Eastbound & Down - Season 2

If I had to pick one, the second season doesn't quite live up to the mostly brilliant first. But as a direct follow-up and the soul-searching middle part of a story (it's been picked up for a third and supposedly final season), Eastbound & Down season two was very good. It finds Kenny Powers in Mexico after his chance with Tampa Bay falls through, living off the spoils of cock fighting and his friend Stevie's stolen credit card. It's a new low in Kenny's life, but you wouldn't know it from the exterior, as he's still as arrogant, self righteous, and vulgar as ever. The best part of the show is still just listening to him narrate his own version of his life and curse people out for disappointing him over and over again. In terms of creating a character that's a total jerk but one you still can't help but love, it's still one of the best successes on television.

But the whole show isn't just Kenny strutting around, doing drugs, and chasing women. His destiny is to be a ballplayer again, and the thrust of the season is him getting a shot through a local baseball team. The manager knows who he is and wants to help him get back into the game, but Kenny is often his own worst enemy as he misjudges his relationships with others and has conflicts with the team owner. The plot follows a lot of the same beats as the first season, but it also does some new things including some exploration of why Kenny is the way he is that's particularly enlightening. It's basically the same mix of comedy, depressing moments, awesomely appropriate music, nudity, and entertaining cameos throughout these seven episodes, and the Mexican setting helps keep it fresh. Unlike the huge downer of the last finale, this one is more hopeful, and I'm really interested in seeing how things end up for our old buddy Kenny fuckin' Powers.

Eastbound & Down - Season 1

Eastbound & Down is the work of a whole lot of good comedic minds, and stars the suddenly pervasive and awesome Danny McBride as a former big league pitcher and current big league jerk who's forced to take a job teaching gym in his hometown as he struggles to mount a comeback. The first and possibly only season is short but sweet, with just six episodes to tell the story of Kenny Powers. Will Ferrell shows up a couple times as the owner of a car dealership along with a few other recognizable faces, but McBride is totally the main attraction, as he's created one of the better comedy protagonists in recent memory that I can think of. He never stops being an asshole, but you still totally root for him because his life is so freaking depressing as the world seems to be conspiring against him.

It's really more nuanced than you might expect from what could appear at first glance to be a trashy sitcom with cursing and nudity. He yells and curses all the time and is completely full of himself, but at times he shows some genuine human understanding (shortly before he screws things up again) and you have to wonder if life always craps on him because he's a jerk or if he's a jerk because life craps on him. It's hard not to have sympathy for someone who lost a dream all too soon, even if what they did while living it was a bad use of time. Besides all that though, it's a really funny show. Kenny's overzealous speeches, his rivalry with Craig Robinson (and especially the conclusion of that), Stevie's scary devotion to him, there's a lot of laughs to be had. The finale left me wanting more, not because there was a lot left open which there was, but because I just I'm not done enjoying the unique views of Kenny Powers.

Best Movies of 2008

Some people also said this wasn't a great year of movies either, but when I compiled a list of what I saw it easily featured the most solid titles of any of the three times I've done this. I feel comfortable going all the way to ten this time. Not making the cut included such films as Cloverfield, which I thought succeeded at doing exactly what it wanted, Tropic Thunder, a fun collaboration by a bunch of funny guys, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, another likable film in the Apatow repertoire.

Best of 2008

10. Hellboy II: The Golden Army


More here for being so amazing visually than a great film. I can't quite tell whether del Toro is a great filmmaker or just has an uncanny knack for neat effects, although I can't say I'm not terrible excited about what he could do with The Hobbit.

9. Valkyrie

I guess in the end I did quite like it. Wonderfully filmed, takes the subject matter very seriously, and it's a sad story that people should know about. A good tribute to the men who tried to stop the world's greatest evil.

8. Pineapple Express

Rogen and Franco are great together in the perfect fusion of buddy stoner comedies with an action film, albeit a mostly grounded one. Although I kind of wish the whole thing lived up to the opening scene with Bill Hader and Dexter's dad a bit better.

7. Burn After Reading


Far from the best Coen film, but far from the worst too. Not quite what I hoped for but a nice entry in their kookier milieu. Am I even using that word right? I can't believe I used that word. What the hell.

6. The Wrestler


I haven't blogged about it yet, but I watched it yesterday so give me a break. Mickey Rourke's performance, which won a Golden Globe (haha) on Sunday, is the most notable aspect, but I thought it was a very good film in general.

5. Quantum of Solace


A lot of people complained about the editing in the action scenes, but they're all a bunch of dopes. There, I said it. I'd be fine with it if every violent film for the next ten years was styled exactly like this one.

4. Iron Man


The runner-up for best comic book-based super hero movie about a man with a heritage to live up to who fights crime by using his vast wealth to create a special suit instead of an extraordinary power of his own. I love Robert Downey Jr.

3. In Bruges


I was a bit surprised to see Colin Farrell won a Golden Globe for this, not because he wasn't good, but because it wasn't really a "Comedic" performance. Really good movie, funny but still with a strong emotional depth.

2. The Dark Knight

The best comic book-based super hero movie about a man with a heritage to live up to who fights crime by using his vast wealth to create a special suit instead of an extraordinary power of his own. All three films featuring a Golden Globe-winning male performance appear on this list. What does that tell you? Nothing, really.

1. Wall-E


And the best movie of the year's only dialogue from the two leads consists basically of "Wally!" and "Eva!" over and over again. It really did touch me though, with a strong message, gorgeous visuals, and heartfelt story. One of the best family films ever.

Pineapple Express

Pineapple Express is yet another success for Apatow Productions. He and his crew rose to fame by bringing back the fun of sex comedies, but they've branched out, and Express' humor is all about pot, with Seth Rogen and James Franco's characters being high for most of the picture. Whereas they usually do straight comedy, this is sort of an action hybrid as the two friends get in trouble with crooked cops and drug lords and end up experiencing quite a few thrills. In some ways, it's more like a lower-intensity action film than a comedy, with most of the humor arising just from the way the characters talked instead of more discrete jokes. The pacing is a little strange, as several scenes, usually involving baked characters, go on for quite a bit longer than you'd expect, as they just keep riffing off each other. I wasn't bothered by it at all though, it fit the characters and gave it a unique feel that I enjoyed a lot.

The cast is full of the usual suspects, with funny, small parts played by Gary Cole, Craig Robinson, Bill Hader, and others. Like with Superbad, Rogen co-wrote with friend Evan Goldberg and does a solid job, but he gave the best part to Franco. I saw one reviewer say he was the funniest stoner character since Brad Pitt in True Romance, and it's not a thought I'd disagree with, although Pitt didn't have nearly as much time to be hilarious. Franco sometimes seems off-putting to me, but he really is great in this movie. He's never without something strange yet poignant to say, and has a great chemistry with Rogen. The movie is full of "bromance", possibly too-friendly, ambiguously gay camaraderie between two guys. There are tons of tropes from normal, heterosexual relationship development in other movies, and once in a while they get downright obvious with it to comedic effect. I haven't seen any of Green's other work as a director, but he does a fine job balancing the action and comedy. The climactic encounter is probably too over the top, although I strongly suspect it was intentional. I liked it quite a lot, and you should see it if you can see the humor in stoned idiots just acting like stoned idiots.