Crushable » Television

DIY: How To Prepare For Your Downton Abbey Inspired Viewing Party

Amanda Chatel — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:31:38 +0000

It seems everyday there’s another mention of Downton Abbey and all the people who are completely falling in love with the show. Devoted fans are really going the extra mile and even starting a new trend: Downton Abbey inspired viewing parties.

With the next episode of season two on this Sunday night, people are getting ready to celebrate by hosting parties that are somewhat of an ode to the show that in the last few months has become a cultural phenomenon. From decorating to appropriate attire to food and beverage, we have some suggestions for your next Downton Abbey inspired party. Whether you have a bunch of friends over to watch the episodes or you think it’s fitting to just rock out all Crawley family style any night of the week, here are some tips to transport you back to 1914 England.

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Gallery: 10 Possible Titles For Downton Abbey‘s Lady Mary And Countess Of Grantham’s Album

Amanda Chatel — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:30:22 +0000

Downton Abbey fans (read: obsessed stalkers), rejoice! Lady Mary and Countess of Grantham, or as they’re known in the real world, Michelle Dockery and Elizabeth McGovern are set to release an album.

When she’s not being completely lovely and gracious as Cora, Countess of Grantham, McGovern is rocking out with her jazz band Sadie and the Hotheads. If that weren’t enough, Dockery likes to make her way down to the local pub to lend her vocals to the band. There’s probably a Crawley jazz fest going on right now somewhere in Hampshire and it probably involves a bunch of pints, too! Where’s our invitation?

It was McGovern who broke the exciting news to the UK Telegraph during a screening of My Week With Marilyn hosted by Colin Firth stating that the album will be coming out “later this year,” while Dockery added “It’s been so much fun. Elizabeth is a great songwriter.”

Although little information is known about the album that these two might be releasing, except that it has a good chance of falling under the jazz genre, we wondered what an album by their characters would be like and be called. We decided to make some guesses of our own.

(Photo: Jezebel)

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Honey Badger Doesn’t Give A S*** That He’s About To Get His Own Show

Amanda Chatel — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:59:58 +0000

If you weren’t one of the 32 million people who have seen the Honey Badger video that went viral last year, then you’ve obviously been living under a rock. And you know what? Honey Badger doesn’t give a shit. Why? He’s pretty badass, that’s why.

The Hollywood Reporter has announced that this “fearless” animal who can run forward, backward, climb trees to get cobras for dinner then defies a venomous bite by simply taking a nap and getting up for more, is about to be a television star. It’s time for the “nasty” breed to make the jump from YouTube pop culture meme to primetime diva.

At the moment, the animated show is being called “Honey Badger U” and will center around a professor of life sciences and his students. The professor’s name is Randall (the name of the video’s narrator) and the Honey Badger role in the show will be that of the school mascot. The creators of the show, Six Eleven Media, plan to pitch the idea to networks this month which is just in time for the Honey Badger book release.

But one has to wonder how the hell any network is going to let “Randall” narrate the adventures of the Honey Badger or any other animal with the FCC standing in the way of the fun. They’d have to spiffy up that “crazy, nastyass” critter so he’s HBO-ready or something. If you can’t say “Honey Badger doesn’t give a shit,” without being bleeped, then maybe the Honey Badger should stay put and just make more videos for us. In the meantime, let’s watch the “hungry little bastard” in action again.

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Ladies Be Filmin’: Pan Am

Leila Cohan-Miccio — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:39:14 +0000

The fall TV season is underway and, despite the ever-lower numbers of women in the writers’ rooms, it’s being hailed as the year of the women: 17 out of the 25 new scripted shows on the Big Five networks are female-centered and many were created by women. In this series, comedian Leila Cohan-Miccio watches the new female-centered shows and evaluates how realistic their portrayals of women actually are. Today, Pan Am.

Obvious comparisons first: as far as 60s-set shows go, Pan Am may not be as subtle and smart as Mad Men, but it’s nowhere near the clunker level of The Playboy Club. Though the pilot offered more backstory than plot, the characters are engaging and there’s some real promise here.

Pan Am follows a flight crew on the eponymous airline: stewardesses (they wouldn’t become flight attendants for twenty years) bohemian Maggie (Christina Ricci), spy (!) Kate (Kelli Garner), runaway bride Laura (Margot Robbie), and sexually adventurous Colette (Karine Vanesse), sunny captain Dean (Mike Vogel), and crew Ted (Michael Mosley), and Sanjeev (Kal Parekh), as they fly a new plane’s maiden voyage from New York to London.

Pan Am spends a lot of time peddling the glamour of flying in the 1960s, and oh god, is it effective. When a stewardess doesn’t show up for the flight, the airline sends a helicopter to go get Maggie so the plane leaves on time, something that’s pretty damn hard to imagine in an era where I’ve had flights delayed several hours because of vague “gate issues.” The plane is equipped with little table hang-out areas that are set with real vases with fresh flowers! Newlyweds get a bottle of champagne to take with them!

Both Pan Am and Playboy Club put forth the thesis that jobs that seem sexist now were actually really empowering for women in the 1960s. Pan Am is much more convincing about it for two reasons. First, the show is honest about the parts that were terrible: weigh-ins, mandatory girdles, sexist crew members. Second, you can actually see the benefits, beyond just money, the women were receiving. As Maggie puts it, “I get to see the world.” Flying schedules were more leisurely, leaving time to explore the cities Pan Am flew to, and it was a legitimately adventurous job. Unlike Playboy Club, women are the center of Pan Am, and they get more to do than looking alternatingly nervous and carefree. Pan Am also gets points for the four central women genuinely liking each other and not resorting to a gross ladies-are-always-competing-with-each-other attitude. Though Maggie, Kate, Laura, and Colette may not be fully realized characters yet, Pan Am‘s pilot was strong enough that I’ll tune in again to watch them develop.

(Photo: Google images)

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Zooey Deschanel’s Full Theme Song For ‘New Girl’ Not Great, Still Better Than ‘New Girl’

Jamie Peck — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:39:35 +0000

Even those who hate Zooey Deschanel‘s cloyingly “adorkable” onscreen persona must admit she’s a decent songwriter. She and Him, her band with M Ward, has put out consistently solid retro tinged pop records, proving her the exception to the rule that actors shouldn’t dabble in musical vanity projects. Which was why I was sort of interested to hear the full version of the theme song she wrote for New Girl, currently streaming over at Vulture. Could it be that something redeemable had come out of that painfully un-funny excuse for a sitcom?

Not really. It’s perky and annoying. (In fairness, I should mention that Zooey’s more nuanced work is not.) The way she phrases the word “lolli-pup” makes my skin crawl. But it does do a fairly good job at capturing the show’s mindless tweeness, so I guess you can’t blame Zooey if that’s what she had to work with. She gets herself into dicier territory, however, when discussing her inspiration for the track.

“There were theme songs I had in mind as inspiration, like, I love the theme from Welcome Back, Kotter,” she recently told The Hollywood Reporter. “John Sebastian wrote that, from The Lovin’ Spoonful. I really love that sound, so I wanted something upbeat that really felt like a theme song.”

Here are the first two lines of the theme song to Welcome Back Kotter:

Welcome back, your dreams were your ticket out. Welcome back to that same old place that you laughed about.

Here are the first two lines of the theme song to New Girl:

Hey girl, whatcha doin? Hey girl, where ya goin’?

Can you spot the differences? The theme to Welcome Back Kotter sets up the serious premise underlying the show’s comedy, while New Girl‘s theme song sets up that the show has no premise. And no, sunshine and lollipops don’t count.

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Weeds S7E12 Recap: “Oh My God, We’re Getting Mugged By Sarah Palin”

Jamie Peck — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:45:38 +0000

This week’s episode of Weeds continued the heartbreaking plotline of mother vs. son and ended with a misunderstanding of Shakespearean proportions. Luckily, there was a lot of comic relief as well, with Doug Wilson continuing to justify his existence via one of the most awkward seductions in television history. Let’s take a look.

Oedipal Struggle

We open with a split screen of Nancy and Silas vying to steal various clients away from each other. It seems like a good, clean fight…for now. Nancy has teamed up with Silas’ former modeling agent even though she basically admitted to Nancy that she sexually harassed her son, which is gross. In order to get some sweet VC money from Doug’s crooked hedge fund, they give a presentation on how they are going to turn their weed into an exclusive luxury item hand delivered by fashion models in town cars. They’re going to make it really hard for people to buy in, and this will trick them into paying $500 per dime bag like at the country club. (“Nothing makes a rich person want something more than telling them they cant have it.” So true!) Their shit eating, cat-that-swallowed-the-canary grins during this scene are priceless. Mary-Louise Parker and Kat Foster must have taken some special acting classes for that.

Meanwhile, Doug Wilson must distract the SEC lady the only way he knows how: with his schlubby sex appeal. Would he ever pull this off in real life without getting maced and sued? Who cares when it produces stills like this! Here he is realizing his harebrained scheme is actually going to work, and he now has to romance the woman whose purse he farted in just a few days prior:

Shifting Alliances

Nancy and Silas both have allies that help them with all manner of screwing and screwing over. Nancy has Dmitri (who jacks Silas’ MILF supply off the newly returned Heylia and Dean, hilariously), and Silas has ~~Mini-Nancy~~ Emma. But for once, Nancy senses things have gone a step too far with Dmitri’s overly exuberant jacking (and/or that Silas has become a loose cannon), and scrambles to correct it before he retaliates with something terrible. But it’s too late! Silas has already gotten stoned and decided to send Emma to tattle on Nancy to Shane’s cop friend, bearing out Dmitri’s little proverb that “you can’t go to war halfway.” I’m not sure I buy that Emma wouldn’t have narced on Nancy already in order to keep from going to jail, but maybe there was some sort of drug dealer courtesy at play. Snitches get stitches, etc.

This all comes just as Nancy is about to get Stevie back from her horrible sister Jill. Such dramatic irony! (How she’s able to use her drug money to show the judge her finances have improved is murky, but whatever.) Perhaps forgetting that Stevie is his relative as well, Silas even brings Jill to NYC for some nefarious purpose, possibly gloating. Even before finding out that Nancy has nothing to do with the jacking, the look on his face as he picks his auntie up at the airport portends the monumental admission of “I fucked up!” that he makes in the preview for the next episode. What the fuck, Silas? The use of tUnEyArDs’ “Gangsta” over the end credits adds a nice touch of dread. (Pity it didn’t make it to the “bang bang bang!” part.) Whoever picks the music for this show has been killing it lately. What’s a boy to do if he’ll never be a gangsta, indeed?

Amazing Quote(s) Of The Week

“I kind of wanna touch his bicep like once, why is that?”

-Andy, on Dmitri

“That’s why I do those things. Feelings. You’re so…beautiful?”

-Doug, to the SEC lady

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Best Week Ever’s Fake Posters Sum Up Our Feelings On ‘Whitney’ Succinctly

Jamie Peck — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 21:07:17 +0000

As we have already spent time telling you, the promotional materials for NBC’s new show Whitney make it look like the whole of the show’s “humor” lies in reiterating sexist stereotypes about men and women. Women love to shop and cry! Men love to look at boobs and watch football! And so forth. Well, the cut-ups over at Best Week Ever seem to agree with us, and they took it one step further by making some awesome Photoshopped posters that capture the ad campaign’s true spirit. Click through for two more.

^^^MY FAVORITE

(Via Best Week Ever)

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Video: A Promo And Stills From The New Season Of Gossip Girl Are Here

Jamie Peck — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 20:04:26 +0000

OMFG, you guys. After much unpleasant waiting, the new season of Gossip Girl is finally almost here, and it looks like it might be the most ridiculous one yet. It takes place at least partly in Los Angeles, to which Blair correctly refers as “a plastic surgery layover, not somewhere you live.” In the promo, we see Nate and Chuck being total playboys on some kind of yacht; Serena uttering the catchphrase “he’s Chuck Bass;” Nate fake-admitting to being “that guy from that movie;” Chuck acting as a stuntman; and Nate becoming Elizabeth Hurley‘s boy toy.

Notably absent from this promo are Vanessa and Jenny (R.I.P.), as well as the rest of the Humphrey/Van der Woodsen clan. So basically, only the most fun-to-watch characters get to go to L.A. This is obviously a huge improvement over seasons past, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they found some contrived way to get Dan and his six-pack out west for a bit, too. Of particular interest is the still featuring Dan and Blair; could their unlikely, screwball comedy-esque near-relationship continue into the show’s fifth season?? Dair fans everywhere are holding their breath. (All ten of them.)

In related news, Elizabeth Hurley is 46. Damn, girl.

(Via ONTD)

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The Pregnant Man Thinks Chaz Bono Robbed Him Of His Spot On ‘Dancing With The Stars’

Jamie Peck — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:09:03 +0000

Never underestimate a not-very-famous person’s drive to piggyback on some perceived association with a sort-of-famous person. Thomas Beatie, the trans guy who first made headlines in 2008 for being both legally male and pregnant, is now saying he thinks Chaz Bono beat him out for a spot on Dancing With The Stars.

Via TMZ:

He reached out to casting in the hopes of landing a spot a few months ago — but never got a call back. But after DWTS announced that Chaz would be on the show, Thomas says he thinks he knows why he was rejected — the transgender quota had already been filled.

Thomas says he understands why producers wouldn’t cast two famous transgender people on the show — but he’s still pretty bummed out … telling us, “I wanted to try my new body out. I’m an athlete and I know I would have excelled.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Dancing With The Stars try to fulfill its promise of “stars” at least somewhat? Chaz Bono might be kind of a B-list celebrity, but he still ranks above Thomas Beatie, no? And the so-called “Pregnant Man” is not even pregnant anymore, so he really should stop calling himself that. I know “The Man Who Was Once Pregnant But Is Now Just A Dad” doesn’t sound as good, but it might be a bit more accurate.

Look at it this way, Mr. Six Pack: you are already, as you say, an athlete. Maybe Chaz Bono needs this more than you. He has, in the past, expressed a desire to get in better shape, so maybe this is the kick in the ass he’s been looking for. With training this intense, I’m sure Chaz will look and feel significantly different by the time the show is done taping. Share the six pack wealth, my friend.

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A Discussion Of MTV’s Hater Baiting New Show, ‘I Just Want My Pants Back’

Jamie Peck — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:33:48 +0000

Last night, MTV gave viewers an “exclusive preview” of their new show “I Just Want My Pants Back,” better known to Greenpoint residents as “I Just Want To Be Able To Walk To The Store And Back (Without Some L.A. D-Berry In A Trucker Hat Bossing Me Around).” Liana and I took one for the team and watched it so you don’t have to. Here is the resulting Socratic dialogue. (Yes, we had this Skype chat while meandering through the Acropolis.)

Jamie Peck: First off I would like to preemptively reveal my bias that I’m sick and tired of this show telling me where I can and can’t walk.

Liana Maeby: In terms of them always filming? YES.

Jamie Peck: I would tolerate this from like, Boardwalk Empire. MAYBE Mad Men.

Liana Maeby: Yeah, I don’t need to see the sign of the coffee shop I can’t go into because your stupid grip truck is parked in front of it.

Jamie Peck: …But I will try to be fair

Liana Maeby: I think the best thing about it is how they tried to make these characters separate from “typical Williamsburg hipsters” by making them “clever and quippy.”

Liana Maeby: Like they found Diablo Cody‘s scribbled on cocktail napkin.

Jamie Peck: They talk like the people from Gilmore Girls.

Liana Maeby: They are Rory and Laureli lite.

Jamie Peck: Nobody in Williamsburg gets laid by talking like that. That is the talk you use with your mother, who is allowed to know you’re a HUGE DORK.

Liana Maeby: As my boyfriend said, “No offense, but if any group of twentysomethings was going to constantly quip and reference like that it would be your group of friends, and your group of friends does not talk like that.”

Jamie Peck: Also, they made them THEATER PEOPLE. Because theater people are the hippest.

Liana Maeby: Did you see the performance art play going on in McCarren last week? I hope that was somehow involved with this show.

Jamie Peck: No! But I am retroactively annoyed!

Liana Maeby: It was amazing! It was people dancing with shadows? For hours? So, okay, this show: minute two, they’re in the bathroom of a bar doing drugs.

Liana Maeby: That is a thing that people do in Brooklyn, drugs in bathrooms.

Liana Maeby: That drug is not marijuana, ever.

Jamie Peck: Yeah but weed?

Jamie Peck: JINX.

Liana Maeby: Owe me coke?

Liana Maeby: And then cut to: sex in the refrigerator? What in the hell? “Honey, I got you this yeast infection!”

Jamie Peck: They were establishing her MPDG [Manic Pixie Dream Girl] credentials. Everyone knows the fridge is the most ~free spirited~ place in the house to do it.

Liana Maeby: Right. She will fuck you in the fridge and then steal your pants and you will love her all the more for it

Jamie Peck: Maybe he didn’t have AC?

Liana Maeby: Valid point. In the winter, someone will fuck him with a hairdryer.

Jamie Peck: D:

Liana Maeby: Sex trophies are not a thing, right?

Jamie Peck: No. Well, not on purpose, anyway.

Liana Maeby: Sex trophy: pregnancy.

Jamie Peck: Sex trophy: herpes.

Liana Maeby: Not pants, pants that somehow fit you. So your doorman won’t see you wearing the same thing? What the hell kind of a concern is that?

Jamie Peck: To be fair, a lot of guys wear girl pants. The doorman bit establishes her as having a trust fund.

Liana Maeby: And a sense of propriety.

Jamie Peck: It is so like a self-centered trust fund kid to think the doorman gives a shit what some rando white girl is fucking.

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