The Strange World of Thomas P. Coombe

TNT Knows Drama...

  ...or is at least vaguely familiar with the concept. I'm writing this as the pilot episode of HawthoRNe airs on the network, and it's as bad as the reviews have suggested. And yeah, Showtime's Nurse Jackie is a far superior show, although I didn't like the pilot nearly as much as a lot of other people did.

  I don't want to pile on, and it seems like I'd just be repeating a lot of other people's criticisms. But watching HawthoRNe, I'm struck by something New York Post critic Michael Starr wrote: Christina Hawthorne seems like a superhero.

And superheroes are boring, unless you're nerdy Peter Parker or haunted Bruce Wayne. No one wants to watch someone be right all the time. Greg House is right nearly all the time, but he's also a jerk. Jack Bauer's right all the time too, but that's on a show where characterization isn't really important.

Pushing Daisies is...well...you know...

One look at any frame of any episode of Pushing Daisies was enough to tell you the show was doomed.

 Because if you took a single frame, you could, well, frame it. It's one of the best looking shows to air in the last few years. And looking like that costs money. These days, what network is going to spend money on a quirky, little-watched mystery/comedy/fantasy?

 Not ABC, which decided to quietly air the final three Pushing Daisies episodes over the last few Saturday nights. (The show's old Wednesday timeslot was reserved for Wipeout, a gameshow that's basically Doubledare with grownups.)

 And I'll miss it. I'll miss it a lot.

At the Movies: Up

 There was a gag on a Simpsons episode a few years back, a fake preview for a Pixar movie called "Cards," which told the story of a bunch of talking playing cards.

 At the time -- I think it was the same year Cars came out -- it seemed pretty on-the-mark.

 Don't get me wrong: I've never seen Pixar do a bad movie. The animation is always lovely, the writing smart, the voice acting superb. And I know I'm probably coming off as arrogant and ungrateful, complaining about movies that I really enjoyed.

  But back then, after years of talking toys, animals and, yes, automobiles, I was hoping they'd expand their storytelling beyond just one word premises. ("Let's do a movie about fish! Monsters! Superheroes!")

 And in the past few years, they have. I'd argue Pixar's last three movies -- Ratatouille, Wall-E and now Up -- are its best, because their stories go beyond that simple "Let's do a movie about..." premise. (Ironically, they're all one-word titles that tell you nothing about the movie.)

I'm Still Writing

 Really, I am, despite not having posted anything for nearly two weeks. Here's the proof: a short essay I wrote for Crunchable, a site edited by my former colleague Michael Duck. And there's more to come this week: a review of Pixar's wonderful Up, and a look at two new nurse-related shows: Showtime's Nurse Jackie (yay!) and TNT's HawthoRNe (that's how the title is spelled, because she's an RN, get it?). The piece on crunchable covers some of the same ground I've gone over here about the end of my reporting career, but from a slightly different angle.

 Tom Coombe

At the Movies: Pontypool

 To me, one of the most frightening parts of any zombie/apocalyptic thriller is the section just before things go really wrong. The time when we're maybe encountering people with the first symptoms of some horrible virus, or seeing or hearing news reports that suggest the world has gone to hell.

 Most end-of-days  movies don't spend much time on moments like these. (Think Clive Owen perusing news clips in Children of Men, or the opening minutes of either Dawn of the Dead film.)

 Canadian director Bruce McDonald's Pontypool -- which is playing now on On Demand -- goes a different route, showing us a zombie-ish outbreak from the point of view of three people at a small town radio station. It's like a cross between 28 Days Later (in that the outbreak doesn't cause the dead to rise, but rather is an infection that turns people into mindless, violent creatures) and the Orson Wells War of the Worlds broadcast. And in its first two thirds, it's extremely scary and effective, and one of the best, most original horror movies in some time.

 

Breaking Bad Season Finale: How the Bear Got Burned

Finally, the season finale Breaking Bad deserved. The show's first season got cut short by the writers strike, and thus sort of ended mid-story.

 But this second season: brilliant from start to finish, making Breaking Bad the best show of 2009 (a title Mad Men might steal this fall, but not without prying it from this series' cold, meth-ravaged hands).

  Some episodes were as suspseful as any movie, while others took their time with quiet moments that fleshed out our understanding of the characters. "ABQ," the finale, was devastating -- I had a knot in my stomach the last 20 minutes -- and finally answered the question we've had since the season began: what's going on with that burned teddy bear? Spoilers are ahead, but trust me, the answer to the question wasn't anywhere close to whatever you've guessed.