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The Black Keys make great music, and The Black Keys are great live. The Dispatch review of last night’s show at the LC Pavilion is… okay. Describing Brothers as the band’s defining album is way off base: it features some very good stuff, but also several utterly skip-worthy tracks. I agree, though, with the tone of the Dispatch review, as I heartily recommend seeing the Keys live if you like bluesy rock even a little.

I’ve got all but the first Keys album – yes, I’m one of those late arrivals who didn’t hear of the Akron duo until Attack & Release – and couldn’t have been much happier with the set list. Although Dan Auerbach’s voice lost the battle against drums and guitar, the rocking-ness of his guitar and Patrick Carney’s drums completely made up for that.  I was hoping to hear 10 A.M Automatic, but when a band has 6 albums to cover it’s hard to be picky!

If you want to see a movie based on a web comic which is itself heavily influenced by video games, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is nearly perfect. It’s more stylized than I expected, which won’t sit well with some viewers, but I was impressed. The trailers had me looking forward to indier-than-thou dry humor in a geeky wrapper, with some goofy action for good measure. That could have been entertaining, if not exactly original… given that Michael Cera himself has been in, what, 19 films matching that description? Pilgrim is, in fact, something unique, and something very, very funny.

Because I’m such an exciting guy, thinking “are they ever going to release The Norm Show on DVD?” and then Googling for the answer is the sort of thing I do on a Saturday night. It’s a topic that often comes up when I think about funny TV shows: Norm Macdonald is my favorite comedian, and The Norm Show featured a wienerdog named Wienerdog.

I was happy to find that during an extended lapse in my Norm-Show-DVD-checking routine, it was announced that Shout Factory is releasing a box set of all three seasons on September 7, 2010! Fellow TV nerds may recognize Shout Factory as the folks who released Freaks and Geeks (a boring, somewhat humorous show whose hype I wish I had ignored) on DVD.

Amazon is taking pre-orders for The Norm Show at $45 a pop. All the cool kids are pre-ordering it. On the bright side, you can do so even if you aren’t cool, as evidenced by the fact that Amazon accepted my order.

You’ve been reading every item I share under “read this” and watching everything I favorite on YouTube… right? Good – I knew it! Seriously though, this is something you don’t want to miss.

I’ve been enjoying a five-part Uncommon Knowledge interview with Mark Steyn, hosted by Peter Robinson at the Hoover Institution. The clips are, like everything featuring Steyn, very relevant and very interesting. Last week the complete interview was released as a single YouTube video, which is 38 minutes long but all kinds of worth it:

Robinson and Steyn’s discussion centers on America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, which is available in paperback now and which I could not recommend more emphatically. Steyn’s mastery of historic facts and current events is mixed with just enough funny anecdotes to keep his writing from being the most depressing stuff on earth… which is no small feat given much of his subject matter!

America Alone (like the interview linked here) is packed with facts that establish the effects of mass immigration on European nations, and warns of how different classically liberal democratic states will be after imbalanced birth rates take their toll. It’s a subject that gets more important each day, with Greece leading the European nanny-states off the fiscal waterfall and American media & politicians refusing to mention Islamic extremism as a possible motive for a Pakistani’s attempted New York City bombing.

Check out the interview, and buy the book! Because I said so, and that’s… what counts?

The folks behind Chuck seem to have completed their quota of dumb, repetitive love triangle episodes for season 3, and the show has bounced back in a big way. Tonight’s episode was another very entertaining one.

According to TV By The Numbers, tonight was actually intended to be the season 3 finale. Chuck is on the bubble again, it would seem? Allow me to refer you to last spring’s cutting insights on the topic of cancellation. Anyway, what would’ve made a great finale could also make for a good segue into what this season should have been all about: butt-kicking and laughs courtesy of a fun duo with a great cast of co-stars. Chuck as this guy. Sarah as this hot mama.

I didn’t think of this until my roommate said something a few months ago, but the relationship between those characters is the perfect template. Chuck’s got ridiculous talents, and is more of a clown than a tough guy (though admittedly about .04% as terrific as Wash from Firefly). Sarah is also extremely talented, but her sense of humor takes a back seat to all the skull-cracking she’s got to do. Like Zoe. They’re different but made for each other, blah blah etc etc.

So, yeah… if you’ve given up on Chuck as I nearly did during that string of lame episodes earlier this season, catch up! With any luck, the remaining filmed season 3 episodes feature a sturdy, non-high-school relationship between the show’s namesake and leading lady! Better late than never, and there’s still plenty the writers could conjure up besides everyone breaking everyone elses’ hearts and making sad faces 10 minutes per episode.

It doesn’t hurt that Adam Baldwin maintains a steady level of awesome.

Chuck Season Three, Episode 7 was incredibly stupid. It’s as if the writers made a list of all the creative things they could do, then lit them on fire and laughed as they re-hashed episodes from the first two seasons.

As I’ve mentioned, the writers could have easily taken the Chuck & Sarah relationship in a new direction with the start of season 3. Chuck gets super powers – as if he’s a new man! Alas, none of those powers provides for a spine, so when Sarah tells him everything he’s ever wanted to hear… he responds by being a total flake. Then, instead of patiently regaining her trust like someone over the age of 13, he gives up and starts making out with the next babe who comes along.

I’ll quote my roommate again, because the lame-ness of the new Chuck episodes annoys us both. He pointed out at the start of the season that Joss Whedon provided a perfect template for what Chuck & Sarah should be: Zoe and Wash from Firefly. Awesome, happy couple. Is that so difficult? If you’re a good writer with interesting things to say, there’s no need for an endless cycle of high school drama between every single male/female pairing on the show.

Or you could be like Chuck‘s writers this season, and liberally mix celebrity cameos into a perpetual mass of stupid love triangles. Maybe I’m underestimating them! Maybe the producers decided it would be better if viewers hated the main character.

Oh well; the end of Dollhouse was great, and Community continues to be hilarious!

As occasional readers – both of you – will know, I’ve been a big fan of NBC’s Chuck although season 2 occasionally bummed me out. I really enjoyed the season 2 finale, because it avoided further overuse of the will-they-won’t-they drama while including plenty of the show’s quality humor and action. Let’s get the spoiler alert out of the way now, in case you’re still catching up on season 2 or haven’t watched the new episodes from last night and tonight!

Season 2 ended such that I was optimistic for the third season – giving Chuck a limitless supply of skills seemed like a great way to use the silly “intersect” concept that we’ve accepted to immediately transform the character. I was looking forward to Chuck as bumbling doofus/super spy, working with Agent Sexypants and Colonel Casey on a variety of fun missions. No need for dumb on-again, off-again romance between Chuck and Sarah, since they get in enough trouble that every episode is a dramatic chance for either (or both) of them to almost die. Yes, I knew this was too much to expect.

The first episode of season 3 had its moments, but was overall a big disappointment. Why, when the woman of his dreams wants to drop everything and run away with him, would Chuck back out? I’m happy to ignore lots of unbelievable things the show does to make spy drama light and entertaining, but the Chuck and Sarah business in Chuck Versus the Pink Slip was too much. The second episode explained it away somewhat, but to quote my eminently wise roommate:

If something is an infinitely stupid thing to do and you make it less stupid by half, it is still an infinitely stupid thing to do.

There are characters who would make the decision Chuck made for the reasons he explained in Chuck Versus the Three Words. Chuck is not one of these characters. Having seen for two years how Sarah and Casey are jerked around by their superiors, he would never choose espionage over Sarah Walker unless lame writers decided it’d be a nice way to draw out the sexual tension. Also, Mopey Chuck is someone we had seen enough of by the end of season 1, so this was a bad idea all around.

On the bright side, episodes 2 and 3 were better; the show is still funny, and Adam Baldwin still rocks worlds. The sooner Chuck and Sarah get together and stay together, the sooner we can stop wasting time on longing glances and all that crap! Were I Zachary Levi, I would have demanded twice as much making out with Yvonne Strahovski months ago. But then, Zachary Levi is probably a toolbox in real life, whereas in real life Yvonne Strahovski is Australian.

The latest episodes of Dollhouse and the final few episodes on the Season 1 DVDs make me wish Joss could work something out with Fox where they agree to two and only two seasons. The early Season 1 “what’s this week’s mission?” business with only minor bits of continuity can’t hold a candle to Joss Whedon at his best. For examples of Joss Whedon at his best, refer to Friday’s episodes of Dollhouse.

One of Whedon’s real gifts is for writing lovable – not likable, lovable – characters whose interactions play out so entertainingly that you’re happy to overlook weak plot points. He needs leeway to develop relationships that aren’t obvious to viewers switching on the TV midway through episode nine. He also needs the support of a network willing to endure low ratings (as when Fox renewed Dollhouse for a second season instead of looking for something else to put in its crappy Friday time slot) knowing that his shows move a ton of DVDs.

Dollhouse gets to go out with a bang after some slow buildup because Whedon and company knew it was canceled with 7 episodes left to film. What would season 1 have looked like with an understanding that Fox didn’t need such disconnected episodes? How much better could Firefly have been if Joss sat down to write it knowing he’d have no less and no more than 26 episodes for the stories he wanted to tell?

A cast of excellent characters with stories that play into a cohesive arc – that’s where it’s at. Without ‘em, would I still prefer Firefly and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog to CSI: Hip City and whatever hospital garbage is popular right now? Probably, but they wouldn’t be half as much fun to watch. To each his own, as long as all these guys get great roles now that Dollhouse is finished filming!

Did anyone watch Dollhouse tonight? As an assortment of places reported awhile back, Fox is burning through the remaining season two episodes in 2-hour blocks this month, with the final three in January. As ever, Hulu is sure to have both of tonight’s excellent episodes within the next few days!

I don’t say excellent lightly here – I really enjoyed the end of season one and really liked how the Epitaph 1 episode on the season 1 DVDs wrapped things up while leaving ambiguity. I think it’s great how Joss (can I call him Joss? man I’m a dweeb) planned ahead with an episode that essentially said, “this is one of the possible horrendous outcomes of what’s going on in Dollhouse,” without closing any doors on season two.

I loved both episodes tonight, and the first thing I said to my roommate afterward was, “I’m so glad this show was canceled!” Surely, Whedon’s experience with Firefly – Fox airing episodes out of order like total jerkbags before canceling during the first season – prepared him for Dollhouse’s abrupt cancellation. It’s good to see a focused team of writers and producers providing great characters with a worthy plot-line. Nothing sharpens the mind like cancellation! Let me choose between seven top-notch episodes and 21 that are a mix of “cool!” “meh” and “boo,” and I’ll take seven every time.

Enver Gjokaj was born for Dollhouse – I don’t think I’ve seen anyone better at adopting a different voice, attitude, and mannerisms. Ray Wise‘s cameo tonight was good. Summer Glau was better than I expected in that her role wasn’t the same one I’ve always seen her in, and she played it very convincingly. If I have one complaint, it’s that Eliza Dushku is too sexy. It seems somehow… unsafe.

I’m looking forward to the final seven episodes, hopeful that tonight was an indicator of the fun twists and madness we can expect!

I don’t know if I read it somewhere or dreamed it up, but I thought Chuck was scheduled to pick back up in March. Not so – season 3 will premiere with a 2-hour episode on Sunday, January 10th, followed by a normal Monday night hour-long episode the next night. The Chicago Tribune post linked above includes a decent preview clip, along with some encouraging quotes from what sounds like a focused and excited executive producer.

Perfect timing after the conclusion of Dollhouse! The occasionally annoying but far more often enjoyable second season of Chuck will be out on DVD January 5th. I’m excited for the new season, as the end of season two opened the door for a new and improved lead character, with plenty of fresh story possibilities as a result!