March 2002 Archives

You may have noticed that lately, things have been getting a bit racy on basic cable. Those basic cable channels are responding to criticism of their relaxed nudity and profanity standards with a questionable cause-and-effect theory. Here's how the argument goes:

• Premium cable networks have a lot of latitude when it comes to subject matter.
• By "latitude," we mean "You can hear people say 'fuck' and see them all sorts of naked, and your mom's not around to change the channel."
• This "latitude" is what keeps people tuning in to HBO.
• If we're to compete with the premium channels in terms of viewership, we need some of that there latitude too.

So far, nobody has questioned the logic. Since F/X aired The Shield with a whole lot of swearing and a very naked murder victim and ended up with its highest-rated hour of programming since 1994, observers have concluded that correlation equals causation. Nobody bothered to examine whether the following might have helped: a heavy months-long promotional campaign, favorable critical reception, and even mordant curiosity on the part of viewers to see if F/X was capable of airing an original show that didn't suck.

Another alleged argument: ESPN simultaneously aired two versions of "Season on the Brink," the Bobby Knight biopic -- one with the dirty words left in on ESPN, and one with them removed on ESPN2. That the F-bomb-laden version did better in the ratings than the sanitized version proves that television audiences want their entertainment raunchy. Nowhere does this argument mention that ESPN2 has a much smaller cable audience than ESPN, nor does it ask if people perhaps preferred that a movie about a famously foul-mouthed coach actually had some representation of that character trait.

The cable networks' final argument is just too good to paraphrase:

Even CBS got in on the act on March 10 when it broadcast the 9/11 documentary about the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Firefighters could be heard repeatedly swearing up a storm. Such language was rarely, if ever, heard before on network TV. Using WPEC, the CBS affiliate in West Palm Beach, as an example, a station spokesman said there had been no language complaints.

Granted, America is stocked with idiots who don't hesitate to complain about the picayune without provocation, but it would take a rare breed of moron to watch a documentary featuring people who went to their death in the name of duty, then pick up the phone to tell their local affiliates, "Those fireman had potty mouths! How dare you!"

After digesting these arguments, I was ready to unleash a torrent of basic cable-approved invective: using three anecdotal and largely unsupported examples of anomalies in cable and network programming, someone's managed to cobble together the argument that people like their television raunchy? What the -- oh, wait. Basic cable profanity. What the hell?

To be sure, there is such a thing as the lowest common denominator. You're always going to have people whose faces glaze like a donut the minute Kim Cattrall begins bouncing around in the altogether, or giggle uncontrollably when Kyle and Stan begin chanting four-letter words. If someone wants to base their business strategy on catering to the bottom-feeders, fine. I'll know not to watch that channel.

But I think the article sells television watchers short. Believe it or not, people don't tune in to shows like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Sex and the City or Oz because they get off on the FCC-forbidden fruits of nudity or profanity. They tune in because the writing is better, the acting is better, and the overall viewing experience is more rewarding.

Do people on these shows get naked? Sometimes, yes. Do they use bad language? Sometimes, yes. But in the case of all four shows cited, both these "raunch" elements are used to tell the story; take the cursing away from Oz and you've lost a lot of credibility in the dialogue. Take away the sex in Sex and the City and you've got... um, a live-action issue of Jane magazine? Do some of these shows veer into the gratuitous from time to time? Sure -- if I had a nickel for every unnecessary F-bomb dropped during the course of a Six Feet Under episode, I'd be able to upgrade my cable package.

However, to argue that those shows are only the beneficiaries of America's hang-ups with sex and swearing only perpetuates the idea that both activities are somehow naughty and we television watchers but guilty adolescents tuning in for prurient thrills. Moreover, it also ignores any of the myriad reasons these shows have rabid viewerships and critical acclaim.

The pity here is not that television viewers are largely portrayed as idiots -- every third article about television infers that the people who watch it are mouth-breathing proles, so this argument hardly breaks new ground. The shame is that facile analyses of why some shows work and some don't inevitably lead to poorly thought-out conclusions, and the overall quality of television will go down until cable executives really are faced with the audience they think they have now.

I came late to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer bandwagon; I've only been watching for a little over two months. But thanks to FX's two-show-a-day syndication schedule, I've seen five seasons already.

This has given me a different view of the series from the people who saw it when it aired. Plot threads that hung on for several months after they wore out their welcome only took a week of FX time. Season-ending cliffhangers were resolved in the space of a few minutes instead of having an interminable wait with nothing but internet-based speculation to fill the time.

In some respects, it's too fast to watch a series. A character who gets introduced on Monday and killed off on Thursday is hardly noticed, even though six episodes can take three months to air. Not only is it not long enough to become attached to a given supporting character, it's not even long enough to write long, involved stories where they have sex with every member of the main cast, not to mention Capt. Picard, Darth Maul, and Xena in a special crossover.

Another thing that falls by the wayside when you watch a show this fast is the difference between seasons. At least on a show like Buffy, where the cast stays more or less constant from year to year, you don't necessarily notice that Season 3 is over and Season 4 has begun. Sure, there are the occasional episodes where Buffy saves the whole universe, but those happen often enough that it doesn't necessarily stand out as anything significant. Each 22-episode season only took me a little over two weeks to watch anyway, so I don't have a "favorite season".

That part's important. I've noticed that a lot of people feel that Buffy was a lot better in the old days. I read a few Internet episode guides, and it was interesting to see one person saying "And now, the show enters the horrible pit of season 3" while another person said "Thank god, the first two seasons are over and we can get into the unalloyed brilliance of the third season." My theory is that people all prefer the season when they started watching the show and started hating it two years later. Because, like I say, I just watched five seasons in a row and I didn't really notice any difference between the seasons except for the hairstyles.

Apparently, I've been missing things, thanks to FX's charming habit of editing out lines they find too amusing. I don't really feel cheated, though, because I don't know the lines I missed. It's a little disconcerting when a longtime Buffy fan quotes an episode to me and it's a line I don't know, but frankly, it's a little disconcerting to talk to a longtime Buffy fan in the best of circumstances.

It's also been important for me not to miss a day. When you're watching a regular show, you can skip an episode here and there and then pick it up in the summer reruns. If I missed a day, I'd not only miss two episodes instead of one but I wouldn't get a chance to see what I missed until the entire run of the show was over. That means that I've been spending two hours every weekday watching this show. If I'd spent that two hours a day doing something useful with my time, I'd be fluent in Japanese by now. I'd like to think that I'm going to do something useful with my time when I no longer have a big section of my dayplanner devoted to "Watch Buffy reruns from years ago," but I expect I'll take the opportunity to schedule in some essential lying-around time.

I still have most of the current season to watch, and I'm kind of wondering what it'll be like when I'm completely caught up. I'm used to world-threatening villains cropping up and being killed off constantly; the turnover for Evil Overlords is incredibly fast. I don't think I'd even bother putting together a diabolical plot to erase history if I knew my plans would be turned to dust a week and a half after I put them in motion. But now season-long plots will take a year to play out instead of the high-speed time schedule I'm used to.

I expect it will make me think that Buffy and her pals have really fallen down on the job. "What's wrong?" I'll think. "It's been a week since that demon was introduced! That's ten episodes! He's still around?" And then I'll remember what's going on. I hope.

And so it ends for The Chair, ABC's groundbreaking attempt to meld the heretofore divergent worlds of barroom trivia and psychological torture. The Mouse Network eighty-sixed the game show after a time-slot change failed to make America any more predisposed to tuning in and watching Jeopardy rejects get strapped to a Barcolounger and pestered by John McEnore. After just eight episodes, The Chair leaves the airwaves, having failed to revive ABC's crumbling prime-time game-show empire but finally answering a question that has daunted Man since the dawn of the 1980s: Is there anything more embarrassing than the sight of McEnore shrilly berating some hapless Wimbeldon linesman with a profanity-laced tirade not usually heard outside of loading docks and troop ships?

The answer? Oh my, yes. But only if he were to go back to sporting the McEn-Fro.

The producers of The Chair can at least take solace in the fact their show outlasted its rival in the brave new world of torment-based game shows, Fox's The Chamber. The casual observer might assume that there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between The Chair and The Chamber, that the shot-for-shot similarities between the two programs just proves that network executives are timorous copycats, bereft of original thought and content to churn out derivative piffle. Which just goes to show how little the casual observer knows -- The Chair and The Chamber were, in fact, two very different shows, awash in subtle nuances and crackling with the spice of variety. The Chair, of course, challenged contestants to answer general-knowledge questions while hooked up to a heart monitor and bolted onto a piece furniture that would spin and shoot out flames and otherwise mess with their heads. If their pulse rate rose above a certain level, then the jig was up. In contrast, The Chamber forced its contestant to answer general-knowledge questions while locked in a room that would shake and shimmy and spray them with water and send a small yet steady electrical charge through their lower extremities. The pulse rate of The Chamber's participants didn't factor into the contest -- for all I know, their heart could explode, and they'd still be allowed to compete so long as they were able to correctly answer that, yes, Gilligan and The Skipper took the other castaways on a three-hour tour.

See? Totally different.

There are other, more obvious contrasts as well. The Chair, as we've already established, was hosted by tennis great John McEnore, while The Chamber was hosted by Vitus Gerulaitis.

No, wait -- that can't be right. I've got to start researching these things better.

You might remember that there was a lawsuit about The Chair and The Chamber, with the two networks ready to duke it out in court over which one of them came up with the idea of abusing game show contestants for fun and prizes first. It's a safe bet that's one dispute that probably gets settled quietly and out of the public eye -- unless the suit is revised so that it's now to decide who deserves the blame for thinking up the concept.

Conventional wisdom will hold that the short, undistinguished runs of both The Chair and The Chamber prove that the sadomasochistic game show genre just doesn't have any legs, that people don't really care to watch their fellow man endure untold agonies for a shot at a generous cash prize, that perhaps the very idea behind either show was idiotic and doomed to fail the moment it sprang, half-formed, out of some moron programmer's thick skull. Such thinking is sound, astute, even sage -- but what if it's wrong? What if The Chair and The Chamber were undone not because they went to far, but because they didn't go far enough? What if America is ready for a torture-game show hybrid that doesn't settle for John McEnore sneering "Does this bug you? I'm not touching you" at contestants but goes the full nine yards and shows actual torture? Damnit, what if we could have gotten Vitus Gerulaitis to host? Or, since he's not available, Mats Wilander? Ile Nastase, at the very least.

Sadly, we'll never know. Cowardly ABC and Fox executives have canceled their respective shows, no doubt nipping the torture-show genre in the bud before they had a chance to run it into the ground, like the reality show craze and the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire phenomenon before it. We'll never get to see the steady parade of The Chair and The Chamber knockoffs clogging up primetime line-ups and giving hosting duties to dozens of out-of-work has-beens, 1980s stand-up comics and retired tennis stars. We'll never be able to watch the inevitable celebrity editions when Emeril Lagasse or Elle McPherson or the cast from Beverly Hills 90210 is strapped into the chair and pelted with grapefruit wedges when they can't successfully name all the U.S. presidents who were born in Virginia.

What a pity. What a waste. The TV networks could have ushered in a new era of mayhem, suffering and valuable parting gifts. Instead, as they so often do, they took the easy way out, leaving us to wonder what might have been, had they only followed their twin natural instincts toward copying others and lowering the bar to give us shows like:

Hangman. Host Chuck Woolery helps bring the beloved children's word game to your television set. Only in our version, when contestants guess the wrong letter, they're actually strung up. Watch Hangman and you'll swing from the gallows -- with laughter and excitement, that is!

Pressed by Stones. Contestants are strapped between two planks of lumber and quizzed by host Tom Arnold on everything from popular music to potpourri. Answer correctly, and they rack up the prizes. But answer wrong, and a series of heavy stones are placed on the top plank, constricting our contestants' breathing and making them wish they would have paid more attention to pop culture minutiae. Contestants win bonus prizes if, during the game, they confess to witchcraft.

Lethal Injection. It's a more humane form of fun and excitement, as contestants spin our lucky wheel to determine what host Ed Begley Jr. will inject in their veins. Perhaps it will be a harmless flu vaccine. Or a yummy chocolate treat. Or perhaps an air bubble.

Iron Maiden. Each week, join Adrian Smith, Steve Harris and other members of the seminal metal band as they answers questions about literature, economics, modern art and non-linear geometry to raise money for charity and risk crunchy beatings at the hands of European football hooligans for every question they get wrong.

Drawn and Quartered. Dom DeLuise is back and hosting this updated version of Win, Lose or Draw. Contestants are joined by celebrity panelists (Burt Reynolds, Ann-Margaret, Fran Tarkenton) for a game of sketch pad charades. The winners are awarded a fabulous Hawaiian vacation package. The losers are hacked to bits with their remains sent off the four corners of the world as a warning to other presumptuous game show contestants.

You Bet Your Fingers. Think you know a lot of trivia? Then just insert a finger into host Joe Pesci's digit-sized guillotine, and we'll see how smart you are.

Rock, Paper, Scissors. Host Gilbert Gottfried wants to know: which one of the three do you want Texas Rangers pitcher John Rocker to throw at your head when you give an incorrect answer?

Strip Poker. Morgan Fairchild hosts everyone's favorite sexy card game, where a losing hand means you have to take off an article of clothing -- so that co-host Richard Kiel can brand your bare flesh with a white-hot poker.

Password 2002. Host Chevy Chase and a cadre of witty celebrities (Ruth Buzzi, Bruce Villanch, Willie Tyler and Lester, the ghost of Waylon Flowers and Madam) are on hand to see which contestant knows the secret password, and which ones will be shot as spies at dawn.

Chinese Water Torture. John McEnroe marks his triumphant return to game shows when he forces contestants to watch videotaped reruns of The Chair and The Chamber. Whoever can hold out the longest is declared the victor and wins...

Well, actually, there are no winners here.

It's good to see spies are cool again. For a long time there, television was nothing but a deserted wilderness of characters who didn't use shoe phones or lipstick .44s. Instead we've been stuck with humdrum doctors and monotonous lawyers who rarely, if ever, garroted someone.

That all changed this year with the introduction of three spy shows. CBS's entry The Agency is a lot like the rest of the network's lineup: light on the shootouts, heavy on the viscous sermonizing. If you absolutely must watch TV at 10:00 on Thursday nights and it comes down to a choice between ER and The Agency, rent a James Bond DVD.

Of the other two espionage-themed spy shows, Fox's 24 has gotten the most ink and certainly deserves every adjective of critical praise it has been buried in the last few months. What began a little unevenly has settled down into an incredibly addictive series. Kiefer Sutherland plays a fine counter-terrorist operative and the writers keep piling twist after twist on top of the attempted assassination saga.

24 is original, stylish and paced tighter than Greta Van Susteren's new face. But let's not jump on the "Best New Show" bandwagon just yet. ABC's Alias, the third of the freshman spy troika, has matched 24 plot twist for plot twist and firefight for firefight.

Back when we first reviewed Alias we said it was a exuberant show that may not be the most grounded piece of fiction ever attempted, but was that rarest of all hour-long TV series: superb, no-apologies escapist entertainment. What Alias has grown into is simply the most fun you can have with your television on a non-scrambled channel.

Instead of pulling back from the somewhat ridiculous premise of college co-ed Sydney Bristow moonlighting as a top secret agent, creator J.J. Abrams has pushed the limits of suspension of disbelief farther than anyone else on television. Sydney and her father are now both double agents for the CIA, Sydney's mother was a KGB assassin and intelligence agencies around the world are engaged in a deadly battle to capture a 500-year old book in which a Renaissance Italian inventor sketched blueprints for 21st century technology.

Now there are probably a lot of people out there who aren't willing to engage in such giant leaps of logic. Screw 'em. Abrams deserves a chorus of hallelujahs for taking network TV so far off the well-beaten path he'd need GPS to find his way back to Boring and Predictable.

The outlandish plots are just one piece of what makes Alias such a great series. It may have lost out to 24 on the split-screen patent, but Alias is still every bit as stylish as its Fox counterpart. For example, Alias has perfected the cliffhanger to a degree Kiefer and Co. can only dream of matching. Every episode ends with Sydney in mortal danger, whether falling down a secret mountain gorge, hanging outside a six-story building with gunfire blazing all around or having her own father leveling a gun at her head. Last Sunday's closing scene, which revolved around the contents of the aforementioned book, was so over-the-top you have to wonder what Abrams is smoking while at the same time applauding his sheer audacity.

Playing the role of Sydney is Jennifer Garner, a superbly athletic beauty who is as good in her show as Sutherland is in his. Garner was a surprise winner at the Golden Globes this year, certainly the most ass- kicking actress ever honored. She deserved the award just for her fighting ability. This may be a little beyond my experience, but I imagine uppercuts and roundhouse kicks are a little harder to deliver in a bikini or skin-tight latex dress.

Garner also gets to show off her subtler acting skills during the quiet moments of Alias when Sydney is pretending to be a grad student, comforting her lovelorn roommate and fending off advances from her goofy reporter friend. There's lots of wine and curling up on overstuffed couches while Paula Cole whines in the background. It's a testament to how good Garner really is that I rarely use these interludes to make a run for the fridge. Sarah Michelle Gellar may still be the queen of action actresses, but Garner is ready to duel for the throne.

The thing that really sets Alias apart from its spy show brethren is its sense of humor. As good as 24 is, there aren't a whole lot of chuckles in watching Jack Bauer scream about his missing wife and daughter. Alias isn't exactly The Simpsons, but it refuses to take itself seriously. The show uses every cliche in the spy genre yet does so with such a light touch it seems the producers are making fun of the conventions instead of simply rehashing them.

Thanks to the skimpy uniforms that are seemingly always required whenever female spies take to the streets, Garner gets to be both Bond and Bond girl. Of course there are gadgets, gadgets and more gadgets, dispensed by a dopey geek with a crush on Sydney. Even Quentin Tarantino's two-episode guest shot as a rogue agent seeking revenge was enjoyable. If you can put Tarantino in front of the camera and make it fun, that alone is worth a Lifetime Achievement Emmy.

Taking it all in -- the rollicking action and sensational cliffhangers, the wacky premise and extreme plot lines, the free-spirited tone -- Alias isn't so much a competitor to other spy shows as it is the television equivalent of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Or a rodeo.

Yes, it's good to see spy shows are cool again. It's even better to see them being cool in skin-tight latex dresses.