TVSquad

Bad news, Flight of the Conchords fans. It looks like the upcoming season of their HBO show will be the end. The boys, Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, have confirmed that they've been having trouble making the second season, struggling with making new music and sitting around with a lot of half-songs, "an album's worth of beginnings of songs." Sure, sure, they deserve to take it easy, especially after bringing us twelve episodes of goodness, but can fans really help but feel brokenhearted? Commence full body-shaking sobbing.

If there were a way to completely stop people on the Internet from saying, "Why do you keep watching this? Saturday Night Live hasn't been good since the days of Gildaphil Belushikroyd Normfeyrrell!", I would punch that button (or that person). Thinking a little more optimistically, there can always be better days ahead, for SNL is forever renewable, with an ever changing cast and crew. The thing that gets the fastest turn-over is the host, who has the opportunity to bring something new and exciting from week to week.

Now that the so-so 33rd season is over, I like to pretend everyone at SNL has kicked aside all the beach time and BBQ invites to plan something exciting for their return. Picking good hosts is an important part of having a successful season, so I've compiled my own list of nine people that must host, just in case SNL decides to re-work the entire show based on blog responses. I'm just covering all my bases, all right?

This fan post from Oh No They Didn't! contains two super-sneaky clips of new songs from Flight of the Conchords' recent Milwaukee tour stop. The audio isn't top-notch, obviously, what with all the audience laughter, echo-y acoustics, and the overwhelming roar of girls everywhere doing that thing where they take off their bra under their shirt and then fling it on the stage. Chick magnets, Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement are. Anyway, we still have a long while to wait before their self-titled HBO show returns for a second season. Perhaps we can give a listen to this new material and start thinking about what January 2009 will bring.

When I got the Flight of the Conchords DVD, I was slightly disappointed to see that there aren't any fun special features. I spent about ten minutes watching Bret and Jemaine dance through the title menu before I finally accepted that the two-disc set consisted only of the 12-episode season. Again, my disappointment was only slight, because the overall awesomeness of the series is enough to keep anyone happy. Little did I know there would be a sneaky surprise waiting for me in plain sight. This is an appropriate time to use "tee hee".

After watching about three marathon-runs of the DVD, I poked around the menus a bit more and saw that there was a language setting for Spanish. I usually like trying out foreign language dubbings on my DVDs at least once so that I can hear how much the voice actors sound like the on-screen people. Yes, I'm one of those types. Easily amused. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the guy playing Jemaine had a very similar deep voice, although Bret's guy was a little off-mark. Then the musical numbers rolled around and I almost fell out of my chair. They actually went through and re-recorded all the songs in Spanish?

Over the past few weeks, my quiet adoration for Flight of the Conchords and their HBO show has quickly spiraled into something dangerously close to rabid fanaticism. This transformation is marked by my sudden desire -- nay, my sudden need -- to listen to and watch all that the boys have ever done, and then take screencaptures of everything and then use those screencaptures in Photoshop to make little 100 x 100 avatars so that I can share my love with other fans on Flight of the Conchords forums and message boards. However, I'm glad to say that I'm not quite there yet, because my self-control has helped me contain my creepiness to a certain extent. That said, I do have a PSD file of screencaptures of the last episode on my Desktop right now. I'm just saying.

Okay, enough story time, because I have some good stuff to share...

My absolute, hands-down favorite new show of this summer is HBO's Flight of the Conchords. The show stars Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement as stranger versions of themselves, musicians from New Zealand trying to make it in big, bag America, with little to no help from their pathetic manager, Murray (the extremely funny Kiwi comic Rhys Darby). But did you know that before the Flight of the Conchords show, there was a Flight of the Conchords band? Well, you probably already knew that, but I wanted to take a moment and marvel at the comedic beauty that is the Bret and Jemaine duo.