Chris: Yay! A crossover always brings out the best in each show! It certainly doesn't smack of desperation. The priorities are always creative and not driven by marketing... Stewie: Okay, that's enough. {youtube width="580" height="380"}4zRBKGuYFRw{/youtube} The first taste was doled out in an almost masochistically small dose, like a wildly-anticipated Beaujolais delivered via medicine-droppers used to feed baby squirrels. Magnanimously proffered to those willing to wait hour-over-hour at a Family Guy Q&A panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2014, The Simpsons-Family Guy crossover episode sneak-peek was released for semi-public consumption. After that, after July of 2014, it seemed an eternity before it would eventually air. Late-September? Narf! That's so far away! Still, patience endured and summer passed by and September 28th hath come, and now gone, at long last: Family Guy's S13-premiere, "The Simpsons Guy", was easily the highlight of the annual, autumnal, FOX Animation Domination kick-off: minus American Dad and Bob's Burgers, both to air their season-premieres in October. Like an easy-peasy, light clean-up of an early-autumn backyard in Connecticut, "The Simpsons Guy" (S13e1) raked in 8.4 million viewers, a whopping 73% increase over last year's premiere, "Finder's Keepers" (S12e1). "The Simpsons Guy" hit a ratings jackpot, at least compared with Sunday night's competition, nailing the #1 entertainment-slot amongst the advertiser's drool spectrum of 18-49, 18-34 and 25-54-year-olds. In addition,…
If summer calls for sans souci, seaside days of sun and sticky sand, then summer nights, especially Fridays, demand a touch of gold bling and a white linen blouse to accentuate that tan, plus just enough coconut rum to help lull you to sleep by the sound of lapping waves ... but watch your back, and your neck. Blackbeard's in town for the summer and not since Jaws has the beach looked more inviting, relaxing ... and deadly. In a sea of fictionalized Blackbeards, the latest incarnation cavorts freely outside the traditional, Pyrate King design book. Clean-shaven (gone is his namesake beard tied with multiple bows of red and gunpowder fuses), bald and casually styled in island linens and sandals, casting off his trademark black velvet frock coats and leather bucket-top boots, NBC's Blackbeard appears more Gob Bluth than Rob Zombie. A mesmerizing figure to start, John Malkovich (Shadow of the Vampire, Being John Malkovich, Dangerous Liaisons, The Portrait of a Lady) portrays the 18thC. pirate with a soothing deadliness that lures the viewer into a unsuspecting trance: his escalating diatribes seep forth with an almost musical, rhythmic, Eminem-cadence, like an unsuspecting frog in a warm pot of slowly boiling water. Before you, or the frog, realize what's occurred, your kidney has been cut out; but Blackbeard has left you…
Like many a standard of American literature, Washington Irving's 1819 short-story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, has seen more facelifts and resurrections than Hillary Clinton's political career: varied adaptations on the usual theme, always entertaining and sketchy, nightmare fare for some. Irving's Sleepy Hollow is uniquely American, but its roots reach far under the lightning-charred, tulip trees of time back to Germany's Middle Ages and the wicked warnings of the folkloric Wild Huntsman, der Wilde Jäger: a headless ghoul who galloped through the forests of Northern Europe at preternatural speeds, seeking bad little children who failed to eat their wegetables, greedy men of ill-repute and stray women of low moral fiber. Be good or der Wilde Jäger vill get you, meinen Kinder! Fox TV is the latest raconteur to tell the tale of Sleepy Hollow, the town "that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie." (This is the second Sleepy endeavor for FOX; the first being 1999's Night of the Headless Horseman, a CGI animation.) The most flexible thus far in its use of artistic license, this latest narration of the ageless myth benefits from the cleverness and vision of Fringe creators Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman. Fundamentally, they follow the basic, chilling spine of the tale and keep…