January 2001 Archives

A few months back, I watched the first episode of Boston Public, then subsequently underwent an out-of-body experience. That's the only explanation I have for the subsequent review I wrote: over the course of the article, I said moderately kind things about the show, including:

"And, for a Kelley show, this is amazingly believable."

"The rest of us -- including people like me who normally use the words "David E. Kelley" as an epithet -- might even be willing to overlook these and other Kelleyisms, provided the show continues to grapple with the tough questions that the first episode raises."

"And even if the show slips into the usual Kelley pattern -- a strong first season, with subsequent seasons slipping into self-parody -- it still has something for everyone."

I'd like to go on the record as stating that I have no idea as to my whereabouts on October 25, 2000. I was kidnapped by aliens. Or abducted by covert government operatives and forced to write the review between bouts of electroshock torture. Or coming off a three-day rap session with America's finest freelance pharmaceutical professionals.

Or doing anything other than watching a show, finding it surprisingly enjoyable and gushing like a musical heroine to the fine folks at TeeVee. Because, really, I've watched subsequent episodes of Boston Public. I've watched subsequent promotions for episodes of Boston Public. And each time I do, I die a little more inside.

How can I not, with plots about suicides, bras, breast implants and teenaged cheerleaders who are apparently employing the same choreographer who gave the world Showgirls? Whatever early promise this show had was squandered in the first episode.

I should have seen this coming. I should have realized that David E. Kelley is falling victim to the same cycle of diminishing returns that's wracked the high-tech industry lately: one phenomenon precipitates a boom time, but as the zeitgeist cools, each subsequent innovation garners more hype and less long-term impact.

Think I'm lying? Consider the following: the World Wide Web, leading into B-to-C web sites that were supposed to make the Web pay for itself, leading into the B-to-B web sites that were supposed to bail out the B-to-C web sites, leading into P-to-P business strategies that were supposed to entice hype-weary bitheads into thinking that perhaps we could do something different with networked wireless doodads. Each little buzzword had a briefer life span than the one before it.

Now think of the Kelley career arc: Picket Fences followed by Chicago Hope followed by The Practice followed by Ally McBeal followed by Snoops followed by Boston Public. From a historical perspective, it should have been clear that, as a series, Boston Public hit its apex in the first half-hour.

The only good news that can come out of this -- aside from discovering that I apparently spent twenty-four hours having the kind of supernatural experience Whitley Streiber only wishes he could write about -- is that we all know an incontrovertible truth about David E. Kelley series. The next one won't peak in the first half-hour. No, using the law of diminishing TV returns, it's going to peak in the previews before the first episode.

You have been warned.

A gaggle of Vidiots and a team of well-intentioned civilians gathered again this weekend at one of the Vidiots' residences, with the express purpose of enjoying not just Super Bowl XXXV, but the new crop of commercials that accompany the game. And to put it bluntly, we were screwed -- not unlike the good people of Cleveland, when Art Modell pulled up stakes five years ago for the greener pastures of Charm City.

This year's Super Bowl ads were lackluster at best, and atrocious at worst. No, there was no creepy animatronic Christopher Reeve walking zombie-like across a stage this year -- but there was also only one flat-out winner, an ad that brought the house down and was unanimously declared a top-notch effort.

The rest? They just made us want to bring the house down -- by setting fire to it.

But enough of our silly historical perspective. Let's get to the winners and losers!

Grand Champion: ETrade's "Monkey 2001." A follow-up to one of our honorable-mention spots from last year, this one made us all laugh. As the famed ETrade chimpanzee rides forlornly through a dot-com ghost down, he ultimately discovers the dead body of a certain familiar sock puppet (sadly, the winner of our top prize last year). "Invest Wisely," reads the final message of the commercial, as the chimpanzee sheds an Iron Eyes Cody-like tear for his departed dot-com brethren.

1st Runner-Up: Budweiser's Extraterrestrial "Whassup" commercial. The plot's not much: a cute family pooch runs outside, is beamed up by a spaceship, and returns to the home planet to reveal that Fido is actually an alien in disguise. At which point the entire thing turns into yet another "Whassup?!" retread. Except we just couldn't get past the amazing visual effects, ones we might even call on par with "Star Wars Episode 1." And the plot's about as good, too. Plus, the dog was really cute until he turned into a bulbous alien.

2nd Runner-Up: eTrade's "Guard." What can we say? We enjoyed this spot for eTrade Banking featuring a bald old bank guard who (in his dreams) outwits a crew of would-be bank robbers thanks to "Matrix"-style fighting moves. Despite the mysterious Jimmy Durante references, we thought the guard kicked ass.

3rd Runner-Up: Mastercard's "The Letter B." This ad featured a bizarre auction, where the letter B ("used by Shakespeare and Cookie Monster") goes on sale along with the color red ("stops cars and causes bulls to charge") and gravity ("paperweight of the cosmos"). Of course, the message is that "there are some things money can't buy," but who cares? This single bizarre scenario gave us a bigger kick than most entire Saturday Night Live episodes.

Honorable Mentions: We hate to reward Budweiser, a company which foisted ads as watered down as its beer upon us, but in addition to the E.T. "Whassup" ad, we also liked the ultra-unhip "What Are You Doing?" ad (young urban professionals enjoying an imported beer and bastardizing the "Wassup" schtick) and the Bud Light ad featuring a dog stuffing itself with the entire contents of a refrigerator. Pepsi is another serial offender, and yet -- for once -- we found a couple of that company's ads (Garry Kasparov vs. a HAL-like chess computer and Bob Dole in a parody of his Viagra commercials) fairly amusing. We also liked the Snickers spot featuring dolls spouting unpleasant catch phrases being crushed, and enjoyed EDS' "Running of the Squirrels" ad quite a lot, despite the fact that it's just a pathetic knock-off of its excellent "Cat Herders" spot from last year.

If you can't bring your A-game to the Super Bowl, EDS... well, that'd make you the New York Giants.

And now, the worst! This year, the worst come in all shapes and sizes. And the top three all come from companies with phony, lame-ass made-up names.

Black Lung Cup (5th worst): Various anti-smoking spots. Just like last year, Philip Morris this year tried to ingratiate itself into the hearts of Americans with another anti-smoking ad that was just plain creepy. But we also got a couple of real anti-smoking downers from the American Legacy Foundation. American Legacy's ads -- especially the one with the throat cancer victim speaking through a monotonic voice box from his hospital bed -- carry an impact, but it really wasn't the entertainment we were looking for. It was just icky and creepy, on a day where we didn't really want our buzz harshed.

"Battlefield Earth" Memorial Trophy (4th worst): Movie trailers. It began as an oddity -- ads for movies, including summer movies, appearing during the Super Bowl. But we must've counted a half-dozen movie ads in this year's broadcast, and it has prompted us to say this: stop it. We don't want to see your unimpressive, impenetrable, pointless movie trailers. We don't give a crap about John Travolta's incomphrensible "Swordfish," nor do we really feel like seeing "Hannibal" or "The Mummy Returns" now. If you're not prepared to blow up the White House or create some other radical, mind-blowing trailer to get inside our heads, go away and don't come back until the week your movie opens.

Wireless Wasteland Award (3rd worst): Verizon Wireless. In a series of atrocious spots featuring people at a concert, we learned about the excitement you can get from chatting via text on your cellular phone. Nothing's more fun than writing messages using a phone keypad! And the real fun starts when you get your Verizon bill. To top it off, the ad was so appallingly faux-hip that it made our ears bleed.

And You Thought Our Original Name Was Bad Award (2nd worst): Accenture. This company used to be called Arthur Andersen, but now it's called Accenture! With a funny accent over one of the letters! So it's much cooler now. At least, that's what marketing tells us. Arthur And... er, Accenture also now produces a series of awful spots under the "Now It Gets Interesting" banner: dancing bacteria, virtual surgery, an old lady blowing out candles on her 150th birthday, and our favorite -- a man disappearing while driving a car. First off, these ads were confusing. ("Can I get me one of them disappearing cars?" a Vidiot wanted to know.) Second, they were obvious. And third, and most importantly, Accenture is a really stupid name, accent marks or no.

Golden Crapulence Award (the very worst): Cingular. Another company with a stupid name they paid millions of dollars to come up with. Cingular's ads were singularly uninteresting: a guy dancing around, football players dancing around. Basically, the ads start out appearing just odd enough that we're waiting for the punch line, the thing that will have it all make sense... and be funny. But the punch line never comes with Cingular's ads -- instead, the punch line apparently is Cingular's name and logo.

Our ribs still hurt from laughing. But not the good kind of laughing. What pushes Cingular's ad campaign over the top is an ad that pushed the same buttons for us as the creepy Christopher Reeve ad last year: the inappropriate use of a disabled person for corporate gain. In this case, the inspirational story of Dan Keplinger, the "King Gimp," an artist who has overcome his cerebral palsy to create amazing artworks. As the ad ran, one of the Vidiots could be heard to mutter, "this had better damned well be an ad for a nonprofit organization or charity of some kind." Oh, no. No, it's an ad for a damned cellular phone company. We've got nothing against Keplinger, who really does have an inspirational story to tell. But, then, we've got nothing against Reeve... or at least we didn't until he re-made "Rear Window." No, our bile is saved for the companies that ride on their backs in order to make a big splash at Super Bowl time.

Congratulations, Cingular. You've made a big splash with us for sure.

I don't understand. Every year, the Super Bowl shows up and site after site (sometimes including this site) reviews the commercials. It's gotten so that there's an excessively hip contingent that watches the game just for the commercials.

Now, maybe it's just me, but that seems like the mark of a consumerist culture run amok. And while I'm normally in favor of things running amok, I still have trouble understanding what's happening here. Commercials are basically carnival hucksters screaming at you, trying to get you to buy Preparation H, and Kleenex, and Schwab Investments. They're on the midway, but they're not why you came to the carnival. They're something you're supposed to hurry past on your way to the cotton candy stand and the disappointing fun house.

The big selling point for the commercials -- which are themselves supposed to be selling points for something else -- is that the advertisers spend millions of dollars to make special "Super Bowl Commercials." The Super Bowl is the Super Bowl of commercials! People in the advertising business still talk in reverent, hushed tones about the Apple's 1984 Macintosh ad, which only aired once, if you don't count the thousands of "World's Best Commercials" shows that have shown it since. For some advertisers, the Super Bowl is the start of the season; it's when they debut their new talking lizards that they'll be shoving down the throat of the viewing public for the next year.

And at any other time than the Super Bowl, the viewing public seems resentful. Commercials are the time when you can walk away from your TV, secure in the knowledge that Ross and Rachel won't be getting back together for at least the next two minutes. But for four hours a year, families gather together in front of the flickering box, anxious to see how they'll be bilked out of their money.

If people are so desperate to see advertising, can't they watch infomercials? And it's not like anyone's sitting there saying "Boy! I'm right on the edge of buying myself some Bud Light. I wonder what they'll show me to seal the deal!" Most of the "special" ads are for places like FedEx. Since when does FedEx need to advertise? Everybody knows about Federal Express, and everybody uses Federal Express. What they're really telling us is "We've got so much money, we can spend millions of dollars creating unnecessary advertising that's only tangentially related to our product! Ha ha ha! Kneel! Kneel before Zod!"

And now, because we live in a futuristic dystopia, it's possible to watch the ads without having all that inconvenient football in the way. Adcritic.com has made all the ads available over the Internet. I don't blame them; they saw a need and they filled it. It's not their fault. But there's certainly something wrong with a society that uses a billion-dollar information superhighway requiring thousands of dollars of computing power to use, and the neatest use to which we can put it is by purposely watching sales pitches for even more products. Products, I might add, that we'll almost certainly put to even more silly purposes.

You think I'm exaggerating the danger, don't you? Well, perhaps you've never seen superbowl-ads.com. It's devoted to following "the latest information on those wonderful Super Bowl commercials". They have polls, news, reviews, and history. Ah yes, the rich history of the Super Bowl Commercial. I expect we all remember where we were when we saw our first Super Bowl commercial.

Speaking of which, people are nostalgic for the Super Bowl commercials of their youth. They remember a golden age, when the corn was high, children respected their elders, and the Bud Bowl was on television. Now it's relegated to the Internet, along with some "Internet-exclusive Whassup?! commercials that you haven't seen." I believe that if there are still people eager to see new situations in which people can say "Whassup?! then that is clear evidence that quite enough Budweiser has been sold.

And the final straw is that the commercials are terrible. There's nothing wrong with having a funny little skit, but when your big payoff is that what you sell is "managing the complexities of the digital economy," well, I have to think that someone spent a few million dollars unwisely. And almost all of the commercials are like that: a little clever, but not, you know, actually selling anything.

Except for that "Tomb Raider" ad. That was really cool.

Seems like I can't turn around without somebody telling me how great Oz is. For some reason, every time a year ends, pundits crawl out of the woodwork (that's where pundits live: the woodwork) to start on their "This is great" and "You should watch this" talk. It's like they take it as a personal insult that I watch Black Scorpion. And I'm not saying they're wrong.

And fairly consistently on or near the top of the list, you always see Oz. It's usually near phrases like "eye-popping and visceral" or "disturbing and brilliant". I suppose it's my own fault for spending so much time on the Internet, but sometimes it seems like glowing reviews of Oz almost outnumber pictures of young women with unnatural attachments to livestock.

Well, I've been holding out for, um, however many years Oz has been on HBO, and I can't take it anymore. I'm not made of stone, people! So as I type this, I am preparing to watch Oz for the first time. And although I will, of course, uphold my vow as an internet television loudmouth to be scrupulously fair and unbiased, I have to admit that all this Oz hype has probably irrevocably soured me toward it. So if I don't like it, rest assured I shall be venting my spleen upon all those who insisted that it was the best show in the world.

Of course, if I do like Oz, I shall undoubtedly claim that if the pundits had really cared, they would have engaged in even more hype than they did, and it's all their fault that I never watched the show until now. I realize it's petty, but let's face it: I really just like to complain. It's what I'm good at.

So let's get on with it. I hear there's a lot of rape and defecation in this episode. Heck, I hear there's a lot of rape and defecation in everyepisode! Thank you; I'm here all week.

Tonight's episode (which actually aired yesterday, thanks to the magic of TiVo) is called "Revenge is Sweet." The preview says, "Alvarez offers to turn informant; Barlog may get leniency for testimony against Keller." I hope there won't be a quiz, because all these names start to sound like one of those really long-running soap operas with twenty main characters. Hey, but I notice that Ernie Hudson is a part of this show. I like Ernie Hudson.

0:01 The "on the last episode" section has too many things for me to keep track of, including at least one murder. I hate coming in in the middle of a drama; I'm always worried that there's some big important plot thread I don't know about that would radically change everything.

0:02 The opening credits have lots of violence and nudity and sex and stuff. If I were a generous person, I would assume that they do this to warn people what kind of this they might be about to see. However, since I'm not, I'm going to allege that they wanted to make sure that no one's prurient interests went away unfulfilled. Except mine, of course, because I happen to have hitherto unimagined reservoirs of prurient interests. And that's why I spend all that time on the internet.

0:06 Plot Thread Alpha is off and running, as Alvarez (a guy in a bandana) becomes an informer, as Warden Ernie Hudson calls him "the perfect snitch." Hey, that would be a great science fiction premise. "The Perfect Snitch," starring David Spade as a cybernetic informing machine. I'd watch it, but that's only because I watch anything that sounds terrible and has a vaguely science-fictiony premise.

0:08 Who's the guy talking to the camera telling me about the prison? For all the talk about how realistic the series is, that seems like an awfully postmodern touch. If I'm using the word "postmodern" correctly. Which I'm almost certainly not.

0:11 First sadistic warden forcing sex on a prisoner. It's always good when the standards of the form are followed. Although to make it a bit less like Reform School Girls, it's a female warden and a male prisoner.

0:12 First prisoner fight

0:16 The gym! Entertainment Weekly says that every time the actors see that they have a scene in the gym, they wonder what sick and disgusting thing they'll have to do, so I'm braced for something terrifying. Nothing much happens.

0:19 Prisoner attacks guards; goes to the hole.

0:22 The gym again! One guy is told "You cannot become a Muslim!" and gets punched.

0:24 The hole again. You can tell the prisoners are hard-boiled because they just look irritated when they get thrown in the hole. How come no one ever gets "gently placed" in the hole?

0:27 "Or Hoyt, he'll make sure you and Jesus have a face-to-face real soon. In Heaven." That's not a bad threat, but the "in Heaven!" part isn't necessary. It's like saying "We gave him a dirt nap... in a graveyard!" The threat has already been made; you don't need to be so specific.

0:31 The gym again. And this red-haired guy is coming onto Luke Perry. Hey, is that the guy from Fame? Nope. Not Paul McClane. That is Luke Perry, though. Luke Perry is a man of upright rectitude and turns down the offer of oral sex. Good for you, Luke. Our nation's children are in good hands.

0:36 They mention Alvarez again. Whatever happened to him? Now that I think of it, I have no idea what's going on. People are being paraded in front of me, but their problems either get solved right away (that one guy is already accepted as a new Muslim) or have been left by the wayside. I'm suddenly consumed with curiosity about what happened to Alvarez. Last I heard, he was supposed to become an informer, and he was also supposed to kill that other guy. In most shows, that would qualify as a pretty important plot point.

0:49 That guy's naked! That's the first nudity not in the credits. And it seemed like it was there just because they promised nudity in the TV-MA box before the show. I mean, yes, the guys in the shower were talking about sex, but still. It seemed less like shockingly real sex and more like contractual obligation sex. Like when Kevin Costner's butt gets dragged out.

0:53 What the?! It's Didi Conn! She's on a game show the prisoners are watching, but it's still Didi Conn!

0:57 Those two men are not having sexual relations, according to ex-President Clinton. But that guy on the floor is definitely dead. Well, that was the big climactic moment, I guess, with death and sex at the same time. And sure enough, the otherworldly narrator is back to remind us of the episode title and we're out.

Well, it was okay. It was a perfectly acceptable hour-long drama that addressed themes you don't ordinarily see on television. Important themes like religion and anal sex. But I have to be honest here. My bones were not chilled. My spine was not tingled. My toes did not curl and my guts did not churn. I will probably watch it again, but I have to think that the assembled pundits have been overstating the case a little.

It's mostly my fault for not knowing what's going on. If were shown all the characters, I probably couldn't identify more than two or three of them. The second part of the episode preview was "Barlog may get leniency for testimony against Keller," and I still don't know who Barlog and Keller are. My summary of this hour of television would be "a lot of stuff happened and one guy died."

I'll give the pundits one more chance, though. I hear The Sopranos is pretty good. Maybe I'll check that out sometime.

HOLLYWOOD (Jan. 23)-- Buoyed by the success of Temptation Island, Fox executives announced plans today to add a second version of the program to its schedule, this one involving married couples.

Temptation Island has been a ratings smash each week that it has aired on Fox. The show places four unwed but committed couples on a tropical island with 26 single people who try to seduce them.

A year ago, Fox executives had vowed to back off from reality programming after the furor surrounding "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire." But after the ratings successes of Survivor and Temptation Island, Fox programming chief Sandy Grushow said, "we'd be fools not to strike while the iron is hot."

The newest edition of the program, Temptation Island 2: The Adulterers, will keep the same format as its predecessor: four couples on an island fending off the advances of two dozen tempters and seductresses. Only in this installment, the couples will be married at least five years.

"Like the first version of Temptation Island, our newest hit will explore the dynamics of serious relationships," Grushow explained. "It's really an anthropological study, when you think about it."

Another change in Temptation Island 2 will be the introduction of alcohol into the proceedings. The show's producers will not only provided unlimited spirits, but encourage the contestants to drink freely and heavily.

"We've found booze really livens things up," Fox reality programming executive Mike Darnell said. "Group dynamic-wise, I mean."

And unlike the first version of the show, in which a couple that shared a child was booted off by producers, Temptation Island 2 won't ban parents.

"That rule really seemed arbitrary," Grushow said. "Besides, just because a couple of folks have had a kid together doesn't mean they can't enjoy a little hey-hey."

BURBANK (Jan. 24)-- NBC jumped into the reality programming game today with a show seeking to capitalize on Fox's recent success with Temptation Island.

According to an NBC press release, Revenge of Temptation Island will "give spurned lovers a chance to get back at their unfaithful exes -- by fighting fire with fire!"

"What's good for the goose is good for the gander," chuckled NBC's new programming chief Jeff Zucker.

Revenge of Temptation Island will fly cuckolded husbands, disgraced wives, and irate boyfriends and girlfriends to a Caribbean island where they will get the chance to wreak a horrible vengeance for public infidelities. They'll get to sleep with their ex-lovers' best friends, brothers, sisters, parents, college roommates or bosses.

"Or any combination thereof," Zucker added.

For contestants, NBC will select former Temptation Island participants, rejected Jerry Springer Show guests, or "anyone who just likes to sleep around," Zucker said.

"Like our colleagues at Fox, we here at NBC are very interested in exploring the human emotion of love," Zucker explained. "With Revenge of Temptation Island, we have the chance to examine love in all its many alluring forms. On camera. With some of them hidden."

CENTURY CITY (Jan. 25)-- ABC announced plans today for a reality program that it hoped would revive the flagging fortunes of its once dominate Who Wants to be a Millionaire franchise.

Seven Deadly Sins Island will be a Millionaire-like game show in a Survivor-like setting. Contestants will race around a tropical island trying to commit as many of the Seven Deadly Sins -- lust, gluttony, sloth, anger, pride, envy, and wrath -- as possible in an hour. Points will be awarded based on the difficulty and severity of the sin.

"It's pretty easy to just sit around and do nothing, so sloth will be worth relatively few points," explained producer Don Ohlmeyer. "Whereas lust or wrath or gluttony... those require a bit more creativity and stamina." An ecumenical council will be on hand to award points, Ohlmeyer added.

ABC has high hopes for Seven Deadly Sins Island. It will air three nights a week. Millionaire will air the other four. "We'll just slap Drew Carey's little improv show in there to fill the rest of the time," an ABC executive said.

Asked if he had any qualms about producing a show that rewards contestants with cash prizes -- in excess of $1 million, according to some reports -- for behavior that's anathema to most western religions, Ohlmeyer shrugged. "It's really not my place to play God," he said. "That's the responsibility of our Seven Deadly Sins Island host, Arsenio Hall."

"I really need the gig," Hall said.

HOLLYWOOD (Jan. 28)-- With its dominance in the reality programming genre slipping, Fox today upped the ante with the latest island-based addition to its prime time lineup -- Rikers Island.

The show will take recently paroled prisoners and place them in provocative settings to "explore the delicate fabric of societal norms," Fox programming chief Sandy Grushow said. Among the settings outlined by Grushow were a college sorority house, the locker room at a women's fitness club and the grounds of an exclusive, all-girls' school.

"We believe Rikers Island will give America a searing and insightful look into this national's penal system," Grushow said. "What does 10, 12, 15 years of incarceration do to a man? Does it force him to mend his ways? Does he lose faith in the system? Or is he driven to commit unspeakably depraved acts of a sexual nature in front of our cameras?"

"We think we know the answer to that," reality programming executive Mike Darnell said. "Sandy and I have seen Oz."

NEW YORK (Jan. 30)-- CBS plans to bolster ratings for Survivor II by airing a reality show companion -- Virgin Island -- on Thursday nights.

"I'm not going to lie to you," CBS President Les Moonves said. "We're deeply impressed by the numbers Temptation Island and its many imitators are pulling down. So we thought what kind of show would give viewers the same vicarious thrill as adultery and infidelity. That's when we hit on it -- virgins."

Each week, CBS will fly a college freshman to an island of the coast of Virginia -- "Virginia, virgin, they sort of sound alike," Moonves said -- where she will be wooed by 20 male contestants. Whoever successfully deflowers the virgin by the end of the hour wins a U.S. savings bond for $10,000.

"Your first sexual experience is a special, intimate moment," host Ricki Lake said. "And what could be more special and intimate than doing it on a sandy beach at sunset in front of millions of viewers?"

CBS is already considering heavy promotion for Virgin Island. Moonves promised a celebrity-edition of the game for May sweeps, featuring contestants "from CBS's gallery of stars," playing for their favorite charity.

HOLLYWOOD (Jan. 31)-- Sandy Grushow, angry that other networks were "stealing our best reality show ideas," vowed today to "get mad and get even" when he introduced his latest creation -- Sacrificial Virgin Island.

"My good friend Les Moonves may think he can come along and rip-off our shows willy-nilly," a visibly angry Grushow said. "Well, two can play that game."

To that end, Sacrificial Virgin Island is exactly like CBS's Virgin Island -- right down to the Virginian island that both shows are filmed on. But in Fox's version of the reality show, if the virgin is not deflowered by the end of the hour, she's "sacrificed to the island's angry gods."

"Of course, we won't actually sacrifice the virgin," said Grushow, adding that Fox's legal department won't allow it. "We'll use elaborate special effects and camera tricks to make it look like we're sacrificing the virgin. I mean, we're not barbarians here."

HOLLYWOOD (Feb. 2)-- After disappointing ratings for the premiere episode of Sacrificial Virgin Island, Fox announced that it was pulling the show from its schedule and replacing it with a new reality program, Bloodsport Island.

In Bloodsport Island, two rivals are flown to a deserted atoll in international waters where they have from sun-up to sundown to inflict any kind of punishment upon each other, up to and including death. Contestants will be given a choice of weapons, though they'll also be allowed to fashion crude armaments out of the island's sticks and rocks.

"As it turns out, we are barbarians here," a sheepish Sandy Grushow said.

BURBANK (Feb. 4)-- Executives from the major networks denounced Mob Hit, a new show airing on the WB Network that lets home viewers donate money to fund contract killings of TV programming chiefs.

"Have we lost all sense of decency?" demanded Fox programming chief Sandy Grushow. "Human misery and suffering shouldn't be fodder for a TV program."

NBC's Jeff Zucker said that while he could appreciate a show that "examines the dynamics of life on the run from an army of merciless killers," he too felt Mob Hit crossed a line. "This isn't something innocent like a little harmless adultery," he added.

Les Moonves, who has fled the country seeking asylum in South America, could not be reached for comment.

"Mob Hit is easily the sleaziest, most amoral show to reach the airwaves in all my years as a TV executive," Grushow said, as he made his way into a hastily constructed bunker beneath the Fox studios. "I wish I had thought of it first."

I've got a confession to make: I'm a longtime fan of The Pretender, a series repeatedly and mercilessly ridiculed on this site. A full eight months after NBC pulled the plug on one of the most intelligently written and addictive shows ever to get its ratings ass kicked regularly by the likes of Walker, Texas Ranger, we're finally going to get some TV closure. "We" being myself and the thousands of fans (remember, folks, they're fans, not geeks) who bombarded NBC, producers at Twentieth Century Fox and, finally, TNT, with e-mails to "save The Pretender!" Not nearly as many Internet activists rallied for The Pretender as for the just-resurrected La Femme Nikita, but then again, Michael T. Weiss is no Peta Wilson, no matter how much eyeliner he uses.

Yes, that's right: Next week TNT will air the cliffhanger-resolving cable capper to the series' final regular episode, on Monday, Jan. 22 at 6 and 8 p.m.

TNT has put more promotional muscle behind "The Pretender 2001" than NBC did during the series' entire four-year run, even going so far as to sacrifice a night of WCW Monday Nitro rasslin' for the movie and nine-episode "Countdown to The Pretender Marathon" leading into the movie's premiere. The countdown is a refresher on the final season of the series, but the two-hour "Pretender 2001" wastes scant minutes recapping that and the entire premise of the show for newbies. Yes, even with Pretender reruns now in heavy syndication and on TNT every day, there are still some newbies out there. Whaddya got, jobs and lives or something?

Pretender 101: Child genius Jarod (Weiss) is taken from his parents in the early '60s by The Centre, a deep-pockets think tank that sells ideas--mostly of the evil, killin' variety--to the highest global bidders. Under the care of company psychiatrist Sydney (Patrick Bauchau), Jarod is isolated from the world as he uses his computer-like gray matter to devise concepts he believes will be used to help people. Surprise: The Centre takes all his ideas and modifies them into the evil, killin' variety. At the age of 30, Jarod finally decides he's tired of living like a hamster and escapes into the world he's never known--like a grad student, but with useful skills.

Once out, Jarod follows in the footsteps of the Incredible Hulk and the Fugitive and helps Downtrodden Good People on a weekly basis, using his brainiac abilities to "pretend" to be anyone and anything--a doctor, a cop, a race car driver, an FBI agent, a male gigolo (!), you name it, while staying one step ahead of The Centre.

Jarod's a good-natured sort, but has a psychotic streak that surfaces at the end of nearly every episode, where he's inevitably hanging that week's Designated Bad Guy out a window or over a vat of acid and haranguing him about the nasty things he did to that week's Designated Victim. Jarod also seems to be wearing that aforementioned eyeliner at all times.

Simplistic morality plays dropped in the middle of a thickly woven plot, however, do not a cool series make. This is where The Centre's Miss Parker (Andrea Parker, coincidentally) comes in. Possibly the sexiest TV ball-breaker ever, Miss Parker's icy focus and sleek 'n' short wardrobe have made her as popular as the Pretender himself. Never mind that she, Sydney and Broots (Jon Gries) have had nearly five years to catch a fairly identifiable runaway--she looks faaabulous.

What does "The Pretender 2001" bring to the show's Byzantine conspiracy buffet? Too many twists to list without blowing several surprises for the faithful, but, needless to say, Jarod and Miss Parker survive the subway explosion of the series' finale, and the movie brings up as many questions as it answers leaving things wide open for the in-the-works TNT sequels. Watch for Jarod's never-before-chronicled introduction to and escape from The Centre (he wasn't alone), psychic powers for Parker (who looks as good here as Weiss looks disturbingly aged--has it only been eight months?) and a comically bizarre thumb transplant (one for the fans).

In all, "The Pretender 2001" meets--and, in a few instances, surpasses--the knucklehead noir standard set by the series. And could fans of The Pretender really expect to get anything more?

Maybe you've harbored a dream, deep within the recesses of your heart, of becoming the all-powerful, well-respected head of programming for a major TV network. You dream of the press conferences, the power lunches, the tense negotiations with talent that end with the likes of Jerry Seinfeld or George Clooney saying, "OK, OK -- we'll settle for a 5 percent pay hike plus points in the syndication package. But only because we like doing business with you."

But before you can linger on the image of wheeling into your primo parking spot at the network lot -- the covered space, right next to Regis -- you realize that such thoughts are pure folly. Networks don't just pluck programming chiefs out of thin air. They carefully cultivate them, forcing them to serve years-long apprenticeships nurturing sitcoms and dramas and cop shows -- they have to, right? Because if there's one thing the president of a TV network's entertainment division needs, it's years of experience developing shows and discerning talent.

Well, if you've ever dreamt of sidling up to Les Moonves at the next TV executives' get-together -- as an equal, mind you, and not as a deranged stalker -- but worry that your utter lack of experience as a programming executive would keep you on the outside looking in, take comfort in this. Jeff Zucker, NBC's newly hired entertainment division president, has just as much experience working with sitcoms and dramas as you do.

Not that Zucker wandered off the streets of Burbank and into a corner office at the Peacock Network. Zucker hails from NBC News. He's run the top-rated Today program since the early '90s. By all accounts, he did a good job there, if light news and interview segments and Al Roker are your thing. As for, um, fictional programming, Zucker sports a big goose egg on his resume.

Unless you count getting Matt Lauer and Katie Couric to pretend as if they like one another.

Of course, a background in programming really didn't help Zucker's predecessor. Garth Ancier came to NBC from The WB a little over 18 months ago with a reputation as something of a programming virtuoso. But he found the going a bit tougher when it came time to expand his oeuvre beyond shows about impossibly beautiful teens and their heartbreaking struggle to pair up with each other.

Of the new shows introduced by NBC this year -- really, the first fall lineup to bear Ancier's stamp -- only Ed, DAG and Cursed are still on the air. The latter show has undergone a name change; it's now The Weber Show -- sadly, not a program about barbecue sets and smokeless cookers, but rather, the same old laughless crap. Now that the name change is in place, perhaps NBC can move on to the next cosmetic change in The Weber Show's ongoing evolution... like making it funny.

Every other program to appear on NBC this fall during Ancier's watch -- Tucker, Deadline, Titans and The Michael Richards Show -- has since been removed from the schedule, their remains so charred you need dental records to identify them. The first three of those shows, in fact, took the gold, silver and bronze in this year's cancellation sweepstakes, giving NBC a mark of futility that makes it stand out even among the buck-toothed, open-mouthed breathers that make up network TV.

Even UPN laughs.

Ancier has no one to blame but himself. It was apparent as early as last May that The Michael Richards Show wasn't ready for prime time... maybe not even ready for public access cable at 3 a.m. But Ancier stuck with the show, even after two overhauls, several cast changes and a re-shot pilot episode failed to ratchet up the laughs.

Ancier also stuck his neck out for Titans, and I think we can all agree it doesn't take a lot of flow charts and bar graphs to convey where you'll wind up after decisions like that. Underlings tried convincing Ancier that Titans was bad -- not even "bad" in that "let's gather round the TV to mock this tongue-in-cheek offering from Aaron Spelling" sense, but rather "bad" as in "let's gather around the TV to kick in the screen." Ancier would have none of it, however, instead opting to schedule the reviled, idiotic Titans as the lead-in for the critically lauded, smartly written West Wing. Meanwhile, Ed -- another critically lauded, smartly written show -- was shunted off to Sunday nights to be pilloried by Fox's powerhouse lineup and CBS's inexplicably popular Touched by an Angel.

Later that night, Ancier went home and mixed bleach with ammonia.

Ancier's also the fellow who irritated the producers of Frasier by moving the show out of its cushy Thursday night spot and slapping it on Tuesdays where it was supposed to have the good manners to die quickly and quietly. Only one problem -- Frasier's ratings are up, and the producers are steamed, and CBS is waiting in the wings with a wheelbarrow full of money. NBC doesn't have the scratch to get into a bidding war with another network, not with the gross national product of most developing nations tied up to produce Friends and ER. So the likely scenario is that Frasier bolts at the end of the year, and NBC is left with two aging, expensive shows coasting on their past reputation as the network's only certifiable hits.

Of course, The Weber Show could always take off, what with that name change and all.

Worst of all from NBC's perspective, you can scour the Peacock's lineup and not find one reality show. At a time when CBS executives are rolling around Scrooge McDuck-like in the piles of money that Survivor and its offspring have generated for the network, the programming executive who misses out on the reality TV boat shouldn't be making any long-term plans.

Enter Zucker, whose entire raison d'être is reality programming. It's not like he has that extensive background developing Cheers spin-offs, after all. No, Zucker's strength lies in the reality genre. Today, morning news. Tomorrow, our very own Survivor knock-off.

And that, gentle viewers, is why this latest move by NBC means doom for every last one of us.

Network executives are known for two things: their natty taste in ties and their inability to come up with an original idea. If it grabs big ratings for the guy across the street, you can bet that by the end of the day the exact same show will be on every other channel -- save for a tweak here or there to keep the intellectual property lawyers at bay.

Remember what happened when America's love for Regis Philbin, easy money and easier trivia questions made Who Wants to Be a Millionaire a big hit? Within months, every network had a prime time game show of its own -- Greed, Winning Lines and, from the oldies but goodies file, NBC's Twenty-One.

Now reality programming is the flavor of the month. And so we get The Mole and Making the Band and a parade of other unscripted, just-let-the-cameras-roll shows that can be produced on the cheap. With a man who would have a hard time telling the difference between West Wing and Wings now helming NBC, expect the Peacock to be leading the reality charge.

The only trouble is that hot trends have a way of cooling off rather quickly. Those Millionaire knock-offs I mentioned a paragraph or two ago? All of them left the air in a matter of weeks. Meanwhile, ABC's boneheaded decision to air Millionaire four nights a week cannibalized its audience and weakened interest in the show. It's easy to see the same thing happening to the reality trend as networks flood their schedules with the likes of Temptation Island, Popstars and Survivor II: The Wrath of Richard Hatch.

And that leaves NBC in a dicey position -- a network with a lineup of reality shows that no one wants to watch, a week's worth of Dateline episodes and a programming chief without the background or wherewithal to produce entertainment shows that excite or interest anybody.

Oh, and it also has the newly renamed Weber Show. That about says it all.

One hopes that the new Sci-Fi Channel series Black Scorpion is supposed to set a new television record for camp. Nothing, not even the old Batman episodes, can touch the sheer, unadulterated badness of Black Scorpion. If this is supposed to be the case, then congratulations, Roger Corman, Black Scorpion is incredibly, inspirationally bad and terribly, heroically horrible.

If that's not what the show is supposed to be, then God help us all, because the locusts can't be far behind.

The fact that this series springs from the very warped mind of Corman, the infamous king of atrocious movies, is a strong hint that Black Scorpion is meant to be very chewy fare indeed. The title character is the superhero alter ego of detective Darcy Walker, a cop whose father was murdered while carrying a badge himself. Darcy decides to get into the vengeance business and becomes the Black Scorpion, apparently by raiding the Baywatch wardrobe trailer.

The Scorpion is played by newcomer Michelle Lintel, a former Miss Kansas and presumably the inspiration for Austin Powers' Fembot foes. It's a good thing too, because for whatever true superpowers the Scorpion lacks, she more than makes up for it in butt cheeks. Her costume is even more revealing than the one Pamela Lee made famous and some of the camera angles used in the pilot episode take incredible advantage of the lack of fabric.

Since it must have taken several years to brush up on the mechanical engineering necessary to pack herself into that wisp of a uniform, it's understandable she never had time for acting lessons. Then again, who needs acting when you and your costume make Lucy Lawless and the Xena leathers look like Calista Flockhart in a burlap sack?

Ample physical gifts aside, Black Scorpion is a supremely incompetent superhero. She goes hand-to-hand with her first supervillain, Firearm, three times during the course of the show. He mops the floor with her all three times. This is the same supervillain that eventually gets beat down by a senior citizen. In addition, there is one scene that begins with Darcy lifting weights. When the supposed superhero is lifting a fifth of the weight I put up in the gym that very afternoon, it's surprising she can manage two grocery bags at the same time, let alone a half-dozen thugs.

Darcy morphs into Black Scorpion via some kind of power ring that transmogrifies her clothes into the uniform, sort of like a one-person Wonder Twins setup. Thanks to this wonderful advance in technology, which her sidekick Argyle describes as "rearranging the molecular structure at an atomic level," Darcy's car also changes from a new Corvette into some retro-70s pimp Vette with the huge front wheel wells and a spoiler large enough to hold weddings under.

So this guy Argyle, who can turn a bathtub full of Jell-O into a pile of hundreds thanks to the greatest scientific advancement in the history of mankind, instead uses it to give a beauty queen an instant swimsuit.

I guess he's pretty smart after all.

Corman, who made a name for himself by producing hundreds of movies for less than the cost of one Titanic, is at his penny-pinching best in Black Scorpion. Plastic scorpion dolls that look they came from the 25-cent vending machines at the supermarket become "Scorpionmobile Stingers." A third of the shots are repeated ad nauseam, Legos are used to create miniatures and I'm pretty sure the supervillain's costume was a Casper mask.

They scrimped and saved on the fight scenes as well. Thanks to The Matrix and Jackie Chan, we viewers have been spoiled when it comes to hand-to-hand combat. Black Scorpion drags us right back to the stone age, complete with Captain Kirk judo chops. Lintel supposedly knows Tae Kwon Do, but perhaps she confused it with Tai Chi since she just might be the slowest human being on the face of the earth. Thanks to her glacial style and martial arts choreography that a hippo could master, the fighting interludes have all the intensity of Senior Center Bingo Night.

Supposedly Corman has already shot 22 episodes of Black Scorpion for a total of $12 million. An entire season for less money than NBC shells out for one episode of ER. The maxim that you get what you pay for has never been so true.

Yet for all the bitching and moaning about acting, writing, direction and action, Black Scorpion is, hands down, the funniest show on the air. I have yet to figure out how we humans distinguish the laughably bad from bad that needs to be put to sleep. For some mysterious reason, I can laugh out loud at Black Scorpion and spend a content 60 minutes letting it infect my brain, while a mere 45 seconds of leering at the late, unlamented Tucker would have me screaming for Judgement Day.

There's a conundrum for all you egghead artificial intelligence researchers out there. I guarantee if you were to design a sentient HAL-like computer that could analyze television shows and you inputted both Tucker and Black Scorpion, the machine would decide that consciousness is too terrible a burden to bear and promptly reformat its own hard drive. Yet we homo sapiens can not only tell the difference, but a piece of our DNA encodes for neurons that actually relish the inane and inept. I call it the Manimal gene.

You'd think that for the last couple billion years, evolution could have been busy with some more important things, like weeding out cancer or hairy backs. Instead, we humans can distinguish ourselves from the beasts only by our ability to laugh at The Highwayman.

Judging from his success with B-movies, Roger Corman must have decoded the Manimal gene fifty years ago. Much like downing a bottle of bubble gum schnapps, you know a full hour of Black Scorpion is bad for you... yet it tastes too good to turn off.

Now if we could just get Corman working on Three Sisters, we'd be all set.

Looking to the Internet for exciting new television programming ideas is just not a good idea--unless it involves mucho nudity and one of those "premium channels" you can't afford, then there's an argument.

Same goes for Britain's ability to export something watchable, but danged if they don't keep trying. The Americanized version of English show Big Brother's main (hell, practically only) viewership was on the Net, but only because it hinted at streaming two-inch RealVideo nakedness. As for Big Brother the TV show, we all know it received a collective Yankee shrug matched only by the US of A's reception of the latest Spice Girls album. Yes, there's a new Spice Girls album--it's called "Reduced Price: $1.95," or at least that's what the stickers on the CD covers say down at the Wal-Mart.

Just imagine the horror of watching something British and web-based--ABC did. Last month, The Mouse Network launched a show "inspired by the British series of the same name," Dot Comedy. Then they deleted it faster than a porn site e-mail after a single airing. Now Gyno-American powered Oxygen has picked up the remaining episodes to fill time between online shoe-shopping shows, and you'll understand why in two paragraphs.

As you may have gathered from the clever title, Dot Comedy is about the Internet and all the wacky stuff available out there on Al Gore's Infobahn. But, like forwarded e-mail jokes with hundreds of those ">" symbols and goofy MPEG movies that clog up your company's mail server until the Computer Guy is forced to come into the office and "interface" with humans by screeching funny words like "bandwidth" and "FTP," the actual "comedy" of Dot Comedy was decidedly low-res.

"In the competitive development arena, we are always on the lookout for new programming ideas, and the World Wide Web is a rich, underutilized source of creativity," said a then-hopeful ABC in a press release. "Dot Comedy is an innovative, daring show that taps into the immediate, electric nature of the Internet. We couldn't be more thrilled." Translation: "We download free content, get some cut-rate cable personalities to intro it and make 'edgy' comments, then hold a studio audience leftover from Funniest Home Videos at gunpoint and force them to laugh hysterically--bang! We've produced a show that's cheaper than a box of new Spice Girls albums!"

At least Carsey-Werner and Oxygen (the production company and cable network that jointly produced Dot Comedy--get the connection now?) could have tried hiring the unemployment-bound Posh, Baby, Scary and, er, Spunky?, to host the show. Instead, we got identically creepy twins Jason and Randy Sklar (MTV's Apartment 2F; Comedy Central's BattleBots), whose only discernible talents were laughing at each other's alleged jokes and growing deep-shag sideburns that would make even Tom Jones feel like less of a man.

Not even ancillary hosts Annabelle Gurwitch (TBS' Dinner & a Movie) and Katie Puckrick (Oxygen's own Pajama Party), two of the sharpest and funniest women of the cable domain, could pull this download out of the trash, but they did have their moments: In the debut episode, Gurwitch's feigned infatuation with a self-described "slim and handsome racecar driver" named Curry was nearly as funny as the "terracotta blonde's" website itself (www.RubberBurner.com--you've got to see this for yourself), while Puckrick's chat with the webmaster of a "virtual museum" of airsickness bags, well, how can you go wrong with that? As she's proven on 635 reruns of Pajama Party (I've seen them all), the sassy-banged one can make even the lamest interviewees look good--but don't ever press your luck and invite the Sklars on, Puckster.

If Dot Comedy would had more offbeat features like these, less sub-Dilbert office time-killer fodder like virtual paper-airplanes-over-cubicles games (?!), over-pixilated video rejects from Caught on Tape!, and a whole lot less of the Dimmer Twins, it might actually have approximated the "cyberculture celebration" it claimed to be. Instead, it was just a lot of annoying "check out this URL" banter flying by with little "stickiness"--that's web lingo for how attractive your site is to multiple-repeat surfers. Since the addresses for the websites on Dot Comedy were only spoken and never displayed onscreen--you'll have to go to Oxygen.com for the links, I'm guessing--the producers obviously understood the importance of "hits."

What I don't understand is why the hosts of these couch/desk/coffee-table shows, like Dot Comedy, always have to have coffee mugs from which they sip from constantly--why do they do this? Does sucking that strenuously for 20 minutes dangerously dehydrate you? What's in those cups? I swear to god, if one of you Netheads e-mails me and says "Java"...

Laughter is the mortal enemy of comedy. OK, more specifically, canned laughter is the mortal enemy of comedy.

Television networks use obnoxious pre-recorded laughter to "sweeten" sitcoms all the time, whether they're actually filmed in front of those fabled "live studio audiences" or not. It also doesn't matter if the material is actually laugh-worthy--only three out of 10 sitcoms on TV at this very moment are consistently funny, but that tinny, braying Audience X from the other side of limbo thinks they're all equally hysterical at unnervingly rhythmic intervals. If I were a comedy writer, I'd love that kind of guarantee; since I'm a Serious Journalist, I must criticize it.

Comedy Central recently began running the 44 existing episodes of Sports Night, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's pre-West Wing foray into TV. Unfortunately, as good as the series eventually became before ABC canceled it after a ratings-starved second season, the weekly Comedy Central dose reminds that the initial episodes were annoying as hell. Why? Because ABC insisted on inserting a laugh track where none was needed, throwing off the show's verbally dense comedy/drama rhythm method. When the canned laughs were finally phased out, Sports Night was great--too bad no one was watching.

Fox's new sitcom Grounded for Life may never be considered great--even by Fox standards--but one thing's certain: the freaking laugh track must go! So must TV critics who are still whining about shows canceled two years ago, incidentally.

John Goodman's "on-hiatus" Normal, Ohio failed miserably as an attempt to wedge sideways into Fox's newly rediscovered niche as the Dysfunctional Family Values Network, a canned-laugh-suspended bridge in the gap between unexpected DFV hits Malcolm in the Middle (which uses no laugh track) and Titus (which uses a moderated laugh track to mask the show's vaguely creepy psychosis). If Grounded for Life doesn't pick up Normal's viewer slack, Fox only has that unkillable cockroach of a cartoon The Family Guy left up its programming sleeve. I'm not threatening, I'm just saying.

The premise of Grounded for Life is DFV simple: Early-30s, married-at-18 couple with a 14-year-old daughter and two slightly younger boys wants desperately to remain "cool" and "irresponsible," but are vexed at every turn by the kids, shadowing relatives and reality. Sitcom reality, anyway--someday, I hope to live there.

Sounds like the perfect set-up for an "edgy" Fox TV comedy, so what's Donal Logue doing here? He's a movie star, ferchrissakes! Besides "The Tao of Steve" and "The Patriot," he's been in over 40 major and independent flicks--hell, I met the guy at Slamdance in Park City four years ago. Never expected him to wind up starring in a sitcom but, then again, I never expected to get paid for watching TV (not by TeeVee, but some other suckers) and writing about actors I've run into at pretentious film festivals, either. Life's kinda funny.

realize that it doesn't really need one--it ain't Malcolm, but it has potential. Logue's patented smarter-than-he-looks Irish everydude doesn't jump off the TV screen as easily as he does the movie screen, but his Sean Finnerty is complemented nicely by wife Claudia (Megyn Price, Lateline), brother Eddie (Kevin Corrigan, a ringer for Christopher Walken), daughter Lily (Lysey Bartilson, Party of Five) and father Walt (character vet Richard Riehle, name a movie or TV series). Minus the generically destructive sons, the ensemble works.

While I usually prefer to avoid violently angry teenage girls (it's just a good rule of thumb), redheaded rager Lily is already my favorite Grounded character--she could eat those Once & Again brats for brunch. The producers obviously agree, since the plotlines of both this week's chicken-hurling debut episode and a future airing included on my special preview tape from Carsey-Werner (not to act like a studio-name-dropping TV critic or anything) revolve around the teen terroress, not Sean and Claudia.

That second episode, involving Lily's fake ID, Internet chat-room espionage and a fake rave at a Newark drycleaner, reaches some genuinely Seinfeldian heights of sitcom absurdity--here's hoping Grounded for Life staves off cancellation long enough for it to air. If not, Logue's back to the indie-flick grind, and you'll be left with yet more That '70s Show reruns, Normal, Ohio leftovers, and the inevitable return of Family Guy.

I'm not threatening, I'm just saying.

There was a time when television shows couldn't get syndicated unless they had at least five seasons under their belts. But that was in the dark ages when there were only three or four channels, and there was more than enough programming to fill up the day. Apparently, not enough people are making new television shows, and basic cable channels are running out of episodes of Working to show at all hours of the day. This means that more obscure shows are being selected for revival... assuming revival means being shown on USA at 9 a.m.

Now, I don't care about most of the shows that didn't make it to five seasons, because they're mostly things like Hulk Hogan's Thunder in Paradise. But occasionally the set of television shows for which I have a deep and inexplicably abiding affection intersects with the set of television shows that basic cable network executive monkeys have picked out of the vast pile of dusty videotapes. And then I jump up and down like a loon. Luckily for the people who live below me, that doesn't happen very often.

But now USA is showing reruns of Doctor, Doctor. That sentence ends with a period instead of eighteen exclamation points only because I have learned rigorous self control. The delight I feel in seeing Matt Frewer's long-forgotten sitcom bursts all bounds of proper punctuation. For two years, I watched him cutting up as Dr. Mike Stratford, and I was never disappointed in his cheerful buffoonery. It didn't bother me that CBS gave it five timeslots on four different days from 1989 through 1991. I followed it diligently, although I may have missed a week or two when I lost track of it. I enjoyed the show so much that I even watched Shaky Ground, his later sitcom which didn't last out a year. I was even briefly willing to watch the Pink Panther cartoons where Frewer provided the voice for the Panther. That had to stop, though, because even my rampant fandom isn't enough to overcome the fact that it just isn't right for the Pink Panther to talk.

I realize not everyone remembers Doctor, Doctor. In fact, hardly anyone seems to have watched it. It was basically the story of Wacky Doctor Miks Stratford and his three co-doctors. And some other people, who changed from season to season as the producers flailed desperately around trying to latch onto an audience.

In addition to Matt Frewer, whose Max Headroom was world-famous at the time (you kids will have to trust me on this), Doctor, Doctor had Julius Carry, who you might have seen briefly on Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place. He was also Bucky in "Disco Godfather," for what that's worth. Oh, and he was Lord Bowler on The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. There were a couple other people, but my new motto is "If you were Max Headroom or someone in 'Disco Godfather,' I'm not interested." That should look good on my business cards.

My point here is that whenever I'm going on about sitcoms I wish I had on tape, one of the shows most likely to come up is Doctor, Doctor. In my memory, it's hilarious. I can recite several lines from memory and then proceed to fall about laughing while the people around me look on nervously and wonder if they should call security. Sometimes they think I invented the whole show out of my imagination, and I have no way of proving it really existed. Well, I didn't, until USA decided that the world had been starved of Matt Frewer's comedic stylings long enough.

So now I'm watching it, and it's funny, but it's not the knock-down, drag-out, laugh-out-loud-and-apologize-to-the-neighbors-later affair I remembered. The funniest line so far, uttered by Matt Frewer in response to being informed that his tie has a stain, is, "Stain?! All this time I thought it was our family crest!" That's sort of funny, I guess, but really only because it uses the phrase "family crest". Family crests are funny. Tha t "business card" line I used two paragraphs ago would have been much funnier with family crests instead.

Now, just because the first episode I saw wasn't shimmering with golden wackiness doesn't mean I'm going to start badmouthing it. It has a refreshing air of absurdism: one of my treasured memories is of Matt Frewer, in response to being told "I'm not in the mood for jokes," whipping out a banana peel, shouting "How about a sight gag?" and proceeding to take an elaborate pratfall. That's great stuff.

But I have to face the facts that some mean-spirited videotape jockey has been saving Doctor, Doctor until I'd lost all first-hand memory of it, and now they've decided it's time for me to see how I like the taste of my words. It's all very disillusioning. The next thing you know, someone will start airing Jason Bateman's brilliant It's Your Move.

Well, I've decided I don't care if Doctor, Doctor isn't "really" hilarious. As long as the reruns (airing on USA at 9:00 am PST) continue to remind me, however vaguely, of the Platonic ideal sitcom I have in my head, I'll continue to watch. Sure, it's possible that the reality of watching Matt Frewer imitating a massive bird of prey in response to unexpectedly seeing his mother isn't going to be funny. But it'll still be funny in my memory.

And I don't intend to be swayed by the facts.

No offense to my colleague Jason Snell -- who, despite stunted social skills, an unpleasant speaking voice and the unfortunate haircut fate has saddled him with, is one hell of a human being -- but these year-end lists are really an exercise in journalistic futility. They're little more than bar arguments set down to paper, pre-assembled stories for TV critics who want to spend late December as far away from a typewriter as possible. And what better way to get a post-Christmas, pre-New Year story in the can than by filing a Top 10 List you can dash off before the Thanksgiving turkey even hits the oven?

They're great for generating debates around the water cooler, these 10 Best Shows lists, but they do toy with common sense. First off, what has the number 10 ever done -- apart from having the good sense to be a nice, easy-to remember round number -- to become the yardstick by which Year-End Lists are measured? What if, heaven forfend, there are more than 10 good shows on the air in a given year? Or, more likely in an age when David E. Kelley continues to find work, what if there are fewer than 10? Say after hours of painstaking research, you can only come up with six shows worthy of a Best-Of List. What are you supposed to do -- slap in a couple of also-runs, a daytime soap opera and a Taxi rerun to keep the other four spaces warm?

And unlike other end-of-the-year lists -- which come out this time of year because, well, the calendar says so -- the TV wrap-up should really be done back in June when the curtain comes down on the regular season. Instead, lists wind up comparing new fall shows with last season's installments -- apples to oranges, West Wings to Frasiers -- with the old, musty offerings getting the short-end of the comparative stick.

And that's just the new shows. Gauging how a program performs over the course of a calendar year as opposed to a fall-to-summer season can force TV critics into more contortions than a Cirque de Soleil tumbler. Take The X-Files. To assess its place in the Best TV Has To Offer, Y2K Edition, which episodes do you consider? Do you look at the first half of the year -- the part where the plots were full of gobbledygook and David Duchovny just showed up to collect his pay stubs and even the guy who smokes the cigarettes looked bored as hell -- or just episodes from this fall when Robert Patrick leapt onto the show's prone body and began pounding on its chest?

In my case, neither one. I really don't care for The X-Files. But I think the point still stands.

So these are the conditions under which Snell expects us to labor. You can see what havoc they played with his own list: Two of the shows he lauded can't even be seen anymore, unless you watch Freaks & Geeks reruns on the Fox Family channel or Now and Again reruns on whatever Saturn-based cable system services the Snell household.

Jason -- and it bears repeating: nice guy, bad haircut, a little bit crazy around the edges -- had this idea that each one of the Vidiots would come up with their own List of 10. Which is further evidence of his rapidly loosening grip on reality.

We don't believe in much here at TeeVee, certainly not hygiene or good manners or the rule of law. But we do steadfastly believe in the principle of groupthink. If one of us is foolhardy enough to come up with an opinion on his own, he had best make sure it meshes with what the rest of us think, if that opinion is ever going to see the light of day.

I mean, why do you think Boychuk never writes anything? All you'd ever see from that guy would be articles about how great Tony Danza is and how you won't find 30 funnier minutes of television than Cursed. If we didn't tie him to a chair and use orange-filled socks to beat some sense into him, that is.

Boychuk's re-education regimen aside, Lists of 10 from each Vidiot would get more repetitive than a Jewel album. As much as I like to taunt Snell -- and his hair -- I have to say his Best Of TV list pretty much goes for me, too. Oh, I'd dump Survivor. And the silly sci-fi for the kids -- the Buffys and the Angels and the lamentable Stargates -- I'd seal those in an oil drum and stash them in a landfill. But the rest of Snell's picks, they're all first rate.

But this feeble chorus of "Me Too" -- this is of no service to you, the loyal TeeVee reader. You don't need me to mumble more lukewarm kudos about shows Snell already heaped lavish praise upon a weak ago. No, today's on-the-go TeeVee reader demands data! Information! High-resolution pictures of barely legal topless stewardesses. And, since customer satisfaction is Job-1 with me, I'm going to give it all to you.

Except for the stewardesses part. That's just unseemly.

So here's my list of shows -- 10 different shows. Ten shows you can still find surfing around your TV. Ten shows you can proudly take home to your parents and watch with the shades up, unafraid of what the neighbors might see.

These certainly aren't my favorite shows -- Snell stole my West Wing and Good Eats thunder last week. But they are easily watchable, entirely accessible and, most important, eminently entertaining.

10. WWF Raw, USA; WWF Smackdown! UPN. We all have our private shames, I suppose. Mine is that I've been a fan of professional wrestling since my boyhood in the early '80s. (Love that Junkyard Dog!) So believe me when I tell you that the World Wrestling Federation is going through a creative renaissance not seen since Captain Lou Albano started showing up in Cyndi Lauper videos. The wrestling's almost beside the point now; I watch these shows as much for the behind-the-scenes tomfoolery as I do for the in-the-ring action. Why? Because an interview with The Rock or Kurt Angle has more genuine laughs in three minutes than a Friends episode does in 30.

9. Iron Chef, Food Network. Truth be told, I miss the old Iron Chef, the Japanese-language version with English subtitles that used to air on local TV here in San Francisco. (As an added bonus, you also got to watch the Japanese-language commercials, which -- if such a thing is possible -- were even more incomprehensible than Iron Chef itself.) Still, the dubbed edition that airs on the Food Network is not without its charms. We get a better look into the dark heart of MC Kaga -- he refuses to attend Battle Pork after the Iron Chefs rack up too many defeats! And the Battle New York, in which Iron Chef Morimoto battles celebrity chef Bobby Flay, may have been the funniest and most surreal hour to air on American TV in 2000.

8. Junkyard Wars, TLC. I have to thank fellow Vidiot Gregg Wrenn for alerting me to the existence of this British import, in which warring teams of geeks and propeller-heads have 10 hours to build a machine out of scrap iron and discarded home appliances. You wouldn't think a show that relies so heavily on physics, engineering and fancy book-learning would be so entertaining; then you watch a team of scientists build a hydraulic crane that tears down brick walls out of a discarded VW van. And if my high school physics teacher looked more like the spikey-haired British cutie who created (and co-hosts) Junkyard Wars, I might have opted for a different career path. Simply put, Junkyard Wars is the second-best game show on TV.

7. Two-Minute Drill, ESPN. And this one's the best. The first game show aimed at shut-ins who spend their time reading sports almanacs and the Baseball Encyclopedia, Two-Minute Drill offers all the excitement and showmanship of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire without the drab, boring questions about topics other than sports. True, this violates my "must-still-be-on-the-air" rule -- the last installment of Two-Minute Drill aired Christmas Day. But ESPN is likely to bring the show back and has already begun combing the dark recesses of sports bars for potential contestants. I have the entry form to prove it.

6. SportsCentury, ESPN Classic. ESPN started producing these documentaries in 1999, as a companion to the network's own arbitrary Best-Of List, the top 50 athletes of the 20th Century. You could argue with that list's conclusions (Michael Jordan as athlete of the century over Muhammad Ali? If Ahmad Rashad's making the final call, maybe...), but you couldn't argue with the quality of the 50 episodes. Recognizing it had a good thing going, ESPN brought back the documentary series, expanding its scope to feature more athletes and its length to a full hour. Sure, a non-sports fan may not get the same giddy thrill that I do from an hour-long look at the likes of Bill Mazeroski or Jacques Plante. Even so, the in-depth interviews, solid pacing and stylized narrative approach make this the best biography series on TV.

5. The Vicar of Dibley, BBC America. I worry that all this talk of sports and wrestling may leave you with the impression that I lead a dull interior life. So let's include this British import about a female Church of England vicar -- played by the redoubtable Dawn French -- relegated to a rural English village. Don't let the funny accents throw you -- this show can trade laughs with the best sitcoms the U.S. has to offer. Though, considering what passes for Must-See TV these days, that must seem like faint praise. Give Vicar a try, though. If the smart writing doesn't win you over, the eclectic cast of supporting characters -- everyone from a vaguely sociopathic farmer to a not-so-closeted senior citizen -- will.

4. King of Queens, CBS. I gave this Kevin James sitcom a mixed-to-bad review when it debuted three years ago, and I had plenty of good reasons. There was an awful sister-in-law character, Jerry Stiller's antics left me cold, and the writing was tepid at best. Since then, three wonderful things have happened -- the sister-in-law was sent off to the Land of Chuck Cunningham where she was never heard from again, Jerry Stiller's character faded into the background where it belonged, and the writers began focusing on the relationship between James and his wife, played by Leah Remini. (Now if my high school physics teacher looked like her, I'd be writing this from reform school...) James and Remini have developed great chemistry together, particularly when they play off the obvious physical disparity between the two of them. This season's "Fatty McButterpants" episode in which James' insecurity of being a tubby guy with a hottie wife -- a pain I know all too well -- managed to be poignant and funny at the same time. If you dismissed King of Queens as typical sitcom banality when it first premiered, you'd be doing yourself a favor by giving it another chance.

3. The Daily Show, Comedy Central. I hardly watched a lick of CNN during the presidential election, and I'm petitioning my cable company to have MSNBC and Fox News dropped from their lineup. Instead, I tuned into The Daily Show -- Comedy Central's twisted take on the Dateline-ization of news programming -- and I am a better-informed man because of it. The departure of Craig Kilborn has decreased the show's smarminess by a factor of 10. With Jon Stewart and the current cast of correspondents, the show has become more biting and incisive than ever. Yeah, the show has its valleys -- I can take or leave the more-or-less worthless celebrity interviews -- but the peaks make it worthwhile. And that, after all, is why the good Lord invented the fast-forward button.

2. Everybody Loves Raymond, CBS. Snell says this show would have been number 11 on his Top 10 List. I say he needs to get over his Survivor fixation. Raymond is the funniest show on TV not featuring animated people. The current season has had a few more down spots than I'm used to -- the hour-long season premiere where the family went to Rome was a double-dog drag -- but the Raymond cast and crew has more than recovered with some hilarious episodes. Few sitcoms can deal with familial matters without descending into the pits of mawkishness. Raymond never does, and it gives you a bunch of laughs along the way. That's a hell of a lot better deal than watching some fat naked guy double-cross his Wisconsin trucker friend off the shores of Borneo, I'd say.

1. The Simpsons, Fox. It's not as funny as it used to be, diehard fans bleat. It's on its last legs, doomsayers insist. And when I watch an episode built around another tired celebrity cameo -- Drew Barrymore's appearance nearly caused me to smash my TV -- I want to agree with them. But each time I do, I remember that even the worst episode of The Simpsons is still better than 90 percent of what you'll find on TV these days. And the aging slugger can still hit one out of the park. The Behind the Music parody that concluded last season? Absolutely brilliant. The episode from this fall when Bart and Homer become grifters? Moments of madness that harkened back to the show's finest efforts during its first five seasons. Everybody's ready to write off The Simpsons, to send it to the retirement home for venerable Fox shows where it will join the likes of... well, it will have plenty of room to itself. The point is, that if you were to sit down and list the shows that were still more entertaining than not after a decade on the air, you'd have yourself a pretty short list. And The Simpsons would most certainly be on it.

If that doesn't deserve the top slot in a nonsensical Best Of List, I don't know what does.

So I'm watching Smackdown! on UPN -- a fact I mention only to underscore the point that I'm not some "Kill your television" elitist snob who only watches BBC America and can't appreciate the subtle beauty of a well-applied figure-four leg lock -- when a commercial comes on. And man-of-the-people posturing aside, I'll be damned if I'm going to waste two minutes of my life watching advertisers try to reach UPN's core demographic of drooling, easily distracted teenaged boys.

So I start to channel surf. The first stop on our round-the-dial voyage -- PBS.

Sarah Brightman -- the ex-wife of musical-writing halfling Andrew Lloyd Webber and current darling of folks who like their fine arts served in easy-to-swallow doses -- is performing an aria from Puccini. She's in a large billowy dress, and, since she's up on stilts, she's standing some 15 feet in the air. For a moment, I think I've circumnavigated the dial and returned to the pro wrestling just in time to watch the debut of a new character -- MezzoSoprano, who demolishes opponents with a series of clotheslines and a near-lethal high C.

If he's reading, Vince McMahon is free to steal this idea, by the way.

After Brightman stops singing -- or at least, when she reaches a point where only dogs can hear her rendition of Puccini -- the audience claps, Brightman curtsies, as well as someone on stilts can at any rate, and we're back at the San Francisco PBS studios where operators are standing by to take my generous donation to public broadcasting.

Yes, it's another PBS pledge drive.

PBS pledge drives have always had the subtlety of a Mafia shakedown ("Nice programming you have here... shame if something were to happen to it."). I distinctly remember watching Sesame Street as a youngster, only to have it interrupted by PBS pledge breaks. "If you want to keep seeing Big Bird, kids," the smiling PBS bastard would say, "have your parents call and make a pledge right now."

I guess I should be happy they didn't promise to have Big Bird executed on-screen if we didn't come up with enough scratch.

These days, though, PBS has gotten more desperate. Every time a pledge month rolls around, PBS executives head into the deepest, darkest recesses of their headquarters, only to emerge hours later with armloads full of "Three Tenors" and "Yanni: Live at the Acropolis" tapes.

And they will play them until you and I pony up enough money to make the bad noise stop.

Think the Panama invasion. Remember when Manuel Noriega lit out of the presidential palace a hair's breadth in front of the 101st Airborne and holed up in the Vatican Embassy? Our quick-thinking military set up speakers outside the embassy and blasted rock music at all hours of the day until the acne-scarred dictator emerged with his hands up and his eardrums bleeding. Remember?

Well, PBS remembers. And they have enough John Tesh concerts on tape to last well into 2001. So grab those checkbooks. And give 'til it stops hurting.