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September 03, 2007
Belated Conchords Blogging
by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
Yesterday was the end of the first season of Seinfeld for Hipsters, aka the most unbloggable show ever. Thankfully HBO has renewed both Conchords and Entourage for next season.
Fire up the grill!
September 3, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
And best of all, we're merely days from the return of Larry David.
Posted by: Jasper | Sep 3, 2007 9:37:05 PM
Damn, but I can't wait for Larry. And hooray HBO for renewing Conchords. More Bowie hallucinations, please!
Posted by: litbrit | Sep 3, 2007 10:45:06 PM
Here is the Best. Thing. Ever. about last night's Conchords episode: part of it was filmed at the place where I got married!
It's toward the end, at the place where both sets of the Conchords bands are playing. The marquee says "Pavilion Theatre" (or something), and then you see the bands inside the venue. The Pavilion is actually a movie multiplex in the Windsor Terrace neighborhood of Brooklyn (close to the Park Slope neighborhood). Part of the Pavilion is small, funky restaurant called The Living Room Cafe. The Living Room Cafe is the club where the Conchords play in the episode, and it's where the hubby and I had our first date in 1998, and where we married in 2001.
When we watched the episode last night, we recognized the Pavilion and the Living Room Cafe immediately, and practically jumped out of our seats! It was moving and exciting to see that this place, which is of enormous sentimental value to us (especially now that we've moved halfway across the country), is still there, and has been immortalized in its way.
Anyway, this comment is totally gratuitous, extremely narcissistic, and of no possible interest to anyone but me. But I had just had to mention this.
And yes, I second litbrit -- I, too, can't wait for Larry (I wonder if the new season will reference his real-life split with his wife)? And the Bowie hallucination in Conchords was pretty amazing. I think that's just what I need -- for David Bowie to come to me in my dreams and give me career advice. As far as gurus go, I could do (and have done) a lot worse!
Posted by: Kathy G. | Sep 3, 2007 11:36:07 PM
I think this is the first instance where I'll be happy if a HBO show takes 2 years between seasons. FotC look to be out of material, as there wasn't a single song they did this episode (I loved having Demetri Martin and Todd Barry in it, though). I'd rather they take a while to cook up good material than to rush a bunch of songs on air.
How do they even come back? Murray's a high powered agent. Mel doesn't even give a shit about them anymore. Will the Crazy Doggz just implode and everything will go back to normal?
Posted by: Cain | Sep 4, 2007 12:04:12 AM
I don't have HBO, so the only time I saw Flight of the Conchords was when I was in a hotel recently on a trip to Washington. I liked it, but I still think the proliferation of quirkiness that the show is a part of is a bad thing.
"Quirk, loosed from its moorings, quickly becomes exhausting. It’s easy for David Cross’s character on Arrested Development to cover himself in paint for a Blue Man Group audition, or for the New Zealand duo on Flight of the Conchords to make a spectacularly cheesy sci-fi video about the future while wearing low-rent robot costumes. But the pleasures are passing. Like the proliferation of meta-humor that followed David Letterman and Jerry Seinfeld in the ’90s, quirk is everywhere because quirkiness is so easy to achieve: Just be odd … but endearing. It becomes a kind of psychographic marker, like wearing laceless Chuck Taylors or ironic facial hair—a self-satisfied pose that stands for nothing and doesn’t require you to take creative responsibility. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
It’s harder to construct a coherent universe that has something to say about contemporary life. This is why Judd Apatow’s almost 100 percent quirk-free summer comedy, Knocked Up, packs such a punch. Its characters face real peril, show real anguish, and have genuine epiphanies. The comedy, at times so funny it’s painful, finds its potency in the absurdity of maleness, femaleness, singleness, married life. It dares to matter."
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200709/quirk/2
Posted by: Ashish George | Sep 4, 2007 12:43:28 AM
I should say that as far as sitcoms go Weeds is a good model. No quirk there. Just straightforward absurdity and satire with a dose of real emotion courtesy of Mary Louise Parker's character and her family.
Posted by: Ashish George | Sep 4, 2007 1:01:11 AM
FotC did a radio series for the BBC a couple of years back, with a very good cast, and Neil Finn as the utterly appropriate deus ex machina.
FotC look to be out of material
Oh, they've admitted that. And the obvious thing for them to do is change location.
Posted by: pseudonymous in nc | Sep 4, 2007 1:06:48 AM
Do I care about Entourage being renewed? Talk about being out of material.
Posted by: Antid Oto | Sep 4, 2007 2:29:53 AM
Love the Conchords, but I could not be less enthusiastic about the next Entourage season. What a nose dive. About the worst and most annoying depiction of your generic hot tempered eccentric self satisfied movie director imaginable, and that guy is somehow central to every dang episode these days.
Posted by: chowchowchow | Sep 4, 2007 12:12:06 PM
Re: Entourage
I couldn't agree more. It has begun to plumb the depths of that state known as Offensive While Unfunny. Larry is consistently offensive, but consistently hilarious, too. And the women get the upper hand as often (if not more often) than the men. George: I have hand. Girlfriend: And you're going to need it. (Yeah, that was that from Seinfeld.)
Whereas Entourage has sunk to having the otherwise-admirable Jeremy Priven phone in his lines; worst of all, he was recently criticizing his perfectly lovely, freakishly thin wife, who wanted to go back to work as an actress, for being past the age suitable for Hi-Def. Good God, if even that level of attractiveness is insufficient to rate as TV-worthy, what about the rest of us mortals?
Also, if I see one more bloody stripper pole, I'll vomit. Randy young guys like to look at semi-naked women. We get it.
Feh. I hope they get cancelled.
Posted by: litbrit | Sep 4, 2007 12:25:21 PM
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