Episode Review: ACTION (“Dragon’s Blood”)

It was a fine episode, and I was surprised that I wasn’t annoyed by Peter (Jay Mohr) this time. Thanks to his daughter Georgia (Sara Paxton), who defines the apple falling not far from the tree. And thanks to her, Peter seemed pretty normal.

In retrospective, including Georgia was a cool idea. I either have forgotten that Peter has a daughter, or the writers mentioned it for the first time here. First I was surprised and shocked that a guy like Peter has a daughter, and then I was shocked (but not surprised, because it was predictable) that Georgia was like Peter: opening her mouth way too far and insulting people. She literally inherited the attitude from her father. And since Georgia was so cool in this episode, I wonder if she has more appearances in the last six episodes of the show. Because Peter is in fact needing a woman in his life, who keeps him in check – pretty similar to the strong female characters on ENTOURAGE like Mrs. Ari.

The rest of the episode was good. The Silverstein brothers (Randy Sklar, Jason Sklar) were hilarious, and I just loved them for jumping on the opportunity to make a movie with Buffy, but ended up in summer camp, just because it’s what they are doing. Here I would hope that characters like the Silverstein brothers would have a recurring appearance in ACTION, since they bring the comedy and they could be a running gag. Unfortunately for the bigger part of the episode, Peter’s search for a director was not really that interesting. Titus (R. Lee Ermey) could have been an interesting character, but instead the episode misses to connect Titus with both Peter and Holden (Fab Filippo), and makes him an unlikable character like all the rest of the cast. In addition, I could not buy into the situation he told he was in. So, he was fucking a male Glenn Close in Mexico and decided to go back into the business, even working with another drug addict, because that seems to be what he is doing all the time. Sorry, but that was neither funny nor clever. Just annoying. There was no character scene at all, instead the episode was pushing for the punchline here.

At least I know now that I probably wouldn’t have liked this show back then. And that I will never like unlikable characters. They are just jokes, they never develop as characters, and they are mostly not funny. With it, those unlikable characters never meet their counterparts. In here, Peter met his daughter, in ENTOURAGE, Ari met Lizzie and his wife. But the rest? Nada. 6.5/10

Stupid brothers look stupid

Something fishy is going on here

The Beautiful Life: TBL – Season 1

The life of a high-fashion model appears glamorous and sexy, but as every new model quickly learns, behind the beautiful façade is a world of insecurity and cut-throat competition. Two teenage models who are about to discover this world for themselves are Raina Mayer (Sara Paxton), a seventeen year old with a secret past, and Chris Andrews (Benjamin Hollingsworth), a strikingly handsome Iowa farm boy.

Episode 01: Pilot
I already watched it during my pilot reviews. If you don’t remember or want to catch up, look here. 4,5/10

Episode 02: The Beautiful Aftermath
Baah, what a terrible episode, even though this one worked a bit better than the pilot (and I rated the pilot better than this episode; talk about awkwardness). The characters were better, the actual story was a bit more interesting and the soundtrack was cut back, despite all the songs in the episode, which let me feel that I was listening to the radio. But the acting in here was just terrible. Not only is Egan (Jordan Woolley) pretty much one of the most boring characters I have ever seen in a TV series, but the actor is pretty bad. His scene with Elle Macpherson (she herself didn’t show any acting skills) was just awkwardly terrible. As well as Chris’ photo shoot with the “scam”. And the chemistry between Chris and Raina is so not there. Oh yeah, and Mischa Barton… I don’t know, but she looks just bad in this show.
I don’t know why I watch this series. Normally I would have canceled it immediately…
Well, at least The CW did after this episode. ROFL. 2,5/10

The Beautiful Life: The Not So Beautiful First Episode

A new teen soap for the teen soap network The CW. And it should be obvious that The CW chef Dawn Ostroff is not having mega-uber-cool ratings with this one. First: Model shows is not everybody’s taste and only for a specific kind of taste. Second: Another teen show in the pool of millions of teen shows on The CW won’t change tack. And the pilot episode of The Beautiful Life: TBL (more about the insane title later) isn’t going to change everything.