In Which We Are On The Fringe Of Things

The Edge of Good

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Occasionally a television show gets everything right but botches all one or two large decisions. This happened with Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman's show Fox show Fringe. They made a litany of awesome title sequences; they reminded one of a return to one of the great series of the last decade, The X-Files, they have solid writing when it doesn't verge on melodrama, but the casting is awful.

why is plaxico in jail while josh jackson walks free?Heterosexual man's hatred of Joshua Jackson goes back to his days as Pacey. Do you even understand how much less action I got in high school because of that? Pacey was a dick. All you needed was a mop of blonde hair. Paceys were fucked. Now Jackson enunciates every dreadful line of dialogue and sounds like a foggy horn. He doesn't look all that great either, kind of what a poppy bagel might look like as a person. Let's deport him back to Canada where he and Michael Moore can increase in size quietly together.

His would-be paramour (in one episode they went undercover together!) is the officious Anna Torv. She's probably the best actress on the show, but she's cold and icy and frankly, boring. Gillian Anderson is turning over in the grave she occupies with the career David Duchovny took from her. (Amazingly, Gillian Anderson is 64 years old and David Duchovy is 26. Who knew?) Torv's seriousness is ungainly and her hair looks as bad as her boss's.

Why do I feel like J.J. Abrams had a steamy night on the set of Lost with the bald former Dharma drone who ruins every single scene he's in? Lance Reddick is the worst actor on television besides Reba McEntire and Tyler Perry. Every single sentence is conveyed in this cold, unnerving grizzle. It's off-putting, and it gives his co-stars nothing to play off of.

trusting your career to j.j. didn't work for matthew foxThe only thing the show can find for a young black FBI agent (Jasika Nicole) to do is babysit criminally insane former human engineer. Torv whirls about radiantly, doing "work" when it suits her, double-timing the agency which she purports to represent. At the end of last season's finale, she met William Bell, the show's central MacGuffin. It was Leonard Nimoy, and I was not amused. The finale showed Bell in another universe where the World Trade Center didn't exist and Kanye stayed in college and was still interning for Louis Vuitton.

As intellectual or visual fodder, the concept of parallel universes doesn't really make any sense. Unlike serious science fiction, another universe draws no basis in reality from human experience. If there's more than one universe, then there are billions, and none of us mean very much. This isn't a very enlightening way to believe in the world.

Lost had the good fortune to become a jovial comedy, and Fringe seems to be aping this goal so far in season two. Here messy science fiction clichés combine with Pacey to create the show's only relief from the drudgery of weird science. What's missing is the wonder of discovery; the pattern that was created by universe splitting need not be an awful fate for those who must investigate it. Properly done, such a happening should free us from ourselves.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls here.

"Living the Blues" — Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash (mp3)

"I Threw It All Away" — Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash (mp3)

"Guess Things Happen That Way" — Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash (mp3)

In Which We Are Tortured by HBO's Bored to Death

Saving the Comedy From Itself

by JESSICA FERRI

Jason Schwartzman’s face holds so much meaning for most of us—his big beautiful mole, his undeniable Jewishiness; the soundtrack of Rushmore starts to flounce around in my head. Do you remember the first time you saw it? How moved you were by Max’s dedication to write the world’s best play? And his determination to win Rosemary’s heart? Those awkward indie days are long gone. Schwartzman has become the star of an HBO series.

The show is Bored to Death, and it was written by Jonathan Ames, who, despite his many novels and risqué one man shows, is still fairly under the radar outside of New York as far as writers go. His reputation is one of a slightly perverted funny man with great autobiographical pieces. Unsurprisingly, Schwartzman’s character on the show is lovingly named, “Jonathan Ames.” The show opens with a hang-dog looking Schwartzman, incredulous at the Israeli movers carting his beloved girlfriend’s belongings into a moving van outside their apartment. When Jonathan questions their ethnicity (Jews aren’t strong enough to be movers, right?) one responds, “What are you, another self-hating New York Jew?" And Jonathan nimbly nods his head as if to say, “duh.”

Here we’ve entered into some sort of parallel universe where jokes about self-hating Jews are awkward and unfunny. Watching Schwartzman in this strange non-Wes Anderson real world (which, thanks to a The New Yorker Talk of the Town piece we know is Fort Greene, Brooklyn) is like watching Woody Allen in a film where he plays a well-adjusted WASP. Thankfully, Zack Galifianakis, who plays Jonathan’s friend Ray, is here to save the comedy in this comedy. After Jonathan’s girlfriend takes off (with a parting kiss that’s hotter than most people get when they’re in a relationship) Ray describes his feelings after his last girlfriend dumped him."After my breakup I felt like I was wearing a falcon hood." "A what?!" Jonathan exclaims. "A falcon hood."

Like most television shows, Bored to Death is off to a shaky start. Jonathan, an aspiring writer, picks up a copy of some Raymond Chandler and decides the best way to distract himself from his post-break-up gloom is to become a private detective. The transition into the show’s premise is rushed and strange, but, okay, we shrug our shoulders and keep going. It’s ironic that Jonathan chooses the lifestyle of a private dick given the fact that his girlfriend has terminated the relationship because Jonathan apparently indulges too frequently with white wine and marijuana. Opening a bottle of white wine, Jonathan plops himself in front of his laptop and posts a Craigslist ad, saying he’s "unlicensed," but willing to help. And his rates are reasonable.

At this point, I’m not quite sure what Ames is trying to do. It feels like he’s trying to remake a less than great Woody Allen movie starring Jason Schwartzman for television. But I digress. Ted Danson, as Jonathan’s needy boss, George, the editor of some New York magazine, jumps whole-heartedly into this endeavor, greeting the audience and Jonathan with “do you have weed?” Once they’ve installed themselves in the bathroom, Jonathan wonders aloud why George is back on the pot. “Oh I’m just bored—I’m bored to death,” he whines. Danson, despite looking like a cross between Annie Lennox and Frankenstein, delivers in this scene, and in a later one where he appears in a bathrobe, desperate for marijuana and women.

Jonathan’s actual detective work in this episode, which involves locating the boyfriend of a missing girl at the request of her sister, is frankly, boring. The scene where he tries to order a whiskey in a bar instead of white wine gets more laughs. It’s obvious at this point that creator Ames has no intention of making the detective work clever or funny. The show’s potential lies in Danson and Galifianakis and their respective interactions with Schwartzman. There’s certainly something here—and Parker Posey and Kristen Wiig are scheduled as the next guest stars. While the conceit of the show is not unlike a Wes Anderson movie, if Schwartzman can keep the mugging to a minimum, we just might have something funny not starring Larry David on HBO.

Jessica Ferri is a writer living in Brooklyn. You can read her published work here, and her blog here.

"Morning Light" - Girls (mp3)

"Summertime" - Girls (mp3)

"Lauren Marie" - Girls (mp3)

In Which We Give You 10 Rules For Dating Worth A Damn

To the Gentlemen

by ALMIE ROSE

Gentlemen. I sense a dating crisis among our generation. The movies have lied to us. Nobody dates anymore. I'm not ready to give up on the movie dating montage we all want so here are some suggestions to help you along:

1. Zachary Braff, stop following me.

This is the 2nd time in 6 days that you and I have been in the same place. Oh I know: you didn't mean it, it's an accident, you don't know who I am, blah blah blah.

This one is important:

2. Gentlemen: If you are on facebook and you are in a relationship you need to put that shit on your profile. If you have a girlfriend you need to click the little button that says "In a relationship." 

It takes two seconds and saves heartache. You don't even need to put the name of the person you are in a relationship with. But you need to declare it. To not declare it is tacky. And weird. I've had guy friends who counter that with, "I don't want people to know about my personal life on facebook." Are you serious? Really? Really Charlie? Then don't get on facebook. Get on linked-in or get your own website where you can put whatever the fuck you want.

3. If you have my number and are texting/calling me for the first time to see me, please suggest dinner.

I am worthy of dinner. Drinks = please take off my skinny pants and do things to my genitals on my couch while "Who's The Boss?" plays in the background. I don't want to speak for all women, I really don't, but I know that most of us appreciate being asked on a real date. And look, there are times when all I really want to do is get into your skinny pants with the TV on for background noise. But if you don't invite me out to dinner then you will never find out. Now if you're taking me out for drinks at a jazz club or something, that's different. But if you ask me to meet you at the bar where they serve free hot dogs, then have fun with yourself and Tony Danza. Even Patrick Bateman took his women on dates.

4. I always say that with a great number comes great responsibility.

I'm not joking. I mean, I am kind of joking when I say it because to say that with a serious tone of voice would make me sound like a tool, but the sentiment behind it is real.

5. If you ask me to dinner, don't try to sneak past the dinner hour and then text me.

Do you think I'm not going to realize that you're texting me at 11 instead of 7? Do you think I just don't get hungry? I love to eat. I'm like a little kid, I love going to restaurants. They're magical. Take me to In-N-Out, just own up to the dinner date.

This one is for the ladies:

6. Ladies, if you are in a relationship, you need to put that on your profile too.

And if you're going to name names, under "in a relationship with..." then you need to put the name of your real boyfriend. Not the name of your best friend, not Christopher Walken, not "art and beauty", but your boyfriend's name. I have a friend who thinks it's hilarious to put her best friend's name...even after she got into a serious relationship. Her best friend is a guy, so that made the whole situation confusing for everyone. Let's all just make facebook easier on each other.

7. No one has an answering machine any more.

If you really wanted to reach me, you had several ways of doing so: cell, text, email, facebook message, twitter, robots or some shit, etc. So if you didn't contact me I know it's because you really didn't want to. It's not like you left me a really lovely long message on my answering machine about how you can't wait to take me out for dinner at Dorsia but I didn't hear it because I was in the shower. No. This is not a Meg Ryan movie. Welcome to 2009.

8. Don't ask me out if you have a girlfriend.

Honestly, I'm surprised that this even needs to be said. But if this happens, if you do ask me out and I find out that you have a girlfriend, then I have every right to be steamed like Seymour Skinner's steamed hams. Once a guy asked me out and then wouldn't add me on facebook (which is suspicious, it really is) because I later found out he didn't want me to see all of the lovely photos of he and his girlfriend on it. I don't blame him, if I were him I wouldn't want me to see that either. But if I were him I wouldn't ask me out in the first place.

9. If you're throwing a party and you invite me, that can count as a date.

Just don't invite me if you're already bringing a date. If you do invite me to your party, please introduce me to your guests; it's rude not to. But if you do introduce me to your guests and then take their camera, take a picture of me, give them their camera back, and say, "This is for you to masturbate to later", that's worse. Maybe I'm just old fashioned.

10. Be a gentleman.

I'm going to stop here because if I go any further then my head may explode. This is why my relationship with Sven is so good. Imaginary boyfriends are the best kind of boyfriend.

Almie Rose is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Los Angeles. She is the creator of Apocalypstick. She last wrote in these pages on the AMC drama Mad Men.

"Quicksand" - Tim Buckley (mp3)

"Martha (Tom Waits cover)" - Tim Buckley (mp3)

"Peanut Man" - Tim Buckley (mp3)