TV doesn’t get much more manipulative than Find My Family, which premiered last night after Dancing With The Stars. The first episode was a repulsive mixture of aggressive agenda-pushing and teary uplift. The show suggests that every adopted person should want to meet his or her biological parents, and every person who gave up a child for adoption is obliged to yearn to meet that child.
How does the show know? Well, in part because its co-hosts, Tim Green and Lisa Joyner are both adoptees, and as Lisa tells one young woman, “I’m adopted myself, so I know exactly how you feel?” Really? Exactly? I doubt so personal a matter can ever be completely understood by another, especially by two people (interviewer and interviewee) brought together solely by TV.
Find My Family operates a kind of benign blackmail. You can have the FMF team help you locate your long-lost child, but in return, you have to appear on-camera, bare your most intimate feelings, and then go and stand under the show’s jaw-droppingly hokey “family tree” — “a very special place where we bring families together,” says Green. Once there, you must have the first seconds of your reunion filmed.
It was telling that one of the most articulate of the people profiled last night, a grown adoptee in Wisconsin named Jennie, said after being reunited with her birth parents, “I don’t know for sure where things are going to go.”
For a series that’s all about the primacy of tears and emotions over clear-headedness and privacy, it’s a wonder that this mild, restrained comment was edited into the broadcast. “I will be here for you to begin again,” go the lyrics to the sappy theme song of Find My Family. Great. And will you be here a year from now, when some of these people may decide — as a few of them surely will, don’t you think? — that this reunion was a complicated, sometimes troubling and upsetting experience that they may regret was filmed for public peeping?
“I feel like it’s been taken from us, from me and the kids.” Kate Gosselin was talking about Jon & Kate Plus Eight, the TV series that ended this week after five seasons due to the disagreements between Jon and Kate. The hour mixed direct-to-camera, separate interviews with Kate (“The kids are already missing [the show]“) and Jon (“I became more educated about myself… I felt like I was free [after the separation]“).
The last edition followed its now-usual format: separate activities with each parent. Kate took the kids to an organic farm where cows were milked. Jon organized a lemonade stand to raise money for the local fire department. In a repulsive moment that typified why this series had to end, the older kids, twins Mady and Cara, started bickering and complaining as they worked on signs for the lemonade stand. One of them whined, “I like stuff we do with Mommy.” Jon, as though stung by this, immediately snapped, “Alright, you’re gonna go into the house. Both of you… You’re unappreciative.” Only the sextuplets were allowed to go to the firehouse and sell lemonade. The punishment didn’t fit the crime.
At one point, the fireman raised a truck ladder high into the sky and we heard one of those comments that used to make Jon & Kate such a pleasure. As the ladder rose, one of the kids chirped to a fireman, “You’re gonna hurt the birds!”
Many of you have asked why I continued to write about this show week after week. First, let’s be honest: It’s partly because so many of you wanted to talk about it in the Comments section. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the Gosselins inspired a lot of response.
But there’s another reason. I started watching the show during its first season. I was just a casual viewer; the series didn’t have a season pass on my DVR. But if I was home or in a hotel room and an episode came on, I’d find that I’d always end up watching the entire thing, because the series was (hard as this is to believe now) completely charming. I remember most of the episodes they showed this last night in a quick montage, whether it was family movie-night, or the clan’s once-annual walk to the local Fourth of July parade, the little ones waddling along behind Jon and Kate like ducklings. The kids were adorable and funny, and the interactions between Jon and Kate seemed unguarded, fresh, often amusing, and sometimes provocative.
Provocative because Kate’s strict rules about order, discipline, cleanliness, and healthy nutrition sometimes smacked into Jon’s more laid-back, what-did-I-get-myself-into attitude. But the yelling and the bickering was always the exception, not the rule.
I would guess that the majority of those of you who’ve written negative comments about Jon & Kate here only started watching less than a year ago, after the episode in which Jon and Kate renewed their marriage vows in Hawaii. You’d probably read something that was just starting to emerge on-camera: the fighting was more intense, it was bitter. It was reality TV that wasn’t a goof or a lark; these weren’t (yet) wealthy celebrities; these weren’t zonked-out, pampered pop stars, or spoiled-brat L.A. or Manhattan twerps. These were suburban parents trying to come to terms with the dissolution of their union and their sudden fame as tabloid figures.
All that stuff ruined Jon & Kate Plus Eight. Some old-faithful viewers dropped out in disgust. But I and many, many people who were charmed by the initial seasons couldn’t help but see it through to the end. Think of it like, oh, like being a fan of Heroes — there’s a chunk of its audience that’s hanging in there, because those viewers feel they’ve put in the time and want to see how it ends.
Well, this week, we saw how Jon & Kate Plus Eight ends. Parents in separate places, justifying their behavior, when they should be worried about just one thing:
Whether or not they’re going to hurt the kids — hurt those “little birds.”
Please feel free to comment on the finale, or offer your general feelings about Jon & Kate Plus Eight. Thanks.
I admire the way my colleague Michael Slezak has analyzed the shortcomings of Adam Lambert’s AMA performance. He writes like a first-rate music critic, breaking down the ways in which Lambert’s vocals, the show’s sound system, the song itself, and the over-the-top performance failed, from Michael’s point of view as an expert of the American Idol aesthetic.
I have to say, however, that as a TV viewer, I thought Lambert’s performance was a gas, a delight, a blast of brash vulgarity in the midst of merely ordinary vulgarity.
Lambert was an event unto himself. The song he was singing was beside the point — and the point was, “Here I am, Adam Lambert, freed from the shackles of American Idol, I’ll push this dancer’s face into my crotch if I feel like it, isn’t it funny to lead human beings around on leashes, and can you believe how high I got my hair to stand up under these lights?”
As a post-music pop star in the manner of Lady Gaga, music takes a back seat to spectacle. Lambert’s AMA climax wasn’t a commercial for his new album; it was, in the Norman Mailer phrase, an “advertisement for myself.” As he did on Idol, Lambert simultaneously connects himself to pop history (his look, demeanor, and his multiple vocal styles gather together Elvis, Elton, Labelle, Pin-Ups David Bowie, with a dash of Lou Reed circa Transformer and Rock N Roll Animal) and disconnects himself from any earlier tradition.
A day after the AMA broadcast, he’s all anyone wants to talk about, and his was the only performance worth considering in multiple ways. Conventional measures of “good” and “bad” went out the window for a few moments. Flouting convention: how rock & roll. Using TV instead of music as a way for a singer to maintain prominence: how pure pop.
Nice job, Lambert.
UPDATE: Barbara Walters and Elisabeth Hasselbeck just slammed Lambert on this morning’s The View (Elisabeth: “there was a sexual aggression there”). I repeat: Nice job, Lambert.
There were three distinct elements of the Seinfeld reunion arc on Curb Your Enthusiasm. I guess you want a SPOILER ALERT for some of the plot details below.
• There were the scenes showing us how the cast got back together again via the Curb universe (it was Curb-Larry’s ploy to get back together with wife Cheryl by writing a role for her).
• There was the episode-within-the-episode we saw on last night’s finale.
• And there was the more-Curb-than-Seinfeld subplot: typical Curb stuff that involved Larry insulting a coffee-stand owner (Mocha Joe, played by the reliably sparky Saverio Guerra); Larry suspecting Jason Alexander of having an affair with Cheryl, and a mildly funny repetition-gag about a drink stain on a wood table (“Do you respect wood?”). (Read full post)
It seemed as though Saturday Night Live was determined to up the energy-quotient this week, perhaps under the impression that if everyone looked as though he or she was working really hard, we might not notice that the work wasn’t all that amusing.
In his opening moments, host Joseph Gordon-Levitt tried to reproduce the “Make ‘Em Laugh” scene from the musical Singin’ in the Rain. Can’t fault J G-L for not having a great singing voice, and he applied some heroic effort to do Donald O’Connor’s walking-up-walls choreography. Gordon-Levitt pulled it off, although in the process making what O’Connor did with deceptive ease look like huffing, puffing hard work.
Don’t tell me: you thought it was great, right? Let’s agree to disagree. Gordon-Levitt’s exertion was what wrung applause from the SNL audience, which is the exact opposite of what movie audiences admired about O’Connor: The idea is to make climbing walls and doing back-flips look effortless. I give G-L an “A” for effort, but instead of making a snide joke about how Singin’ In The Rain is a movie “your grandmother” watches, SNL’s writers should have tried to understand the source-material first.
The “Digital Short” featured Samberg as a hiphop artist collaborating with Reba McEntire — or rather, Kenan Thompson playing a guy who’d found a red wig and had supposedly fooled Samberg into thinking he was Reba. All set to music. If only this convoluted notion had resulted in some sort of funniness about hiphop or country music or something. It was well-shot and choreographed, but again: lots of effort, few moments of mirth.
There was a “What Up With That” sketch, which you may recall from a few weeks ago, starring Kenan Thompson as a singing talk-show host who never lets his guests speak much, if at all. In this new one, Al Gore and The Office’s Mindy Kaling were among the nonplussed guests. Thompson sang and danced up a storm, to much boisterousness and little effect.
“Weekend Update” had quite a few funny jokes, and Al Gore returned with an admirable poker-face to poke fun at his own usual “renewable energy” spiel:
Musical guest the Dave Matthews Band sounded just like the Dave Matthews Band always does. Matthews also did a good Ozzy Osbourne impersonation in a sketch.
And in a shocking breach of tradition, it was the final sketch of the night that was the best one all evening: Gordon-Levitt spoofing Say Anything. Jason Sudeikis was superb as a guy needling J G-L’s John Cusack.
So what’d you think? There’s no denying Joseph Gordon-Levitt was the most energetic host in a while, but did you actually laugh more than I did? Please sound off below.
Jimmy Kimmel Live hosted a scream-filled appearance by Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Taylor Lautner last night that proved to be lots of fun even if you’re not a Twilight loyalist. (I refuse to use the term “Twihard” after Jimmy said last night that that was the “worst group name–it’s right up there with ‘Claymates.’”)
As the audience yipped and yelped, Kimmel noted Launter’s pumped-up physique in the movie — he asked the actor if he’d been hit by “gamma rays.” (Kimmel referred to the movie as Vampire Chippendales.) Lautner said the most difficult aspect of his training regime was “putting something in my mouth every two hours.” Tee-hee! Screams! He hastily added that he meant “beef patties,” which really didn’t help the accidental-naughty-factor very much…
Kimmel and his guests, brave souls, allowed the studio audience to ask questions. When one fan, Troy, asked Stewart whether she’d had a swine-flu shot, she said that in fact, she’d just had one the day before, and added, “I’m genuinely freaked out by you right now” for asking such a perfectly-timed question:
Kimmel asked Lautner whether, when he and Taylor Swift are “making out, does Kanye West ever come in and interrupt?”
Jimmy can be forgiven an easy Kanye joke after conducting such an amusing interview.
With tears in her eyes, Oprah Winfrey said on her Friday “live from Chicago” Oprah show that she will cancel her talk show as of Sept. 9, 2011. Pegging her show’s exit to its 25th anniversary, Winfrey said it “feels right in my bones and it feels right in my spirit.” Her voice breaking, she said haltingly that she valued “the yellow brick road of blessings” her show has brought her. She promised to “knock your socks off” with the “18-month ride.” The audience gave her a standing ovation.
Winfrey waited until we’d watched a grim, wrenching segment on a raped and murdered child, plus interviews with Gabourey Sidibe (the star of Precious, a movie to which Winfrey signed on as a co-producer) and with Ray Romano to make her announcement.
Frankly, during the opening segment, I hit the “mute” button as soon as I heard the phrases “sold into sex slavery” and “cigarette burns on her body.” I just don’t have the stomach for this kind of story, and frankly, was surprised that Winfrey still does segments like this.
But Oprah has done a lot of good that far outweighs the questionable stuff on Oprah. Thus, her announcement had the feeling of an American queen stepping down from her throne, or an unelected president resigning from office. And it’s not as though she’s going to disappear any time soon, which only adds to the pop-culture interest here. Unlike the few major broadcast entertainment figures comparable to her, from Arthur Godfrey to Johnny Carson, Winfrey’s decision to make this a long goodbye will yield a new model for how a beloved celebrity leaves the public stage ( …if only until she starts up her next TV project).
Even when she decides to end something, Oprah does it in a uniquely big way.
Did you watch? What do you think of Oprah ending Oprah?
Anyone thinking General Hospital was going to hold James Franco’s debut on the soap opera to a final-seconds tease today was wrong. Dressed as a shabby graffiti artist, Franco — playing a “world-famous photographer and artist” cleverly named “Franco” — put in a monosyllabic appearance in the first two minutes of Friday’s edition, and skulked around during the entire hour. In between, there were scenes of Hospital regulars arguing and emoting lines like, “Neither one of them gets out of here alive!”
Franco was initially seen witnessing an awkwardly staged gangland shoot-out (I had forgotten the way everything on a soap set, right down to the stairs people run down, looks like flimsy cardboard). I’m not going to pretend I’m a regular GH-watcher — you’d figure that out fast, if I tried to pass — but I’m also the sort of person the producers want to attract: that is, a new viewer, to boost the generally sagging ratings of the soap opera genre.
So, as a Franco fan dating back to his Freaks & Geeks days, I was psyched for his role as “an artist whose canvas is murder,” as the promos hyped it. We saw a bit of artist-Franco’s art installation today. The floor had the chalk outline of an absent corpse; there was graffiti on the walls and lots of random metal sculpture. This Franco is a rip-off artist: part-Jean-Michel Basquiat, part-Keith Haring, all-hack.
Oh, and all-evil. He approaches the bleeding body after the shoot-out. The guy asks for help, but Franco steps on his throat, finishing the fellow off. Then Franco the artiste rearranges the corpse’s limbs in a special way, leaving a message for the cops to figure out.
Back in his studio, Franco phones a woman, saying he needs her. She murmurs, “Should I wear anything special, or nothing at all?” Oooh, those rebel artists-of-death — they attract all the babes, don’t they?
The show kept cutting back to some endless argument involving a woman name Olivia, who babbled ceaselessly about her son Dante. She seemed sullen, defensive, and either terribly rattled or else trapped in a terrible storyline.
(GH fans, care to weigh in on Olivia’s story? Thanks.) (Oh, and pardon a newbie’s question, but: Does General Hospital ever have any scenes in a hospital?)
Meanwhile, I’ll be hanging in to watch how James Franco’s storyline plays out next week. What did you think of it so far?
This season, The Mentalist has done two things simultaneously. It’s increased the degree of personal relationships among the regular characters, and it’s sharpened and refocused Simon Baker’s Patrick Jane — made him more intent than ever on solving crimes and, ultimately, getting his ultimate goal: the capture (and death?) of serial-killer Red John.
Last night — and if the headline above didn’t tip you off enough, here ya go: SPOILER ALERT, DON’T READ IF YOU DIDN’T WATCH LAST NIGHT! — we saw the deaths of a few characters, one of whom had been crucial to the season thus far. (Read full post)
Friday Night Lights committed some minor sins last night, but I’m willing to forgive almost all of them just for the sight of Tim Riggins in a hunting cap he wore with intentional ironic goofiness while on a hunting trip with Matt Saracen. (Was “33,” the number Tim had written on his deerstalker cap, his football jersey number?)
The hour started out well. I like the way East Dillon Principal Burnwell (very nice, Dickensian name) isn’t cutting Coach Eric Taylor any slack. (His terse dismissal of a pep rally was, “Rah, rah, rah, sis boom bah” — and that last “bah” sounded like the start of “bah, humbug!”)
But I’m already a bit impatient with the Vince-Luke arguing and fighting. The racial tensions here aren’t being played out with nearly the degree of detail and subtlety that FNL used to deploy with brilliant regularity. I ascribe this to the difficulty the producers have set up for themselves in splitting our attention between two schools and two teams. There are simply too many new characters and so many subplots to juggle; it’s inevitable that some of them will be treated abruptly, as this rivalry between Vince and Luke was this week. It’s too bad, because I think both characters could yield nuanced stories, given their backgrounds.
Speaking of subplots, of all the ones to choose when FNL has been spending its initial weeks setting up Eric’s challenges with new players and Tami’s woes with the redistricting, this was the week the series had to pick for Devin to ask Julie to accompany her to a gay bar? Again, I like Devin as a character from last season, but her best-buds friendship with Julie seemed to come out of nowhere. And I get that to some extent, this was a plot device: to have Julie see coach Stan in the gay bar. I’m hoping that this guy, who so far as been depicted as a loud doofus, will now become more three-dimensional as we see how this aspect of his identity plays out. But again, is this a case of too many characters distracting us from our core favorites?
Which brings me to a few faves in particular:
• Tami: How much is it going to take for her to start unloading on Eric to pay as much attention to what she’s going through as she does for his troubles? This week, her car is vandalized, and she… what, cleans off the mess, drives home, and offers to cook dinner for the bunch of team boosters Eric needs to schmooze? This isn’t the emotionally open Tami we know and love. (But all respect, as always, to Connie Britton for making the absolute most of every second of screen time; her reactions do a lot of storytelling the scripts don’t have time for.)
• Riggins and Saracen go hunting: How funny was that? In the midst of Matt’s dolorous worries about his future with Julie, his apprenticeship with that nutty-but-brilliant artist, and his pizza delivery job, it was great to see ol’ Tim pull his pal out into the woods for a little hunting. And even better that Matt proved to be such a klutz at it.
Finally, what did you think of the night’s big emotional payoff, the news of the death of Matt’s father, deployed overseas? The show pulled Kim Dickens in as Matt’s mom for the first time this season just so she could be home when a military team appeared at the door to give her the bad news. Into what sort of emotional spin will this send poor Matt?
Friday Night Lights airs on DirecTV’s 101 network every Wednesday.
Did you watch? What sublot are you finding the most interesting? The most frustrating?
'Twilight' Saga: 'New Moon'It's almost here! Get all the latest news, photos, video, and fan commentary leading up to the big premiereMore
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Cougar Town
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