TV Report, April '06
April 24, 2006
About a month or so ago Entertainment Weekly proclaimed on their cover that “TV is King”, listing what they thought to be television’s best shows, while back page columnist Stephen King went into detail about why he has become a boob tube junkie in the few years he’s written for the popular magazine. The article, and King’s humorous column, only enhances the belief among many that we are living in a Golden Age of television, one that continuously thrills and surprises us with steadily improving new original works, and increasingly ascending old favorites that do so much in making up for the inevitable garbage and failures some networks are forced to produce to fill time, and save money. On any given night you may see something as terrible as “Freddie” and “Unanimous” and think that television really hasn’t improved as much as everybody says, after all, formulaic comedies and ridiculously lowbrow reality shows are still rampant, as well as dime-a-dozen crime shows, self satisfying blowhards on cable news commentary shows, and afternoon scandal hours that are, indeed, trashier than your local supermarket rag sheet rack, but for all that bad, isn’t it some kind of tradeoff with the TV devil to have such shows as “Lost”, “The Sopranos”, “Scrubs”, and “The Office” to fill us with laughter and amazement at the end of a long day? Of course in an ideal world every show would be as exciting as “24”, as wrenching as “The Shield”, and as classy as “The West Wing”, and in an even more perfect world, the six seasons allowed to something like “Yes, Dear” would be reserved instead for “Arrested Development”, despite ratings failure, but there’s no such thing as complete and total as perfection in a landscape as vast as television, so we have to live with the imperfections to better appreciate the quality of TV’s best. These days it’s quite easy to find, literally every night of the week there is something worth watching, so to better understand how good we’ve got it, I’ve compiled a list, beginning on Monday and ending on Sunday, arguably the best night of television, of what is happening on shows that maybe not everybody watches, but shows that I specifically set aside time every week to catch up with. Like Mr. Stephen King, I too am a slave to the TV, and the following report should be proof enough of my devotion to the glorious magic picture box.
Monday: To say that I start the week off with “Prison Break” would be a lie, for as a precursor to my nightly viewing schedule I always watch “Jeopardy” at 7:30. I figure if I’m going to veg out the rest of the night and watch escapist entertainment until bedtime, where 20-30 minutes of reading redeems me somewhat, I may as well start the night off with some kind of education, and the long running “Jeopardy” is still the best smart guy game show on TV. Coincidently, my best category is “The Movies”, my worst category is “The Bible”, the category least likely to cripple or propel me if I ever appear as a contestant is “Shakespeare”, and the category most likely to question my devotion to Alex Trebek’s quiz show is “Stupid Answers”, because seriously, if I wanted to see a show just give their money away for nothing I’d watch “Wheel of Fortune”, and you and I both know that that just isn’t going to happen in this lifetime.
“Prison Break” starts the fictional viewing night off strong, as Michael and company continuously run into easily fixable roadblocks, week after week, designed to drag out the suspense of the actual break. So far everything from a burned out piece of tattooed flesh, to the incompetent memory of a psychopath have thwarted the inevitable escape, but word has it that it’s coming, probably by the end of May Sweeps, so for all those haters who think the show has sold out on its original premise, I say just hang on and put your faith in the writers to finally get the cons outside the walls of Fox River, and into Season Two on the lamb. If by the end of Season One they’re still inside the walls, I may have to give up as well, but for now, I’m still as hooked as ever.
“Prison Break” gives way to “24”, which in the final hours of its fifth season finds Keifer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer free of the terrorist plot that left nearly half the cast dead (poor Edgar, he deserved a kinder fate than syntox gas), but now riddled with an even tougher assignment, proving that President Logan was behind it, including the assassination of President Palmer, all along. The addition of Peter Weller as Jack’s former mentor, and now chief instigator (along with Logan), Christopher Henderson, has really shifted the season long story arch from terrorism to conspiracy theory, and though it was hard to swallow at first, making the shifty, weak-kneed Logan the Nixonian mastermind now seems like a stroke of genius. The cast of this show is always first rate, especially for a plot driven action-adventure, but Gregory Itzin as Logan, and Jean Smart as his suspecting First Lady, deserve Emmy consideration for their complex performances, blending the pressures of high power jobs with the strains of a long and frustrating marriage. The combination of “Prison Break” and “24” makes Fox’s Monday the most exciting two-hour block on TV, and though both may be wildly unrealistic, who among us doesn’t want some ludicrous escapism after a long Monday at work?
Tuesday: Tuesday’s I dedicate to medical shows, NBC’s sorely under-appreciated “Scrubs”, and Fox’s diagnostics mystery “House”, which air at the same time, 9 PM, so I have to tape “Scrubs” and watch it at 10. Now that “The Shield” is over for the season, and I haven’t taken up the critically maligned “Thief”, 10 is the perfect time to catch up with the wacky residents of Sacred Heart, where surrealistic slapstick comedy is routinely mixed with genuinely heartfelt medical and personal stories to create the most idiosyncratic medical show this side of “MASH”. In contrast with the brainiacs on “House”, the long in the tooth docs on “ER”, and the over-hyped beautiful people on “Grey’s Anatomy”, J.D., Elliot, Turk, and Carla, as well as a hilarious supporting cast of nurses, doctors, friends, and one scene stealing janitor, are, despite the fantasy and slapstick cutaways, about as down to earth and likable as any cast on TV. Lets hope NBC thinks so as well and gives it the support audiences haven’t been, finding it a timeslot where it can thrive, instead of Tuesday at 9, where it’s slowly dying against Hugh Laurie’s craggy Dr. House. We’ve already lost “Arrested Development” this year, it would be a sad state of affairs for the comedy world if we were to lose “Scrubs” as well.
Wednesday: Midweek, and while everybody in the country gathers around the water-cooler to talk about last night’s “American Idol”, awaiting tonight’s results, I’m riffling through the “Lost” fan sites looking to see what people are expecting of the new hour to come, and hoping that ABC’s best drama can continue to unravel to perfection the great mystery that has been season two’s Dharma Initiative. Recently we’ve learned that hatch captive Henry Gale really is an Other, a really low and unimportant Other in the grand scheme of things (unless that’s just what he wants Locke to believe with his tricky mind games), and that our bearded pirate friend who stole Walt, and just last week finally released Michael, may have more to do with Dharma than we originally thought. The recent batch of new episodes continued in the show’s great tradition of blending the island’s mystery with wrenching character back stories, as we watched Hurley struggle with mental illness, Locke lose the love of his life because of his pathetic grifter father, and Rose and Bernard struggle with Rose’s cancer, which like Locke’s paralysis, and Jin’s infertility, has miraculously been cured on the ultra-magnetic island. By the end of season two I feel that Jack and Ana will have the Losties on the verge of war against the Dharma brain trust, but whether or not “Lost” devolves into “Lord of the Flies” I don’t care, as long as the characters remain this complex and engaging, both on the island and in the past, than I don’t see why it shouldn’t remain the best show on network television. The return of “Invasion” at 10 only sweetens the deal.
Thursday: Thursday is jam packed with good television, and though I still don’t watch “CSI” or “Without a Trace”, two of the highest rated dramas on TV, I do start out the night on CBS with “Survivor”, a show I’ll watch till its dying breath. I know by now it’s predictable, the editing gives valuable information away, and hardly any of the contestants are ever memorable anymore (how many bartenders and yoga instructors are there in this country?), but I still love the psychology of the show – dumping 18 strangers on a bare bones island with little food and little water and making them participate in grueling challenges that test both mind and brawn, for the rights to survive, and win big cash prizes. The experiment is still interesting, the challenges are still exciting, and host Jeff Probst is still hilariously overbearing when he catches a contestant in a blatant contradiction. I tell you, as bad as a rainy night on Exile Island may be, having to double track during Tribal Council as Probst has you on the ropes for a lie would be ten times worse. The rest of the night for me includes “My Name is Earl”, and “The Office” on NBC, perhaps the funniest hour on television, and then “ER” at 10, which, like “Survivor”, I’ve decided to stick with to the very end, not because it’s exceptional television, but because, in it 172nd season, I feel it deserves at least one long-time devotee to stay along for the ride. Most critics would plead with me to give up already and switch to “Without a Trace”, but I remain defiant, for any show that can have Armande Assante, Ernie Hudson, and John Stamos as believable guest stars, is okay in my book.
Friday: Friday is a weak TV day, except when USA is running new “Monk” episodes, which currently they are not, so I suggest shutting off the tube for a day, go check out a movie, take in a Bisons game, go to the casino, read a book, whatever, just take a breather, and come back on Saturday for a better, if lighter, list of options on your way to an overloaded Sunday night.
Saturday: Okay, like Friday, Saturday could best be spent away from the TV, but I have a few suggestions anyway, starting with the Travel Channel, which reruns Wednesday’s new episodes of the “World Poker Tour” at 6, and then runs a classic of the show at 8. If you’re like me and have become a poker fanatic, the WPT is your best bet, not only because it features the final table of impossibly difficult 4-5 day long, 10,000 dollar tournaments in the world’s greatest casinos, where the first place finisher usually always pockets north of one million dollars, but because it features the best two-man commentary team in the business in Vince Van Patten and former pro Mike Sexton. The two may be over the top in their praise of a good bluff, or overly dramatic when one player sends another player packing with a sick river card, but they are usually spot on in their analysis of critical plays, and any amateur player looking to learn the game through TV could do worse than Van Patten and Sexton on the WPT. In the same vain, check out NBC’s coverage of the “National Heads-Up Championship” Sunday at noon, as well as ESPN’s constant reruns of the “World Series of Poker”, and the Game Show Network’s “High Stakes Poker” for more great Texas Hold ‘em on TV. Before you know it, you may find yourself sitting down next to me in any one of the three local card rooms; mention this column and I may find it in me to take it easy on you.
If poker’s not your thing, and I understand if it isn’t (I’m still tripping off my Vegas vacation, so it’s big for me right now), than Saturday is always a good day to find some sports on TV. I suggest, if you can find them, checking out the Mets this season, they’re sporadically featured on Saturday afternoons on Fox, WB11, ESPN, and WNGS, and are off to a blistering start. It’s too early to be too optimistic, but this might be the year my beloved team from Queens finally takes down the Braves and their 14 consecutive NL East titles. In the past it’s been a pipe dream to even think it, but this year, fingers crossed, could be different. Now if only the pathetic Bills and hapless Knicks could get it together, I’d be in some kind of sports fan heaven. Oh yeah, and go Sabres.
Sunday: If Friday and Saturday are best left for leisure and light viewing, Sunday night is a paradise for the obsessive TV junkie, beginning with “King of the Hill” at 7:30, and ending, if you want to stay up so late, with “Ebert and Roeper” on CFTO at midnight. Ebert you can find elsewhere over the weekend, so the late Sunday episode isn’t mandatory viewing, but Hank Hill still is, and thankfully will continue to be, thanks to Fox renewing the long-running series for another year. Other Sunday night mainstays still worth checking out are “The Simpsons” (still kind of funny, though light years beyond the Golden Age of seasons 3-8), “Desperate Housewives”, and “The West Wing”, which recently concluded its two-year long election storyline with the election of Jimmy Smits’ Matt Santos, and the tasteful, mournful funeral of the late John Spencer’s Leo McGarry. I’ve said this before, but now that “The West Wing” is great again, I’m entirely bitter that NBC is yanking it off the air, but I guess as far as an arch is concerned, there’s hardly a better run than eight years of a fictional TV president and the election campaign of his successor. Good run, it will be missed.
Finally, I choose to end this piece with the continuing brilliance of HBO’s mob masterpiece “The Sopranos”, which, in its sixth and final season, is exploring the depths of human nature the likes of which you’d be hard pressed to find in the greatest of philosophical studies. When poor, crazy Uncle Junior shot Tony in episode one, sending the show, and our hero, into an identity crisis that only resolved itself when the big guy stared at the gates of the afterlife and decided he wanted to live, we suddenly found ourselves outside the realm of the gangster genre, but confronted with a symbolic essay on the preciousness of being, the essence of self, and the purity of truth. Those deeply spiritual subjects have stretched beyond Tony’s near death experience this season into his crew’s personal lives, tackling Paulie when his dying aunt nun confessed to him that she was his real birth mother, to Meadow, who abhors her family’s mob ties but seems to get along easy enough in her budding legal career as “Tony Soprano’s kid”, and to Vito, who was spotted at a gay nightclub and now fears for his life in his homophobic line of work. Tony is struggling to find his footing as boss after his shooting, Paulie can’t stand any more deception, Johnny Sack is losing his manhood behind bars, away from his crew and family (his reprieve for his daughter’s wedding was a comedic masterpiece directed by Steve Buscemi), Vito is in a personal purgatory, isolated in New Hampshire, an outcast from a purely macho society that shuns his kind, Christopher is stuck in a limbo between Jersey gangster and wannabe Hollywood producer that’s ripe with ridiculousness, money waste, and industry satire (applause to Ben Kingsley for his hilariously self-effacing cameo), and Junior, the once revered Don of the family, is awaiting a competency hearing in a local nuthouse, about as low as it gets. The show has always been more than your simple mafia story, but this season, as it nears a final conclusion, David Chase and his crew of gifted writers are opening the box of human frailties, confronting the characters with questions of identity and insecurities, and producing a season long arch filled with bitterly dark humor, pathos, sudden violence, and ethical quandaries. As it stands, as great as network television is right now, there’s hardly anything that even comes close to the level at which “The Sopranos” is at, and for the TV lover, that’s just fine.
by Adam Suraf