Television Can Blow Me (22 page)

The rebellion succeeds. The house of Battyarsetits falls. The Roman soldiers are served Julienne style over cinnamon rice. The adjoining villa looks like it’s been attacked by a giant food processor. They have indeed killed them all. The brothers are free, free at last. So now what?

That’s for season two to decide (clue: mountain retreat then marching on Rome) but for now let’s give props to a terrific show that got better with each episode. Lurid to a fault, preposterous throughout and amped to its eyeballs it slowly began to mould its obvious influences into something unique. The show is a lot smarter than it looks. It takes considerable skill to pick up the number of loose threads it left dangling going into this finale and tie them all up without sacrificing credibility, character or story yet they do it brilliantly.

Starz showed their faith in a show by commissioning a second season before the first even premiered. Production was delayed as the (excellent) actor playing Spartacus, Andy Whitfield, underwent treatment for cancer. Aerial Telly wishes him a speedy recovery and grants the show his blessing and endorsement. How can it now fail?

The verdict on Spartacus: Blood and Sand Season 1 finale “Kill Them All”:
Thrilling end to an impressive season.

Marks out of 10:
8

True Blood Season 2 finale

Michelle Forbes is a beast. Does anyone play villains with such relish? Would anyone dare? She’s been fortunate to get roles as well written as stone hearted war criminal Admiral Cain in Battlestar Galactica and now brings her pagan intensity to batshit crazy Maenad MaryAnn Forrester in True Blood but they were lucky to get her too. The statuesque Texan doesn’t just have something of the night about her. She is the night, the barren winter, handmaid of the Moon. Abandon all hope as ye enter her. She says that she cannot see MaryAnn Forrester as a villain and this is why she’s made True Blood’s second season such a blast.

And fun is what this girl is all about because the Maenad? Something of a party animal. She has Bon Temps literally under her spell with her wild bacchanalian orgies - violence, sodomy, tree fucking, just a few of the vices practised. But don’t just dismiss MaryAnn as some kind of gangbang scenester. Hell, no. She is fixing to bring forth god.

Which god? Why, the GOD WHO COMES. Dionysus to me and you. He and MaryAnn are to be wed and she’s going to offer the human sacrifice of the slightly more than human Sam Merlotte, bartender and shape shifter.

Naturally, we can’t have that so Bill hatches a terrific plan to deliver Sam into the clutches of MaryAnn: let Sam get captured and stabbed, have Sookie create a distraction, feed Sam his blood for a lightning fast recovery, get Sookie chased by MaryAnn, have Sam shapeshift into a celestial looking bull to fool MaryAnn and into thinking her horned god (a.k.a. the GOD WHO COMES) has come among them, take advantage of her excited state by having Sammy the Bull (no, not that one) gore the living shit out of her, impaling her heart and killing her to death

OK, I don’t really know where to begin on the logical, practical and timeline holes in this particular plan but I know my finishing point will be she’s SUPPOSED TO BE FUCKING IMMORTAL. If that was all it took why didn’t you knife her in the tits 12 episodes ago?

While you were at it you could have skewered Jason Stackhouse who continues to be one of TVs most slappable characters. Jason spent much of season two rising through the ranks of the Fellowship of the Sun, the vampophobe God botherers. Jason was treated like a brother by Fellowship head Rev. Steve Newlin and repaid his mentor’s trust and loyalty by getting into his wife’s panties when the first opportunity arose. Thanks, brother!

You can’t really blame Jason (and I like blaming him for everything). It’s not like Sarah Newlin took much persuading and it is very hard to turn down fresh pumpum when it’s placed on such a pretty platter. So fuck Rev Steve just like you fucked his wife, Jase. After all, he was planning to burn Godric alive in that weird ceremony. Godric ended up on a rooftop immolating himself for kicks at sunrise making Eric cry tears of pure blood. It was all quite moving.

That’s melodrama for you - hysteria, romance, heightened reality - making an art of the daft. In that tradition True Blood have turned in an artful, thrilling second season. It’s fitting that most of it revolves around sex because True Blood has always been filth - the filthiest filth currently muddying up our screens. But it’s well written filth so you just can’t resist. Some gibberish, it is so serious.
¹

The verdict on True Blood Season 2 finale:
Oh Maenady, well you came and you gave without taking. But I sent you away.

Marks out of 10:
7.5

¹
Thus spake Frank Black.

Gong intermission

Aerial Telly Awards 2010

Hey cocksmokers. It’s around that time of year where no account TV turkeys vote for Thanksgiving and surf towards the Aerial Telly velodrome for news of the annual awards. At first it’s a trickle but it quickly becomes a cascade as the television industry catches on that the only awards that ever have mattered or ever will matter are online in all their stark pitiless glory. Crippled by anxiety attacks and comfort masturbating as they look for their names, they end up either weeping with relief or screaming in horror as their careers are made and broken before their coke monged eyes. Because Aerial Telly is not some bought and sold TV critic sucking up to celebrity, drinking cocktails with feral TV scum, slurping media jizz as if life itself depended on it. Nor is Aerial Telly some public school fuck who wandered into television criticism by accident because he went to the right college at Oxford. No, Aerial Telly is a savage beast, an untamed, ungovernable monster who builds and destroys reputations like the interventionist God Nick Cave doesn’t believe in.

“Battle anybody - I don’t care who you tell” - thus spake LL Cool J and that’s exactly what you can expect when Aerial Telly is in the place. He doesn’t do telly - he is telly; begotten not made of one being the telly. Fuck you in both eye sockets if you doubt it.

Best show: Breaking Bad, AMC

It could easily have been Boardwalk Empire, Terence Winter’s ultra-slick Prohibition-era period piece, but AMC’s Breaking Bad continued its career through Albuquerque’s drug trade in a stunning third season that saw Walt decline further into moral torpor, revealed more of the intriguingly enigmatic drug lord Gus and introduced us to the terrifying Cousins, the most menacing villains on the box. Ballsy, principled and heartbreaking, the show was as taut and daring as it’s ever been in its three season run. When it dies, let its gravestone read: the show that WENT THERE.

Worst show: FlashForward, ABC

They lost consciousness; we lost our minds. Christ knows it had stiff competition - Phone Shop, The Persuasionists, The Prisoner all drank mare’s piss, swilled, gargled and swallowed - but nothing summed up the malaise of overblown tailspinning television in 2010 like GashBoreward. In taking a promising premise into some of the most fatuous territory television has ever broached, GnashJawMerde was a pioneer of conspiracy shit-eating that blazed a trail for blows like Rubicunt and The Event. In giving another outlet for Dominic Monaghan to creep everybody the fuck out with his goblin ears, SlashBoreturd wrote another chapter in one of the most baffling success stories in Hollywood. Lacking looks, talent and charisma, his career makes Kaspar Hauser’s appearance seem explicable. Sonya Walger’s future knickers of doom couldn’t save MashWhoregurd from its massively deserved shitcanning. Hilariously poor dialogue, Blowhindturd from Heroes style navelgazing and a signature sucky performance from lead acturd Blowseph Whines assured an early bath for BashYourBird and the sense of relief around the shiny planet called Earth was palpable.

Best performance by a male: Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes in Sherlock, BBC

Jon Hamm continued to captivate, Bryan Cranston was electric but Beenadick Cumdumpsnatch pulled off the thesp coup of the year by putting a fresh spin on the done-to-death private dick Sherlcock Blowmes. Charismatic, prickly and borglike, Cumdumpsnatch’s Holmes had a fantastic unpredictable energy. Dangerous, mercurial and whip-smart, he took in every molecule of his environment via his 360° chameleon vision with an arrogance that was engaging, not nausey. Never an easy task but Cummy nailed it as precisely as any acturd ever will.

Best performance by a female: Ruth Wilson as Alice Morgan in Luther, BBC

It was the best of shows, it was the worst of shows, but for the main Luther was a riot - an irresistible pleasure and that was down in no small part to Mad “she’s crazy” Alice played with manic glee by Ruth Wilson. The oddball Hannibal and Clarice relationship she had with John Luther was preposterous, funny and touching and Wilson will never have a better role. Endless Monkfish clichés and moody cop poses couldn’t rustify her love. She knew he was nitroglycerin but she wasnae listening.

Skankiest bangs on TV: Alessandra Torresani

Although Caprica went a little bit shite and couldn’t really complain about its cancellation its star Alessandra Torresani forged a role as a skanky banged, Queen of Slut Town with a series of eye-popping photo shoots and outfits that made her look a proper floozy cooze. No complaints were heard Casa Aerial.

TV pie of the year: Krysten Ritter as Lily Champagne in Gravity, Starz

Torresani may have had the skank but Krysten Ritter had the beauty and the bangs. As suicidal fuckhead Lily Champagne she foxed her way through Starz’s impressive but doomed Gravity with the easy grace you expect from a former boneypie model.

Best writer not called Aerial Telly: Shawn Ryan

When you’ve made the illest cop show in history you could be forgiven for resting on your laurels. But that’s just not how The Shield creator Shawn Ryan rolls. Coming back harder than ever with the magnificent Terriers on FX, Ryan proved once again he is one of the biggest and most slept-on talents in the industry. 2011’s The Chicago Code seems likely to keep his streak going. Beast.

Funniest bastard on the planet: Louis CK

Not content with releasing his kick ass Hilarious live DVD, Boston stand-up Louis CK confirmed his position as the comedian other comedians want to be - the best motherfucker out there - with his consistently brilliant Louie sitcom on Fx. Utterly fearless like a great stand-up should be, Louis CK brought it ‘til it stayed brung in 2010 winning an unlikely but much deserved second season for Louie in 2011.

Most unjustly culled show: Party Down

Balless, soulless, woman abuser Chris Albrecht ruined yet more chick’s lives when he cancelled the unimpeachable Party Down, (co-created by television god Rob Thomas) after taking over at Starz. It got two seasons when it deserved ten. I don’t care if nobody but the cast and crew themselves watched it - it DEMANDED to be made until it bankrupted everyone involved. Its memory lives on. Aerial Telly will keep it alive. Count on it.