A temporary home and repository for television and film critic Daniel Fienberg, formerly of HitFix.com and Zap2it.com and one half of The Firewall & Iceberg Podcast.
I meant to have this post up yesterday but... exhaustion prevented it. Or something to that effect.
I posted a couple weeks ago with the basics about HitFix and have been mentioning it ever since. If you don't remember the background, read this handy Variety story...
In any case, HitFix is now live! You can check it out at HitFix.com. As it says in the upper left corner, we're live, but we're still in beta, so we know about various bugs and we're working to fix everything as fast as possible.
But what's there, we're mighty proud of. I'm especially happy with the logo for my HitFix blog, which I think is mighty snazzy. So go check out the site and lemme know what you think.
[For those of you looking, the launch of HitFix has obviously been very slightly delayed. I'm not going to make a promise to you about a specific date, but we're gonna have the site up as soon as we're ready to be proud of it. We very nearly are. VERY. Does "early next week" count as a promise? HitFix is coming. It looks and works better every day.
[This blog post will obviously be at HitFix.com when the site goes live....]
[This post, like the past few, will be following me over to my new online home at HitFix.com... Keep an eye out, kids, because HitFix is launching on Friday. Or at least we're hoping it will be! To whet your appetite, go check out Drew McWeeny talking HitFix on G4's "Attack of the Show." ]
Because the English language is a living breathing creature, it's necessary to come up with new words and parts of speech...
New Phrase: Ducking the Shoe (or Duck the Shoe)
Part of Speech: Either a verb or a gerundive of some sort
Definition: Escaping even the most minor of punishments for extended errors or catastrophic misdeeds.
Used in a Sentence: Despite dwindling ratings at NBC, Jeff Zucker and Ben Silverman have been ducking the shoe for years.
Origin and Linguistic Evolution: Last week, a certain president of a Western Superpower with rather dramatically low approval ratings in his native land had a shoe whipped at him by a reporter from a country he supposedly liberated. Said lame duck president successfully evaded said shoe, just as he also evaded an electoral challenge four years earlier, an ill-ingested preztel and any sort of censure from the legal bodies in his home nation. This blog isn't a place to get political, so I won't. Y'all know about the shoe.
In any case, as jokes about the incident were spreading the Internet like pregnancies in an Eastern Massachusetts high school, Alan Sepinwall and I determined that "Ducking the Shoe" needed to become a catch phrase. The venerable "Jumping the Shark" became so meaninglessly mainstreamed that nobody using it knows what they're referring to anymore, while its media-annointed replacement, "Nuking the Fridge," fell flat when people realized that using the expression would force us all to remember sitting through "Indiana Jones and the Quest for Profit."
Hence... "Ducking the Shoe," the perfect phrase for a moment in history where avoiding accountability isn't just a way of life, it's an art form which, if handled properly, can cause the government to provide you with billions of dollars in compensation for your ineptitude. Ducking the Shoe isn't an insult, so much as a reflection on the renewable resilience of the American Spirit. At our finest, we're a nation of shoe duckers. What, you'd rather be hit by the shoe? Go back to CANADA.
I spent several days running "Ducking the Shoe" into the ground on Twitter, attempting to work the phrase into the vernacular.
Examples:
The "Heroes" fall finale stunk, but don't expect any heads to role, as it was written by the already scapegoated Jeph Loeb. Tim Kring, meanwhile, continues to duck the shoe.
Sacramento Kings coach Reggie Theus was unable to duck the shoe and was fired for his team's slow start. Golden State Warriors coach Don Nelson, though, is ducking the shoe due to the mistaken impression that when Montae Ellis returns from injury, the team will cease to stink.
Medialoper's very thorough list inspired me to codify Ducking the Shoe in blog-post form. Take the phrase. Work it around in your mouth a little bit and hear how it sounds. Lace it up and walk around the store for a while to see if it fits. Sprinkle it on your food to taste -- It's fat-free!
It's not too late for 2008 to go down at The Year of Ducking the Shoe.
[Targeted launch date for HitFix.com is now Friday, Dec. 19. Mark your calendars. Tell your friends. Etc. This review is being posted in The Fien Print blog at HitFix, but since it won't be live until Friday, might as well give it a place to live until then...]
NBC's reality show "Momma's Boys" is being dumped into a mid-December wasteland of repeats and holiday specials. Clearly the network is hoping the tiresomely generic series will score big with viewers who can't distinguish between "previous unaired" and "actually original."
[Note: With HitFix still revving up for launch, I don't have an immediately place for this sort of rambling analysis. This post will migrate over to my HitFix blog as soon as it becomes active and available.]
My Ten Thoughts about the 2009 Golden Globe nominations in TV after the bump.
[Note: With HitFix still revving up for launch, I don't have an immediately place for this sort of rambling analysis. This post will migrate over to my HitFix blog as soon as it becomes active and available.]
My Ten Thoughts about the 2009 Golden Globe nominations in Movies after the bump.
