October 2002 Archives

Originally, the Powers That Be here at TeeVee tapped me to review American Dreams, the new NBC drama that takes you back to the heady days of November 1963 when the only thing you had to worry about was convincing your square old man to let you appear on American Bandstand and the Oswald prison transfer. But Rywalt, he begged and pleaded and said pretty-please and pretty much fell all over himself to convince the bosses that he should write the review instead. Maybe he saw something in American Dreams that truly moved him. Maybe he just wanted an opportunity to make fun of his wife's Philadelphia accent in writing. I really don't spend a lot of time analyzing what strange dynamic drives Rywalt to do whatever it is he does around here. Truth be told, when he and I are in the lunchroom together, I try to avoid making eye contact.

So Rywalt wanted to write the review. And because I am magnanimous, because I'm a team player, because I believe in giving everyone a chance to share in the greater glory of TeeVee, I went ahead and let him.

Because I am also lazy.

So the pilot episode of American Dreams sat there on my TiVo, unseen and not in the least bit missed until this weekend, when it came down to the forsaken pilot and a backlogged stack of new sitcoms. And let me tell you, if more people had to choose between watching American Dreams and three or four consecutive episodes of Hidden Hills and In-Laws, ratings for American Dreams would rival those of the Super Bowl. Unfortunately for NBC, it happens to broadcast all three shows, so its ability to counter-program against those two terrible sitcoms is sadly hamstrung.

Having spent a teeth-grinding hour watching American Dreams then, I can heartily endorse Rywalt's pan of the show. Every last bit -- the muddled direction, the by-the-numbers storyline, the uninspiring performances -- earns a big ol' "Preach On!" or a "Hear, Hear" or even an "I'll Drink to That, Old Man" from me. Except the fixation on the Philly accents. That's Rywalt's thing. I don't get why -- I'm not his goddamned biographer.

The point is, there are many reasons to gesticulate disdainfully at American Dreams and laugh at it, not with it. First off, there's the performance of Brittany Snow, who is doubtlessly a very nice girl with a kind word for everyone and a particularly sunny disposition around pets and old people, but who, as the American Bandstand-worshipping teenybopper Meg Pryor, irritates me beyond measure for reasons that are probably more my fault than hers. Then there's the ridiculously reverential shots of Dick Clark, filmed entirely from behind like the President in a 1930s movie -- I like a good deus ex machina as much as the next guy, but Dick freakin' Clark? There's the collection of just-add-water characters, right on down to the loose-with-boys best friend and the cutesy-pie little brother in leg braces. Most gallingly, there are scenes like the one in the pilot between Meg and a Bandstand producer -- played by Joey Lawrence, shorn of his silky tresses and going by the name "Joseph" now -- in which the young, peppy, unbelievably irritating girl confesses -- without a hint of irony, mind you -- that appearing on television is the most important thing she will ever do. And finally, there's the sledgehammer-subtle dialogue which drives home the point, again and again, that the trials and tribulations the Pryor family endures are the same things that happened to America during the hazy, crazy Sixties.

"Maybe I don't want to do what Dad tells me to do anymore," says the oldest Pryor boy in the series premiere when he decides to quit the high school football team and give up his chance for a college scholarship. Which is just the sort of attitude that will serve him well around about season three when LBJ will be fixin' to send him off to the 'Nam.

All of that would merely make American Dreams laughable. What makes the show detestable is that, once again, the Baby Boomers are holding our nation hostage by producing and broadcasting a TV program that declares for the umpteenth time how memorable the 1960s were and how remarkable the people who came of age during it.

For the past several decades, Baby Boomers have ruled over the pop culture landscape with an iron fist, forcing a weary nation to participate in an orgy of navel gazing as the songs of Chubby Checker, Gerry and the Pacemakers and Herman's Hermits echo unceasingly. You can't go to a cineplex without being forced to endure a movie about a group of kids coming of age in the mid-'60s, learning about life and love and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the soundtrack of Motown's greatest hits. You can't turn on the TV without watching some aging hipster sporting a ponytail that doesn't mask his receding hairline and a gut that suggests he's spent the last 40 years drinking something else besides herbal tea talking wistfully about his road trip to Altamont. And while you have to search long and hard on the radio dial to find the likes of Sinatra, Miles Davis or anything from the Baroque period, it's well nigh impossible to scan through stations at random without stumbling across Shotgun Mike and the A.M. Good-Time Patrol playing a block of Martha Reeves and the Vandelas followed by a double-shot of the Lovin' Spoonful on Oldies 98 FM. Roll over, Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky he should have been born after World War II.

The message of the Baby Boomers, offered up loudly and repeatedly, is this: We are The Greatest Generation, no matter what that boob Tom Brokaw says. And the rest of you must bask in the glow of our sanitized, nostalgia-tinged memories, whether you like it or not.

To which, we say, put a sock in it, hippie, and get on the ice floe. Your days of providing useful contributions to this society are clearly at an end.

Only the self-congratulatory narcissism particular to a generation that's provided the subject matter for most of Oliver Stone's canon could produce the notion that stuff happening nearly four decades ago would be just as relevant today as it was in ancient times. Television audiences in the 1950s were treated to I Remember Mama, which espoused the virtues of turn-of-the-century living. The 1970s gave us a boomlet of 1950s-themed programming that lasted about as long as Anson Williams' pop music career. But TV producers -- not exactly the most innovative subset of mankind walking the planet today -- keep mining the 1960s for source material, until even the most tolerant of souls is longing for Peacedog and Moonchild to just cram it.

(With two '80s flashback shows -- Do Over and the mercifully canceled That Was Then -- following on the heals of last season's disastrous That '80s Show, we could be experiencing the first wave of 1980s-themed nostalgia shows. And if there is a merciful God, this trend will die out long before I turn on the TV in a couple years to watch the story of a young girl growing up in the 1980s who longs to become a Solid Gold dancer in a program that films Marilyn McCoo entirely and reverentially from behind, like the President in a 1930s movie.)

Because this Sixties worship -- it's tiresome. It was tiresome when we watched Fred Savage grapple with the twin horrors of the RFK assassination and his inability to get to second base with Winnie Cooper. It was tiresome when NBC's excruciating The '60s miniseries turned the entire decade into an extended Time-Life record collection commercial. It's tiresome now as we're forced to endure American Dreams and, soon, Oliver Beene, which hopes to milk laughs out of the yukfest that was the Cuban Missile Crisis. And it will continue to be tiresome as Brittany Snow and her pals dance, dance, dance their way through the Watts riots, the anti-war movement and Nixon's first term in office.

In the meantime, America will watch as the Baby Boomers yammer on, through their TV series surrogates, about how memorable their life and times have been, how lasting their legacy, and how much better their music is than anything you or I ever listened to. It's a little bit ironic, considering that this is the generation that greeted their parents' oft-told stories of growing up -- how tough they had it during the Great Depression, how they had to MacGyver up everything from living quarters to toiletries -- with eye-rolling contempt. Well, the Baby Boomers have become their parents, prattling on and on while everyone within earshot wishes they would just shut the hell up. And I can't think of a more fitting punishment.

Though watching American Dreams has to be a close second.

UPN's new Tuesday night supernatural detective series Haunted is on the cusp of, maybe not greatness, but certainly adequacy. It's got a decent premise, competent acting and writing that is better than a lot of what passes for scripting on UPN. Still, there's just something missing, a piece or two that keeps this respectable show from rising to the level of, well, more respectable television. I have no idea what that piece is, by the way. If I did, I'd be taking pitch meetings and dating actresses instead of trying to pad my vague, irrelevant criticism.

Haunted follows the adventures of private investigator Frank Taylor, a former cop who recently suffered a near-death experience in the line of duty. Waking up from the bright light at the end of the tunnel, Taylor finds himself visited by the dead and buried. Real people, not just the rest of the UPN prime-time lineup.

Thanks, you've been great. I'll be here all week. Try the veal and tip your waitress.

It turns out that most of the deceased that annoy Frank will only start acting less like telemarketers and more like respectable souls if he takes down the person responsible for their current shortness of breath. So they rattle some doors, clank some chains, give Frank the chills and allow him occasional glimpses of their mottled, decaying flesh. Insert your own in-law joke here.

All of this works well for trying to establish a creepy mood, but after a while there's no escaping the fact that these poltergeists are a little lacking when it comes to brains. Maybe because those got blown out the back of their skulls. After all, these spirits can open and shut doors, manipulate plumbing and drop matchbooks in just the right place for Taylor to notice. Why don't they just pick up a pencil and make it easy for him? Instead of splashing the walls with blood to form some mystical symbol, why not just use the red stuff to write out "Jim Smith killed me. He lives at 501 Elm Street, apartment 4. He likes watching Jeopardy and has a guinea pig named Sniffles."

Haunted tries hard to be the creepiest show since The X-Files. But there's real scary and then there's TV scary and unless you're on HBO, television producers are forced to stick with TV scary. This means lots of grays and blacks, lots of underexposed film and plenty of enormous shadows. But there are only so many cats jumping out of dark closets one can sit through before one checks to see if, by some miracle, Frasier is funny again.

The X-Files wasn't a scary show because it had murky shots. It was a creepy series because it combined a unique style with intricate plots and unpredictable action. Last week Taylor approached a full, murky bathtub that a woman had died in. In this post-"Fatal Attraction" age, is there a man, woman or child alive who doesn't know that as soon as Frank got too close to the tub, something would grab him and drag him in?

Matthew Fox doesn't help much either. The former Party of Five star plays Taylor and tries to imbue him with the weariness and paranoia that apparently are the tell-tale symptoms of people getting visits from beyond the grave. But while the actor isn't bad when mourning his kidnapped son, his ass-kicking cop persona needs some work. This is not a knock on Fox's acting abilities. It's just that he's too damn cuddly and sincere. He looks like a cat person, and men that own cats are simply not hard-boiled detectives.

The best thing about Haunted is one of Fox's co-stars, John Mann. Mann plays Simon, the child-killer that nearly kills Taylor before Frank offs him. Simon is not happy with the current situation and has made it his purpose in death to menace Taylor whenever possible. Simon is nice and sinister. So evil, in fact, he deserves a spot on Haunted's lead-in show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy is a superior series in almost every respect except that it hasn't had a decent bad guy since season three. A murderous albino poltergeist might be just the ticket to get Joss Whedon's signature show back on track. Although Mann doesn't get much screen time, he makes the most of it and can snap into an insane grin that would land him in a mental hospital within minutes in the real world.

If you simply must watch TV on Tuesdays at nine, then Haunted isn't going to be the worst choice you can make. Dead people are usually good for a laugh, the boom mike never drops into the shot and the actors have all their teeth. It's a little more than mediocre, much less than appointment TV. And 24 doesn't come back for another two weeks.

I'm not a very big fan of The WB.  That's partly because I'm irritated that I have to call their dumb network The WB, which is difficult to work into a sentence, and is impossible to mention in a conversation without sounding like an asshole.  Mostly, though, it's because the average WB show is so appallingly bad that the viewer's brain will induce itself to hemorrhage rather than continue to process what the eyes and ears are sending it.

So you might be surprised to learn that I actually had high hopes for Greetings From Tucson, The WB's latest attempt to find a worthy occupant for the coveted post-Reba timeslot.

For starters, the show's premise has some potential.  It's hardly the most original concept, given that most of its ideas are lifted directly from The Jeffersons.  But compared to the mindless blah that is the modern sitcom, a revival of Norman Lear's thought-provoking 1970's comedies would not be a bad thing at all.

More interesting is the fact that Greetings From Tucson features a mostly Latino cast.  In case your attention tends to wander during impassioned awards show speeches, you should know that the Hispanic community is sorely underrepresented on our nation's airwaves -- unless, that is, central casting needs to fill the part of a gang member, an illiterate high school student, or a comedic sidekick with a craaazy accent.  So it's nice to see the networks finally making a real effort to shorten impassioned awards show speeches.

Of course, I was a little concerned about the impending apocalypse, which must surely follow the arrival of a watchable sitcom at The WB.

Well, not to worry.  Turns out Greetings From Tucson is crap.

Ironically, it's the show's promising concept that is its worst enemy.  Usually, a generic, humorless "my family is so crazy" sitcom only warrants the label "mediocre".  It's the wasted opportunity that makes this one so disappointing.  Greetings From Tucson's premise is like the recipe for a delicious comedy burrito, loaded with spicy social commentary and fresh perspective.  The actual product, however, is more like Tina's Frozen Microwave Sitcom, loaded only with refried plot lines and bland punch lines.

Things start out badly right from the show's title.  The phrase "Greetings From Tucson" is obviously meant to sound like the caption of a postcard, and indeed, the title sequence displays the cast and credits on a series of postcards.  The same device is used to transition between scenes.  It's actually a pretty clever visual motif.

Or, at least, it would be clever if it had any damned thing to do with this show.  Early in the pilot episode, we learn that Joaquin Tiant has won a big promotion at the copper mine, enabling him to move his family to a better neighborhood.  Of course, he still works at the same mine, so one assumes that this new neighborhood is not that far away from their previous digs.  The problem is, you don't usually send a postcard when you've only just gone from one side of town to the other.  And, if you did, it would probably be more appropriate if it read, "Greetings From Three Exits West on the I-10."

Moreover, with the word Tucson in the show's title, you might think that the city of Tucson figures prominently in its plot.  Nope.  Through the first three episodes, there's nary a mention of searing summer heat, Saguaro cactus, potholed roadways choked with octogenarians, or the mighty Arizona Wildcats.  Apart from the fact that there must be a copper mine somewhere nearby, this show might as well be called Greetings From Yermo.  At least then there would be something funny about it.

So then, what is Greetings From Tucson actually supposed to be about?  Since the title isn't very helpful, let's see how The WB's web site describes the show.

The first thing it mentions is that Greetings From Tucson is based on the life of series creator Peter Murrieta -- which is awesome, because for like ten years I've been saying that somebody needs to do a series based on the life of Peter Murrieta.  The rest of you, however, may find this factoid somewhat less exciting.

The description then goes on to say, "Life is seen through the eyes of 15-year old David Tiant (Pablo Santos), as he faces the challenges of growing up in an ethnically mixed, upwardly mobile family."  While this is a pretty vague encapsulation, there's certainly enough meat here to support some interesting, intelligent scripts.  Unfortunately, the scriptwriters seem to have been experiencing some cell phone static when the producers explained the concept.

For instance, the family is described as "upwardly mobile" because of father Joaquin's big promotion.  (Incidentally, this must have been one hell of a promotion.  We're told that the Tiants' last house was in such an impoverished area that it had bars on the windows and was subject to frequent police helicopter flyovers.  But now the money flows so freely that Dad can afford to buy a huge-screen TV and, when it fails to fit through the door, just leave it out in the yard with a tarp draped over it.  Looks like I should have considered a career in copper mining.)

So the show is about a boy from the poor part of town, and the crazy things that happen when he goes to live amongst the rich folk, right?  Er, not really.  In fact, rather than actually show us any of these potentially humorous situations, the pilot episode just tells us about them, through some of the most unwieldy exposition imaginable. 

To wit, here's one particularly painful line uttered by David's bitchy sister, Maria: "You're just jealous because we're at a new school, and it's only been six months, and I'm already popular and on the cheerleading squad, and you're not."  In addition to setting a new record for number of "ands" used in a line of convoluted dialogue, this statement reveals that the Tiants moved in half a year ago, and have already basically settled into their new lives.  So much for the awkward first day at a new school.  So much for wacky first encounters with the new neighbors.  So much for almost anything amusing that might happen on this show.

Well, how about that "ethnically mixed" business?  Maybe Greetings From Tucson is about the small-minded bigotry that lurks in the suburbs, and the crazy things that happen when a predominately Mexican-American family has to deal with their otherwise Caucasian neighbors.

Or maybe not.  For one thing, the idea of a Tucson neighborhood that doesn't know what to make of a Mexican-American family is doubtful at best.  The 2000 Census puts the racial makeup of Tucson at 29.34 percent Hispanic and climbing, which means that anybody who is shocked to discover he has Mexicans living next door has probably just moved in from Tulsa.

If you can get past that anachronism, the pilot episode does bring up a few racial issues, but the show's treatment of them is clumsy and not a little hypocritical.

In one unpleasant scene, the stereotypically white-bread neighbor lady tells the equally pasty-skinned Mrs. Tiant, "We were thinking of getting some work done in our yard, and I saw those Mexicans building a wall for you.  I hear they're really good, and those guys look trustworthy.  Maybe I could get their number from you."  The big joke here is that "those guys" are Tiant's husband and brother-in-law.  For making this fairly innocent assumption, and having the gall to point out that Mexicans do good landscaping work, this woman is later dubbed, "Our racist neighbor."

What, then, should we make of young David entering a clothing store, family in tow, and proclaiming, "Of all the parts of my Mexican heritage that I'm most proud of, taking the extended family to the mall in one car to buy one item is probably my favorite."  Even if this weren't a pretty ridiculous thing for a fifteen year old boy to say to no one in particular, even if one accepted that as few as seven people would be considered a Mexican extended family, and even if this weren't the funniest line in the script, it's still the same kind of stereotypical comment that is "racist" when spoken by the white neighbor.  So is it all right for me to think it's funny when it comes from the mouth of a Mexican-American kid?

Not to mention the moment when Mrs. Tiant, upon hearing that her daughter has been telling people that her family is Spanish, tersely informs us, "She lies like a Spaniard."  Muy progresivo!

Fortunately for race relations everywhere, the topic of ethnicity has been pretty much completely abandoned since the pilot.

So the show is neither about being "upwardly mobile" nor "ethnically mixed".  If you take these two phrases out of The WB's plot description, you get, "Life is seen through the eyes of 15-year old David Tiant, as he faces the challenges of growing up in a family."  Oh!  So Greetings From Tucson is just another generic comedy about family life?  To borrow a catch phrase from the show's pilot, "That's what I'm saying."

Worse, it's not even a very good generic comedy about family life.  It is still possible to squeeze some creative humor from this tired-ass format (see The Bernie Mac Show).   But Greetings From Tucson is almost completely laugh-free, which is clearly highlighted by the fact that the laugh track really seems to be enjoying the hell out of it.

The characters are all fresh from the cookie-cutter.  Rather than burden us with character development, the uninspired writers have populated the show with such sitcom mainstays as Slutty Daughter, Free-Spirited Grandma, Dimpled Toddler Who's On-Screen For Thirty Seconds Per Episode, and Strict Father Who Rules With An Iron Fist, A Heart Of Gold, And A Brain Of Some Sort Of Porous And Malleable Alloy.

Even so, the cast is mostly passable, doing the best they can with the drek they've been given.  The unfortunate exception is Pablo Santos as David, whose uncomfortable staccato delivery gives the impression of someone reading an eye chart while simultaneously passing a stone.  Stranger still is his accent.  In an interview on The WB's web site, young Santos explains that he speaks both Spanish and English completely devoid of accent, so he is in fact affecting an accent on the show.  This results in the rather surreal experience of watching a Mexican boy who appears to be, and is, badly faking a Mexican accent.

The plot lines are every bit as trite as the characters, having been culled directly from the bottom 5% of the Canonical List of Sitcom Clichés.  So far we've seen such old favorites as "David gets drunk," "David learns to drive," and "David gets an after-school job."  I'm on the edge of my seat wondering what wacky shenanigans might ensue next week, when we get to enjoy "David joins the football team."

Still, none of these faults is particularly horrible in its own right; at least, not the kind of horrible we haven't already been exposed to so frequently that we've developed a psychological immunity. And I do applaud the WB for making a continued effort to employ more Mexican- and African-American actors, though evidently it's too much to ask that even one of these shows not be totally freaking awful. I was also glad to hear that Los Lobos, who perform the show's theme song, are still alive and kicking; I sure dig that crazy La Bamba.

No, the reason this show truly bites the big one is this:

Mexican-American family life is incredibly rich subject matter.  In Mexican culture, family is prioritized above nearly all else.  Parents are to be respected and obeyed, and woe is to any who dare to cross them.  The familial bond is intensely strong, so much so that distant cousins are treated almost as brothers.  This could make for great, original television; not to mention that Americans of all races could do with some exposure to this way of thinking.

Greetings From Tucson had that chance, and blew it.  And what's left is about as meaningful as the drivel people scribble on the back of postcards.

I recommend returning this one to sender.

A couple of years ago, CBS trotted out a little-hyped, barely anticipated series about a team of Las Vegas-based forensics investigators. The folks at the One-Eye Network thought so highly of this new series, they shunted it off to Friday night and gave it two simple orders: don't hemorrhage too many viewers from the sure-to-be-a-hit remake of The Fugitive and don't depress the ratings for the terrifically successful Nash Bridges. Do that, CBS executives explained to the producers of that lightly regarded show -- a little crime-solving drama by the name of CSI -- and maybe we'll keep you around for a full-season. Maybe.

Two years later, The Fugitive is as lasting as a fever dream. The only place you'll find Nash Bridges these days is on basic cable, and only if you're an insomniac or unemployed. And CSI? It did all right for itself -- if you consider monster ratings, a handful of Emmy nominations, and a Thursday night time-slot where it regularly punches NBC's once-vaunted Must-See lineup square in the mouth all right.

It is safe to say that nobody -- not you, not me, and certainly not the programming wizards under CBS's employ -- anticipated this kind of success. But just because the suits at CBS have no earthly clue why CSI has become the most-watched drama in the country, they didn't rise to their current position by not knowing what to do when a hit show presents itself. And that is, slap the series on top of the ol' Xerox machine, and hold down the "copy" key until you lose sensation in your index finger.

The first attempt at recapturing lightning in a bottle -- CSI: Miami -- is a no-bones-about-it clone, from its stylized extreme zooms right on down to its theme music re-appropriated from The Who. That's where the similarities to the original end. Whether or not you've cast your lot with the original CSI -- and I may have mentioned once or twice that it's not my bag -- it's a well-constructed series with engaging storylines and solid performances from top to bottom. CSI: Miami, on the other hand, is an ungodly mess. Other writers more talented and better spoken on these issues than myself have already picked over CSI: Miami's bones, pointing out its many flaws and shortcomings. I'll just reiterate that CSI: The Sequel fails because it forsakes CSI: Original Recipe's all-out science geekery and zest for evidence-gathering -- really, the show's central appeal -- in favor of a character-driven approach. And when those characters are David Caruso, barking orders in a low, soothing voice to his scurrying lackeys, and Kim Delaney, contorting her face in a variety of tics to constantly blubber about her dead husband, you wind up with a knockoff that falls well short of the real McCoy.

And the funny thing is, if CBS wanted a CSI carbon-copy to capture the hearts, minds and eyeballs of the original's behemoth-sized audience, it had a much better procedural drama elsewhere on its schedule to bear the CSI imprimatur. Even odder, that show is on right after CSI on Thursday nights.

Without A Trace doesn't exactly break new ground with its storyline -- FBI agents investigate missing persons cases in New York. Then again, CSI hasn't exactly blazed a new narrative trail with "Grissom and his team solve crimes." But in the same way that CSI has managed to take a well-worn idea and produce some consistently involving stories, on Without A Trace, the stock premise works. And in ways that CSI: Miami can only dream of, in its wildest, rum-fueled fantasies.

It starts with the writing, of course. Granted, it's early in the show's run, but for the first three episodes at least, Without A Trace has managed to keep things compelling, without resorting to the maudlin tricks and overwrought gimmickry you might associate with the missing-persons genre. The show's writers also keep you guessing -- a seemingly straightforward case about a boy who got lost on his way to a Yankees game evolved from a child abduction case to a potential runaway situation to an adopted kid seeking out his birth parent, who turned out to be a sex predator using the Internet to lure adoptees across state lines. The clues were peppered throughout the episode, so that when the case finally jelled, it made perfect sense to viewers instead of coming across like a pat solution the writers thought up so that the case could be wrapped up in an hour and the local evening news wouldn't have to be pre-empted.

They take evidence very seriously on Without A Trace. Unlike in CSI: Miami -- where the producers have made Caruso's Horatio Caine character so omniscient, you suspect that he's solved the case in the first five minutes of the program and merely strings us along so he can collect a full episode's paycheck -- the characters on Without A Trace spend time piecing together a case. Sometimes, the evidence leads to a dead end. Sometimes -- like in the missing kid episode -- it leads the investigation in a whole new direction. Wherever the evidence takes you, you end up feeling rewarded for paying attention. And watching fallible characters sort their way through a case is eminently more satisfying than sitting back as unerring automatons solve yet another mystery with machinelike precision.

To date, Without A Trace hasn't invested much time in detailing the private lives of its characters. But that's not to say the show hasn't paid any attention to character development. It's there -- it just happens to be under the surface, revealing itself over time. We've learned in drips and drabs that head of the investigation team, Jack Malone (Anthony LaPaglia), doesn't have the most picturesque of homelifes. In the most recent episode -- a case involving a troubled marriage and an unfaithful wife who goes missing -- Malone seemed especially bothered. We learn at the end of the episode, in an almost offhanded way, that his own wife has left him. It was the kind of subtle moment you don't often see on network television -- certainly not on CSI: Miami, where we found out -- courtesy of some especially clunky expository dialogue -- that Delaney's character had been recently widowed within five minutes of her first appearance on camera.

Without A Trace can get away with nuance, thanks to the efforts of a very talented cast. LaPaglia, who strikes all the right notes as Malone, heads the cast list, but he doesn't devour all the screen time. The proceedings are divvied up nearly equally among the entire ensemble -- Eric Close, last seen on the doomed Now and Again and solid here; Poppy Montgomery, who has been simply stellar in the opening episodes; the always engaging Marianne Jean-Baptiste; and Enrique Murciano, who may be turning in some of the best work on the show. Whether he's squaring off against Close's character, a newcomer to the squad, or intimidating a suspect into cooperating, Murciano infuses his role with the kind of energy you normally find among the best crime dramas.

That's not to say Without A Trace has joined the ranks of those best crime dramas -- not yet anyhow. But it shows the kind of promise that CSI showed out of the gate two years ago. Like that series, Without A Trace doesn't reinvent the narrative wheel; then again, it doesn't really need to. What it does do is tell an interesting story and tell it in an interesting way. Most shows on the air today would be lucky to say the same thing. And in a season where basic competence is beyond the reach of most programs -- and yes, we're including a certain South Florida-based crime series in that number -- Without A Trace's overall quality is deserving of a parade and a chorus of joyous hosannas.

At any rate, CBS should certainly drop all pretense and stamp Without A Trace with the CSI seal of approval. If the network does, might I suggest a theme song off of the Who's Next LP?

At first glance, the WB's new series Birds of Prey seems like it might be a good idea. It leverages some of the (tiny) handful of things the AOL Time Warner has going for it: the unsettling ability to launch youth-oriented action-drama genre series (a la Buffy, Angel, Roswell, Smallville, and, uh, Charmed), and the sprawling, 60+ year-old Batman franchise, which seems utterly unstoppable despite two horrid recent feature films which were primarily notable for batsuits with anatomically correct nipples.

The premise of Birds of Prey goes something like this. Years ago, Batman and Selena Kyle (aka Catwoman) consummated their love-hate-and-leather relationship, producing a daughter (Helena) who Catwoman kept secret from Batman. Fast-forward a decade-plus: Batman and Batgirl are fighting a climactic battle with the Joker in the tunnels underneath the Gotham waterfront. Naturally, the Bat-duo foil the Joker's evil scheme, but Batman fails to let the Joker be killed in the conflagration. The Joker escapes and immediately seeks revenge by sending a henchman to kill Batman's (former?) paramour Selena Kyle and going himself to the home of Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, to shoot her as she showers off the muck from a evening of righteous butt-kicking. Selena Kyle is knifed down in front of her now-teenage daughter Helena; Barbara Gordon survives the shooting but is paralyzed. Batman vanishes, apparently devastated, leaving Gotham defenseless against bad guys in silly costumes.

Fast forward a few more years. (We're getting to the starting point of the series -- bear with me!) Batman is still MIA. Barbara Gordon is confined to a wheelchair, works as a teacher, and is the legal guardian to the hotheaded troubled youth Helena Kyle (who has learned her father was Bruce Wayne/Batman). Even in a wheelchair, Barbara Gordon does not give up her crime-fighting do-gooder ways: instead of being Batgirl, she's now Oracle, who taps into the world using computer technology and spy gadgets from her secret hideout at the top of the Gotham City Clock Tower. Unable to go do righteous butt-kicking herself, she has a field agent: the fast-talking, corset-leather-and-lace-wearing, building-hopping heroine called The Huntress, who is (of course) the alter-ego of Helena Kyle. Together, the former Batgirl and the scion of the Bat and the Cat set out to Do Good in New Gotham. By the end of the pilot, they're joined by Dinah, a young runaway who sees visions and can "sometimes" telepathically project herself into other people's thoughts when she touches them. Helena and Dinah are meta-humans -- people with some sort of super power -- while Babs remains an ordinary person in a wheelchair with all sorts of cool toys who just happens to have been Batman's protégé. Look for meta-humans to serve as villians-of-the-week.

Got all that? Good.

Now for an actual tangent. Understanding where Birds of Prey comes from requires a little background on the last decade or so of the Batman franchise on television, plus characters which spun out of myriad DC comics. When Warner Brothers had success with the Tim Burton-directed Batman feature films, they greenlighted an animated series largely helmed by Alan Burnett, Paul Dini, and Bruce Timm. Batman: The Animated Series ran from 1992 to 1995, spun off a couple animated features, another animated series in the late '90s (The New Batman Adventures), and, in 1999, Batman Beyond, another animated series set in the mid-21st century featuring an octogenarian Bruce Wayne remotely directing the actions of a new, teenage Batman. The history of these (and related) shows is worthy of a TeeVee article in itself, but for now, just know they were well-written, introduced new characters to the Batman universe, and gave Mark Hamill (best known for his role in the film "Corvette Summer" and a handful of silly sci-fi flicks) a new lease on life with his surprising voicing of Batman's nemesis, the Joker.

Now, I'm not particularly familiar with the Batman comics -- obviously, there's more than enough useless information in my brain already, and there's just not enough room for Elseworlds and Crises -- but back in 1988, DC Comics did something which will now sound familiar: in the graphic novel The Killing Joke, Batgirl is shot by the Joker and paralyzed from the waist down. Remarkably, DC never renounced this plot development, and Barbara Gordon evolved into Oracle, a character who appeared in many DC comics in the next decade. Later, in 1998, DC rolled out a new comic series called (you guessed it!) Birds of Prey, featuring Oracle and Black Canary, a martial-arts-savvy heroine not coincidentally named Dinah Lance. Birds of Prey has been one of DC's more popular titles, and along came the Frog Network. DC Comics also has a character called the Huntress -- someone who's associated with Oracle and Black Canary, but is the headstrong butt-kicking scion of an organized crime family, rather than Batman's love child.

Tomato, tomahto. The Batman universe is not known for its continuity -- particularly where Barbara Gordon is concerned -- so it suffices to say the producers of the Birds of Prey series and writer Laeta Kalogridis rolled a bunch of these elements together and came up with something they thought might work on TV. A cup of Killing Joke, a slice of the Batman animated series (in the forms of probable first-season nemesis Harlene Quinzell -- aka Joker pal Harley Quinn -- and Mark Hamill offscreen briefly voicing the Joker), a bit of Dark Knight Returns (Batman in self-imposed exile), and a large helping of the Birds of Prey comic... and you have a TV show. Right?

Well, no. At least if the pilot is any indication.

And, oddly, the problem isn't the actors. Dina Meyer (nee 90210, but also "Starship Troopers," "Dragonheart," and the forthcoming "Star Trek: Nemesis") does fine as Barbara Gordon, with the exception that she doesn't look old enough for the part, particularly when trading quips with the supposedly much-younger Huntress. (And for whose benefit is she wearing those skin-tight civilian outfits?) Ashley Scott (nee Dark Angel) is appropriately flippant as Helena Kyle/The Huntress, and no doubt screens well with the coveted 18-35 male demographic when she's out doing her righteous butt-kicking scenes in heavy make-up, leather, and a low-cut bustier. The standout of the cast may be newcomer Rachel Skarsten as Dinah, whose naiveté may provide some real-world grounding for the audience as the plots and characters get more byzantine. For now, Mia Sara's Harley Quinn is an unknown. Oh, and the wordless Batman seen in flashback was played by the same guy who was in those OnStar commercials -- hopefully, we won't see him or his anatomically correct costume again.

Some of Birds of Prey's problem is the writing. Alfred the butler provides a lugubrious voice-over at the beginning of the pilot, and the show's plot abounds with forced coincidences, cliché dialog, and predictable scenes. To an extent, this is understandable: it's unfair to judge almost any show by the writing in its pilot, and Birds of Prey sprouts from some very complicated ground. Kalogridis manages to fashion a relatively coherent, lightweight story around enough exposition and introduction to put the show's universe in front of an audience: no small feat. Some details don't stand up to close scrutiny, but, gosh folks, it's TV. Hardly any of it stands up to close scrutiny. (For instance, we might believe Oracle's secret VR-equipped hideout is behind a clock in one of Gotham's tallest, most visible buildings... after all, that's how it is in the comics. But it might make more sense if Our Heroines didn't spend their downtime hanging out in front of said giant clock -- you know, where people are always looking to maybe figure out what time it is? And, you've got to wonder, with all that visible gearwork, can that clock be read from more than 40 feet away?)

No: Birds of Prey's biggest problem is that it takes itself seriously, and that means its production values make it seem cheesy and, worse, tacky. Any live-action superhero show faces a tremendous hurdle in that it has to make human actors look and behave as if they were illustrations off a comic book page. It's almost impossible to do, even in high-budget feature films. For instance, none of the actors wearing a batsuit (anatomically correct or not) can turn his head from side to side. Shows like Xena: Warrior Princess and (to an extent) Buffy can get away with corny production values because they don't take themselves very seriously: most of the time, the audience is in on the joke, and realizes it's just watching TV. "Okay -- we're off to fight the monster of the week!" Wink-wink, nudge nudge. Monster, get it?

Birds of Prey doesn't look to the camera and say "wink wink, nudge nudge:" the characters are firmly rooted within their universe. Yet, when the Huntress runs across a rooftop, the producers have seen fit to treat the audience to the roar of a big cat as a sound effect. Ugh. When Batgirl is zapped through the air and slammed against a wall by the Joker in flashback, we're painfully aware we're watching an actor being swung around on wires. The Joker himself looked like a spray-painted escapee from a Play-Doh convention, and Mighty Batman was plainly struggling to get his seventy pounds of anatomically-correct batsuit into the air for his heroic slow-motion dive. That's not Batman, that's some guy trying to get through his sixth take. Help, OnStar!

The Huntress dives off a balcony, and, look, there she is being lowered in harness, then blended in to a computer-assisted set piece. In the Climactic Battle, the Huntress plows through patently foam-form masonry to get to the bad guy, making the whole building façade vibrate like a cheap sheet of plywood... but, OK, since that battle took place in her mind, maybe it was symbolic foam masonry. The show wants its audience to take it seriously and accept its premise, but when some of the fundamental scenes which support that premise come off so laughably, nothing works.

We'll probably see the look of Birds of Prey change in subsequent episodes, and, hopefully, the scripts will rely less upon super-hero theatrics and action shots reminiscent of feature films. If Birds of Prey plans to stay on the air, it needs to learn a few lessons from the Angels and Smallvilles of the world and make sure its events are character-driven, so even if a scene comes off tacky, fans will shrug it off because of its significance to the characters. If we're lucky, Birds of Prey will also try to be its own animal, rather than delve deeply into the Batman universe to provide stories. If you think the show's explanation of the Huntress is a little complicated, just wait until they try to bring Dick Grayson on board. You know, Robin? Is he still Robin? Or his he Nightwing now?

See, now I've confused myself.

I watched the premiere of American Dreams on TiVo last night. Not a good show.

Why? Well, it has a few problems. First, the show can't seem to figure out what it's about. Most of the show is about a middle-class family in 1963 Philadelphia. Helen and Jack Pryor (Gail O'Grady and Tom Verica), good Catholics, struggle to raise their three children, eldest JJ (Will Estes), heading for high school graduation, college, and possibly a football scholarship; feisty Meg (Brittany Snow), who wants nothing more than to be on American Bandstand and meet boys; and youngest Will (Ethan Dampf) who is, well, um, young. The show is about their hopes, their fears, their reactions as they meet the crises of life, and -- of course -- their dreams. Nothing wrong with that.

But then the show toddles off its track and is about something else: It's a quasi-documentary about 1963. The introduction of instant replay to televised football games. The popularity of the TV show American Bandstand. The assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Ah, but then the show stumbles a bit more, and it's about something entirely else. As Meg manages to finagle a spot on American Bandstand, the show becomes a different quasi-documentary, this one about AB. We see the cameramen and what they do between shots (one opens up a well-broken-in paperback). We see the director as he calls out instructions to the crew. We see grips and gaffers moving things and polishing the set. We see brief appearances, from original AB footage, of the recording artists of 1963, and we get to hear the semi-salacious backstage banter of the crew. (Regarding the Beach Boys: "Don't talk to Mike, he's a wild card. Go with Brian." "If only they knew," we're supposed to snicker, having been prepped for this moment by VH1's Behind the Music.)

Okay. So we've got three shows here. And none of them are especially good. None of them are exceptionally bad, and the writers are clearly taking pains to have the characters react in unexpected ways -- as when the Catholic priest snaps at JJ to forget his feelings and just play football, dammit, because it's his responsibility to do so.

The show doesn't quite look like 1963. The Bandstand footage isn't very seamlessly integrated. On the plus side, the kids look about their ages and, particularly speaking about Brittany Snow and Vanessa Bojarski, the actors look like actual humans and not like staggeringly gorgeous actors.

So altogether the show would get a B-minus from me, maybe a C. Not something I want to watch again, but only mildly awful.

There's just one problem.

Anyone who has ever spent time in Philadelphia knows about the Philly accent. Everyone from Philly has a distinct accent and it sounds nothing like one from Brooklyn or Boston or anyplace else on Earth. The Philly accent is this odd almost-drawl, kind of a gargle, completely different from any of the various New York nasal twangs or Boston flatnesses. It's unmistakable, a part of Philly as much as any cheesesteak, Liberty Bell, or William Penn statue.

And it is completely and totally absent from American Dreams.

In another show this might not be a major oversight. But American Dreams is supposed to be set in a very particular time and place. The location and the people are integral to the concept of the show: Philly, 1963, American Freaking Bandstand. Playing this without one even half-hearted stab at the Philly accent is like "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" in Minnesota, like Huckleberry Finn in Cockney, like Welcome Back Kotter in Farsi.

And, as they might say in Philly, that just idn't roight.

Many years ago, when I was a young, fresh-faced undergraduate still not entirely sure how I would make a living in this crazy world, I took a visual arts class on video-making, which, if the course description is to be believed, gave me "a technical foundation and theoretical context for all subsequent production-oriented film and video studies." What this meant is that we spent a lot of time watching videos by performance artists that featured people excreting on camera and naked fat men masturbating while denouncing the Reagan administration.

I know I have a history of resorting to hyperbole to describe particularly unpleasant experiences. Let me assure you, I'm not doing that here. Because if we learned one thing in that class, it was that truly great art challenges its audience, shocking them out of their dull complacency by presenting discomforting images and themes. And if you want discomforting shock, well, watching the bowel movements of total strangers more or less fits the bill. And if we learned another thing from that class, it's that perhaps we were being hasty when we said all those mean things about Jesse Helms.

As awful as it may have been to watch those videos, it felt like a holiday afternoon compared to our final project for that class -- making a video of our own. Since misery loves company (and since public universities have limited video production equipment), we had to team up with another student to produce our video. And since I have a hard time making friends -- hard to figure, I know, with my winning personality and charm -- my partner was selected for me. He was an unpleasant, unkempt young man who spent half of his time stoned, a quarter of it preparing to get stoned, and the rest of it recounting all his adventures whilst stoned.

Needless to say, we had conflicting visions about our project. And, since whatever interest I had in the class had curled up and died about the same time the fat man had taken off his pants as he outlined the shortcomings of Ronald Reagan's economic policies, my little stoner buddy ended up getting his way.

His idea of the perfect conceit for our video project was to cherry-pick things he had seen in movies, music videos, and particularly pretentious paintings and cobble them together into an original work of our own. Who cares if it made any damn sense? It would look real cool. And so he wanted a scene where one of the characters appeared on camera wearing devil makeup and he wanted "Carmine Burana" playing in the background because he heard it in a movie once, and, by God, we just had to have someone eating a hard-boiled egg in the video.

"Robert DeNiro eats a hard-boiled egg in 'Angel Heart,'" he told me.

"I wish I was watching 'Angel Heart' right now," I would respond, all the while begging God to take me in my sleep.

The point isn't that the entire classroom experience was so unpleasant it steered me away from my destiny of directing low-budget, straight-to-Cinemax schlock or that I managed to eke out an A-minus, thanks to my mastery of late '80s video-editing equipment and my inspired choice of ambient light to darken and obscure all the nonsense my nutball partner insisted on capturing to video. Rather, I bring this up because if this would-be Fellini had put down his bong long enough to land a job in Hollywood, I suspect he'd have found gainful employment behind the scenes of Push, Nevada.

Like countless student films before it, Push, Nevada takes a bunch of images and ideas that someone else thought up first and thought up better and strings them together into a confusing mess. Alternately pretentious and condescending, the series from producer Ben Affleck and his gang of yes-men favors quirk over coherence, gimmickry over storytelling. It resorts to elaborate camera tricks when an understated approach will do just fine. And most important, it seems to forget that most people are tuning in to ABC on Thursday nights to be entertained, not to be constantly reminded how clever the show's producers and writers think they are. One can only hope someone at ABC is as embarrassed broadcasting this nonsense as I was explaining to a dubious T.A. the deep symbolism of a guy in devil makeup eating handful after handful of hard boiled eggs.

The show follows the travails of Jim Prufrock -- As in J. Alfred Prufrock. As in the T.S. Eliot poem. Get it? Get it? You do? Oh. -- an IRS agent who gets a fax hinting at some sort of fiduciary hanky-panky going on at a casino in Push, Nevada. The nut of the problem is, there's a million dollars missing, and it's up to our man Prufrock to dare disturb the universe and find himself the money. So what's stopping him? Well, it turns out that Push, Nevada is a town with a secret, where nothing is what it seems, where danger lurks behind ever corner and every stranger seems to be hiding something. It's a town without pity, and as we all should know by now, it isn't very pretty what a town without pity can do.

Um... it seems that I've confused the premise of Push, Nevada with Gene Pitney's 1961 chart-buster. Not that a show based on a Gene Pitney song wouldn't be much more entertaining than Push, Nevada.

Since even Ben Affleck's star power shouldn't be enough to secure a prime-time slot for this gibberish, Push, Nevada offers this twist -- it's not just an disjointed mystery program, it's also a muddled game show. Home viewers are encouraged to play along with Prufrock, collecting the clues scattered throughout each episode and solving the mystery their own damn selves. First person to figure out where the missing money is gets the million dollars. Say what you will about this terrible show, NBC isn't offering you a dime to watch In-Laws.

But not even money -- or at least, the vague promise of money -- was enough to make me endure more than two episodes of Push, Nevada and its unending parade of quirky characters. You've got the Bible-quoting white trash trucker and his sexy wife! The transparently corrupt sheriff and the obligatory good girl with a heart of gold! The trio of nameless men in suits and sunglasses acting as the evil puppetmasters pulling the strings! Armand Assante! Truly, no cliché has been left unturned.

You can almost imagine Affleck in a pitch session with his lackeys. All the characters will have biblical names, see? he says excitedly. "And we'll have a martini-swilling coroner who talks to the dead bodies like they're actual people. It'll totally blow people's minds." And the lackeys -- no strangers to enabling behavior -- probably sat there nodding and saying, "Sure, Ben. Anything you say, Ben. Sounds great Ben," all the while perusing Push, Nevada's contest rules to see if they're still eligible to win the million dollars.

It's apparently a violation of some obscure law to talk about Push, Nevada without making some reference to Twin Peaks, that other quirky mystery show that aired on ABC a decade ago. And, if you're talking about the second season of Twin Peaks, when it dawned on David Lynch that he had better think up a solution to his murder mystery and the show descended into incoherent madness, then the comparison is pretty apt.

But those first six episodes of Twin Peaks -- that was great television. From the opening moments of the pilot episode, you couldn't help but get hooked. As quirky and strange as the characters were, they were also elaborately constructed and developed -- you wanted to know more about these people. That's lacking in Push, Nevada and its absence is more noticeable than the missing million dollars. The town may be full of secrets, but that doesn't necessarily mean any of the secrets are interesting.

And, ultimately, that's what will do Push, Nevada in. You can decry the pretension, eviscerate the flawed storytelling, roll your eyes every time you're introduced to another character with a name straight out of the Old Testament. But the long and short of it is, Push, Nevada's producers are offering a shot at a million dollars just to pay attention to their little show. And about 15 minutes into the pilot episode, I was making to-do lists, balancing my checkbook, sifting through the newspaper and clipping coupons to save 30 cents on my next purchase of cat food. Anything, but devote any more than the barest amount of brain space possible to Push, Nevada.

That's really not a good sign. Sorry, Prufrock -- I have heard the mermaids singing each to each. And they're sure not singing for you, pal.

However, Push, Nevada's prize-patrol conceit may wind up saving it from a premature though thoroughly deserved death. The producers have sworn up and down on a stack of that book that gave them all their character names that they're giving away the million dollars even if Push, Nevada goes off the air. Still, that's decidedly hard to do if you've only shown four episode's worth of clues. With the Push, Nevada audience rapidly dwindling, ABC is looking for a place to stash this turkey while avoiding the slew of lawsuits that are sure to follow should a litigious viewership be denied its crack at a cool million by the whims of network programmers. There's talk of "repurposing" the show, which is a polite way of saying "Stash Push, Nevada on some other channel, where its low ratings will cause only minimal damage." That could mean another Disney-owned outlet, but, really, where else can they air it? The Disney Channel? ABC Family? ESPN2?

My suggestion would be for ABC to just split the prize money among the remaining viewers who've seen every Push, Nevada episode. In about a week, that should be enough to buy everyone a burger and fries. In two weeks, they could even super-size it.

Judging by the entries in our Dead Pool, Life With Bonnie doesn't have much of a chance. I haven't been tabulating them or anything, because I leave that to the higher-ups, but it seems like every mail call brings another bag full of people predicting Bonnie Hunt's imminent departure from the airwaves. But what's odd is that most of these people bear no ill will toward Ms. Hunt herself. In fact, they seem to admire her and appreciate her comedic gifts, while at the same time confidently forecasting a Hunt-less future.

Of course, if you were to take your cues from the kind of mail we get, you'd think that the cancellation of Farscape rivaled the sack of Rome. You'd also think that Tim Curry was the most popular man on the planet and that spelling and grammar are no longer taught in our nation's public schools. You'd be right about that last part. But my point is that much as I'd like to just take our audience's collective word for the fact that Life With Bonnie is going down and going down hard, I felt I owed it to myself, to the organization I represent, and to you, the TeeVee reader, to find out for myself.

The official description of the show is that Bonnie "juggles the roles of wife, mother and host of the local morning talk show Morning Chicago." The use of the word "juggles" is a danger sign, because it means there's more than one show being crammed into the same half-hour. Some of the time, it's a cloying family sitcom, where Bonnie grapples with the challenges of a husband, wacky maid, two smartmouth kids, and an obligatory baby. This show is terrible. It needs to go away.

The other half of the show is set at Bonnie's morning show. Usually in this context, you wouldn't get to see that much of the actual show, because Hollywood likes to make shows that go behind the scenes of imaginary television shows, like Larry Sanders and Sports Night. But on Life With Bonnie, they just show the show-within-a-show, if that makes sense. It's just endless interview or cooking segments which have nothing to do with whatever plot the family segments had.

My theory is that Bonnie Hunt pitched two different shows to ABC. First, she pitched a largely-improvised morning show parody, probably mentioning Fernwood 2-Nite fairly prominently. And then, in case the network suits thought that was too daring, she said sarcastically, "or I could just do a generic family sitcom." And then they decided to take both shows and run them at the same time.

It's not the first time something like that's happened. In the first season of Barney Miller, it was half Barney and his wife, and half police station. And then they noticed that Barney's wife wasn't as interesting as Max Gail and Abe Vigoda and took that part of the show out. I mention that because I find it interesting and mention it at every opportunity. If I were the one reviewing Firefly, I'd probably mention it there, on the pretext that Ron Glass is in the show.

But to get back to Life With Bonnie, it's a hard show to review, because no one from the family is in the morning show, and no one from the morning show stops by the family. They're on different sets, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they used different audiences.

So let's take this one show at a time.

Show A, the annoying family, is, as I've said, terrible. It's all about running around frantically and screaming and the smart-mouth kids. It's not good. Even for a wacky-family sitcom, it's not good. If the whole show were like it, our Dead Pool contestants would have an excellent chance of being right, because television chews up and spits out bad family sitcoms all the time.

Show B, the morning show, is mostly improvised. And it's not really all that funny. It's amusing, but only in the same way that an actual morning show is, including the bits where the host and guests laugh at their own alleged cleverness. In fact, the second episode (featuring David Duchovny as a weatherman, although I always thought stunt casting came much later in a show's lifetime) features almost Tim-Conway-and-Harvey-Korman levels of actors laughing. It doesn't entirely break the illusion of the show, because actual local morning shows aren't 100% professional, if you know what I mean. But when I'm watching actors enjoying themselves so much, it makes me sad that I'm not enjoying the show that much. If the whole show were the improvised morning show, it would probably never have gotten on the air. But if it did somehow get on the air, it would probably get cancelled pretty quickly too.

It doesn't come off so much as a parody of morning shows as just a morning show where the host doesn't know what's going on. It gets laughs from the studio audience, but, frankly, not from me. People seem to be laughing at the idea that they're watching an improvised segment, not so much because they're seeing a funny segment, if you see what I mean.

The brief bits where Bonnie interacts with her crew (which includes David Alan Grier, who tried and failed to be a frontman last year with DAG) are fairly entertaining, but they last almost no time. They're about a minute or so, shoved between Shows A and B. If the whole show were about the backstage antics, it would probably get cancelled pretty quickly. Because while Hollywood likes to make television shows about the process of making television shows, there's not a great deal of evidence that the American public wants to watch them.

Now, having said all that, I still don't hate Bonnie Hunt. I'm not sure where everyone got this big crush on her, because even her official bio can only claim "She became familiar to audiences with her cameos in 'Rain Man' and 'Dave.'" What? Since when does doing cameos make you familiar? For that matter, aren't cameos things normally done by people who are already famous? If you're not yet "familiar to audiences," you're not doing a cameo; you've just got a bit part. Anyway, Ms. Hunt was also the mother in "Beethoven." And "Beethoven's 2nd." Don't go by the fact that I don't appear to have heard of her; people seem to like her. At least, the people entering our Dead Pool do. But that hasn't stopped them from predicting failure for her. And who am I to argue with you, our perceptive readers?