- "30 For 30" I'll say at first that I love the idea- apparently Bill Simmons'- of 30 documentaries by 30 celebrated directors looking at sports history in the ESPN years. It's, essentially, 30 stories that could have been Gary Smith pieces in SI, and some of them, I'm sure, were. It's much better than the usual, self-congratulatory bullshit that usually marks ESPN anniversaries.
I wasn't a huge fan of "King's Ransom," the Wayne Gretzky doc that opened the series, mostly because Peter Berg is a truly wretched director who brought a lot of the tics common to his awful action pictures- shaky cam, rapidly flashing images- to what should have been a fascinating story of the Great One's trade to L.A. in 1988.
But the second installment, Barry Levinson's "The Band That Wouldn't Die," is a true gem- telling a heartbreaking story in an original and compelling way. The Baltimore Colts' move came a little bit before I started watching sports, but it's really terrible that it happened the way it did, and the amazing story of the Colts marching band. I still couldn't get over the drunken airport press conference by Robert Irsay- if an owner did that in the Roger Goodell era, I'm sure the league would've intervened and certainly not allowed him to move the team.
- "Law and Order" I've seen about 400 episodes of this show and its various spinoffs over the years, but Friday's may have been the worst ever, a lazy "satire" about reality TV, "Jon and Kate" and Octomom that not only was aggressively silly, but didn't even have an ending. I liked JIm Gaffigan as the dad, but still.. horrible episode.
- "Saturday Night Live" Another weak effort Saturday, hosted by Gerard Butler. How many "300"-is-gay jokes can you make? At least four of the bits were completely laugh-free, especially the Obama/The Rock/"Incredible Hulk" bit that they already did almost word for word last year. "Weekend Update" was good, especially the interview with Balloon Boy's ballon.
The other odd thing was the show's sponsorship by Bud Light Wheat, which interspersed old dress rehearsal outtakes (only one of which was very funny) with ads for the titular beer. The latter was especially creepy- I was thinking, "heh heh, the Bud Light and the wheat are gonna have sex!" And then... they had sex.
Posted by Stephen Silver at October 18, 2009 10:33 PM