It’s National Sandwich Day! That means it’s the 293rd birthday of John Montagu, or as he is more popularly known, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. His legacy is creating the glorious food item (food group, really), in which we stuff many things betwixt two slices of bread. This would later become bastardized by the invention of Hot Pockets and other sloth-friendly grub. In honor of this great day, we give you our ode to pop culture sandwiches past the break. Leave us your favorites — or favorite sandwich fixins so we can all consider new things to stuff our maws with, Liz Lemon style — below.
It used to be that summer was a wasteland for the TV fans, with re-runs and bad movies filling up prime-time hours from June until September. But now that basic and premium cable provide as much of our entertainment as the broadcast networks, all three sectors have upped their game. So, while we’ve had to bid farewell to Parks and Recreation until the fall and Friday Night Lights forever, it’s not like we won’t have anything to watch during the warmer months. After the jump, peruse trailers and commit to memory the premiere dates for your best summer TV bets.
Ana Gasteyer, Michael J. Fox, and Rich Sommer (a.k.a. Harry Crane from Mad Men) are among the celebrity guest stars who turn up in a brand-new, 52-second trailer for Season 8 of Curb Your Enthusiasm. As you may remember, this season will find Larry David back in New York, the city that made his Seinfeld-era career. Although we don’t learn much about the plot from the clip, we do see a lot of David yelling and characters calling him names, so we’re not expecting a major departure from the Curb we know and love. But, being New Yorkers, we are hoping his city-specific conflicts will be cathartic — and the scene that has him fighting over a cab is mighty promising. The show debuts July 10th on HBO.
Comedian Matt McCarthy may be most familiar to viewers as the cable guy from Verizon’s FiOS ads, but his funnyman antics have landed him everywhere from TV specials to movie appearances to a guest spot on the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. In our exclusive video Interactive Interview, he talks about being compared to John Belushi, working with Will Ferrell in The Other Guys, and why he wants to be your new CFF (coaxial friend forever).
Will audiences of the future find 30 Rock funny, the way we still enjoy I Love Lucy and Cheers? That’s the question Salon critic Matt Zoller Seitz poses in a smart piece arguing that today’s cultural reference-laden sitcoms, or “footnote shows,” as he calls them, all come with an expiration date. In fact, Seitz points out, early episodes of the show that launched the trend, The Simpsons, are already incomprehensible to kids.
While we agree that series like Community may not have decades-long shelf lives, we do believe that plenty of 21st-century sitcoms have what it takes to make generations of fans laugh. After the jump, we list ten shows we think will pass the test of time. Add your suggestions (and feel free to take exception with ours) in the comments.
Since we never know when Larry David will decide to pull the plug on his hilarious HBO series, Curb Your Enthusiasm, we’re pretty excited to see that there’s finally a promo for Season 8. Although it doesn’t reveal anything as concrete as a premiere date, the funny, Godzilla-inspired teaser does give us one very interesting piece of information: looks like David will be coming to New York City, his old Seinfeld stomping grounds. Watch the promo after the jump and add to our list of local landmarks and attractions we’d like to see Larry visit while he’s in town in the comments.
Thanks to the plethora of reruns airing on TBS, it’s hard to ignore that The Office just ain’t what it used to be. Plenty of people think that the problem is Jim — now that he’s married to Pam and a manager, there’s not as much room for his character to tug at our heartstrings or make us laugh. But NBC obviously thinks it’s something else: a lack of guest star power. That’s why they’re reportedly bringing in the great Kathy Bates to cameo in a story arc as Jo, a bossy Floridian executive whose pals with Jan’s replacement. Maybe they were hoping she’d work her Annie Wilkes magic on the writing staff? (In less exciting news, a day care center could soon be opening at Dunder Mifflin, presumably for Jim and Pam’s spawn.)
While stunt casting can be a tricky beast (and is often a tell-tale sign that a series is on the way out), when done right, it’s a beautiful thing to watch. After the jump, some of our favorite TV guest stars in recent months. Note: We wanted to include Betty White’s super brief cameo on 30 Rock, but the video was nowhere to be found.
A Seinfeld reunion? GET OUT! First it was Saved by the Bell (minus Screech) on the cover of this week’s People, and now the AP is reporting that another reunion for a ’90s stalwart is in the works. The actors who played the show’s four principles will appear on the upcoming season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld alum Larry David’s HBO show. Read More »
Welcome back to Whatever Happened To…, a weekly column where we unearth a pop culture personality from the deep, dark recesses of your over-stimulated psyches. Because nostalgia is fun! For this third installment we present you with Blossom. Errr, we mean Mayim Bialik. Note: This is kind of cheating because we just found out from Pop Candy that she’s going to be featured on the season premiere of What Not To Wear tonight. Read More »
Last night marked the third season finale of Dexter, Showtime’s series about an extremely good looking and easy to relate to serial killer. As Salon’s Heather Havrilesky points out in her wrap-up, “…he’s a bloodthirsty monster in ordinary nerd’s clothing. This is the delicious and awful trap of Dexter, a drama that, even in its third season, still may qualify as the strangest and most unsettling show in the history of television: Even at his darkest hour, even when he’s watching events in his life unfold from a great distance, without feeling much of anything, Dexter is undeniably likable.”
This isn’t the first time in recent TV history a beloved character happens to be a bit of a dark horse — The Sopranos made the concept a pop culture staple. Think about most of the shows you watch today: Heroes, House, Gossip Girl, Lost — sorry Dr. Huxtable, the days of goody goody television are long gone.
We count down our favorite small-screen antiheroes after the jump. Add your own in the comments.
