Well then, that was entirely disappointing. I hadn’t actually realized that this season would be the last one, but this episode took the concept of a “series finale” to its most absurd literality more than any show since Dinosaurs. Which, I suppose, is something to commend it for. But why, then, did it feel so boring, disappointing, and most importantly, unfunny?

The first half of the episode is just an extended courtroom scene, with Wiltes as Todd’s attorney, and while it started funny, its interminable length and increasing unbelievability just made it a weak sketch drawn out too far. Plus, something about the fact that it was supposed to be the trial of the century didn’t jibe with the pretty cheap looking set. I know that’s a weird gripe, but it was indicative of how overall slapdash this finale seemed.

There has always been an undercurrent of mystery to Todd Margaret, whether it be the “how are we going to get to the courtroom/North Korea prologue segments?” or the duplicity of Dave, and even the circumstances of Todd’s birth. You could argue that those things weren’t necessarily “important”, that it’s just a comedy show, but it was the creators’ choice to include those things so I think they have a right to deliver on them.

Instead of some sort of meticulously (and humorously) plotted endings, instead everything just got tied up in the most obvious, fast, unfunny, and actually sort of depressing manner possible. Todd’s trial goes terribly, he is sentenced to death. Obviously. He was actually born in Leeds (and I guess may have been Keith Moon’s son? Maybe?) but that really didn’t have anything to do with anything.

Dave ends up being nothing more than just an entitled son of a powerful Lord, played, in easily my favorite moment of the night, by Mark Heap (aka Bryan from Spaced). Whitney and the neighbor track him down and get him to free Todd. Fine. Before that can happen though, Todd in an act of desperation tries to call one last lifeline. Alice? No, the Turkish girl, which sets off the truck bomb, killing Alice. Around here is where the finale really lost me.

It’s not that you can’t joke about death or anything, there just wasn’t really a joke at all. Alice got blown up. Then it’s hinted her corpse gets molested by the morgue workers. lol? Wiltes flees London, leaving behind his friend. Todd is deported to North Korea, the only place that will take him, and in a brief and incoherent montage rises to be a leader and ends up destroying the whole world with nuclear weapons. There was so much plot in this episode, and so little character work or comedy, it was sort of stunning. Easily the worst episode of the series. What a poor decision. Zing!

There’s two tacts for doing a penultimate episode of a season. For a lot of cable shows, the second-to-last episode of the season is the place for the firecrackers, the whiz-bang revelations, the climax, allowing the the final episode to start setting up the plotlines for the next season. Then there is the other option, a sort of treading of water where chess pieces are briskly moved around with little to no reason, clearly setting the scene for a finale that will, presumably, deliver essentially two episodes worth of goodness, knocking down all the pins set up in its predecessor.

Next week’s finale of Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret Season 2 better bowl a strike, because this was unfortunately my least favorite episode of the season thus far. Thank god for Spike Jonze and especially Sharon Horgan, who shouldered the entirety of this week’s humor. Alice’s scene with the police who are questioning her about her poorly faked liquor license was her finest work on the show yet, only to be quickly surpassed by her surgically precise dressing down of the increasingly idiotic Wiltes.

That being said, I wasn’t a fan of her suddenly figuring out that Dave was Mountford, not just because it didn’t really make sense (I don’t exactly hold this show to high standards in that regard) but instead because it seemed like the writers could have come up with a much funnier scene (preferably involving her and Dave) for this revelation to occur. Instead, it was just a random light-bulb-moment, expositional waste. As far as Jonze, I’m just really loving how each week his outfit seems to get another Sherlock Holmes item and mannerism added to it.

Todd himself was barely in this episode, once again in an extremely random situation that’s completely separate from the “main plotline.” Though his incarceration in the pedophile ward was at least a callback to the ongoing “Young & Barely Legal” joke, it really just seemed like the writers needed Todd out of the way for a while. The pederast fan-fic reading circle was pitch dark and pretty funny, but I couldn’t help but wish that Todd was with some of the other main characters, embroiled in this hunt for Mountford instead of just drifting through sketches. The requisite montage at the end however, set up what looks like a good finale, especially with the return of Russ Tamblyn. Yes!

For anyone who’s been lucky enough (heh) to get into any of his other projects, the premiere of a new David Milch series classifies as Grade-A event television. Whether it be his true-crime redefiner NYPD Blue, the absolute and 100% sublime western Deadwood (which I am currently rewatching and boy, is that a good show), or even the strange but interesting surfer-hymn John From Cincinnati, David Milch is up there with David Simon, Matt Weiner, Vince Gilligan, Terrence Winter, and David Chase as the best people working in the industry.

His shows are not just TV shows, if that even means anything anymore. More than any other series, they’re long form journeys into a world, a feeling, and an always compelling and finely when ensemble of characters. Not that I was really worried, but his new series on HBO, Luck, is no different. After previewing 6 weeks ago, the pilot episode officially premiered last night, and I loved it. I really, really did. I can’t wait for more.

A full collaboration with stylistic powerhouse director Michael Mann, Luck is a gorgeous, smart, verbose, epic and altogether great look into the world of modern horseracing. Though Dustin Hoffman’s recent parolee Ace Berenstein is ostensibly the central character, as with Milch’s other shows there really is no protagonist per se. In fact, Hoffman might be given the least screentime of any plotline in the pilot, not that he doesn’t make the most of it, especially in his interactions with driver Gus (Dennis Farina).

The real star is the race track, and the various men and beasts it colludes with, consumes, curses, blesses, and defines. Whether it be the fastidious bookie Richard Kind, crippled bettin’ man Marcus (a very good Kevin Dunn, who you’ll recognize as the bumbling dad from the Transformers movies), a mumbling drunk Nick Nolte who talks better to horses than people, and a host of others from jockeys to trainers and so on. Dunn and his other three pickers are especially fun, serving as a sort of Greek chorus while also being embroiled in their own intrigue surrounding a miracle bet.

The script is airtight and I as of yet see no weak spot in the ensemble. Then there’s the racing. Obviously feeling out of his depth on staging, Milch grabbed Mann to help out viscerally and what a great choice that was. Having raced horses myself (weird, right?) I can say I’ve never seen the sport captured so vividly, and with such chest-bursting fervor and majesty. There better be racing sequences in each episode.

Some people have been complaining that without a “central” character, and with the dense insider dialogue, Luck is inaccessible or too symbolic or hard to get into, but to those people I say shut up. Sorry to be blunt. No, this is not standard network television. No, there is not always some super exciting cliffhanger before every act break. Deal with it. If it’s not your cup of tea, that’s fine, but if you’re willing to devote some actual attention and thought, I have no doubt Luck will be one of the best shows on TV. Besides, there’s a difference between arch and dense, and Milch’s complications are never condescending, they are there only in the service of deep and nuanced stories. More please.

If the past few episodes have been very decidedly Todd centric, this weeks outing was a welcome diversion to the actions of the rest of the main cast, especially Doug and Brent. I’ve noted that their hunt for Mountford was the comedically weakest thread thus far, but this week they delivered big laughs in a couple of scenes. First of course was Will Arnett’s pretty fantastic performance as he interrogates the final Mountford on their list, an elderly woman whose crotch he proceeds to grope in hopes of proving she’s a man in disguise.

His pawning off of the apology on Spike Jonze’s Whitney was particularly funny, and I think elucidated what is starting to really work in their relationship: that being the fact that while Brent is full of bluster and vulgarity, it’s really Whitney (the one who, hysterically, calls him “a p-word”) who is the dominant one. Which led to the impressive bit of physical comedy involving the two crummy detectives being spun around by Dave and Jon Hamm.

The dual (triple? quadruple?) phone conversation taking place in the car and out on the street was really funny and deft and made me feel more than any other time this season that the writers were really earning their keep instead of just leaving the heavy lifting in the hands of the actors. Speaking of actors, there was my favorite bit of the episode, and perhaps of the season thus far: the revelation that Jon Hamm is in fact playing himself, having been hired by Dave (in lieu of Michael Winslow) and subsequently written out of Mad Men.

It’s a dumb little meta joke reveal, but something about it really just hit my funny bone. Jon Hamm pushing down the retractable handle of his rolly suitcase while sobbing uncontrollably was a great moment. Less great was Todd’s part of the episode. It wasn’t that it was unfunny (though it was pretty mediocre at best) but his tangent with the bachelorette party seems particularly out of nowhere, even in a show built on random ridiculousness. Nevertheless, the fact that it ended up with Todd digging up Princess Di’s grave with a dildo is I suppose enough reason to have it around, and I look forward to the ramifications of that next week.

As I had hoped, the addition of large quantities of morphine (not to mention the welcome return of Russ Tamblyn) to the already bubbling Todd Margaret stew made for the funniest episode of the season. I thought it was Cross’ funniest performance, and had the most precisely contrived scenarios, and just the right balance between uproarious improvisation and obviously scripted gags. Once again Todd was left paired up with Dave, but to much better results this time.

Left in the hospital after his turn in the rugby scrum, Todd is couriered around his supposed birthplace by the increasingly interesting Dave, and ends up juggling a liver meant for transplant like it was deli meat. Next up came one of my favorite moments, the vocal performance from Colin Salmon as the Teddy Bear. Hudson as a character has never been funnier than his delivery of “I’m a talking bear!” Meanwhile, Mr. Margaret and Alice have a great scene where he roleplays as Todd. Alice gets the job at Le Molecule, though she thinks it’s because of Hudson, and the eggshells conversations between her and the strange chef (who, remember, thinks she’s retarded) were quite good.

Wiltes and Whitney were the weak link this week, but mostly because they were given absolutely nothing to do (though Wiltes screed about Hybrids was fun). Then we actually got something quite interesting, which is Todd acting pretty much fully selfless for the first time in the series. Choosing not to reveal to the happy Alice that it was him who got her the job, Todd finally got some (unneeded?) perspective on his actions.

It wasn’t a bad scene by any means, and I guess it could be chalked up to Todd’s opiated state, but regardless it was sort of a watershed moment in the sense that Todd has always been a one note (a good note) character, and now he’s breaking out of that shell a little. I’ll be interested to see how they balance this newfound awareness with the increasingly dire plot machinations.

And boy are they dire. Many of the big events that have been building over the course of the series are finally coming to a head, most notably the gigantic Thunder Muscle bomb that almost detonated at the end of the episode. Whitney and Wiltes seem to be closing in on Dave/Mountford, Todd has released a bio-weapon onto Le Molecule (revealed in a genuinely disturbing post credits sequence), and the trial seems as close as ever.

There also seems to be a third level of intrigue occurring as far as Todd’s origins, as not only was it revealed that he was adopted, but that he might have actually been born in that hopsital in Leeds after all. It’s a bizarre plot contrivance, but this show is already full of them, nay built by them, so it doesn’t bother me. Perhaps he’s Dave’s long lost brother or something, which would (sorta) explain why he was chosen for his wicked games. Good episode.

If the first season of Todd Margaret already felt absurd, this second outing is taking that credulity and stretching it even further. While the 21 minute runtime has always felt brisk, this episode in particular flew through so many set-ups (not to mention jokes) that it almost felt like a different, larger show. But despite the busy plot machinations (which percolate a low-at-best level of intrigue) the humor at the core remains the same, and remains the only arbiter for your enjoyment of the show.

Personally, I think Todd Margaret (the character) is as funny in a low-stakes situation (visiting Alice’s restaurant) as he is in a off-the-wall high stakes one like finding himself in a rugby scrum while wearing a child’s outfit or crashing an 18 wheeler full of explosives into an strangely underused Peter Serafinowicz. It’s not that I don’t like those situations, but I almost want to tell them to save their money on set design.

I was a little bummed that we didn’t get much more of Todd’s father this week as Russ Tamblyn was such a standout last week, but we did get more of the mysterious Dave (though none of Jon Hamm as his manservant) and a healthy dose of Spike Jonze’s Whitney as well, who’s intellectual dandy persona has been played up much more in this episode than in past. Him and Arnett’s Brent Wiltes have now teamed up (presumably for the rest of the season, which is only 6 episodes) to get to the bottom of all the plotting.

Which, thankfully, leaves Todd to blunder around ignorantly as he does, hopefully only vaguely embroiled in any sort of expository action and instead left free to make an ass of himself and generally be the idiotic beating heart of the show. There were two stupendously cringe worthy scenes this week, the first being his plea to the head chef of Le Molecule to bring Alice on as a sous chef, because she’s “dying of retardation”.

The second, even more gutbusting encounter was his disastrous meeting with the Yorkshire Sports Club owners as he tried to sell them Thunder Muscle. When implemented correctly, a fart joke can still be funny, and Cross debased himself with aplomb. His rapid-fire monologue about not being a rapist nor the infamous Yorkshire ripper were the highlight of the episode.

I hope next week slows down a little bit, but I understood the necessity of an episode like this to get all the moving parts active, if only because they have almost no other time to do so. I continue to enjoy this series, but I also understand why it’s not for everyone, especially a relative insular outing such as this.

Another season of HBO’s 24/7 Road to the Winter Classic has come and gone with last night’s season two finale wrapping things up with the showdown at the Winter Classic. What was evident from the early going was how the producers opted to pay more attention on individuals opposed to the teams like last year.

The episode kicks off with Mr. Universe, Ilya Bryzgalov, as he is coming another loss just days shy of the Classic. The never shy net minder has forced the hand of coach Peter Laviolette to go with back-up Sergei Bobrovsky in their next game and eventually outdoors against the Rangers. We are then shown the Rangers at breakfast where soon to be waived Sean Avery wonders whether his orange juice has free refills. Again, that’s someone making $15 million a year asking about free juice. Classic.

With Bryz on the bench the Flyers visit the Penguins marking a homecoming for Jaromir Jagr and Maxime Talbot. Last time out in Philly, Scott Hartnell told Matt Cooke he was the dirtiest player in the league. This time Hartnell focuses on Evgeni Malkin who he calls “the ugliest guy in the league”. This show should really just focus on chirping more so than not. I think the viewer could do without the ever slow walking into the arena or sitting on a plane and focus more on the amount of hilarious trash talk NHL players give and take.

It really doesn’t get much better than Talbot yelling at the ref that he caught a stick in his “fucking penis” does it? Flyers go onto win as the focus shifts back to the Rangers who travel to play the Panthers. The highlight of the game is the sucker punch on Michael Del Zotto by Tomas Kopecky who in turn gets a pummeling by Mike Rupp. HBO offers a nice candid moment with Brandon Prust admitting he didn’t want to get suspended ahead of the WC so he decided against fighting.

After some family filler the focus is now solely on the Winter Classic. Bryz announces to the media he will in fact be on the bench for the game much to the unseen dismay of management, the teams practice, and it is revealed that Marc Staal will make his season debut just like his younger brother Jordan did last season on 24/7.

With the game underway we get our first interaction with Claude Giroux asking Henrik Lundqvist if he could “score one on him” (foreshadowing) to which Lundqvist replies with a light slash. Giroux then focuses on Artem Anisimov who he tries to coax into an interference call at the face-off.

The Flyers take a two-goal lead before Mike Rupp answers twice for the Rangers. After his first goal he mimics the Jagr salute, which doesn’t sit well with the Flyers who in turn plan to do the Anisimov gun salute in rebuttal. Unfortunately, they never score again but what a sight that would have been had they scored on the ever-controversial penalty shot by Danny Briere.

The Rangers secure their third straight win over the Flyers as they continue to surge to the top of the league standings. The Flyers, albeit disappointed they didn’t get two points, aren’t far off the Rangers tails.

The episode concludes with a similar montage it had opened with three weeks ago. It sums up while hockey is just a game you’d be hard pressed convincing a hockey player it’s just that. It recaps the bumps and bruises we see throughout the last episodes and everything in between. It was a fitting ending to another successful season, which as of right now could be the last.

Last week, I mentioned that the second episode of HBO’s 24/7 Road to the Winter Classic was lacking in game footage and it’s almost as if the producers heard my cry as episode three delivered and then some. From the beginning we are thrown into the Flyers locker room where head coach Peter Laviolette shows the most emotion he has all series long as his team finds themselves down a goal heading into the third period against the Colorado Avalanche. His mini tirade sparks his team to find the equalizer before falling in a shootout resulting in the team’s second consecutive loss as the team leaves for Dallas hoping to turn their fortune.

The Rangers first appear during their family skate at Bryant Park before attending a ugly Christmas sweater party where Michael Del Zotto debuted a sweater featuring some rather risqué reindeers. Luckily, no children were in attendance. Later, the team is shown pummeling my beloved Devils which fortunately lasted only a minute or so.

Like most teams in the NHL, it is customary among the Rangers to pass out a special item for the MVP of the game. The Rangers being from New York and all chose to pass out a fedora which was most likely donated by Sean Avery. For this win, Henrik Lundqvist earned the honors and I couldn’t’ help but wonder whether he too keeps a spare in case he doesn’t get the MVP after each game.

Claude Giroux returned to the Flyers line-up against Dallas after battling a concussion he received in the first episode and has himself quite the return notching a goal and three assists. During the game he chats with Stars center Steve Ott who encouraged the younger Giroux to check his stats on NHL.com because he’s really good at face-offs. Ott would go onto lose the ensuing draw and later tell Laviolette to show some “fucking class” as the coach refused to wait for the Stars to leave the ice resulting in a shove captured by the cameras.

Laviolette later has a case of amnesia when confronted about the incident and choses to focus on the win instead. Prior to the game against the Rangers, Laviolette and his staff find themselves watching the Ott incident on TV at a bar which summarized how big a deal it was to the hockey world despite the coach’s attempt to play it down.

When the Flyers finally meet the Rangers at MSG it’s pretty much gold as far as the chirping between players goes. From Brad Richards telling Tom Sestito that his one day in the NHL is like fantasy camp to Mike Rupp telling former Ranger Jody Shelly he’s “fucking irrelevant out here” to my favorite chirp simple “fuck you Lundqvist”

It’s really what a rivalry is all about, nonstop shit talk. While it didn’t capture the pre ‘Classic’ showdown like last year with the Caps and Pens, it was easily the highlight of the show.

Afterwards we are finally given our moment of Byrz, as the goalie is shown celebrating Christmas with his family and hot blonde girl husky, Milya. Bryzgalov also divulges the many faces he has starting with his home face, his public face, his game face, his off-day face, and his HBO face. No matter how many times you read that over it won’t make any sense. Guy is simply out there.

Next week the two teams finally meet in the Winter Classic as the show comes to its conclusion. Hopefully HBO will have its best for last.

The first episode of HBO’s 24/7 Road to the Winter Classic was a doozy. It’s successor? Not so much. While it showed a more personal side of the players and coaches, overall it wasn’t as memorable. The episode starts with pretty boy Henrik Lundqvist rocking out on his guitar to the Foo Fighters alongside tennis legend John Mcenroe as they practice for an upcoming charity event.

It was disappointing to see Lundqvist, who was born in the birthplace of melodic death metal (Gothenburg, Sweden), play something less epic and more mellow. When he first appeared in the NHL there was a rumor that he played in a metal band but upon seeing last night’s episode I have my doubts.

Not much later we get our first glimpse of last week’s star Ilya Bryzgalov on board the team charter after a victory against the Caps. In his two second appearance amid the ever popular HBO montage the goalie flashes his book of choice which is none other than Alexey Tolstoy’s The Road to Calvary.

As the focus shifts back to the Rangers ahead of their game against the Blues we all witness the horror that is head coach’s John Tortorella’s scary thumb. Nightmares for weeks, people. Then it’s back to Flyers rookies Harry Zolnierczyk and Zac Rinaldo discussing how as kids they use to play against their teammate Jaromir Jagr for Sega Genesis (my guess is NHL 94) and now have the opportunity to share the ice with him. Then it’s Bryz time! As his teammates are shown calling him “universe” for his deep thoughts seen last week which Bryz himself refers to as epic.

Bryz then proceeds to compare his Siberian husky to a hot blonde girl much to the amusement of Zolnierczyk and his protégé and fellow net minder Sergei Bobrovsky who I’m pretty sure is still working on his English based on his reaction. When it’s finally game time for the Rangers and Blues we get a fantastic f-bomb ridden rant from Tortorella which reminds us why we love this show so much as the Rangers drop their second game in a row.

In what has to be the highlight of the show, Flyers coach Peter Laviolette evaluates the performance of the referees in Montreal as typical. This has to do with the fact that many believe the Canadiens get favoritism at home as they are one of the NHL’s darlings (Like the Flyers aren’t though? Hello two Winter classics in three years!). It wouldn’t be HBO without a conspiracy now would it?

After the game the team learns that team captain and all around goon Chris Pronger will be out for the remainder of the year due to severe post-concussion syndrome. We then get possibly the greatest footage of Tortorella off the ice as he talks about his relationship with a 10-year-old fan named Liam who suffers from cerebral palsy. Both talk about how much of a role they play in each other’s lives and the entire segment was super heart felt, we’re talking tissue box status.

Bryz returns to talk about his love-hate relationship with being a professional goalie before posing this gem of a question “OK, they fire the puck from the blue line. Chief usually yelling ‘block the shot’ at the defensemen. They doesn’t have the goalie gear, but they have to block the shot. So who is more crazy, me or the defensemen? Who is more weird?”

A couple stiches and a separated shoulder later we get to watch the Rangers steal a win in Phoenix before watching the Flyers 7-game win streak come crashing down at the hands of the Bruins.
While this episode didn’t have as much in-game footage as last week, the human aspect of the teams was still enjoyable to watch. There is really no such thing as too much Bryz as it just gets weirder with every episode.

Big ups to the producers for not showing the Ranger highlights against the Devils this week as it was simply embarrassing if you happen to root for the other team.

I love hockey. I play it, I watch it, I write about it, I do all there is to do with the best sport on earth. I am a 12-year-old forever stuck in a 25-year-old’s body. Life got even better yesterday with the debut of HBO’s 24/7 Road to the Winter Classic. Whoever came up with slogan “it’s not TV it’s HBO” back in the day was either really cocky or speaking on a whim. Regardless, they could not have been more spot on.

Anything the channel does generally turns to gold whether it’s drama, comedy, or sports. Last year, HBO shadowed the Caps and Pens leading up to their showdown at the Winter Classic and as the event has continued to show success in ratings the NHL has made it an annual hootenanny. This year the Rangers and Flyers will covet the outdoor ice and have had the HBO cameras trail them from the beginning of training camp leading up to 24 hours shy of last night’s debut.

For the first episode we are shown the battle wounds every hockey player faces in what some have argued to be a heavily violent game. From there, Liev Schreiber narrates his way through the history found with the New York Rangers ahead of their game against the Toronto Maple Leafs where the f-bombs where a flyin’. The biggest highlight from the match-up was Rangers coach John Tortorella telling the team not shit themselves over Toronto’s Phil Kessel. It’s gems like these that make 24/7 that much better because we would never hear about it otherwise.

We are then introduced to the Flyers and shortly thereafter we have the star of the series by a landslide. The star is none other than goalie Ilya Bryzgalov. Affectionately known as Bryz, the 31-year-old Russian was signed to a big-money contract in the off-season in hopes he will finally fill the void the Flyers have lacked in net. Of all the things to talk about with the cameras Bryz opted to discuss the universe; a clear sign that he has in fact taken one too many pucks to the head over the years in the NHL.

Ahead of their first game footage against the Pittsburgh Penguins, the focus shifts back to New York onto everyone’s favorite Vogue intern, Sean Avery, doing what he does best off the ice, which is of course modeling. As for the actual game which always looks so epic on HBO, the mics caught Philly’s resident goon Scott Hartnell congratulating the Pens Matt Cooke on being the league’s dirtiest player which is what most fans can only dream of hearing let alone saying. With the victory the Flyers proceed to have a dance party in their locker room.

On the same night, the Rangers would be handed their second straight loss at the hands of Tampa Bay, however the game would be remembered for a goal celebration gone awry. Having taken the lead on a short-handed goal Rangers center Artem Anisimov pointed his stick at Tampa’s goalie and mimicked a shooting motion which sparked a melee and resulted in the Russian getting ejected. Amid the scuffle, Anisimov did not hesitate to let his Russian f-bombs fly and even managed to incorporate the referees’ mother. It would be explained that the celebration was something a teammate did back in Russia which inspired Anisimov to follow suit.

Other highlights from the first episode included Philadelphia’s budding star Claude Giroux getting a concussion (which was only just diagnosed earlier this week), Ryan Callahan’s 95-year old grandmother, Bryzgalov on Chinese penalties towards animal cruelty, rituals for team dinners, and the uncertainty both teams face in the coming weeks as their outdoor showdown draws near.

I’ve watched the first episode twice and can easily watch it until next week because everything about it encompasses the sport to such different heights that you can’t help but get lost in it even if you have no loyalties to the teams involved.