True Blood 5.1 "Turn! Turn! Turn!"

I had such a good time covering True Blood last year that I decided early on that I'd chime in again this year. Unfortunately those slutty Bon Temps whackjobs and their blaspheming god (Alan Ball) did not reward me with a fine debut. Cliffhangers are rarely the best way to end a TV season -- especially one with a really devout fanbase that's coming back anyway. They invariably make the return feel like less of a drunken celebration and more like the clean up after A Lost Weekend. No one remembers how things got so messy but excuse us while we mop up.

Turn Turn Turn... TARA? The angriest bartender in Bon Temps won't be happy about this.

There's so much clean up. Sookie's house had not one but two dead girls to dispose of (Tara and Debby) and icky leftovers (the tooth!) but to avoid Tara's death being a true one, Sookie bargains with Vampire Pam to turn her. This is a terrible terrible decision but Sookie makes notoriously terrible decisions and almost always for selfish reasons so this is par for the course. More after the jump including the usual NSFW shenanigans of those Bon Temps hookers...

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Mad Men and The Other Women

* an earlier partial version of this article was accidentally published last night. It's complete now.

Have you wondered what happened to our series Mad Men @ The Movies? Well, Matthew Weiner and his team up and ditched the abundant movie references for most of season 5, leaving me to wish that I hadn't required movie references in order to write about the Sterling Draper Cooper Pryce worker-bees each week. Last week's "The Other Woman", a queasy game changing episode is the instant classic Season Five episode but for our purposes The Other Women this season on Mad Men are TV and Music (particularly the Beatles) which have stolen the pop culture referencing thunder from the movies.

Ratings and cinema references may be down (the former an obvious risk when a series disappears for long stretches) but quality, thankfully, isn't.  Not at all. The finale is next week on June 10th, an exhaustive television evening given that True Blood returns and it also happens to be Tony Awards Night and I also have a birthday party to attend... 

The much despised Betty Draper Francis. Still one of the most fascinating characters on television.

Much to look forward to. Much to write about. So herewith brief notes on the last four episodes... 

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Review: "Snow White and the Huntsman"

This article was originally published in my movie column at Towleroad

"Fairy tale revisionism" has been rapidly climbing the Hollywood idea chart. In the past few years we've seen Alice in Wonderland, Rapunzel in Tangled, Red Riding Hood, and Snow White in Mirror Mirror (reviewed here).  There are several more on the way including Angelina Jolie as Maleficent terrorizing Sleeping Beauty Elle Fanning. This weekend Snow White returned to theaters for the second time in three months. Her timing is apt since the apple-munching princess is celebrating her 75th big screen anniversary (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered in 1937). Why so many fairy tales? Modern Hollywood thrives on branding so the more familiar the movie before it arrives the better. And what's more familiar than fairy tales?

Tale as old as time. 
True as it can be…  ♫

Oops wrong fairy tale. Regret to inform that Snow White and the Huntsman does not have a theme song sung by Angela Lansbury but let's borrow that song anyway as framing device. Snow White and the Hunstman does have a theme song but it's a less catchy dirge-like ballad. One of the seven dwarves coughs it out at a funeral until Florence and the Machine take over on the soundtrack as the heroes rise up against evil Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) in montage. 

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. If you can suspend your disbelief that Kristen Stewart is "the fairest of all them all" in a beauty contest with Charlize Theron, read on...

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Review: "Dark Shadows"

This article was originally published at Towleroad in my weekly column

Chloë Grace Moretz is judging you!

With the world too busy seeing The Avengers (reviewed) for a second time last weekend, Dark Shadows premiered to considerably less fanfare and bank than Tim Burton and Johnny Depp collaborations are generally greeted with. So who will even notice that we're one week late to the ball? Young Carolyn Stoddard (Chloë Grace Moretz) will -- she's so smugly superior -- but she prefers the word "happening". She's quick to school her out-of-time vampire uncle Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp) that no one throws "balls" anymore.  

Actually, Carolyn, Tim Burton does...

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Smash: That "Bombshell" Finale

True story. When I pressed play on the DVR to write up this last Smash post of the season, the TV "resumed play" in the middle of the episode somehow though I'd already watched the whole thing through. The mute button was on. Chorus girl Ivy (Megan Hilty) was pulling a ring box from her purse. The ring wasn't hers but fellow chorus girl Karen's (Katharine McPhee) whose fiance had left the ring in Ivy's hotel room after a drunken one night stand. At the exact moment that Ivy opened the ring box, the unmistakably familiar siren song of the ice cream truck sounded outside my apartment. 

I'm not sure where I'm going with this so let it suffice to say that this final episode of Smash's first season was nothing at all like a refreshing creamy treat. The only similarity was that I felt sick to my stomach after devouring it. I don't mean to be a drama queen but at episode's end when Ivy reached for a bottle of pills in her last vain attempt to commune with Marilyn Monroe, that dream role long since torn from her, I knew where she was coming from. I too felt robbed. 

This is not to say that I ever expected Ivy to get the Marilyn role in this fictional soap opera about the creation of a Broadway musical. NBC's peacock of choice from the beginning was the creamy lovely generic American Idol alum Katharine McPhee. The "who will get the role?" drama always felt a little forced since all the marketing was built around McPhee and the show took frequent awkard pains to insist that Katharine McPhee/Karen had "it" while Megan Hilty/Ivy was merely a competent seasoned performer but not a star. I've spent a lot of time shaking my head about the show's absolute inability to notice that the show doesn't play like that at all and they should have rethought their game plan. Megan Hilty has IT in so much bold all caps that it's like she's carting around her own spotlight and orchestra. Every time she performs the show lifts off to a higher level and every time the show tells us she doesn't have charisma, the show becomes as far-fetched as "Bombshell's" narrative that you can rejigger an entire show, rehearse a new lead, refit all the costumes and write a new song and everything will go off without a hitch mere hours later! 

It occurred to me afterwards and somewhat perversely that perhaps Katharine McPhee's generic charms are not the problem but it's Megan Hilty who is miscast. If Smash is not secretly a show about an otherwise talented director (Jack Davenport's Derek) who is terrible at casting --McPhee is beautiful and talented but sounds and moves nothing like Marilyn while Ivy is beautiful and talented and makes a very convincing musical Monroe -- than it is failing terribly. 

...sadly I was hoping she would.Set List: Standards - none; Contemporary - none; Originals -"Don't Forget Me" which is the second worst original song in a generally sensational musical score 
<--- B♡bby & Dennis: This one goes to Dennis (Phillip Spaeth) who is, as ever, adorable. And he always looks so happy!
Anjelica Awesomeness: "Wonderful!" Eileen's what now? exasperation that her ex-husband bought a ticket to the show. 
Best Moment: Sadly, the best moment by far was the little flashback inserts of Megan Hilty doing "Wolf" and Megan Hilty doing the epic "Let's Be Bad" the two best numbers ever seen on the show. But I also loved the sudden change in the title card. It was no longer "Smash" with an orchestra tuning up but "Smash" with an overture. Nice touch now that the show is playing (albeit in out of town tryouts).

Curtain Call: Skinny Katharine McPhee belting the anthemic ballad "Don't Forget Me" a weak song that sounds suspiciously like one of those interchangeable anthemic ballads that they always end American Idol with. In short, "Bombshell"'s finale was 100% Marilyn Monroe free; no blonde wig on McPhee could ever bridge that infinitesimal gap.
Grade: C-
Season as a Whole: B/B- though the first half of the season, particularly episodes four through six suggest that this could be an A level show. Here's to next season. Break a leg!

American Idol Katharine McPhee as American Idolesque American Icon Marilyn Monroe

Previously on Smash
1.1 "Pilot" |  1.2-1.3 "The Callback" & "Enter Joe DiMaggio" |  1.4-1.6 "The Cost of Art", "Let's Be Bad" & "Chemistry" |  1.7 "The Workshop" with Bernadette Peters! |  1.8 "The Coup"...the worst episode |  1.9-1.10 "Hell on Earth", "Understudy" |  1.11-1.12 "The Movie Star", "Publicity" with Uma! |  1.13-1.14 "Tech" & "Previews" with Uma!

Season Awards
Best Episode - The Cost of Art | Best Actress - Debra Messing (and yes I'm surprised by this) | Best Actor - Jack Davenport | Best McPhee Number - "Rumor Has It" from The Cost of Art | Best Hilty Number - "Let's Be Bad from Let's Be Bad | Best Production Number - "Let's Be Bad" in Let's Be Bad | Best Number Not Staged -  "Wolf" in The Cost of Art | Best Number That Doesn't Feature Hilty or McPhee - "Say Yes" with Christian Borle from Understudy | Best Anjelica Huston - Anjelica Huston | Amount of Joy I Suspect I Would Feel If They Staged the Entire "Bombshell" on Broadway with Megan Hilty in the Lead Role - ∞