January 2002 Archives

Music to Tackle By

By Philip Michaels on January 31, 2002 12:00 AM

With the first half of Sunday's AFC Championship game in the books, CBS's announcing team went to work, chronicling highlights from the first 30 minutes of play, outlining key injuries suffered by the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots, and setting the stage for what to expect in the second half. Their task completed, the announcers signed off and turned over the broadcast to the afternoon's halftime entertainment -- pop music recording artist Sheryl Crow.

Crow and her backup musicians stood on a platform overlooking one of the end zones at Pittsburgh's Heinz Field, surrounded by black-and-gold clad Steeler fans. Crow herself was wearing a mustardy beige pantsuit and the kind of furry headgear normally associated with Soviet agricultural ministers. The scene thus set, Crow launched into a song entitled... well, I'm not familiar with her particular brand of earthy pop. Suffice it to say, it had precious little to do with passing, tackling, or otherwise engaging the hated enemy from New England in a battle for American Football Conference supremacy. For all I know, Crow was singing about the year's wheat harvest figures for Uzbekistan.

The crowd, it is safe to say, was less than enthused. There were no audible catcalls -- certainly nothing along the lines of the tsunami of booing that rained down on Destiny's Child when the group tried to perform at halftime of last year's NBA finals. But apart from a few hardy souls waving their Steeler Terrible Towels, not many people were either getting down with their bad selves or putting their hands in the air like they just didn't care. For the most part, the crowd just looked puzzled as to what Sheryl Crow was doing in the middle of their football game.

"Sheryl," the crowd seemed to collectively say, "all we wanna do is have some fun. And we got a feeling -- judging by the looks of you and your Politburo-style chapeau -- that we are the only ones."

To be fair, CBS wasn't the only network to interrupt a sporting event so that it could feature a completely unrelated musical number. Over on Fox, viewers were treated to a halftime performance by R. Kelly, who was joined by a choir to perform a song about what an awfully nice place America is to live, what with its liberty and its amber waves of grain and its freedom to wear a giant, diamond-encrusted "K" around your neck. But again, unless one of the reasons for America's greatness musically enumerated by R. Kelly and company involved Marshall Faulk's ability to advance the football down the field, then his performance was as out-of-place as Sheryl Crow's little ditty about five-year vodka production figures.

Now more than ever, we as a people are being subjected to random acts of rock and incongruous musical interludes at our halftimes, during our seventh inning stretches, and while the Zamboni is touching up the ice in between periods. Whereas the likes of Creed, Aerosmith and Faith Hill used to content themselves with mangling the national anthem and then leaving us to our sports, they are now likely to appear at any point during a broadcast, taking valuable time away from grave matters of import, like Mike Ditka and Jerry Glanville discussing Jerome Bettis' groin.

I guess I don't begrudge the pop stars their right to follow their creative muse and gratify their egos in front of a captive audience of millions. They're just trying to move product, after all, and that's what this country is all about -- that and liberty and amber waves of grain and the right to wear gaudy jewelry, if R. Kelly's lyrics are anything to go by. It's just that the music they choose to perform rarely, if ever, fits the venue where they're performing. The songs are usually about rocking the night away, or loving the one you're with or not stopping thinking about tomorrow. Few songs in our current musical canon can really lay claim to capturing that moment when a middle linebacker is able to summon up his 'roid rage and knock the opposing team's quarterback off his feet and into a grade-two concussion.

Again, this isn't necessarily the fault of the performers. It's not like when they sit down to pour their hearts and souls into their music and lyrics, they're thinking about whether the song will be appropriate for halftime at a Bucs-Seahawks game. Well... except maybe for Smash Mouth.

No, the responsibility to restore just a little bit of sanity to televised sporting events falls squarely upon the TV networks who have allowed halftime to become a testosterone-fueled version of Top of the Pops. If broadcasters are going to continually turn to musical acts to juice the ratings -- and I have a hard time imagining droves of Sheryl Crow fans tuning into a football game just to listen to their favorite leggy chanteuse sing a three-minute ditty about an unbroken chain of freeborn republics casting off the shackles of capitalism -- then they at least owe it to their viewers to select songs that fit the occasion.

Take ABC, which, six or seven years ago, got it into its head that what would really enhance the "Monday Night Football" viewing experience would be an opening musical number performed by a pop artist with just a nodding acknowledgment that a football game would soon follow. So you had Amy Grant singing "Baby, Baby" while adorable children pranced around in Green Bay and Chicago jerseys or Vanessa Williams belting out "Saving the Best for Last" opposite of grainy footage of Steve Young scrambling for his life.

America, quite rightly, rebelled, turning on ABC with the kind of ferocity normally displayed by wounded, cornered woodland creatures. The network junked its Pop-Star-of-the-Week approach, and restored Hank Williams Jr. and his rousing "Are You Ready for Some Football?" tune to the opening credits -- quite possibly the only time in recorded history when anyone west of Appalachia was glad to hear a Hank Williams Jr. song.

The other networks need to learn from ABC's hard lesson. They need to select musical accompaniment that's both relevant and complementary to the sporting events they're broadcasting. No more Aerosmith-'N Sync duets. No more Michael Jackson and his halftime salute to the children of the world. No more Up with People and its salute to... um... people.

That's why I'm hoping that at this Sunday's Super Bowl, Fox puts the kibosh on the planned halftime performance by U2, and turns the stage over to a musical group that befits the occasion. Ladies and gentlemen, your 1985-86 Chicago Bears, here to lead us all in a stirring sing-along of "The Super Bowl Shuffle."

Fall '01: "Emeril"

By Philip Michaels on January 28, 2002 12:00 AM

Your last chance to watch Emeril, NBC's phenomenally substandard freshman sitcom, came and went about a month ago with all the fanfare normally reserved for Arbor Day observances. Here in San Francisco, the local NBC affiliate actually pre-empted Emeril's farewell episode -- risking the ire of Emeril's six or seven loyal viewers -- so that it could air a men's basketball game between the Stanford Cardinal and the Belmont Bruins.

For those of you not well-versed in the vagaries of early December college basketball, the outcome of the Cardinal-Bruins tilt was in doubt for about five seconds after the opening tip-off, with Stanford cruising to a 34-point win. So the NBC station serving the fifth largest market in the country basically decided to swap an NBC-produced show for an athletic contest devoid of any compelling drama, competitive balance or interest for almost anyone outside of greater Palo Alto.

I'm not saying we in San Francisco didn't get the better end of the deal, but still...

The San Francisco station could get away with this, you see, because it was about to lose its affiliate status. And while there's something to be said for going down with the ship and seeing things through to the bitter end and being true to your school like you would to your girl, man, you have to draw the line somewhere. Airing a lame-duck, laugh-free sitcom starring a TV chef whose acting skills couldn't land him an understudy role in a dinner theater production of "The Fantastiks" seems as good a place as any to draw it.

How could this happen? How could a show that NBC once saw as its flagship new comedy for the fall season come to such an inglorious end? How could an end-product as embarrassingly amateurish as Emeril ever make it to the airwaves in the first place? And how does a San Francisco station lose its network affiliation of fifty-plus years, replace programming from the home office in Burbank with Frasier reruns and Judge Joe Brown doubleheaders -- and end up calling it a wash?

Because NBC ignored the portents, the warnings, the guy in the hardhat waving the emergency road flares and frantically screaming "Turn back." Because NBC made the same mistakes it made back when Warren Littlefield was running the store, convincing every underling he could buttonhole that Jonathan Silverman and Brooke Shields would be the foundation of a sitcom colossus not seen since the Golden Age of TV. And NBC will keep making those mistakes, as sure as entertainment president Jeff Zucker has the phone number for David Arquette's agent on speed dial -- unless someone at the Peacock Network starts listening up and starts listening up good.

So even though Emeril got turfed a month ago, we need to exhume the rapidly cooling body and start poking it with sticks -- we have to do this. Not because we derive any grotesque satisfaction from meticulously chronicling every NBC faceplant and pratfall -- though, admittedly, that's an undeniable lure -- but because if we don't point out how things went so horribly wrong with Emeril, step by pigeon-toed step, someone's only going to make the same mistakes again. And should Bobby Flay, Wolfgang Puck, and Iron Chef Morimoto wind up as a trio of mismatched roommates on a Must-See sitcom next fall, we're only going to have ourselves to blame for keeping silent.

It's probably overly simplistic to say that NBC made its biggest blunder when it approached Emeril Lagasse to appear in a brand new comedy. Overly simplistic -- and yet wholly accurate. After all, many things probably contributed to the first World War -- German ambitions, European political intrigues, complex regional hatreds and rivalries we can't begin to fathom. And yet, the whole thing might have been postponed if only Archduke Ferdinand had crossed Sarajevo off the goodwill tour itinerary. In a similar vein, NBC's troubles began the day some junior executive in the development department said, "Well, why not a sitcom starring that TV chef -- you know, the one who's always saying, 'Bam!'?"

A lot of networks make that same mistake. They sign a big-name star to a high-profile deal before they even have an inkling as to what the show will be about. With a star like that, the show will write itself, the suits insist. Until the next thing you know, you've gone through four executive producers, three premises, and two re-shot pilots, and Jason Alexander's ratings are still burrowing deep beneath the earth's surface. Which is when it's time to line up the next ex-Seinfeld cast member for another high-profile sitcom and begin the cycle anew.

With the "star first, show later" formula already proven to be a dicey proposition for success, NBC decided to further stack the odds in the house's favor by pinning its hopes on Lagasse. He's a charismatic fellow, sure, and his various cable TV shows have their following, and the man undoubtedly makes a mean flambe. But up until NBC called his number, Emeril's previous acting experience was limited to holding back the tears whenever he julienned an onion. How good can we expect a novice like that to be?

Not very good at all, as it turns out. It's probably unfair to judge Lagasse too harshly; after all, his expertise lies in making gumbo, not wisecracks. Then again, it's not like someone put a gun to his head and forced him to appear in a self-titled sitcom -- though given Emeril's uneasy on-camera demeanor during the show, maybe someone did. His performances ran the gamut from "Deer in the Headlights" to "Guy Who's Thankful He Has That Cable Gig to Fall Back On." But most of the time, Emeril just looked confused.

Someone makes a joke? Emeril blinks. There's a simple misunderstanding that leads to hilarious consequences? Emeril furrows his brow and tries to make sense of the strange noises coming out of other people's mouths. Madcap hilarity ensues? "Hey, guys -- want to see me julienne an onion?"

It's not like Emeril's production team didn't notice the trouble the titular star was having with the material. In later episodes, while other characters did the comedic heavy lifting, Lagasse was relegated to expository dialogue -- What's going on here? So what did you say? Man, don't that beat all? -- turning the star of the show into a bit player. It's like F. Scott Fitzgerald rewriting "The Great Gatsby" to give all the good lines to Jordan Baker and Meyer Wolfsheim while recasting Gatsby to the Wacky Next-Door Neighbor role.

Having cast its lot with a rank amateur in the starring role -- at least until Lagasse was banished to the background -- NBC compounded its woes by turning over day-to-day control of Emeril to a pair of simpletons. Too many cooks may spoil the soup, as Emeril his own brow-furrowing self may say, but NBC managed to pin down the number of broth-ruining chefs to two -- in this case, Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason.

You may recognize the Bloodworth-Thomasons as the creators behind Designing Woman, Hearts Afire and Evening Shade -- all long-running programs despite the fact that I've never met a single person who watched any of them (for a current example of this phenomenon, please refer to Becker). The Bloodworth-Thomasons pretty much dropped out of the scene in the mid-90s, after their very good friend, Bill Clinton, became the most powerful man in the western world. Since then, the Bloodworth-Thomasons have been fairly busy suckling at the swollen teat of power and producing the occasional propaganda film to convince a dubious public that their very good friend Bill is a man the stature of a Roosevelt, an Eisenhower, even a Grover Cleveland and not, as you may have previously concluded, just some tubby lecher.

You would think that sort of capacity for fiction would serve the Bloodworth-Thomasons well when it came to making Emeril a laugh riot. Sadly, you'd be wrong. Saddled with a star whose idea of timing involves how long to keep a roast in the oven, the Bloodworth-Thomasons decided to surround Lagasse with a supporting cast lifted straight from the pages of the Big Book of Clichéd Sitcom Characters. Emeril reheats all your warmed-over favorites -- the sassy black woman, the ditzy Southerner, and a host of other characters that weren't all that funny or original when they appeared alongside Delta Burke and Dixie Carter 15 years ago. All that was missing were the crusty landlord and the naive and wise immigrant, but who knows -- maybe they showed up in that episode that got pre-empted in San Francisco for the Stanford game.

Then, there was the dubious casting of Robert Urich, whose only prior association with comedy began with firing off the occasional zinger at the expense of Binzer on Vega$ and ended with agreeing to star in Love Boat: The Next Wave. Unfamiliar with the art of comedic timing, the nuances of humors, the basics of squeezing a laugh out of even the slightest material, Urich took an unconventional approach to his role as Emeril's agent -- HE DECIDED TO SHOUT EVERY LINE AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS! Perhaps he got that advice from a respected comedic actor. Maybe the Bloodworth-Thomasons told him it would be a scream. Or, most likely of all, he got his hands on Emeril's cooking sherry right before each take. In either case, Urich's performance was a mess, a scenery-chewing bit of hammery that shines out as the worst thing about Emeril. That may seem like no small accomplishment, but keep in mind poor Emeril's just doing this gig for a laugh. Urich's played both Dan Tanna and Spenser, for heaven's sake.

(If Urich's screaming for comic effect is the worst thing about Emeril, then by far the best is Lisa Ann Walter, a talented comedic actress who deserves better. This is the second not-very-good-show that I've watched largely because she's been in it, and while reviews like this may seem like I'm hardly doing her any favors by tuning in, I can assure you I'm the one who's suffering here. And so my plea to Lisa Ann Walter, if she's out there, is to please start selecting projects with greater care, or we're going to have to bring up the thorny issue of reparations).

The higher ups at NBC saw all this -- the clichéd characters, the dreary scripts, the horrible shouting -- and then did the sensible thing. They ordered changes to the pilot, sending it back to the producers the way you and I would send back a meal if we asked for the New York steak and got served up a corndog. So the Bloodworth-Thomasons went to back to the drawing board, worked their special magic -- and produced the hackneyed, tired series that made it to the airwaves. The higher ups at NBC saw all this... and broadcast it anyhow.

And that's probably the most distressing thing about all this. NBC realized it had a turkey on its hands. It knew everything about Emeril was wrong, wrong, wrong. It probably had the "NBC Cancels Emeril" press release typed up and ready to go last August. And it still put on the schedule, hoping none of us would be sentient enough to smell the stink. Even worse, suits like Zucker now seem to be implying that Emeril didn't catch on, not because of its inherent suckiness, but because you and I weren't hip enough to grok on its cutting-edge concept.

"Our thinking was to take a swing," Zucker told Entertainment Weekly, "to try something different." For the record, Zucker also thinks the Rachel-Does-Ross-And-Now-Here's-Joey storyline on Friends is the height of narrative invention.

So NBC is beyond help. The network will move on to convincing people that watching Hank Azaria not being funny is much more enjoyable than watching Emeril Lagasse not being funny (or not -- Azaria's new show was canceled last week after two episodes). The Bloodworth-Thomasons will turn their attention to getting the 22nd Amendment repealed. Emeril will go back to his cooking show. Robert Urich will go back to speaking in a normal tone of voice. And you and I will be back here this fall bemoaning another miserable star-powered sitcom that's been foisted upon us.

Unless someone pays attention to the lessons -- the lessons we should take away from Emeril so that at least some good can come out of this abject failure.

I. Building your show around a big-name star before you have any idea what the show is going to be about is not a very good idea.

II. Building your show around a big-name star who hasn't actually acted before is never a very good idea.

III. Shouting unfunny lines does not necessarily make them funnier.

IV. If you've noticed that your show is unwatchable, chances are the rest of us will, too.

V. The only programs Robert Urich gets to make anymore are the ones where he kicks some punk's ass.

Those five rules are simple, concise, and easy enough for even the most thick-headed network executive to follow. Stick to them without deviation, and you won't guarantee that your schedule will be littered with great shows. But you will ensure that the programs won't be unspeakably horrible.

And you'll never have to worry about turning on your network and watching Emeril Lagasse julienne an onion.

Give Him... "The Chair!"

By Jason Snell on January 17, 2002 12:00 AM

There are three different kinds of contestants on ABC's new game show The Chair. The first kind are somewhat knowledgeable and quite excitable; they can't make any money because they can't calm down enough to answer questions in any reasonable amount of time. The second kind are crazy ninja masters you see in Outer Limits episodes or read about in "Doctor Strange" comics. Stop their hearts with the mere force of their minds? That's chump change, buddy -- these people are so masterful, they can get that sucker pumping in reverse. Unfortunately, these contestants have been spending so much time on the astral plane, they don't know the answers to any of the questions The Chair poses for them. So they can't win any money, either.

The third group? Well, those are the losers who are so hopped up, we will never know if they're intelligent. They come out, sit in the chair, watch their pulse blast through the roof like a cartoon thermometer stuck in boiling red-hot lava, and then silently slink away, having never uttered a useful word in their brief moment of network TV exposure. Poor saps.

The Chair, if you haven't heard, is at the forefront of the latest wave of game shows to arrive on our TV screens. If you set your TiVo to record The Simpsons last Sunday, you may have caught The Chair's direct competitor, The Chamber, which pre-empted The Simpsons at the last minute in order to get it on the air before The Chair. (Coming soon on CBS: The Gallows! And NBC will undoubtedly follow with Bag of Rocks and a Good Strong Current, hosted by Joe Rogan.)

The Chair's host is, oddly enough, former tennis great John McEnroe. And yet, despite the oddity of this athlete-turned-broadcaster (he's actually quite a good tennis commentator), McEnroe is the least of The Chair's problems. See, McEnroe is effusive and abrasive, but he's actually quite personable and damned fun to watch. In fact, I wish he were the host of The Weakest Link, because his demeanor is a much better match for that show than the trying-too-hard, schoolmarm approach of Anne Robinson.

However, McEnroe has one major weight dragging him down, and it's likely a mandate from The Chair's producers: Enunciate the name of the show, for pete's sake! We've got a brand to market here! That means that every other sentence, McEnroe ends his sentence by inserting a pregnant pause and then barking out, "THE CHAIR!" For example: "Welcome back to.... THE CHAIR! Missy from Los Angeles is our next player, and she'll be trying to win $250,000 in... THE CHAIR! If she doesn't answer, she'll be removed from... THE CHAIR! But if she wins in... THE CHAIR, we may have her back in... THE CHAIR during the next episode of... THE CHAIR!" You get the idea.

Of course, the producers of The Chair know that besides McEnroe, their pricey piece of furniture is the show's only asset. Contestants are strapped into it and forced to answer a series of questions, all while hooked up to a heart monitor. The chair swivels around and occasionally other shocking things happen, like the sides of the chair emitting 4th-of-July sparklers or a live alligator being lowered from the rafters. The goal of The Chair's contestants? Answer the questions correctly while keeping your heart below the target heart rate, which begins at 60 percent above their resting pulse and drops as the game goes along.

Sounds interesting, and the show's definitely following the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire rulebook when it comes to sound effects, music, lighting, and lots of sliding-around camera movement. There's just one problem -- the aforementioned contestants.

See, quiz shows have two things going for them: interesting questions and interesting contestants. However, The Chair has neither. The questions aren't particularly interesting (with the exception of a "did you spot it?" photo montage), and half the contestants are unable to answer them anyway, due to their elevated heart rates. And when a contestant finally does start answering questions, it doesn't matter -- because they're practically catatonic.

The result is a game that's not fun to watch -- again, beyond the fun of waiting to see what funny statement McEnroe will make next. That's not a recipe for success. That said, The Chair is a cut above The Chamber. I was able to make it through a whole hour of The Chair, but The Chamber lost me after 10 minutes.

Perhaps it's a subtle difference in the intention of the two shows. The Chair is about the contestants' (however uninteresting they might be) and their own self-control. The Chamber is about torturing contestants with showy special-effect torments. In the battle of two game shows that don't stand a chance of making it through to summertime, at least The Chair can take solace in its superiority to its soulless, unpalatable rival.

Ten for 2001

By Jason Snell on January 13, 2002 12:00 AM

If it's the end of one year and the beginning of another, it must be time for the endless supply of best-of-the-year retrospectives. Last year I revived a ritual that dates back to the founding of TeeVee -- namely, the year-end top 10 list. Unlike our annual Teevee Awards, which are chosen by the entire group of Vidiots and represent the best shows and performances of the season, this list -- and any that may follow -- are one person's opinion about good TV from the past calendar year.

Rather than present a list of my 10 current favorite TV shows, this is a list of 10 shows that weren't on my 2000 list. Some are new, while a few have either returned to prominence lately or just barely missed last year's list. In any event, if you're not watching these shows, you owe it to yourself to give 'em a try.

10. Adult Swim, Cartoon Network. Following in the footsteps of perhaps the most bizarre comedy show on television, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, is this collection of cartoons for adults. At its heart are a handful of new and even-more-wacky Space Ghost episodes, as well as a spin-off called The Brak Show, featuring dimwitted supervillain Brak and Space Ghost bandleader Zorak in a series modeled after a '50s family sitcom. They must be seen to be believed. Several other shows with various levels of quality appear in Adult Swim, my other favorite being Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, in which lame Hanna-Barbera superhero Birdman serves as a defense attorney for cartoon characters in need of legal representation.

9. Undeclared, Fox. From the showrunner of Freaks and Geeks, Judd Apatow, comes this single-camera sitcom about a bunch of freshman in a college dorm. Not as real, as deep, or as searingly painful as Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared is half as long as its predecessor, but is just as funny. For a while it appeared that Apatow finally had a hit on his hands, but Fox has since cut the series' order and it may not make it to next fall. Which would be a shame, because the kids at the extremely fictional University of North Eastern California (where's that? Redding? Shasta? Truckee?) are all right.

8. Gilmore Girls, The WB. A near-miss from last year's list, Gilmore Girls was one of last year's best new series and hasn't fallen into the sophomore slump of its NBC counterpart, Ed. Though this season's introduction of a ne'er-do-well rival for young Rory's affections smells like a shameless plot complication, it can't sour the small town sweetness of Stars Hollow, Connecticut, or the complicated and appealing web of relationships between the show's grandmother, grandfather, mother, and daughter. This is a family show, there's no denying it -- but unlike other "family programming," it's not a treacly confection. It's the real thing.

7. The Chris Isaak Show, Showtime. Talk about a series I had no expectations for. You mean, it's like Seinfeld or Larry Sanders, only it stars the guy who sings "Wicked Game" and acts in movies like "Fire Walk With Me"? Really, does rockabilly star Chris Isaak expect to become a serious actor just because he had a bit part in "Silence of the Lambs?

No, no he doesn't. Instead, he stars in a quirky comedy that bears more than a striking resemblance to Northern Exposure in tone, mostly because the show's executive producers are Exposure veterans Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider. Mixing behind-the-scenes rock-and-roll action, neurotic musicians, and fun musical numbers, Isaak is the biggest surprise of the year. It's a series so goofy, its most rational character spends all her screen time naked and doing fish pantomime. Mona the mermaid's got it all together compared to Chris's keyboard player and manager, two of the most dysfunctional characters this side of Larry David. The show's second season has just started on Showtime, and you can catch first-season reruns on VH-1 -- minus the nudity and swearing, of course.

6. Junkyard Wars, The Learning Channel. Since Gregg Wrenn first introduced us to this series last year, it's become mandatory viewing in our household. What other show could combine science and engineering education with Iron Chef? Featuring a collection of British and American teams battling to create crazy contraptions from junkyard scrap over the course of 10 hours, Junkyard Wars is both engrossing and educational. If I were a high school science teacher, Junkyard Wars would be assigned viewing.

Now, there's a little problem with the hosts. Apparently American network TLC has decided that the funny accents of British hosts Robert Llewellyn and Cathy Rogers and their British contestants are a bit too much for the sensitive American ear, so it ordered up a couple batches of all-American episodes. The first shows, which teamed Rogers with the lame George Gray -- now starring in the syndicated Weakest Link! -- were a shock to see. But the second set, with pleasant Canadian Tyler Harcott replacing Gray, were more palatable. Still, the American teams seem to take Junkyard Wars much too seriously compared to their fun-loving UK counterparts.

Fortunately, TLC has seen fit to alternate the UK Junkyard Wars episodes with the U.S. editions, giving us a full dose of Llewellyn and more fun-loving Brits when the Harcott-hosted show is off the air. That means we get that many more episodes of this excellent series -- and keep 'em coming.

5. 24, Fox. Every time I see Keifer Sutherland I can't help seeing him as the wheezing mad scientist in "Dark City." Every time I see Dennis Haysbert, I lament the loss of Now and Again. But I'm still hopelessly addicted to Fox's 24-episode experiment, a show that's much more about ratcheting up the tension than about plot or character developments. Do I care that Keifer's daughter is in mortal danger? A little, I guess. Do I care that her best friend got her arm broken, was shot up with heroin, then run over by a car, and finally smothered to death? Well, that's a real bummer, to be sure -- but she was kind of annoying.

No, 24 succeeds because it's an injection of adrenaline, a paranoid chain of events that can't be handled in any fashion other than the seat-of-your-pants variety. It's about snap decisions, all of which could potentially be life threatening. It's a horror show. It's a thrill ride. I love it.

4. Alias, ABC. A James Bond-style action-adventure series that's essentially one long chain of cliffhangers, Alias does Bond one better by making the hero a double agent, one with a complicated personal life, and -- oh yeah -- a girl.

It's a ridiculous premise that gets more ridiculous by the week, and I do hope that eventually Alias scrambles things up even further by dropping the whole double-agent motif. This is a show that would be just as entertaining if its complexity was cut in half. But still, Jennifer Garner sparkles -- especially when she's wearing a sparkly party dress -- as agent Sydney Bristow, feisty operative for evil spy agency SD-6 who's actually a CIA agent trying to sabotage her employers from the inside.

Like 24, Alias is more about style than about substance. And why should that make it any less of a pleasure?

3. Late Show With David Letterman, CBS. After September 11, Dave showed America just why it is that he's the heavyweight in the late night hour, not Jay Leno. Letterman may not get Leno's ratings, but then, there's lots of popular crap out there getting better ratings than good shows in the same time slot. Letterman plays dumb a lot, and tries to avoid politics as much as he can, but after September 11 he was forced to be real, emotional, downright angry -- and to interpret those feelings through his comedy.

Also, terrible as it is to say, September 11 also gave people a chance to notice that the past year or two has brought Letterman back up to top form, after a late-'90s slide. The people who tuned in after the terrorist attacks, to see what Dave had to say about it all, got a taste of the re-emergent brilliance that's been going on late at night for a little while now. As we rapidly approach David Letterman's 20th anniversary in late-night, it's important to realize just how good he is and how much we take him for granted.

2. Farscape, Sci-Fi. This mind-bending sci-fi puppet show has been growing on me for the past couple of years, but this season Farscape really came into its own, with one of the most high-stakes season-ending cliffhangers I've ever seen (hero John Crichton lies on an operating table, brain open, brain surgeon murdered, the secret information in his brain removed by his archenemy -- and meanwhile, his girlfriend and the series' female lead lies dead and buried). Since then, the show has actually gotten better, highlighted by a tour de force series of alternating episodes that split the cast -- and Crichton -- in two.

Yeah, Farscape is the show with the space puppets -- I mean, space muppets. But it's also one of the best sci-fi series on the air. It's complicated, quirky, and unlike any series that has ever come before it.

1. The Tick, Fox. As with many unique, brilliant shows, The Tick couldn't live on the air for very long. Fox has already cancelled it, in fact; its last episodes will be airing this month. I expected a lot from this series in the year since it was announced; I got something even better than I had expected. It was a cross between Seinfeld and Superman, and it worked brilliantly. And now it's gone. Hey, two years in a row with a cancelled show at number one on my list! Talk about the kiss of death.

Finally, my annual top ten: 10. Late Show With David Letterman; 9. Junkyard Wars; 8. 24; 7. Alias; 6. Futurama; 5. Farscape; 4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer; 3. Angel; 2. Stargate SG-1; 1. The Tick.

Ten Good Things About Television

By Lisa Schmeiser on January 9, 2002 12:00 AM

There is literally no lead I can write, no justification I can make, no apology that will mask what this is: a top-ten list recapping television in the year 2001. For a while, I debated doing "Ten shows that made absolutely no impression on me whatsoever," but ... well, what am I going to write? JAG: Apparently, it's still on. So scratch that idea. Coming up with ten odious shows, events or trends would be too easy -- I could just pick ten articles at random from the Teevee archive and riff on those.

Therefore, I'm simply going to go with the following ...

Ten Things about Television in 2001, Chosen for No Other Reason Than My Whimsy

1. John C. McGinley on Scrubs (NBC)
There is literally nothing I don't love about him. From the lines he tosses off ("So take your blahblah to the blahblahologist.") to his delivery, every time John C. McGinley appears on the screen, I sit up a little straighter and begin cackling in gleeful anticipation of whatever he's about to do.

2. Undeclared (Fox)
I was ready to declare the live-action half-hour dead until I saw this: the show is tight, funny and cringe-inducing in its depictions of average schlubs at a safety school. Anyone who even thinks about cancelling this is a chowderhead. For the love of God, won't some insane billionaire start the Judd Apatow Network and guarantee the man a television home in perpetuity? Or turn an existing cable channel into the JAN? I doubt anyone would really miss TNT.

3. Fox in general
Yes. Seriously. This is not the set-up to a long joke. Consider: King of the Hill, Futurama, The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle, The Bernie Mac Show, Undeclared, The Tick, 24. That's eight good shows. Find me another network station that does that. Hell, if I were being charitable, I'd almost say eight good shows cancels out such abominations as Titus, X-Files (which should have been taken out back and shot two years ago) and You'll Watch Whatever Crass, Jiggly Reality Show We Give You and You'll Like It. But I'm not.

Be warned, however, that Fox gets a conditional spot on the list until we can confirm Undeclared on the television schedule for 2002-2003. Cancel the show, and I find another network to grudgingly praise.

4. The Fall 2001 television season
And I'm not just saying that out of sheer gratitude that it happened at all: I'm just mean-spirited enough to have been looking forward to watching what would have happened had writers or actors gone on strike. But, since strikes were averted and shows were issued forth unto a waiting public ... holy cow, this is the first year I can recall where I've wanted to consistently watch more than one new show. How did that happen?

5. Kenny Mayne (ESPN)
Oh. My my my. He's the second reason I watch Two Minute Drill. The first reason is because the husband has the show on season pass and thus it is constantly on in our household. Still, Kenny Mayne's something else -- the quirked eyebrow, the deadpan delivery, it's all good.

5a. ESPN commercials
This network has the best promotional spots -- ever. Send their advertising department the finest meats and cheeses in the land. Send me a compilation of the commercials. Please?

6. HBO
With a few notable exceptions -- Arli$$, Mind of a Married Man -- the channel has the most solid line-up of original series and movies on today. If you're not watching OZ, you should be, and not just because Luke Perry is about to come back from the (presumed) dead. Now that the first and second seasons of The Sopranos are out on videotape and DVD, you have no excuse for not watching. Six Feet Under got so good, it wasn't even funny; Rick Cleveland turned into some of television's best, most compelling writing. Clark Johnson's Boycott deserved a wide-screen release of some sort, it was that good. Conspiracy combined masterful and understated acting (Stanley Tucci, Kenneth Branagh and Colin Firth all turned in powerful performances) with a premise that perfectly illustrates Hannah Arendt's concept of the banality of evil.

See how long the preceding paragraph is? I rest my case.

7. Season 3 Farscape (Sci-Fi Channel)
Any show that exploits the unresolved sexual tension between two characters without killing the chemistry deserves plaudits, but Farscape did one better by choosing a novel way to settle some of the simmering between John Crichton and Aeryn Sun: they cloned him, had her date one John, then killed him off just in time for John #2 to re-enter the scene and start the mating dance anew. Kudos to the writers for exploiting the elastic parameters of science-fiction narrative, thus enabling them to have their cake and eat it too.

8. The Chronicle (Sci-Fi Channel)
It's about time tabloid journalists had their day in the sun -- no, Deadline doesn't count -- and it's about time Jon Polito got a role that lets him combine his fine comic flair with his gruff, authoritarian demeanor. His performance is enough to make me forgive Rena Sofer's presence.

9. Adult Swim and Justice League (Cartoon Network)
Anyone who is not watching Home Movies is living a dull and orderly existence. Anyone who does not love The Brak Show or Sealab 2021 is a humorless dolt. And the supremacy of Space Ghost Coast to Coast is, of course, uncontested. The Cartoon Channel aggregates three hours of cartoons for grown-ups with Adult Swim and kindly broadcasts the package on Sundays from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., then repeats the show again on Thursday nights for those of us who, having already spent our Sundays watching Fox and HBO, are in the throes of Quality Viewing Fatigue by 10 p.m.

As for Justice League -- not only is it really gorgeous to look at, it's surprisingly well-written and manages to please both long-time fans of the genre and newcomers. Comic book geeks like me are gratified by the appearance of Green Lantern Corps members Salakk and Kilowog as supporting characters in an episode, but the show is so carefully constructed, anyone can watch and be entertained.

10. The Best Buy commercial with the two bored convenience-store workers
Note to Kevin Smith: you will never need to make Clerks II. Someone else has already done it for you, and man, was it funny.

My Defenses Are Down

By Lisa Schmeiser on January 4, 2002 12:00 AM

Though we at TeeVee have long sung the praises of TiVo, we are only now beginning to see the long-term effects a TiVo can have on your television-watching experience. I came head-to-head with one of these effects this weekend. I am now no longer inured to the sinister power of commercials.

Anyone who's exposed to a toxic substance can build an immunity to it. Lobsters scuttling along the floor of the Atlantic seaboard eat PCBs for lunch, habitual stoners can smoke a bale of marijuana before getting mellow, couch potatoes can watch commercials without having their brain seize. But TiVo is television detox. Owing to its magical ability to manipulate space and time, viewers can fast-forward through the barnacles of banality clinging to the underbellies of the shows we're actually watching.

However, owing to a sustained period spent in a TiVo-free home (hi, Mom!), I have been subjected anew to that which tough TV-watchers can shrug off. And now, as I lay on the floor twitching in shock, I can only summon the wherewithal to issue a warning: Repeated use of TiVo can lower your resistance to the following televised atrocities.

Exhibit A: Network promos comprised of spurious lies and logical distortions. It's no secret that the promotions running on any network are, in fact, created by people telecommuting from Hell.

But there is a special circle reserved for the people who make the Friends promos. It was bad enough when they broke out the Enya -- because although Friends may be many things, a new-age comedy of manners it isn't -- but now, there's misty lens shots, and Rachel and Joey spending quality time together, and if one goes by the promotion, someone has turned Friends into the Reader's Digest version of Melrose Place. Is this the actual intent of the promotion, or the inadvertent result?

I don't know, and I don't care; I make it a policy to avoid anything that may have been exposed to Enya, however accidentally. This comprehensive avoidance policy is probably not what the people who craft show promotions had in mind.

Exhibit B: The United States Postal Service commercial. This commercial is vexatious because I just don't understand it. Carly Simon is singing for the government? Isn't she part of that cabal of sensitive, feel-good singers who hate the Man? And isn't this song the same one used in Working Girl, the cinematic paean to unrepentant 1980s ambition? The same film that decried blue-collar folk as classless schlubs? And wasn't the song used to glorify the cubicle farms of Manhattan, each tiny stall housing someone who would sooner sell their children's kidneys than deliver mail?

So what is this song -- ostensibly about the freedom to go and make fistfuls of money without moral qualm -- doing as a tribute to the kinds of people the song and the movie go out of their way to avoid? I mean, God bless the Postal workers and their indefatigability, but don't they deserve a more appropriate theme song?

Exhibit C: Olympic promotions. The Games aren't here, irate Europeans haven't butted heads with the baroque liquor laws of Utah, nor has some high-strung teenager won a medal for ice-dancing to an orchestral version of "Breathe," but the international incidents are already beginning. For example, NBC is shilling the forthcoming Games by having Neil Diamond and Melissa Etheridge duet on "America."

Somewhere, Julie Cypher is watching and wondering how being married to Lou Diamond Phillips turned into the high point of her life in the public eye.

Exhibit D: 1-800-CALL-ATT. I've never pretended to understand Carrot Top's allure. I've never even launched an investigation to determine if he has any allure whatsoever. But I do have half a mind to write the board members of AT&T and inquire of them if asking Carrot Top to pitch their collect-calling service is some sort of oblique business strategy designed to cripple said collect-calling business, so when the inevitable antitrust lawsuit hits, they can bring up 1-800-CALL-ATT as an example of one telecommunications market they don't own and thus avoid some sort of court-ordered breakup. There is no other rational explanation for why a company actively engaged in rebuilding Ma Bell and annexing the Internet, cable television, and a few stray former Soviet republics would do something so stupid as to use Carrot Top as a sales tool.

However, I am hopeful that a class-action suit filed on behalf of anyone who's ever watched the gangly, red-haired comedian suffer through an attack of St. Vitus' Dance before yelping out the corporate jingle will bring AT&T to its knees.

Exhibit E: Lexus commercials. There is one that blanketed the airwaves immediately before and after Christmas in which assorted people were all gifted with brand-spanking-new luxury cars -- a wife surprising her husband, a family surprising Dad, loving parents surprising their teenaged daughter. I have to confess: the premise of these commercials baffles me, on the following grounds.

One: We are in a recession, with Americans carrying the highest amount of consumer debt ever. Exactly how many households have the financial capability to keep the purchase of a Lexus secret? Two: you give someone a Lexus for Christmas this year, how are you going to top that next year? By buying one of those former Soviet republics AT&T will be selling off to pay the penalty on their lawsuit? Three: Consider the spectacle of a presumably upper-middle-class child receiving a Lexus for the holidays. And remember -- recession, high rate of unemployment, consumer debt, gift expectations. The only way giving a teenager a Lexus can work out well for all parties concerned is if the gift subsequently turns into a means of fear and punishment: "Get a 1500 on your SAT, Madison, or we take away the car," or "Taylor, if you don't get that National Merit scholarship, we're going to have to sell the Lexus and use the proceeds to send you to a state school."

These commercials only incite fear and confusion. And while those may be perfectly natural things to feel around the holidays -- at least, in my experience, they're as inevitable as a Muzak rendition of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" -- again, I have to wonder if this was the effect Lexus was striving for.

Oh, how I miss the days when commercials used to make crass consumerism look like fun.

Surveying the list above, there is one common thread running through all items: a big question mark floating over my head as I behold these things on the television. Once upon a time, I wouldn't have been confused by these phenomena. I wouldn't have even noticed them.

But a steady diet of TiVo -- which carries with it the expectation that all television is television I want to watch, when I want to watch it, how I want to watch it -- has made me soft and unsheltered. Because I am no longer watching network promotions, I am appalled anew at their incoherence. Since I typically fast-forward through commercials, when I'm forced to view them in real time, I'm struck with how ham-handed and illogical most sales pitches are. I am the television equivalent of a vegan who's just been force-fed a Big Mac and a pound of M&Ms; my system is overloaded and short-circuiting from the toxins flowing through it.

Clearly, there is a lesson to be learned about the hazards of prolonged exposure to TiVo. Either television has gotten really stupid, or I'm now noticing how stupid it was all along.

I'd tell you which it was, but I've just noticed two episodes of Twitch City on the TiVo and there's nothing like short-lived Canadian sitcoms to cleanse the palate. Ah, TiVo -- your blessings are mixed, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Fall '01: "24"

By Philip Michaels on January 2, 2002 12:00 AM

By all rights, we should hate 24, each and every one of us. No one could blame us for openly rooting against the show, at the very least, or, at the very most, offering crude and possibly heretical incantations to Baal for 24's quick and immediate demise. Because long before the first minute of the first scene had even aired, the first-year series about a day in the life of a government agent trying to thwart the assassination of a presidential candidate already had three strikes against it. Fox gave us every reason in the world to hate 24 sight unseen.

First, there was the network's relentless promotion of the show, a steady drumbeat of 24-related propaganda that infused and eventually overwhelmed Fox's coverage of the World Series. Break in the action? Time to pimp 24. The backstop behind home plate is unencumbered by signage? Let's just superimpose the grim visage of Kiefer Sutherland to further flog the audience into watching. Tino Martinez wears number 24? Say, Tim McCarver, that reminds me of this new show debuting on Fox this fall...

Then, there is the not-at-all insignificant fact that TV critics anointed 24 as the surefire-smash-hit of the 2001 fall season. Critics are, of course, fine people on the whole and upstanding members of society and those rumors about their unwillingness to pick up a check are more or less overblown. But, by and large, they should not be confused with men and women of flawless judgments. Sex in the City, Once and Again, Tracey Takes On -- all shows heralded by the knights of the keyboard for no apparent reason other than as a drunken dare or possibly a prank gone awry. And when critics rush en masse to their thesauri to dig up increasingly flattering superlatives -- well, the last time we had such uniformity of opinion, David E. Kelley was a master of wit and sophistication. And now the airwaves are choked with crummy shows produced by that tousle-haired little creep.

Finally -- and perhaps most damningly -- 24 stars Kiefer Sutherland. I don't think I need to explain the chilling implications of this development to anyone who's spent any appreciable amount of time in the nation's cineplexes between 1987 and 1996. But just in case you've been lucky enough to avoid "Flatliners," "1969," "Chicago Joe and the Showgirl" and anything else starring America's second-favorite acting Sutherland, suffice it to say that most of Kiefer's silver screen work won't be landing on any American Film Institute Top 100 lists any time soon, unless AFI is planning a Suckiest Films of the First Bush Administration special. And if you happen to be mentally drafting an angry e-mail to me right now chronicling the delicious differences between El Kiefo's portrayals of a slow-witted, poetry-spewing cowboy in the "Young Guns" movies and his turn as a slow-witted cowboy who keeps his poetic aspirations to himself in "The Cowboy Way," let's just say we agree to disagree, OK? Oh, and you have my deepest sympathies for your brain injury.

Despite lugging along more baggage than you can legally stow in the overhead bins, 24 winds up being a surprisingly good show. Really good. The storytelling is fast-paced and engaging, the show never seems to drag, and you don't walk away from 24 feeling stupider than you were when the hour began. Even Kiefer doesn't harm the proceedings, providing some of his finest work since his turn as the slow-witted yet sadistic cracker lieutenant in "A Few Good Men."

Does 24 deserve the universal hosannas being sung by the nation's TV critics, who've declared this to be the best new show of the year? Nah. I can think of three, maybe four freshman shows that are ahead of 24 in the line, starting with Fox's Undeclared. (And how weird is it for me to find half-a-dozen new shows that I actually like this fall? Well, that trend ends tomorrow -- Emeril is next on my to-do list.) No matter what you think of this year's crop of new shows, however, 24 certainly is worthy of your attention.

24 centers on a day in the life of one of those shadowy government spy agencies which are so popular on TV this year. This time around, the focus is on Jack Bauer (our one and only Kiefer), a maverick agent who must contend with a) an assassination plot against presidential candidate David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert, last seen in the brilliant Now and Again a few falls back); b) the kidnapping of his daughter; and c) the fact that some as of yet unknown person within his own shadowy spy agency probably has played a hand in both a) and b). Oh, and Bauer has to deal with all of this in one 24-hour period -- hence the show's numerically inspired title.

Because every show needs a gimmick these days, 24's hook is that the events unfold in real time. In other words, each hour-long episode represents an hour in Jack Bauer's day. The season premiere takes place between midnight and 1 a.m., the second episode runs from 1 to 2, and so on. The structure gives 24 a narrative punch, keeping the action moving and allowing the producers to experiment with some cool transitional effects to keep the real-time illusion in place. Of course, given that this is a 24-episode series, we can safely presume that Bauer won't have this assassination thing wrapped up sometime just before supper.

24's narrative structure may be its most distinguishing feature, but it may also be the biggest hurdle standing in the way of the show's success. Picture this: you've caught the first four episodes of 24, you've assiduously followed every twist and turn in the plot, you've even produced elaborate flowcharts to track each character and their respective machinations. And then, one week, you've got a social obligation or there's a Red Wing game on or the dog wants to go for a walk right now. And the very next week, it's 6 a.m., and Kiefer's wearing a completely different shirt and half-a-dozen characters you didn't even know about have been systematically waxed. It's like you miss a week, and the next time you tune in, all the characters are speaking Spanish.

Fox, to its credit, is taking steps to ensure that you won't have to cut off all contact with humanity between 9 and 10 on Tuesday evenings, lest you miss a moment of 24. The network has yanked the awful Pasadena from its Friday night lineup and, instead of filling the hole with Best of Cops or World's Funniest Groin Pulls, is rebroadcasting that week's 24 episode. 24 reruns also air incessantly on the FX cable channel, proving that there's more to corporate synergy than annoying Time-Warner popup ads on AOL. And, even if you wind up missing all 73 rebroadcasts of a particular 24 episode, Fox has seen to it that the "Previously on 24" segment of the show recaps the entire series to date. At the rate things are going, by week 13, the new episode will run about two minutes, preceded by a 58-minute recap segment.

If there is a drawback to 24's narrative contrivance, it's that sometimes the structure telegraphs the plot twists. At the 50-minute mark of each episode, for example, you can count on a shocking and dramatic development to transpire which probably won't resolve itself until next week's installment. Sometimes that cliffhanger approach works, sometimes it feels cheap and forced. And on more than one occasion, some of 24's tertiary characters have bought the farm, and their impending demise couldn't have been more transparent if they appeared on camera wearing red Starfleet shirts.

Still, 24 hits more often than it misses. And I'll take a show that tries something different and suffers than the occasional misstep over a program that aims for something safe, predictable and bland and hits its target every time. 24 has a good story to tell, and it tells it well -- and that's enough to keep me watching through the last minute of the season finale.

Which is why, when Fox interrupts its Super Bowl coverage with shots of a giant inflatable Kiefer Sutherland head floating high atop the Superdome, I won't really mind. Much.

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January 2002 Archives

Music to Tackle By

Fall '01: "Emeril"

Give Him... "The Chair!"

Ten for 2001

Ten Good Things About Television

My Defenses Are Down

Fall '01: "24"

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