The TV version of Comedy Bang Bang takes the format of the late-night talk show and turns it on its head. It’s filled to the brim with the character cameos, comedy sketches, and games that are popular on the podcast, along with some new elements only made possible in the visual realm. First-season guests include Zach Galifianakis, Adam Scott, Amy Poehler,”Weird Al” Yankovic, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, and Jon Hamm.

To whet our appetites, IFC has released the full second episode of the show, with guest Amy Poehler.

Also recommended viewing: this clip of Jon Hamm freestyle rapping about the TV show Taxi, accompanied by Watts.

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My last memories of Johnny came in the early 1990′s when he appeared to be out of touch with the times. Still in top form as a host, I saw him interview guests and appear to have little clue who they were or why they were on his show. I can recall Morrissey on the show as a musical guest and Carson, along with his guest, Bill Cosby, share an incredulous look as to why the teenage L.A. audience that night shrieked every time he mentioned Morrissey’s name. Carson retired in 1992, still a dominant force on television, still the place to be if you wanted to make a name for yourself. He went out on top and then he disappeared from the limelight.

For anyone who never saw Carson in his prime, especially people who were born into a television landscape with four or five late night talk show hosts, they may wonder what the big deal is about this one man. So what? He interviewed people and put on some skits- Leterman, Leno and Conan all do that. Hell, even Arsenio Hall was doing it before his show went off the air. What they don’t understand is that for 30 years, Carson was the only one. He was the destination place for actors, musicians and people with interesting lives to appear before the nation. For stand-up comedians especially, appearing on Carson and making the man laugh (or even better, having him call you to the couch for an interview) could make a career… the next day. What Jay,Dave, the Jimmy’s and Conan are all doing was perfected by Carson and they’re all indebted to him. That is just one of the points made in this compelling documentary from director Peter Jones, premiering on PBS tonight at 9 PM (check local listings) as a part of the network’s long running series, American Masters.

Carson was a notiriously private man, granting very few interviews in his lifetime (he died in 2005). Jones was granted unprecedented access to the late TV star’s personal and professional archives, including family photo albums, home movies, memorabilia and all existing episodes of Carson’s Tonight Show from 1962 until his retirement. He and his staff culled through over 4,000 episodes to compile a portrait of an enigma. While showing his brilliant talent as an entertainer, Jones also shows the complex personal life of Carson, warts and all. When he wasn’t on camera, Carson was a known womanizer, was married four times, had a distant relationship with his three sons (from his first wide), struggled with alcohol, and could seem aloof and cold. In what seems like an age old tale of Hollywood, Carson longed for the approval of his mother, whom he adored, yet she never paid him a compliment, even at the height of his success. Carson chose to let his work speak for itself and Jones found the clues to Carson’s life in the hours of footage when Carson was quite revealing about himself on camera.

Besides the great footage from every year of The Tonight Show, as well as clips from Carson’s early forays into television on CBS and ABC, Johnny Carson: King of Late Night  also features 45 interviews with performers who appeared on, or began their careers, on The Tonight Show. Included are Severinsen, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres, Carl Reiner, Don Rickles, Bob Newhart and Steve Martin. Joan Rivers appears and discusses her famous falling with Carson after she went to start her own late night talk show. Drew Carey and Garry Shandling both get choked up when discussing Carson and the profound effect he had on their lives.

For anyone who grew up with Johnny, this documentary is like a visit with an old friend. The only thing that would make it better is if PBS were to air it at 11:30 PM.  For students of television unfamiliar with Carson’s place in the history of the medium and his rightful place as one of the most important pop culture figures in the 20th Century, Johnny Carson: King of Late Night is the ideal place to start learning about him and how he helped shape the way we watch television.

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When I reviewed the pilot of Smash back in February, I honestly didn’t see myself watching it past two or three episodes. But here I am three months later, happy that it, in all its ridiculousness, exists and sad that tonight is its season finale. Monday nights will be lonely this summer without it. In Smash‘s honor, I wanted to dedicate a Pulling Rank list to it, but I couldn’t decide what the list should be about. So, I’m just going to rank the ideas I came up with, in order of how much I’d like to turn them into a list.

1. The 10 Best Instances In Which One Could Use the Phrase “I’m In Tech”
2. 10 Most Crazpyants Outfits Worn By Debra Messing as Julia Houston
3. Top 10 Ridiculous Musical Numbers That Happened in Public Places Without Onlookers’ Consent
4. Top 10 Reasons Why Bernadette Peters Should Appear in Every Episode
5. Top 10 Television Parents I’d Like To See Yell at Leo (Emory Cohen)
6. The 10 Best Scarves That Were Artfully Draped Around Someone’s Neck Other Than Debra Messing’s
7. The 10 Most Satisfying Ways in Which Ellis (Jaime Cepero) Might Get His Comeuppance
8. Top 10 Comments Comedian Retta Has Made as She Live-Tweets the Show Each Week
9. Top 10 Drinks I’d Like To See Anjelica Huston Throw In Someone’s Face Next Season
10. Top 10 Comments Marilyn Monroe Might Make if She Watched An Episode of Smash

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Politics hasn’t really been covered in movies or TV like this before. Perhaps that’s because Veep was created and co-written by Armando Iannucci of the satirical British series The Thick Of It and the film In the Loop.

Obviously the inspiration and entry point for this is the alternate universe in which Sarah Palin became vice president, except that that’s not really what Veep is about because Vice President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis Dreyfus, in another riveting comic performance) is a environmentalist and a Democrat, and her intelligence or preparedness are not in questioned. But it would be too late, one-note, and dull to do a Palin send-up this late in the game. Nor is gender politics really an issue the way it’s been made out to be one with Palin. Veep has a far more fascinating take in that it’s simply about what it’s like to be the Vice President of the United States which is to say, to have power but not really to not have power and to be tantalizingly closer to power, and to fill your days with soul-killing glad handling, public relations, niceties, and pleasing everyone without accidentally making a huge gaffe (which, of course, Meyer does anyway). Veep is a thoroughly, and darkly absurd, dismantling of the romance and history of politics.

Meyer and her team of consistently exasperated aides (including Anna Chlumsky, Matt Walsh, and Tony Hale) play the Washington game of press junkets, handshake ceremonies, and favor trading, but long for something more to do. This plays out in what is likely to be a wonderful running joke: “Did the president call?” Meyer asks her secretary. “No,” the secretary invariably responds. And he probably never will.

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Before Americans were unified by semi-important causes on Facebook, Making a Difference was kind of a big deal. You actually had to make an effort to do so – you know, actually put on real pants instead of pajama bottoms and write your name on a petition with real ink. It was a tough business, but ultimately a high-reward game – and it was not lost on young people, either. Can you imagine how kids would cry today if they got gardening tools and bike accessories in their Happy Meals, instead of Green Lantern and Squinkies? Kids, man.

So what changed us from well-meaning, proactive citizens into lunatics who appointed this guy as a deputy for physical education? You can debate the causes until you’re out of breath, but one thing is certain: by the 1990s, the lines between activism and entertainment were already starting to blur. And by the spring of 1990, when ABC aired The Earth Day Special to what I’m sure was a somewhat rapt audience, they were likely melted together.

The Earth Day Special, recorded to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the holiday, is sort of a bizarre, live-action, environmentally-conscious spin on the cult classic Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, only the message is to conserve and recycle. And, likely because of the live-action star talent on display, the pop-cultural lunacy is even denser.

It’s always a noble intention to enlist the hottest movie and television stars of the day to urge the public to make a difference. But the damaging effects are twofold: first, in the present day, you run the risk of obscuring the message with the medium. When Michaelangelo, everyone’s favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, warned against drug use in Cartoon All-Stars, what six-year-old cared what he had to say, unless it was about getting some pizza and using Shredder as a can opener? This detracting effect is only multiplied with the passage of time, as compulsive, possibly stoned YouTubers (who obviously weren’t listening to Michaelangelo) find mugging footage of future talents or current unknowns who once were white-hot and think, “Whoa, can you believe how much the cast of The Cosby Show wants me to consider saving energy during everyday activities at home?”

Unfortunately for our ecosystem, The Earth Day Special, not-at-all creepily sponsored by megacorporation Time Warner, is nearly two hours of wall-to-wall, batshit insane film and television crossovers, with a loosely-bound plot about…not throwing cans in the ocean, or something. (See what I mean?) I’m almost afraid to bullet-point the best parts of this star-studded disasterpiece, lest I spoil the entire thing for you. So here are just 10 to consider as you watch the special, piece by piece.

1. Danny DeVito and Rita Perlman. The real-life couple play a fictitious couple (note: almost every celebrity plays someone else, rather than just appear in their more famous incarnations) whose viewing of the special seems to bookend the proceedings. Can you remember when we, as a society considered those two your typical everyday couple? And did that fleeting thought coincide with DeVito’s distracting leftover ponytail from Twins or the haunting implications of Perlman’s walnut cracking?

2. Robin Williams, or: what people were willing to accept as entertainment. Williams has always been a moderately funny actor who’s somehow managed to stretch his career past its sell-by date. (Be honest: if Williams’ rubbery gags and voices still get him gigs, why haven’t Michael Winslow’s?) The Dead Poets Society star pontificates on man’s dominance over the planet for literally eight minutes, to a stunningly rapt audience that even laughs at sentences that are only sort of jokes.

3. A most disturbing of main plots. What nightmare writers’ retreat yielded the notion of Mother Earth (Bette Midler) needing our attention on earth at the hospital where Doogie Howser works? And why is Murphy Brown breathlessly reporting on the issues? And why the hell is Carl Sagan stopping the picture cold to explain the ozone layer?!

4. Misguided nostalgia. ’80s buffs will certainly geek out over the sight of a still-thin Harold Ramis in a Ghostbusters – sorry, Wastebusters - jumpsuit, berating Martin Short for his wasteful habits in what has to be the worst appropriation of the “Who’s on First” routine. Or Doc Brown passionately jumping out of his DeLorean and explaining the need to change the planet to a rapt audience of Doogie Howser, Dana Delany and a spectacularly-bearded James Brolin.

5. Misguided nostalgia, part II. Of course I’m going to point out the insanity, at about 13:20 into the above segment, of E.T. turning a bunch of newspaper clippings into a book on fixing environmental issues and handing it to a group of kids that includes child actors Mayim “Blossom” Bialik, Jonathan “SeaQuest DSV“ Brandeis and Dante “Rufio” Basco. I do it because I enjoy torturing Popdose editor Jason Hare (who probably just scrolled to the bottom of the page to post a solemn “you son of a bitch”), and also because you might notice our extra-terrestrial lurking in an alleyway amid a pile of disused cardboard boxes, which is not helping the environment at all. Goddammit, E.T.!

6. The rap sequence at the beginning of the above clip. YESSSSSSSSSSS.

YESSSSSSSSSSS.

7. The importance of a laugh track. The pre-recorded bits from the casts of The Golden Girls, The Cosby Show, Married…with Children and Cheers don’t have the laughs you hear on standard episodes, which is jarring. These were some of the highest-rated programs of the day, and the attempts to wring laughs from environmental issues is so dire that during the Cheers segment later in the broadcast, you can actually hear crew members cackling at the jokes from offscreen.

8. Chevy Chase, still an asshole. Chase’s ongoing spat with Community creator Dan Harmon led to a renewed discussion of what a major jerk the Saturday Night Live funnyman has been in the past. Allow us to add another log to the fire (bad metaphor, considering the subject of the special): in a dream sequence, DeVito is tortured by Chase, Dan Aykroyd and Rick Moranis, who play a trio of jackass drinking buddies with no concern for the environment. Pierce Hawthorne looks positively cuddly after this scene!

9. Blinding star power. By the time this above clip ends, an improbable amount of Oscar nominees and winners, including Dustin Hoffman and Morgan Freeman, have donated their time to make sure you don’t keep the refrigerator open for 10 minutes, you inconsiderate ass. The trend reaches its improbable zenith when a distressed townsperson (Meryl Streep) seeks recycling solace in the words of a reassuring bartender (Kevin Costner, the second male star in the special to sport a ponytail).

10. “Resolution.” Let’s face it: we were already heading for the exits (or the 11:00 news, whichever came first) by the time Mother Earth made her full recovery and issued a treacly speech. Did a musical performance by Barbra Streisand have to hasten the retreat?

It’s pretty telling that there’s more to giggle about over The Earth Day Special than what you can take away from it. The only recycling I really feel we’ve done here is dredging up past entertainment for future enjoyment. But as ponytailed Kevin Costner helpfully reminds us, maybe that’s the whole point.

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Bob’s Burgers

Created by Loren Bouchard, Bob’s Burgers stars H. Jon Benjamin as Bob Belcher, patriarch of the Belcher family and owner of the greasy spoon hamburger joint the show takes its name from. Bob is married to Tina (voiced by John Roberts) and they have three children: Tina (Dan Miltz), a 12-year-old in the throws of those very… very awkward years of early puberty; middle child, Gene (Eugene Mirman), a couple years younger than Tina and obsessed with his Casio type keyboard; and rebellious Lousie (Kristen Schaal), who’s the typical “smarter than everyone else/too smart for her own good” younger character you find in so many sitcoms. Louise is distinct for wearing a pink hat with rabbit ears. Tina helps run the restaurant and the kids all have specific jobs to help with the family business. Like so many animated series on prime time television, Bob’s Burger’s is essentially a sitcom with hand drawn characters, this time a combination of the family and workplace comedies.

The first episode, “Human Flesh,” does a good job of introducing the world of Bob’s Burgers, with the type of crude and somewhat shocking comedy that has become common place thanks to Family Guy and Adult Swim. The first episode is hit and miss with the laughs. However, subsequent episodes are funnier and more inventive. “Crawl Space” finds Bob hiding from his in-laws in the walls of his house. When he becomes trapped Bob begins having hallucinations right out of The Shining. In “Sacred Cow” a documentary filmmaker tries to make Bob feel guilty for cooking meat by chaining up a steer outside the restaurant. That episode ends with Bob making out with the dead cow in his dreams. It’s actually funnier than it sounds. Later episodes build on the promise of the earlier ones and the first season ends strongly with “Lobsterfest” and “Torpedo.”

The look of Bob’s Burger’s is kind of rough and crude, not quite as jarring as Dr. Katz, one of the other series that Bouchard worked on, but definitely not as polished as many of the other adult oriented animated series on television. What the show lacks is art direction it makes up for in the writing and performances. The cast does a great job of creating a believable sitcom family. They have the tough job of making us care for animated characters and trying to get us to laugh. For the most part the whole group succeeds in doing this. Schaal, in particular, excels on the show. There are also features plenty of guest stars, the most surprising of which is Kevin Kline. The Academy Award winner is a natural in voice over work.

The first season DVD contains all thirteen episodes from its maiden voyage on Fox. The two disc set contains audio commentary on every episode, audio outtakes for two episodes, “Bed & Breakfast” and “Sexy Dance Fighting,” a music video for the fan favorite song, “Lifting Up the Skirt of the Night,” and the Bob’s Burger’s original demo with an introduction by show creator, Bouchard.

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Shhh… wait, what’s that? Do you hear that? It’s… it’s… yes! We’re finally here! The moment when cultural nostalgia for the 1980s is no longer really a thing!

Oh, okay, so that hasn’t really happened yet. Movie studios are still making adaptations of beloved ’80s properties, pop music is still dipping into ’80s influences like U2 and the brief but powerful impact of New Wave, people are still buying ironic lunchboxes on eBay. The ’80s ain’t going away, but that doesn’t mean the 1990s can’t be culturally ascendant. That, more or less, is what this column is about. Those of us who enjoyed/endured our adolescence in the ’90s are now in a position to generate meaningful critical analyses of the era’s culture and that’s exactly what I intend to do. Today, I’d like to kick things off with Daria, MTV’s spin-off of Beavis and Butt-head that, perhaps more than any other show of the decade, captures the tone of American culture in the ’90s.

The 1990s were stellar years for both mainstream and underground animation, and MTV was at the front of the line. This was back in the glory days of the network when it was big enough to be a force of nature but it still had some integrity vis. youth culture. As much as the ’80s nostalgia hounds love to talk about MTV’s early years of experimentation, I’ve always found the network’s ’90s output to be more interesting. It was an era when MTV used its huge bank account and endless cultural cache to influence not just how young people spent their money but how culture developed as a whole. It was hardly rare for MTV to lift a band, director or animator from artistically valid obscurity and make that artist a star. That’s what MTV did with Mike Judge when it featured his work first on the late-night goldmine of underground animation, Liquid Television, then during primetime with the long (and now revived) run of Beavis and Butt-head.

It was also no small matter to lift an incredibly minor character from B&B and build a whole show around her. Daria Morgendorffer was seen rarely and spoke even more rarely in her original incarnation as one of a world full of people who suffered Judge’s titular idiots. Transplanting her into the role of the simultaneous voice of one half of MTV’s audience and the vocal satirist of the other half was genius, but also damn risky. Without mincing words, it’s the kind of move modern-day MTV would never, ever make.

For the uninitiated, Daria is a half-hour cartoon show about a teenage girl whose intelligence, impatience with authority and love of irony constantly put her at odds with the people in her life. It’s characterized by Daria’s constant sarcasm just below the register of the very serious, very self-involved denizens of fictional, vaguely East Coast suburb Lawndale. The show ran for five seasons between 1997 and 2002 with two late-series movies.

Daria is a sneaky show. Its monotone protagonist cuts down her shallow, materialistic world with a vocabulary that numbers higher than the total brain cell count on The Jersey Shore but the aesthetics of the music and animation are bright and flat. Compared to MTV’s other animated properties, which were all some form of stark, gritty or cold, Daria is a downright pop confection. The show trends optimistic, giving its bitter heroine a cool best friend, love interests and several glimpses into a happy, prosperous future despite never being happy with her present. It’s upbeat while it pretends to be down on everything, and that’s about as ’90s as things get.

If there’s one thing that characterizes American culture in the 1990s, it’s misguided optimism. It was the prosperous time between the Cold War and the War on Terror, the time when the Gen-X crowd was starting to grow up and get rich in a booming economy fueled by bubbles in housing, banking and technology. We could pretend to be angry at our deficit-erasing, AIDS-awareness-raising, aisle-crossing president for his personal peccadilloes, so why shouldn’t the mascot of the era’s middle class teens pretend to be angry about the minor absurdities of her endlessly comfortable life?

For Daria and the time in which it aired, being snarky and smarter than everyone else was good enough. It was class-aware but it wasn’t outraged about the inherent disparities between classes (perhaps because its protagonist was an upper-middle class kid who butted heads with overtly rich people, not a poor kid who butted heads with everyone). It was anti-establishment insofar as it disagreed with the most annoying parts of the soft liberalism that dominated the ’90s. If Daria was a teen today, she wouldn’t be idly giving lip to clueless teachers and ditsy cheerleaders, she’d be camping out with Occupy protesters and facing legislation that removes contraception from the sex ed classes at Lawndale High.

This, ultimately, is the tone of ’90s nostalgia. Whereas reminiscing about the ’80s comes with the smugness of being less destructive than the ’70s and less naive than the ’90s, nostalgia for the ’90s comes with a very dark expiration date. The cultural force of the 1980s ended with grunge music and sex-driven sitcoms whereas the candy-colored optimism of the 1990s ended with war and widespread poverty. Watching Daria from its debut in 1997, I don’t just miss baby T’s and alternative rock, I miss the blissful ignorance of believing things couldn’t possibly get worse than The Spice Girls.

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Oh, The Borgias. You most prestigious, if not highest-rated, among Showtime’s blood-and-tits primetime business model. You’re entertaining despite yourself and you have a time slot that is, without a doubt, the toughest territory in all of television.

Seriously, I’ve just come to appreciate the sheer chutzpah of Showtime putting The Borgias in the same 10:00 PM Sunday slot that has been the home of increasingly staggering cable ratings in many places that conspicuously aren’t Showtime for years now. Currently, as with most of its first season, The Borgias airs at the same time as Game of Thrones. And while the latter saw its numbers increase to some rather respectable heights by the end of its first season (numbers it has already beaten in its second season), the former’s viewership dwindled to a place that would only keep it on the air on a premium network that never gets big ratings to begin with. I’m right along with the premium cable viewers who would much rather get their quasi-historical spectacle on HBO come Sunday night, but I have a soft spot for The Borgias all the same.

Whereas Game of Thrones has always been a serious, cinematic endeavor, The Borgias has been delightful trash from the word go. More importantly, Showtime’s horse in this race became self-aware by the second episode of its first season (at the very latest), embracing its exploitative atmosphere and hammy performances for what they are. Does this make it destination television? Hell no, but I’ll watch the reruns like no one’s business.

There’s a wonderfully ridiculous scene in The Borgias Season 2 premiere in which ostensible protagonist Rodrigo Borgia (Jeremy Irons) stalks a deer through the woods around Rome with a crimson red bow, only to stumble into the ruins of an ancient Roman structure that was most likely a brothel. The place is adorned with curiously preserved frescoes of explicit sex and other kinds of debauchery, but to Rodrigo they are things of great beauty and historical significance. So, naturally, he has the frescoes removed from the ruins, installed in the freaking Vatican and restored by an artisan’s apprentice who is (naturally) a bisexual woman pretending to be a man so she can pursue her art.

In a sense, The Borgias is that very scene played out again and again each episode. It is a wholly implausible excursion that only ever dips its toe in historical reality for appearance’s sake, focusing instead on its own unabashed obsession with titillation. Oh, but it’s glorious for its Roman brothel sensibilities. If the show wasn’t entertaining, if it pulled its punches or tried to be taken seriously, it wouldn’t be worth talking about. To its credit, however dubious, The Borgias does trashy so damn well that I’m willing to critically endorse every gratuitous bath scene, every overblown sword fight, every hilarious Pope-ism that comes out of Jeremy Irons’s mouth…

…just, ya know, after I watch Game of Thrones first.

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HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series is a war between two kinds of time. On one side is the time-sink of Martin’s vast, sprawling and ongoing series of novels that span thousands of pages filled with hundreds of characters and dozens of simultaneous plot threads. On the other side is the speed of televised storytelling with its ability to show tens of pages worth of content in the space of a few seconds and distill multiple conversations into a single scene relying on skilled actors to deliver volumes of meaning in one nuanced line reading. HBO has already proved its ability to create a visually stunning and suitably tense adaptation. The challenge ahead of it going into Season 2 of Game of Thrones is whether or not it’ll be able to distill an ever-growing story into one hour a week without turning the show into a 10-season monster.

GoT Season 2 opens (thankfully) in a different place than A Clash of Kings, the second book in the series. George Martin has a habit of beginning and ending his books in unfamiliar places filled either with characters we’ve never seen before or with shock twists that won’t be explained for years of real time. It takes this opening episode quite a while to introduce Melisandre, the priestess of the mysterious god R’hllor, or for that matter Stannis Baratheon, both of whom will end up being major players as the story progresses but have so far played no part in the series. “The North Remembers” opens instead in the familiar seaside city of King’s Landing where most of Season One took place. Evil brat Joffrey is enjoying a bit of mortal combat beside Sansa Stark, the girl whose father he had beheaded some time earlier. The scene sets the tone for a number of key characters, including old faces like Tyrion, but also introduces Ser Dontos, a guy who’ll be a sorta big deal a long time from now and…

…see, this is what I’m talking about. I’m among the half of the GoT audience who have read George Martin’s novels, so this all makes a lot more sense to me than it would to someone who has only ever watched the show. It’s great that the adaptation is so faithful to the source material, but Seven help us, it’s all so damn confusing. The twisty politics of Westeros are labyrinthine on purpose but the many other stories blossoming in the show are about to gather their own sprawling casts of important names and webbed relations. Jon Snow is going to mix us up in the lore of the North beyond the Wall, Daenerys will soon have several cities full of people and politics to handle in the East and we haven’t even been to freakin’ Dorne yet.

For all my misgivings about the vast undertaking of adapting A Song of Ice and Fire, the presentation of Game of Thrones remains excellent. Viewers unfamiliar with the books may never be able to sift through the ever-growing mythology and, short of reading the books themselves, I wouldn’t even encourage them to try. Rather, it’s better to just enjoy the ride. The sets are nicely appointed, the costumes are spot-on, the acting is great and the dialogue is sharp. It doesn’t require a steel trap memory of Lannister family history to appreciate the subtext-laden conversations between Cersei and Tyrion, nor is an understanding of Valayrian magic necessary for Daenerys’s dragons to be cool, nor is the montage of child murders that caps the premiere any less terrifying if one doesn’t remember old King Robert Baratheon’s tendency to make illegitimate offspring all over the city because of the deep heartache he felt for the death of his one true love.

I’m sure Random House wants Game of Thrones to be compelling enough to get viewers hooked but confusing enough to make them seek out the books (which they have in huge numbers). I’m also sure HBO wants to keep the show thrilling for all of its audience, whether they’ve read the books or not. If GoT sticks to the more visceral pleasures on parade in “The North Remembers” without getting too bogged down in names and mythology, everyone should remain happy and the show should remain a hit.

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A typical summer night in the 90s

I love weird pop culture. I’m not talking about “so bad it’s funny/good” weird, but genuinely bizarre stuff that belongs in its own, special, thoroughly un-ironic corner of human artistic expression. It’s valuable both as a consumer and critic of pop culture to have a background in the weird stuff because it puts more mainstream content in perspective. For example, the mind-bending perceptual experimentation of Inception doesn’t look so bizarre or off-putting when you’ve spent a night watching a movie from mainland China in the 1980′s about a child who has vaguely Buddhist mystical powers and a sidekick who is basically a stranger he met on a train who may or may not have microwaved and ate shit early in the film’s proceedings.

How I experienced such oddities is as important as the specifics of the oddities themselves. See, I had the good fortune to grow up in the glorious cultural window of the 1990s. Let me elaborate:

By the 1990s, cable was firmly established but the concept of a 24-hour, consistent programming schedule hadn’t yet been implemented. The Internet was around but it didn’t really carry much video and the little video it had was brief and low-quality. The result was a cable television landscape that essentially transformed into the weirdest place in reality after midnight, catering to the insomniacs, stoners and weirdos who would eventually migrate to the infinite supply of entertainment of high-speed Internet the next decade. In the 90s it seemed like every TV network gave late night programming responsibilities to a creepy, bug-eyed guy who worked in a closet at the corporate HQ. Basic cable would trot out its collection of old, forgettable pulp films, premium stations filled the waves with softcore porn, obscure horror and foreign detritus, even the music stations trotted out a mix of emergent electronic music and deep cuts from alternative rock bands.

I’ve always been a night person. As I write this, it’s nearly 3:30 AM Pacific and I’m bright-eyed. I was like this as a kid, too. So, come school break, I turned nocturnal and immersed myself in the wanton weirdness of late night TV. It was a grab bag that I couldn’t control or predict. Titles meant nothing and the late hour meant I was completely unsupervised. Thus, bizarre movies from mainland China, various iterations of Emmanuel and purposely off-putting music videos from the likes of Rammstein, Aphex Twin and Dirty Vegas. I never would have found this stuff on my own, not even in the stacks of a scuzzy video store. TV had to give it to me in the wee hours.

By the 00s the weirdness of late night TV basically disappeared. Cable had accrued enough original programming to fill 24 hours with middling crime procedurals, MTV and VH1 jumped on the reality TV bandwagon and premium stations adopted an all-reruns, all-the-time policy that persists into the modern day. TV isn’t where to go for weird anymore.

Thankfully, the Internet is a vast and stormy sea of weird. Clicking around Wikis, aggregators and forums is the equivalent of channel surfing, only with a higher degree of personal agency. Programs like Net Nanny curtail the degree of weirdness a kid can find, or at least until the kid learns how to circumvent the censorship. I admit I’m nostalgic for the days of TV’s unbidden bizarreness, but I know each generation has its own thing. Indie theaters, cavernous book stores, random pamphlets, underground newspapers– They’re all sources of weird throughout the history of pop culture. One way or another, a kid needs to have that strange fruit to fuel creativity and open-mindedness.

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