About meekthegeek

Writer, animal lover, environmentalist, pop culture fanatic, and Star Wars fan.

The Munsters

Posted on November 27, 2011 by meekthegeek

Growing up, I’m sure I caught reruns of The Munsters now and then but they didn’t make much of an impression. I basically thought of them as the other Addams Family. The two shows actually ran during the same two seasons (1964-1966). Guess they were the Once Upon a Time and Grimm of their day.

The show was produced by Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, creators of Leave it to Beaver. They seem to have drawn on their background with that show, preserving the familial love, but hightening and spoofing it.

The premise for The Munsters doesn’t need much explanation; it’s about a family of old horror movie-esqe monsters. As the pilot opens, we first meet Marilyn (Beverly Owen), a normal, pretty blonde young woman, kissing her date goodnight on the front porch. Marilyn explains that the couple she lives with are her aunt and uncle, with whom she has lived since she was a baby. She frets about introducing her date, Tom, to her family, and Tom invites all of them to a party his parents are throwing. Continue reading →

Family Guy: Back to the Pilot

Posted on November 22, 2011 by meekthegeek

If, like me, you have given up on Family Guy, you probably didn’t bother to watch the Nov. 20 episode. The show has become really repetitive and juvenile. They even managed to F up Star Wars–their Return of the Jedi episode, “It’s a Trap,” was terrible. Here is a good article from 2009 about the show’s decline. Continue reading →

American Gothic

Posted on November 20, 2011 by meekthegeek

Okay, it’s compare-and-contrast time. American Horror Story fans, meet American Gothic. I’ve been thinking there is a resemblance there, beyond just the title, and the recent addition of enigmatic Sarah Paulson to the cast of the former prompted me to finally write this.

Let’s start with the subject matter. Subverting the archetype of the happy American family has been done in practically every genre of entertainment, but works especially well for horror. The idea of evil lurking beneath the facade of normalcy may be what scares us more than anything. Continue reading →

Unaired Sesame Street Pilot Clip

Posted on November 16, 2011 by meekthegeek

I love discovering unaired pilots, even just clips of them. There is a story circulating the interwebs about how Sesame Street is searching for “the missing Gordon,” and they’ve posted this clip in hopes of finding him. I don’t really care if they find him. I’m just excited to see a clip from an unaired Sesame Street pilot! If you grew up in the 1970s there’s a real heartstring-tugging moment in here… you’ll see what I mean.

Point of Attack, or Where to Start your Pilot

Posted on November 12, 2011 by meekthegeek

Anyone sitting down to write a story, whether it’s for television or any other medium, has to decide where to start. It seems like a simple question. You start at the beginning.

A protagonist’s story arguably starts from the moment of his or her birth, or earlier. So for purposes of this discussion we’ll call the beginning the “inciting incident” that kicks off the action of the story at hand. The inciting incident can happen before or after the camera begins to roll, however, giving the writer choices to make about Point of Attack. Continue reading →

21 Jump Street

Posted on November 10, 2011 by meekthegeek

Even for the ’80s the 21 Jump Street theme song is cheesy. Its peppy, synthesized beat puts one more in the frame of mind to watch teenagers dance on cafeteria tables than to witness the solving of gritty, hard core crimes. Most of Part 1 of this 2-part pilot, however, sets the tone for a run-of-the-mill procedural. A young, hot-headed new cop (Johnny Depp) is out to prove himself as worthy as his dead cop father and is paired with a cranky old partner (Barney Martin), months from retirement.

“It seems you like to roll in hot and kick tails,” the older cop barks. “…’Cause with that baby face you got everybody’s been kicking yours since the seventh grade.” Continue reading →

American Horror Story

Posted on October 24, 2011 by meekthegeek

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a pilot that convinced me that the ensuing show was going to be something different. American Horror Story employs a lot of conventions we’ve seen before, yet this episode completely held my attention. I can’t exactly say I loved it–it’s no The Walking Dead, the brilliance of which I will never shut up about–but it has that thing. I can’t help but compare it to Locke & Key, which was screened at Comic-Con this year but never actually made it TV. The powerful aesthetic of American Horror Story (on FX) further convinced me that Locke & Key failed only because it was shopped to the wrong network, but I digress… Continue reading →

Dream On

Posted on October 10, 2011 by meekthegeek

“I’m sick of my generation being called the TV Generation. ‘All you guys did was watch TV.’ What’d you expect? We watched Lee Harvey Oswald get shot live on TV one Sunday morning. We were afraid to change the channel for the next 25 f***ing years.” – Dennis Leary

Martin Tupper, as the main title sequence of 1990’s Dream On demonstrates, is squarely within Dennis Leary’s “TV Generation.” We see the legs of a 1950s housewife as she plops her baby down in front of the black-and-white television set. Three different kids play the growing Martin, as he stares transfixed at the set over the years. Continue reading →

New Girl

Posted on September 27, 2011 by meekthegeek

Just in case you’re not one of the reported 10 million people who tuned in for the much-ballyhooed premiere of New Girl last week, here’s the deal. It’s terrible. Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh, but as someone who loves most of Zooey Deschanel‘s work going back to Almost Famous, I found this show to be a huge disappointment. You can pick apart whether the jokes are cliche or the characters are likeable, but I don’t generally expect much from network sit-coms in that regard.

My main problem: Why Dirty Dancing? What is the fascination with that movie? And is Zooey’s character Jess even old enough to remember it?? It came out in 1987, and she’s probably supposed to be 30, tops, so what exactly is her attachment to a trite film about a skeevy old guy (no disrespect to the late Patrick Swayze, who played said skeevy old guy) preying upon an idealistic teenager wearing Keds? Continue reading →

Will It Fly?

Posted on September 24, 2011 by meekthegeek

When I first heard that the movie Source Code, which I haven’t seen but which looks pretty cool, is being developed for TV, my instinctive first question was, “What network?” (The answer is CBS.) Because, with sci-fi and genre TV, the network is everything. It will largely determine how the material will be handled and whether it will succeed. Continue reading →

Anatomy of a Pilot

A gooey dissection of television pilot episodes.

Author Archives: meekthegeek