August 2002 Archives

The thing you have to realize, when you consider the state of the half-hour TV series during these lazy, crazy days of summer 2002, is that this was supposed to be the year NBC finally figured out how to put together an entertaining sitcom. Last spring, Jeff Zucker, the newly ascended head of network programming, stood before a pack of reporters, fielding a steady stream of questions on why it was that NBC sitcoms without the words "Frasier," "Friends" and "Will" in the title appeared to be conceived, written and produced by small children, especially dimwitted house plants, and folks with recently diagnosed brain injuries. Zucker responded with a tack embraced by all savvy head honchos, from Hannibal all the way through Vince Lombardi -- he conceded the problem, blamed it on his exiled predecessors and vowed sweeping changes.

"Thursday at 8:30 has been a problem for us for a few years," Zucker said on that May 2001 day, exhibiting the kind of candor one does not normally associate with the suits at General Electric. "We haven't really put any comedies in there that have lived up to 'Must-See TV.'"

That was going to change, Zucker declared. From that day forward, people would no longer see the closing credits of Friends and shriek in anticipation of the horror that was sure to follow. From now on, when people tuned into NBC on Thursdays at 8:30, the laughs would outnumber the sobs. Because from now on, NBC was going to air a good show in that time slot.

From now on, NBC was going to air Inside Schwartz.

In case you missed it or paid good money to a trained professional to have your brain wiped clean of all unpleasant memories, Inside Schwartz didn't exactly pan out. It was about a single guy aspiring to be a sportscaster who coped with his comically inept love life with daydreams involving famous athletes and sports figures. Like former Chicago Bears linebacker Dick Butkus! And boxing referee Mills Lane! The kids, they love Mills Lane. It was almost like someone saw that scene in "Singles" where Xavier McDaniel counsels Campbell Scott about the heartbreak of premature ejaculation and decided that 10-second sequence would be a great basis for a 24-episode-a-year series.

The show died about as quickly as it took for you to read that last paragraph.

Not to enjoy a cruel laugh at NBC's expense -- though, really, shouldn't we derive some laughter from what the network has been broadcasting in that Indian burial ground of a time slot for the past decade? -- but the failure of Inside Schwartz means that NBC's Thursday at 8:30 p.m. track record for the last seven falls appears thusly:

2001: Inside Schwartz
2000: The Steven Weber Show (nee Cursed)
1999: Jesse
1998: Jesse
1997: Union Square
1996: The Single Guy
1995: The Single Guy

Or as you might more easily recognize it, crap, crap and more crap still. Throw out Friends' aberrational 1994 debut in the Thursday at 8:30 p.m. time slot, and you'd be left with the inexplicably long-lived Wings in 1993, Rhythm & Blues in 1992 (He's a wacky white DJ at an all-black radio station!), and A Different World from 1987 through 1991 -- remaining on the air for the sole purpose of keeping NBC VIP Bill Cosby fat and happy on Pudding Pops. Before that, and you're back to the days of Alex P. Keaton learning important life lessons in Ronald Reagan's America.

And here's the damnedest thing of all -- the entire time Inside Schwartz was stinking up the joint, NBC had in its lineup a perfectly wonderful comedy just biding its time until the world at large began to pay attention. A show that was more than capable of holding its own in the post-Friends time slot. A show that -- at this point in their respective life spans -- is much funnier than Friends. And a show that, in our opinion at least, just happened to be the best half-hour of entertainment you could find on television this year.

Yes, if only 12 months ago, NBC had realized that it had a winner on its hands with Scrubs. Then, maybe the folks who snort and roll their eyes at every little miscue to come out of Burbank -- not that we know any people like that -- would have to wipe the smirks of their faces and give the Peacock its due.

Hey, we're not above saying nice things about NBC if the end result is more shows like Scrubs. All the hallmarks of stellar programming are on display here -- superb writing, engaging storytelling, a cast without a single Johnny Weaklink or Sally Scenechewer in the bunch. But Scrubs also features something else, something that makes us anticipate the arrival of each new episode and lament that moment right after the end credits when we realize that we have to wait another week for the next one: a unique perspective and distinctive voice.

There's a program on television right now -- on NBC, natch -- called The Rerun Show. The idea is a cast of unknowns takes an old sitcom -- Diff'rent Strokes, say, or One Day at a Time -- and reenacts it all ironic-like. The laughter is supposed to come, we suppose, from the idea that, yup, people used to watch shows about billionaire white industrialists adopting precocious black orphans, and they didn't even watch them ironically either, har har. And that's really funny, until you realize that about half the shows on the air today -- Just Shoot Me, My Wife and Kids, Becker, whatever piece of crap Bob Saget has leant his name to this season -- could easily appear on The Rerun Show: 2012 Edition. And how exactly are you going to feel when you tune in a decade from now to watch a cast of unknowns skewer that episode of According to Jim you chuckled at last week? Not half as bad as Jim Belushi's going to feel, we hope.

The makers of Scrubs probably won't have to lie awake at night dreading the day they turn on the TV and see Danny Bonaduce playing the part of Dr. Dorian in some kitschy reenactment. That's because Scrubs takes a wide detour from the well-trod territory that's been covered by sitcoms since the days of Ralph Malph telling Potsie to sit on it. Instead of the setup-joke formula that's lulled an entire nation into somnolence, the jokes on Scrubs can come from any direction -- a quick cutaway, a dream sequence, a visual gag. It's as if the show's cast and crew sat down and watched every sitcom on NBC that preceded it for the past half-decade, wrinkled their collective noses, and said, "Well, maybe we can try something different for a change."

Then again, you could say that of any of the half-dozen or so other shows that could have just as easily elbowed Scrubs aside to claim the Best Half-Hour prize. The shows that got our attention this year didn't feature a laugh-track and weren't filmed within a country mile of a live studio audience. Instead, they went their own direction. The Bernie Mac Show took a fairly familiar premise -- carefree man takes in his sister's three adorable children only to discover they sass back -- and infused it with a brand new point of view. The Job managed to generate big laughs out of the kind of material -- self-destructive, burnt-out cops -- that Steven Bochco's been mining for drama Emmys since the '80s. Speaking of Emmys, don't let the stubbornly idiotic refusal of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to recognize Futurama and The Simpsons among the best comedy series fool you into thinking that these two animated offerings aren't better than 90 percent of the programming starring carbon-based lifeforms. Good Eats isn't a comedy series, but then again, it's nothing like any cooking show we've ever come across, either, and that hasn't stopped host Alton Brown from teaching us a really good way to make pot roast. And while Malcolm in the Middle may not have been as sharp this year as in previous seasons -- because, really, isn't it time for "Hour-Long Post-Super Bowl Special" to take its rightful place among "Brand New Baby," "Annual Clip Show" and "Ted McGinley Joins Cast" as one of the Four Horseman of TV Series Apocalypse? -- it still delivers the goods more often than not.

So, given the formidable level of competition, what makes Scrubs stand out from the half-hour crowd? It's the show's ability to speed down the ol' absurdist highway without an unplanned detour to the corner of Hollow Laughter and Forced Hilarity, where so many sitcoms, sketch comedy shows and prop comics have decided to pull over and stay awhile. Scrubs isn't like that. It's not afraid to delve into the silly, whether it's repeated Jimmie Walker cameos or breaking out into a "West Side Story"-style dance number to illustrate the rivalry between surgical and medical interns. But the show's producers and writers don't forget we're tuning in week after week because of the characters, so things never got lost in a McBealesque haze of gimmickry.

Besides, name another show in which a cappella renditions of both Poison's "Talk Dirty to Me" and the theme song from "Underdog" figured prominently into storylines, and we'll gladly split the Best Half-Hour Show trophy in two. Until that time, Scrubs takes the prize.

There's also the not-at-all small matter of having John C. McGinley in your cast.

McGinley plays Dr. Perry Cox, the mentor to Zach Braff's Dr. Dorian. As played by McGinley, Cox is so good at his chosen occupation and so burned out on the petty politics, mindless bureaucracy and inevitable mortality rate of modern medicine that he no longer cares who he offends. He's dismissive of underlings, insolent to authority and intolerant of anything other than perfect compliance from his patients. He says mean, awful, unpleasant things -- the sort of stuff that, if uttered in real life, either earns you a punch in the nose or a modest following on particularly snarky Web sites.

Naturally, he's a big favorite around here. So much so that we think he's the Best Actor in a Half-Hour series.

Chalk up a fair chunk of Dr. Cox's appeal to good writing, and, if there's any justice in the world, McGinley is keeping the "Scrubs" writing staff well stocked in the food, beverage, or smoking paraphernalia of their choice as thanks for thinking up such delightfully nasty things for him to say. But McGinley's more than just a warm body who happened to luck into a well-written role -- in the hands of a lesser actor, Dr. Cox is just another ill-tempered sourpuss. After all, that grumpy Dr. Becker is always running off at the mouth about something, but you won't hear us saying anything nice about the thespian prowess of Ted Danson. Not without a court order, anyway.

So, obviously, there's something about John McGinley that makes him an actor worth watching. Maybe it's because up until this point in his career, he's mostly been a mainstay in Oliver Stone movies, and we're just relieved to see the talented actor in a project that isn't about a cabal of evil, white businessmen plotting to corrupt southeast Asia or the National Football League or that nice Martin Sheen's airline. Maybe it's the way he clearly delights in his part, savoring especially vicious tirades against his inferiors the way an oenophile swirls around a good merlot. Or maybe it's the quieter moments, the scenes when McGinley gives us a peek at the man behind the monster, like when he sits silently and throws back a belt of scotch at the end of one episode to fight off the gnawing realization that there's no guarantee tomorrow won't be just as lousy as today. A lot of actors can do the Charismatic Jerk part -- McGinley certainly has proven he's exceptional at it. But that's not the only club in his bag, either.

Whatever the reason, the result is the same -- McGinley makes Scrubs a better show because he's in it. Yes, the writing is top drawer. Absolutely, the rest of the cast is first rate -- we're particularly fond of Sarah Chalke, Ken Jenkins and Judy Reyes. But remove John McGinley from the picture, and it's a less complete show. Still very good, certainly, but maybe not as interesting. And you can't really ask an actor to bring much more to the party than that.

But the ultimate testament to what McGinley and Scrubs have accomplished this season comes from none other than NBC. So obvious was the top-to-bottom quality of Scrubs that it managed to overcome the Peacock Network's gravitational attraction to Suck; this fall, Scrubs will follow Friends on Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. Forget the solid writing, the good performances, even John McGinley's contributions -- if it means not having to endure another Inside Schwartz-like disaster this fall, Scrubs has earned every last laurel we could toss in its direction.

Additional contributions to this article by: Philip Michaels.

This year, not one but two actresses were so bad, they deserved our Worst Actress award. One of them will not care, and she should not, as she's not really an actress by trade anyway. The other should care, and the real tragedy is she will not.

Reba McEntire will give neither hoot nor holler over our opinion that she is one of the two worst actresses of the 2001-2002 television season. After all, her show hasn't been cancelled, so she's free to continue her sui generis brand of bad acting, i.e. paring down her repertoire of emotional reactions to a handful of responses toddlers would find limiting, and overcompensating for the paucity of her range by amplifying her reactions to levels previously only achieved during heavy metal videos. This brand of terrible thespianism manages to impress both with its novelty and its bottomless depth, which is why McEntire is taking home one of our prizes.

Regardless of our reasoning, Reba will not care for two reasons: first, she keeps moving from one form of the lively arts to another, staying one step ahead of the law. First it was aiding and abetting in the odious practice of Broadway stunt-casting by playing the title role in Annie Get Your Gun, a musical so wracked by bad casting decisions that former Duke boy Tom Wopat looks like a classy choice in comparison. Then we shouldn't forget that country music career. A song about the trials and tribulations of being a cross-eyed megamillionaire will not crack CMT's most-played list, but we're willing to bet a song about being the target of derision by acerbic know-it-alls might play well with the gimme-cap crowd.

The person who should care about sharing this year's Worst Actress award is Emily Procter, who's bringing home the tarnished trophy for the second year running. We typically don't beat up on an actress for two years in a row, because we figure once is enough: the thing about being a bad actress is that you typically stay consistently bad, so giving the award to Mariska Hargitay for two years' worth of Law and Order: SVU is akin to shooting fish in a barrel. We're usually on the lookout for some fresh-faced young thing who can add to the Oeuvre of Awful, not merely maintain her previous contribution.

Along came Emily Procter, someone who managed to be terrible on not one show, but two, on not one network, but two. We didn't like her as Ainsley Hayes because her lack of presence and habit of delivering lines as though she were participating in a third-grade spelling bee dragged down a show that focused on expressive, hyperverbal characters. This year, we also didn't like her on CSI, which is impressive given that she was in only one episode.

First, the only thing she apparently learned on The West Wing was how to stick out like a sore thumb. We've already reviewed why she did so on that show. However, Procter managed it on CSI -- a show, mind you, that doesn't have nearly the acting bench depth of The West Wing -- by appearing to completely miss the point of her character. CSI is by, for, and about geeks; the characters get off on puzzle-solving and their emotional involvement with this aspect of their work is evident, even among such arguably workman-like performances as the ones George Eads and Jorja Fox typically give. Procter, by contrast, played her character -- a ballistics expert, who appears to live in the same reality-distorted Florida that gave us Cindy Crawford as a maritime lawyer -- as an ennui-riddled bubblehead. Every one of her handful of scenes ground to a halt as she defused any tension by yawning about nine-millimeter guns or practicing for "Lab Tech on a Hot Tin Roof."

Second, Procter is evidently Meryl Streep's direct opposite, as she appears to be incapable of mastering any other dialect than the one she was apparently raised with. We have nothing against southern accents -- at least one Vidiot slips back into one every now and again -- but we do have something against actresses who can't manage to shake them, or even vary the tone and style of their dialogue delivery from role to role.

Either one of these acting crimes isn't inherently bad -- shows typically have one actor or actress who appears to be nurturing the impression that they're in an entirely different show than the one that actually employs them, and shows typically have one actor or actress hobbled by profoundly limited range. But when that one actress combines both misdemeanors -- well, then you have Procter, who will continue to jar viewers out of a pleasurable viewing experience so long as she's on screen.

Perhaps this time next year, we'll have seen another side of Ms. Procter as she completes her first season as a series regular. Perhaps we'll be wrong. (Perhaps she'll have faded away from that show entirely, given that the recent addition of Kim Delaney to the cast suggests that Procter's power as a leading lady is, indeed, limited.) Or perhaps we'll simply be marveling as she shows us yet another way to be truly awful on the small screen. Given the scope of Ms. Procter's sinister anti-talent, anything is possible.

Additional contributions to this article by: Lisa Schmeiser.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall -- which would explain the cartoon-style, ER-shaped hole that our Worst Hour Show award winner has left through the crust of the Earth. NBC's flagship drama series has gotten so bad that those of us who watched it rumble past us a couple of years ago -- picking up speed and headed toward Earth's molten core -- can only laugh the hearty, bitter laughter of people who know you can't have nice things.

Once among the best series on TV, ER is now so stomach-cramplingly, bowel-rattlingly awful that the only reason to watch this past season was to root for the tumor baking inside Mark Greene's head. Any show that can get you to wish for the painful, prolonged death of a major protagonist must have burned some serious bridges along the way, and ER has been merrily lighting matches for years.

At one point, ER was a brilliant triumph of style and substance. But now it can stand only as a tutorial on how to take something original and daring and frantic and effectively emotionally manipulative and turn it into a campy, tiring, Grade-C soap.

"Melo" was always the junior partner to ER's "drama," but in the past several seasons the prefix has taken over the show, like a vestigial head that has since grown to full size and eaten the original. Once-human characters have been reduced to moody, annoying caricatures and once-interesting situations have devolved into a series of painful, predictable bleats. We can only be thankful that Elvis is dead, because God knows what projectile he would have unleashed at his TV set if he ever had a chance to watch ER.

Every once in a while, a show will come along in which there is an Actor surrounded by actors. You can usually tell which is which -- the Actor is busy emoting and becoming one with the character and generally putting on a virtuoso performance while those around him simply say the lines and wait for the next cue. Many shows built around high-profile Hollywood names involve Actors among actors -- recent outings by Gabriel Byrne, Bette Midler, Nathan Lane and Tim Curry spring to mind.

Then there is the much more delightful phenomena of a show where one actor is clearly gifted with a talent which surpasses their colleagues, yet they use it in the service of good, if by "good," you mean, "not overtly showing up the other people in the scene." These delightful specimens make a show better simply by subtly elevating everyone around them. Patrick Stewart on Star Trek: the Next Generation was one such rara avis. One of this year's co-winners for Best Actress in an hourlong show is another.

Say what you will about CSI -- it's an armchair detective's guilty pleasure, it's a baffling crowd-pleaser, it's another little franchise machine in the making -- but one thing you can't say about it is that it's an embarrassment of thespian riches. Most of the actors turn in workmanlike performances, working adequately within the limited parameters of writing that's more focused on the case du jour than on character development. That's not the stuff upon which we bestow TeeVee Awards -- if it was, Benjamin Bratt would have gotten the nod way back when -- but what Marg Helgenberger's doing with the raw material she's been given is.

Let's examine the material in question: fairly scanty character development in the scripts, and what's present is stocked with clichés. On paper, Helgenberger's character, Catherine Willows, was created solely with drinking-game potential in mind -- she's a former stripper with a heart of gold! She's a plucky single mom! She's got killer instincts and investigative chops to match!

On screen, however, Helgenberger takes this material and uses it to make Catherine the warm heart of an otherwise lonely show. She's the one who took subplots about kidnapping, rigged evidence, and awkward show spin-offs, and turned them into miniature character studies of a woman who's constantly balancing what her job gives her against what it takes away. This is hard enough to do in shows that are custom-built for relatable characters, but to do so when you're in a show that consciously focuses away from the characters is amazing.

In addition to consistently being better than her material, Helgenberger also makes everyone else around her look better: on their own, costars George Eads, Gary Dourdan, Jorja Fox and William Petersen can come off as wooden, distant, stilted and surly, respectively. With her, however, Eads' character Nick becomes sweetly awkward, Dourdan's Warrick is relaxed, Fox's Sara is an introverted workaholic, and Petersen's Gil is a cool, cerebral counterpoint to her quick, assertive style. Apparently, there's something about Helgenberger's vivid characterization that's contagious.

Best of all, whatever Helgenberger's doing isn't obvious -- she's not Acting, but merely doing her job extremely well to the benefit of those around her. For rising above her material and bringing everyone else with her, Helgenberger gets a stake in this year's Best Actress, Hour Show.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, winner of the left half of the split Best Actress TeeVee statuette (and now a four-time winner of this award), is not one to rise above her material. There have been plenty of godawful Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes and all Gellar has ever managed to do in any of them is gamely play along. She'll spin kick and quip and look good doing it, just like always, but if the writers decide to put her to work in a fast-food restaurant where an old woman with an enormous penis sprouting from her head is consuming diners, well, Sir Laurence Olivier might have stumbled over that, too. All poor Sarah can do is flop around in the muck along with the rest of the cast and pray that the bank cashes her paycheck. The only winners when Buffy goes bad are the people who create drinking games.

But give Gellar the right material -- which, thankfully, Joss Whedon can do at a whim -- and she shines more completely than any other woman on the tube, if you don't count Marg over there, holding the right side of our pathetic little trophy. Gellar may not be the best at any one particular thing, but when you add up all she has to do in her willfully genre-defying show, there is nobody else working today who could fill her shoes.

There are several actresses in the field who can beat the crap out of the baddies, several who can make you cry, and several who are good with a quick line. But Gellar is more than capable at all three, often in the same episode. The range of what she must deal with would leave most actresses flummoxed and exhausted, but Gellar -- more often than not -- pulls it off. And then uses it to hit someone in the head.

Last year, Gellar's stand-out moment was a devastating portrayal of grief in "The Body." This year, it was singing her way through an unwanted resurrection in "Once More, with Feeling." In between, she's managed to believably give us demon-fights, quiet moments of loneliness, rough sex, maternal protectiveness and God knows what else. And all without the soapy sheen of unreality that coats shows far more grounded in "reality," including reality shows and tripe like ER.

No, Gellar isn't perfect. Neither is Buffy. But one of the most enjoyable shows on the tube probably couldn't exist without its star -- we'll see, won't we? -- and there's no greater testament to how good a job she's doing.

Additional contributions to this article by: Lisa Schmeiser, Greg Knauss.

We've already written a great deal about Alias, this year's TeeVee Award winner for Best New Show. But a series this refreshing deserves some repetition. Besides, would you rather read about Jennifer Garner or the fact that Tim Curry is returning to network television in the fall? Thought so.

What Alias creator J.J. Abrams has managed to accomplish in the show's first season is nothing short of amazing. Just last summer we here at TeeVee HQ were chortling over an ABC press release praising the virtues of a series about a spy named Sydney who managed to save the world between term papers. That wasn't even the funniest part. This was an action series from the same man who gave us Felicity.

FELICITY: Oh Noel, I love you so much, but you're KGB and I'm CIA. Can we ever make this relationship work?

NOEL: Da, comrade, if we truly love each other. What happened to your hair?

But Abrams surprised us all. Sure, there's still heaps of navel gazing, but it's buffered by some of the most stylish action sequences prime time has seen in years. 24 got most of the critical ink this year, but Alias was every bit as adept at staging battle sequences and ratcheting up tension until fans with weak hearts had to either turn off the television or risk exploding ventricles. This is a show that redefined TV cliffhangers, ending nearly every episode in more outrageous fashion than the previous week. And the storyline? Absolutely ridiculous.

Yet somehow Abrams and his talented stable of writers managed to keep the whole thing from spinning out of control. Or maybe the whole point was to go spinning completely out of orbit, but to make it so entertaining nobody noticed. A 15th century Italian inventor creates a doomsday device, then draws a picture of Sydney in the instruction manual? Sure, why not? Sydney's long-deceased mom is actually the head of a global criminal conspiracy? Of course.

Even after a full season, we're still not sure why this show isn't a car wreck, yet something about the writing keeps this show out of the junkyard. Abrams has shaped a series that is absolutely pitch perfect, tiptoeing the razor-thin line between acceptable goofiness and complete disbelief as if its creator were born on a tightrope.

Of course, Abrams and his writers and directors can not take sole credit for the success of Alias. Jennifer Garner's portrayal of Sydney made her the hottest TV star of the year and for good reason. She is the rare actress who can pull off both the physical and emotional demands of her job; even after five seasons on the air, Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy still runs like a girl. Most amazingly to some of us, the slower interludes are not signals to go find more snacks, thanks to Garner's ability to be affecting without straying into choking sappiness.

Alias will never win an Emmy for Best Drama, this is a show that's just too much fun to win an irrelevant statue. So the cast and crew of Alias will just have to be content with their TeeVee Award for Best New Show and the knowledge that they've put together the best damned rollercoaster ride on television.

Additional contributions to this article by: Gregg Wrenn.

Sit through the last 12 months of television programming that the nation's ever-swelling media conglomerates have beamed our way, and you'd be foolish to reach any other conclusion: The 2001-2002 TV season wasn't all that bad. Stack it up against the Jonathan Silverman-heavy and Kirstie Alley-infused offerings of past seasons, and you might decide that the age we're living in, if not exactly golden, would certainly qualify as one of the other precious metals. Bronze, perhaps, or even electro-plated silver. In the past year alone, we've witnessed the single-camera, shot-on-film sitcom take a tired genre in new directions, the doings on cable TV continue to push its broadcast counterparts to bigger and better things, and the welcome success of a handful of producers who apparently think that television should be more than shows like My Precocious Kids! or TV Police Drama Template No. 73. It's almost enough for those of us who ply our wares in the TV criticism game to stop making up elaborate stories about what we do for a living so that we can avoid the disdainful glances of friends and family.

Then again, sit through the last 12 months of programming swill that the networks have forced down our throats, and only a dullard, nitwit or other member of UPN's core demographic would conclude anything but the following: The 2001-2002 TV season wasn't all that good. Compare it to the swill we've had to watch the past few seasons -- and suddenly the likes of Jonathan Silverman and Kirstie Alley don't sound so bad. Forget the Golden Age of TV -- we're living in the Cubic Zirconium Era. Or maybe you haven't been paying attention to the past 12 months, which have seen the reality TV genre linger and spread like a rash no topical ointment can contain, the cancellation of a handful of promising to brilliant new shows while vanilla-flavored pablum like My Wife and Kids and Yes Dear lives to see another day, and the continued employment of David E. Kelley. Taken all together, it's enough to make us keep telling our next-door neighbors, ex-girlfriends and spinster aunts that this Web site we work for traffics strictly in puppet porn. Anything's better than admitting we sat through Emeril last fall.

It's a funny thing about the 2001-2002 season -- neither of the above paragraphs is technically incorrect. You could stack them together, one right after the other, and while most of the time, you'd give the impression that the author is confused or contradicting himself or not taking his meds in strict accordance with the schedule prescribed by his medical team, this time you'd be spot on. The past year in television offered a decidedly mixed bag -- Scrubs and a musical Buffy episode and the return of Judd Apatow to network TV on the one hand; Bob Patterson and B-list celebrity boxing matches and the return of Jon Seda on the other. You try coming up with a definitive way of summing up a season that served up equal helpings of good and awful. Us, we'll stick with bipolar opening paragraphs, thank you very much.

Or we could turn to the words of a man born 190 years before Bachelorettes in Alaska would darken our airwaves. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness... it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair." Charles Dickens was probably nowhere near a TV set when he wrote that, but he sounds exactly like a fellow who just got done watching The Tick only to learn it's being pre-empted next week for Temptation Island II. Then again, Chuck also wrote "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done," which is exactly the sort of thing NBC's Jeff Zucker would say before announcing that Inside Schwartz gets the 8:30 p.m. on Thursdays time slot behind Friends.

It's easy to dwell on the negative -- especially when it could be so easily found in NBC's Thursdays at 8:30 time slot. Each year, we have to endure a parade of new programs, which -- with a little bit of luck and a modest amount of effort -- rise to the level of mediocre and forgettable. UC: Undercover, Philly, That '80s Show -- honestly, does anybody remember a thing about any of these shows, other than we didn't watch them? The Agency -- did anybody watch a minute of that last year? What? It's still on the air? Good Christ. Where the hell have we been the last 12 months?

Sorting the middling from the bland -- trying to tell Judging Amy apart from Crossing Jordan, say, without resorting to hairstyles -- is a walk in the park compared to dealing with the truly wretched programs that come our way each season. The best we hope for is that as soon as the shows arrive with a thud, they fade quickly from the memory without leaving lasting psychological scars before more pablum rises to take their place. And if not -- well, enjoy season number two of Reba, folks. This fall on the WB!

Someone kick us in the head now, please.

Of course, it's not all sackcloth-and-ashes-time here in TeeVee Land. A handful of developments, cancellations and all-out failures have given us... well, not optimism. We haven't had any of that since we found out that Baby Bob is returning to network television next season. But less despair. Decidedly less despair.

With the exception of Survivor -- really, the only well-executed reality TV show -- the Temptation Islands and Moles and Elimidate Deluxes of the world have withered up and died before securing themselves barnacle-like onto the prime-time lineup. The triumphant return of a Bob Saget-led family sitcom to network TV was mercifully short-lived. Fox sent the used-up and played-out Ally McBeal to the boneyard. And ER, while still retaining an inexplicably large viewing audience, has lost its grip on the top-rated-drama perch -- a sign that perhaps the populace at large is catching on to the notion that the show hasn't been all that compelling since long before George Clooney was assumed bodily into big-screen stardom.

There's other reasons to feel good about the past year in television, beyond the bad-things-happening-to-bad-shows schadenfreude that's become our stock-in-trade. Good things. Positive things. Things deserving of compliments -- and very few of the left-handed variety, too.

Turn on cable these days, and you're just as likely to stumble across honest-to-goodness outstanding original programming as you are Miami Vice reruns and continuously looping "Pearl Harbor" screenings. No Sopranos this year? Not to worry -- HBO can offer up any one of a number of top-flight shows in its stead: Six Feet Under, Oz, Band of Brothers... Arli$$.

Just checking to see if you're still paying attention.

About this time last year, we were ready to head on down to the local mortuary to start pricing funeral arrangements for the weak and sickly sitcom genre. We've still the priest, florist and gravedigger on speed-dial, but we're pleased to see that a number of half-hour comedies are eschewing the live-before-a-studio-audience tedium in favor of putting their own distinctive stamp on the format. Malcolm in the Middle was joined this year by Scrubs, Andy Richter Controls the Universe and The Bernie Mac Show as the shows doing their best to save the sitcom genre from an eternity of kooky misunderstandings, wacky next-door neighbors and Tony Danza as a single parent with a house full of smart-mouthed kids.

Speaking of Scrubs, Andy Richter and Bernie Mac, those three happen to be among the strongest crop of rookie shows to come along in recent memory. Along with that trio, include Alias, 24, Undeclared, Thieves, and The Tick, and you've got a lineup of shows strong enough to make us wonder why we ever got so grumpy about this state-of-TV business in the first place. Of course, considering that the last three shows we mentioned wound up cancelled, we can remember why pretty quickly.

Still, that hasn't stopped us from having to sort through a rather strong and eclectic field of nominees for the annual TeeVee Awards -- and not just for the Worst Of categories, where the competition is usually three or four shows deep. The competition for Best Show, Best Actor, Best Actress -- all spirited and lively debates with nary a winner-by-default or a weary Vidiot sighing, "Oh, let's just give the award to Sarah Michelle Gellar again... maybe this is the year she shows up in person to accept the trophy." Things turned out to be so competitive, in fact, that we wound up having to invent awards, just so worthy contenders like The Job and Home Movies wouldn't get hosed out of taking home one of our meaningless trinkets.

So sit back, kick up your feet and spend the next week sorting through our awards for the Best and Worst of the 2001-2002 television season. Maybe you'll agree with our choices, maybe you won't. Maybe these honors will stand the test of time, or maybe, they'll look as silly in retrospect as when we hailed Jenna Elfman as the best comedic actress of 1997-1998. Our only excuse is that those first six episodes of Dharma and Greg were really good stuff. That, and we used to drink quite heavily.

But whatever your thoughts on the awards in particular or the 2001-2002 television season in general, we suggest you keep them to yourself. There's nobody here but us puppet pornographers, remember?

Additional contributions to this article by: Philip Michaels.