Saturday, April 15, 2006
The Loop!
posted by RICK : 11:33 AM
FOX was gracious enough to air two episodes of their hit new comedy The Loop this week. I watched both. Here's what the show is not about: the mysterious section of St. Louis known to young and old alike as "The Loop," and the crazy misadventures of three tourists looking for said loop in a late model Mazda after a wedding, but instead getting lost and inadvertantly touring a neighborhood full of St. Louis's most luxurious crumbling homes. It should also be noted that "The Loop" (the St. Louis version) didn't live up to its name as I-- er, these travelers-- detected a discernable beginning and ending. I suspect that if August Ferdinand Mobius had been from St. Louis, his invention would have been less like this and more like this.
Yes, FOX's The Loop is nothing like that. Instead it takes place in Chicago, and follows the misadventures of Sam Sullivan, a kid fresh-out-of-college who is the first amongst his group of friends to get a real job or, based on the two episodes I've seen, "a job". The Loop wants to be many things, but what it suceeds at most is being America's first, true, MySpace-comedy. It's the first series I can think of that appears to be marketed almost exclusively to the MySpace-mainstream-alternative. Clearly the logic is if SUPER-UNDERGROUND comic Dane Cook can have a quarter-trillion friends, surely the formula will get the as many viewers IF NOT MORE. So you take a gorgeous looking cast, put them in few clothes, throw in some whip-pans, a pop-punk soundtrack, and Courtney from the Dandy Warhols (he was on Thursday's episode for some reason*), simmer, serve. The fact that this show is one of the two new comedies (Free Ride being the other... which, actually, might have all ready been canceled) on FOX that were to replace Arrested Development just makes matters worse.
But there's a problem.
The problem is that I'm going to watch this show again. And I'll probably watch it until its inevitable cancelation (most kids on MySpace don't watch TV, they're too busy MySpacing) because of a critical saving grace: Philip Baker Hall is absofuckinghilarious. He plays the owner of whateverthehell airline the main character is suppose to work and everything that comes out of his mouth is pure gold. Perhaps the bigger question in all of this is why exactly PBH is on this stain of a series? Oh yeah, maybe its because PTA hasn't had a movie in six years.
*Not to be confused with his unnecessary appearance on Veronica Mars last fall, but at least in that case he was never actually addressed as "Courtney from the Dandy Warhols")
FOX was gracious enough to air two episodes of their hit new comedy The Loop this week. I watched both. Here's what the show is not about: the mysterious section of St. Louis known to young and old alike as "The Loop," and the crazy misadventures of three tourists looking for said loop in a late model Mazda after a wedding, but instead getting lost and inadvertantly touring a neighborhood full of St. Louis's most luxurious crumbling homes. It should also be noted that "The Loop" (the St. Louis version) didn't live up to its name as I-- er, these travelers-- detected a discernable beginning and ending. I suspect that if August Ferdinand Mobius had been from St. Louis, his invention would have been less like this and more like this.
Yes, FOX's The Loop is nothing like that. Instead it takes place in Chicago, and follows the misadventures of Sam Sullivan, a kid fresh-out-of-college who is the first amongst his group of friends to get a real job or, based on the two episodes I've seen, "a job". The Loop wants to be many things, but what it suceeds at most is being America's first, true, MySpace-comedy. It's the first series I can think of that appears to be marketed almost exclusively to the MySpace-mainstream-alternative. Clearly the logic is if SUPER-UNDERGROUND comic Dane Cook can have a quarter-trillion friends, surely the formula will get the as many viewers IF NOT MORE. So you take a gorgeous looking cast, put them in few clothes, throw in some whip-pans, a pop-punk soundtrack, and Courtney from the Dandy Warhols (he was on Thursday's episode for some reason*), simmer, serve. The fact that this show is one of the two new comedies (Free Ride being the other... which, actually, might have all ready been canceled) on FOX that were to replace Arrested Development just makes matters worse.
But there's a problem.
The problem is that I'm going to watch this show again. And I'll probably watch it until its inevitable cancelation (most kids on MySpace don't watch TV, they're too busy MySpacing) because of a critical saving grace: Philip Baker Hall is absofuckinghilarious. He plays the owner of whateverthehell airline the main character is suppose to work and everything that comes out of his mouth is pure gold. Perhaps the bigger question in all of this is why exactly PBH is on this stain of a series? Oh yeah, maybe its because PTA hasn't had a movie in six years.
*Not to be confused with his unnecessary appearance on Veronica Mars last fall, but at least in that case he was never actually addressed as "Courtney from the Dandy Warhols")
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(co-creator)
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