Cocktail Party Primer (Episode #9)

Prêt-à-Field Earth: The Last King of Species

Warning Prison Break fans who live under rocks: the following contains the least spoilery spoiler in the history of spoilers. But first, Internet Movie Database thinks you’re very easily amused, NBC thinks you need more exposure to classic literature, and Fox plans on bribing you to tell all your most sordid secrets. If you want to be one of the cool kids at all the hottest shindigs, box socials, and hootenannies this weekend, I’m here to tell you everything you need to know.

• Academy award winner Forest Whitaker has just signed a deal to produce and star in a FX drama about an arms dealer. Between this, The Last King of Scotland, and his turn on The Shield, we’ve all come to think Whitaker as a serious and accomplished thespian who commands high profile roles. It won’t be long until his success triggers the automatic ‘Tom Hanks Clause’ wherein an actor becomes so respected that all the embarrassing flops in the past (I’m looking at you, Turner and Hooch) are scrubbed from his resume. I mean, if nobody looks at Hanks and thinks of Bonfire of the Vanities, there’s no reason we can’t forget Whitaker’s cinematic gems Prêt-à-Porter, Battlefield Earth, and Species.

• Have you ever wished there was a resource where you could find out every single smidgen of information about such classic characters as The Skipper from Gilligan’s Island or Carlton Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Of course you haven’t! You’ve got a life, a job, and a World of Warcraft account. You don’t have time for such useless diversions. But assuming you become an agoraphobic shut-in who spends 17 hours a day online and you suddenly discover you’ve just about exhausted the content that the World Wide Web has to offer, IMDB will now allow you to fulfill that very non-existent desire with their new character pages. And if learning that Allison Parker appeared in 160 episodes of Melrose Place (one of which was titled Peanut Butter and Jealousy) doesn’t while away your last few minutes of boredom, there’s always that site where you watch cheese age via webcam.

• On a Columbian game show called Nothing But the Truth, contestants hooked up to lie detectors had already ‘fessed up to indiscretions like drug smuggling and homosexual prostitution in front of an audience of friends and loved ones. On October 2, a woman admitted to having hired a hitman to murder her husband who ran away before the hit could be carried out. The woman was awarded $25,000, but the show ended up cancelled when producers realized they might be charged accessories after-the-fact for the failed murder plot. It shouldn’t surprise you at all to learn that Fox is working on a U.S. version. Ever conscious of building buzz, I expect that they will sensibly save their version of that blockbuster revelation for sweeps.

• So I was watching Heroes the other night and I thought, “NBC really has some great prime time programming on these days. But you know what would make it a million times better? If they would finally figure out a way to meet the public’s almost obsessive desire to see adaptations of the dull, early 18th century novels we had to read in high school!” I guess that the network must be monitoring my thoughts with some kind of creepy brain implant, because they’ve just announced that next year they’ll debut a 13 episode adaptation of Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe. It should be just like Lost, but with colonialism, cannibalism, and if we’re very lucky, monkey butlers. English teachers everywhere just wet their pants.

• When I found out about the rather shark jumpy decapitation that happened on Prison Break this week, Se7en jokes started swirling around in my mind. I mean, having something awful happen to the love interest is basically fiction’s oldest and cheapest way of motivating a hero and giving him some easy pathos, but, um, guys? Somebody used this particular gruesome method of dispatching the pretty lady already. I couldn’t get over the comparison until someone mentioned Justin Timberlake in my presence. Then the following sprang up fully formed, and dislodged any thoughts of Brad Pitt from my mind (a tricky thing to do indeed):

[gv data=”1dmVU08zVpA”][/gv]

To all the networks out there with viewers to distress

It’s easy to do; just follow these steps:

1: Cut off the love interest’s head

2: Stuff her head in a box

3: Make Linc open the box

And that’s the way you dooooooooo it.

It’s her head in a box!

Martha Smith is a San Francisco-based freelance writer and editor. She writes mostly about food, TV, and other things that can be enjoyed while sitting down.