afunkystar

Thanks to law shows today, like the many Law and Order spin-offs and the god-awful CSI franchises, people want cop/court shows to be over the top, contain lots of fights, have twists and turns in the evidence and be in your face. This show builds slowly and focuses on the fact that average people are deciding someone else's fate. I don't usually like court shows (I can only watch L&O up until when the case goes to trial, because the trials are so boring), but I like this show. The problem is that I wouldn't have bothered to notice this show if it wasn't a Fontana/Levinson project. Because I loved Homicide so much, I can appreciate what they're trying to do here. There's only been three episodes so far, but I like that the cases have been "average." TV shows always have to have a case that's been "ripped from the headlines," and is so sensational that it's impossible to believe. Instead, The Jury had an episode about an inmate who killed a priest during a riot. One juror wondered what the point was of trying him, because either way the man was going back to jail to finish his sentence from a previous crime. Yet the writers (including James Yoshimura, who wrote Homicide's much-celebrated "Subway" episode) still use that "back-page" subject matter. It is their willingness to go into typical crimes that makes this show interesting. Instead of going for the shocking like CSI does, they find shocking things in everyday life.

Yeah I remember The Beat too. ;)

If you're looking for a movie to pull your own MST3K on, this is a good one. Horror 101 airs on the Sci-Fi Channel from time to time, yet their is no "science fiction" in it. You can't take anything seriously because every part of the movie either tries to hard (the pictures in Miss James's office looks like rejects from the Se7en art direction department) or tries too little (all the students utter "What's wrong with you?" AND "You idiot!" at least once, maybe more). The characters are glaring stereotypes, which could have been effective if it got us thinking about the characters one way and then suddenly turned the tables on us. But instead, no tables are turned and the characters are devoid redeeming qualities. The pudgy guy in black is the loner weirdo, the student in the glasses (which, by the way, don't have any LENSES!) is another possible suspect because he's the typical repressed nerd. But the jock is a bit of a hot head, so we could suspect him of foul play, blah blah blah...

There are so many questions to ask, but I suggest that you don't because it makes your head hurt. Why would a university not cancel a course after most of the students dropped out, leaving only eight left in the class. Seems like a waste of money. And WHY does this university have guard dogs out at night, for goodness sake? Are none of the students allowed to walk around campus after the sun goes down? If you've ever been on, seen, or just heard of a college campus, you know that people are out at night!

The most annoying things about this movie is its crappy soundtrack that gets played WAY too often and the fact that the writers wrote about a page of dialogue and just found different ways of rewording it to fill the 2 hours. That said, this is a good one to make fun of with a few friends. It good even for the squeamish, because there's NO HORROR AT ALL in it. This is the Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai of horror movies.

Floyd: That's a stupid place for a hole in the stage.

Jake: (like he's an idiot for not knowing) IT'S TO SERVICE THE HYDRAULIC LIFT!

Allison: You dork!

The fast-food characters that have been mentioned are all great, but one cannot forget Carl, the Hunger Force's foul-mouthed, Brooklyn-accented next door neighbor and landlord. He is disgusting and hilarious. What other character on TV could say "I'm gonna give this rainbow 'ting another FIVE minutes and if it don't show up quick...den I am goin' down to da store...an' get a hot rod magazine...'cause dey got 'dem chicks wit da boobs on dere..."

The show makes no sense and you get used to it. Bizarre inventions escape through the robot-rabbit-sized hole in Dr. Weird's lab. Carl's car is somehow crushed every week. 2-bit Atari-looking characters called "The Mooninites" come to Earth, sass off to everyone and commit crimes. The first Mooninites episode, "The Mayhem of the Mooninites" is the best in the series by far and if you have not yet seen it, then you don't know the definition of funny.

Even at its worst, this is one of the best comedies on the Adult Swim program block. It needs a DVD to catalog the 15-minute show's small number of episodes and so fans can see where the idea for this whacked-out show came from. Where else can you see a strung out doll yell obscenities or a eight foot spider wearing a diaper?