PARKER LEWIS!! IMPORTANT!! EASTBOUND!! GIRL!! HOMICIDE!! TRANSFORMERS!! RESCUE ME!! HercVault!!

I am – Hercules!!

John Hughes’ acclaimed smash “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” came out the summer of 1986, but TV inexplicably waited until the summer of 1990, four long years later, to rip it off twice. NBC and Paramount offered the Hughes-free not-acclaimed authorized version, “Ferris Bueller,” which moved the characters from Chicago to Los Angeles and starred Charlie Schlatter as Ferris, Jennifer Aniston as Jeannie, Brandon Douglas as Cameron and Ami Dolenz as girlfriend Sloan. It was cancelled by December. The struggling 4-year-old Fox network teamed with Sony and writer-producer (and future “Suddenly Susan” creator) Clyde Phillips for “Parker Lewis Can't Lose.” Premiering only 10 days after “Ferris,” “Parker” pitted the scheming teen title character, his nerd pal Jerry, and Parker’s girlfriend, Annie Sloan, against Parker’s archnemesis little sister and expulsion-focused Principal Musso. Corin Nemec (Harold Lauder in “The Stand”) played the titular scheming BMOC, Billy Jayne (the horny little brother in 1985’s “Just One Of The Boys”) played buddy Mikey, Groundlings star Tim Stack (“Son of the Beach”) played Parker’s dad, and 6’7” Abraham Benrubi (who would grow old as admissions clerk Jerry Markovic on “ER”) played massive classmate Francis Lawrence “Kube” Kubiac. “Parker” lasted 73 episodes over three seasons. A pre-“Return to the Blue Lagoon,” pre-“Dazed and Confused” 17-year-old Milla Jovovich starred in the pilot, and other first-season guest stars included Josh Lucas, Josie Bissett, A.J. Langer, Robyn Lively, Penny Johnson, Ozzy Osbourne, Donny Osmond, Ziggy Marley, Rodney Allen Rippy, Ryan Stiles, Charles Rocket, Gerrit Graham and Ray Walston. AUDIO COMMENTARIES: 1.1 “Pilot”: writer/creators Clyde Phillips & Lon Diamond (note that if Lon married Clyde, he’d be Lon Diamond Phillips), producer Robert Lloyd Lewis (has the same last name as Parker’s family) and composer Dennis McCarthy. 1.5 “Close, But No Guitar”: Phillips, Diamond, Lewis and director Bryan Spicer. 1.8 “Saving Grace”: Phillips, Diamond, Lewis, Spicer and actor Troy Slaten. 1.10 “Deja Dudes”: actors Slaten, Tim Stack, Anne Bloom and Taj Johnson. 1.16 “Jerry: Portrait of a Video Junkie”: Phillips, Diamond and Lewis. 1.18 “The Human Grace”: Diamond, Lewis, Slaton and actor William Jayne. 1.25 “My Fair Shelly”: actors Stack, Bloom, Maia Brewton and Corin Nemec. OTHER EXTRA: “The History of Coolness: A Look Back At ‘Parker Lewis Can’t Lose’” (29:59): Nemec, Jayne, Slaten, Brewton, Stack, Bloom, Johnson, Phillips, Diamond, Lewis, Spicer, McCarthy, Benrubi, actress Mary Ellen Trainor directors Rob Bowman and Larry Shaw discuss the show’s history. Discover that the middle aged Nemec appears now to be morphing into Eddie Haskell. Learn that Benrubi and Johnson both served as roadies on No Doubt’s first California tour and appear in the band’s first video. Learn that nobody seems entirely sure why a new actress was brought into the second season to play replace Bloom as Parker’s mom (“I think it was a contractual thing; I think she was too expensive or something,” offers showrunner Phillips).

A six-episode HBO comedy from the “Foot Fist Way” team of writer-director Jody Hill, screenwriter Ben Best and writer-actor Danny McBride, “Eastbound & Down” follows a vulgar, racist, homophobic, narcissistic, dope-addled, deluded and tax-evading former major-league pitcher named Kenny Powers who finds himself reduced to serving as a P.E. coach. Besides McBride (“Pineapple Express,” “Tropic Thunder”), the series stars John Hawkes (“Deadwood”), Jennifer Irwin (“Still Standing”), Katy Mixon (“Four Christmases”) and Andrew Daly (“Mad TV”). It holds a handful of solid-gold gags, and a lot of waiting between solid-gold gags. A lot of critics liked it less than I did: USA Today says:

… a smug, ugly, wit-free comedy from Will Ferrell and friends that operates under the assumption that the audience is as stupid and vulgar as the show's characters. Prove that assumption wrong.…

Entertainment Weekly says:

… What lifts Eastbound & Down away from mere crudball humor is McBride's ongoing love affair with the lower middle class: He revels in getting all the details right, from his brother's cramped suburban house to the frowsy bar where Kenny drinks boilermakers in the front and hoovers coke in the back-room.…

The New York Times says:

… feels like a margarine, not butter, version of “Talladega Nights,” the Nascar reversal-of-fortune story in which the children were ingeniously named Walker and Texas Ranger, and the exchanges between Mr. Ferrell and John C. Reilly had an addicting improvisational madness. Comparatively, “Eastbound & Down” feels static. Unlike Ricky Bobby, Kenny shows no signs (at least not yet) of a turnaround, and it is unclear whether Mr. McBride could believably pull one off. Lacking Mr. Ferrell’s vulnerability, one that comes to a great extent from resembling an overgrown 10-year-old, Mr. McBride looks like someone you’d run away from in the parking lot of a Waffle House.

The Los Angeles Times says:

… I can't say the pilot struck me as especially funny, but there are good things and talented people in it, and it looks good. (Hill directed, and Best appears as Kenny's once-and-present drug buddy.) Perhaps I am just being old-fashioned, but I was disappointed by its tenuous relation to reality and the uneven respect it pays its characters. …

The Chicago Tribune says:

… Kenny’s outsize ego may get tiresome after a while; though I've only seen the first half-hour of "Eastbound & Down," I can't escape the feeling that it might have worked best as the first third of a comedic washed-up-athlete film. …

The Washington Post says:

… He's never lovable, he's barely tolerable, but many of the things he does and says are frighteningly recognizable. He's a kind of Everyjerk, and when a long day of blustering and cursing is done, he can be heard weeping pitifully in his bed. "Eastbound & Down" finds true triumph in utter failure.

The San Francisco Chronicle says:

… What HBO might find equally difficult with "Eastbound & Down" is overcoming the fact that the series is mostly stupid, frequently unfunny and covers for its lack of original comic material by dropping f-bombs all over the place. The notion that being daringly inappropriate at all times or shouting obscenities as loud and often as possible somehow makes "Eastbound & Down" cutting edge is misplaced. Anybody can do that. Is it funny? Sometimes - definitely. But the repetitive yahoo-centric situations hint that there are no other comedic layers here. Swearing, yelling and snark, with an unlikable main character - that's just "Deadwood" without the brilliance, nuance and originality. At this point, "Eastbound & Down" is a consciously lowbrow, one-note tirade. Maybe the five other episodes grow up? (HBO usually sends three or four episodes, so something seems amiss.)…

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:

… The humor in "Eastbound" is a far cry from the cerebral comedy currently en vogue on shows like "The Office" and "30 Rock," but that doesn't mean "Eastbound" can't do sly humor that falls left of center. …

The Newark Star Ledger says:

… Kenny is so abrasive, so unapologetic in his cruelty, that it becomes almost as frustrating to watch him as it would be to live with him. … Maybe McBride has more pitches in his arsenal than he's shown so far, but the repertoire on display in "Eastbound & Down" feels too limited for a long stint on HBO's mound.

The Boston Globe says:

… falls into the grating category of totally obnoxious dude comedies, at least based on tomorrow night's premiere. Maybe the series, whose producers include Will Ferrell, will improve in coming episodes, but it's hard to see how.…

The Hollywood Reporter says:

… What's initially so sublimely hilarious about the series is its protagonist's utterly clueless refusal to conform to polite society, yet he's somehow likable -- lewd-crude hubris and all. Credit the performance of Danny McBride, a budding star who makes it clear in the premiere that he will spare no foul-mouthed rant or offensive diatribe in depicting an arrogant anti-hero of monumental self-delusion and hostility. …

Variety says:

… Perhaps sports fans are similarly pining for something to fill the emotional void left by "Arliss," but anyone holding HBO to a higher standard will signal for a reliever long before "Eastbound" reaches the bottom of the ninth. … Even with the promise of a Ferrell cameo in future episodes, it's a tired premise -- a more profane version of the kind of low-swinging sitcom that could easily have wound up on TBS. …

I adore “Secret Diary of a Call Girl,” which continues to star fabulous Billie Piper and her naked body in a swell look at a high-end London prostitution. It’s a British import but also, along with “Weeds” and “The United States of Tara,” a reason Showtime remains a rare destination for watchable sitcommery.

Season five of “Entourage” was an uncharacteristic downer, starting with Vincent Chase broke and trying to recover from the failure of “Medillin,” then begging for a supporting role on what looked like a really bad Jason Patric firefighting movie. The season ended with Chase landing at the last minute the lead in the next Scorsese picture, but it was kinda too little too late. In between Ari reconnected with an old friend and fellow agent and, in a science fiction turn, “Sopranos” hottie Jamie Lynn Sigler started sleeping with fat nobody Turtle.

Herc’s Popular Pricing Pantry