Welcome back to the Pop Culture Club, where this week we visited one of my pet obsessions, Dr. Drew’s latest “D-listers get the D.T.’s” series: Sex Rehab. I have been down this road with Dr. D for two Celebrity Rehabs and a Sober House, and — to use the most common pun possible for this show — I’m addicted.
The dilemma I always face in watching his shows is that I can never decide whether it’s exploitative or not. Do you remember, from when you were kids, the “That’s good/that’s bad” story? Someone would tell a long shaggy dog tale and it would constantly switch from being good news to bad, e.g., “I fell out of a plane. That’s bad. But I had a parachute! That’s good. But the parachute didn’t open. That’s bad. But I landed on a giant feather bed! That’s good. But it was filled with rocks! That’s bad”…etc. Well, that’s exactly the frequency with which I changed my opinion about whether Sex Rehab was ridiculous or haunting while watching the premiere. One minute I was high-mindedly snickering at a patient who was acting like a typical reality-TV exhibitionist bonehead, and the next I was agape as Dr. Drew pointed out exactly why that behavior could kill them. READ FULL STORY »
Welcome to the Pop Culture Club, where every week we watch an “assignment” and then report back to discuss it. This week it was the new USA crime show White Collar, otherwise known as Catch Me if You Can for 48 Hrs. The concept: Dogged FBI agent Peter Burke releases his prize arrest – supersuave supercriminal Neil Caffrey – from jail to help the Fed track down other criminals. And here’s where things zig when you think they’re gonna zag: These guys are really different!
This week at the Pop Culture Club the plan was to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Or was it? In my endless masochistic desire to get us to objectively rejudge our nostalgic favorites (
This week’s assignment was the new NBC comedy, Community. A comedy, I might add, that was my top pick for new shows this season. I loved the pilot and watched it a few times: it felt like a little movie to me, but one that – oh lucky day! – would go on and on every week. I loved Joel McHale’s smarmy persona, and thought it was the perfect 21st-century reincarnation of the ‘80s Bill Murray archetype. With the strong supporting characters (Human robot Abed, giggly Shirley, and Chevy Chase’s obliviously un-PC Pierce) and a tight, bouncy script, the pilot was 22 minutes of sitcom perfection. Each week, however, the quality has dipped a little more. So here’s my philosophical question for the ages: If a show is not living up to its potential, but is still funnier than 85% of the other comedies out there, is it a failure or a success?
Welcome back to the Pop Culture Club, and before we begin, I should alert any newcomers that as this “Club” has all ostensibly seen Zombieland, there will be spoilers galore that will ruin your enjoyment of the movie should you choose to see it later. (That, by the way, was the longest possible way to say “spoiler alert.”)
Hey, Pop Culture Club (and anyone else who likes to see actors bleed from the mouth and get hit by banjos), don’t forget to go see Zombieland, and we’ll meet back here at EW.com on Thursday to discuss.
Nothing about The Good Wife should have appealed to me. I’ve never been a fan of legal shows; the only one I’ve watched with any regularity is Damages, and that show rarely enters a courtroom. (And the law aspect is the least intriguing thing about it to me; Damages appeals more to my love of complete plot insanity.) I was never a big ERwatcher, so I had no great allegiance to Julianna Marguiles, and Sex and the City drove me batty, so I certainly don’t get the warm fuzzies when Chris Noth shows up. And yet, The Good Wife won me over. 
This week, the Pop Culture Club took on Bored to Death, HBO’s new comedy about a novelist who tries to break out of his post-breakup stasis by becoming a private investigator. In other words, it’s Raymond Chandler plus Woody Allen times Wes Anderson. The scene in which Jason Schwartzman takes a belt of whiskey to appear tough in a bar and then wheezes and nearly spits it up is straight out of Allen’s Play it Again, Sam; the whiny, affectless, overconfessional dialogue is all Anderson.
Attention, all Pop Culture Club members: Don’t forget to watch HBO’s neurotic-private-dick comedy Bored to Death so we can discuss it on Thursday, here on Popwatch. If you don’t have HBO, 
This week at the Pop Culture Club, we were assigned Sons of Anarchy on FX, which recently started its second season. I had tried this show when it debuted last year; it was created by Kurt Sutter, an alumni of one of my favorite shows, The Shield. At the time, that cop show was concluding with one of the most intensely satisfying wind-downs in series history, so I was looking to clutch onto anything that remotely smelled like it. I wanted — no, needed — to like it, yet I couldn’t find anything on Anarchy to cling to. It felt generically badass, like someone had swept behind all the furniture on The Shield, collected all the run-off machismo, rolled it up, dressed it up in leather jackets, and stuck it on motorcycles.
