Thanks. I usually avoid that one.
They did him dirty.
The sitcom Outsourced was based on a movie of the same name. The movie was much better. (For one thing, it was actually filmed in India but the TV show faked it.)
I specifically said that.
NOW YOU’RE JUST NITPICKING THE TERMINOLOGY I HAPPENED TO USE. In which case you’re incorrect, he’s not homosexual, he’s pansexual, openly and proudly. We’ve seen him have romantic encounters with Stevie, Patrick, Jake and in his wine speech he references a transsexual man as well as someone else, though I’m not exactly sure what the rosé was in that analogy.
But, yes, I used “lifestyle” as a catchall word to mean everything that makes David Schitt David Schitt. His style of clothes (like wearing a leather sweater in the dead of summer), his sexuality, his sibling rivalry with Alexis, his various relationships with other members of the town, even something like Patrick’s (female) fiance showing up at the motel. It’s all things that a character like Roland (or the people one might associate with a small town in the middle of nowhere) would have given him hard time about, even if he was just joking.
But, in any case, the point I was making is that Dan Levy wrote the script in such a way that those type of people, people that would make his life more difficult, simply don’t exist in the Schitt’s Creek Universe. Similarly, if someone wanted to do an updated version of Green Acres, it could easily be made apolitical. Just because someone might associate farmers with being right wing gun toting assholes, doesn’t mean it’s required to be that way in a show you create.
You would’ve have to use his cluelessness to punch up, not down.
“What do you mean I have to pay the doctor?”
Psst … it’s David Rose.
Is that really the joke? I never caught that.
Every time I watch that scene and he says “And I’ve been known to sample the occasional rosé” I assume he’s talking about a transsexual, but then he says “And a couple summers back, I tried a Merlot that used to be a Chardonnay”, which would be a transsexual man, which then makes the rosé line not make sense, and then the part about the wine and not the label and by then I’ve forgotten about it and we’re on to the next scene.
But yeah, that makes more sense. I never would have put that together.
I mentioned “Friday the 13th-The Series” in the “Forgotten shows” thread. I’ll mention it here too.
I sure didn’t. It’s been a while, but as I recall my own reaction to that episode, it was more “David doesn’t know his wines, but is trying to sound like he does.” If there was anything else there, it went over my head.
The only joke involving names that I’m aware of involves the Schitt family There’s Roland Schitt (“roll in shit”), Jocelyn Schitt (“jostle in shit”), and Mutt Schitt (obvious).
I did appreciate that when Johnny Rose and Stevie Budd joined forces to run the motel, they called it “Rosebud Motel.” But that’s not a joke; I have a feeling that that motel name was planned from the beginning, and that’s why the characters got those surnames. Including all of Johnny’s family.
Your wish is (possibly) granted.
London Hughes is English, so that’s the foreigner angle covered. Doubtful that a broad caricature like Balki would work anymore.
Then you missed Stevie’s question to David in the wine store that led to David’s wine analogy.
I’ve occasionally wondered if someone could do a serious reboot of Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie, or any of the other high-concept sitcoms of the '60s.
There was a movie version of Bewitched, from 2005, with Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, in which the premise was they were making a reboot of the TV show, and the actress playing Samantha turned out to be an actual witch. (It was pretty bad, IMO.)
They could do some version of Bewitched in which Sam practices seriously evil witchcraft, like in that National Lampoon parody from way back in the 1970s. Bernie Wrightson drew i, and it ends up with Sam, Endora, and Darren tied to a stake about to be burned:
Well. OK, maybe that’s a little too dark. But a little edginess would help. Have a look at the 1942 film I Married a Witch, probably the inspiration for Bewitched
I remember that one, but haven’t seen it. It was still a comedy, as I recall. I was thinking of a serious reboot, in the same way that the rebooted Battlestar Galactica took its source material seriously.
That one I have seen; managed to be a comedy without becoming a complete farce. The problem with IDoJ and Bewitched was that they relied so heavily on Tony and Darren going to such ridiculous lengths to keep things a secret. A reboot should turn that around. Make it Sam (or Jeannie) that will do anything to keep their secret, and Darren knows that if he tells anyone they won’t believe him anyway. Maybe there is still a way to do that as a comedy, but it wouldn’t be easy to strike the right balance.
I agree, and I think it has been a mistake they’ve made in the past. How about this? “X-Files” is a deep cover, special unit. Our two new, young stars have a powerful extraterrestrial experience, and they are deemed as excellent candidates to be read into and become part of this special unit. That means more than just two people, constantly. It will involve a team, a la “NCIS”. This will provide more variety and plot opportunities.
Yeah, that part was pretty clear. And done really well IMO. In fact, the phrase “I like the wine and not the label” almost instantly started showing up everywhere after that episode. T-shirts, posters, framed pictures, decals etc etc etc.
In general I like that idea, but if too many people know, I think it loses its edge.
A comparison would be season 1 vs season 2 of The Invaders. Having someone in government be on the ball and “believe” is good, but if everyone does, then you have no “mystery”. I don’t know where the balance point would be but I’d hope the writers would find it.
For a re-boot of X-Files, just get rid of the Grand Conspiracy plot-lines. Just stick with the Night Stalker-style, stand-alone episodes, where they would be investigating a crime, and the criminal would turn out to be a monster. Those episodes were great. (It’s too bad that Darren McGavin refused to play Kolchak when he did a guest shot.)
Agree 100%. In the revival, the conspiracy episodes were absolute crap, with the exception of the one that started out like a monster-of-the-week and eventually revealed the MotW was the ScullyMuldarWonderBabyAllGrownUp - that one kind of worked. But, in the second (11th?) season, I really enjoyed almost all of the monster-of-the-week episodes.
Alternately, work out in advance what the conspiracy is and where the story is going. The first run arc was intriguing up until about Season 4, then it got too unwieldy with the “simultaneously reveal one answer and introduce two new questions because our ratings are still good and we got renewed again so we can’t wrap anything up yet and have to keep making up shit” nonsense.