My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

1993: Saved By The Bell: The College Years debuts to thunderous acclaim after the original Saved By The Bell‘s Saturday morning run ends. The College Years leads its timeslot for the entire first season, and NBC commits to seasons two through four early on, locking up the actors at lower pay rates while they still can.

1993: Saved By The Bell: The New Class debuts on Saturday mornings, replacing the original Saved By The Bell’s slot in NBC’s Saturday morning lineup. Like its predecessor, it has tremendous success.

1994: After one season, NBC moves The New Class to Tuesday nights, creating the infamous “Bell block,” which becomes a ratings juggernaut.

1994: Tori Spelling leaves Beverly Hills, 90210 and rejoins the Bell cast in her role of Violet Anne Bickerstaff, Screech’s longrunning love interest. In order to make room for Spelling in the cast, NBC fires Kiersten Warren, who plays the nerdy-yet-cute Alex Tabor.

1994: Release of Saved By The Bell Rocks!, an album of teenpop “inspired” by the series.

1995: NBC debuts Saved By The Bell: Classless, a one-hour comedy-drama featuring Lark Voorhies and Elizabeth Berkeley (the two Bell principal cast members who did not sign on with The College Years) as their old characters Lisa Tuttle and Jessie Spano, who are now college dropouts trying to get by as Chicago waitresses/improv comedians. The show does not equal the ratings success of the Bell block, but performs respectably and lasts for three seasons before being cancelled.

1995: As the third season of The College Years comes to a close, NBC shocks the world by announcing that the fourth season of The College Years will be its last, citing ramping production costs as the reason. Industry insiders comment differently, claiming that hardball contract negotiation tactics on NBC’s part caused the rift. The fact that New Class will remain at NBC through 1997 causes many onlookers to wonder about the future of the Bell universe.

1996: Moments after the final episode of College Years airs, ABC announces that their fall lineup for the next year will include Saved By The Bell: AfterClass, a new one-hour dramedy featuring Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Tiffani-Amber Thiessen as Zack and Kelly Morris, “entering the biggest Bell adventure of them all: parenthood.” Notably, AfterClass features no other Bell alums, although execs state that Dustin Diamond has been invited to “visit” the show for a potential guest appearance as Screech.

1996: NBC announces that Diamond’s contract obligations to NBC through The New Class will prevent him from appearing on AfterClass. Diamond threatens to sue NBC for damages to his career, and the New Class cast stands with him in solidarity.

1996: Kiersten Warren releases her tell-all book, Head Left Ringing, which luridly details the fast lives of the extended Bell cast. Warren claims that her firing was due in part to her refusal to partake in Bell sex orgies, because as the “new girl” it was her “duty” to service Dustin Diamond and Dennis “Mr. Belding” Haskins, who according to Warren had a penchant for double-penetrative sex. Warren also claims that the infamous “Jessie gets hooked on speed” episode was based on an actual cocaine addiction within the cast, although Elizabeth Berkeley was not the addict in question. The book tops the New York Times bestseller list for sixteen weeks.

1996: NBC fires Dennis Haskins and Dustin Diamond without explanation, replacing them on The New Class with Mario Lopez, recurring his A.C. Slater role as Bayside High’s new principal. Diamond goes on a rage-filled bender in Las Vegas and is arrested for dangerous driving and possession of a drug known as “llama cocaine.” Haskins announces in a press conference that he is selling all his possessions and moving to Tibet to study inner peace.

1997: After one year on The New Class, Mario Lopez leaves the show, saying that he only ever intended to put in a year to “stabilize” the troubled series, whose cast have been swapped and replaced constantly. He is replaced by Bob Golic, who played the student advisor on The College Years.

1997: Dustin Diamond is acquitted of all charges due to police misconduct in his arrest, and promptly gives a profanity-laden interview to media waiting outside the courthouse, repeatedly referring to NBC management as “cocksuckers” and calling out Mark-Paul Gosselaar for “never coming through” on promises of a recurring guest appearance on AfterClass. He announces he will go on tour with a lounge act in the next year.

1997: Comedian/magician Ed Alonzo, AKA “The Max,” is found dead in a back alley in Columbus, Ohio. Authorities suspect foul play as his death was “presumably due to bludgeoning.”

1997: ABC announces the debut of Saved By The Alarm Bell, a one-hour action/procedural series about private security forces, starring Mario Lopez, Elizabeth Berkeley and Leanna Creel (reprising her “Tori Scott” character from the final season of the original Saved By The Bell). Almost immediately, rumours emerge from shooting about a feud between Berkeley and Creel, with Berkeley claiming Creel to be a “wannabe” and Creel saying Berkeley is a “druggie princess.” Similarly, Lopez is rumoured to be having sex with both of his costars.

1998: Dustin Diamond’s lounge act fails to cover its operating expenses for the third tour date in a row and his road crew and band quit. Three weeks later, Diamond declares bankruptcy. Three weeks after that, he accepts a job on QVC, vowing to turn the Dustin Diamond Sales Hour into “the hottest hour of must-see TV on QVC.”

1998: Lark Voorhies is arrested for the murder of Ed Alonzo. Voorhies pleads not guilty by reason of self-defense, claiming that during her time on the original Bell, Alonso fathered her love-child, and that he had grown obsessive and violent in his wishes to see their daughter, to the point of stalking and attacking her outside of the “Beller” convention in Columbus in 1997.

1998: Saved By The Alarm Bell is cancelled after only one season. The cancellation is met with loud and public derision from many former The New Class actors, all of whom consider the original Bell cast to be living off luck and timing.

1999: Lark Voorhies is sentenced to fifteen years in jail for manslaughter. Her appeal is personally funded by Mark-Paul Gosselaar. It fails.

1999: QVC fires Dustin Diamond. Diamond vows to “set the standup world on fire,” and relocates to New York City, hitting comedy clubs non-stop. New York’s comedy culture swiftly ostracizes him, and he soon has no option but to play third-tier clubs in New Jersey.

2000: Citing personal reasons among cast members, ABC brings to an end the popular AfterClass, with Kelly and Zack giving birth to twins in the final episode. Mark-Paul Gosselaar uses his now-vast personal fortune to start up several dot-com B2B enterprises, all of which prove moderately successful and all of which make him richer. He grows more secluded over time.

2000: Tiffani-Amber Thiessen converts to Scientology.

2001: ABC reveals that as part of its fall lineup, it will air a seven-episode miniseries entitled Saved By The Bell: Class Struggle, wherein every single Bell alumnus will come together in an epic story about the future of Bayside High, now potentially the site for a new shopping center. At press conferences, development executives admit that getting Lark Voorhies temporarily released for work orders has been “difficult.” They also admit that Dustin Diamond has been holding out for more money.

2002: Mark-Paul Gosselaar drops out of the much-delayed and deeply troubled Class Struggle, claiming that the cast are “covered in filthy, filthy germs.” A fistfight breaks out on set between Dustin Diamond and three New Class actors when the former calls them “posers.” The miniseries’ development and production costs will eventually top well over $100 million, much of that due to the climactic “Bayside Inferno” scene, which in addition to costing $20 million claims the lives of Dennis Haskins and Hayley Mills.

2003: Class Struggle finally airs, having become the most expensive television production of all time thanks to lawsuits from the Haskins and Mills estates. It receives a critical and popular drubbing, scoring abysmal Neilsen ratings and mockery from all quarters. Tom Shales writes “I have seen more hubris in this production than in a thousand viewings of Ishtar. What was once great has become mundane thanks to the constant injection of Hollywood dollars into a story that was once pristine and true – a simple story of a blonde boy who spoke to the camera has become a pretentious nightmare.”

2005: Dustin Diamond is sentenced to twelve years in prison for trafficking in llama cocaine.

2008: Lark Voorhies is released from prison on an early parole for good behaviour.

2009: The CW announces that in 2010 it will air a series entitled Bell, starring “the next generation of Bayside students.” Tiffani-Amber Theissen and Mark-Paul Gosselaar (now both emerging from extensive post-traumatic therapy) star in supporting roles as parents of Cynthia Morris, the wisecracking, conniving daughter of Zack and Kelly. Lark Voorhies signs to a recurring guest role as Lisa Tuttle. The CW officially demands that the word “Screech” never be uttered on set.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

CONTROVERSY as this week’s TV column, rather than having the traditional dichotomy of five images, has FOUR images with the American Idol bit taking up two of five slots (because it is on twice during the week). Begin discussing how much Simon Cowell paid me to do this… right now!

“Pork and Beans” by Weezer and “So What” by Pink. 2008 was a really great year for “fuck you” songs, as the general frustration of the world with stupid bullshit finally hit its boiling point, and these were two of the best. Weezer’s song was “Fuck you, I’m a nerd” and Pink’s was “Fuck you, my marriage didn’t work out and who are you to comment.” They both had fantastic hooks (Pink’s “na-na-na-na” in particular will burn itself into your brain) and great musicality, and while Weezer’s video might have been a love letter to internet geeks, Pink’s video had Pink dancing naked and chainsawing down a tree, so at best the “best video” contest between these two is a wash.

The Incredible Hercules. Let’s face facts: 2008 was a remarkably shitty year for Big Two superhero comics. Other than the tail end of All-Star Superman‘s glorious twelve-issue run, what was there? “Event” comics repeatedly failed to impress (something which, at this point, should surprise absolutely nobody) and most superhero comics held up as this year’s exemplars of the form (Jason Aaron’s Ghost Rider, say, or Geoff Johns’ work on Green Lantern, or Abnett and Lanning’s writing on Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy) are barely more than what should be expected out of the form – competent, entertaining storytelling that isn’t particularly revolutionary. The one bright light in all of this was Incredible Hercules, a comic which takes the mythological scope of Walt Simonson’s Thor and marries it to a humourous style not unlike that of Giffen and DeMatteis’ Justice League International (with the same core of pathos that that latter title had). Constantly wonderful and only getting better with time.

WALL-E. The single best film Pixar Studios have ever made – and considering this is the studio with Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc. and The Incredibles under its belt, that says something. Confident enough to wed most of its storytelling to physical comedy – and physical comedy created by a junky little robot no less – the scope and ambition of WALL-E is only more breathtaking. Yes, Andrew Stanton and company walked it back in public, claiming that it wasn’t “about” consumerism and the ecological destruction of the planet. The rest of us knew ass-covering bullshit when we heard it.

Nation by Terry Pratchett. Nobody knows how many swings at the plate Pratchett has left in him at this point, so that makes this home run of a book all the more glorious; a book which manages to be horrifying without being gory, romantic without being crass, sad without being melodramatic, spiritual without being moralistic, and praiseworthy of science without being annoyingly self-satisfied. As it is a Pratchett book, it is of course also very, very funny and clever throughout, and its message – of the possible comingling and even necessary interdependence of science and religion – is timely and welcome.

Leverage. God, how did John Rogers pitch this and ever have any trouble? “It’s Ocean’s Eleven versus evil corporations who screw over the little guy.” Why did it take so long for someone in Hollywood to throw money at him to get it made? But finally it happened, and this show is a glorious triumph – funny, exciting and most of all you never, ever have to watch it in Idiot Mode because the characters are doing stupid things for stupid reasons. Leverage is a show where the characters, at their worst, do smart things for stupid reasons. Or stupid things for smart reasons. And that makes all the difference.

Furr by Blitzen Trapper. I like music with energetic beats and operatic ambition, so the fact that I’m putting simple, folky, gentle Blitzen Trapper on my “best” list should serve as notice to how brilliant this record was. The title track is a love song about a werewolf, for crissake – just saying that should prepare you for some of the shittiest filk imaginable, but instead Blitzen Trapper makes it work, avoiding cute jokes and writing pure, eloquent poetry, and sounding all the while like a young version of Bob Dylan backed up by The Band. Just fantastic.

Berlin: City of Smoke. Jason Lutes’ epic continues to be absolutely fucking staggering. You should read this comic. Enough said.

In Bruges. Tanked at the box office, as people expected from the shitty advertising campaign that it would be another Lock, Stock-lite English gangster caper film, but instead this was by turns a funny and solemn story about two gangsters (in Bruges) taking cover after a crime gone horribly wrong, a crime that left scars. The comedy comes from razor-sharp dialogue; the pathos from absolutely brilliant work by Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes, and a story that inverts the usual heh-heh-we’re-gangsters tropes and unabashedly, without moralizing, points out that the criminal life really, really sucks at your soul. The best directorial debut of the year, by a country mile.

Northlanders. Brutal, vicious, and utterly fantastic Viking stories that only served to once again remind comics fans of why Vertigo still matters if you’re not interested in medium-dark fantasy (along with the equally fantastic Scalped). Totally hard-ass and uncompromising about both the virtues and flaws of the Viking world, and the lack of an overarching supernarrative means that Brian Wood can do what he does best – stories more connected by theme than by plot. (With Vikings in them.)

Fallout 3. Everybody else has already said everything that could be said about this game, so I’ll just throw in a backhanded compliment: the game is so crazily chock-full of content that I maxed out at level 20 when I was less than a third of the way through the main plot. Dear Bethesda: please to patch game to give more levels please.

Bob on Survivor. You have to love it when a 57-year-old physics teacher (and clearly still a very fit one) dominates the competition challenges over people half his age and invents multiple realistic-looking fake immunity idols to keep himself in play. Bob was the runaway fan-favorite of Survivor: Gabon and easily one of the most dominant players in years, his only failing being an early willingness to trust the wrong people (which merely made him all the more sympathetic).

The Boys. The next time somebody tells me that Garth Ennis just likes to take the piss out of superhero comics and that’s the only reason he’s writing The Boys, I will make them read #15, wherein Annie, undergoing a severe crisis of faith, demands that God give her a sign He exists, and leaves the church disappointed and on the brink of collapse when nothing happens – and then promptly runs into Hughie, who of course is exactly the sign she asked for. Then I will beat them to death with a lead pipe because I am sick to fucking death of people whining about shit that isn’t true. Be forewarned.

The Battlestar Galactica board game. An ingeniously designed board game, featuring the standard cooperative-survival mechanics one would expect given the setting, but with a brilliant twist: some of the players are actually Cylons and they are secretly trying to destroy humanity. The game’s system is designed to make hiding and striking against humanity a thing of subtlety and play-skill; if you’re really good you can even set up other players to take the fall for you, framing them as Cylons using nothing more than your own ability to lie. Similarly, it takes true observational skill to ferret out a really good Cylon player, as well as time your incarceration of them properly. Yes, it’s kind of a shame that Boomer sucks compared to most of the other characters, but other than that this game is seriously just about perfect in its execution.

Chuck. With a promising mini-season start last year, Chuck was already a solidly entertaining little show, but now? Far and away the most improved show on television; the plots are more clever, the dialogue snappier, the action higher quality and the unrealized romance between Chuck and Sarah satisfyingly boiling away behind a thousand actually-good reasons for them to not be together. Also good: the elevation of the Buy-More supporting cast to credits-level importance. Last season I was worried Chuck might waste them in favour of the annoying guy who plays Morgan. This season – well, less Morgan! That’s a start.

Metropolis by Janelle Monáe.

I trust that was self-explanatory, but if it wasn’t – that blend of nu-funk, futuristic soul and utter batshit craziness (it’s a concept album! Set in 2719!) is like what I think Legion of Super-Heroes should be if it were transposed into musical form. And she’s an obvious music nerd. Any other P.Diddy “discovery” diva-lite would want to be all pretty and sexified in their debut video. She wants to be Robot James Brown. How awesome is that?

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

2008 was a year that produced many singular and outstanding creative works. These were not those.

Waltz with Bashir. One of the most overrated films of the year, the recipient of far too many movie-critic blowjobs to count. Admittedly, the idea of a documentary presented entirely in rotoscopic animation is novel, but one novel idea doesn’t necessarily make a film good, and once you get past the gee-whiz factor of the cartoony Waking Life visual treatment of the film’s material, what do you really have? You’ve got a documentary that’s somewhere in between indulgent and boring, relying on the “oh this is serious stuff” aura that journalists will cheerfully hype about absolutely any inferior creative work related to the ongoing Israeli-Arab conflict. Pretty cartoons do not redeem it.

“Lollipop” by L’il Wayne. L’il Wayne has so much awesome work under his belt that it seems a cruel trick that this, one of the most annoying songs he’s ever written, should be his biggest mainstream hit ever. It’s not catchy, it’s just repetitive.

Countdown. It seems almost besides the point to mention how fucking terrible Countdown was, because everybody remembers how fucking terrible it was. But people deserve to be reminded of how shitty, how absolutely crap every fucking week of this fucking shitty comic was, in case they are considering buying a DC “event” comic. So: Jason Todd spent a long time becoming Red Robin. Then he quit being Red Robin. Mary Marvel became a magic-eating psycho whore. Then she stopped doing that. Then she started doing it again. Kamandi finally got the origin story nobody ever demanded. God only knows how many pages were spent detailing the slow death-by-superdisease suffered by Karate Kid, which would have been compelling if the payoff hadn’t been “they fail and he dies anyway.” (Memo to Keith Giffen: I know you’re proud that you’ve managed to kill off Karate Kid twice, but at least the first time it only took you one issue.) We met the Earth-3 “good guy” version of the Joker. Then they killed him off. Jimmy Olsen fucked a bug. Then the bug dumped him. Then Jimmy Olsen fought Darkseid. Again: Jimmy Olsen fought Darkseid, and they were serious about this, which gives one new respect for George Lucas because as bad as the prequel trilogy was, at least he never had C-3P0 fight the Emperor. And finally, a series ostensibly intended to “count down” to Final Crisis in the end turned out to have absolutely jack shit to do with Final Crisis, which begs the question what the point of this shitty, shitty comic was in the first place.

Four Christmases. I sat through this when a friend of mine’s son and I couldn’t get into The Transporter 3 and we needed to see something. Sitting outside in the cold for two hours would have been preferable to sitting through this lifeless, unfunny waste of time, a movie which just screams out “we only did it for the paycheque” en masse. If I ever see Vince Vaughn in real life, I will punch him in the cock.

Heroes. Okay, yeah, Heroes always sucked, but I am gratified that this was finally the year where everybody else figured out that it sucked too. Masi Oka, one of the few actors on this show capable of more than two facial expressions, got saddled with plotlines and dialogue apparently designed to make everybody hate his character. (It worked!) The writers continue to come up with new ways to not deal with the fact that right out of the gate they created three characters (Sylar, Hiro and Peter) who are massively overpowered compared to everybody else on the show and who need permanent power-downs or else the show’s idiocy level will rapidly become terminal. Of course, before they do that they need to figure out how to write a basic plot worth a damn. Also, if I ever see the guy who plays Mohinder in real life, I will punch him in the cock too.

The AI in Call of Duty: World at War. When I play the solo mode I want to really feel like I’m in the middle of the biggest war of all time. This is tricky when you have American GIs and Japanese banzai solders shooting at their respective opponents while standing literally shoulder-to-shoulder because the GIs are stuck in “shoot pointlessly at enemy” and the Japanese are stuck in “shoot pointlessly at you.” Do not even get me started on the Russians and their propensity to throw grenades at the same time they’re calling for you to charge something.

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Introduced “nuked the fridge” into common parlance to complement “jumped the shark,” wherein the former means “movie franchise jumping from beloved icon to joke nigh-instantaneously,” but the phrase could have just as easily been “swing with the monkeys” or “watch the alien spaceship.” This movie is stupid, where previous Indy movies were so pointedly not, and that is the greatest disappointment imaginable. Shia Labeefs’ status as “Next Big Thing In Hollywood, No Really, We Mean It” aside, he sucked in this. Of course, everybody else sucked in it too – even Harrison Ford for god’s sake – so he’ll probably be fine.

DCU: Decisions. What was the point of this comic, anyway? Never mind that simply getting Judd “I’m A Liberal!” Winick and Bill “I’m a Conservative!” Willingham to tag-team-write a comic doesn’t actually ensure any sense of political balance so much as it boils down political positions to ludicrous cariacature (Lois Lane and Power Girl are Republicans because they’re for “strong national defense,” and Green Arrow is a Democrat because he’s a big enviro-hippie!). Forget that the plot made no sense. But seriously, who was going to care about this comic when real life was more important and interesting than figuring out who Batman would vote for? (And before anybody says “well, they scheduled it months before anybody knew Obama was going to be a candidate” – whatever, any real American election would be more interesting than this comic.)

The third season of Dexter. Oh man I have never seen a show go this badly off the rails before. What was previously sharp and savage got dull and indulgent real goddamned fast. And Jimmy Smits? Jimmy Smits is never bad in anything. What the hell happened? Did they put something in his water? Who is poisoning the waters of Jimmy Smits? I will discover who is doing this thing, and I will harm them!

“I Kissed A Girl” by Katy Perry. Any music critic talking about this piece of shit being “catchy” is trying to earn populist cred. Sometimes shitty popular songs are just that and nothing else. The only thing more annoying than the chorus and the lyrics was the ginned-up “controversy” about Katy Perry (WHO IS TOTALLY STRAIGHT EVERYBODY AND IT IS JUST A SONG) endorsing bisexuality. Christ, like James Dobson needed something else to get him hard?

Comics fanboys pre-emptively whining about The Dark Knight getting ignored by the Oscars. Heads up, guys: Heath Ledger is already practically a lock to win Best Supporting and that’s great. But you know what else? The movie is half an hour too long at least, the sonar thing was distracting and hard to watch, and that middle bit where Jim Gordon is dead and Bruce decides to quit being Batman then Harvey says he’s Batman then it turns out it was all a trick to catch the Joker except why did Bruce tell Alfred he was quitting being Batman – that bit made no fucking sense and Christopher Nolan, that clever little bastard, was just figuring we’d all cream our pants over everything else so much we wouldn’t notice and he was mostly right about that. The Dark Knight is a good movie, close to being a great one, but it wasn’t even the best superhero movie this year (that would be Iron Man). So please shut the fuck up.