Pop Vox

'Flashforward': the Next 'Lost' or the Next 'Heroes'?

2009-10-15T11:00:56Z

Now that ABC’s new sci-fi drama FlashForward has been given a full-season pickup (a plump 25-episode order rather than the standard 22), it’s time to decide whether I plan to be around for the entire season. The premise definitely whetted my appetite: everyone on Earth blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, during which they get a preview of what’s to come for them six months in the future. Will knowing what happens in the future give them a shot at changing it? What if they don’t want it changed? There’s a lot to plumb, questions about fate and choice that would seem to lend themselves well to a series. But so far, I’m not sure FlashForward is making good on its promise.

From the beginning, the show’s producers have been vocal about avoiding comparisons between their show and Lost, and who can blame them? Lost is a cultural phenomenon—why set yourself up to lose the expectations game? But ABC has been promoting FlashForward as a worthy successor to Lost, and just in time as the tropical mind-bender prepares for its final season next year. And if the goal was to tamp down Lost comparisons, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to cast not one, but two cast members of that show (Sonya Walger and Dominic Monaghan).

But so far, Lost it ain’t. The pilot wasn’t bad, but it also wasn’t great—certainly not of the quality of Lost, which remains one of the best pilots in television history. The premise is the star of the FlashForward more so than anyone in the ensemble, and three episodes in I haven’t become attached to any of the characters yet. I’m mildly interested in Demetri Noh (John Cho) who doesn’t have a vision during his blackout, and fears that he is destined to die before then. Aside from him, I don’t care enough about any of these people to be emotionally invested in what happens to them six months hence. And so far, all the show’s questions of fate and choice have felt more like watching an undergraduate philosophy-class discussion than a compelling genre show.

Unless it shapes up over the course of its run (as shows often do as they find their footing), FlashForward will not be remember as the successor to Lost, but rather as the successor to Heroes, a show that has made a fine art of audience attrition. It seems like a lifetime, but it was only three years ago when Heroes was the hot science-fiction thriller du jour. It even managed to garner nods for best drama series at the Emmys and the Golden Globes. Flash-forward to the present, where its ratings are continuing to free-fall in its fourth (and quite possibly final) season, and the people still watching seem to be doing so more out of defiance than anything else. It’s this fall from grace that the producers of FlashForward need to be paying attention to. As Lost and Heroes demonstrate, the setup is easy. It’s the execution that trips you up.

Why We Love Teen Musicals

2009-10-14T23:44:27Z

by Katie Baker

There are many charming things about Glee, Fox TV’s quirky new fall comedy about a troupe of high-school misfits with gorgeous voices and hearts of gold. There are the one-liners that cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester lobs like poisoned pom-poms at her colleagues. There’s the winsome Afterschool Special sincerity of teachers Emma and Will. Best of all, there’s the glee club itself—baby diva Rachel, budding gay Kurt, artsy jock Finn—those fresh-faced kids with the fantastic vocal cords whose renditions of songs both retro and rap make for some serious chills down the spine.

Of course, Glee isn't the first show to figure out that teens and musical numbers make for a potent combination—the pairing is practically ubiquitous these days (who among us, oh lucky one, hasn’t confronted the phenomenon that is High School Musical?) And it’s not just sappy Disney flicks: the breakout stage hit Spring Awakening, about sexually repressed teens and their erotic stirrings in 19th-century Germany, swept the Tony Awards in 2007. (Glee actresses Lea Michele and Jenna Ushkowitz both appeared in its various casts.) The Public Theater’s production of teen rock-musical Hair at New York’s Shakespeare in the Park last year turned out to be so popular, it extended its run twice and was immediately snatched up by producers for Broadway. Wicked, which imagines the exploits of Oz’s witches in their girlish years, is the Great White Way’s top-grossing musical right now, clearing close to $1.5 million a week despite the recession. (Perennial teen musical favorite West Side Story isn’t far behind, netting $1.01 million in the last week of September alone.) Even Fame has gotten a remix.

In fact, musicals and teens are such a natural match, it’s hard to remember that it wasn’t always thus. But back in Broadway’s heyday, very few musicals dealt with teen love (West Side Story was a notable exception). Sure, there were star-crossed kiddies in shows such as South Pacific, The Sound of Music, and Fiddler on the Roof, but they were generally sideshows to the main affair. And that main affair was romance between adults, who were separated by barriers of race (The King and I), social class (My Fair Lady), and morality (Guys and Dolls, The Music Man). The leading lads and ladies weren’t malleable pups, but hardened gamblers, con artists, Cockneys and curmudgeons. This made their evolution into kind, responsible men and refined, elegant women through the transformative powers of love all the more improbable and touching.

These days, we’re a little more cynical that a hard-living guy or gal might be cured by love—much less burst into song about it. Thanks to postmodernism, we’re no longer cockeyed optimists. Trouble is, musicals are the antithesis of ironic ennui—they’re all about volatile emotions that can’t be contained and must burst forth in spontaneous song. So where to channel all that un-sardonic emoting in these snarky times? Some playwrights make it happen by transposing their plots into historical eras (Les Miserables, Miss Saigon); others turn to that old ruse of play-within-a-play, and set their musicals in the record industry or the world of fine arts (Dreamgirls, Billy Elliot). And others still go back to high school.

Whereas postwar audiences may have had an easier time relating to Maria and Captain Von Trapp than to his 16-going-on-17 daughter, that’s not really a problem for us—we’re all still in extended adolescence these days. So we get our vicarious thrills by identifying with Glee's Rachel and Finn, or Hair's Sheila and Berger, or Spring Awakening's Melchior and Wendla as they sing about the immature emotions and roiling hormones and impulsive mood swings that we pseudo-adults have to suppress in daily life for fear of social consequences—say, the implosion of a political career. And indeed, the most successful moments in Glee are not the well-coordinated stage performances that the kids put on (although those are surely entertaining), but the teens’ tender interior monologues, such as when Rachel expresses her broken heart by belting out Rihanna's "Take a Bow." That’s when the show really pulls at our cynical, ironic, postmodern heartstrings in the most delightful way.

Worth Your Time: Geoff Muldaur, Headliner of the Texas Sheiks

2009-10-14T15:08:07Z

by Malcolm Jones

Geoff Muldaur is a reluctant headliner. You’ll find his name as the leader of the Texas Sheiks on the spine of the CD case, but the front cover of the new album just says “Texas Sheiks.” Likewise, while he is far and away the best and most unique vocalist on the album—this is the man who inspired Richard Thompson to say, “There are only three white blues singers, and Geoff Muldaur is two of them”—he seems more than content to equally share vocal duties with the rest of the band. He’s made his share of solo records, in a career that stretches back to the '60s, but they are outnumbered by the collaborations he’s been part of—with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band (a band that inspired everyone from the Lovin’ Spoonful to the Grateful Dead); with his former wife, Maria Muldaur; with a Woodstock ensemble that included Paul Butterfield, Ronnie Barron, and Amos Garrett; and most recently as the arranger catalyst for a big-band recreation/reinterpretation of the music of '20s jazz great Bix Beiderbecke. Oh, and many year ago, his definitive version of the song “Brazil” inspired and sustained Terry Gilliam on his way to making the film of the same name. Muldaur gets around, he just doesn’t seem to like to stand out.

This is not coyness or false humility. Instead, it’s a true musician’s tip of the hat to the pleasures and benefits of collaboration in music making. He’s fully capable of holding a stage by himself, as you can see from the accompanying video. But he knows when not to hog the spotlight, too—the best time being, of course, when you’re lucky enough to have someone good to share it with. On Texas Sheiks, he got really lucky.

Hang around enough old-time musicians and sooner than later you’ll run into plenty who insist it ought to be played exactly one way (translation: exactly the way they heard it on some record cut in, say, 1925). Their goal is laudable: they want the spirit of the music preserved and respected. But oddly the opposite often results. The music is strangled before it gets a chance to breathe. At best, it sends you off to find the original recordings of old fiddle tunes and early jazz that inspired these control-freak folkies.

As I slipped Texas Sheiks into the player for a first listen, I feared something of the sort might be forthcoming. The 14 songs on the album were all old blues, country, jug band, medicine show, and early Texas swing numbers originally performed by luminaries and lesser known musicians from the '20s and '30s such as Big Bill Broonzy, Henry (Mule) Townsend, Skip James, and Robert Johnson. Even as I punched PLAY, I was thinking, This is bound to be one of those overly reverential exercises, recreation without inspiration. Maybe I should just cut out the middlemen and -women and play the old songs. But as soon as the fiddle and National slide guitar kicked off “The World Is Going Wrong,” I knew I wasn’t going anywhere for a while. The music on Texas Sheiks is no arid copy, no airless preservation of the past. Instead, it looks over its shoulder, tips its hat with all due respect and then proceeds to infuse this old material with brand-new life. The blend of competence and joy in these performances is enough to satisfy anyone for a long time.

Some of the performers made their reputations as early as Great Folk Scare of the '60s (Kweskin, Muldaur). Others (Cindy Cashdollar, Stephen Bruton, Johnny Nicholas, Suzy Thompson) have been mainstays of folk and old-time music scenes or accompanists behind musicians as varied as Bonnie Raitt and Asleep at the Wheel. Whatever their prior identities, they shed them here and fuse into the band at hand, Geoff Muldaur and the Texas Sheiks. A loose aggregation that gathered expressly to make this record, they somehow manage to sound like they’ve been playing together for years. You get the sense that each musician is listening to the others. Everyone stays out of everyone else’s way, and yet everyone makes a contribution, and just at the right time, too. The result is a sound that’s so light that it’s almost transparent. These singers and players sound happy and the feeling is completely contagious. The songs are old, several are familiar (“All by Myself,” “Blues in the Bottle”), but each one sounds like it’s being performed right there in your living room for the first time. Got the blues? Here’s the cure.

One final thought: I wouldn’t swear to it, but it sounds as though this music is recorded live in the studio without technical tweaks or overdubs. Like the songs on the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, each cut sounds like real people playing acoustic instruments in real time. In that sense, this album should more than satisfy the music police, because it so perfectly mirrors the originals first played decades ago. When you listen to old 78s, or their CD copies, you’re hearing music played as it was played in the street, on the porch, in churches and barrooms. Recording then was no more than a microphone in a room. The music recorded there was like a snapshot of music as it was played in normal life. The only accommodation was to keep each song to the three or four minutes that a 78 rpm disc could hold. That’s almost a lost art. Music of the caliber played on Texas Sheiks is what keeps the “almost” in that last sentence.

Q&A: Mario Lopez Suits Up in Women's Lingerie

2009-10-14T08:28:51Z

By Nicki Gostin

Mario Lopez is a busy guy these days. Not only is he the host of Extra, but he’s reprising his role as Dr. Mike Hamoui on Nip/Tuck, which returns for its sixth and final season on Wednesday. Oh, yeah, and he also has those impressive abs to maintain. He spoke with Nicki Gostin.

Why are you wearing women’s lingerie in the first episode of the new season of Nip/Tuck?
Whoa! That’s a way to start off! Well, you know, I’m actually not in the first episode, its a little way into it. I don’t start off as strong. It’s a racy, edgy show. Just when I think, “Oh, they’ve gone too far, it goes a little further.” My character has innocence about him yet he’s willing to go there to be a little edgy himself and go against his beliefs a little and have a little more fun and get sexy.

Do you know what size you are in lingerie?
No, I don’t remember paying attention to it too much. Just kind of threw it on. It felt like a Halloween costume.

What do you think your best feature is?
In lingerie?

Yeah, your legs, your bottom…
Definitely not my feet. I felt like my feet were too big for those heels. But I would say, I was getting a lot of compliments from the ladies on my behind.

You have amazing abs. How many sit-ups do you do a day?
It’s funny because the stuff in the magazines always makes me laugh. I really don’t have a particular abs workout. I just do all different workouts. If I’m eating a little healthier that day, I’m not looking to stick to the midsection.

Come on. Those shirtless photos have to make you happy. Those abs are brilliant.
Thank you. That’s very sweet of you. I don’t know what to say. I guess I’ll take the compliment.

You did a nude scene in Nip/Tuck last year. Was that you or a double?
No, no, that was me. I thought it was just going to be a quick shot, but it turned out to be a slow, sort of soft-porn kind of deal. It looked kind of crazy. It was in slow motion. At first I was a little shy about it, but then you know we had a female director and a lot of the crew is female. After a while I felt very comfortable. You’re there wet and naked all day; you can’t help but get chummy with everyone.

You’ve written a book with your sister.
I’m really excited about that. It’s called Mud Tacos. It’s a children’s book, basically telling the stories of my sister and me growing up. She has a little boy and girl the same age difference as my sister and me. It got us thinking of our stories. We’re trying to get kids to use their imaginations. We used to build mud tacos in our grandmother’s backyard. The leaves were the taco shells, the mud was the meat, and the worms were the cheese. It’s kind of sprinkled with our culture throughout. So far it’s got a great response.

Did you guys actually write it?
Yeah! It’s all speaking from our experiences. It’s really from the heart. My mom is really proud.

Do you think Jimmy Fallon is upset that you guys did the Saved by the Bell reunion cover for People?
People magazine had asked me to do it when I was on the cover for hottest bachelor of the year or whatever. They ran it by me, and I said, ‘Yeah, it’s a good idea.’ And I spoke to the others, and it worked out well. Jimmy’s a great guy, but it was hard enough to co-ordinate everyone’s schedule to do the People shoot.

Wait, you organized the cover?
Well, I mentioned it to everyone.

Do you hang out with them?
It’s kind of like high school. You try to see each other when you can. Everyone has their own life and is doing their own thing, but I’m so happy to see them when I do.

Have you read Dustin Diamond’s (Screech) book?
I have not.

From what I’ve read, he’s not very nice about you.
At this point I don’t think he’s very nice about anyone. He’s had his struggles, and I feel sorry for him. I hope he’s going to be alright, he’s had his share of problems.

Did you ever think he would be so bitter?
No, you just don’t know with those things. I don’t wish anyone any harm. God bless him.

You’re also on Extra.
It’s a lot of fun. It’s like a dream job. I love hosting, even if it’s a BBQ party at my house. I get to talk to all the people I look up to and really like.

Ever get sick of hearing someone plug their movie?
No, because we’ll get that out of the way and then I’ll ask them whatever I want to ask them. We’ll just have a conversation.

Do you have a lot of BBQs at home?
I do. I either grill or bartend. I like having game night at my house. I like Pictionary, Scattergories. I’m a big game-board lover. I must say I am not bad at them.

Are you dating anyone?
Just my show, Extra. That’s my serious relationship right now.

Doesn’t your mom want you to settle down?
My mom likes that I’m very busy and is supportive. She leaves in it God’s hands. I’m just working on becoming Mr. Right, not necessarily working on finding Mrs. Right.

Awww, that’s sweet. How are you working on that?
To learn as much as I can from others, being patient, growing as a man, building some spiritual muscle, not just physical muscle.

Do you go to church?
Every week. Nice Catholic boy.

What about confession?
I don’t go to confession because I’m usually working when the confession booth is open. But I confess every night in my head because if I waited all week, it’d be too much. God would be overwhelmed.

‘The Laramie Project’ Revisited: Theater as Journalism

2009-10-14T00:19:30Z

When members of the Tectonic Theater Project descended on Laramie, Wyo., a few weeks after the murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard in 1998, local residents didn’t quite know what to make of the actors and writers trolling around town with tape recorders. They weren’t “real” journalists, after all. When told that the troupe would be writing a play about Shepard’s death based on their interviews, some citizens shrugged—what would the effort really amount to? Some might have imagined a shoestring production in some dark basement on the Lower East Side of New York, said Moisés Kaufman, Tectonic’s cofounder and artistic director.

But when the drama group showed up in town 10 years later for a follow-up, that initial work, The Laramie Project, had become one of the most frequently produced plays in America, and Shepard’s death had come to define the community in ways Laramie could not have imagined in those first raw months after the killing. This time, “people were editing themselves a lot more,” Kaufman said—if they consented to interviews at all. The local newspaper even ran a pointed editorial aimed at Tectonic's efforts: “Laramie is a community, not a project.”

That reticence and veiled hostility are very much a part of the troupe's new work Laramie, 10 Years Later, which debuted with a reading in New York on Monday night, the 11th anniversary of Shepard's death, and simultaneously in 150 other theaters in all 50 states and in 14 countries.

Kaufman had previously demonstrated the power of using real quotes and court transcripts in his 1997 play Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. When I first saw Laramie in New York in 2000, the gruesome descriptions of Shepard’s mangled body, based on recollections of the first people on the scene, were as powerful as any imaginary dialogue dreamed up by the best playwright. As Kaufman said Monday night in New York, his medium for telling a story isn’t a television screen or a newspaper, but actors who bring these real characters to life with the Laramie residents' own words—since the actors interviewed the subjects in person, the audience is only one degree removed from the townspeople.

This time around, the documentary format that seemed so fresh in the original production initially felt a little dated. But as the evening unfolded, it became clear that the method itself is largely timeless. It’s the story that matters here, not the medium, and Laramie in 2008 provides just as intriguing a tale as did Laramie in 1998.

We encounter a character from the first Laramie Project, a University of Wyoming professor who has since run for office and become the first openly gay state legislator, helping to battle an effort in Wyoming’s House of Representatives to define marriage in the state as between a man and a woman. And after a long battle, the university finally passed domestic-partner benefits for employees (though they won’t be enacted until the economy improves).

And even more riveting, this time the convicted killers agreed to be interviewed for the piece. In the show’s most gripping segments, Russell Henderson is full of remorse, sad that he didn’t do more to stop what transpired. Aaron McKinney also has regrets but, tellingly, not for killing Shepard.

Tired of being known as the hate-crime town, many Laramie residents seem to have concocted a revisionist version of what transpired—in 10 Years Later, they believe variously that Shepard’s murder wasn’t a hate crime, that it had nothing to do with his sexual orientation, that it was a drug deal gone bad, and that the two men convicted for his death had been high on meth for several days before the incident, even though none of the trial evidence supports these theories. As a folklore expert in the play explained, damaged communities try to control their own story and protect their own reputation by creating alternate histories, often based on nothing more than rumors. Residents could accept that Laramie might be home to drug crimes (what town isn’t?), but mindless hate? No way.

This perception gained credence, the new play suggests, after a 2004 segment by Elizabeth Vargas on ABC’s 20/20 that presented the case as more about drugs than homophobia. The new Laramie seeks to undercut that point of view by presenting testimony that implies that the 20/20 producers came to town to debunk the hate-crime explanation, regardless of what the evidence showed.

Of course, whether they're journalists or dramatists, interviewers alter the way a story is told just by their mere presence, a dilemma an audience member asked the Tectonic cast about at Monday night's debut. Yes, Kaufman acknowledged, the presence of his troupe no doubt affected how Laramie residents behaved and how they answered questions, doubly so the second time around, 10 years after the murder. In the end, the best any interviewer can hope to do is to be as unobtrusive as possible, and to retell the story as faithfully as possible.

Q+A: How Kelly Osbourne Got Her Groove Back on 'Dancing With the Stars'

2009-10-13T22:41:26Z

by Nicki Gostin

Kelly Osbourne has surprisingly become the frontrunner on this season of Dancing With the Stars. But the reality TV star who became famous at 16 when she appeared on The Osbournes with her rock-star dad Ozzy, mom Sharon, and brother Jack has had her share of troubles. She’s been in rehab more than once for an addiction to prescription pills and tried to control her weight by using ADD medications including Ritalin. Fortunately, now she’s clean, engaged to model Luke Worrall and having the time of her life. She spoke to Pop Vox.

When you danced the first time on DWtS you made me cry.
Aw, thanks.

Did you know there was such a lady inside you?
No, I did not. What was surprising was I went through five and a half weeks of practice, and every single time I did it, I never, ever once did it as well as I did that night.

How much weight have you lost?
Well, I kind of plateaued recently. I’m starting to really build some muscle which makes you gain a little bit of weight, but about a stone (14 pounds).

Are your jiggly parts disappearing?
Me and Louis (van Amstel, her dance partner) were looking at my legs and I’ve lost about two inches from my thighs.

Do you feel amazing?
Yeah!

Why did you decide to do the show?
Because they’ve asked me for nine seasons. But I’d never really been clear-headed enough and I’ve never been willing to work that hard.

What changed?
I wanted to do something that scared me, that challenged me, something I’d never done before, something to take my life in a new direction. I’m turning 25 this month. I kind of went into this experience thinking I’d really, really, really have to prove to people that I was different, prove to people that I’ve changed and it kind of spoke for itself. Never in a million years did I think that this was going to happen, that people were going to perceive me in this way and be so nice.

You’ve been so honest about what you’ve been through. People are rooting for you.
I feel as a young woman in Hollywood, whether you call me a celebrity’s daughter, or a celebrity, you’re in a position where no matter what you do, people are going to find out. You can lie and pretend you’re Miss Perfect or you can be honest. People have problems, it's normal. People have issues, and its normal—everybody has them. Everybody has struggles. I know what I went through, millions are going through it and me being honest about it, how bad it got and how good my life is now, it helps people. I was sick of lying; I don’t want to lie anymore. I hate it when young women in Hollywood lie about what they do.

Obviously there is a genetic predisposition for you, but how much do you think the pressures of Hollywood contributed to your addiction?
I was doing drugs before the show started so it would have happened anyway but whether the progression of my downfall ... I do think it was set up a lot because of the media and the pressures of being so young and famous and not knowing how to deal with it.

Are you the first family member to be offered the show?
No, we all have. My mum really wants to do it but it’s almost impossible. She manages the whole family, organizes Ozzfest and she’s on America’s Got Talent so she wouldn’t be able to put in the hours.

Did you think ballroom dancing would be so hard?
Oh yes. All the dances are hard and I go into all of them knowing nothing. It’s all equally as challenging. It’s not like I know a few steps of the samba. I don’t know anything.

Are you eating really healthy now?
I will admit I’m definitely eating a lot healthier but I still allow myself the things I want. I’m just very careful with how much. I also make sure I get my fruit and veggies every day.

Isn’t it amazing how simple it is?
That’s the thing but it’s got to be a life change. It can’t be a diet.

Are you engaged or dating?
Engaged.

Got a wedding date?
No.

Good. Take it slow.
That’s the thing. Luke and I, we find it really confusing and baffling the way that people nowadays are so old-fashioned, they say, "You’re engaged, you have to get married, you have to get as much money as you can for the wedding photos." All that kind of stuff. Plus you know Luke is only 19 years old. We can be engaged for as long as we want to be. We just know that eventually we want to marry each other and it doesn’t have to be now at all. What’s the point of getting married now if he can’t even f---ing legally drink? It’s ridiculous.

Are you nervous about maintaining your weight when the show finishes?
Yeah. I worked so hard for it I’m not going to let it go. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I really enjoy dancing. I went to one of Louis’s workout dance classes which was amazing. I’ve never sweated so much in my life.

Will you ever do another series of The Osbournes?
No! We tried working together again on Osbournes Reloaded but it was so edited we made the decision with the network not to continue it. We also discovered that we argue a lot more when we work together and we’ve done our thing as a family. We were great and fantastic and instead of finishing when people are like, "Yech, why are these old farts still on TV?!" we finished with them still wanting more.

What are you plans after the show?
I want to go to Broadway. I played Mama Morton in Chicago on the West End in London.

What Does Bob Dylan Sound Like Singing Christmas Carols?

2009-10-13T18:42:12Z

What would you say if Bob Dylan came caroling in your neighborhood on Christmas Eve?

"Listen, Bobby D. That was an absolutely rip-roaring take on 'Must Be Santa,' but would you mind terribly playing 'Idiot Wind' while you're here?"

Well, that's exactly what you'd do, if you had any sense. Thus, the round of LOLs and OMGs that accompanied the recent news that Dylan had recorded a Christmas album for release this season, Christmas in the Heart (which hits stores Tuesday). The Church of Dylanology, as always, will look at the album as a problem to be solved. Is it a joke? Or a further exploration of the roots music obsession that has also informed his trio of recent good-to-great proper albums? Something else?

My take, after one listen (Sony didn't provide advances of the CD) is that there's no deep meaning or in-joke to behold here. Anyone attempting a hermeneutical link between Dylan's new version of "Little Drummer Boy" and his recent rewrite of Willie Dixon's "I Just Want to Make Love to You" is asking to be made a fool of in the public square. Whatever historian Sean Wilentz says, these new carols and standards don't sound like part of the same project as the allusive, original compositions on Love and Theft or Together Through Life. There's not enough context or commentary on any of these standards that links them to anything else in Dylan's catalog, not even his previous WTF covers (on the Self Portrait LP). But neither is this album a throwaway joke, as some insiders have suspected: all the proceeds are going (in perpetuity) to a trio of worthy charities that target hunger. How churlish would Dylan have to be in hooking up such a noble consequence to an entirely unserious premise?

So, if every Dylan album distinguishes itself in some fashion, let's say Christmas in the Heart achieves its unique status by virtue of its being the one you're not supposed to think about at all—not even once (let alone twice). In fact, thinking will ruin the fun that can be found here: Dylan's reclamation of the long-neglected lyric about "muddling through" troubles during "Have a Merry Little Christmas," the well-wishing pathos his ravaged vocal chords manage to locate in "Little Drummer Boy" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem." The worst track on the album—"Here Comes Santa Claus"—is, thankfully, dispensed with at the outset. The jolly backing vocals and lilting rhythm section both clash with Dylan's voice so badly, it might actually make you surly enough to clock a loved one on Christmas morning. The rest of the record, though, is sufficiently spirited to be a minor pleasure.

Editor's Note: Thanks to a commenter's sharp eye, the above paragraph has been changed, reflecting the fact that Dylan did not ad-lib the line from "Have a Merry Little Christmas."

Is 2009 the Most Depressing Year Ever at the Movies?

2009-10-09T20:00:00Z

In the winter of 2008, Warner Bros. unveiled a batch of posters for what would become the second-highest-grossing movie of all time, The Dark Knight. The marketing campaign featured a silhouette of the Joker behind a glass door, scrawling these words in blood: Why so serious?

Somebody could ask Hollywood the same question. Fall movie season is usually the time when the studios haul out their dark dramas for awards consideration, but this year's batch seems especially bleak. The themes they touch upon include incest, murder, AIDS, cancer, abuse, layoffs, and lots of unexpected, tragic deaths (and we're not even counting the dead vampires in the Twilight sequel). This probably isn't just coincidental. This fall's slate was written at the end of the Bush administration, when most of Hollywood—at least the predominantly liberal part—was under a cloud of gloom. Now, we're all feeling gloomy; the economy is in tatters, and the unemployment rate continues to soar. Does anybody really want to go to the movies this year to feel even more depressed?

To give you a sense of how serious the movies are about to get, you have to look no further than the new Coen brothers' comedy A Serious Man, about a Jewish physics professor who is like a live-action Wile E. Coyote, beaten down after his wife leaves him, his children hate him, and his brother is arrested. "It's hell to sit through," writes David Denby, film critic for The New Yorker, adding, "we're not surprised when, at the end, the apocalypse arrives in a dark whirl." The Road (Nov. 25), based on the Cormac McCarthy novel and starring Viggo Mortensen, is actually set in a post-apocalyptic world. A Single Man (Dec. 4) is a 1962 story about a closeted English professor (Colin Firth) who must deal with the sudden death of his lover (Matthew Goode) in a car accident. In The Lovely Bones (Dec. 11), a young girl is murdered. Up in the Air (Dec. 25) stars George Clooney, as an empty corporate type who flies around the country laying people off. Precious (Nov. 6) deals with a teenager who is raped by her father, and must raise the children in the face of her abusive mother. As one blog commenter writes online, "I don't think I can watch this in the theater. It is just too much."

That's not to say these movies aren't good. Precious is, in fact, probably one of the best films of the year—it won the audience award at Sundance and it showcases Mo'nique in a career-changing performance. But an audience will only buy tickets to a movie if they are in the right mood to sit through it. In 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, people flocked to King Kong, screwball comedies, and gangster movies. None of the doom-and-gloom movies of the past summer—like the cancer-centric My Sister's Keeper or Funny People—were hits. We wanted escapist entertainment: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the No. 1 movie of the year so far, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is No. 2, and the goofy comedy The Hangover was the surprise hit of the summer, earning $275 million.

Many of these dark movies are being campaigned for Academy Awards, but they might also sink the Oscars. In case you haven't heard, the academy is nominating 10 movies for best picture this year in an effort to broaden the show's viewership. Still, Hollywood's voting elite could just as easily ignore Up and nominate 10 downers: An Education, Bright Star, Inglourious Basterds, The Hurt Locker, and a combination of the other yet-to-be-released movies listed above. Forget about all the tears from the winners. By February, we might need a laugh, for crying out loud.

7 Things: 'Hair' Star Gavin Creel Will March on Washington

2009-10-09T17:24:20Z

Gavin Creel, star in Broadway's revival of Hair, will march on Washington, D.C. this weekend for gay rights. He joined us in the studio beforehand to talk about his musical roots, his hatred of auditions and his feelings on American foreign policy.

Bonus Material from Our Exclusive 'Where the Wild Things Are' Roundtable

2009-10-09T17:12:40Z

Last week, Ramin Setoodeh and I had the honor of interviewing Maurice Sendak, Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers at Mr. Sendak’s house in Connecticut. It was the only time the creative team behind Where the Wild Things Are would be getting together to speak to the press. This morning, Newsweek posted the magazine version of our exclusive conversation, which you can read here. We think it’s the definitive WtWTA interview.

Instead of reblogging portions of the official transcript, however, we thought we'd do something different here on Pop Vox: share some of the stuff that we couldn’t squeeze into print. To find out what death, danger and Discovery Channel documentaries have to do with kiddie lit, read on…

NEWSWEEK: Why write about death in a children’s story?
Sendak: Well, it’s a great subject. There’s a lot of charm to it. I remember when we did Hansel and Gretel, the opera. All of the kids are out in the open, unprotected from the weather, and so we had one of the little girls die. And the opera people and everybody was: “Are you sure you want to do this? It’s Hansel and Gretel.” But I said: “Hansel and Gretel is one of the scariest stories ever written! Psychotic mother; stupid, inane father. What the hell are you talking about? Of course there’s going to be somebody dead in it.” After the show, the kids came backstage and they wanted the autograph of the dead girl. [laughter] Like, I was just like chopped liver, they walked right past me. “Where’s the dead girl?”

There’s something in that, though—danger and rebellion are the things that are thrilling to you when you’re a kid.
Sendak: Kids are barbaric. They really have to be. They don’t know what it is to be polite or nice. There is a toughness to being a child. Childhood is a very tough time. I always had a deep respect for children and how they solve complex problems by themselves.

How did this translate when you sat down to write and illustrate Wild Things?
Sendak: Well, Max and his mother - it’s not that good a relationship. But it’s really what a lot of relationships are like between children and parents. A lot of yelling and losing of one’s temper and throwing of things, and then you’re sorry you did it. I’ve always been interested in how children maneuver and figure out how to live.
Jonze: And how do they?
Sendak: Cleverness, shrewdness, fantasy, and just plain strength. They want to survive. The kids in Hansel and Gretel¬ she is the heroine, she saves her brother’s life. Little girl saving a little boy’s life - when do children have to confront such terrible ordeals? But they do! They do.

What was it like to see the Wild Things embodied onscreen with the voices of James Gandolfini and Forest Whitaker? Did it clash with the image of them you’d kept with you all these years?
Sendak: Yes, but at the same time, I fell in love with the new versions. They were gentler, they were kinder. Underneath, of course, they were capable of the same terrible things. One of them puts Max in her mouth. There always is the possibility that something might go wrong, and you’ll get eaten. And you don’t know what it is that might go wrong. What you’ll say or what you’ll do that will provoke a Wild Thing to eat you. I love watching animal movies on television. One of the only things I like. And they always say, don’t do this and don’t do that, don’t run away and don’t turn your back and don’t lie flat. I love that. It’s from my childhood. How do you prevent dying? How do you prevent being eaten or mauled by a monster? I still worry about it.
Jonze: When we went to shoot the movie, we actually watched nature documentaries, and wanted to feel like we were watching animals-
Sendak: Good.
Jonze: -and that’s part of the reason we shot it out on location. We wanted it to be not on soundstages and not with greenscreen, but in real places. The camera doesn’t know where these creatures are going to go. What’s motivating them is unpredictable, unknowable, and the cameraman is just there, trying to document these wild animals, from the point of view of Max, who knows just as little as we do of what they’re going to do.
Sendak: Yes, he doesn’t know what’s to come next. I mean, that’s gotta be scary for a kid, but it’s also gotta be what a kid likes most. It’s that enticement of what might or might not happen.

That was one of the most powerful things about the movie: the sense of potential danger.
Jonze: Our goal was to make a movie that feels like what it’s like to be a 9-year-old kid. As a kid, everything’s new. You just got here. You’re trying to read the clues, see what other people are reacting to. Emotions that other people have are unpredictable and confusing; emotions you have that are unpredictable and confusing. That’s scary, and so I wanted to make a movie that felt like that—that felt like being in the head of somebody at that age of their life. Things feel out of control.
Eggers: The first time that we talked about writing a screenplay based on the book, Spike had it figured out. He wanted it to be live-action, and he wanted it to be filmed on a wild, actual landscape that seemed dangerous. He wanted Max to really get in a boat and sail on the ocean. Immediately, I got freaked out. The kid in me could remember seeing The Black Stallion, that scene where the ship goes down and the kid and the horse wash on shore, and I remember how freaky that was as a kid, seeing a kid all alone, and how that sort of hits you at a gut level. Because most of childhood you do feel alone, and you sort of have to figure out ninety percent of it yourself. So the landscape mirrors, I think, Max’s inner turmoil. The fact that there’s real danger. You see all these shots in the movie of the Wild Things’ claws just missing Max’s head. At the very beginning, they almost knock him off a cliff in the middle of a fun rumpus.

Were there disagreements when you were writing the screenplay?
Jonze: A big thing was not having the bedroom turn into the forest. And Dave and I went back and forth on it! It sort of didn’t fit with the way we were taking the movie, but it’s so powerful. As a kid I remember taking those three pages and just flipping from one to the next to the next and then back, and watching the way the bedposts turned into trees, and the way the wallpaper fell back into the forest. Those three drawings to me were so magical. But Maurice was always of the opinion: “I’ll fight you, I’ll give you my opinion, but whatever you believe in, I’ll back.”

I’m interested in the distinction between stories that are “for children” versus stories that are “about childhood.” Maurice’s work was about childhood but also entertained children. Will the film resonate with children the way it’s already resonating with adults?
Eggers: I think it depends on the kid. I think there are entertainments that are confections, like bright colors and simple storylines and tidy points that are always going to be there for pretty much any kid if they want to just relax and see something and have it pass through their heads quickly. And then there are things that tell harder truths, and their tones are a bit more nuanced, and the colors aren’t so bright and the lines aren’t so tidy, and those are the movies or the books that stay with us longer and get us at a more primal level, which is what Maurice’s books do. Spike and Maurice and I, the boys that we were, absolutely respond to this movie, and feel this vicarious thrill. If we had our druthers, that’s where we would be, on this island with these creatures you could order around and throw rocks and bum through the woods and howl. But I think that there’s always going to be the kids that don’t respond to that kind of thing. Maybe it’s the difference between indoor cats and outdoor cats.
Jonze: Maurice talks a lot about how hard childhood can be. But he was the one from the beginning who was saying, “Make sure you don’t just represent the fear and anxiety of childhood. Make sure you represent the joy and excitement and-”
Sendak: Fun.
Jonze: “And fun and mischievousness and power and play.” And as much as he will talk the talk of that side of childhood, he is an adamant protector of the inner life, the inner desire for joy that children have. And I think we wanted to represent both sides of that.

It seems like so many classic children’s stories are about becoming untethered: being orphaned, losing parents. And they capture both sides: the fun and the freedom of that, but also the anxiety of being on your own.
Sendak: In the early part of the century—19th century, 20th century—it was very common that children were orphans. Popular works like The Secret Garden immediately start with the death of the parents, and how she has to cope without a mother and a father and make life work for her in the secret garden. That always seemed to be the most critical test that a child was confronted with - loss of parents, loss of direction, loss of love. And I think they were good - The Secret Garden had a terrific effect on me when I read it as a young person. Can you live without a mother and a father? Well, she does - she makes out well. She makes out too well. She makes out sentimentally well. So I went a step further. Let’s tell the truth. Let’s talk about the kid who doesn’t make it sensationally well. Let’s talk about the struggles and the fights.

Eight Hairy Questions for Chris Rock: The Uncut Version

2009-10-08T20:35:32Z

Photo: Matt Carr─Getty Images

(Editor: Last month we ran a much shorter version of our chat with the comedian. Here is the longer version.)

by Allison Samuels

Chris Rock is known for making even the most awkward situations funny. He manages to do that and more with his new documentary Good Hair, a two-hour in-depth look into the $1 billion hair-care industry catering to African-Americans. Perms, weaves, and hair-care products are discussed, scrutinized, and investigated with humorous but respectful reporting by Rock himself, who leaves no rock unturned. The comic even traveled to India to watch religious ceremonies in which hair is donated for the purpose of extensions. Last month Rock sat down with Pop Vox at the Beverly Hills Polo Club to discuss jheri curls, hair weaves, and the Jacksons.

NEWSWEEK: You got the idea to do this documentary because of your two daughters, right? They asked you why they didn’t have "good hair."
ROCK: Yeah, that was part of it. But I’d always fascinated by the Bronner Bros.' big hair show down in Atlanta for, like, the last decade. It’s such a major event and in its own league that I thought, I need to do something on this. But for some reason it was easier to get money for Pootie Tang than it was to get money to do a project on black hair [laughs]. Go figure. I had to wait until I had a little more clout in the business before I could get it made.

It was amazing to see popular African-American actresses like Nia Long and Raven-Symoné talk so freely about getting weaves and extensions. Were you surprised at their honesty?
Well, I’m a comic, so I think people already feel more at ease when I ask them questions. I don’t think the intimidation factor was there. But I also think these women just wanted to be a part of something that explained what blacks feel they have to do to feel accepted in society—what they had to do to be considered beautiful by the masses. That’s what was important to me to get out there. The whys of black people’s obsession with hair. It’s a deep-rooted issue that isn’t as simple as wanting to look white or be something you’re not. The women in the film, I think, actually break down the trials of black women in many ways—and let you know it ain’t easy.

Actress Nia Long was hilarious in explaining how she won’t get her hair wet in the pool when she’s wearing a weave but she doesn’t mind when she's in the shower with a boyfriend. Were you surprised by her bluntness?
I’ve told Nia this is her best performance since Boyz n the Hood. She hasn’t had a better role. She stole the movie with her straight-to-the-point attitude. Yeah, there were a few times when I was, like, Wow—did she really say that?! But that’s the beauty of a documentary. You're capturing people at their rawest. [People] kind of let their guards down now and let it flow.

You really go after the hair relaxer/perm business. What disturbed you the most about that part of the industry?
When I realized just how strong those chemicals are in those perms. I used to get perms—I had a jheri curl for years and it used to burn my scalp like crazy and I’d have sores in my head. But I had to have one because the Jacksons had them. And you know anything the Jacksons did, I did as a kid. If they had perms in their hair, I wanted one, too. Jackie and Jermaine had a curl; I had to have a curl. That went on for a long time. I had a jheri curl in New Jack City. But when I did the research and found out what the perms actually have in them, it was scary. Those chemicals could be used in warfare and we’re putting them on our scalps on a regular basis. Who knows what long-term impact that has on our health? My daughters can do a lot of things, but they ain’t putting chemicals in their hair.

Speaking of perms; you have the Rev. Al Sharpton speaking candidly about his perm and how seriously he takes his hair. Why was Reverend Al important to speak on this?
Come on—you know you have to have to have the good reverend in anything that deals with black hair. He’s so not ashamed of discussing his hair and how he keeps it up with a scarf and whatever it takes. You gotta love him. I don’t worry too much about discussing politics with him, but I do love talking to him about everything else, cause he’s a smart brother who could have his own comedy show. I think he gets a raw deal because of some of things that happened in the past. But his thoughts on black life and what it involves can be priceless.

Ten years ago, people were laughing at weaves and the people who wore them. But not so much today? Why do you think that is?
I think we all know more about weaves today and why people wear them. I now think about the women I dated, and I can remember the ones I could put my hands in their hair and the ones I couldn’t. And I go, "Oh, wow, that’s what was going on. They had a weave." But I also think we all understand that there is an ideal of beauty out there, and many of us feel compelled to live up to it. In some cases, we have to. What was more interesting to me was how expensive it [is] to do weaves, and how it can really put a strain on a relationship or a household. We didn’t put that in the film because it was a little too depressing.

You’re a comic and the documentary is funny, but you seem to make a point of not judging or making fun of whatever decisions the women or men were making in wearing their hair.
First off, I’m not a black woman, so judging them and what they do would be insulting. I tried to approach like a real journalist. You know, [being] objective and just reporting the facts. I just wanted to relay information on a subject that’s been very interesting to me for years. And I was very careful not to judge or make fun: why make fun of the people who I made the film about, and for? The humor actually comes from the real people talking, not me. And I love that.

Are you surprised at the buzz this film has been getting for the past year?
I tell people this film has gotten more attention than anything else I’ve done and that’s amazing to me. It’s going to be this year’s Sex and the City! But I’m being careful in how I market it. Really thinking hard about if I do the Lettermans and the Conans before or after it comes out, because I want people to get a feel for it. On the surface, you’d think it was funny, and it is in many ways—but not in a disrespectful way. Hair is a delicate and sometimes painful subject in our community, so I have to be careful on where I go with promotion. I don’t want late-night talk shows to misrepresent it. It’s a slice of black life that many in the mainstream have never seen before. But I think people will appreciate it. At least, I hope so.

How Food Blogs Led to the Demise of 'Gourmet'

2009-10-08T19:02:38Z

Cover image courtesy of Gourmet.com

I never subscribed to Gourmet, which went out of business this week, but over the years I’ve subscribed to Bon Appetit (Conde Nast’s other food title), Food and Wine, Cooking Light, Vegetarian Times, the short-lived print version of Chow, and Cook’s Illustrated, and those are just the ones I remember. As far as I can recall, I never made a single recipe from any of them. I imagine some of Gourmet’s subscribers never prepared any of the magazine’s recipes, either, but instead, consumed the magazine itself, the way I consume food magazines—on the sofa, with a glass of wine, the evening it arrives, before shuffling into the kitchen to sauté a chicken breast and steam some broccoli, or boil some dried pasta and open a jar of sauce. Gourmet, like all food magazines, was more about the way we think about food than about the way we actually prepare and eat it—after all, you’ll never learn as much about cooking by reading a magazine as you will by actually getting in the kitchen and banging some pots around. So it seems important to look not only at what we’re losing with the death of Gourmet but to ask what is taking its place. Despite The New York Times’s assertion that it’s “Rachael Ray’s world” now, and we’re just cooking in it, the answer can be found not in the quick-and-easy cookbook aisle, but on the Internet.

In the typical high-end food magazine story, a writer travels to an exotic locale, gets exclusive access to an exclusive restaurant or master chef’s kitchen, obtains a closely guarded ancient recipe for a complicated dish, which she then executes flawlessly back in her own kitchen. On a typical food-blog entry, the blogger returns from a frustrating day at the office, deals with a crisis involving his cat, turns to the uninspiring assortment of items in his pantry (middle-aged eggplants, a single, forlorn-looking tangerine, cumin), and then, with the help of several cookbooks, cobbles together a tangerine-scented Moroccan eggplant couscous that he enjoys with a bottle of beer and some Tivo-ed reruns of House.

If the popularity of food blogs is any indication, our current vision of ourselves, as preparers and consumers of meals, is not as kitchen pros who can magically make the complicated look effortless, but as bumbling amateurs who can miraculously pull together a meal that actually tastes good. Gourmet billed itself as the magazine of good living, implying that by the time you had the means and inclination to subscribe to a glossy food magazine, you had the living part down, and now were ready to improve upon what was already working well. It assumed readers possessed a mandoline, a passport, and a working knowledge of Portuguese. The napkins in your pantry not only were cloth, they also matched, were clean, and had even been ironed. Food blogs, by comparison, assume that for readers, life itself is a daily work in progress. Though several of the most popular ones are maintained by accomplished chefs who have published cookbooks, their tone is more one of amateur enthusiasm than professional competence.

David Lebovitz, an American living in Paris who has written two books about food, began a recent blog post with the confession, “The other day, I stood in the middle of my apartment and screamed.” True, his frustrations were with his Internet provider, not food. But compare this with a story from the July issue of Gourmet, by Alexander Lobrano, also an expat living in Paris: “[A]fter a stately pause, the graying waiter returned with a heavy copper casserole, which he set at my end of the table. Lifting the lid, he released a fleeting cloud of steam. The mingled aroma of wine, beef, and onions was so intoxicating it seemed an eternity before everyone had been served and I could dig in.” Lobrano’s story evokes life the way we want it to be; the way it is maybe once or twice in a lifetime. Lebovitz’s post evokes the way life is, every day. Perhaps the rise of food blogs means we’re hungry for writing about food the way we actually prepare and eat it, crumpled paper napkins and all.

Tracy Morgan Caves and Joins Twitter

2009-10-08T18:34:28Z

After the massive viral campaign to get Tracy Morgan to join Twitter hit fever pitch yesterday, his rep just told Pop Vox that the actor has officially caved. His first tweet? "Welcome to Tracy Morgan's world." Follow the most-desired Tweeter in the world here.

Why the Nobel Prize in Literature Doesn't Really Matter

2009-10-08T11:30:22Z

by Malcolm Jones

What exactly does it mean for Herta Müller, the Romanian-born novelist, to take home a Nobel Prize in Literature? Most concretely, it means collecting roughly $1.4 million. That's not chump change, but after that, the benefits become more nebulous. If you've languished in semi-obscurity before winning the prize, it means a brief period of instant celebrity, a period in which critics play catch-up with your work and publishers lucky enough to have bought the rights to your work in leaner times now rush to get your books into print, if they're not there already.

If you're a writer, such as the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, who's been at odds with your government, it may buy you some protection. Nobel Prize winners don't get locked up too often. In the long run, it probably means that you're not going to have a lot of trouble getting your books published for the rest of your life. But if you think the prize guarantees you legions of new fans, think again. It may, but, then again, you may wind up like last year's winner, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, who enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame and then fell off the radar.

Every now and then, the Nobel can resuscitate a career. When William Faulkner won in 1949, none of his books were in print in his home country. The Nobel turned his life around, and the resulting acclaim translated into sales that gave him the financial security that had eluded him all his life. And while most of his best work was behind him when he won, the prize allowed him to stop buying time by script-doctoring in Hollywood. He could stay home, where he became intensely prolific in the last decade of his life, completing the Snopes trilogy and capping his output with the uncharacteristically cheerful novel The Reivers, which, while minor compared with some of his most towering books, looks better and better with the passage of time.

Faulkner escaped the notorious Nobel curse, which, so the legend goes, condemns a writer to either silence or insignificance once he or she has won. The curse, though, is something of a joke, since most writers who win a Nobel are already near the end of their career, and therefore not too likely to produce major work whether they win or not.

Publishers and booksellers agree that any prize helps a writer, and the bigger the prize, the more it boosts sales, at least for a little while. But in the long run, the prize doesn't seem to have much effect either way on a writer's reputation. Nobel winners Pearl Buck and John Steinbeck are no longer in the front ranks of American writers, and even Sinclair Lewis isn't read much anymore. And then there are all the authors whose greatness actually diminishes the value of the Nobel. How, we have to ask, could the jurors have erred so badly as to neglect James Joyce, Eugene Ionesco, Eudora Welty, and Vladimir Nabokov? It's enough to make you think that the decisions aren't made for strictly literary reasons. That can only diminish the cache of the prize. It doesn't mean we don't care who wins, just that we don't care as much. Maybe that's not a bad thing. Writing is hard enough without turning it into a contest.

Five Failing TV Shows We Should Take Off the Respirator

2009-10-07T18:02:52Z

There are issues so polarizing, so emotionally draining, so morally fraught, that we never really solve them as much as we table them for a while. Euthanasia is one such issue, which has come back to fore during the vigorous debate over American health care. But it’s an equally important issue in the world of entertainment: when is it finally time to pull the plug and kill a TV show? I know there are emotions involved, believe me I do. But I have to be the cold realist—there are some shows that have to die. It’s simply too painful to see them in their current state. I can’t bear it, and I’m willing to make the tough choices that others can’t. What follows is a list of the shows that must be taken off the respirator post haste.

1. America’s Next Top Model. Top Model has always been a house of cards. The title suggests that the show’s winner will go on to have a fruitful career in the modeling industry. Now that we’re into the show’s 13th season, it’s clear that isn’t true, and probably never will be. However, for the sake of the show, it’s still important to pretend there’s still some connection, however tenuous, to the actual world of modeling. In this season, Tyra Banks just threw all pretense of legitimacy out the window. She claims to be challenging the industry by casting only contestants who are 5 foot 7 and shorter. She fired judge Paulina Poriskova, an actual model who gave the girls sage advice on the craft, and replaced her with a revolving cast of guest judges. Lauren Conrad? Really? Imagine if American Idol stopped giving the winner a record contract, or if Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? replaced the million dollars with a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for Shake and Bake. There would be no reason to watch anymore, nor is there any reason to watch Top Model.

2. Dexter. This one is going to hurt me, so I’m going to mitigate the criticism by starting out with a compliment. Dexter is not the type of show I’d have expected to last more than a season, simply based on its elaborate, seemingly self-limiting premise. That the producers managed to pull off two great seasons is a marvel. Yet here we are in season 4 and I can’t help but think the wheels have come off. Season 3 sputtered all the way through. I was intrigued by the possibility of the fourth season because for the first time, the show seemed like it was going to try something different from the pattern it repeated for the first three seasons—Dexter meets someone as homicidal as him, but without his moral code, so he has to take them out. The new John Lithgow character seems like he could provide a worthy foe. But the show feels stale and recycled, and it’s arguable that no other show knows less what to do with its supporting characters than Dexter. There’s a fifth season already locked in, but a guy can dream.

3. Scrubs. Casts change. That’s a part of life in the television world. But when a cast changes so cataclysmicly that the entire DNA of the show is changed, maybe it’s time for the show to end. That was certainly the case when ABC cleaned house at The Practice, and it’s the case with Scrubs. Following a season finale that could have just as easily been a series finale, the show will return soon with nearly all of its main cast, including Zach Braff and Sarah Chalke, gone. I was never a huge fan of the show to begin with, so maybe I’m being needlessly harsh, but isn’t eight seasons enough? Creator Bill Lawrence is now running things over at Cougar Town, so perhaps he should focus on that.

4. Entourage. Again, I’ve never been a huge fan of this particular show, and I’ve dropped in and out periodically through its run. But it’s clear that Entourage has only two scenarios: Vince is famous, beloved and life is awesome, or Vince is on the Hollywood outs and life is terrible. If there’s nothing to do rather than ricochet between these two tired extremes, then why keep the show on for so long? Like Dexter, this is another case of wishful thinking, though; Entourage is going to drag on for at least one more season. And sure, that means more Ari (Jeremy Piven), and no one can argue with that, but if a supporting character is my only reason for watching a show, there’s a major problem.

5. Weeds. I feel bad for picking on Showtime, but its other big hit, Weeds, is perhaps in worse shape than any show on this list. It started with the season 2 finale, which ended with an ambitious, hydra-headed cliffhanger. But the consequence of making such a mess is that you have to then clean it up. So much for season 3, and when that season ended with the show completely abandoning its original premise, it’s been unrecognizable since. Characters I loved are gone, and the ones that stayed have almost no reason to be there. There’s only a scant reference to marijuana anymore, which used to be a focal point of the show, now it’s just a smoke screen. There’s another season queued up, but, man alive, do I wish there weren’t. To its credit, Weeds does finales very well. I just hope the next one will be its last.