March 2001 Archives

It's official, ladies and gentlemen. I am a sell-out. There was a day not too long ago when, thanks to my bedrock principles and iron-clad integrity, I could call down the thunder of self-righteousness and smite the armies of hypocrisy. Those days are now lost forever, fading so rapidly they are but an ephemeral wisp of memory, much like the last decent episode of ER.

I look in the mirror and all I see is ugliness. Granted, I was not an attractive man to begin with, but my many physical imperfections are now overshadowed by a gulf of spiritual wretchedness -- greed, ambition and an unquenchable thirst for power.

I purchased my destiny on layaway, making payments on the price of my soul. And a new pair of Dockers.

Whereas most men lose their principles when they lose their pants, my integrity comes crashing down when I put them on. This would not be such a problem if I didn't spend so much time watching television. You see, this moral crisis has its roots in a decade-old ad campaign, easily the most annoying, obnoxious, loathsome string of commercials to ever stain the airwaves.

Even now, people still shudder at the memory. For those of you who have repressed, the spots were nothing but crotch shots of Dockers doing their pantly duties in all sorts of mundane settings. While the images of various buttock and genital regions assaulted our eyes, voice-overs that had nothing to do with pants tortured our ears.

The scripts were devoted entirely to the vast accumulation of wealth, wine, women and powerboats that those clad in Dockers had amassed. There were coy little quips about the stock market, tips for throwing garden parties and complaints about the availability of decent German mechanics. The message of the ads was simple: wear these pants, get a Mercedes. No doubt about it -- here was an evil ad campaign. It celebrated everything that was wrong about America, namely that there are a whole bunch of people richer than me.

Those commercials were the source of my continued pathological hatred of yuppies and the pants they wear. It's gotten to the point where the trousers themselves don't matter -- the color khaki alone is enough to send me into paroxysms of anti-Lexus rage.

That ad was the turning point in my life, setting me on the path to righteousness: no SUVs, no food with an accent mark in its name and above all, no Dockers. I still planned on being rich, but would skip mere yuppie status and jump straight to billionaire. I would be wealthy enough to ax 150 marketing vice-presidents with a single round of pink slips.

While some may debate the merits of basing one's morality on TV commercials, it was working out pretty well. After all, where else am I going to turn for advice and guidance? Political leaders? Athletes? Actors? Ted Nugent? Nope. It might as well be those guys who do "Pizza Talk" for Round Table. They seem like good people.

Prior to a couple weeks ago, my quest for a TV-inspired, morally pure and Dockers-free life was on the right track. I picked jobs where jeans or shorts were considered plenty business-like. Lord knows there's no dress code here at TeeVee World Headquarters. Between Boychuk's camouflage face paint and fatigues and Snell's leopard-print G-strings, casual Fridays are taken to a dangerous extreme.

Then the Big O came pounding on the front door. The only problem? Opportunity was wearing Dockers. Needless to say, I am now a part of the khaki-colored Army of the Damned. It's only a matter of time before I'm sipping merlot and wondering where the brie is. The scary part was how quickly I caved. Years of television-induced morality down the toilet faster than you can say, "Have a Coke and a smile." Could I possibly be as shallow as one of those brain-dead freaks that have convinced me to never, ever drink Mountain Dew again? Yes, apparently so.

There is still hope, however. I haven't given up on my anti-Madison Ave. philosophy just yet. I continue to erect new pillars of integrity to replace the crumbling ones. For example, I will never purchase a cell phone, thanks entirely to Cingular.

Despite what Cingular says, Michelangelo, Shakespeare and Mozart all did fairly well in the self-expression business without the benefit of wireless communication. Not to mention the waves of nausea that overcome me whenever I see the spot that features Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Free at last" speech. Yes, Dr. King had a dream, but I doubt it involved 1000 weekend minutes for only $29.95. And if Cingular's cell phones are going to increase my self-expression by having a fat guy jump up and dance every time I need to make a call, I'll just stick with pay phones, thank you very much.

There are other personal boycotts as well. The day I buy a Mazda is the day that "zoom-zoom" kid gets run over by an RX-7 and Pyrrhic victory though it may be, I'd rather charge my friends maximum price for a collect call than give David Arquette the satisfaction.

Just so you don't think it's all doom and gloom for my advertising philosophy, there are quite a few positive messages that have been incorporated into my thinking. After all, without commercials I'd never have known the real meaning of "true," or that Disneyland makes you a good parent. Now that I know all a woman needs to be happy is furniture polish and a decent PMS cure, my dating life should pick right up.

Unfortunately, it may be too little, too late. My once unshakable faith in the evil of khaki has been broken. What's to keep some cell phone serpent from tempting me with the forbidden fruit of free voice mail? I obviously don't have the willpower to do this myself. Where can I turn for the inner strength to resist the demons and keep what remains of my integrity? Who can save me from myself?

Hey, there we go, right there on channel 73. The Powerpuff Girls. I have found my role models.

Early on in Sunday night's Oscar broadcast -- a rare Academy Awards ceremony that began and ended on the same day -- the producers trotted out highlights of Oscar's memorable moments. Our favorite was the clip of John Wayne, a few months away from his final credit roll, making his last appearance at the Academy Awards.

"Oscar and I have a lot in common," the aging Hollywood icon said. And that's true -- both are moldy, decaying icons that ceased being relevant around 1958.

But we kid John Wayne.

Oscar, however, does not get off so easily. Hollywood's night of nights, as the awards program's stentorian announcer likes to call it, has in recent years become a tedious, unending exercise in self-congratulation -- a Rotary awards banquet with better tuxes. Bloated and satisfied, Oscar totters along, from one predictable denouement to the next, with the only really drama coming in the opening minutes as we learn whether any of the nominees fulfills an expectant nation's fondest dreams by throttling Joan Rivers right there on the red carpet.

Rivers will live to see another day -- at least until someone throws a pail of water at the old hag -- but this year's Oscar telecast wasn't entirely disappointing. Steve Martin proved an able host, keeping the proceedings moving and never embarrassing himself with pedestrian material, unlike a certain denizen of center square that we could name. The show finished in a crackling three hours and twenty-some minutes -- not exactly Jesse Owens fast, but certainly better than last year's four-hour plus fiasco that ended sometime after the witching hour on the east coast. Some of the award winners -- Marcia Gay Harden, Steven Soderbergh -- were pleasant surprises, and the technical award winners -- particularly the "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" crowd -- came off as gracious, exuberant and dignified all at once.

And still, this year's Oscars ceremony was the usual drag.

The event remains more predictable than a Don King-promoted title fight. Anyone who didn't expect Julia Roberts and Russell Crowe to walk home with gold Sunday night, we've got some reasonably priced dot-com stock to sell you. Keeping the ceremony under the mythical four-hour mark is all well and good, but that's still about two and a half hours longer than the ceremony needs to be once you eighty-six the Debbie Allen dance numbers and the Britney Spears Pepsi commercials reminiscent of mid-'90s porno. And we think we've already covered the disappointing news that Joan Rivers still walks among us, to say nothing of the ongoing employment of her talentless spawn Melissa.

Why do people watch this nonsense? It can't be for the pearls of wisdom that trip off the tongues of the lucky winners -- 10 bucks says a week from now, you won't be able to remember who Julia Roberts thanked (hint: everybody on the planet) or who presented the award for best musical score (curiously enough, Jennifer Lopez). You're not watching for the fashion -- or at least you shouldn't be, unless the sight of Björk accessorizing with stuffed animals makes you giddy. And you certainly shouldn't watch for any of the ass-kissing splendor of the pre-game show, hosted by dead-eyed Julie Moran; Chris Connelly, the sycophant's sycophant; and Steve Kmetko, the man whose last name sounds like an AM talk radio station's call letters.

"You're really something of a chameleon able to play everything from Picasso to Nixon," Radio Free Kmetko gushed to Anthony Hopkins. "How do you do that?"

Hopkins, looking a trifle bit sad that he doesn't eat people in real life, replied "Well, that's why they pay me." And thus ended one of Oscar night's more lucid interviews.

Yes, the Oscars are a bore, a couple of big-name no-shows away from degenerating into the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards. Still, 800 million people can't be wrong. There has to be a reason -- beyond force of habit -- that so many folks around the world tune in each year.

We think those 800 million luckless souls flipped on the Oscars Sunday night for the same reason as us -- to heap scorn and derision upon winners and losers alike. That, and the possibility of a Rivers double homicide proved just too tempting to miss.

5:15: Julia Roberts and Benjamin Bratt are staring into the empty, soulless eyes of Julie Moran, who wants to know if the benighted one has prepared an acceptance speech for her coronation later tonight. "She never does," Bratt says, "which I find kind of amazing, considering what comes out of her mouth sometimes."

Nicole, Tom -- get ready for company in the couples' therapy class.

5:19: Steve Kmetko is in fawner's heaven. "I see Louis Gossett Jr., James Coburn, Faye Dunaway and Angelina Jolie," he says.

No doubt here to return their Oscars, per the Academy's edict.

5:30: The ceremony proper begins with a montage of historic Oscar moments hurtling through the solar system along two strands of DNA, perhaps in an effort to reach new levels of self-referentiality. As the show cuts to the astronauts on board Space Station Alpha to open the show, we can't help but note the staggering parallels between this ceremony and Mir.

5:31: Steve Martin recalls his first thought when the producers asked him to host the Oscars: "Would there be time for my facelift to heal?" The cameras cut to Michael Douglas in the audience.

Somewhere, a member of the Academy Awards production team is chuckling at his own cruel joke.

5:41: Eleven minutes in, and we've just heard the evening's first, "Boy, is this ceremony going to be long" joke. Which is really funny, until you realize that in three hours, we'll still all be sitting here, just getting around to handing out the award for best make-up.

5:42: Hey, we like Steve Martin just fine, but it doesn't look like Russell Crowe shares our affection. One more "Gladiator" joke, and we're afraid the Best Actor nominee is going jam a real arrow through Martin's head.

5:45: It's Catherine Zeta-Jones, out to present the first Oscar of the night for Art Direction and momentarily raise our hopes that the awards will be presented alphabetically. Zeta-Jones has a majestic, old Hollywood air about her -- meaning that she looks like she'd have all of us little people live off bread crumbs and dried chicken bones if she could, just to emphasize how affluent and regal she is.

We could not despise her any more at this moment if we wanted to.

Meanwhile, Michael Douglas -- 93 years young -- sits in the audience looking at his child bride and thinks, "I like peas."

5:49: Marcia Gay Harden is your Best Supporting Actress, and we couldn't be happier.

It's not because we want to be Marcia Gay Harden when we grow up -- although that certainly plays a role in our vicarious euphoria. It's not because we're cackling over our hunch that more people voted for the "Pollack" actress than actually saw her movie. No, we're pleased because this is proof that the Academy voters are as vindictive as we are, and see no shame in presenting the Best Supporting Actress award in a spirit of petty spite.

You see, that award -- while no doubt given for work that will outshine the legacy of such previous winners as Mira Sorvino in "Mighty Aphrodite" -- is proof that the Academy is in the throes of a horrible backlash against brother-lovin', nutbag-marryin' Angelina Jolie.

"If we vote for Kate Hudson, she might drag her diseased stoner husband on stage when she accepts the award," you can imagine the voters thinking. "Whereas that nice Marcia Gay Harden won't do anything horribly embarrassing in her acceptance speech."

It's a gamble that paid off.

5:53: For anyone who's forgotten what happened in the ceremony's first 20 minutes, the show's producers are thoughtfully running instant replay highlights as we fade out to commercial. Laugh now, but after the obligatory Debbie Allen dance number pounds your brain into paste, you'll be thankful for the thoughtful reminder that, yes, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" did indeed take home the Best Art Direction Oscar.

5:56: Russell Crowe comes out to glower at the crowd. Apparently, that Iron Cross-like medal on his circa 1856 formal wear is for heroic acts of humorlessness and scowling.

6:00: Ben Stiller presents the award for Live Action Short Film. And at Oscar parties across the country, people suddenly and silently turn their attention to the shrimp cocktail.

Your lucky winner, by the way, is "Quiero Ser." So be sure and look for that when it opens next week at the 32-screen AMC Bloatoplex, right after the 11 a.m. matinee of "Heartbreakers."

6:03: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Ms. Halle Berry. Run for you lives! She's got a car!"

No, no. That's not true at all. She had something far, far more deadly -- a laudatory introduction for Sting's musical performance.

Nothing against the former Gordon Sumner. But we recently caught "Urgh! A Music War" on cable -- it's a concert movie featuring some of your favorite early '80s bands before they became fat and satisfied and overly reliant on synthesizers. The Police -- young, energized, exciting -- were one of the opening groups in the movie, and Sting and the boys blew the roof off the joint.

Now? Sting's singing bland tripe for forgettable Disney cartoons, following the trail blazed by that risk-taking musical innovator, Phil Collins.

Ah well... Sting's got payments to make on his castle. So look for Sting's inspiring Disney anthem on his next album, "If I Ever Lose My Faith... At Least I Have the Lucrative Corporate Sponsorship Deals to Fall Back On."

6:26: Before presenting the Oscar for Best Sound, classy, classy Mike Myers mocks the importance of the award and the anonymity of the nominees. No doubt making the winners just feel great about this, their greatest night. Imagine the one time you get to appear in front of the camera, lauded as the best in your industry, only to be taunted by the guy who played Steve Rubell in "54."

We're guessing it's only a matter of time before the authorities find Myers' crumpled body in a back alley outside the Paramount studio, after he's beaten bloody with a boom mike.

6:30: When "U-571" wins best sound effects editing, an Oscar Party guest is heard to snort audibly. "The Academy Award-winning 'U-571,'" she says, the sarcasm dripping off her tongue like sweet, sweet honey.

Hey, we tell her, we liked "U-571." It was an entertaining yarn.

"I liked it, too," she said. "But an Oscar-caliber movie? It starred Jon Bon Jovi and that knuckle-dragging mope who plays Dr. Dave on 'ER.'"

Yes, we reply. But it killed Jon Bon Jovi by the second reel, and Dr. Dave was dispatched in a particularly gruesome and satisfying way. Give that movie more awards, we say.

6:31: Now both of us saw "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," and while we disagree on the film's overall quality, there's one thing we can both agree on -- if the Oscar-nominated song, "A Love Before Time," appeared anywhere in the movie, it somehow escaped our attention.

Maybe we were in the rest room or buying $5 worth of Junior Mints at the concession stand. But this is all new to us. Thank God Debbie Allen is here to work her mad brand of crazy genius with the choreography. The sight of sword-wielding Chinese dancers somehow makes the world seem right again.

6:36: Julia Roberts -- just a few hours away from accepting an award that was basically gift-wrapped for her the day "Erin Brockovich" wrapped up filming -- forgoes the corny patter written for her by Oscar scribes and goes straight to handing out the Best Cinematography award. Backstage, Bruce Vilanch white-knuckles a folding chair and plots his revenge.

Peter Pau wins the cinematography Oscar, by the way, which is when we notice that the Academy has shoehorned all the Chinese people together in the same part of the theater. Is this Hollywood or Los Alamos?

Meanwhile, some guy on the outskirts of Paducah, Kentucky, hears Pau firing off a long list of Chinese names and heads down to the National Guard to lend his manpower toward stemming the oncoming Red Menace.

6:42: Here, without commentary, is Steve Martin's best joke of the night: "I saw 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.' I was surprised because I didn't see any tigers or dragons. Then I realized why -- they're crouching and hidden."

6:50: Cinematographer Jack Cardiff gets an honorary Oscar, with no one ever bothering to explain his legacy. Oscar party guests, realizing there are six of them and only five shrimp left, swoop down on the shrimp cocktail with stealthy moves worthy of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

6:56: And the Oscar for Best Documentary short goes to "Big Mama." Man, we loved Martin Lawrence in that.

By the way, the Documentary Feature win of "Into the Arms of Strangers" underscores an important tip for next year's Oscar pool: Never bet against the Holocaust documentary.

7:02: Ladies and gentlemen, Sarah Jessica Parker. Or possibly one of Robert Palmer's backup singers from the "Addicted to Love" video. It's hard to tell the difference these days.

7:03: It must be March -- perennial Oscar bridesmaid Randy Newman is on our TV singing an Academy Award nominated song that's sure to lose out later in the evening. You can tell that Newman isn't even trying anymore. For starters, his song from "Meet the Parents" sounds like he's taken every musical number he's ever written, thrown it in a blender, and hit "frappé." And secondly, he's performing with Susanna Hoffs.

See what years of losing out on awards can do to you? You're reduced to phoning it in with the least-talented Bangle.

That's what killed Jim Varney.

7:18: "There is one group of highly talented men and women in film whose contribution requires that they not call attention to themselves," presenter Goldie Hawn says. "They are the composers."

And at that moment, John Williams stops banging on his timpani for a moment to look up and say, "Really?"

By the way, Goldie, you're a card-carrying member of AARP. The "I'm so ditzy" ingenue act is creepier than seeing Miss Havisham in a miniskirt.

7:30: Yet another honorary Oscar sends guests scrambling for the last of the crab dip, crafting crude pincers from extra cauliflower florets. This one -- the award, mind you, and not the crab dip -- goes to Dino De Laurentiis, who must have been selected before "Hannibal" came out.

7:39: Björk and her lovely swan take the stage to frighten the audience with a jaunty Icelandic dirge. Bet the Academy members are regretting that they made such a big stink last year about the "South Park" songs right about now.

7:43: Martin introduces John Travolta as "one of Hollywood's biggest stars." And we can't help but wonder whether he means that literally. Still, it's rather appropriate that the creative genius behind "Battlefield Earth" should be tapped to introduce the montage paying tribute to deceased Hollywood stars.

Curiously, Travolta's career is not included in the clip reel.

Sir Alec Guinness is, however, with the Academy choosing to mark his distinguished thespian legacy with a clip from "Star Wars" -- a movie Guinness reportedly despised. Guess that explains the rapid whirling noise emanating from a graveyard outside London.

7:55: We think we've figured out Jennifer Lopez's fashion choices. Perhaps tonight's dress -- which invites you to get up close and personal with Ms. Lopez's breasts -- is merely a desperately frantic attempt to deflect attention from her ass.

Let us simply say that no neckline on earth is that revealing.

Lopez is here to introduce Bob Dylan, performing his Oscar nominated song, "Things Have Changed." As a service to our readers we now present the opening stanza:

Booda bladah bleh, bladah bladah blah.
Bingo baby bee
Bladda bing badda blaw blaw boo
Baba ba bing ba ba blee
Screw you, Jakob.

Moments later, when Dylan wins, he mumbles a heartfelt thanks. No, really. He mumbles.

8:05: Hillary Swank takes to the stage in what can charitably be called a "See? I'm not really a man after all!" ensemble. Yes, Hilary, we get it. You were only acting in "Boys Don't Cry." We're suitably stunned by your talent.

Best Actor winner Russell Crowe immediately offers thanks to Chad Lowe.

8:22: Another side effect of the impending actors' strike: stars are flying into the Oscars from all over at the last possible moment. Presenter Kevin Spacey, in fact, reveals that he left his tux in Nova Scotia and warmly thanks "Shipping News" castmate Judi Dench for bringing it to L.A. with her. It's a genuinely nice moment -- which is promptly ruined by the realization that Julia Roberts is about to waltz away with an award simply for being so darn cute.

8:37: And now to present the award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Arthur C. Clarke. Or, quite possibly, Dr. Evil from the "Austin Powers" movies.

8:45: Guess Nicole Kidman gets Tom Cruise's necktie collection as part of the divorce settlement.

8:48: And what movie has earned the coveted Oscar for Best Picture? Is it the visually stunning "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?" The artistically complex and deftly filmed "Traffic?" Or could it be the poignantly funny, cleverly written "High Fidelity?"

What? That last one wasn't even nominated? Geez, the people who vote on these awards are chuckleheads.

Which they promptly prove by giving their gaudy little statue to the overly loud, overly long, overly rated "Gladiator."

Look, as far as popcorn movies go, "Gladiator" is as good a choice as any. But the best motion picture of the year? The film that people will point to 20 years from now and say, "Russell Crowe battling computer-animated tigers... you know, it just didn't get any better than that in the year 2000."

Please tell us Price Waterhouse goofed and handed out the wrong envelope.

Reasonable people are free to dissent, of course, but for our money, "Gladiator" was a B-movie story spruced up with A-list production values. The story was uninspired, the acting wooden, the dialogue something you would expect out of a Screenwriting 101 class. It was a lot of noise. It was a lot of hype. It was... well... a lot like the Oscar ceremony itself.

Come to think of it, "Gladiator" may be the perfect choice after all.

About three-quarters of the way through the series premiere of Big Apple -- long after police detectives stumble across the vivisected body of an exotic dancer but just before a New York City cop dope-slaps an FBI agent for looking at him funny -- I felt strangely out of place. Maybe it was the 45 minutes of law enforcement officials trying to out-swagger one another. Maybe it was the salty language and earthy turns-of-phrase for all things feminine. Maybe it was the on-screen presence of Michael Madsen and the potential for ear-related mishaps that portends. Whatever the reason, I almost felt like I shouldn't be watching Big Apple. Any moment, I expected Nielsen enforcers to kick down the door and demand proof that I fit within the show's demographic -- sing baritone, crush beer cans against my forehead, gut a live pig, anything. Just so that I proved I was man enough to keep watching the show.

Which is a problem, you know, when you're not a man.

Make no mistake -- Big Apple is macho. Extremely macho. So macho as to ignite the suspicion that excess testosterone will actually spill out from the TV and splash on anyone within a 10-foot radius. Big Apple men who express the slightest bit of hesitation are chided by their fellow characters for being "half a homo." As for the women, the aforementioned stripper comprised 50 percent of the female characters in the pilot -- just the sort of thing to warm the hearts of the sisters at N.O.W.

Big Apple springs from the mind of Davild Milch, who -- as the CBS promos like to remind viewers -- is a co-creator of NYPD Blue. If his work on Big Apple is any indication, Milch can claim a lion's share of the credit for showing America more of Dennis Franz than it realized it wanted to see. Here, Milch must content himself to simply add Olympic-style lap dancing to the list of once-verboten sights you can now watch in prime time. It's not a distinguished addition to the collection of ground-breaking TV moments.

After two episodes, despite my fondness for several individual actors --Titus Welliver, David Strathairn and the ear-chopper himself, Michael Madsen -- I didn't connect with the show. Of course, maybe I'm just being reactionary here. Maybe I'm just tired of crime dramas starring New York City and its assortment of world-weary cops. Maybe I'm just a little oversensitive.

Or maybe not. In episode two, the Michael Madsen character takes issue with the lack of respect he feels he's receiving from the world at large with this witty rejoinder: "Am I wearing a dress?"

So what did we learn this week from Big Apple, kids? If you're a man and you're not getting respect, you must be a woman. A frilly dress-wearin' woman.

I realize it's not television's place to blaze a trail for equal rights. There are several channels doing a brisk business by catering to men and women who are just fine with gender roles hewn out of the Mesozoic Era. And few showrunners probably apply rigorous egalitarianism to whatever gender-related perceptions percolate through their show.

But we're a handful episodes into Big Apple, and it's one display of territoriality after another. The entire show is based on a law-enforcement pissing match -- NYPD vs. FBI -- and every interaction between the characters reads like something out of Jane Goodall's field notes.

And lest you think this is just uptight Lisa trying to bring down the patriarchy and spoil everybody's good time, consider that Big Apple's second episode lost 43 percent of its lead-in audience from CSI. That's 43 percent of a fairly large sample that looked at Big Apple, saw Ed O'Neill and Titus Welliver making like silverback gorillas during mating seasons, and decided they had better things to do with their time.

And that's not terribly surprising. Look at CSI as a program: whether or not its creators intended it to be, it's a chick show. It emphasizes perception, patience and analysis over confrontation and heroics. CSI attracts the kind of viewers who like goal-oriented stories with a little personal melodrama thrown in. Read some Tania Modleski -- go ahead, it's fun! -- and you'll learn that a lot of the pop culture phenomena that appeal to the distaff demographic have the traits that make CSI something of a surprise success.

CSI does a masterful job of avoiding the implication that men who are not militantly masculine are women -- again, something to which people with XX chromosomes might respond warmly.

And the William Peterson thing doesn't hurt either. He's a lot better looking than Quincy.

Pulchritudinous actors aside, I'm sure the programming geniuses over at CBS thought they had an early ratings lock on their hands --both shows are about crime and law enforcement, CSI is about the undainty field of forensics, Big Apple is just plain undainty. It would be two hours of gritty, crime-busting fun!

Which would be true, if the two shows had anything in common except for the thick-skulled network on which they both air.

Simply put, CSI and Big Apple share no elements that would induce the audience of one show to stay for the other. If you're into watching Gary Dourdan conduct a solitary analysis of pipe-bomb etchings, you're probably not going to take too kindly to watching Ed O'Neill and Titus Welliver engage in the same chest-beating antics that Dian Fossey used to observe in Zaire. And if you're into watching women strut around semi-naked while Russian thugs conduct complex financial negotiations, you're going to be disappointed with CSI and its lack of semi-nudity, Russians and semi-nude Russians.

Because of the NCAA basketball tournament, CBS moved Big Apple to Wednesdays, sticking in the time slot after Survivor and testing the theory that it was ER killing the show and not the oppressive stink of alpha-male urine splashed all over the plots. When Big Apple only kept 23 percent of its lead-in audience -- richly ironic, given all the territorial battles taking place in Mark Burnett's little kingdom -- network suits professed shock.

They shouldn't. Instead, they should opt for a more simple and elegant solution to Big Apple's rating woes -- take it off CBS and sell it to the Discovery channel as a modern-day parable of primatology. You might have more success there.

Mark Burnett isn't through disgracing prime time just yet. The creator of Survivor has a deal with the USA network to produce Combat Missions, a reality series that pits teams of military special operations troops in competitions designed to mimic their real-life work environment.

Although the Pentagon has banned active duty soldiers from participating, there are a lot of complaints about turning our proudest ex-warriors into little more than heavily armed Price is Right contestants. It's not like ex-soldiers don't sell their skills as mercenaries or security types all the time. The difference here is that mercenaries:

A) Use real bullets.
B) Don't have to time their assassinations around a Mountain Dew commercial.
C) Rarely, if ever, perform missions while a second-rate stand-up tags along.
D) Would kill David Letterman if he called them a "Parade of Losers."

There are also some people making noise about the dangers of such a series showcasing secret military tactics for all our enemies to see. Considering Burnett's pledge to make Combat Missions as realistic as possible, that might have been a concern.

Might have been, but isn't. As an ex-SAS officer, Burnett should know he has a real problem on his hands: the vast majority of special operations work would make for terrible television.

If Burnett wants to make a TV show out of true Green Berets, SEALs and Delta Force operators, he's going to find himself saddled with a show even more boring than Survivor. Unlike Sylvester Stallone, these guys have limited ammo and die when they get shot. They look forward to prolonged gunfights against superior firepower about as much as your average Carl's Jr. night manager would. In the real world, caution and meticulous planning are as crucial to special warfare troops as they are to mechanical engineers.

It's been a while since they made a TV show about engineers.

I'm betting Combat Missions isn't going to change that. In fact, I'll wager Burnett tries passing off American Gladiators stars as the real deal: "Now entering Automatic Weapons Arena, let's give it up for Lieutenant Pyro and Seargent Atlas! They'll be dueling with M203 grenade launchers and rolling the Giant Spheres of Death! While their managers, Terrific Trish and Honey Hot Heather, go at each other with K-Bar knives!"

"Don't forget to watch the premiere of the SFFL next weekend on TNN! Special Forces Football -- the way football was meant to be played! With bazookas!"

Should Burnett try and live up to his promise, here are some of the thrilling challenges you can look forward to seeing on a truly realistic Combat Missions:

Beach Recon: You'll be on the edge of your seat as a fire team of amphibious troops treads water for three hours, watching an empty beach. Two of them might swim in for soil samples.

HAHO Parachute Insertion: Thrill-seeking supermen hurl themselves out of a plane cruising 30,000 feet above enemy territory. Wearing full combat gear and oxygen masks, the operators launch themselves into free-fall, plummeting for almost several seconds. They then open their chutes and spend a good hour gliding gently to the ground.

Hostage Rescue: A squad blows open a door and storms a large room, killing all the bad guys and saving the innocents. Sounds great, except that it's done in three seconds. Preceeded by six to 48 hours of telephone negotiations.

Sniper O.P.: Watch as a nearly invisible sinper and his observer spend six hours crawling through 30 yards of brush then lie motionless for three days while waiting for a target. Occasionally they take a dump in a Ziploc bag.

Burnett's got another problem besides boring missions: no babes. Just a quick warning, Mark -- the first SEAL you try to squeeze into a bikini will snap your neck like a toothpick.

Now that would be reality television worth watching.

Oh, sure, we mock our readers in the TeeVee Mailbag. But every so often, we feel it's only fair to let our readers speak unedited and unadulterated by mockery. This is one of those times.

Besides, we were too lazy to write a piece for today.

Electra Woman & Dyna Girl had everything a late-'70s young boy could want on a Saturday morning: Two gorgeous women in tight spandex-and-leather costumes, high-tech gadgetry, a tricked-out superhero car, cheeseball villains, a stone-funk rocker of a theme song and a pre-ADD running time of 15 minutes per episode -- did I mention the tight spandex-and-leather costumes? Hot babes and cold cereal, part of a complete breakfast.

Is it any wonder the hormonally charged boys who got up early on weekends to watch Electra Woman & Dyna Girl are now demographically-targeted Gen-Xers staying up late for The X Show? That the hair-gelled slickster pushing commission-sales home electronics on you takes long lunch breaks with his latest Maxim? That Mr. Goatee serving your double-tall non-fat mocha latte pre-ordered a Charlie's Angels DVD from Amazon.com months ago? That The WB has a pilot in development for a revamped '00s take on the Gynamic Duo? That it's somehow OK for hipster Gen-X writers to peel off terms like "Gynamic Duo"? Electra Woman & Dyna Girl was part of The Krofft Supershow, an unholy '76-'78 mess of a Saturday-morning variety show from producers Sid & Marty Krofft, who are responsible for an entire generation of dysfunctional adults, not just males. The Bugaloos, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, H.R. Pufnstuf, Lidsville, Land of the Lost -- if it involved slipshod puppets and a $27 soundstage, rest assured it was a piece of Krofft.

The Krofft Supershow didn't offer much to young women -- hosting "rock band" Kaptain Kool & the Kongs, who were eventually replaced by the Bay City Rollers, looked to be in their early 30s and sounded easily replaceable by a talentless Scottish pop group -- but it did give us eight wondrous episodes of Lori (Deidre Hall, later of Days of Our Lives) and Judy (Judy Strangis, later of abject obscurity) becoming snug-costumed superheroines and kicking supervillain ass with stack-heeled boots that would give the Spice Girls vertigo. If pre-teen girls got anything out of Electra Woman & Dyna Girl, it was a vague message of wedgie empowerment over the virtues of sensible shoes... or something. Either way, Kaptain Kool was a dick.

Sure, alter egos Lori and Judy were career women -- if you call journalism a career. They were writers for Newsmaker magazine, but no one ever took notice when the strictly platonic older-woman-and-younger-assistant couple would disappear and re-emerge in bright spandex (and mask-less) costumes minutes later and cruise off in the snazzy and fuel-efficient Electra Car. This was either a major scripting gaffe or a tribute to Newsmaker's progressive "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Like the upcoming Josie & the Pussycats movie, The WB's Electra Woman & Dyna Girl update purports to be an irony-rich, grrl-powered overhaul bordering on spoof: Having hit the skids in the years after Dyna Girl/Judy bailed on crime fighting for modeling, Electra Woman/Lori's now a penniless drunk living in a trailer park, according to the network's initial pilot workup. The as-yet-uncast role calls for a "good-looking, statuesque blonde, 35-40," and I'm projecting Daisy Fuentes. After participating last year in a thankfully aborted action series called I-Spike (international volleyball pro by day, international spy by night -- no, really!), she's gotta be ready for anything.

The new Judy -- they're attached to the name, apparently -- is a "bright, imaginative, pretty but mildly obsessive 18-to-19-year-old brunette with not much of a social life." To drive this point home, she's a journalism major at USC who hopes to land a job at the school paper with a lifestyle piece on Electra Woman. Yes, a moist review of the new Dave Matthews album would probably get her in, but it seems Electra Woman saved this Judy's life as a tyke, and she's been obsessed with EW ever since.

Once Judy tracks down Lori to the double-wide, she convinces the soused superheroine to return to action, and gets recruited as the new Dyna Girl in the process. I'd love to see 18-to-19-year-old brunette Carly Pope (coincidentally, a journalism major on The WB's Popular) as Judy II, but only because I'm obsessed with her and she won't return my calls.

Other than sheer sassiness, Electra Woman & Dyna Girl had no superpowers, per se, but they did have an impressive assortment of cool crime-fighting toys (like the all-seeing Crime Scope) engineered by resident old genius Frank. This time around, the unmarketable coot will be replaced by "Griffen, a good-looking techno-head, 18-19, whose fascination with Judy's breasts is obvious -- but not to Judy."

Watch it: This is exactly how Kaptain Kool (now an editor for Maxim) lost his first gig.

Good bad guys are hard to find. Heroes are easy -- it's creating a truly ingenious villain that separates standout TV dramas from run-of-the-mill. Joss Whedon's two supernatural series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, are prime examples of what happens when evil becomes merely mischievous.

Now in its second season, Angel is the Buffy spin-off that follows the adventures of the title character as he battles demons and other malevolent forces in Los Angeles. From the beginning, Whedon promised Angel would be darker than Buffy. Considering Buffy's plot lines included Angel being sent to hell thanks to Buffy's impaling him, it was hard to believe the new show could live up to that guarantee. Now, after an uneven first season, the show has hit its stride and is easily the bleakest show on TV. Call me warped and disturbed, but now that Angel makes Chris Carter's old Millennium look like Laugh-In, it has settled firmly into my prime-time top five.

It's all thanks to the bad guy or, in this case, group of bad guys. Last year, viewers were introduced to Wolfram & Hart, a law firm that specialized in supernatural clients. This year, the company's role has been expanded so that it is now the bureaucratic overlord of all chaos and mayhem in Southern California. As if just being lawyers wasn't evil enough already, these are lawyers that bill $400 an hour for sacrificing goats.

The secret to great bad guys isn't how many people they kill or lives they destroy, it's what they do to the hero. In Angel's case, Wolfram & Hart turned the champion of the innocent into TV's best anti-hero this side of Tony Soprano. Whedon hasn't revealed if Wolfram & Hart merely works for Satan or if he's the head guy, but destroying the firm and its connections has become Angel's Quixote-style windmill.

As a result of the lawyers, Angel has fired his partners without explanation, driven a cop to attempt suicide, discovered Earth really is Hell, and set fire to both his former girlfriend and his vampire daughter. In one of the series' most pivotal moments, Angel locked 20 of the lawyers in a wine cellar with a couple of vampires who left all but two of the humans slaughtered.

When the evil is forceful enough to blur the line between hero and vigilante, to change a champion of the innocent into a gunslinger who believes the ends justify the means, you've got yourself some fine television.

Of course in last week's episode, Angel had an "epiphany" and decided to go back to being goofy and huggable, thereby ruining all the show had achieved the past couple months. Oh well, I guess it was unrealistic to expect a real long-term anti-hero on any network that isn't HBO.

The situation at Buffy the Vampire Slayer isn't quite as sunny. Although still one of the all-time greats, Buffy has hit some rocky patches these past two seasons. Whether it's because Whedon is spending time on Angel or just the inevitable middle-age doldrums, Buffy has had more than its fair share of mediocre efforts -- including last year's bloated "Initiative" plot line, the ridiculous, pretentious season finale and an episode this season that featured Buffy learning about love from a talking blow-up doll.

Sure, there are still flashes of the typical Buffy brilliance -- last week's episode "The Body" had as powerful an opening half-hour as you will ever see on network television. Emma Caulfield's Anya is terrific comic relief, and the fictional planet's most mind-numbingly boring human, Riley Finn, is finally out of the picture. Most importantly, Spike is once again a regular -- which has turned out to be as much a curse as blessing.

Spike is William the Bloody, a notorious vampire with a nasty reputation second only to that of Angel in his evil days. Spike, played by the unbelievably smooth James Marsters, was the main villain during Buffy's second season and easily the coolest bad guy in recent television history. After being defeated by Buffy, Spike disappeared for a year only to return in a limited role last year.

The problem was that "The Big Bad," as Spike likes to call himself, was rendered impotent by government scientists. Suddenly the best evil character in prime time was demoted to comic relief. Yes, he was damned funny, but the situation was pathetic.

Spike's return has cast a spotlight on Buffy's biggest problem the last couple seasons: a total lack of decent evil. The main villains from the first three years of Buffy -- super-powerful vampire The Master, Spike (with his girlfriend Drusilla), and Sunnydale's Mayor-turned-giant-snake-demon -- were ne'er-do-wells that would make any British soccer hooligan proud. With sidekicks like Bad Angel in season two and the psychotic vampire slayer Faith in season three, Buffy was constantly facing bad guys cooler than herself.

Last season introduced viewers to Adam, a demon cyborg created by the government's Initiative program as a prototype for some kind of super-soldier. Adam turned on his creators and ran amok trying to fashion yet another Armageddon. Sure, he was strong and ruthless and relatively invincible, but Adam also had the charisma of a cow. This guy could have spent 15 minutes clubbing baby seals to death and the audience would have been yawning the whole time.

It's hard to pinpoint the problem with Adam. Was the actor playing the part terminally dull? Did the writers get bored with him? Or did that Roger Corman-style makeup just render him too silly to be truly evil? I'm guessing it was a combination of all three.

This year's "Big Bad," a goddess named Glory, doesn't have the same costume problems, seeing how her getup is nothing but a red cocktail dress. She's a lot better looking than Adam as well, but looks don't equal charisma, and there's virtually no evil twinkle in her eye. Glory eats via a pretty cool brain sucking trick, but she's so bland that even the victims must think it's some kind of geeky practical joke.

Here's a so-called goddess that should be more powerful than all Buffy's previous enemies combined. Yet instead of wiping out the Slayer, her friends and family with a snap of her fingers, Glory can only walk away empty-handed and whine about her bad luck. She's not so much a Wrathful God of Chaos as she is the God of Bratty Debutantes Shoe Shopping at Nordstrom When They're Out of Size Six Pumps.

In the mean time, Spike is sitting on the bench, drowning in self-pity. While continuing as comic relief, his role has expanded to include uneasy ally and Buffy stalker. A pathetic and creepy infatuation with the woman he has sworn to kill is no fate for so royal a dark prince.

It doesn't have to be this way. Earlier this season, Buffy devoted an entire episode to Spike's origin and his killing of two previous Slayers. It was an instant classic, and featured perhaps the greatest single scene in the show's tenure: Spike describing his last Slayer kill with the help of a flashback while showing Buffy that she, like all her predecessors, harbors a secret death wish.

It was an absolutely electric five minutes and showcased a tension between Spike and Buffy that could never be equaled by Glory or Adam on their most despicable days. Marsters has evil down cold and the chemistry between himself and Sarah Michelle Gellar wasn't so much white hat-black hat as it was two assassins lining each other up in their sights. That kind of intensity used to be the rule on Buffy. These days, the most intense thing about Glory is her hair.

I don't know what the future holds for Spike and Wolfram & Hart. All we can do is hope that Spike returns to form and they both live long and dangerous lives, wreaking havoc and slaughtering the innocent. After all, who else are we going to root for... the good guys?

When you think of The X-Files, you naturally think of wacky hijinks. Right? Right?

Oh, you don't? Well, then I'm not sure you're going to like The Lone Gunmen. It's the new spin-off from the endlessly inventive (cough cough) minds at Fox. The titular gunmen are occasional comic relief on The X-Files, because sometimes an alien-obsessed FBI agent just has no other choice than to go to three guys who run a tiny conspiracy newsletter to find out what's really going on. If you want to influence the fight against conspiratorial crimes, I recommend you start up a crackpot-style zine. Or write for a two-bit television review Web site. Either one, really.

The gunmen are Langly, Frohike, and Byers, and although the three of them acted more or less as one unit in the X-Files episodes where they appeared, it's now important to be able to tell them apart. Well, sort of important. Let's say it's more important than being able to distinguish between the girls on Popstars, but less important than knowing the names of both your parents.

Langly is the tall guy with stringy white hair. He's jumpy and outspoken, and is the most likely to go off on anti-government rants.

Frohike is the little one who looks suspiciously like a troll. It's apparently his job to be comic relief; in the pilot, he had three wacky pratfalls (including one that was face first into the mud) and was the lucky recipient of a full-body cavity search. Oh, and when it came time for the inevitable "Mission: Impossible"-style "guy-dangling-from-a-ceiling-to-steal-something" scene, it was his job to do the dangling. Lucky Frohike.

Byers is the bearded guy in the suit. He has a backstory involving the FCC, but his real job is to be the reasonably normal-looking one. He's also noticeably younger than the other two.

If you're thinking "Oh boy! Two old guys and a guy in a suit! Fox sure knows how to put the sex in sex-ay!" then you've put your finger on what might be called the demographic hole in the classic Lone Gunmen archetype. So they've added Yves Adele Harlow, who is a perfectly normal hacker. No doubt you've frequently run into hot women who spend all their time either hacking into government computers or testing out their twin Uzi submachine guns (which might not really be Uzis, but as that's the funniest submachine gun name, that's what I'll call them) at the local shooting range. You've probably also noticed that they spend a lot of time on their makeup. Oh, and because series creator Chris Carter has issues of some sort, Yves Adele Harlow turns out to be an anagram for "Lee Harvey Oswald." Make of that what you will.

Okay, so Harlow is somewhat unrealistic. Almost exactly as unrealistic as Angelina Jolie in "Hackers," in fact. Although the person Harlow most resembles is Angelina Jolie in "Tomb Raider", what with the British accent. And the twin Uzis, of course. I don't want to dwell on them, but, well, twin Uzis! Twin Uzis, I tell you! And when she's at the shooting range (which she apparently is a lot), there is, of course, a slow, loving pan of her posing, both barrels blazing away.

Aside from the occasional both-guns-blazing hottie, the look of the show is a lot like The X-Files. All the lights seem to be turned off, and various excuses are found to light the faces of the starts with blue, green, or red lights. Also, hardcore X-Files fans will be delighted to know that there are scenes involving flashlights in which the beams of light are visible in the air. Casual fans will no doubt use this as excuse for everybody to sip their drinks.

It's hard to escape the impression that The Lone Gunmen isn't destined for a long, happy life. Its debut was scant days after sweeps month was over, and The X-Files is slated to come back to its time slot after a month. Also, the description of The Lone Gunmen in my television guide is "Hackers who are brilliant but short on social skills investigate conspiracies." Boy! Ill-mannered geeks exploring their own paranoia on television? That should be great! And you say they're funny-looking? Well, all right!

Okay, I admit that the description appeals to me. But if television history has taught us anything, it's that a show which sounds good to me is doomed to vanish from the airwaves in short order.

This show raises important questions about society today. Questions like "Didn't this already air a few months ago, and wasn't it called The Trouble With Normal?" The answer, it turns out, is no. That show had four central paranoiacs, and this one has three. And many more shadows.

Another difference is that The Lone Gunmen has aspirations to being drama. The pilot dealt with Byers's father apparently dying, and has important character-building scenes involving Byers and his estranged father. Yes, the same father who supposedly died. It's complicated. And what makes it even more complicated is that all this theoretically meaningful plot was wrapped in wacky pratfalls. And Langly saying "Congrats on not being dead," which I guess was a punch line. Made me want to punch something, anyway.

To put that joke another way, The Lone Gunmen raises questions about the role of Government in the private lives of its citizens and about whether technology is as powerful a tool for god as it is for evil. It also features jokes about full body-cavity searches, so there's something for everyone.

Series creator Chris Carter claims that The X-Files is a drama with comedic elements and that The Lone Gunmen is a comedy with dramatic elements. But the drama is flat and the comedy isn't funny.

And from what I hear, X-Files fans are pretty irritated with having their show taken away for a month while The Lone Gunmen tries to make its mark. That seems to me like exactly the wrong group to cheese off, but who am I to doubt Chris Carter? After all, he is the genius behind Harsh Realm.

Since last we cracked open the ol' TeeVee Mailbag, we've been running around like busy little beavers here at the home office. In addition to cranking out the high-octane television comedy that Americans of all stripes have grown accustomed to ignoring on a regular basis, we've been taking meetings and putting on our best Sunday-goin'-to-meet clothes. Deals have been brokered. Non-binding memoranda of understanding have been agreed to. Solemn bonds have been formed over Dominican cigars and glasses of port.

The result, our business manager assures us, will put our humble little Web site in high clover, keep us in tall cotton and give us stacks and stacks of long, folding green. So long as the "clover," "cotton" and "green" in question are actually agricultural products as opposed to, say, metaphors for money. Because we've never believed in reading contracts before we sign them, and we're not about to start now.

But who needs Internet riches and lasting financial security when our new online partnerships will give us a far more important commodity -- exposure. And exposure is what really stokes the engine of the new, new economy.

Our business manager assured us of that, too. And since we last saw him boarding a plane for the Cayman Islands, who are we to question his wisdom, vision and vague promises of future profits?

One thing worries us about our higher online profile, though. With new readers flocking to the TeeVee fold by the dozens, will that mean an appreciable increase in -- how to put this delicately? -- less perceptive Web surfers who stop here, look around, and pelt us with foolish questions and half-formed sentences? Will the TeeVee Mailbag staff -- already putting in time-and-a-half sorting through the myriad requests we get for downloadable porn -- have to work nights and weekends just to tackle the avalanche of correspondence we're sure to get from folks who've yet to master the tricky art of subject-verb agreement.

Because let's face it -- it's not like we're the premier online destination for Mensa candidates to begin with.

Maybe that seems a little harsh, especially to the 13 or 14 loyal TeeVee readers who've never bombarded us with passionate defenses on behalf of Shasta McNasty or requests for the lyrics to the theme from Maude. But spend an afternoon in our shoes, folks, and you'll realize that a fair chunk of the folks who drop us an e-mail probably didn't dash off the letter while on their way to Stockholm to pick up a plaque from the Nobel committee.

Take TeeVee reader Heynani, who came across our three-year-old April Fool's parody of Entertainment Weekly -- a forgery so transparent that Time-Warner's lawyers won't even bother with a cease-and-desist order -- and fell for our fakery hook, line and sinker.

You stated that Katherine Helmond who played Mona on Whos' the Boss died in 1995. How is that possible? Considering that she plays the mother of Ray Romano's wife on the TV Sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond". In fact she was just on the Thankgiving show this year. Please respond and let me know that you have corrected your mis-information!

So troubled, in fact, was Heynani by our little jest that Katherine Helmond had joined the big Soap reunion special in the sky, that she sent the exact same e-mail a few weeks later after we callously ignored her entreaty to set the record straight.

In the interest of accuracy, then, we confess that we were just kidding when we said that Katherine Helmond died in 1995 after she appeared in the sitcom Coach. Katherine Helmond is very much alive. The truth is, we were the ones who died a little bit when that happened.

A little bit more of us died after receiving this epistle from E. Normandin about Gideon's Crossing.

It's sad to think that a quality show like Gideon's Crossing is in danger of being cancelled. I am so sick of all the airhead,bimbo featuring sitcoms on television. It says a lot about a society that chooses empty trash now all over the airwaves in lieu of really thought provoking,quality drama.

So what's wrong with that letter? Nothing. Except that E. Normandin sent it to us on Oct. 14, a scant four days after "Gideon's Crossing" premiered. Which means he got suckered by the "Save Gideon's Crossing" article we ran last summer as a parody of Internet-based Save-This-Show! campaigns.

Folks, we're not sure how you formed this impression we were responsible citizens. But once you realize that three-quarters of everything we run on this site is nothing more than a bald-faced lie -- whatever slice of fiction happens to pop into our heads as we sit down at the keyboard -- you'll be a lot happier. Trust us. Buy the soft-soap we're peddling and you'll only wind up looking silly at cocktail parties.

Or course, four months later, it turns out Gideon's Crossing is in danger of getting canceled. So who looks silly now?

E. Normandin, that's who. Though we also would have accepted ABC.

It just goes to show that we should never make fun of the Save-Our-Show letters that clog up our mailbox like butter in an old man's arteries. And you know why? Because most of the time, these letters are funnier than anything we could come up with.

Witness this e-mail from Cindy Klauss, who -- if this letter is any proof of her innate sense of comic timing -- has a future writing sitcoms. NBC sitcoms.

I am not sure if you are aware of it but PAX network has produced 3 new Christy movies

Come on, Cindy. What self-respecting TV critic isn't wired into the moves and machinations of the PAX network? Who among us can't tell you, chapter and verse, what the PAX network has scheduled?

These are not rhetorical questions, by the way. We'd like to know. We're hiring.

Oh, but Cindy's not finished. Please go on, Cindy.

one aired in November and the other two are airing as a miniseries in May in which Christy will finally choose between the two men in her life and there will be a wedding. Exactly who Christy chooses is being kept secret and will not be revealed until the show airs. This has created wild speculation and frenzy among us fans and everyone, nearly everyone has an opinion on who the lucky man should be.

We hear both men reject her after they learn of Christy's promiscuous ways.

There are many intriguing aspects to the return of Christy including the search for and casting of a new lead actress,

You mean Kellie Martin's not on the show anymore. Oh goddamn, what's the point?

the return of several fans favorites to the movies including Stewart Finlay-McLennan as Dr. Neil MacNeill and the involvement of the Catherine Marshall/LeSourd family in the productions. Also there is about to be a new Collector's edition of Christy released in book stores next month that contains all kinds of previously unpublished material including journal notes, original manuscript, character sketches, letters and photos.

Wow. Previously that sort of stuff was only available to Christy scholars. All two of them.

What? You're not finished yet, Cindy?

But the really big story here concerns the fans and how they would not give up.

Clearly.

We wrote letters, posted on the internet, built web sites, participated in chats and mail lists and on and on.

Thank God that energy wasn't wasted on something useless like volunteering in your community or stamping out illiteracy.

Anyway, we the fans need help again.

No doubt.

We need to make sure the public knows about this wonderful upcoming miniseries and if enough watch, PAX is interested in producing more movies or even a series. PAX is a small network and will not be doing much promoting of Christy on its own. That is why we need to be sure publications/web sites such as yours at least can let tv viewers know about this event.

You, um, didn't do too much research on the Web sites you sent this letter off to, did you Cindy?

I need your help in getting the word out about the upcoming miniseries. It would be so helpful if you could feature some info about this wonderful family values show on your web site.

No. You really didn't do research.

I care very, very much about this story/show, and I just cannot let it fail without a fighting chance. Can you please, please help us in this effort?

Cindy, we'd be happy to. After all, what kind of heartless brutes would take such a sincere letter -- a heartfelt entreaty on behalf of a long-forgotten show running on a rinky-dink netlet -- and use it just for mockery and cruel abuse?

Well, Boychuk would. But he doesn't have much pull around here.

So watch Christy, everybody. You apparently don't have to worry about prolonged exposure to Kellie Martin any more, and the show probably isn't nearly so tedious as Cindy is making it sound.

You can see now why we're worried about how more Web traffic means a tenfold increase in our daily gibberish intake. Why, we're fairly overworked as it is, what with rewriting wire stories without the proper attribution and cashing our cushy dot-com paychecks and thinking up new and exciting ways of libeling your favorite celebrities. To force us to spend an extra ten to 15 minutes a day furiously pounding the delete key as we go through your mail -- then it's almost not worth it, no matter how lucrative our Web cross-promotional deals.

And that doesn't even take into account the increased e-mail we're likely to get from overseas. That's almost enough to scotch the deal right there.

Don't get us wrong -- we like to think of ourselves as citizens of the world here at TeeVee. There's nothing we're fonder of than foreigners and their quaint customs and backward ways. We get such a kick out of reading all your cards and letters, out loud, and in funny accents. Wrenn's Irish brogue was the hit of last year's Christmas party.

But every now and again, we get international e-mail, like this A-Team-inspired letter to our Lisa Schmeiser from Maarten Vermaak, that really just creep us out, funny accents or no.

Wow, you certenly know how to change everything that is good or nice, into a pile of sh*t. You must have had a bad childhood, probably without television, ony with books.

Here in Europe, we also have critics who know how to tell something positive about things. Ok, sure, "The A Team" series are based on a general idea, of helping the inocent, escape or rescue somebody in an impossible way and stay out of the hands of the bad guys, but WHAT IS WRONG WITH THAT???????

There are a lot of people who love the series just for that, and all the humor that is in it.

I don't think they sould replace the original cast, the remaining cast members sould act in this movie, and with a lot of modern computerwork, i'm sure they can make a real George Peppert, as John "Haniball" Smith.

BTW After i finished your critics, the first thing that sliped my mind was:

Wow, there is another person who must have watched at least 20 "A-Team" series, becouse how could you know this 'standard' story if you haven't seen the shows?

(If your critic isn't based on you watching the show, how can you know it's true? If that is tha case. I Think you are a bad critic, so it should be removed from the internet.)

Maarten, we couldn't agree more. Lisa is "very bad critic." So not only have we removed her from the Internet, we've banished her to another kingdom and burned her village to a cinder. Then, we salted the smoldering ruins.

That'll show her to hold an opinion contrary to yours, eh, Maarten?

As for George Peppert, we think he stands as good a chance as any one of getting cast in the "A-Team" movie. George Peppard, on the other hand, may have a tougher time, given his frequent drowsiness, complete immobility, odd odor and that ongoing battle with the heartbreak of rigor mortis.

Of course, not every letter from Europe creeps us out. Some, like this one from Sweden, merely depress the hell out of us.

My name is Annika Nilsson (not my fault) and wondering if any of you guys might know if the science fiction-series "M.A.N.T.I.S" might be available on video somewhere??

I think I´ve looked nearly everywhere for it without much luck, so I´m turning to you for help.

Many, many thanks for all your assistance, it is greatly welcome!!

Annika, we hate to be the bearers of bad news to anyone -- especially Swedish women. But we have no idea where you can find the lost episodes of M*A*N*T*I*S. We believe that when Fox canceled the show, the tapes were assumed into heaven, never to be seen again by the unclean eyes of mortal sinners.

Either that, or Fox had the M*A*N*T*I*S cassettes burned beyond recognition.

We're sorry, Annika. But if you need a M*A*N*T*I*S fix, you'll have to look elsewhere. Of course, if any old crummy TV show will do, there's this Christy movie airing on the PAX network soon. Cindy Klauss can tell you all about it.

Not that all our troubling questions have to cross the international dateline to make it to our TeeVee Mailbag. Like the Edsel, Crystal Pepsi and the Democratic Party platform, some of the most perplexing queries we get are made right here in the U.S.A. Like this poser from Alexandra Aulisi:

Any possibility of getting an article about something other than the XFL. I'm not a football fan of any sort and, frankly, one article was enough. Thanks.

No, Alexandra. It's not possible. Thanks for your inquiry.

Ah, but we kid our readers. We joke, because we love. And we know that deep down -- underneath that veneer of indifference, behind those blank, empty stares every time we pass by, once everyone looks past that restraining order filed against us -- you feel the same way about us. Because we have the e-mail to prove it.

E-mail like this letter from Emmit Devay who noted the triumphant return of Vidiot Emeritus Pete Ko to our little Web page by writing:

...Holy shit! Peter Ko IS alive!

Actually, Emmit, we're sorry to say that Pete Ko passed away several weeks ago. While watching reruns of Coach.

As Katherine Helmond will tell you, that show kills.

The wrong actors are getting the money. I don't mean that different people should be starring on television; I mean that I don't care about the stars at all.

When I'm deciding which series I'm going to watch, and which will have to go without my valuable demographic, the first question I ask is, "Who's in the background?" Remember Pride and Joy? Of course you don't. The only reason I bring it up is because it had Jeremy Piven in it, and he's great. I thought he was better in that (which was a bad show) than he was in Cupid (where he had to carry the whole thing).

Likewise Michael Ian Black. He was on the MTV skit-comedy series The State, and played Johnny Bluejeans on Viva Variety. Later, he was the beloved voice of the Pets.com sock puppet. And now he's Phil on Ed. The man's a born wacky sidekick, and he does a great job being wacky in the background. Do I want to see a series starring him? Not really. But I'll watch anything that employs him in a minor role.

Another good example is David Anthony Higgins. Long ago, he was part of The Higgins Boys and Gruber on The Comedy Channel, before it merged with Ha! to become Comedy Central. It was a great show; well, as "great" as it could be, given that it was composed almost entirely of clips of the same stand-up comedians over and over again. I don't know what happened to Gruber or the other Higgins, but Dave (now "David Anthony", because he's working for real networks) has been on two shows I've seen: He was the star of The Army Show, and he's a background character on Malcolm in the Middle. I think it's pretty clear which show is better.

I don't mean to say that I don't wish these actors (and several more which, through rigid self-control I am not listing) long and prosperous careers. And, of course, if one of them should stumble into a starring role in something, I will watch them with glee. But in general, the sort of actor for whom I have an irrational attachment tends to be best at the characters that are taken best in small doses.

I've suffered through many bad shows because I like to watch the people in the background. Remember Working, with Fred Savage? Neither do I, except for the one scene per show where Dana Gould was allowed to say something. The same goes for movies -- Ryan Stiles was in Hot Shots, Part Deux, which is why that movie's box office grosses include my $3.50. If I had my way, that money would have gone directly to Mr. Stiles, instead of feeding the pockets of the rest of the hacks involved.

Sometimes, it doesn't even matter if I get to see the person who attracts me to a project. Nick Bakay (who, I'll have you know, is the voice of the cat on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and used to be the announcer for Dennis Miller's short-lived network late-night talk show) is a writer for The King of Queens, which is all the recommendation I need to watch a few episodes. That policy can, of course, backfire -- I was forced to watch a few weeks of World's Funniest! (with host James Brown making me pine for the halcyon days of Bob Saget) when I found out that Trace "MST3K" Beaulieu was writing for it.

But don't get the impression that it's all sadness when I follow random people's career; Beaulieu was also the reason I watched Freaks and Geeks, and that was a fine, fine show.

What all these performers have in common (besides that they're all great and should be paid a lot more money) is that they're character actors. It's basically their job to walk onto the screen, spend maybe five minutes there, and get out. But while they're up there, they're all the audience can see. It's not really their job to care about the plot; it's their job to take the pressure off the stars by single-handedly making their project watchable and exciting.

Most of the actors for whom I will watch anything earned that status by having once been on a show I liked. When I see Phil Stubbs' Love-a-torium on Ed, I'm laughing partly because I remember Johnny Bluejeans singing a tender love song to Ms. Pac-Man. In a way, I'm hoping that the presence of Random Guy From Old Show will make New Show just like Old Show. This almost never happens, of course, but it's as good a way of picking new shows to watch as any.

Most of this process is actually subliminal. I'll find myself watching something for a few weeks, wondering why that one guy seems so familiar. When I finally break down and look him up, I find out that I've been watching Stephen Colbert all this time. I love when that happens.