TV Report: May 2005
May 21, 2005
Even though this is being printed on the 28th, it is being written on the 21st, so unfortunately, this short TV article will not be able to encompass all I want it to, namely, the season finales of “Lost”, “Desperate Housewives” and “24”, which were three of the top five best shows on TV this year. Maybe a future TV article will include these great series, but for now, here are some thoughts on what has been going on during this May Sweeps period. All through the year I’ve been constantly changing, usually as the week progresses, my opinion on what really is the best show on TV. When the week starts on Sunday, I’ll usually say “Arrested Development”, but then nine o’clock comes and stuff like “Deadwood” or “The Wire” hit the screen on HBO, opposite “Desperate Housewives”, and my opinion suddenly changes. On Monday we have “24”, having another superb, action-packed season, and on Tuesday the continuing saga of Vic Mackey and The Barn on “The Shield” makes for gritty cop drama. Wednesday is “Lost”, as well as “King of Queens”, and Thursday, though this is just for show now, “Survivor” and “ER”, neither of which are as good as they used to be, but still make it into my weekly viewing schedule. If I had to choose, I’d probably still stick with “Deadwood”, just because there is nothing quite like it on TV now, and Ian McShane’s performance as Al Swearengen is the best performance HBO has offered since the first season of “The Sopranos”, when James Gandolfini hit the TV landscape like a bat to a skull. As the second season moves along, Al has recovered from his debilitating struggle with kidney stones, and he’s back to his ornery self, but in recent weeks, with the death of the Sheriff’s young step-child, Al has shown a hint of humanity, in the otherwise grungy and inhumane saloon he runs with an iron fist. The concluding episode should prove fascinating; with the arrival of George Hearst to the camp, and as the battle between Woo and his rival Lee intensifies for the Chinese market on prostitution and opium, the show plunges further into a muddy distopia the likes of which John Wayne and John Ford could never have gotten away with.
Over on “F/X”, the show that struggles mightily to win my favor over “Deadwood” as the best drama on TV is “The Shield”, which in its fourth season has found much new conflict with the addition of two new cast members. On the one side, we have Glenn Close as the new captain, taking over for councilman David Aceveda, who is still around, acting out creeping fantasies with a high priced hooker on a daily basis. Close’s Monica Rawling is cleaning up Farmington with controversial property seizures, with the help of Vic and what remains of his now-defunct Strike Team, but Vic has had more to worry about than a new captain this season, as his old partner, Shane, has run himself into a sticky mess with new resident warlord Antwon Mitchell (Anthony Anderson). The conflicts on both sides of the law, Monica vs. Crime, Shane vs. Vic, Vic vs. Antwon, Shane and Vic vs. Antwon, have been riveting, even more so than the season long Armenian money heist story arch last year, and with potential Emmy favorite Close unsigned for the fifth season, more change could be in the future for Vic and his sometimes morally suspect ways of life. Anderson’s performance as Mitchell has a frightening chill to it, almost making us forget that he tends to choose bad movie projects (“Kangaroo Jack” anyone), and Michael Chiklis has brought a whole new level of intensity and anger to Mackey this season, as Vic has to keep one eye on his rouge ex-partner, one eye on his new headstrong captain, and a third eye on his increasingly troubled personal life. On “The Shield”, action, drama, and pathos come hand in hand with profanity, ethics, and danger.
On NBC, “ER” has struggled in the past few years to bring in new blood and convincingly turn them into characters we should care about. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, but it doesn’t help when the one character we’ve lived with for 11 seasons, Dr. John Carter, has now left the building, the last of the original cast characters to get the itch to jump ship. Carter’s exit to Africa was hasty, even for a show that has killed its cast members off with everything from a brain tumor to an unfortunate helicopter crushing, but maybe it was time for the good doc to give it up, after all, “ER” is hardly the show it used to be, and it is hardly the ratings champ it used to be either. But it is still a cash cow for struggling NBC, and even if it repeats itself (how many different ways can one show portray a difficult child birth?) and focuses too much on the unhappy love lives of its residents (somebody please break up Sam and Luca already), I doubt the end is near, because what else does NBC have for Thursday at 10? “Medium”? “Revelations”? “Fear Factor”? Come on, and this is the network that cancelled “Boomtown”. Yeah, two years later and I’m still bitter.
Finally, let’s close on a good note. Over on Fox, the resurrection of “Family Guy” has been a strange twist in TV history, a case of DVD sales actually bringing back a cancelled show. I’m yet to see any of the new episodes, and to tell the truth, I was never a huge fan of the show that seemed like a rip-off of “The Simpsons” crossed with “Married with Children”, but if post-death popularity can lead to new life, than please, please Fox, bring back “Futurama”. I know “Family Guy” is cheaper to produce, and the low brow humor probably brings in more viewers than the smart satire of Matt Groening’s much loved Sci-Fi series, but as the weeks go by, and the relatively small number of episodes become more and more familiar, thanks to nightly viewings on The Cartoon Network, the need for new material becomes ever so desperate. If one cartoon can come back from the dead, maybe it’s not too much to ask for another small miracle from the network that just renewed the low-rated “Arrested Development” for another full season. AD’s survival is the happiest TV news of the year, but “Futurama’s” long-shot renewal would be a godsend.
by Adam Suraf