Joel Murphy

It’s a good time to be a Batman fan. After years of suffering through horrible films like Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, Bat-fans were finally rewarded when Christopher Nolan single-handedly saved the franchise with Batman Begins and this summer’s juggernaut The Dark Knight.

And while The Dark Knight may go down in history as the best Batman film ever made (and Heath Ledger’s haunting portrayal of The Joker will undoubtedly be remembered for years to come), there is one problem with the film - it’s not really for kids.

Older fans like myself love Nolan’s dark, brooding version of Batman. While having a grown man dressed like a giant bat battling criminals still seems quite improbable, Nolan has worked hard to make his version of Gotham City as grounded in reality and plausible as possible. If Batman did actually exist, he would probably live in Nolan’s universe.

And while I could watch The Dark Knight over and over again without ever getting tired of it, I still wouldn’t show it to a seven-year-old. Something tells me little kids just won’t appreciate the dark humor of The Joker’s memorable disappearing pencil trick.

So how can a savvy network capitalize on the popularity of The Dark Knight by launching their own animated Batman series without making a show that would be unsuitable for children? The Cartoon Network has a solution. They decided to go in the opposite direction and create Batman: The Brave and The Bold, a lighthearted, child-friendly cartoon that is more reminiscent of Adam West’s version of Batman than Christian Bale’s.

Batman: The Brave and The Bold debuts this Friday night, but the nice people over at The Cartoon Network were kind enough to send me the first episode in advance (I’m kind of a big deal). So, this week I’m bringing you a very special One Shot column where I am reviewing a show that hasn’t actually aired yet …

Batman: The Brave and The Bold - “The Rise of the Blue Beetle!”
(Cartoon Network - Premieres this Friday at 8 p.m.)

The Brave and The Bold is a popular DC Comic that features different superheroes teaming up to battle a common foe (i.e. Aquaman and Wonder Woman team up to make a merman tell the truth). This new animated series has stayed true to that original concept, but has made Batman the focal point of the show - meaning that Batman will appear in every episode, but he will get a different superhero to work with each week.

The opening of this Friday’s episode appears to be an homage to the live-action 1960s Batman TV series. The episode begins with Batman and the Green Arrow tied to a giant grandfather clock positioned above a pool of acid. Standing over top of them is the Clock King and his two henchman - Tick and Tock. The Clock King explains that when the clock strikes midnight, Batman and Green Arrow will be dropped into the acid and killed. Unfortunately, Clock King is on a tight schedule and can’t stay until midnight - so he leaves, assuming that his plan will go off without a hitch. Of course, Batman and Green Arrow waste no time escaping once he is gone.

The Batman/Green Arrow scene is just a brief vignette to open the show. The actual episode centers around the Blue Beetle - a Batman fanboy named Jaime Reyes who has become the Blue Beetle thanks to an alien suit he inadvertently discovered. Batman knows Jaime’s secret identity, even though his friends don’t. The Blue Beetle seems to be the show’s version of Robin - a teenaged superhero who works with Batman that young fans will hopefully relate to. Luckily, The Blue Beetle is much less annoying than Robin - so his presence in the show is actually tolerable.

Batman is hoping to test Jaime to see how he responds under pressure and to see if he will make a good superhero someday. So Batman and the Beetle team up to take out an asteroid headed for Earth, but they inadvertently stumble into a wormhole and end up on an alien planet (a wormhole undoubtedly created by the Large Hadron Collider). The inhabitants of the planet - a group of gelatinous beings that look a bit like Kirby from the old Nintendo games - are living in fear of an evil dictator named Kanjar Ro, who uses the Kirbys for fuel. The Kirbys have seen the Blue Beetle before (although Jaime is unfamiliar with them - meaning that someone else in the Blue Beetle suit was there before) and they think he has returned to save them. They also think that Batman is the Blue Beetle’s sidekick.

Batman decides to play along and act as the sidekick to see how Jaime handles himself. The power and adulation immediately go to Jaime’s head and he begins to believe that he doesn’t need Batman’s help to defeat Kanjar Ro. Since the episode hasn’t aired yet, I won’t give any more detail about the actual plot than that, but let me assure you that from there hijinks ensue.

Final Thoughts: Being a sucker for Batman and a big fan of The Cartoon Network, I assumed that I would like this show, but I ended up enjoying it even more than I thought I would. The animation on the show is very slick - it’s almost as if Batman: The Animated Series, the opening animated sequence on 1960s Batman series and The Venture Bros. all had a crazy, drunken three-way and Batman: The Brave and the Bold was the resulting love child.

Diedrich Bader (from The Drew Carey Show and Office Space) does an outstanding job as the voice of Batman. While I am normally skeptical any time anyone besides Kevin Conroy gets to voice Batman, I have to admit that Bader knocks it out of the park. The writers also give him a lot to work with - Batman toys around with the Blue Beetle a bit when the aliens think he is their savior, which suggests that Batman has a sly sense of humor (which they will hopefully reveal more of in future episodes).

The show is really great. It’s clearly aimed at kids, but has enough jokes to keep adults happy. It’s the kind of show that parents can sit and watch with their kids without rolling their eyes and dorky Batman fans like me can watch alone in their boxer shorts without feeling sad and pathetic afterward.

I’ll definitely be watching this show every week and I suggest that you give it a try as well. With any luck, it will become a huge hit and Diedrich Bader will make a million dollars from the show so that he can finally live out his dream of doing two chicks at the same time.

Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He loves pugs, hates Jimmy Fallon and has an irrational fear of robots. You can contact him at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.

---

Similar Posts:

• One on One with Diedrich Bader
• One on One with John DiMaggio
• Hobo Radio - Batman Day
• Hobo Radio - The Dork Knights
• Hobo Radio - It’s a bird, it’s a plane …

Joel Murphy

There is no question that both Hulk Hogan and the wrestling business itself are in a state of decline. Long gone are the glory days of Hulkamania, when I, along with countless other devoted children of the 80s, would have done just about anything Hulk Hogan asked me to. Sadly these days, when most people think of Hogan, they think of the tabloid stories that seem to constantly surround him and his family.

Add to that the fact that I despise most reality shows and you can see why I was hesitant to give Hulk Hogan’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling a try. However, my 80s nostalgia and my desire to see someone physically harm Screech convinced me to give this show One Shot …

Hulk Hogan’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling -
“Down to the Basics”
(CMT – Saturdays at 8 p.m.)

Since this is the first episode of the show, the opening segment is devoted to introducing everyone involved and going over the rules. The 10 celebrity contestants will be broken up into two teams and each week they will be taught three moves. Then each team puts together a wrestling match. The team that puts together the worst match gets one of their celebrities eliminated. Eventually, one celebrity will win the entire competition and will receive a CCW championship belt.

Here are the contestants:

• Danny Bonaduce – the crazy guy who used to be on The Partridge Family

• Todd Bridges – Willis Jackson from Different Strokes
• Butterbean – super-heavyweight boxer with 93 wins and 63 knockouts
• Trishelle Cannatella – useless reality show attention whore
• Dustin Diamond - Screech
• Erin Murphy – Tabitha from Bewitched
• Dennis Rodman – formerly relevant NBA player
• Frank Stallone - Sylvester Stallone’s brother
• Tiffany - 80s pop star
• Nikki Ziering - Playboy playmate formerly married to Steve Sanders

Hulk Hogan is one of three judges for the competition. The other two are “The Silver Fox” Eric Bischoff and “The Mouth of the South” Jimmy Hart. The two trainers for the show are “Nasty Boy” Brian Knobbs and Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake. I don’t want to insult the two trainers, but let’s just say there was a reason these two never earned nicknames like “the excellence of execution” or “the man of 1,000 holds.” But considering that the main judge of this competition is a wrestler who has seen amazing success using only three moves (and no, “hulking up” does not count as a move), I guess I shouldn’t expect to see these celebrities breaking out any suicide planchas or 450 splashes anyway.

The immortal Hulk Hogan

Hogan talks to all of the contestants inside the ring. He tells them: “Before we get started, I want to make one thing perfectly clear – wrestling, when performed at it’s best, is an art form. It requires strength, skill, agility and intellect, but it also requires personality.”

Shortly after that, Hogan calls Trishelle out and wonders if she really wants to be there. She responds by saying, “Of course I want to be here. I’ll prove it to you.” I can’t be entirely certain, but I’m pretty sure she was offering to blow Hogan.

Danny Bonaduce then tells everyone that he is disappointed that the mat is red because he wants to be able to see the blood. Clearly, he is wasting no time breaking out the crazy. I know Brian picked Butterbean to win this competition when he previewed this show a few weeks ago, but my money is on Bonaduce. For whatever reason, he really wants to win this competition and he’s crazy enough to make it happen. I think either he wins it all or the show ends with him chasing around the winner like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shinning.

I also feel it is worth mentioning that Screech is sporting Triple H’s facial hair (a.k.a. The Lemmy). I think a better choice would have been the classic Hogan mustache, but still, I respect the effort.

The celebrities are broken up into two teams. Bonaduce, Butterbean, Tiffany, Todd Bridges and Trishelle are Team Beefcake. Tabitha from Bewitched, Dennis Rodman, Frank Stallone, Screech and the former Mrs. Steve Sanders are Team Nasty (because of course Nikki Ziering and Dennis Rodman would be on Team Nasty).

The three moves the celebrities must learn this week are the kick to the midsection, forearm smash and clothesline. Technically, Dennis Rodman should have an advantage going into this competition since he actually did wrestle with WCW in the 90s, but I remember how terrible his matches were back then. Butterbean was also involved in a wrestling show – he knocked out Bart Gunn in a legitimate boxing match at Wrestlemania, which doesn’t really give him an edge in this competition, but it does give me an excuse to link to the video.

The trainers teach the moves to their teams. Knobbs accuses Screech of hitting someone “like a woman,” which earns an eye roll from Erin Murphy. Todd Bridges accidentally kicks a guy in the nuts while attempting a kick to the midsection. Murphy also says that Nikki Ziering is like an animal or small child who gets distracted by shiny objects. From what little they show of the actual training session, Beefcake seems to be the better trainer.

We then fast forward to the teams’ matches, which are being performed in front of a live audience. Our first match is:

Tiffany and Danny Bonaduce (with manager Todd Bridges) vs. Trishelle and Butterbean
For this match, Trishelle and Butterbean are the good guys (faces) and Tiffany and Bonaduce are the bad guys (heels). Butterbean and Bonaduce start the match (and Bonaduce already has the crazy eyes). Butterbean shoves him down to the canvas. Bonaduce responds with a cheapshot kick to the midsection. Then he hits the forearm smash and attempts a clothesline, but Butterbean doesn’t sell it. Butterbean clotheslines Bonaduce, walks over top of him and then tags out to Trishelle.

Trishelle slaps Bonaduce. He pulls back to punch her in the face, but then he reconsiders. She kicks him in the midsection and then rams his head into the turnbuckle. Bonaduce rallies back with a kick to the midsection and a forearm smash. Then he tags Tiffany.

Trishelle and Tiffany are alone now in the ring – there doesn’t seem to be anyone around. The beating of their hearts is the only sound. Tiffany chokes Trishelle, then gives her a stiff forearm smash. Trishelle attempts to ram Tiffany’s head into the turnbuckle, but they blow the spot. The two eventually hit a double clothesline and both of them end up on the mat.

Both women tag out and Butterbean rushes in and clotheslines Bonaduce three times in a row. He then sets Bonaduce up in the corner and charges at him, but Danny moves out of the way at the last minute. Bonaduce antagonizes the crowd, which allows Butterbean to recover and hit him with a bodyslam for the three count.

After the match: Butterbean and Trishelle celebrate with a Ric Flair strut. The heels rush the ring (including Bridges, who was a non-factor the entire match) and attack them. A brawl ensues and a “CCW” chant breaks out (I refuse to believe that the crowd actually started this chant – my guess is that they piped it in like they used to do with their “Gold-berg” chant in the glory days of WCW).

Both Butterbean and Bonaduce were really solid in their performances. I definitely think they will be the two to beat this season.

Erin Murphy and Rodman vs. Screech and Frank Stallone (with manager Nikki Ziering)
Murphy and Rodman are the faces for this match, Screech and Stallone are the heels. Screech and The Worm start things out. The two pose for a few seconds, then Screech charges Rodman, but ends up hitting the turnbuckle. Rodman kicks him in the midsection, which sends Screech to the mat. Then Rodman gives him a very stiff forearm to the back, which knocks Screech down again. Rodman follows it up with one of the worst clotheslines I’ve ever seen in my life.

Rodman tags in Murphy. Screech charges at her, but she drops to the mat and he runs over her and into Rodman’s forearm. Murphy hits Screech with a solid clothesline. He rams her head into the turnbuckle, then tags out to Stallone.

While the ref is distracted, Nikki Ziering attacks Murphy. Stallone puts her into an absolutely terrible looking headlock, then tags out to Screech. Screech attempts to charge Murphy in the corner, but she moves out of the way and he hits the turnbuckle. Murphy tags out to Rodman, who hits a series of clotheslines on Screech and Stallone. Then Rodman goes up to the second rope and hits Screech with a flying clothesline. The ref counts three and the match is over.

After the match: Rodman ripped off his shirt to reveal a nWo t-shirt underneath it. Hogan and Bischoff, also sporting nWo shirts, come down from the judges table with a can of black spray paint. They spray paint the nWo logo on Screech’s back while the fans boo and throw garbage into the ring. At the last minute, Sting is lowered from the rafters with his trademark basbeball bat and he makes the save for Screech.

… okay, I’m kidding. Absolutely nothing happened after the match, except more fake CCW chants.

Danny’s not here, Mrs. Torrance

The judges give their thoughts on the two matches. They all agree that Team Nasty had the better match this week (I’m unconvinced, but neither match was amazing, so really it was a coin toss). Then, they toy with the members of Team Beefcake a little while before eliminating one of them. Bischoff tells Trishelle that she looks good, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she deserves to be in this business (Vince McMahon would disagree), but then he tells her that she is safe this week.

Jimmy Hart babbles incoherently about Danny Bonaduce for a while before telling him that he’s safe this week. Clearly, Hart is trying to solidify his roles as the Paula Adbul of this group of judges.

Hogan tells Butterbean that the crowd loves him, but he needs to be more agile in the ring, since times have changed and you can no longer be like Hogan (a.k.a. you need to learn how to wrestle instead of making it on pure charisma). Butterbean is safe this week. Hogan tells Tiffany she needs to step up the physical aspect of her performance and he tells Todd Bridges that he needed to have more of a presence during the match, since he was easily forgettable. Ultimately, Hogan sends Tiffany home, after calling her a jabroni for some reason. Hogan then says, “What’cha gonna do when Celebrity Championship Wrestling runs wild on you?” and I die a little inside.

To close things out, Tiffany gives an exit interview where she pretends to care that she was eliminated from the show.

Final Thoughts: This is by no stretch of the imagination a great show, but being a lifelong wrestling fan, I was entertained enough to want to come back next week. The chances that someone cracks Screech’s head open with a steel chair or that Danny Bonaduce snaps and kills someone are far too great for me to not tune in.

Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He loves pugs, hates Jimmy Fallon and has an irrational fear of robots. You can contact him at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.

---

Similar Posts:

• Note to Self - More than a contender
• Murphy’s Law - What’cha gonna do?
• Note to Self - No madness this March
• One on One with Mick Foley
• One on One with Mick Foley

Joel Murphy

For months now, the USA Network has been running ads for the The Starter Wife. Seeing these ads over and over again, I realized three things:

1. It’s really hard to get “I Want Candy” by Bow Wow Wow out of your head.

2. Debra Messing’s delivery of “I live in a crazy world” is almost as ridiculous and over the top as the infamous “You’re risking a patient’s life!” line from the pilot episode of House.

3. Because it looks like the most clichéd chick show ever, I had to give The Starter Wife One Shot …

The Starter Wife – “The 40-Year-Old Virgin Queen;
Diary of a Mad Ex-Housewife”
(USA Network – Fridays at 10 p.m.)

This past Friday must have been my lucky day because the USA Network gave me not one, but two episodes back-to-back of this show. Since the two episodes were intertwined, I had no choice but to review them both. So technically I got a “double shot” of this show, but I won’t tell if you don’t.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this show, the concept is pretty simple. Debra Messing plays Molly Kegel (okay, that’s not really her last name, but it’s close enough – besides, I heard her character likes to exercise). Molly Kegel was married to a big shot Hollywood producer, but he dumped her once he made it big because she was just a “starter wife.” Apparently, in the miniseries that preceded season one, Molly met some other guy, but he dumped her too, so she is single once again at the start of this season. Luckily, she has her sassy gay friend (sadly, it’s not Will) and a poor man’s Shirley MacLaine to lean on.

Overall, the show is about what you would expect from a chick show (if you are wondering how long it took Molly to try on shoes while exchanging witty banter with her friends, the answer is six minutes). Allow me to give you a recap of the show’s major plot points …

Molly’s douchey ex-husband (who is so douchey that he wears a Bluetooth headset at all times, lest you forget for one minute that he is, in fact, a douche) has all of his money tied up in his movie Blood Canal. He has so much money tied up in it that he starts bouncing checks to their daughter’s private school. He eventually sells his house and moves into an apartment, but he needs Molly’s help to move, because he is so horribly inept at life. She constantly has to coddle him through every little thing he does.

Douchey ex-husband’s movie is a complete flop. The test audience hates it. The ex begins to sulk, but Molly gives him a pep talk telling him that he is a great producer and he can sell the movie, even if it is a steaming pile of shit. After all, he gets a large share of the money made in foreign markets, so all he has to do is retool the movie so that it sells overseas and he will make money.

Molly’s sassy gay friend is an interior decorator (because he is incredibly clichéd). He falls for one of his clients, a large black action movie star. Sassy gay friend assumes that the guy is straight, but the action star ends up banging him once they are alone together. Afterward, the action star makes it clear that he’s not gay; he’s a straight dude who just happens to like banging guys.

Poor Man’s Shirley MacLaine

Poor Man’s Shirley MacLaine is a recovering alcoholic, so she decides to work at a posh celebrity rehab center. She is sent to the airport to pick up a washed up alcoholic actor, but he continually tries to ditch her on their way to rehab. She eventually gets him checked in.

Later, Poor Man’s Shirley MacLaine tries to do a sexy dance for her husband, but he is unimpressed (in fairness to her husband, her “sexy” dance contained some of the most awkward and unsexy dance moves I’ve ever seen). Her husband tells her that he’s lost all interest in sex, since he is so old and decrepit now, but if she is still interested in getting some, she should bang other guys. Her husband believes that since he has absolutely no interest in screwing her, she must whore around town to save their marriage. For some reason, she is offended by this idea. Gee, I can’t imagine why.

Now that we got the subplots out of the way, let’s get into the main story …

In the beginning of the show, Molly decides to swear off men, since her last two relationships were so disastrous. But, of course, she meets a handsome gentleman who immediately makes her swoon, so being chaste is going to be harder than she thought.

Molly writes children’s books. The man she meets is also an author and he hosts a writers’ group (we’ll call him The Writer). Molly attends the first group meeting, but the other authors tackle more adult subject matter and are underwhelmed by her children’s book.

She contemplates quitting the group, but instead decides to bring her personal diary along to the second meeting and reads from that instead. The other members of the group are amused by her diary entries, which recount the exploits of the rich housewives that Molly knows. The Writer is so impressed with her work (a.k.a. he wants to bang her) that he invites her to a party at his house. The party will be filled with powerful people in the writing industry and he wants Molly to bring her diary along so that he can help her land a job as a columnist.

At the party, Molly tries to pitch the column to a magazine publisher, but she wants to change the names of the women mentioned in the diary entries. The publisher insists that she use the actual names of the women she is writing about, so Molly reads him an excerpt about his wife, who pulled a Winona Ryder and stole jewelry from a Barney’s counter.

Molly storms out of the party, but she accidentally leaves her diary behind. When she returns the next day to look for it, it’s nowhere to be found. What she does find is that The Writer hooked up with a random blonde chick, who walks around the apartment naked while Molly is there.

Molly eventually discovers that someone stole her diary and that person is selling excerpts of it to a gossip blog. Whoever is selling the excerpts uses the pseudonym “The Hollywood Ex-Wife.” The Writer shows up to her house with a guest list from the party, so that she can try to track down who stole it. He and Molly bond some more.

The first story that appears on the gossip blog is about the wife of a LA Dodgers player. Molly and the Dodger wife became fast friends and the Dodger wife confided in her that she once paid a waitress to flirt with her husband so that she could find out whether he was cheating on her or not. Molly wrote about the story in her diary and whoever stole it sold that entry to the gossip blog. The Dodger wife is horrified that the story got out and Molly feels so guilty that she ends up confessing that she is the Hollywood Ex-Wife. Unfortunately, some other chick overhears their conversation, which is undoubtedly setting us up for future shenanigans.

Final Thoughts: While the show wasn’t outright terrible, it was definitely your standard chick show. There were lots of talk of shoes and clothes and lots of high society parties and get-togethers. The sassy gay friend and aging Shirley MacLaine-type are characters that have been seen a thousand times before. The men in Molly’s life all act exactly how you would expect them to.

Ultimately, the characters and situations have a “been there, done that” feel to them. There isn’t much originality to the show at all. The one thing I will give them credit for is having Molly’s diary get stolen and the information leaked out over the Internet, since I thought for sure the show was just going to go the Sex and the City route and have Molly become a columnist.

One other way the show tries to be original is by having strange fantasy sequences that parody famous movie scenes. When Molly decides to be chaste at the beginning of part one, she has a dream sequence where she is Cate Blanchett’s Queen Elizabeth from the movie Elizabeth. When Molly gives her ex a pep talk, there is a black and white Frankenstein parody. As Molly searches for her diary, they lampoon the same Mission: Impossible sequence that everyone lampoons (Tom Cruise being lowered into the room from the ceiling). Once the diary entries begin to get posted online, we are treated to a Raiders of the Lost Ark parody, where people’s faces melt off once the diary is opened.

While I appreciate the fact that they were trying to mix things up, all of these movie parodies felt really flat. Not a single one of those movies is less than a decade old and the sequences didn’t really have any new jokes to offer. Instead the writers seem to be using the Seltzberg school of thought – instead of coming up with a punchline, simply reference things we are all already familiar with.

Overall, the show lived up to what it promised – Debra Messing does indeed live in a crazy world. Unfortunately, it’s not a world I want to revisit any time soon.

Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He loves pugs, hates Jimmy Fallon and has an irrational fear of robots. You can contact him at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.

---

Similar Posts:

• Murphy’s Law - One Shot: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
• Murphy’s Law - One Shot: Gossip Girl
• Murphy’s Law - One Shot: 90210
• Murphy’s Law - One Shot: Batman: The Brave and The Bold
• Murphy’s Law - One Shot: Hulk Hogan’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling

Joel Murphy

As you should all know by now, I am on an epic quest to seek out shows I wouldn’t normally watch and give them one chance to impress me.

The past two weeks, I have reviewed The CW’s teen dramas, 90210 and Gossip Girl. While the majority of The CW’s lineup would fall under the category of “shows I wouldn’t normally watch,” I don’t want it to seem like I am picking on one particular network or genre. So, this week I decided to branch out and try an action-packed drama – Fox’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

You would think that I would have given this show a try by now. I enjoyed all of the Terminator films on a purely visceral level and their message – that one day robots will become sentient beings who will seek to enslave us all – is an important one that I think is worth focusing on.

However, the entire Terminator story has only gotten more convoluted and ridiculous with each subsequent incarnation. The initial movie made sense – the robots use a time machine to send one of their own back to destroy John Connor’s mother before Connor was ever born. After that plan was thwarted, they continued to send back more advanced robots at different points in Sarah and John Connor’s lives. But if they have a time machine and the first plot failed – why not just keep sending robots back until you get the job done? Send 1,000 of them back to kill pregnant Sarah Connor and call it a day. Robots strike me as efficient beings – so why wouldn’t they stick with the original plan and make sure the job is done right?

I tolerated this lapse in logic through three enjoyable films, but somehow the idea of a weekly TV series just seemed too much to take. Besides, what is a Terminator story without Arnold Schwarzenegger? His acting and dialogue is so ridiculous that it distracts you from any plotholes. Without him, the whole thing just doesn’t work.

But the whole point of this “One Shot” feature is to expand my horizons. So, with that in mind, I decided to give The Sarah Connor Chronicles a try …

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – “The Mousetrap”
(Fox – Mondays at 8 p.m.)

The episode opens with Johnny Gavin from Rescue Me and Penny Widmore from Lost together at a gas station. Apparently in this show they are married to each other (don’t tell Desmond, brother). Johnny Gavin leaves Penny alone in their car. A Terminator seizes the opportunity and kidnaps her.

Meanwhile, John Connor is helping a bitchy pregnant chick get free cable. He gets her cable working just in time to see a conveniently-placed news story that is recapping events from a previous episode of the show. Apparently, the Terminator who kidnapped Penny designed himself to look just like an actor who was in a terrible low-budget knockoff of Conan the Barbarian (not sure why he wouldn’t just model himself after the real Conan the Barbarian, Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I digress …). The Terminator killed 20 FBI agents, but everyone thinks that the actor did it. The news report also states that the actor was killed during the standoff with the FBI.

We then see Summer Glau, who is standing in the Connor household explaining to John that the house is slowly sinking. She is apparently a reprogrammed Terminator sent back to protect John. Glau plays the role almost exactly like she played River Tam in Firefly and Serenity, which works since River Tam was also a programmed killing machine.

Johnny Gavin gets in touch with the Connors to let Sarah know that Penny has been kidnapped. Sarah Connor agrees to help him, even though she knows they are walking into a trap. Sarah tells River Tam-inator to keep an eye on John, who is heading out to pick up new computers. Ms. Connor runs into Brian Austin Green on her way to her car and he offers to come along with her to save Penny.

River Tam-inator

John and River Tam-inator load their computers into the back of his truck. Then, some random blonde girl calls John and tells him she wants to see him. He decides he doesn’t want River Tam-inator to cock-block him, so he sneaks off when she isn’t looking (because leaving behind the only person who can protect him so that he can try to get to third base with a random blonde while a Terminator is setting a trap for everyone will turn out to be a great idea).

We see Penny Widmore tied to a chair inside a run-down shack. The Terminator plays with an actual mousetrap, for those of you who like your symbolism as blunt as possible.

Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson calls an FBI agent and invites him to lunch. She tells him that she has information about the showdown between the dead actor and the 20 slaughtered FBI agents.

Penny Widmore manages to grab her cellphone. She calls Johnny Gavin and gives him her location. He quizzes her about their sex life to make sure that it’s actually her and not a Terminator imitating her voice. After proving that she isn’t a robot, she quickly hangs up the cellphone because the Terminator reenters the room. Terminator then goes into a speech about the inventor of the mousetrap while setting mousetraps up around her chair – Dude, we get it. You named the episode “The Mousetrap.” Mousetraps are symbolic. Sarah Connor and friends are walking into a trap – one that involves drawing them out to this location so that the Terminator can go after John Connor. I think that became pretty clear as soon as John ditched River Tam-inator to go out on a date. You can stop beating us over the head with it.

Random blonde chick and John Connor exchange supposedly witty banter about magazine titles. She begins calling him “Cat Fancy,” which he seems to enjoy. Wow, is this really the guy that is going to save us all from the evil robots?

Brian Austin Green does an incredibly unconvincing job trying to portray himself as a badass soldier. Sarah Connor and Johnny Gavin find Penny Widmore and find that the Terminator has used – you guessed it – mousetraps to build a makeshift bomb around her chair. Only it’s not really a bomb, it’s a decoy to distract them. We covered this two paragraphs ago – this was all just a clever ruse to draw them all out of hiding and to isolate John Connor.

He makes an unconvincing soldier

Sarah Connor calls John and tries to warn him about the trap. The Terminator listens in on the call, which gives him John’s cell number and the password the gang uses when calling each other. The Terminator then disables Sarah’s car and blows up the cell tower so that she can’t get back in touch with John. Then, the Terminator mimics Sarah’s voice and calls John, telling him to come to the pier.

Penny Widmore caught a piece of shrapnel from the blown cell tower in her back and is bleeding profusely. Sarah, being the heartless bitch she is, tells Penny that she “ain’t got time to bleed” and orders everyone to get on the move so that they can go save John.

Shirley Manson meets with the FBI agent and quickly convinces him that she is no “stupid girl” and while many believe that she’s “only happy when it rains,” she will in fact only be happy when she gets her hand on a Terminator so that she can replicate the technology for her own personal gain. She wants the FBI agent to help her get one.

Sarah Connor hijacks a van and drives at breakneck speed to save John. Johhny Gavin begs Sarah to slow down because her driving is making things worse for Penny. Sarah eventually slams on the brakes, but it’s too late – Penny is losing too much blood and is fading fast.

The Terminator quickly spots John Connor at the pier and chases him around (cue the Benny Hill theme song). John eventually dives off the pier into the water; the Terminator jumps in after him. Apparently, Terminators haven’t been programmed to swim, so the robot quickly sinks to the bottom of the water, allowing John to escape rather easily. (Hindsight says maybe tricking John into coming to a place surrounded by water when you can’t swim wasn’t the brightest move, Terminator.)

Johnny Gavin cries outside of a hospital. John Connor tries to comfort him. Then, we cut to Penny Widmore’s funeral. Gavin tosses his Bible into the open grave. The Terminator, looking rather stylish, watches the entire funeral from a distance.

Final Thoughts: The show wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. It moved along swiftly and kept my attention the whole time. Whoever hired Brian Austin Green as a soldier should immediately be fired, but other than that, the cast did a good job, especially Summer Glau.

I might be willing to give this show another try, however part of me is worried that week after week of John getting chased by a Terminator only to escape at the last minute could get really old really quick. Hopefully the other episodes of the show mix up the plot a bit more – this week’s storyline seemed a bit predictable and cookie cutter.

So it’s hard to say for sure whether or not … I’ll be back.

Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He loves pugs, hates Jimmy Fallon and has an irrational fear of robots. You can contact him at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.

---

Similar Posts:

• Murphy’s Law - One Shot: Gossip Girl
• Murphy’s Law - One Shot: 90210
• Murphy’s Law - One Shot: The Starter Wife
• Murphy’s Law - One Shot: Batman: The Brave and The Bold
• Murphy’s Law - One Shot: Hulk Hogan’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling

Joel Murphy

In case you missed last week’s column (and, if you did, shame on you), my life now has purpose. I have decided to seek out television shows I would not normally watch and give them one shot to win me over. Last week, I took a look at the new 90210. This week, I watched Monday night’s episode of Gossip Girl.

Clearly, the writers of Gossip Girl knew I was coming because they named the episode “The Dark Night,” which played right into my Batman-fandom. Plus, the entire show takes place in New York (a.k.a. Gotham City), so I held out hope that Batman would show up to kick some pretentious trust-fund baby ass, but sadly it was not to be.

Here’s what happened instead …

Gossip Girl – “The Dark Night”
(The CW – Mondays at 8 p.m.)

Going into this week’s episode, I knew absolutely nothing about Gossip Girl except that the kids today seem to love it. Having watched only one episode, I’m still not entirely sure what was going on, but I’m going to do my best to recap.

As far as I can tell, Gossip Girl is actually the name of a blog that shares the exploits of the main characters in the show. The blog is written by an unseen character and excerpts from it are revealed via voiceovers (done by Kristen Bell).

In this episode, some chick named Blair is throwing a fancy party that all of her snobby rich friends show up to. However, the party is interrupted by a citywide blackout. Shenanigans ensue.

The entire plot of the episode is rather ridiculous, so instead of giving a detailed summary of everything that happened, I’m going to start by sharing the five most unbelievable plot points of this particular episode:

1. The entire Gossip Girl website makes no sense. Perhaps they have addressed this in other episodes, but it’s very unclear how the unseen narrator is able to know intimate details of these character’s lives. Don’t get me wrong, Veronica Mars was a great detective, but she wasn’t omnipotent. Besides, why is 28-year-old Kristen Bell so interested in the lives of snobby teenagers? I haven’t seen an adult this obsessed with teenage girls since Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused.

2. Blair is dating a smarmy British nobleman and she asks him to ravage her as if she was Keira Knightley’s character in Atonement. The British guy actually responds with: “You’re a delicate little flower, nothing like that tart Kiera Knightly.” He wants their first time to be special. Forget the fact that it’s hard to believe that a British nobleman would be dating a random high school girl from New York; no guy in the history of the world has ever turned down sex because he wanted the first time to be “special.” The Smarmy British Nobleman is the type of purely fictional character that only exists in romance novels and chick flicks. He might as well have been riding a unicorn the entire time.

3. A rich high school kid clad in a Hugh Heffner-esque smoking jacket hires a variety of international sluts to come over to his apartment and bang him. However, he can’t get it up because he’s obsessed with Blair. The dude is in high school – at that age, a strong gust of wind can give you a hard-on (or so I’ve been told). Outside of a severe medical condition, there is no way he wouldn’t be able to get it up. (Of course, during the blackout he and Blair end up pawing at each other. The smarmy British dude walks in on them right as the lights come back on and she tries to pretend like she thought Smoking Jacket was actually the British guy, which thankfully he isn’t dumb enough to fall for.)

4. A bitchy fashion designer fires a blonde intern after overhearing the intern badmouth her dress. Then, the two of them are left alone during the blackout and magically the fashion designer decides to listen to the advice of the little blonde intern and thanks her for being so honest. It’s a pretty astounding 180 in the span of a few hours.

Random Side Note: Earlier in the episode, the blonde intern hit the clichéd high school girl trifecta – she was shopping, had her cell phone up to her ear and was gossiping about boys.

Gossip Girl’s Zac Efron

5. The show has the prerequisite preppy looking kid with a bowl cut (on 90210, I referred to the character as Smallville, so to change things up, I’ll refer to Gossip Girl’s douchey bowl cut as Zac Efron). Zac Efron is in love with a brunette girl, but is man-whoring himself out to The Duchess (the mother of smarmy British guy) because he needs money.

Brunette girl finds out that Zac Efron is sleeping with The Duchess, but is strangely okay with it because she understands why he is doing it. Then, The Duchess tells Brunette that if Brunette doesn’t break things off with Zac Efron, she will go to the FBI and tell them where Zac Efron’s dad is hiding. Because apparently his dad is wanted by the FBI. Brunette breaks things off with Zac Efron.

I would point out that Brunette could have told The Duchess that if she did go to the FBI, then Brunette would go to the police and explain that The Duchess was paying a high school boy to have sex with her (which I’m pretty sure is still illegal), but what’s the point? This entire plotline is ridiculous.

There was also a subplot involving the chick from Accepted and some other douchey guy getting trapped in an elevator and being forced to confront the problems in their relationship, but I didn’t feel it was ridiculous enough to make the unbelievable list. Sure, its clichéd, but it’s more within the realm of possibility than anything else happening in this episode.

Unfortunately, the fact that the whole show was implausible and over the top wasn’t my biggest problem with Gossip Girl. What really bugged me was that the show didn’t have a single likeable character. They all came off as whiny, spoiled brats who craved drama and had no issues with infidelity. Perhaps we are supposed to relate to unseen author of the Gossip Girl website who is serving up a big bowl of schadenfreude by sharing all of these character’s dirty little secrets, but as I mentioned before, the narrator comes off like a creepy stalker.

Say what you will about the new 90210, but at least that show has the Wilson family acting as its moral compass. Gossip Girl just has a bunch of rich assholes.

Final Thoughts: Clearly this show was not meant for me. Unless Batman actually does show up to beat down all of these spoiled brats, there is no way I will be tuning in again.

- XOXO Joel Murphy

Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He loves pugs, hates Jimmy Fallon and has an irrational fear of robots. You can contact him at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.

---

Similar Posts:

• Murphy’s Law - One Shot: 90210
• Murphy’s Law - One Shot: The Starter Wife
• Murphy’s Law - One Shot: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
• Murphy’s Law - One Shot: Batman: The Brave and The Bold
• Murphy’s Law - What’cha gonna do?