like reality shows, you're functionally retarded. Isn't that cute? (Subtext: "Hi, I'm Aaron Sorkin, and I hate reality shows because I blame them for people not liking my shows. For some reason.")
  
• Danny and Jordan entered a relationship that made me uncomfortable a few times, but then got together, and I genuinely hope that's not going to be a terrible thing. (Subtext: "Hi, I'm Aaron Sorkin. I seem to have written these characters into a corner by making one of them a pretentious douchebag, and the other a terrifying, unstoppable cruise missile of 'love.' Or maybe 'unholy obsession.' Oh, fuck it, let's get together and hope people go with it.")
  
• Matt and Harriet broke up, because they're both irritating, sanctimonious bastards when they're together. (Subtext: "Hi, I'm Aaron Sorkin. Have you met Kristin Chenoweth?")
  

The lesson? "Hi, I'm Aaron Sorkin. I hate."

Oh, my, do I have more to say after the jump.

Let's ignore, for a moment, the bizarre vendetta that Mr. S has against reality television and against people that "don't get" his show. That's pathological and weird, and he's creepy in that sense. What's weirder and creepier and pathologicallier is the bizarre-ass allegory that Johnny Cokefiend has constructed. Matthew Perry is acting his ASS off in this show. I know! Who could've predicted that? But Perry is going to be senza ass, because he acted it clean off in pursuit of... what? Aaron Sorkin's crazyface? It's cheating if you get to write the words for both the character who's ostensibly "you," AND the character who you've pitted yourself against. But you're not even doing it right - you get to make Ma(aaron)tt Alb(sorkin)ie this witty genius and a platform for your ire, and you write him all petty and bitchy. And we have no idea why HarriettotalynotKristen Chenowethayes gave this dickbag the time of day, because he's a baby, and she's... got no redeeming qualities. But your show claims that she's a genius comedienne. Who can't tell a joke. No wonder nobody cares about your show - your main "romantic" storyline doesn't make any fucking sense.

What's even more infuriating is that not only is Perry doing a genius job with this mish-mash of a Sorkin Therapy Session, between great silent reactions, really good chemistry with everybody (specifically Bradley Whitford, Timothy Busfield, and the girl who plays Suzanne the PA), but so is everyone else!

Bradley Whitford, when not saddled with the weirdness of Jordan obsession is funny, per usual, and a delightful producer of shows. He and Perry are best of friends, and you can tell. He pedconferences with the best of them, and gives - at worst - interesting line readings.

Timothy Busfield is my favorite, if for no reason other than the time I took the Warner Bros. studio tour, and we went past the West Wing set. Allison Janney was talking to some production person and studiously ignoring the tram. Timothy Busfield takes the opportunity to wander out of the "White House," and shout "Allison Janney, ladies and gentlemen!" at the tour, and starts applauding. It was terribly funny. ANYway, I could watch Cal operate a TV show for an hour. That'd be good times. They nailed that part of the show last Monday, with the zooming all over the studio during the dress rehearsal. Which was then ruined by Weirdo Jordan being bizarrely insecure about the boobs on the guest artist. I don't get it.

They stopped showing us the sketches that aren't funny, and just started showing us the funny that surrounds the sketches that may or may not be funny. The pitch for "Dolphin Girl," two weeks ago was very funny. Nathan Corddry and Sarah Paulson wander in and pitch it to Matt, and it's spot on. This week, Nathan and Nate Torrence really want a sketch called "Metric Conversion" to be in the show. A sketch called "Metric Conversion" does not strike me as having a ton of hilarity potential, but we don't have to see it. We do, however, see Tom and Dylan be tremendous in their attempts to get it on the show. ("BIG SKETCH," yells Dylan, awkwardly, and I watch that over and over, because it's FUNNY!)

Ed Asner as Yoda of NBS - great times. Steven Weber talking to the Chinese parents of a viola prodigy that wants to get into Tom Jeters pantaloons - exceptional times, all the way around, if a bit repetitive. It was the same story ("What will happen if I'm just honest with Mr. Zhang Tao this time? The same as the last time? Hopefully the Harsh Truth will cause him to respect me again."), but it was well-played. Also the viola prodigy wanting all up on Tom was well-played.

But Amanda Peet has this thankless job of being this bizarro network executive with no sense of propriety. She's handling it admirably, and looks like she's having fun with it, but it's absurd. Even leaving out the weird giving-in to the stalkeration of Bradley Whitford's Danny Tripp, and the insane arguments that she had against dating him (not: "I'm your boss," or "You're stalking me," or anything, it was "I'm scared of feeling," or something. Briefly, "You're a recovering cocaine addict," I think. I don't recall. I passed out from irritation.), she's a loon. And Aaron Sorkin, well, Aaron, it's pretty clear you're just writing based on things you've heard about pregnant women. "I hear the're hungry all the time! And for weird foods! Oh, and their hormones are doing things! WHERE'S MY TYPEWRITER? I have a PREGNANT LADY to write! Genius!"

GOD.

So much potential. Sorkin's a good writer. But there's so much that's weird with it. Just stop being weird. STOPSTOPSTOPSTOPSTOP.

Watch it. It's good. It'll probably be canned, and that's a shame, because maybe Aaron'll stop using it as a canvas for weirdo allegory. Because it's way too much insight into the terrifying world of Aaron Sorkin, and eventually, we the audience get tired of saying "OKAY. We get it, you did all this stuff. Isn't it funny that a lot of this happened in real life. If you keep winking at us, we're gonna think you're some sort of predator. Knock it off."

And I like the show. Yeesh.

This is the Jump.

...Wherein I Am Incapable of Concentrating Long Enough to Write A Recap

I've aborted two attempts to write recaps of shows I've decided I really like. I like television, and quality writing/acting/fun is part of why I try to stay in the "business." As it were. Gosh, that was pretentious. I wanted to share why I was enjoying myself with Friday Night Lights (Which Airs On Wednesdays, So Please Don't Be Confused) and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip Is a Very Long Title Even When I Don't Add Words to the End, but I'm not nearly as good at writing recaps as TWoP, and besides, who'd read them? What would be the point? Plus, it takes a load of concentration, and I started to get bored and go on tangents. So, I decided to take all my witticisms and dump them here. In a Wit Dump.

First of all, I was going to call the series CDVRs, for C-Dog teleVision Recaps. That's precious, isn't it? Looking at it now, I'm glad I'm a crashing failure at recapping television, because that's just offensive.

Second of all, I realized I didn't want to talk about the episodes, per se, but rather about the shows as a whole.

So, on and ever upward.

Studio 60 will be the next post, and Friday Night Lights will follow. I don't want these posts to be super-long, and this one was just sort of explaining myself. And now I'm explaining why I explain myself.

This is the Jump.