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Rushfield Babylon

where it all went wrong
Writer, reporter, Idol chronicler, seer. Contact: rr at
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  • December 23, 2013 7:11 pm

    Feel free to skip the entire last year of TV and just watch this spoilers supercuts from your friends at Yahoo.

    Beware! Spoilers Ahoy!  A plenty!

    3 notes Filed under:  tv, television,.
  • October 31, 2013 11:37 pm
    I took a journey to the bottom of the heart of entertainment, into the belly of Price is Right to find out what makes it the most successful show in the history of American television, which is to say the most successful, widely viewed piece of entertainment in the history of civilization. From my daring adventure: We’ve all seen new cars in our time. When someone buys one these days, neighbors rarely pour out of their houses to dance in the street. In its four decades, “The Price Is Right” has given away literally thousands of cars. But the excitement when George Gray informs the audience that the next prize will be “a brand-new car!” is worthy of a religious revival meeting. The hysteria would put teenage girls screaming at a One Direction concert to shame. Carey, through his vampire makeup, breaks a smile every time. “Cars, cash, and trips — that’s what people want to win,” he offers later. “It’s one of those big purchases — a house and a car. It’s the second-biggest thing people ever pay for their whole life besides their house.” Read it all at Yahoo

    of entertainment, into the belly of Price is Right to find out what makes it the most successful show in the history of American television, which is to say the most successful, widely viewed piece of entertainment in the history of civilization. From my daring adventure:

    We’ve all seen new cars in our time. When someone buys one these days, neighbors rarely pour out of their houses to dance in the street. In its four decades, “The Price Is Right” has given away literally thousands of cars. But the excitement when George Gray informs the audience that the next prize will be “a brand-new car!” is worthy of a religious revival meeting. The hysteria would put teenage girls screaming at a One Direction concert to shame. Carey, through his vampire makeup, breaks a smile every time. “Cars, cash, and trips — that’s what people want to win,” he offers later. “It’s one of those big purchases — a house and a car. It’s the second-biggest thing people ever pay for their whole life besides their house.”

    7 notes Filed under:  television, tv, price is right,.
  • September 19, 2013 1:54 pm
    Had a fascinating conversation with the great Emily Deschanel about veganism, growing up in LA and the issue closest to my heart, crime fighting. I held her feet to the fire about whether her on screen romance with her co-star is getting in the way of catching killers, whether, in fact, murderers might be escaping and might be on the streets walking among us thanks to her character’s person hi-jinx.  Q: But in the middle of all the love scenes, do you ever want to scream: “There’s a murderer on the loose!” Does their relationship stand in the way of their crime fighting? Are they being irresponsible?A: I don’t think we’re being irresponsible. It’s nature that you’re going to have relationships in your life and sometimes it’s with the people you work with. But whether it’s romantic or unromantic there’s dynamics and that can play a part in your conversations, in how you approach things. We’re very professional at the Jeffersonian Branch of FBI, and nothing’s gotten in the way of a crime so far. Q: You give us your word that no killer has gotten away because of their romance?A: I give you my word. No murderers are getting away with anything because of our relationship. If anything, it helps. Because we talk to each other even more, we go home and talk about the cases. Even when we try not to. A fascinating and free-wheeling conversation with one of the brightest young stars I’ve talked to in a while.  Join us! 

    Had a fascinating conversation with the great Emily Deschanel about veganism, growing up in LA and the issue closest to my heart, crime fighting. I held her feet to the fire about whether her on screen romance with her co-star is getting in the way of catching killers, whether, in fact, murderers might be escaping and might be on the streets walking among us thanks to her character’s person hi-jinx. 

    Q: But in the middle of all the love scenes, do you ever want to scream: “There’s a murderer on the loose!” Does their relationship stand in the way of their crime fighting? Are they being irresponsible?
    A: I don’t think we’re being irresponsible. It’s nature that you’re going to have relationships in your life and sometimes it’s with the people you work with. But whether it’s romantic or unromantic there’s dynamics and that can play a part in your conversations, in how you approach things. We’re very professional at the Jeffersonian Branch of FBI, and nothing’s gotten in the way of a crime so far.

    Q: You give us your word that no killer has gotten away because of their romance?
    A: I give you my word. No murderers are getting away with anything because of our relationship. If anything, it helps. Because we talk to each other even more, we go home and talk about the cases. Even when we try not to.

     

    11 notes Filed under:  bones, emily deschanel, tv, television,.
  • September 10, 2013 3:13 am
    A THING THE NEWSROOM DOES RIGHT Whatever complaints you may have about it - it’s the if memory serves - only movie or TV show of the past 20 years about contemporary politics and journalism that doesn’t have constant cameos from real life politicians or news people. In two seasons it’s been free of those walk ons by Senators or Wolf Blitzer, or cutaways to Chris Matthews opining on whatever’s happening in the story that are supposed to give the piece realism but end up distracting you by how stiff and awkward the Senator or news folk seem playing themselves in the movie or TV show, and what are they doing in here anyway?  Is the director just creating some sort of clubby insiders event by having all those real life poobahs hang out on his screen?  And while they’re at it undermine whatever point they are supposedly making condemning politics/the media/whathaveyou by winking and saying - but in the end we’re all just great buddies. Whatever else The Newsroom might do, it doesn’t do that. It leaves the acting to actors, which is something that if we all did would make the world a much better place. Okay, so something happened and I don’t hate this show anymore. Somewhere along the way this season I stopped hatewatching it and started likewatching it.  Leave me alone, I’m trying to come to terms with this myself.

    A THING THE NEWSROOM DOES RIGHT

    Whatever complaints you may have about it - it’s the if memory serves - only movie or TV show of the past 20 years about contemporary politics and journalism that doesn’t have constant cameos from real life politicians or news people. In two seasons it’s been free of those walk ons by Senators or Wolf Blitzer, or cutaways to Chris Matthews opining on whatever’s happening in the story that are supposed to give the piece realism but end up distracting you by how stiff and awkward the Senator or news folk seem playing themselves in the movie or TV show, and what are they doing in here anyway?  Is the director just creating some sort of clubby insiders event by having all those real life poobahs hang out on his screen?  And while they’re at it undermine whatever point they are supposedly making condemning politics/the media/whathaveyou by winking and saying - but in the end we’re all just great buddies.

    Whatever else The Newsroom might do, it doesn’t do that. It leaves the acting to actors, which is something that if we all did would make the world a much better place.

    Okay, so something happened and I don’t hate this show anymore. Somewhere along the way this season I stopped hatewatching it and started likewatching it.  Leave me alone, I’m trying to come to terms with this myself.

    22 notes Filed under:  the newsroom, television,.
  • August 13, 2013 9:04 am
    TOWARDS A UNIFIED FIELD THEORY ON HOW THE INTERNET MAKES EVERYTHING TERRIBLE I have nothing bad to say about Breaking Bad.  I was completely gripped by Sunday night’s episode. I’ve watched it twice and enjoyed it more the second time.  I think when the show concludes it is certain to go down as one of the great dramas in TV history. What quibbles I have with the show I recognize as just that - quibbles. So why on Monday did the internet make me ashamed to have watched the show, much less to have liked it? Part of the revulsion is no doubt due to some vestigial adolescent need to feel myself ahead of the crowd and just getting cranky when I find my tastes are actually not particularly unique or special. But beyond that, I think there is something terrifying about the way the internet turns out for these events and cranks up the GIF, meme, Tweet and think piece machines like some sort of disembodied 4th of July parade. These moments carry a desperation with them; the logical conclusion of the Bowling Alone thing, where now living our lives glued to our individual screens cut off from actual human interaction, we are desperate to find ways to march together. I’ve noticed that these events- awards shows, series premieres, etc. are becoming bigger and bigger of group phenomenons.  Super Bowl ratings have never been higher. The Grammies for chrissake inch upwards.  We want to watch together. In our own homes, in front of our own multiple screens. All to some extent harmless enough. If the world (or the upscale, urban sub-sub-subset of the world) can find some comfort in cheering on an episode of gritty drama together, then good for it for finding some in this cold machine driven world. But the downsides, as I see them are: • In our desperation to make a community out of watching an episode of a TV show, we pour more of our hopes and desires into that show than any hour of entertainment can bear.  We meme the life out of whatever is original and striking about a work within minutes, overexposing it so much it becomes noxious.  In olden times, it took years for enough VHS copies of Scarface to trickle back to frat houses so that every brother could do a passably awful Tony Montana imitation and make you wince when you heard the real thing.  And in the mean time people could talk about the film, consider it, pass judgement and change their mind before the re-use of the film became this world devouring thing apart from the show itself. Today, “I’m the one who knocks” and “say my name” are reproduced in every form upside down and backwards literally before the show is even over and any hope of a quiet place to take it in is in vain. • The fancy media instead of calming the crowd, now only stokes the flames. Once they could have put things in perspective, but now they see their job as articulating the frenzy of the mob. What is the good of having a blog or a Twitter account if you’re going to be the only corner of this corner of the internet not enjoying the hooplah?  And if you’re a professional reviewer and get screeners in advance you can actually get ahead of the mob by declaring an episode the best thing since Euripedes before anyone else has even watched it, and hope that your words are printed on banners in the parade. • Frenzied mobs, history has shown us, are not always just about fun, games and watching TV together. Now and then, they can have a dark side. Once we say this is all about us just piling on together for some kind of group ecstatic transformation, that can lead to all kinds of places, and I have noted in the past, Twitter’s less attractive tendency to transform into a lynch mob at the drop of a hat. Its hunger for fresh blood has not in the least abated. • Of late, its hunger has actually become an industry. Sharknado represents the internet now creating material for itself to mock.  In olden times again, the camp fun of watching old disaster films was mocking the dead serious overacting and unintentionally hamfisted actions. Now at Twitter’s demand, networks are producing intentionally hamfisted and overacted pieces so the internet can tear them apart. They are even letting us - in a contest - pick the name that we find most mockable. So we pick the thing we most want to rip to shreds, like a school bully making a nerd dress up in the most ridiculous costume, so we can make fun of him for wearing it. What is the solution? Well, as America’s leading anti-First Amendment crusader I have advocated the power and dignity of shutting the hell up many times before. Short of that catching fire, we can pray the internet continues to be merely annoying and only sporadically dangerous.  And short of that, networks that want their shows to be appreciated by the peoples and not just the subject of a mass spectacle should stop sending screeners to critics.  That part of the conversation at least we can put a lid on.

    TOWARDS A UNIFIED FIELD THEORY ON HOW THE INTERNET MAKES EVERYTHING TERRIBLE

    I have nothing bad to say about Breaking Bad.  I was completely gripped by Sunday night’s episode. I’ve watched it twice and enjoyed it more the second time.  I think when the show concludes it is certain to go down as one of the great dramas in TV history. What quibbles I have with the show I recognize as just that - quibbles.

    So why on Monday did the internet make me ashamed to have watched the show, much less to have liked it?

    Part of the revulsion is no doubt due to some vestigial adolescent need to feel myself ahead of the crowd and just getting cranky when I find my tastes are actually not particularly unique or special.

    But beyond that, I think there is something terrifying about the way the internet turns out for these events and cranks up the GIF, meme, Tweet and think piece machines like some sort of disembodied 4th of July parade. These moments carry a desperation with them; the logical conclusion of the Bowling Alone thing, where now living our lives glued to our individual screens cut off from actual human interaction, we are desperate to find ways to march together. I’ve noticed that these events- awards shows, series premieres, etc. are becoming bigger and bigger of group phenomenons.  Super Bowl ratings have never been higher. The Grammies for chrissake inch upwards.  We want to watch together. In our own homes, in front of our own multiple screens.

    All to some extent harmless enough. If the world (or the upscale, urban sub-sub-subset of the world) can find some comfort in cheering on an episode of gritty drama together, then good for it for finding some in this cold machine driven world. But the downsides, as I see them are:

    • In our desperation to make a community out of watching an episode of a TV show, we pour more of our hopes and desires into that show than any hour of entertainment can bear.  We meme the life out of whatever is original and striking about a work within minutes, overexposing it so much it becomes noxious.  In olden times, it took years for enough VHS copies of Scarface to trickle back to frat houses so that every brother could do a passably awful Tony Montana imitation and make you wince when you heard the real thing.  And in the mean time people could talk about the film, consider it, pass judgement and change their mind before the re-use of the film became this world devouring thing apart from the show itself. Today, “I’m the one who knocks” and “say my name” are reproduced in every form upside down and backwards literally before the show is even over and any hope of a quiet place to take it in is in vain.
    • The fancy media instead of calming the crowd, now only stokes the flames. Once they could have put things in perspective, but now they see their job as articulating the frenzy of the mob. What is the good of having a blog or a Twitter account if you’re going to be the only corner of this corner of the internet not enjoying the hooplah?  And if you’re a professional reviewer and get screeners in advance you can actually get ahead of the mob by declaring an episode the best thing since Euripedes before anyone else has even watched it, and hope that your words are printed on banners in the parade.
    • Frenzied mobs, history has shown us, are not always just about fun, games and watching TV together. Now and then, they can have a dark side. Once we say this is all about us just piling on together for some kind of group ecstatic transformation, that can lead to all kinds of places, , Twitter’s less attractive tendency to transform into a lynch mob at the drop of a hat. Its hunger for fresh blood has not in the least abated.
    • Of late, its hunger has actually become an industry. Sharknado represents the internet now creating material for itself to mock.  In olden times again, the camp fun of watching old disaster films was mocking the dead serious overacting and unintentionally hamfisted actions. Now at Twitter’s demand, networks are producing intentionally hamfisted and overacted pieces so the internet can tear them apart. They are even letting us - in a contest - pick the name that we find most mockable. So we pick the thing we most want to rip to shreds, like a school bully making a nerd dress up in the most ridiculous costume, so we can make fun of him for wearing it.
    What is the solution? Well, as America’s leading anti-First Amendment crusader I have advocated the power and dignity of shutting the hell up many times before. Short of that catching fire, we can pray the internet continues to be merely annoying and only sporadically dangerous.  And short of that, networks that want their shows to be appreciated by the peoples and not just the subject of a mass spectacle should stop sending screeners to critics.  That part of the conversation at least we can put a lid on.

    90 notes Filed under:  Breaking Bad, television,.
  • August 7, 2013 7:24 pm


    I’ve gotten the live feed for Big Brother, and it is pretty much swallowed my life.  I watched for half an hour Jessie and Elissa make pancakes  and discuss who was the hottest guy in the house. (The racist Jeremy they decided duh).

    I dont want to be mean about this, but if you are not watching this season, you are completely unprepared for the apocalypse.  I am seeing it play out before me in real time, and it’s big.  When the world ends it’s going to look like if Mad Max was rewritten by Harold Pinter as a 9 act play.  The End of the World by inane circular conversation plummeting in on itself.

    Only the noble MacCrae - pizza delivery gentleman - retains his purity this season. He alone will walk out, shrugging his shoulders and putting his hair in a pony tail as society collapses.  

    Please join this immediately. The day will come soon when you thank God for the skills you learned at the feet of Big Brother/

    22 notes Filed under:  big brother, television,.
  • July 26, 2013 3:51 pm
    ROSEBUD! My breath has literally just fled my body, probably never to return. Leafing through the catalog of this upcoming Hollywood memorabilia auction, there it was: Don Johnson’s signature white linen jacket ensemble from Season 1 of Miami Vice. Perhaps the most influential piece of costuming of modern times.  From the pastel period! This is no earthtones!Apparently the fools in Hollywood think this is going to go for a mere $1200.  Can I afford not to buy it?  Can any of us?  It’s like Gen X’s Gettysburg Address is on the block.  You could wear Crockett’s uniform around every day!

    ROSEBUD!


    My breath has literally just fled my body, probably never to return. Leafing through the catalog of this upcoming Hollywood memorabilia auction, there it was: Don Johnson’s signature white linen jacket ensemble from Season 1 of Miami Vice. Perhaps the most influential piece of costuming of modern times.  From the pastel period! This is no earthtones!

    Apparently the fools in Hollywood think this is going to go for a mere $1200.  Can I afford not to buy it?  Can any of us?  It’s like Gen X’s Gettysburg Address is on the block.  You could wear Crockett’s uniform around every day!

    13 notes Filed under:  miami vice, television,.
  • April 23, 2013 1:03 pm
    Goodnight, Farewell and Amen Dr. Sidney Freedman.  Thank you for keeping us sane through the longest Korean War America has ever known.

    Goodnight, Farewell and Amen Dr. Sidney Freedman.  Thank you for keeping us sane through the longest Korean War America has ever known.

    23 notes Filed under:  television, mash,.
  • April 2, 2013 2:40 pm

    Ruining the Leno/Fallon Feud for Everyone

    Can’t we even have an honest to God awkward situation anymore without the participants packaging it and turning it into a meme? Is there any piece of human existence that isn’t just fodder to be Shared and Passed Around and turned into some sort of viral fodder?  

    This is ultimately the legacy of Lorne Michaels. It’s bad enough that anything funny or fun that happens is immediately packaged and exported, with its sequel and follow-up ready on the loading dock right behind it. Anything slightly enjoyable in the Michaels world soon makes 50 zillion loops around the web until even the most ardent fans are choking on it and overflowing like diners gorging on Olive Garden all-you-can-eat breadsticks.

    It’s bad enough our comedy has been completely ruined by the memeization, but to have even our fights and tension and horrible moments too, this is too much.

    10 notes Filed under:  tv, television,.
  • March 6, 2013 5:06 pm
    Had a wonderful conversation with the utterly charming and delightful Martin Freeman about The Hobbit, in which he came clean about Smauglock, his Tumblr movement, and standing up to the Geek Mafia.  He said: BF: Knowing what this character means to the geek world, did you feel the weight — MF: Of a million geeks! It’s probably like feeling the intimidation of the mafia. It was like pissing off the Crips. The geeks are going to get me! But no, I think I tried not to think about it, really. Like with anything I’ve done ever. I’ve had a few parts that are very beloved to people from literature, and I can’t play that. I can’t play their expectations. That’s not the screenplay you’re making. It’s not a democracy in the way that I’ll go and find out what Russell thinks out there in Oregon. I’m afraid he doesn’t have a say. He’s either going to like it or he’s not going to like it, and believe me, we want him to like it. But we have to get on with the job of making a film. But Peter is a geek. He’s an absolute self-confessed Tolkien geek. So you have one at the helm. After which I asked him the big question the world has been dying to know. “Are you aware of Smauglock? Read his answer at BuzzFeed

    Had a wonderful conversation with the utterly charming and delightful Martin Freeman about The Hobbit, in which he came clean about Smauglock, his Tumblr movement, and standing up to the Geek Mafia.  He said:

    BF: Knowing what this character means to the geek world, did you feel the weight —

    MF: Of a million geeks! It’s probably like feeling the intimidation of the mafia. It was like pissing off the Crips. The geeks are going to get me! But no, I think I tried not to think about it, really. Like with anything I’ve done ever. I’ve had a few parts that are very beloved to people from literature, and I can’t play that. I can’t play their expectations. That’s not the screenplay you’re making. It’s not a democracy in the way that I’ll go and find out what Russell thinks out there in Oregon. I’m afraid he doesn’t have a say. He’s either going to like it or he’s not going to like it, and believe me, we want him to like it. But we have to get on with the job of making a film. But Peter is a geek. He’s an absolute self-confessed Tolkien geek. So you have one at the helm.

    After which I asked him the big question the world has been dying to know. “Are you aware of Smauglock? 

    Read his answer at BuzzFeed

    66 notes Filed under:  smauglock, sherlock, martin freeman, the hobbit, film, television,.
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