Author: Jeff Hammond

Space may be the final frontier, but if we’ve learned anything from science fiction, it’s that interstellar travel is boring as shit.

Just because the sun has returned to our usually drizzly city, doesn’t mean for a second people are going to stop watching television. Thing is, summer is a sort of testing ground, featuring television series the studios aren’t entirely sure about or were too crappy to air during the peak viewing months.

Were it not for the quiet release of Caprica‘s 90-minute pilot episode direct to DVD back in early April, I imagine there would be a far greater uproar of religious outrage.

It’s the age-old story. Man buys computer, computer connects with other computers forming global network, network develops artificial sentience with insatiable bloodlust, artificial sentience destroys mankind.

No doubt you, like many TV-lovers, have discovered the joys of television on DVD. Summer evening trips to Blockbuster have certainly resulted in many a marathon viewing of entire seasons of some of the best television has to offer.

J.J Abrams’ Star Trek reboot/remake will likely demonstrate tremendous success in attracting mainstream viewers. Not only because of the action packed TV spots that have littered prime time television, but because Abrams followed through on his promise to make a Trek movie that would be near-universally accessible.

Imagine: the warm breeze gently pouring into the Willamette Valley, carrying the laughter of Bridgetown residents who’ve taken to the parks, streets and open-air restaurants all the way to your front porch where, after a long day of swimming on Sauvie Island, you swing softly in a hammock and watch the first stars twinkle in the sky.

What better way to usher in the return of the sun than to resign yourself to the recesses of a sticky movie theater in an effort to maintain the porcelain complexion you managed to develop, and vowed to rid yourself of, over the course of the rainy months that are most characteristic of our city?

I’m not saying Sit Down, Shut Up is garbage, I’m just saying it’s not exactly on par with what one might expect from executive producer Mitch Hurwitz. I know, you’re probably asking yourself, does he mean the Mitch Hurwitz? Of course, you might also be asking yourself, who the hell is Mitch Hurwitz?

To say that Parks and Recreation is, in any remote manner, disparate from the delightful machinations of its creative and network predecessor The Office would be completely inaccurate. Parks and Recreation is The Office.

It’s hard to believe that 13 years ago, the filthiest show on television was a stop-motion animated series following the adventures of four precocious third graders in their “quiet, little, white-bread, redneck mountain town.”