Hi kids, thanks to a mysterious pain of the abdomen that may or may not be chronic appendicitis, I’ve been sitting on the couch watching television and the occasional movie for three weeks straight. And I’ve started to ask myself a seemingly blasphemous question. Sorry to get all “Tifaux Quarterly” on you, but is television funnier than film? I decided a long time ago that I wanted to make movies, and I wanted them to be funny. But lately I’ve been coming up against this problem: where do I go for inspiration? And the answer these days is television. Arrested Development (R.I.P.(?)) The Office, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, even The Simpsons from time to time, are where interesting comedy is happening. Look at the past year’s theatrical comedy releases and you see a bit of a wasteland. Sure the hits like 40 Year Old Virgin and Wedding Crashers were funny, but there was nothing particularly special or interesting about them. They were just fun and raunchy. Probably the best comedy film released last year was The Aristocrats which has the special distinction of being nearly impossible to show on television. It was a truly hilarious and introspective look at the art of joke telling. I left that theater feeling like I had learned something.

And I guess that’s what it comes down to. I don’t learn anything from funny movies these days. I learn a lot from Arrested Development. The art of the callback was never used so well. Forget about the rule of three, those guys taught me the rule of 30.

But you can’t pull off something like that in a film. There’s a freedom of experimentation that you get when you have over 8 hours of time to work with these characters every year for many years (if you’re lucky). The complexity of the situations can play out over a much longer period of time, which can lead to better and more excruciating forms of embarrassment. Of course you can get to a point where the situations are bled dry (The Simpsons, I’m looking in your direction) and at that point it’s best to throw in the towel. The British almost get it right with their limited series, but they’re often too restrictive. I would love to have twice as much of Basil Fawlty even though it probably would have killed John Cleese. Something like the three(ish) seasons that Arrested Development had is a nice balance.

But you can’t make an 8 hour comedy film. That would suck. You have 90-120 minutes in a comedy to set up your situations and play them out. The answer to that problem ought to be sequels right? If television just gets better as the series continues (until it peaks and gets stale after the writers exhaust their ideas or bow to network pressure to finally get those crazy kids in bed) why is it so hard to make a good sequel to a funny movie? I can’t think of any great comedy sequels since After the Thin Man. Or God forbid great TV shows adapted from movies. Actually there is one. Buffy The Vampire Slayer. But Party Girl the series? Ferris Bueller the series? My Big Fat Greek Life? (ok, bad example since it was adapted from a terrible movie whose success only proves my point) obviously disasters from the start. Oh, and M*A*S*H (the series) is allegedly hilarious, but I didn’t grow up in the 70s and I’ve never really understood it.

Maybe this is on my mind because when I stop being sick I’m going back to work on what I think will be a great sequel, Hal Hartley’s Fay Grim which is a sequel to his 1997 film Henry Fool. It’s made for the right reasons, which is unusual for a sequel. It’s not about cashing in on the (modest) success of the original, it’s about exploring the characters further and telling an interesting story. You don’t even need to have seen Henry Fool to enjoy Fay Grim but you enjoy it even more if you have. It’s not really a comedy, but the funny parts do tend to come from Hal’s (and the audience’s) deep familiarity with the characters.

So what’s wrong with comic filmmakers these days? Where’s our new Woody Allen? Where’s our old Woody Allen for that matter? I refuse to believe that guy doesn’t have another incredible comedy like Manhattan or Bullets Over Broadway in him. Even the Coen brothers have disappointed lately. The giants of film comedy are letting me down. Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry have done some great stuff with Charlie Kaufman’s screenplays, and I’m still holding out for Judd Apatow or Mike White’s film masterpiece. And David O. Russell is on his way too. But I don’t see the breadth of talent that I see almost every night on TV.

Since this is a TV blog I figure our readers are probably already on board with this idea, but I want to ask the question to you anyway. Is there something I’m missing? Are the great comedy films out there but I’m just not going to the right film festivals? The film festivals I go to are dominated by angst. Where’s the funny?

I really wasn’t planning on watching Top Chef — the reality cooking show that took Project Runway’s spot after its season finale. I mean, it’s like when you’re a kid and you drop your ice cream and start crying. Your mom says “we’ll get you another one” but you can’t be consoled. You start sniffling and sobbing and shouting “I don’t want another one! I want THAT one!”

So imagine my surprise, when I tune in (because there really isn’t anything else on at that time) and find that it’s actually a pretty watchable show. Let’s not get crazy — it doesn’t hold a candle to Heidi and company, but the contestants are lively and the challenges are interesting.

Last week’s episode, “Food of Love,” was reasonably disturbing, seeing as how it involved some dominatrix judging the sexiness of the various dishes. Scarily enough, the top prize went to this dude for a sampling of desserts called The Total Orgasm (basically, it was cream puffs and jello).

This week’s challenge: get eight-year-olds to eat monkfish. The obvious answer? Fry the shit out of them.

The contestants are all pretty interesting, but there aren’t that many who really demand your attention (i.e. Santino). In any case, here are a few:

Stephen is the kind of reality show jerk where, at the reunion show, will say the oft-repeated phrase, “I didn’t come here to make friends, I came here to win” in an attempt to justify their assy behavior. Presumably, this even applies to the unnecessarily catty comments made during interviews.

Candice, who is 23, doesn’t stand much of a chance of winning, it seems, but last night she got into a screaming match with Stephen and called him a douchebag. And it was every bit as awesome as you’d expect it to be.

Other fun characters include Dave (the gayest gay that ever gayed), Lee Anne (who is pretty much awesome, and manages to pull off the tough-talking persona without being an ass — a rare feat) and Tiffani (who sucks). Last night, Cynthia left the competition because her father was dying and it was a rare sad moment in reality TV. Sad, as in actually sad, and not as in “Jodi, I can’t vote Ibis into the Gauntlet because she was on my season of Road Rules! What am I going to DO!”

One of the show’s big weaknesses is host Katie Lee Joel — who is as pretty as a peach and has just as much charisma. While watching the show, it’s really easy to forget that she’s involved with the production at all, and when she comes up to take a bite of someone’s Tomato Succo with Octopus Frit you suddenly realize the show actually has a host.

At first I wondered why they would get a fairly generic pretty girl to host a cooking show. Then, I read her Bravo bio, only to discover that Katie Lee Joel is married to none other than Billy Joel. First off, ew! Secondly, at least this makes sense in that it was just a little case of nepotistic ladder-climbing. You would have thought that they would find some celebrity chef to do it (Bobby Flay, Molto Mario or, sigh, my Tyler) or at least someone who didn’t look exactly like one of the judges.

Once again, Veronica’s detecting skills got slammed in the mystery of the week. This time she made a bunch of mistaken assumptions about a fleeing bride. But who can blame her, really, as these one-offs are only increasing in their twist-and-turniness to the point that it’s impossible to tell who paid who to do what?

(I know a lot of people don’t watch this show. I think you should, and I’m going to write about it anyway [high five, Dan] but it’s not like it’s easy to get into at this point. Even with a full 5 minutes of “Previously on Veronica Mars…” Those five minutes seemed particularly excessive, by the way, and not very helpful. Anyway, I’d recommend stop reading right now and go rent the first season DVDs, then join up again next week. You will not regret it.)

These types of twists and coincidences are only fleetingly entertaining, like the solutions to a Encyclopedia Brown mystery. When the bride shows up on her wedding day to foil the plans of her dastardly fiance, I want to know why this is awesome. I don’t want to be wondering who these people are, what they’re waiting for, and if the fiance’s father is the farmer from Babe. (He isn’t.) The cheap twists don’t ring true on a character level — they just earn a small smile at the writer’s ingenuity, not at Veronica’s cleverness. I want to live vicariously through Veronica’s cleverness, dammit!

All I can say is Veronica better sharpen up, post-haste, because things seem to be getting interesting (or at least intriguing) in all the everyone’s-on-trial-for-murder plots. In last night’s episode, Kendall, by request of Aaron Echolls (hi Aaron! how’s jail?), either deposited or removed something from Logan’s shower drain. I’m going to make my prediction now — I’M MAKING A PREDICTION! — and say she was removing some hair so that Aaron can somehow frame Logan for Lily’s murder. Because that’s the type of caring, selfless father he is. Who wouldn’t sacrifice your son for the sake of your own neck? After driving your wife to suicide? And screwing and murdering your son’s girlfriend?

But we know what that means… Veronica will have to prove, again, that Logan didn’t murder Lily, and that Aaron did. Hooray! It’s Season One again! Forget about Logan’s other trial, or the bus crash — let’s just continually re-hash Lily’s murder. There has to be more we don’t know about this girl. Where’s the secret diary and the psychotic shut-ins and the gigs as a prostitute, a la Laura Palmer? If this show takes one lesson from Twin Peaks, it should be that there’s always more to learn about messed-up teenagers.

And if it takes two lessons from Twin Peaks, the second should be to slow the fuck down with the constant barrage of possibly meaningless info. Or at least pace yourselves. Agent Cooper could at least enjoy a cup of coffee before trying to process some crazy shit the log lady said. I get exhausted just looking at Veronica, sometimes. She’s top of her class, works after school at a coffeeshop, goes to all Wallace’s basketball games, solves various minor mysteries, and helps out her dad on the big cases. No wonder her judgment’s occasionally off.

I don’t know about you, but when I was in high school, I could barely manage to have a normal conversation with a boy or dress myself properly, let alone attempt to figure out what was wrong with other people’s lives and put people in jail. Which is part of the reason I like the show. I have faith that even though Veronica’s making a bit of an ass of herself so far this year, she will eventually get it together and tell everyone what they’ve been doing wrong. In a nice or funny way, of course.