Because You Asked What I Think About...Family Tree

Family Tree is the new HBO show created by Christopher Guest (of This Is Spinal Tap, Waiting For Guffman, Best In Show, For Your Consideration, etc) and starring Chris O'Dowd (of The IT Crowd, Bridesmaids, and general adorableness) as a man who starts searching out bits of his family history.  It's quirky in a delightfully non-hipster way, and like all of Guest's work it's imbued with his unique charm while still being entirely its own piece of work.  The half-hour television structure is working well, and the actors we've seen so far (some familiar Guest faces like Michael McKean, some new ones) are flat-out superb and quietly hilarious.  O'Dowd's sister Bea (Nina Conti) and Monkey are some of my favorite new characters in recent memory.  Suffice to say, if you've enjoyed any of Christopher Guest's work in the past, you'll adore this, and if you're new to him than this is a lovely entry-point.  Funny, self-effacing, weird, and relatable, it's my favorite new show of the year.  The opposite of a disappointment.  Family Tree!  Go watch and tell your friends and make sure it doesn't get Enlightened.

Image via LATimes

Veep Life

So, in all of the miserable hubbub about Girls, no one is talking about Veep.  Well, not no one, I heard a thing about it on NPR, but you know what I mean.  But, hey!  Guess what?  Veep is fantastic!

I should have started by mentioning that this show co-stars Tony Hale, and obviously anything Tony Hale touches turns to beautiful gold, including that episode of Dawson's Creek where he tells Dawson he has to pull the old man's plug or when he was the amazing ceramics teacher on Community ("No Ghosting!").  So it should come as no surprise to anyone that his role on an HBO comedy is anything other than perfection.

And, oh!  Julia Louis-Dreyfus!  I mean, talk about women in comedy.  It might be a little unfair to compare Veep to Girls, but too bad so sad, they're on the same night on the same channel so I'ma do whatever I want.  Whereas Hannah in Girls is relentlessly pathetic and trying so hard to be REAL that she becomes REALly unbearable, Veep's Selena is flawed in some charming ways of which she seems hyper-aware yet simultaneously totally oblivious, but her shortcomings only make her more likable and relatable (which, sadly, is I believe what Dunham was trying to achieve). And just the fact that Veep's cast has an authentic gender-balance, actual characters of color, and shows a woman holding a serious position of power (and yet simultaneously no power at all because being the Vice President sucks) in our government makes in miles better in terms of "women characters on television" than anything I saw on Girls.  Point made, contradictions left unexplained, let's move on.

Alcatraz!

I feel like Alcatraz should always be pronounced the way that Gob Bluth pronounces Michael's name when he thinks he's escaping to Portugal down ol' South America way: "Michael!"