Way back in September, Kyle, Friend of the Faux Katie, and I attended a taping of the Parker Posey/Lauren Ambrose/Amy Sherman-Palladino sitcom The Return of Jezebel James. I’m excited to say that the episode we saw is airing tonight! (Unless they cancel the show between now and 8:30. Which is… possible.)

This is our episode! That kid with the horns on the right is based on this kid.

Living in New York, and in the age of the single-camera sitcom, we don’t get a lot of opportunity to see scripted shows being taped. I’ve been to the Daily Show, which was awesome, but it was also remarkably similar to sitting at home watching the Daily Show (for example, it took almost exactly a half hour to tape). Seeing Jezebel James taping was completely different and fascinating. Watching the crew at work, manipulating these giant cameras at insane speeds and making instant decisions and changes and improvements, was like watching a whole other show in addition to the one being taped. I loved it. I could’ve stayed there all night just to watch them do their jobs.

… Which is good, because the taping went until after 1:00 AM! Keep in mind these numbers: Taping began at around 7:00. About 8-10 minutes of the show had been previously recorded. That means that we spent 6+ hours taping 12-14 minutes of actual show. Now, if this were a movie, that might not be so insane. But according to the audience’s cheesy host/comedian(?), who’s been a host/comedian(?) at dozens of tapings of many shows, in his experience, this was the latest a sitcom taping had ever gone. (Also, his family owns Town Shop. FYI.)

Like I said, I had no problem with this, because I was loving the whole experience. However, it did not bode well for the show. The problem seemed to be the house style of dialogue, those lovely convoluted twisty-turny sentences that tripped so lightly off of Lauren Graham’s tongue. Apparently, not everyone is so adept at turning the Palladino witticisms into natural speech. I adore Parker Posey, and she was delightful to watch, but it was not a natural fit for her — not the speeded-up rhythms of taping a TV show, not the mouthfuls of dialogue, not the increasingly late and exhausting night. Not any of it, really.

Her assistant was our favorite. Great timing. Get that guy his own show!

I’m very curious how it all turned out. Critics and audiences don’t seem to like it so far. For the crews doing overtime last September, that may turn out to be a relief. But for poor me who likes seeing TV being taped, that’s a shame.

So is anyone going to watch tonight? I’d recommend it, even though it’s not a slam dunk show. It’s worth taking a look, and not just because you may hear my laughter.

Hello world! Dan’s post about accents has inspired me to get back on these interwebs and talk about New Amsterdam. Specifically, why I am not going to watch New Amsterdam any more.

On the plus side, he wears awesome three-piece suits.

If you’ve been following the show, you already know it’s about a dude (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who’s immortal and who currently works as a homicide detective. He has a sassy lady cop sidekick, a sassy ancient bartender/son, and a cute doggy who I believe he just calls “36,” presumably in reference to however many dogs he’s had in his long, long life. He won’t be free of immortality until he finds true love, or something. (I don’t know. That part’s still being hashed out. He seems to have found the girl and she’s into him. Do they need to have sex? Get married? Does she actually have to pull the trigger?) In the meantime he solves crimes and forces us through ridiculous flashbacks that usually involve some sort of antiquated facial hair.

The best thing about the show, that kept me interested for three whole episodes (I missed the one they unexpectedly ran on a Thursday), is that he tells the truth. When asked if he’s ever been married, he says 7 or 8 times. When asked if he thinks about changing careers, he says about every 10 years. When asked why he knows so much arcane crap about New York, he says it’s because he was there. This is kind of fun.

However, I’m giving it up. I don’t normally get offended at my TV (except at bad writing), but last night’s “honor killing” episode was so patently absurd and insulting to an entire culture that I could barely believe it was happening. In the episode, an Indian woman gets raped, and then her father kills her for sullying the family name. This is ridiculous and contrived, and just not right.

Also, and I can’t stress this enough, I can’t understand half of what Amsterdam says. This accent is… inexplicable. The best I can describe is that it’s early Marlon Brando/Eastern European/Southern gentleman/Brooklyn old-timer. I just can’t understand him. I can only imagine how tough he is to comprehend without our marvelous 5.1 surround sound.

IMDB tells me the actor is Danish. That explains it a little bit. But it still does not explain why Amsterdam, the character, has such a bizarre accent. He is adorable, don’t get me wrong. But I am not a crotchety old lady (usually), and this show is turning me into one.

Basically, I’m over all this new stuff. I just want the old shows back again.

If you’ve ever watched TV with me, you’ll know I have a pathological need to identify every minor actor that appears on screen, whether it’s a background player in a Reebok ad or the latest corpse in Law and Order. After last night, though, I may want to retire my skills, because I proudly identified this guy in the fourth quarter Amp ad, and I don’t think I’ll ever have a better ID moment for as long as I live. [kml_flashembed movie="http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf" width="430" height="346" fvars="m=27487205;type=video" wmode="transparent" /]

Have you watched it?

Okay.

It’s Donkey Lips from Salute Your Shorts.

You’re welcome.

Favorite ad? Justin Timberlake. Least favorite ad? The peanut one with the unibrow lady. Honorable mention? The e-trade baby.

If you’re interested in the actual sports “plays,” that bit near the end when Eli Manning escaped a million defenders by the skin of his teeth — that was pretty great. Go Giants!

These pop-ups are like closed captioning for stupid people.

What can I say? I love the robots and the fighting and the time travel. I know I haven’t seen a lot of new TV lately, so you might start to question my judgment, but I still think that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is one of the best, most promising new shows of this season.

(Up front: I’ve never been obsessed with the Terminator movies — I’ve seen them each once — but I think they’re good fun. Except for the third one, which was disappointing. You don’t have to be a superfan to like the show. But knowing about the movies — a cursory glance at wikipedia will do — may help.)

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I will rave a bit.

…so I can complain about terrible punctuation in an episode of Ugly Betty.

In last week’s episode, Daniel decides to do an alternative runway show. He makes the invitations himself. Unfortunately, the invitations say:

FASHION GET’S REAL

I almost fell out of my chair, because I am nerd and this is the type of thing that appalls me. No one read the invitation before putting it on air? The director? The actors? The producers? The studio people? No one? Really?

Instead of screaming and tearing her hair at this infuriating misuse of an apostrophe, Betty hugs Daniel. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the least believable thing this show — which once set a paintball fight in an office, and frequently has characters meet in a secret hidden love dungeon — has ever done.

This is what happens when the writers go on strike and the graphics department is left to its own devices. Or should I say “device’s”? Or “it’s”?

I feel dirty just typing that, even in jest.

Last night, when I wasn’t fast-forwarding through the already abbreviated Globes (as Kyle mentioned, my goal was to never hear Billy Bush speak extemporaneously, and I succeeded), I caught the premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I have to say, I thought it was tops. A solid A- pilot. The second “premiere hour” is tonight, so do take a look.

The story takes place between movies two and three. For those who have only seen each movie once (or never), that means that future Savior of All Mankind, John Connor, is about 15. He’s played by Thomas Dekker, who you may remember from the Zach-is-gay-no-he’s-not controversy of early Heroes episodes. He has a good sense of earnest whinyness, and he looks convincingly enough like a cross between young Edward Furlong (movie 2) and youngish Nick Stahl (movie 3). His mother, as played by Lena Headey, maintains the suspicious toughness of the movie Sarah — and her horrible haircut. I was relieved that they cast someone who can pull off the toughness, unlike the pasty and meek Bionic Woman.

But all of that’s just window dressing for the plot, which I won’t get into here because it genuinely surprised me last night and I don’t want to ruin it. Like any story involving time travel, this one’s convoluted and paradoxical, but it’s trying something new — and it’s different enough from the movie to be fresh and interesting. Suffice to say, there are good robots and there are bad robots, and there are people who are going to blow up the world, and it’s exciting and full of questions. (For example — don’t read this if you don’t want a mild spoiler — why would Future John Connor send Young John Connor a sexy young lady robot to protect him? Is he messing with his younger self? He is, isn’t he?)

Also, a robot said “Come with me if you want to live.” Always a great line.

I like to think I would’ve picked this one, personally.

And definitely not Sweet P or Victorya’s. Maybe the fun of Kit’s or the structured-ness of Jillian’s would have caught my 18-year-old eye, but who knows.

Tim, as usual, offers his measured take on the prom dresses here. Then come back and tell me which you’d choose.

The Wire’s fifth and final season begins this Sunday. I even signed up for HBO so I could watch it as it aired. Congrats to HBO for earning my patronage — it wasn’t Sex and the City or the Sopranos or even poor murdered Deadwood, it was The Wire that did it.

The first episode has been available on HBO on Demand all week, so I’ve, like, totally already seen it, and it is the greatest television show ever. I will say no more.

A scene from last night’s Project Runway…

Michael Kors: That looks like Barney Rubble.

Maggie and Kyle, turning to each other: Trouble?

I then spent the rest of the episode swearing that if Rami didn’t win it would be a travesty of justice and the end of Project Runway and me forever. His candy dress was one of the best-looking things I’ve ever seen on the show. Thankfully, I didn’t have to write any angry letters.

I’m not sure I would’ve booted Elisa if I were the judges. Sure, her dress was gross-looking, but this is at least the second time that Sweet P has brought out something that looks like crumpled paper and in no way fit, at all. And it would have been thematically appropriate to get rid of someone with “sweet” in her name. What do you think?