The Stew

I’m used to having my TV shows replete with unrequited or dangerously requited love. Buffy and Angel? Tragic. John and Aeryn? At times, equally tragic. And I’m old enough to remember that we really, really didn’t want Maddie and David to ever hook up — because of the shark-jumping potential we knew such a liaison would surely hold.

I’m at a loss, then, to explain why I find the Pam and Jim relationship on The Office to be so completely different from just about every other on-screen relationship. After a couple of seasons of the requisite unrequitedness, the two were suddenly a real couple. And yet, magically, the show doesn’t suck because of it.

I like Pam and Jim as a couple. They’re cute without being saccharin, they’re happy without being unrealistic, and they’re still incredibly funny. Watching the two of them in last week’s episode come to Dwight’s rescue — each in the best way that he or she knew how — was repeatedly hilarious and touching.

Is this a magic combination of acting and writing, or merely a function of me growing old and sappy? I can’t rule out either hypothesis.

(Slight bit of trivia, because I can’t help but be proud of it — Jenna Fischer and I went to the same university. I think our time there only overlapped by a single semester, but I’m sure she secretly wishes she had gotten to know me.)

I swear to God, I’m not going.

My wife’s best friend is a Barry Manilow fan. I don’t think I can adequately convey how much of a fan.

Anyway, when I found out that Mr. Manilow was coming to town, I thought it would be a nice opportunity for the girls to get out of their respective houses. I figured that if the ticket prices weren’t too terribly bad, I’d pick up a pair for my wife and her friend.

Score! The nosebleeds are only $7.99! Seems like a mistake, but what the hell. That’s a bargain to see the man who writes the songs.

So I click to get the tickets, fully expecting them to be sold out. They’re not! In fact, they’re not bad seats if you aren’t sensitive to altitude. I fill in the appropriate information about myself and…

Okay, how much do two $7.99 tickets cost? In Ticketmaster math, $41.18.

[farnsworth] Waaaaah? [/farnsworth]

This should be illegal. In fact, if I ever get to be an elected official, one of my first acts will be to introduce a bill that forces venues to post ticket prices that include taxes and fees.

Ticketmaster sucks. Geez, I just got done talking about middle-man excess, and this might be an example worse than the recording industry. When the fees are more expensive than the underlying ticket, something is completely, utterly amiss.

Too bad Pearl Jam had no balls.

My wife has been a fan of Radiohead for years. I like them just fine, though I haven’t given all their stuff a listen. Regardless, I’ve got to give them credit for this gutsy move with their latest album, In Rainbows.

In case you hadn’t heard, the band doesn’t currently have a contract with a major record label, so they’re releasing In Rainbows on their Web site as a digital download. Obviously, they’re not the first band to do this — however, there are two very interesting things about this digital download:

• The songs are 160kbps DRM-free MP3s. You can play them on any device you want, or burn as many copies to CD as you want.
• You can pay whatever you want for the songs, or nothing at all.

That’s right — if you don’t feel like paying for the music, you don’t have to. If you think it’s worth a few bucks, go ahead and pay a few bucks. (I paid 5 British pounds for it — with processing, that’s about $10.50 or so in U.S. dollars.) Every cent, should you decide to send some, goes directly to the artists.

Hopefully, this sparks some kind of trend. The recording industry for decades has been one of the more blatant examples of middle-man excess, and anything that makes them more irrelevant is a good thing.

While this sort of distribution model wouldn’t work for every artist, there are plenty who could gain major goodwill with their fans if they tried something like this. Are you listening, Britney?

Honest, the first show that went through my mind as Pushing Daisies got around to explaining its premise wasn’t Dead Like Me (creator Bryan Fuller’s other death-obsessed comedy-thing), but rather the first episode of Torchwood. In that show, a murder victim is brought back to life for less than a minute in order to find out who did the deed. In this show, murder victims are brought back to life for less than a minute in order to find out who did the deed, for fun and profit.

Pushing Daisies has been at the top of most best-of lists for this season, and it’s easy to see why. It looks like nothing else on TV. It sounds like nothing else on TV. Director Barry Sonnenfeld lets out his inner Tim Burton in a way he wasn’t allowed to in last year’s mid-season comedy Notes from the Underbelly.

The cast is pitch-perfect, with supporting player Chi McBride getting the best line (”Bitch, I was in proximity”) of the night. It’s funny, touching, and deserves to be watched.

Which is, frankly, why I’m worried about its future. It managed to narrowly win its time slot, which is a good sign, but whether audiences will stick with something this quirky remains to be seen. In the meantime, I’ve got to thank ABC for bringing us stuff like Twin Peaks back in the day and this show now. It’s a ratings risk, but one I’m glad they took.

Speaking of Peaks, I finally managed to catch the first two episodes of Reaper. (The common element is, of course, actor Ray Wise, far right.) This is the other show of the new season that has been topping best-of lists, and again with good reason. It’s funnier and more human than that other slacker-centric sci-fi show, and it’s got a lot of places it can go. Expand the current circle of friends for the lead, kill or maim one or more of the current ones, and you’ve got a perfect Buffy replacement.