ChristaMiller-related stories
Posted Nov 19th 2009 12:05PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, Cougar Town
(S01E08) It does seem like we're still in the "unsteady footing" stage of this series, doesn't it? For every episode like "Don't Come Around Here No More," which shows the cast gelling and gives us the glimmer of hope that the show will become a really good ensemble, we have episodes like this one, which are at times funny and at other times irritating.
Commenters have told me to stop obsessing over the fact that Courteney Cox's character of Jules is at her most annoying when she's dealing with her "over 40" issues. But I just can't; that's when the show is at its most sledgehammer-in-your-face irritating, with Cox acting to the rafters. This episode showed that quite a bit -- I could have used less of Jules desperately trying to convince people she could pass for 34 -- but it also showed that, when Jules isn't worrying so much about her age, Cox does a pretty nice job of making Jules less of a cartoon.
Continue reading Review: Cougar Town - Two Gunslingers
Posted Nov 5th 2009 11:35AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, Cougar Town
(S01E07) For the first half-dozen episodes of
Cougar Town, legions of watchers have been wondering along with me what would happen when a) Courteney Cox remembers she's not playing Monica Gellar anymore and dials it down a notch and b) the ensemble starts melding with each other a bit more. Well, we seemed to get that in this episode, and it made for a funny and engaging half-hour.
Do I still have issues with the show? Sure. But this episode was the best sign I can think of that Bill Lawrence and company are going to get the show on a funny footing by the end of the season.
Continue reading Review: Cougar Town - Don't Come Around Here No More
Posted Oct 29th 2009 11:33AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, Cougar Town
(S01E06) I've been trying to figure out why I'm not connecting with Courteney Cox and her
Cougar Town alter ego, Jules Cobb. It's not just about Cox overacting her role; if that were the case, I would have gotten tired of Monica Geller at around season five of
Friends. No, it was something else, something that I couldn't put my finger on.
But after enjoying the male side of the show more than the female side for the second week in a row, the reason has become clear: I might be the wrong gender. I'm neither getting nor caring about why Jules has so many issues with dating young'uns or the process she has to go through as a "woman of years" in order to do that.
What's ironic about that is that I had problems with the pilot because it felt like it was too frat-boy sounding. So maybe
I don't know what I want out of this show. It's not the first time that's happened.
Continue reading Review: Cougar Town - A Woman In Love (It's Not Me)
Posted Oct 22nd 2009 12:32PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, Cougar Town
(S01E05) Much better.
Much better.
Those are the words that kept popping into my head as I watched this episode. Courteney Cox dialed it down a notch. The characters melded together a bit more. We explored the lives of the guys a little bit, seeing a side of each we haven't seen yet. And finally, the show wasn't about Jules Cobb pointing out how she's 40 all the time; it was more about how her experience comes out in her relationships with the young'uns, whether it's her boy toy Josh or her assistant Laurie.
And, it was funny. Especially when there was an apple involved.
Continue reading Review: Cougar Town - You Wreck Me
Posted Oct 15th 2009 10:29AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, Cougar Town
(S01E04) First, let's get a mystery out of the way: the Tom Petty centric titles. I shot off a note to Bill Lawrence asking about it, and he Blackberried back to me that it's because a) Tom Petty is from rural Florida and b) he's Bill's favorite singer. So there you have it.
Now, on to this episode. We've all seen Courteney Cox play neurotic; she played neurotic for ten seasons on
Friends. But we've also seen her play tough, confident and warm, whether it was on
Friends or any of her other roles. Right now, either via the writing or the way she interprets the role, she's playing Jules Cobb as a purely neurotic mess, and a loud one at that. It's not endearing, it doesn't help me connect with Jules' plight, and, most importantly, it's not funny.
Tonight's episode was Jules at her most neurotic, and it made for the least funny episode of the first four. It's a bad trend that's starting to make me worry about the overall health of the show.
Continue reading Cougar Town: I Won't Back Down
Posted Oct 8th 2009 9:42AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, Cougar Town
(S01E03) Interesting trend with this show: The episode titles have so far been titles of Tom Petty songs. Take a look at the
names of the upcoming episodes and the pattern continues for the forseeable future. Wonder how long they can hold on to this convention, especially as linking the episode to a title of Petty song they haven't used before gets harder.
That's the best thing I can say about this episode, to be honest. This one was less funny than last week's episode, which was less funny than the pilot. At least last week's episode had some heartfelt emotion behind it, so the lack of laughs could be excused. But this episode didn't even have that, which made most of what was supposed to be funny fall flat.
Continue reading Cougar Town: Don't Do Me Like That
Posted Sep 30th 2009 10:01PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, Cougar Town
(S01E02) I'll say this much about the second episode of
Cougar Town: It didn't make me laugh as much as the first did. But I feel a whole lot better about the show's future after seeing it.
Sometimes that happens, and it happens a lot with Bill Lawrence-led shows. Sometimes it's not wall-to-wall laughs, but the story is satisfying enough that you don't care. In this episode, we see some more humanity behind Jules and her quest to finally have a life even though she's in her forties... and we see the consequences of trying to pursue a life in your forties. We also got a little more out of Ellie than just the bitter wife we saw in the pilot. We also see the beginnings of a weird flirtation between Jules and Grayson that most people figured would happen from the first three minutes of the pilot.
Continue reading Cougar Town: Into the Great Wide Open
Posted Sep 23rd 2009 10:01PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, Cougar Town
(S01E01) I have faith in
Bill Lawrence. I know that he's a guy who doesn't want to put out shows that are crap, and that if something he produces is crap (hello, sixth season of
Scrubs), he cops to it and vows to improve.
That being said, I really, really hope he has the time to work his magic on
Cougar Town. Because what I see from the pilot are the bones of a good show, but one that's going to need some time to develop.
I like the actors. I like the premise. There were a lot of funny lines. I even like the fact that Lawrence re-shot certain scenes to make them sound like they're from a more female point of view. But even in the pilot, you can see signs that this show can devolve into something more cartoonish than real, and right now it's a 50-50 shot that it'll do just that.
Continue reading Cougar Town: Pilot (series premiere)
Posted Aug 20th 2009 11:18AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Industry, Scrubs, Interviews, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free
On the last day of the TCA press tour, as the stars of ABC were yukking it up at a crowded party at the Langham Huntington in Pasadena, Bill Lawrence and I were out in the courtyard talking about what the new season of
Scrubs -- or as I'm calling it,
Scrubs 2.0 -- is going to look like.
Essentially, it's going to be like a medical version of
The Paper Chase, with Turk and Cox being the professors. We'll be following the lives of young medical students who will shuttle back and forth between classes and their rotations at the "new" Sacred Heart, which is being rebuilt on the med school's campus. While in the hospital, they'll run into a lot of the characters from
Scrubs 1.0, including J.D., as Zach Braff is scheduled to be in the first six episodes.
It all sounds a bit confusing, so I'll let Bill lay it out for you folks. An edited transcript is after the jump.
The full transcript can be found here. And I'll be getting on the phone with Bill to talk
Cougar Town sometime next week, so stay tuned. Oh, and at the end of the interview, we talk about the role Bill's wife, Christa Miller, had on
Scrubs that didn't involve any acting.
Continue reading Bill Lawrence: The TV Squad Interview (Scrubs 2.0 edition)
Posted Aug 20th 2009 11:18AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Scrubs, Interviews, TCA Press Tour, Reality-Free
Here's the full transcript of the interview I did with Bill Lawrence on the last day of the TCAs. It's goes into some of the financial nitty-gritty of the
Scrubs deal and drops a few other details. I also asked him to repeat what was going to go on in the new
Scrubs a few times, just so I could understand completely what was going on. Enjoy!
The main post, where you can leave your comments, is here.
Well let's start with the obvious. You've been thinking about doing another season of Scrubs for like a year now.(laughing)
Because you told me...when'd you talk to me about that? About a year ago?We're the only people who shot the shit about it. I thought there was a chance it would happene. I just saw the landscape, you know.
Continue reading Bill Lawrence: The TV Squad Interview (Scrubs 2.0 edition) - full transcript
Posted May 6th 2009 11:25PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Scrubs, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S08E18) Since I have no idea whether this is truly the end for
Scrubs or not, I hedged my bets on the season vs. series finale label. I will say this, though: If this is indeed the end for the folks at Sacred Heart, they couldn't have gone out any better than they did tonight.
Tonight's finale hit on all the same themes that have carried the show for eight years: people grow and change, but life at the hospital just keeps going. Someone leaves, someone dies, someone makes a life-changing decision, and life keeps going. "It's just a day," as Cox almost-convincingly said during one of J.D.'s attempts at getting an emotional goodbye from his mentor. He's right. And as Sacred Heart didn't make such a big deal out of J.D.'s departure, neither did the show. He didn't even turn to look back at the ICU as he turned the lights off. Well, he did, but I'll talk about that after the jump...
Continue reading Scrubs: My Finale (series / season finale)
Posted May 6th 2009 9:43AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Scrubs, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S08E17) After the roll the show's been on lately, it was kind of weird to see
Scrubs hit a bit of a creative pothole right before the series/season/show-as-we-know-it finale. Lots of personal character movement happened during this one, but the laughs were few and far between. And, despite the upheavals, we're still dealing with some of the interns, signifying life goes on at Sacred Heart. It was just a weird mix, and it made for a decent but not great episode.
Continue reading Scrubs: My Chief Concern
Posted Apr 8th 2009 11:02PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Scrubs, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S08E14) As Homer Simpson might say, "The
Scrubs are going to the Bahamas!"
For eight years,
Scrubs hasn't ventured all that much away from Sacred Heart and it's surrounding environs. There was an RV-based road trip to Washington so J.D. can see Kim, and J.D. somehow ended up in Las Vegas during an extended fantasy/reality sequence. But other than that, the gang's lives have been confined to the claustrophobic world of the hospital.
But Bill Lawrence must have figured, what the heck, it's the last season, so he shipped everyone down to the Bahamas for a well-deserved location shoot in paradise. And, I've got to tell you, part one is the funniest episode of the season (I've seen part two, and it ain't bad either). I'll tell you why after the jump.
Continue reading Scrubs: My Soul on Fire (part one)
Posted Mar 19th 2009 11:02AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: OpEd, Scrubs, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S08E11) Ah, the wonders of corporate synergy. ABC has produced
Scrubs since day one, but since it aired for seven years on NBC, an episode like tonight's would have probably never gotten made. Actually, it would have gotten made, but
SportsCenter would only be referenced, not shown in extended sequences airing on the break room TV. And we wouldn't have gotten an opportunity to see extended shots of Hannah Storm wearing
her sexy outfits (she's in her late 40s, a mom, and a respected journalist, but she still rocks
those tiny dresses, doesn't she?).
This was an odd episode. Very light in tone, without a lot of guffawable moments. But the dramatic moments were spot on, and the nice easy-going vibe of the episode really reminded me of ones I used to see very early in the show's run. I mean first-season early.
Continue reading Scrubs: My Nah Nah Nah
Posted May 2nd 2008 11:23AM by Joel Keller
Filed under: Scrubs, Video, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S07E10) So next week, according to NBC, is the
"Scrubs finale," which means that only 11 episodes will have aired for what was going to be the show's last season.
Epguides.com lists a 12th episode, but I'm guessing it either never got made or it'll be saved for the eighth season on ABC.
Anyway, tonight was definitely an episode full of transitions. Kelso's on the golf course. Cox is the interim chief of medicine ("Chief Dr. Cox," as he orders everyone to call him). Carla wants another baby, especially now that Turk's a Uniball. Ted's got some confidence for once, and is challenging the authority of the Janitor. And J.D. and Elliot are starting to look more and more like a couple, especially when they're cooing over little Sam Dorian.
Continue reading Scrubs: My Waste of Time - VIDEO
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