2014: The Year in Television

If you know me at all, and you certainly do not, you know I'm a big fan of mankind's greatest invention: television.



No, the other television.

 

There you go!

So without further ado, the Daily Irritant is proud to present The Year in Television!

Newcomer of the Year, Comedy:

Broad City

Ilana and Abby get funnier every week. And Hannibal Burress just keeps killing it.




Runner up: Review with Forrest MacNeil starring Andy Daly who should really have been a star for some time now.






Best Newcomer, Drama:

Tyrant




For some reason, this show doesn't seem to be making anyone elses's top-10 lists, but I really love this show.
Mainly because of this guy:

Ashraf Barhom is just amazing as Jamal, the man who wishes he could be a good person but just can't somehow, which is also a really fascinating character. He makes this show which is good, but not great, mainly because of the producers' decision to focus so much on his brother Bassam/Barry who is much less interesting character. I assume they see him as the Walter White of the show, the guy who starts out with good intentions and becomes corrupted, but Jamal is reaaly where the show's focus needs to be.

Performance of the Year Female: 
Tatiana Masley, Orphan Black 



She plays five totally distinct major characters as well as  the occasional supporting character, at least one of whom is male. She completely disappears  into each character, I have no idea which character she would even resemble in real life. And a lot of scenes involve two or more of her characters talking to each other. Just amazing.

Performance of the Year, Male:
Ashraf Barhom, Tyrant



See above.


Biggest Disappointment:
How to get Away With Murder


I love Scandal.
Love it, love it, love it love it!
So when I heard that Shonda Rhimes had a new show coming out, and it was called "how to get away with murder," I could not wait!


Then I watched it.
Sighhhhh. . .

It's just bad. Just really badly written, badly drawn characters, bad trying-too-hard direction, just bad. A quick IMDb search reveals that Shonda Rhimes did none of the writing on this show. That explains a lot. Because it's just bad.


Best British Series
Call the Midwife
 
No, it's not Downton Abbey this year. It's Call the Midwife. This is a show that by all rights should be insufferably saccharine and corny as hell, but somehow is just the opposite. The tale of young nurses and older nuns providing midwifery services to the residents of an impoverished London neighborhood in the 1950s manages to pull off the impossible. It's a drama with no villain. And it works. Somehow a show whose every character you're likely to fall in love with manages to create tension and suspense. My wife says that poverty and illness are the villains and, as usual, she's right on. Anyway, if you haven't seen this show, you're really missing out.


Most Infuriating Development:
Super Fun Night gets cancelled after one season.
 

Rebel Wilson was one of the best surprises in years, a fresh face with a new style who is consistently funny but also able to bring the heart when needed.

Her two sidekicks were also really good. Screw you, ABC! No wonder no one watches network TV anymore!





Best Reason to sign up for Netflix:
Happy Valley



Great British cop show not available on any channel. Sarah Lancashire is one bad-ass cop. There are only 6 episodes in this mini-series so you can binge watch the entire thing in one rainy afternoon.

Other Shows We've Enjoyed This Year:
The Americans



Maron




Rectify




Fargo



Mainly due to the performances of Billy Bob Thornton and Allison Tolman. Oh, and Colin Hanks. And Martin Freeman. And pretty much the entire cast, although how Keith Carradine keeps getting acting jobs is beyond me.

The Good Wife



Which somehow managed to get even better after killing off love interest/boss Will Gardner which I thought was going to ruin the show. Adding Michael J. Fox certainly helped.

The Returned (Les Revenants)



Technically, this French import is a 2012 show, but we stumbled onto it on Netflix this year and were hooked from episode 1. They're smart enough to keep the mystery going throughout the entire run without (spoiler alert) ever explaining exactly what the hell is going on. That may make the ending a bit unsatisfactory for some, but any explanation they could have come up with would probably have felt even less satisfying, so I think it was a smart move.

Downton Abbey




And I'm sure I'm forgetting a few. If I remember anything else, I'll do a part two tomorrow. But for now I've got to go. I've been away from the TV for too long.

The Weirdest Headline I Have Ever Seen

Wife of freed Cuba agent pregnant, thanks to US

But no, the story is even weirder.

Officials have confirmed that a US senator helped a Cuban spy imprisoned in California to impregnate his wife

 

What? Why is a US Senator helping a Cuban spy with anything? And why is a US Senator helping anyone impregnate anyone? And how is a Us Senator. . . you know what, never mind. I'm pretty sure I don't want to know.

The highly improbable arrangements allowed for Adriana Perez Hernandez to be artificially inseminated months before husband Gerardo Hernandez returned to Cuba to a hero's welcome last Wednesday.
The parents-to-be owe much of their good fortune to Senator Patrick Leahy, who has made several trips to the communist-ruled island over the years.

Apparently, at least one trip with a vial of Cuban spy baby-making stuff!

 

Hernandez was arrested in the United States in 1998 and convicted in 2001 on charges of espionage and conspiracy to murder. He and five other Cubans were sentenced to two life sentences plus 15 years.

But hey, that's no reason a United States Senator shouldn't be jerking you off into a test tube so you can reproduce!

Exploiting Tragedy

On Saturday, two New York police officers were murdered by a scumbag who had just murdered his girlfriend. This is terrible. No one disputes that it is terrible when people are murdered, at least no one at the Chaos Compound. But certain people, certain despicable people, have decided to use this tragic killing as a platform from which to try and score cheap political points.

Take for instance, bow-tied shitweasel Tucker Carlson:

"The murders took place out of the blue in the context of a lot of political agitation," Carlson explained on Sunday. "You don't want to start speculated about why this happened or casting blame unfairly. Again, we know who pulled the trigger, he is ultimately responsible."

Okay, good. Stop. Stop right there, you got it. No need to say any more things.
Aaaaand, you're gonna say more things, aren't you?

"But it's such an emotional thing, it's so wrong, immoral, unfair, that it's almost hard not to point at some of the people who have been whipping race hatred in this country for the past couple of months, and saying they do bear some responsibility for this."

 Right. Just like how you all blamed Bill O'Reilly for the murder of Dr. Tiller, against whom he repeatedly whipped up hatred. . . oh, wait. No. No, that's right, that gunman bore sole responsibility for that murder. Right.

"For [President Obama] to embrace Sharpton," Carlson opined, "Who is just an open bigot and a criminal and a tax cheat, who's been whipping up race hatred in New York for all these decades. For the president of the United States to embrace this guy as a personal friend, an adviser, to show up at the NAN meetings, to have him in the White House again, and again, and again, and again, to endorse his message -- boy, no wonder you've got craziness going on in the streets." 

Yes. Yes that must be it. I'm sure no one was planning on protesting the frequent murders of unarmed black people by police officers, then someone said "hey, looks like Al Sharpton's visiting the White House. To the streets!" Obviously the protestors take their cues from the White House's choice of domestic policy advisers. Of course.


Then there was shameless, soulless opportunist Rudi Giulianni:

“We’ve had four months of propaganda starting with the president that everybody should hate the police,” Giuliani said during an appearance on Fox News early Sunday.

 Really? Well, as we like to say here at the Daily Irritant, name one.
Go ahead. Name one instance of President Obama saying anything remotely like "everyone should hate the police." Go ahead. I'll wait. . .

*crickets*

“The protests are being embraced, the protests are being encouraged. The protests, even the ones that don’t lead to violence, a lot of them lead to violence, all of them lead to a conclusion: The police are bad, the police are racist. That is completely wrong.”

 Wait. "even the ones that don’t lead to violence, a lot of them lead to violence?" Do you really not prerpare yourself at all for going on television? I mean, I know it's FOX, but still.

So, you're saying that the president and others who have "embraced" and "encouraged" the protests have some culpability if those protests lead to violence? I mean, setting aside for a moment that the man who killed these three people was not one of the protesters, wasn't even a New Yorker, setting that aside for a moment, I'm curious what your take was on the last prominent cop-killing?

A Las Vegas couple who shot to death two police officers, a civilian and themselves delivered an ominous message before they left home with a shopping cart of weapons to carry out the anti-government ambush, a neighbor said.  
Authorities said they believe the Millers were acting alone but they espoused an "anti-government, anti-police" ideology with militia and white supremacist overtones. 
 Investigators were looking into possible links between the couple and some of the groups that converged on rancher Cliven Bundy's property during his armed standoff with federal rangers over land rights.

 So I assume you equally condemned the people who promoted the anti-government, pro-Cliven Bundy mindset that led to this violence?

 Fielder said she had heard Jerad Miller make anti-government statements in the past — including a desire to overthrow the government and President Obama and kill police officers

Surely you denounced in the strongest possible terms those who embraced that kind of hatred for government in general and Barack Obama in particular, right?

 They covered one with a swastika and the Revolutionary War-era Gadsden flag, which depicts a coiled snake and the words “Don’t Tread On Me.” On the other officer was a note that said, "The revolution is beginning." 

And I'm sure you heaped blame on any public personality who spoke encouragingly to crowds waving those Gadsden flags and calling for revolution, right?

Disingenuous piece of shit.


And somehow Bernard Kerik keeps being given a platform to spew shit like this:

"This guy's intent — based on that Instagram post — was retribution for Eric Garner and Michael Brown," he told Newsmax. "The people who encouraged these protests — you had peaceful protesters who were screaming 'kill the cops' — the so-called peaceful protesters.
"Who was encouraging these protesters? De Blasio, Sharpton and other elected officials and community leaders. They encouraged this mentality. They encouraged this behavior.
"They encouraged it — and these two cops are dead because of people like them," Kerik said. "They don't owe the cops an apology.
"An apology isn't good enough. They have blood on their hands."

And how did Maqyor De Blasio "encourage" this mentality? Who knows? And no one is going to ask. As long as these assclowns stick with FOX and Newsmax and these other half-baked right-wing jokes of journalistic outlets, they can make up whatever kind of crap they want, because no one reading or hearing them is going to do any research to find out what it is  that Mayor De Blasio or President Obama or Rev. Sharpton may or may not have said. they'll just hear these little sewer rats say that they encouraged the killing of cops and think "yeah, I could see De Blasio giving a speech telling people to kill cops." "Yeah, makes perfect sense to me that Barack Obama was probably reciting 'Fuck Tha Police' at his latest press conference. I could never tell the difference between him and Eazy-E anyway."

Later, Kerik called for peaceful citizen demonstrations over the deaths of the officers.
"What I want to see is a day of outrage," he told Jeanine Pirro on her Fox News program. "I want to see protests for the two cops that are lying dead tonight.

Of course he said that. And he wasn't the only one trotting out this bullshit trope.

Bill Kristol put down his shit sandwich long enough to say this:

"Well, it's terrible what happened," Kristol remarked. "And I hope liberals show as much concern about Officer Ramos and Officer Liu as they did as they did about Mr. Garner and Mr. Martin. We'll see."

 

 

They always do this. Whenever there are protests over the murder of a Trayvon Martin or a Mike Brown or an Eric Gardner, or one of the many otheres, they always trot out this whole "hey, there was a white guy killed by a black guy, why don't thery protest about that?"
As if they didn't know that the reason no one needs to protest about the dead white guy is because the perpetrator will no doubt be arrested, charged, tried and convicted. If the scumbag nut who killed these two cops hadn't killed himself, there is no question but that he would have been arrested ( or been killed while "resisting arrest") charged, tried, convicted and executed.
People protest because unarmed black people keep getting killed and the killers are never brought to justice.  They never face any consequences. They don't even lose their jobs as police.

They know this. They know damn well, but they don't care. They just want to use the tragic deaths of their fellow human beings to score cheap political points. And it's disgusting.

Conservative thinking in a nutshell

The Clay Hunt Suicide prevention for American Veterans Act seems like the sort of thing that no one could oppose. A plan to try and help veterans, people we sent into harm's way for little discernible purpose, cope with the trauma that was inflicted on them in our name so that maybe they won't be committing suicide at a rate of TWENTY-TWO PER DAY should be one of those things that passes easily. Unfortunately, this is America 2014, and all it takes is one fuckwad senator to put a hold on a bill and that bill goes nowhere. And apparently, the only senator fuckwadded enough to actually put a hold on a suicide prevention bill for the goddamm troops is Tom "Dr. No" Coburn. Because he thinks it costs too much.

No, really. He thinks that preventing the suicides of troops with PTSD is something that maybe we ought to pinch pennies on. You know, shop around. Try to get a bargain.

But it needn't be pricy!

Now you might think that was the epitome of conservative thought right there, and it probably is, but take a look at this video from Clay Hunt's parents, pleading with Tom Coburn to please allow this bill to come to a vote. (skip ahead to about 1:30)



This is conservative thinking in a nutshell.

If you don't want to bother watching the video, let me summarize. Mr. Selke begins by telling Senator Coburn that he is a conservative Republican from Texas and thanks him - twice- for his "vigilance" on the budget. He agrees with the Senator that there is just too much darn government spending, and adds "but this is an exception."

That's conservative politics in a nutshell. The budget must always be cut, spending must always be reduced. . . until it's something I need, then that's an exception! Granted, this is a very important bill, one that needs to be passed, and there is a special place in Hell for Coburn if he doesn't relent on this. I don't dispute that at all. But when they want to cut, say food stamps, I'm guessing there's nary a peep out of the Selkes. (Certainly not from the wife, who seems to be a mute) Just last week, 10 new senators promised to eliminate food stamps entirely.  (link) No conservatives are going on tv saying "this is an exception."  Because it doesn't affect them personally.

Mr. Selke rightly states that each of these troubled veterans is a "valuable, precious child of God," but so are the kids who will go hungry if SNAP is eliminated. But those are other peoples' kids, so that's not an exception. Cut away!

I'm pretty sure that the people whose homes were destroyed by hurricanes were also precious children of God, but how many conservatives came out publicly to ask for an exception to be made when Tom Coburn wanted to withhold disaster relief from them.

Conservative thought in a nutshell: government spending for me - good. Government spending for anyone else - wasteful pork!

Jeez, can we please get rid of this guy?

Scalia on torture morality: 'I don't think it's so clear at all'

 By Eric Bradner, CNN updated 4:53 PM EST, Fri December 12, 20


Yes. It is. It's really one of those super-easy ones. You know how a lot of things aren't really black and white? But this one totally is. It's like debating about the morality of child-molesting, or serial-killing.

"I think it is very facile for people to say 'Oh, torture is terrible,'" he said.

Um, I know you mean that sarcastically, but it really is facile. As in easy. Because condemning torture really doesn't take a lot of philosophical pondering. It's like asking what color is an orange? It's obvious.

"I think it is very facile for people to say 'Oh, torture is terrible,'" he said. "You posit the situation where a person that you know for sure knows the location of a nuclear bomb that has been planted in Los Angeles and will kill millions of people.

"You think it's an easy question? You think it's clear that you cannot use extreme measures to get that information out of that person?"

Okay, fine. If you ever find yourself trapped in an episode of 24, then sure. If you actually find yourself in this situation in which no one has ever been or ever will be, then sure go ahead. But since all the torture that was committed in our names, the torture about which we are talking, occurred in the real non-television world, I hardly think your nightmare scenario is all that relevant. It's just a thing people make up when they can't think of any other way to justify committing crimes against humanity.

Scalia also discussed the death penalty, saying he thinks it's "too bad" that a campaign in Switzerland to re-institute capital punishment has been thwarted by the the country's membership in the Council of Europe, which has made the issue a requirement for all participating countries.

Of course. Of course he wants to kill people. Hey, maybe we could execute prisoners after torturing confessions out of them! Just like Jesus would want. Pro Life!

"What are human rights is not written up in the sky, and if it were written up in the sky, it would not be up to judges, lawyers, just because they've gone to law school, to know what human rights ought to be and therefore are," Scalia said.

Okay, no it's not "written in the sky," but we have all come to an agreement on what they are. There is a "Universal Declaration of Human Rights." We are a signatory to it. There's no debate on this.

"And therefore each society's perception of what it believes human rights should be ought to be up to that society"

No, that's Civil Rights. Every country has different civil rights. Some places have freedom of speech, others don't.  In some countries, the accused is entitled to a lawyer, not in others. these are civil rights. Human rights are universal. That's why they are called human rights, not national rights, or local rights, because they apply to all humans.
You really think it's OK for a country like North Korea or Saudi Arabia to decide what human rights means in their countries? I know, they already do, but do we really want to say we're okay with it? Do you really look at, say someone being tortured to death for criticizing the dear leader and say "hey, that's just what they have decided that human rights are for that country?" That's wrong no matter what country you're in. Maybe we can't do anything about it, but we sure as hell don't give it our implicit stamp of approval by pretending that human rights vary from one culture to another.

And he brushed off questions about whether Supreme Court decisions opening the door for outside groups to spend unlimited sums of money on elections have hurt the country, saying that "the amount of money that is spent on all elections -- state, local and federal -- in the United States, is less than what women spend on cosmetics for a year, OK?"

 Screwing up the curve.

Wow! I could see if you really, actually believed that you were bound by the First Amendment to allow unlimited spending, I could see where you might defend your sickening decision by saying something like "it's unfortunate that this decision has led to an increase in corruption, but until we amend the Constitution, I have no choice. . ." but you're seriously going with the defense of "hey, it's not that much money?" Really? Because, first of all, that's bullshit.
No matter how much women may or may not spend on makeup, the Sheldon Adelsons and Foster Friezes of the world being able to pour unlimited millions into campaigns is absolutely a recipe for corruption. And it's not the point. The point should be that that's what the Constitution mandates. The point is not "well, the results aren't really that bad."  Because you are required to abide by the Constitution, whether the results are positive, negative, or neutral.

 He said the alternative is having Congress impose limits on "who can speak and how much who can speak."

No. Anyone can speak. I'm speaking right now. Speaking doesn't cost money. The fact that I don't have the money to purchase air time and address a national audience  is not an infringement on my freedom of speech. Limiting how much money one person can donate to a candidate puts no limit on speech. Just limits in how large a soapbaox one might be able to purchase.

Scalia said he doesn't agree with the notion that outspending the other side is the key to winning elections. He said if people really believe "the masses are so ignorant that they are swayed by television ads," then "let's have a king. Right? Let's have a king."

What?!?!? How do you make that leap? People are easily swayed by advertising, so we might as well have a monarchy? How do you get from "people are ignorant" to "let's have a king?"





Gawd, I hate this scumbag. The evil just oozes off him!