Round One

HAPPYLAND

VS

TRANSPARENT

See the winners and losers at http://challonge.com/popfilter

Today’s fight is brought to you by MTV and Amazon.com. It’s not enough to say that one show is better than the other. One show is clearly better than the other. This is Pacquiao versus a middle school junior varsity wrestler named Todd. Pacquiao has the fighting acumen that comes from thousands and thousands of hours of training, hard work and intense, regimented discipline. Todd barely maintains a C average and gets a pizza party if he wins a match. It’s a woefully unfair fight.

Transparent is the story of a family whose patriarch comes out as transgendered. The pilot does everything right. It builds its world skillfully. It manages to communicate that it’s more than a premise. The characters and their relationships to each other are introduced naturally. This show is a workshop on how to give characters time and space to come alive. The transitions are sleek and the production value is way up there. The pilot is fortified by the amazing talent of Jeffrey Tambor and Gabby Hoffman. Based on the strength of this episode, this show entered the lineup of things I watch regularly. So far, it’s the contender all the other shows need to beat. My money is on it to fight it’s way through the bracket and take the belt home for the entire fall TV challenge.

Happyland is about a disgruntled teenager who works at a faux Disneyland with her mother who plays the princess. It’s the classic girl meets boy, boy kisses girl, boy turns out to be girl’s half-brother. The flaws of this show are glaringly obvious, especially when compared to Transparent. First of all, MTV has been producing dramas since 1992’s Catwalk. That’s 22 years! Yet Happyland looks like a chintzy, amateur, dollar-store version of a television show. Every scene is saturated with cheapness, from the bad acting to the idiotic premise.  MTV has had two decades to figure this stuff out, so why does this look like the premier of a cable-access-channel show? Second of all, the girl who plays the best friend is the worst actress I have ever seen and it hurts my brain to watch her. How she found work as a professional actress is mind boggling. And finally, the first part of the premise is actually kind of interesting. She’s a girl who works at a theme park she was practically raised in. Her job is to work behind the scenes, holding up a facade of perfection while her life at home with her single, immature mother is anything but. Why in the hell did they throw in the angle about her getting flirty with her brother? That is just utterly weird, and drama just for the sake of drama.

In a bout that surprises no one, Transparent leaves Happyland bruised and beaten on the floor and coasts triumphantly to round two.

-Stephanie Rose

Next time Ryan will pit

MANHATTAN LOVE STORY VS SELFIE