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Featured, Heartland

Review: (Almost) quitting time on Heartland

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Sunday’s latest episode of Heartland covered the theme of quitting through several storylines while setting up what could be some pretty dramatic scenes as this season draws to a close.

“Riders on the Storm” saw the return of Georgie’s brother, Jeff, to Heartland where he made an immediate impression on Jade, even if part of the reason he was visiting was the result of a little white lie. I understand Jeff wanting to put blame on his boss rather than admit he quit because he didn’t like the new guy in charge. Thanks to Tim, Jeff got his confidence back and prepared to return to his job and prove he could handle more responsibility.

Quitting seemed to be in the cards for Scott’s nephew, Emmett, too. The latter was feeling the pressure of trying to live up to the former’s status as an award-winning relay horse racer and seemed to have an easy out because his horse kept bolting. Once Amy had solved that problem with a set of blinders, Emmett had to come clean to Scott about his feelings. I appreciate Heartland‘s writers for—for the most part, anyway—having characters admit to their true feelings within the same episode rather than drawing it out for weeks on end.

Speaking of quitting, Ty’s mom was still in rehab attempting to kick her addiction to alcohol and didn’t want her son visiting because she was ashamed she fell off the wagon. Ty took two steps back with regard to his maturity by responding badly to her request before coming to the conclusion that supporting his mother was more important than worrying about whether or not she wanted him there. He wanted to attend Family Day, so he was going.

I knew that, by the end of Sunday’s storylines, Tim and Jack would work out their differences—and hurt feelings—to emerge as equals in the rodeo school. Jack simply has too much experience for Tim to ignore what he has to say. I did love the back-and-forth jibes about age and inexperience on the road to a solution though, as well as the heart-to-heart where Tim revealed he’s been in a bad mood because Miranda is preparing to get married. Will Tim and Casey make it a dual wedding with Ty and Amy by season’s end or will he dump her and ask for Miranda’s hand? We’ll see.

Notes and quotes

  • “I’m not interested in training the next generation of weekend cowboys.” Jack has some of the best lines, doesn’t he?
  • “When was that guy’s last rodeo? When they were bucking dinosaurs?” Nice comeback, Tim.
  • As a die-hard Blackstone fan, it was great to see co-stars Nathaniel Arcand and Justin Rain on Heartland.
  • Does anyone else have a horrible feeling that Lou is coming back to Heartland by herself?

Heartland airs Sundays at 7 p.m. on CBC.

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Awards, Featured

CBC fails the Canadian Screen Awards even before the broadcast (finally) begins

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It’s only been a week since social media gorged on the Oscars, Hollywood’s valentine to itself. Together we gushed and snarked at the red carpet fashion, cringed at Neil Patrick Harris’s never-ending box trick, cheered and hissed at the speeches, and even talked a bit about the merit of the movies themselves. The broadcasters, ABC and CTV, live blogged and used the #Oscars hashtag on Twitter. The continent was united in watching a live event. PVRs are for losers when it comes to the collective water cooler that is social media.

Tonight the Canadian Screen Awards take place at 7 pm in Toronto, but will air on CBC at 8 pm local time across the country, and be streamed online at 8 pm Eastern Time everywhere — meaning there will be no way to take advantage of the live event to create a communal experience for viewers.

Those who care about the awards — those who are the biggest advocates for the shows, movies, and the industry as a whole — will turn to the tweets of those in the room to learn the winners before (and in many cases instead of) tuning in to the broadcast.

We didn’t suffer though the endless hours of the Oscars because the show itself was so entertaining — we watched because we wanted to see who won, together. I run a website on Canadian television. I love awards shows. This is my night. And yet I will no more  watch the awards on tape delay than I would watch the Stanley Cup Final on PVR.

I won’t argue that the Canadian Screen Awards are as important to Canadian popular culture as the Oscars are, but I will argue that the Canadian television industry has a huge stake in giving them pride of place on their schedule, which for a live event means live, especially in this social media age.

The Canadian Screen Award ratings may very well end up being good enough for CBC. But an industry that aims for good enough is not an industry I’d be proud of.

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Featured

Interview: Canadian Screen Award nominee Tiny Plastic Men returns

I had never heard of Tiny Plastic Men until it was nominated for three Canadian Screen Awards this year. That’s pretty shameful, especially since the offbeat comedy series is entering Season 3 on Super Channel this Monday night. Still, showrunner, co-writer and co-star Chris Craddock understands; his show is on a network you have to pay extra to have access to.

Nominated for Best Comedy Series, Best Writing in a Comedy Program or Series for Craddock and Best Performance by an Actor in a Continuing Leading Comedic Role for Mark Meer, Tiny Plastic Men follows the antics of Crad (Craddock), October (Meer) and Addison (Matt Alden), three misfit toy testers who get into oddball mischief at Gottfried Brothers Toy and Train Company.

In Monday’s return, “Crad Van Winkle,” Crad awakens to discover that he’s lost a year of his life and nothing at Gottfried Bros Toys is the same as it was. Can he go back to the beginning and return Gottfried Bros to the beloved status quo? Upcoming guest stars include Alan Thicke, Kevin McDonald and hockey Georges Laraque who reprises his role as Gaston LeBoeuf, Canada’s openly gay linebacker.

We caught up with Craddock (right, in the picture above with Alden, left, and Meer, centre) before the Canadian Screen Awards gala.

I have to admit and I’m ashamed to say this but I hadn’t heard of the show until the Canadian Screen Award nominations came out.
Chris Craddock: I do think we’re a bit of an obscure show because we’re on Super Channel and not a lot of people subscribe to it, unfortunately. And with so many different ways to watch television I do feel like we’re lost in the shuffle a bit. It does make me sad because we’re crazy proud of the show, we work hard on it and we think it’s funny and even a little fresh. We’d love to get some eyeballs and would love to develop an audience.

Super Channel really is a hidden gem for Canadian content. Are you happy your creation is on the air somewhere?
Very happy. It’s not easy to get past the gatekeeper in this industry and being greenlit by a Canadian broadcaster is an all too rare treat for us. Super Channel has been nothing short of amazing when it comes to supporting Edmonton folks.

Super Channel is no stranger to Canadian comedy. There are you guys and Too Much Information with Norm Sousa.
Yeah, man. Norm is hilarious and I love that guy.

What’s the comedy scene like in Edmonton?
We’re improv-based like so many other people are. There is a live improv soap opera we do here called Die Nasty and all of us have done that, and there is Edmonton Fringe too. When you’re young and an up-and-comer, you’re at that festival because it’s so accessible and a big part of what makes the comedy scene here what it is.

They could have said, ‘This is not what we ordered,’ and taken it away. But they didn’t.

You guys are heading into your third season. How did Tiny Plastic Men come about in the first place?

It was a funny thing and a really rare thing in this business. Because of the success we had with Mosaic Entertainment with Caution: May Contain Nuts on APTN, Super Channel approached them about a sketch show. And maybe we were a little cheeky or dumb, but we didn’t follow orders and created this sitcom thread that runs through it. We were passionate about it and Super Channel was cool enough to say, ‘OK.’ [Laughs.] There it is. It would have been a sketch show and I think we would have done a good job at that but I like what we have now. I love narrative. I’m a playwright, so I love characters and continuity and love the challenge of putting it together over the course of multiple episodes. It’s crazy, looking back. They could have said, ‘This is not what we ordered,’ and taken it away. But they didn’t.

What’s the writing process like on Tiny Plastic Men? Is it collaborative or do you all write and come back to the table with finished scripts?
We’re super collaborative and the three leads are the writers. I’m the head writer/showrunner if you will. Very equal voices at the table. We jam out a season arc and have our episode ideas and what genres we want to focus on. Sometimes it’s a sci-fi thing, sometimes it’s a horror thing. And we have pop culture beats in there too.

Coming from a playwright background, what was the most surprising thing that you learned?
How much things cost. In the beginning I’d write, ‘They have a car and it’s a hatchback and the back half of the car looks like the Millennium Falcon and the front of the car…’ and they’d be like, ‘Yeah, we can’t afford that.’ Things you don’t think will cost a lot will cost a ton.

How important is it to have a Tiny Plastic Men website where you guys can put up clips and online extras?
It’s pretty important for us, especially since not everyone gets Super Channel.

Who are you wearing at the Canadian Screen Awards?
I’ll be wearing Simons. I’m proud to be wearing Canadian.

Have you got a speech prepared?
Nope. I don’t know what I’m going to say. I may come up with something short on a just in case basis. People say it’s just an honour to be nominated and we’re just thrilled to be nominated. We’re in a  category against shows that have 10 times our budget and just to be named among all these other shows is just an honour.

Tiny Plastic Men airs Mondays at 9:30 p.m. ET on Super Channel.

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Featured

Gangland Undercover rides onto History

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It’s almost impossible to read the synopsis for Gangland Undercover and not think of Sons of Anarchy. Like the long-running FX series, History’s newest offering spotlights leather-clad men astride motorcycles who pack guns and mete out their own form of justice via violence.

Unlike Sons of Anarchy, however, Gangland Undercover is based on fact. Written by Charles Falco, Vagos, Mongols and Outlaws: My Infiltration of America’s Deadliest Biker Gangs outlines his three-year double-life as a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives informant who became a member of the California-based Vagos biker gang and took them down from the inside. The reason Falco did it in the first place? He was given the choice to be an ATF informant or go to jail for over 20 years on drug charges.

Debuting Monday on History, the six-part Cineflix production stars Damon Runyan (Haven) as Charles Falco, the man tasked with becoming a trusted member of the Vagos gang. Opposite Runyan is Paulino Nunes (Bitten) as Schizo, the president of the group. The first episode quickly sets up Falco as a man caught in a tight spot and deciding that infiltrating the Vagos was his best option. For Runyan being able to ride with the gang meant one thing: learning to actually ride.

“As soon as I got the audition I signed up for the driving course, because that was my way in with my wife,” Runyan says with a laugh. “Then once I got the role I was buying a bike. There was this massive, explosive argument and I’ve been riding ever since.” It’s an attractive lifestyle, being part of a brotherhood who spend their days on the road, drinking and enjoying a somewhat transient life. It can be a dangerous one too, and not from the possibility of being stabbed, beaten or shot.

Check out the exclusive two-minute sneak peek of Gangland Undercover.

“When you’re riding in formation, you have to trust everyone because you have no buffer,” Nunes, a motorcycle veteran who has owned his own bike for five years, says. “You have a bike a few feet around you on all sides and if anyone messes that up, you all go down.” You have to ride through anything: Runyon was stung by a bee while Nunes got eyefuls of dust because he was wearing aviator shades during the first ride of the season.

Trust is a major factor in any motorcycle gang, and though Schizo welcomes Falco into the Vagos family, not everyone is happy with the rookie member. Falco’s fictional criminal backstory is constantly called into question and he’s pushed into more dangerous criminal activity as a way to ferret out his true identity and intentions. Pair that with scenes set in dark bars, a throbbing rock beat and the odd fistfight, and Gangland Undercover is as exciting as that other series that just finished its run.

But this is based on the truth.

Gangland Undercover airs Mondays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on History.

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Featured

Comments and queries for the week of Feb. 27

How does one apply to be considered to have Paul and his kickass crew do your deck or “customize” indoors?—Darren

Hey Darren! Isn’t the work that Paul Lafrance and his crew do on Custom Built, Disaster Decks and Decked Out fantastic? I’d love to have him come over and work his magic in my yard. Anyway, you can apply to have Paul, or many other HGTV hosts, swing by your place via the Casting Call page on HGTV.ca’s website. Good luck!

 

So many great choices [in the Canadian Screen Award nominations]! I agree that Orphan Black will likely win, but it’s worth remembering that the CSA voting took place just as 19-2’s ASTOUNDING season 2 premiere aired (truly, one of the best things I’ve ever seen on TV). It might be a tight race indeed. I’m excited to watch the awards.

P.S.: You guys should watch Vikings!—Lisa

I’m surprised by the unanimous love for Orphan Black in the “Will win” department, despite the near-unaminous opinion that the stellar 19-2 “Should win.” Is this mainly a pity vote for OB since it keeps getting snubbed by Emmy? Don’t get me wrong, I like OB a lot, but as far as drama goes, I think 19-2 is head and shoulders above. That said, Tatiana is definitely deserving for Best Actress.

Best Actor, definitely Jared Keeso, the heard-and-soul of 19-2. But why wasn’t Adrian Holmes nominated too? He turned (and continues to turn) in a great performance as Nick.

For Comedic Actress, I would vote for Kacey Rohl in Working the Engels. While the show wasn’t a great one, I felt she was the surprise bright spot in the cast (sorry Andrea!) with her comedic timing and great reactions to the wackiness of her family (I’d only seen her prior dramatic turn on Fringe).—Jeff

 

I have been preaching the gospel of Hard Rock Medical so hard, you’d think I was on their payroll. It’s such an interesting and well-produced show and so much better than the typical medical drama.—Meridith

Got a question or comment about Canadian TV? greg@tv-eh.com or head to @tv_eh.

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