February 2003 Archives

It's late here. Eyes closing. I'm watching The Best Sex: 12 Years of Real Sex on HBO. At one point they're showing footage of this Brazilian group which does live sex shows. They show the audience, and I think to myself, what kind of person goes to see a live sex show? Then I realize: I'm watching people watch a live sex show. Good Christ. Someone drop the roof on me now.

Children have lost a great friend today. It's easy to make fun of Mister Rogers. It's easy because he was so sincere. We live in such a cynical world, and it is hard to imagine that a man like him could actually exist. But he did, and somehow he was able to get his own TV show.

It's funny -- I cried when I found Mr. Rogers died today. I never met the man, but he was my friend.

That's all I gotta say.

We spend a lot of time being cynical these days, and that cynicism stretches even into some of the most innocent of subjects. Take TV shows targeted at kids -- so many of them are nothing more than lengthy advertisements for toys. Or they're pure entertainment with no redeeming value. Or they're hideously awful -- yes, we mean you, Barney.

The image of a TV kids-show host has also been portrayed in a cynical bent, and with good reason. Wouldn't you think that talking to kids every day, as a career, could wear on a person? The Simpsons' Krusty the Clown is an archetype, so much so that when the long-running host of Blue's Clues quit, he said he didn't want to end up burned out and bitter like good old Krusty.

It's all funny and has the ring of truth to it. If you put yourself in those shoes, wouldn't it drive you crazy after a while?

But none of that was true of Fred Rogers, who died today at the age of 74. He saw children's programming as a calling. He was sincere. He loved talking to children, communicating with them, soothing their pain and helping them understand something about the wonders of the world around them.

I admit to being a cynical person at times. I have used Mister Rogers for comedy fodder -- most recently when I used him as the subject of a TeeVee April Fool's piece. When I was in college, people would occasionally ask me in one of those long, philosophical dorm room discussions, what philosopher or figure had the biggest impact on my life. And when I answered "Mister Rogers," it always got a laugh, which was the response I was trying for.

The thing is, I wasn't kidding. As ludicrous as it might have sounded, the reality is that Mister Rogers represented something special to me. I didn't really have much influence from my grandparents, who either died when I was fairly young or lived far away so I rarely got to see them. Mister Rogers was a sort of grandparent.

Yes, Mister Rogers had a silly show with puppets and a fish tank and a wacky mail delivery man (Mr. McFeely, named after Rogers' middle name). But his show's slow pace was comforting. From his sweater to his sneakers, Mister Rogers was a comfortable presence.

The most important thing was Fred Rogers' message, the one that rose up above any others on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: I like you the way you are. There's no other person in the world like you. You are unique, and valuable. Mister Rogers was a believer in his viewers. He told us all about the importance of liking yourself, of accepting yourself for who you were.

Now, I'm not saying that millions of teenagers, caught in the depths of self-doubt and surrounded by horrendous peer pressure, managed to stay true to themselves because they heard Fred Rogers' voice in their heads and followed his teachings. What I am saying is that I believe Mister Rogers planted the important seed of self-confidence and the importance of liking yourself for who you are in generations of young kids.

I know he did it in me, and that I'm a dramatically better person for it.

Is there any better legacy for any person, let alone a television personality, than to have that kind of effect on people?

I don't think so.

Goodbye, Mister Rogers. And thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

"Ed" moves to Friday at 9 p.m. starting March 21 and ending April 4. "We're very happy about this," executive producer Rob Burnett told the New York Daily News yesterday. "We've been begging the network to do this for two years."

"Since fewer people watch television on Friday nights, perhaps there will be fewer people noticing how awful our show has become," Burnett added hopefully as he poured himself another stiff belt of bourbon.

It's also always a sign of what high esteem your network holds you in, when they're yanking your show off the air a month before the season ends.

Time was, we answered our reader mail in long, nasty detail. The ol' TeeVee Mailbag has been on hiatus for a couple of years, but after XXVIII entries any roman-numeraled entity can become tiresome. (We're looking at you, Super Bowl.) Still, a few letters we've gotten lately are worth mentioning.

We've received two letters about David Clennon, who stars in The Agency (we had to look it up ourselves), a show that apparently still airs on CBS affiliates in parts of the country. We said Clennon was "a delight to watch" when we reviewed his show a couple of lead actors ago. Anyway, seems this Clennon fellow is politically outspoken enough for Dave Smith to write and say he's "not too politically bright" and for Paula Hassler to call him a "near traitor" for criticizing George W. Bush. Okay, but why do you think we care? We're not David Clennon's answering service, you know.

Meanwhile, "Rick" wrote us referencing our coverage of JFK Jr.'s death -- wow, timely! -- so he could complain about being given a B instead of an A in a college course when he dared question his professor's love of the Kennedys during Chappaquiddick. In 1969. Wow, timely! But we have to point out, again, that we really just don't give a shit.

However, we do appreciate that James Hong, the freakin' genius who invented AmIHotOrNot.com, wrote us a note when we wrote about ABC's rip-off reality show, Are You Hot? Thanks, James.

It's very hard to write a review of something good. Whether it's a film, book, television show, car, or screwdriver, if something is really that good, all you can really say is, "Hie thee hence and see for yourself how good this is."

When something's really bad, you can tear it apart gleefully, as loyal TeeVee readers already know. You can say entertainingly mean things about it. You can design tortured metaphors to describe how bad it was. You can invent strange new words for calling into question the ancestry of the thing's creators. You can, in short, have a fun time pounding out 1,000 words of vitriol on your keyboard.

But when something's good, really good, maybe even the best, what can you say? You can simply gesture at the thing, and maybe bow.

Thus, here is my gesture and my bow: Boomtown is not only the best show currently on television. It is quite possibly the best television show of all time.

I do not say this lightly. The only hiccup in this is that I have been saying the same thing about Six Feet Under for a couple of years now, so now there's this wrestling match in my head going on between Michael C. Hall and Gary Basaraba.

So okay: NBC's multiple-perspective crime drama Boomtown and HBO's dark family drama Six Feet Under are not only the best shows currently on television. They are quite possibly the best television shows of all time.

This breaking of TeeVee's virtual silence on these two shows is occasioned by, first, the airing on Bravo of the first eleven episodes of Boomtown; and second, by the beginning of the third season of Six Feet Under. They both start Sunday, March 2, but -- and don't tell HBO we said this -- Six Feet Under is repeated enough during the week that you can skip Sunday and pick it up on Monday on HBO2 or Tuesday on HBO again.

Make sure you watch them. Hie thee hence!

And now, to fill space: Boomtown and Six Feet Under are absolutely fantastic. Either one on its own, or together, they finally show us what TV can be. They are the promised art long awaited in this most plebian of media.

Why is TV plebian? Television and film have a lot in common. They are both essentially moving pictures with sound. Yet film is almost universally considered art (if often a very bad one) while TV has a much harder time being taken so seriously. There are a lot of factors at work here, but I think we can say this is mostly the fault of the people working in TV -- of the people who have worked in TV since its inception. They have kept TV in the position of film's awkward younger sister, mostly for commercial reasons.

TV creators have particularly overlooked the format's greatest strength, the one thing which sets it apart from film or any other art form for that matter: TV's episodic nature. Unlike a movie or a play, which can realistically only be of relatively short length, across the many hours and years of a television show's run, a group of artists can give us the ability to watch as great changes occur, to see how time passes and affects us all -- through TV, we can gain deeper and more profound insights about what it means to be a creature of time.

Sadly, most of the history of TV consists of entertainments designed with the exact opposite purpose in mind. Television shows have almost always been written such that the characters undergo no changes; their situations remain the same and the world they inhabit is static. Sitcoms especially are built such that the episodes can be watched in essentially any order. The characters never grow, except in Very Special Episodes near the end of the series when the writers are grasping for a departing audience.

The reasons for this are entirely commercial, of course. Selling shows into syndication is the dream of any producer, because that's where all the real money is. Sure, TV shows may make money during their original run. But if you get enough episodes in the can to go into syndication after it goes off the air, the series can still generate income without costing anything at all -- it becomes a money machine. And a powerful money machine it is.

Powerful enough to warp the very medium which allows it to exist. Powerful enough to prevent the artistic growth television deserves.

But the balance is shifting. Syndication is still powerful, but the crazed competition of the 500-channels-and-nothing-on cable/satellite system has encouraged and rewarded experimentation on the part of series creators. And, more recently, the DVD market has only begun to change the way we watch television. It has the potential to alter TV the way VHS altered film: Allowing us to go back and review things which were once considered lost, worthless items on the junk heap of culture. Once upon a time films like "Invaders from Mars" and "THEM" and "All That Heaven Allows" were thought to be one-time entertainments, thrown out to theaters for a few months and then crumpled up and chucked away. Maybe they'd be cut up and sold for late-night TV, maybe they'd be shown in shoddy 16mm prints by film collectors. VHS changed all that -- DVD is still changing all that, changing the economics of film distribution so entirely that even obscure, virtually unseen titles merit release on the cheap plastic discs.

DVDs are so cheap, in fact, that even TV shows which never racked up enough screen time to qualify for syndication are being put out. And the good news about that is that finally, at last, TV is free: Free from the shackles of least-common-denominator economics. Finally creators can bring us shows based, not on their chances of failing to offend enough people for long enough to crank out six year's worth of mediocre entertainment; but based on being actually good. Finally we can see shows which tell us something, which enrich us, which uplift us and ennoble us.

Finally, we have Boomtown and Six Feet Under.

These are shows in which even the credit sequences are worth watching. Don't skip past the credits for Boomtown, I urge you: Because they are beautiful and haunting and the music is really, really great. And Six Feet Under -- well, the very first time I watched the show, I knew within three notes that this would be my favorite TV show of all time.

Beyond those credits, too, is some great television. On Boomtown, the approximate centers of the show are police detective Joel Stevens and assistant district attorney David McNorris, played by Donnie Wahlberg and Neal McDonough. In the course of eleven episodes we've watched McNorris go from powerful, confident, glib D.A. to alcoholic, depressed, and possibly suicidal. We've watched his character unfold in a compelling arc as we learned about his father, his mistress, his wife. Joel Stevens, meanwhile, has remained outwardly stable as we find out more and more of how truly unstable his life really is, what with his wife's recent suicide attempt coming on the heels of their baby's death. Both Stevens and McNorris have been opened to us gradually, with subtlety and feeling, not as good guys and bad guys, but simply as human beings we can understand and sympathize with.

All the characters on Boomtown are seen sharply and in great detail, but, I think, none more than these two. It's hard to tell where to place the credit for this more: Is it the writing or the acting? I think it's a lot of both. Wahlberg just exudes stoicism and steadfastness; McDonough is on fire, dangerous, electric. And I cannot say enough good things about the writing (led by the show's executive producer, Hollywood screenwriter Graham Yost). Fresh, realistic -- how it manages to seem so real without there being any cuss words is nothing short of astonishing. It makes anyone who uses the word fuck look short on imagination.

I haven't mentioned the rest of the cast and their characters; I love them all so much, it's hard not to say something about each of them in turn, but I'll stop here. Boomtown is that rare thing, a true ensemble drama.

Six Feet Under, by way of contrast, is smaller than Boomtown, but less formulaic; a show about a family of morticians simply allows a lot more originality than a cop 'n' lawyer show. Also, being on HBO, everyone says fuck a lot more. Six Feet Under is more serious, though; this is a show which tackles very weighty topics -- death, life, love, the essential flawed nature of humans -- while eschewing many of the off-the-shelf situations that drive even a great network show like Boomtown.

What it shares, though, is careful attention to character. It's hard to choose the center of this series, although it might seem easy to just pick Peter Krause's Nate Fisher. But on closer inspection I think just as much screen time is spent on David Fisher, played by Michael C. Hall; probably only slightly more than their mother and younger sister, played by Frances Conroy and Lauren Ambrose respectively.

Certainly when the show debuted 26 episodes ago, its focus was on Nate, returning to and eventually taking over his dead father's business. What began as a chronicle of Nate's finally coming to terms with his life and his choices grew into a deeper meditation on family and friendship. We got to know more about David and his life as an only-partially closeted gay man; Ruth's examination of her life and what she would do with it now that her husband is gone; and Claire's confusion and conflicted feelings as a young woman only just entering adulthood.

The true beauty of Six Feet Under is its unwillingness to turn anyone into anything less than a full human being. Characters commit acts which in lesser shows doom a character to being the Bad Guy, or at least end in some kind of comeuppance; but on this show, each character is seen with such love and kindness, they're forgiven. They are only people, after all. David watches gay porn, has sex with a street hustler. Ruth had an affair before her husband died. Nate fathers an illegitimate child.

The stuff of soap opera? Maybe. But no soap opera has followed the repercussions of such actions with such realism, such understanding. Watching Six Feet Under, we get glimpses of ourselves, and the questions we have, and the mistakes we've made. There's an illumination aspect to the show, as it opens up dusty corners inside us viewers and lets us look into them. The show achieves true poignancy when it shows us the Fisher father while he was alive and how each member of the Fisher family has dealt with his loss. Inside each adult is a child, and inside each child is an adult, and this show lets us feel that for a moment.

Really, what Boomtown and Six Feet Under have most in common is that they embrace the series nature of television and give the characters room to breathe. Where a film is like a short story, a TV series is like a novel. Instead of quick impressions and perhaps sketchy character transformations, we can watch something more akin to life. We can take it slowly, examine the details, absorb the sights and sounds. We can get to know the people of these TV worlds and feel the connections between the lives they've been given and the lives we're leading. And we can see something of ourselves.

And that right there is art. A rare thing indeed, but even rarer on TV. Catch it while you can.

Last Friday I set my TiVo to record HBO's Da Ali G Show. Last night I started watching it but didn't get far since it was late and the show wasn't compelling enough to overcome the hour.

So far the best part, though, is hearing the Voice of HBO intone, with perfect clarity and diction, "Next on HBO... Da Ali G Show."

In an ad for 60 Minutes, this is what the voiceover guy says:

Not many people have stood up to Saddam Hussein and lived to tell the tale. He did, and recounts it to Steve Croft in excruciating detail!

Excruciating detail? Really? Doesn't that imply that at least 45 of the sixty minutes will be this bore going on about what he had for breakfast, and what Saddam's breath smells like?

I saw "Daredevil" yesterday. Not good. It should have been better -- Daredevil was one of my favorites. Ben Affleck was the least of the movie's problems, which may be summed up as terrible writing, terrible writing, and more terrible writing (although some of the inside jokes were clever). Colin Farrell was brilliant in what few scenes he had. Jennifer Garner was not good. Couldn't they have found someone more... European? Too bad they rushed the Daredevil-Elektra relationship, and damn them for apparently changing the way the story played out in Frank Miller's books. By the way, I was shocked -- shocked! -- at Miller's cameo. I wonder what he thought of the finished product? (I wouldn't make the mistake of saying he should have written the script, though. I saw "Robocop 2" again a couple of months ago. Shudder.)

The trailers turned out to be more interesting. "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is coming this summer. If you knew nothing at all about the comic books, you would be fascinated and confused. If you knew something about the comic books, you also would be fascinated and confused. If the story is still set in late-19th century London, why are there speeding cars and sub-machine-guns? Looks cool, all the same.

"X-Men 2" looks very, very good. I'm sure I will be disappointed with the finished product.

The even more extended "Hulk" trailer is not very good. They're showing too much now.

Crazy Crispin Glover ("I can kick...!") is in a re-make of "Willard." Can miss.

I have a confession to make that may ostracize me from mainstream society forever: I don't get Friends. I mean, I know it's a show about six impossibly good looking people (except for the guys) who live in a Manhattan so unreal that unemployed people frequently spend their days lounging about in 6,000 square foot, Pottery Barn-furnished apartments, but that's not what I'm talking about.

I first glimpsed Friends sometime during its freshman season, about 56 years ago. That was long before the show's female leads had dieted down to their birth weights, prior to any of the actors entering rehab, and when the entire cast still made less per episode than the gross national product of Belize. I was in high school and Thursday was still "Must See" TV for NBC.

The episode I saw had something to do with "laundry virgins" and featured Ross and Rachel (what a shock) together at a laundromat. At one point I believe one of the characters jumped in a laundry cart to claim it as their own. No, really, this was the pinnacle of the episode's story arc.

I may have been under the age of legal consent at the time, but I clearly saw that this show stunk -- and this was a judgment coming from someone who at age 14 thought that the Wings and A Different World double-feature made for a really enjoyable evening of TV viewing.

So, imagine my surprise when critics everywhere began to praise the silly series, and fans jumped on the Friends bandwagon in a big way. Well, I was an independent thinker, I still wasn't going to watch. Not even when the six superstars became ubiquitous. Not even when my hairdresser strapped me down and gave me the mandate-by-law "Rachel" haircut in 1995. Not when the show's cast declared that they were excited and honored that Friends was the favorite TV series of the O.J. Simpson jury. Now there's a group of Mensa potentials worth currying favor with.

Eventually, I relented and watched another episode. And it turned out that this misfit group of laundry virgins had actually become funny -- not Simpsons or Seinfeld funny, but amusing, make-you-smile, better-than-a-sharp-stick-in-the-eye funny. At least, except for the awful moments with Phoebe talking about her life as a street person or Monica wearing a fat suit.

So I started watching, telling myself I could stop any time I wanted. And Friends inexorably devolved. Once Rachel got a surprise positive result from a pregnancy test just in time for the season-ending cliffhanger, Friends was removed from our TiVo Season Pass list in a small ceremony.

Still, I couldn't help looking in on those six crazy kids every now and then, especially when the news came out that this would be Friends' final season, setting the stage for some wrap-ups of the show's never-ending storylines.

But forget about that. NBC has, for the sixth straight season, signed a "last-minute" deal with the cast to shower them with cash in exchange for more episodes. What went unmentioned in NBC's press release was a disclaimer informing viewers that the show, in fact, sucks. And will continue to suck until it's finally sent to the boneyard.

A fully-unfunny Jon Lovitz hooks up with new mom Rachel on a blind date while Chandler and Monica have sex in front of her child. In a remarkable coincidence found only on sitcoms, Phoebe confesses to mugging Ross when they were both teens. My Mother the Car had more subtext and believability.

Remember when they had to put Old Yeller down? Remember how sad you were? Well, Friends is just like that, except for the sadness and the regret and the lovable dog. It is, regardless of the money and the synergy and the ratings, time for Friends to go. Kill it during sweeps in a special 70-minute episode featuring Charo and the Solid Gold dancers if you must, but just kill it. At this point, I think viewers would be happy to pay these people a million bucks an episode not to appear on my TV screen once a week.

Sure, the ratings are good. No matter how ridiculous the show gets or how many times I groan at yet another feeble joke or insipid plot twist, it's like a train wreck -- I can't turn away. And neither can America. Because I know, in my heart of hearts, that the next time someone asks me about Jennifer Aniston's hair I want to be ready with an informed opinion.

I managed to watch about five minutes of But I'm a Celebrity -- Get Me Out of Here! last night before I felt too unclean to continue. And this is coming from someone who has caught every episode of Joe Millionaire and American Idol and Survivor.

Not only does But I'm... prove that, no, Fear Factor does not mark the low point in reality TV, but it proves something even more amazing: Surreal Life and Celebrity Mole weren't scraping the bottom of the "celebrity" barrel.

On Jimmy Kimmel Live a couple weeks back, Celebrity Mole winner Kathy Griffin explained that the "Celebrity" in the title was in really big, qualifying quotation marks. But that's not the case on But I'm... -- these people simply aren't celebrities. See for yourself -- this group is pathetic. We've got a couple of minor actors, a few has-been TV hosts, a male model, Howard Stern's flunky, someone with a slightly famous mom, someone with a somewhat-famous ex-husband... and Robin Leach.

When Robin Leach is your big name, it's time to admit you're a desperate network. Get this show out of here.

Dear New York's Fox Five,

For two years I have been silent out of respect. I believe I have shown great patience and a rather un-Collier-like sense of decorum. But I can be silent no longer. Your broadcast signal sucks! In fact, calling it a broadcast signal would be an overstatement. Now I will admit, I could just get cable or DirecTV and this whole issue would be moot. Get cable, and I get to watch my reruns of The Simpsons and Seinfeld and I finally get to find what whole hullabaloo is about 24. Yeah, I could do that.

But the thing is, I'm a cheapskate. Don't take my word for it, ask the TeeVee guys. They'll tell ya: Collier don't pick up the check for nothin'. Why am I gonna pay 70 damned dollars just to get one stupid channel? Oh sure, I'd get ESPN, MTV and CNN and that stuff. Sure, I guess that would be kinda cool. But I just can't see myself paying for TV. Call me old school if you must, that's just how I am.

Anyhow, it's going on two years since your antenna was destroyed with the World Trade Center. Every station in New York City that once broadcast signals from the towers have strong signals once again... except for Fox Five. I think it's time you guys got cracking on fixing your signal, because I really, really need to watch my reruns of The Simpsons.

Collier Out.

As a service to you, I had my TiVo record ABC's newest reality show, Are You Hot? (subtitled "The Search for America's Sexiest People"). I watched this show because I care for you, and also so I could say that I have seen a reality show more up-to-date than Real People.

Here's the boilerplate synopsis of Are You Hot? in case you arrived on this planet late: Heretofore apparently normal people enter a contest where their looks -- specifically, their face; their body; and their sex appeal -- are judged by a celebrity panel and/or TV viewers in an elimination tournament until one man and one woman are left; they are crowned "The Sexiest People in America."

I don't know if the idea was stolen or paid for with blood money or, heck, traded for Chocodiles; but this show really looks to me to be based on an old Web site. Originally it was AmIHotOrNot.com and now it's simply HOTorNOT.com, and the idea is very basic: People put up their photos and visitors rank them, 1 to 10, and the tally is displayed. The site had few redeeming features; the best one of which, in my opinion, was that you could, with some URL editing, follow the photos to their source server and there sometimes find porn. You can't do that any more, though.

The TV show retains the framework -- people who think they're hot show themselves to us to be judged -- but, like the site, drops the pornography. Alas.

It's too easy to make fun of Are You Hot?, from start to finish. I believe that is its sole purpose, in fact. Why else hire a host who appears to have defeated Casey Kasem in the Thunderdome to win possession of his hair? What other purpose can there be for hiring Lorenzo Lamas as one of the celebrity judges? Why else show us footage of these people who obviously think they're hot, when in fact they are not? And why show footage of these other people who are so obviously hot, if the judges stupidly insist they are not?

This show is joke-proof, irony-proof, satire-proof. It's the noble gas of reality shows, formed only in the intensely dense fusion reaction at the center of Hollywood where the massless particles of television producer intellects collide with the bare nuclei of ideas stripped of their originality.

There are simply so many snide remarks crowding in my brain at once I cannot even begin to give voice to them all. Lorenzo Lamas -- snort! Rachel Hunter -- guffaw! Randolph Duke -- who?

The only joys to be drawn from this program -- and they are small ones -- are to feel vindicated when a person you've decided is hot is dubbed "Hot" by the judges; and to feel vindicated when a person you've decided is hot is dubbed "Not" by the judges. Either way, you can feel superior, either by having your tastes ratified by the celebrity panel or by knowing, deep down inside, that you are better than those losers. Who are famous, while you are not.

I believe, though -- and I want you to take this tidbit and tuck it into your shirt pocket to take out and think about later, like those little cards funeral homes give away at services -- I believe this show serves a more insidious purpose. It's part of a huge fabric, along with the other reality shows and the evening news and talk shows, all stretching back to the late 1980s as Ronald Reagan was leaving office; yes, "Are You Hot?" is the latest and greatest cog in the machinery started up way back then, and this machinery has only one purpose: To convince you -- yes, you! -- that America is populated entirely by imbeciles.

It isn't. Look around you! America is full of smart people! You probably don't even realize it because you're too busy scratching your head at The People's Court from the Stairmaster at the gym, wondering why that 400-pound lady with the mustache would bring her lover on national television and expect her husband not to notice. You don't see all the heavy intellectual lifting going on because you're screaming at Joe Millionaire contestants, "He's a construction worker you cheap hussy!" Or maybe you're wondering who thought it was a good plot line to introduce vampires into General Hospital spinoff Port Charles.

Admit it. You think Americans are stupid. You see that "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" and "Shanghai Knights" are top box office draws and you lament. You marvel at shows like Will & Grace and The District and you cry to the heavens. You watch BBC America.

But I'm here to wake you up and let you know that Americans are not morons, not at all. Somehow, by the wiles of some conspiracy, by some confederacy of dunces, the stupidest among us have the loudest voices; but we are not dumb. Did you know that researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have designed a synthetic retina? Did you know that engineers have built a robot called Dante to walk down into volcanos to gather gas samples? That right now, while you're reading this, NASA has a spacecraft orbiting the planet Jupiter and sending back pictures -- and that it's been out there for almost eight years? And that NASA is using the last of its propellant to steer it so it will end its useful life crashing into Jupiter instead of Europa because on its pass by that moon, it found evidence of a possible ocean, which may support extraterrestrial life? And did you know you can right now buy a Tomy Mighty Men & Monster Maker Kit on eBay?

Look at your shoes. Have you thought about how much technology it took to make them? How about that PC you're using? Hey, is it a Palm? Aren't those just totally amazing? And check out my titanium eyeglass frames!

No, Americans aren't all drooling bolt-necks, but if you watch TV and read the news, you think they are. And that's a damned shame. That's what Are You Hot? is really about: It's about making you feel smart, making you think everyone else is not, and -- most importantly -- it's about defeating you, keeping you down, making you feel like it's not worth it to give life your best because of the sheer overwhelming stupidity of the human race. It's about letting petty tyrants and thugs have their way with you and the natural resources of this world because it's just not worth the fight.

I gave up an hour of my life (I couldn't watch any more) to view Are You Hot? so I could bring this news back to you, so do not take it lightly, thou lamp of the universe: Don't waste your time on this crap. Go out and make something beautiful for yourself and your fellow humans.

I just saw Tom Brokaw in Qatar (pronounced variously "cutter," "gutter," and "kaTAR," and Tom interviewed an Arabic scholar to verify that, yes, in fact, even Arabs don't know how to pronounce it) and now I know why we're going to go to war regardless of Saddam Hussein's concessions, the findings of the UN, or the protests of France, Germany (and when they're on the same side opposite you, it's time to check your hat and coat and sit down), the people of Europe, and most of America:

We're going to war because all the journalists have gotten out their khaki jackets with the big pockets.

I'm watching umpteen hours of blizzard coverage on television to see when and if this blizzard is ever planning on ending, and the local Fox affiliate has decided that the thing to do is to send out the sportscasters to do the "Hey! Snow is fun!" pieces as a welcome relief from the "Don't get a heart attack from shoveling snow" piece, the "even ambulances can't get through the snow" segment and the "store shelves are empty" report.

Their idea of a fun piece is to send a sportscaster to a sledding hill over in Northwest so he can report on the people sledding and get bowled over by exuberant snow bunnies.

After one such ride that left the cameraman half-buried and the sportscaster covered in snow, the guy asks the woman who plowed into him, "So your winter fun includes knocking over sportscasters?"

"Well, it's good training if you're going to be war correspondents," she reasoned, then went away.

The first thing I thought was, "What would they do with sportscasters overseas? Play-by-play calls of the firefights?"

The second thing I thought of was, "Can we send any sports reporter? How about Mike Lupica?"

Things are going pretty well in your career. You've got a television show, and you've got a movie coming up. You're hot and in demand. You've probably done a couple of magazine covers. But take my word for this: when Lorne Michaels comes calling, just say no. Don't host Saturday Night Live.

Right now, everything's going great. You get to show up on late night talk shows, and everyone fawns all over you. Why would you want to ruin all that by wading hip-deep into the unfunny morass of SNL? Do you want people to see your face and think of Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz giggling at how bad they are at reading cue cards?

Seriously. You're allowed to say "no" to some of these things, you know.

I'm an Oakland A's fan because the stadium is a stone's throw from my apartment, the bleacher seats are dirt cheap, and the A's have an "us-against-everyone" underdog ethos that meshes well with my world view. Plus, the interest in sports fills the void in my soul that would normally be occupied by things like wisdom and intellectual curiosity.

Anyhow, there's a backup outfielder on the Athletics, a kid by the name of Eric Byrnes, who happens to pronounce his last name the same way as Robert the poet, Ken the documentarian and George the dead comedian. I believe a friend of mine and I attended the a game a season or two ago where Byrnes made his Oakland debut. The Oakland Coliseum's basso-profoundo p.a. announcer introduced the rookie in his best voice-of-God intonation -- "Now batting for Oakland, number 22, Eric Byrnes."

"Are they booing?" my friend asked.

"They're not booing," I replied. "They saying 'Boo-urns!'"

And I think that says it all about the far-reaching impact The Simpsons has enjoyed on television, popular culture and the way obsessive nerds like myself communicate amongst each other. Here my friend and I were watching a baseball game, and all of sudden, we're quoting Simpsons dialogue at each other. And not even from a good episode, either -- that "Boo-urns" exchange comes at the end of "A Star Is Burns," the ill-advised crossover episode with the soon-to-be-cancelled The Critic. Even when The Simpsons turns out a clunker -- and it's safe to say that "A Star Is Burns" is decidedly that, what with Matt Groening yanking his name from the credits and all -- there's still a moment or two that's funny enough to stick with you years after the fact.

That's important to remember as The Simpsons broadcasts its 300th episode tonight -- a rarefied accomplishment for any program that doesn't open with a ticking stopwatch. And it's not as if The Simpsons has reached the 300-episode mark wheezing and limping and calling out to its God for death -- it's still among the best shows on television, and it looks like it will continue to be for quite some time to come. In a medium where most programs are lucky to stay on the air for 300 minutes, what the people responsible for The Simpsons have to managed to pull off is quite remarkable indeed.

Yes, as the show's minutia-obsessed fan base will explain in painstaking detail, episodes of The Simpsons these days rarely reach the heights achieved by earlier efforts -- some of the finest half-hours of programming you can ever hope to watch. And yes, The Simpsons can be maddeningly uneven, ping-ponging from brilliant to blasé often from one commercial break to the next. Slate even decided to commemorate The Simpsons' 300-episode milestone by chronicling the many ways in which the show isn't as good as it used to be. That the argument may be correct is beside the point -- rather, it's important to remember that even at its worst, The Simpsons is still better than almost anything else. Besides, you don't see too many fan sites devoted to detailing the myriad ways Full House or Becker fell off in quality during their later years, now do you?

Certainly, the fact that The Simpsons is animated helps it avoid the usual pitfalls that bedevil even the best of TV series as they get older. Animation allows The Simpsons to turn sitcom conventions upside down. The format gives the show's creators license to do things that in a live-action program would seem, well, cartoony. And thanks to animation, Homer Simpson and family always look the same -- they don't age Friends-like before our eyes, becoming tired or wizened or skeletal after a decade on the air.

The Simpsons also gets a boost from some very talented vocal performers. And if you have any doubt as to just how talented, do yourself a favor and tune into the Inside the Actor's Studio episode in which James Lipton bows and scrapes before the people who provide The Simpsons with their voices -- Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer. (When is that episode re-airing, you ask? Why, Saturday, February 22, at 4 p.m. Consider this a bonus "Watch Me," from me to you.) In a sense, those folks have a thankless role -- their entire body of work occurs off-camera so they don't always enjoy the same kudos for creating a living, breathing character that flesh-and-blood actors do. But try to imagine Homer without Castellaneta's distinctive cadence or Marge without Kavner's rasp. You could give the characters different voices, but they certainly wouldn't be the same characters -- and there's a good chance we wouldn't feel as warmly toward the four-fingered, yellow-skinned slobs as we do.

But in the end, if those voices don't have anything interesting to say, there would be nothing to differentiate The Simpsons from The PJs. Or Fish Police. Or any of the dozen or so other animated series that have tried and failed to make a go of it in prime-time during The Simpsons' 14-year-run. At the end of the day, what's kept The Simpsons on course for 300 episodes and counting has been the writing. It's the show's calling card. It's the thing that makes people feel so passionately about The Simpsons, that they'll debate whether or not Season 9 is funnier than Season 11. It's what turns a handful of the episodes listed below into monumental examples of satire, masterpieces of their medium. And it's why a couple of losers watching an Oakland A's game can recall a throw-away bit of dialogue word-for-word from an episode featuring an otherwise forgotten character from a lesser show.

A couple of us Vidiots decided to list our five favorite episodes. When we came up with the idea, four of five Simpsons installments immediately leapt to mind, but just in case I was overlooking something, I decided to peruse the exhaustive and impressively maintained episode guide over at The Simpsons Archive. By the time I was done sorting through the 14 seasons worth of shows, my Top Five list had swelled to 21 -- and those are just the episodes I think are the best ever. If we were to list the ones that I actually liked, the number would spike into the hundreds.

(And even the ones I don't like would probably wind up one someone's list. I mentioned to Gregg Wrenn that I don't particularly care for Stark Raving Dad -- the one where Homer wears a pink shirt to work and gets thrown in an insane asylum with someone claiming to be, and sounding an awful lot like, Michael Jackson. I told Gregg I find the episode to be overly sentimental and a little bit sappy -- he gave me the stinkeye, and I suspect he wouldn't be the only person to do so. Which again proves that even those episodes of Boy Scoutz N the Hood. that we deem, in our Comic Book Guy voices, to be the worst ones ever are still pretty damn entertaining. Oh, also that's there's no accounting for taste, particularly Wrenn's.)

So here's my Top 5 Episodes in descending order, complete with my favorite line from each and tinged with deep regret that I couldn't find room for either "The Day the Violence Died" or "Boy Scoutz N the Hood."

5. "I Love Lisa." As a rule, the Lisa-centric episodes tend to be my least favorites -- they have a sentimentality to them that, to me at least, feels out of place with the overall tone of the series. But this episode avoids all that, thanks to a little boy whose parents won't let him scissors and who has an alarming tendency to glue his head to his shoulder -- the misunderstood genius, Ralph Wiggum. Lisa gives Ralph a valentine out of pity, which our nosebleed-prone hero takes as a sign of undying affection. There's a Krusty anniversary special, a musical tribute to one-term, forgettable presidents and an alarming glimpse at the depths of Police Chief Wiggum's corruption and incompetence. But this episode is Ralph's, from the moment Lisa choo-choo-chooses him to his stirring performance as George Washington in the school's President's Day pageant.

Favorite Line: "You can actually pinpoint the second his heart rips in half."

4. "Cape Feare." I could have picked any one of the episodes where Sideshow Bob returns to avenge himself against Bart -- along with the late, lamented Phil Hartman, Kelsey Grammer turns in the best work of any Simpsons guest star. But I'm going with this one, not because it features McBain's ill-advised attempt to host a late-night talk show, not because of the clear "Cape Fear" shout-outs, not even because Homer is unable to grasp even the rudimentary concepts of witness relocation. I just think every show should feature a medley of hits from "HMS Pinafore" sung by a convicted felon.

Favorite Line: "No one who speaks German could be an evil man."

3. "The Front." As you might well imagine, I'm a sucker for anything that parodies the TV industry. And this episode, where Grandpa becomes a writer for Itchy and Scratchy cartoons, throws a few well-deserved elbows at children's programming, the Emmy awards, and the alarming number of Harvard grads who wind up writing for television. Throw in Homer returning to high school to get his diploma and you've got something every bit as entertaining as the Wedding Episode for Strondar: Master of Vacom.

Favorite Line: "Didn't you wonder why you were getting checks for doing nothing?" "I figured it was because the Democrats were back in power."

2. "Krusty Gets Busted." Along with "Bart the General," this was the episode of The Simpsons that, in my mind, established it as more than just a half-hour extension of those animated bumpers from The Tracey Ullman Show. It's our first prolonged look at Krusty -- really, along with Moe, the best and darkest ancillary characters in the Simpsons universe -- and it features an outstanding use of a Stephen Sondheim lyric to usher in suspects for a police lineup ("All right... send in the clowns."). Plus, we have the first appearance by Sideshow Bob. I mentioned I like his episodes, right?

Favorite Line: "If the crime is making me laugh, they're all guilty!"

1. "Last Exit to Springfield." Brilliant on so many levels, from the absurd (the room in Montgomery Burns' mansion featuring 1,000 monkeys at 1,000 typewriters) to the sly (far too many digs at organized labor to reprint in the confines of these parentheses). You like references to popular culture? Then enjoy this episode's riffs on "Marathon Man," "Batman," "Yellow Submarine" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." And, of course, Grandpa's dissertation on bumblebee nickels and the importance of tying an onion to your belt may well rival the Gettysburg Address, Kennedy's inaugural speech and Bryan's exhortations against a cross of silver as a landmark of American oratory. Or not. But it's still a great episode.

Favorite Line: "If only we'd listened to that boy instead of walling him off in the abandoned coke oven."

--Philip Michaels

Picking only five great Simpsons episodes is the hardest thing I've ever been forced to do here at TeeVee. After all, how do you separate the extraordinary from the merely stupendous? What kind of subjective scalpel must one wield to say that an episode like "She of Little Faith" -- a recent show that featured Lisa converting to Buddhism and Homer launching a hamster into low-Earth orbit -- is merely the sixth best episode ever? Especially considering "She of Little Faith" would be the high-water mark for 99.99% of the sitcoms that have ever aired.

So I used a dart board. Here, in no particular order and whittled down from an initial list of over 25 possibilities, are the five that were selected almost at random.

1. "The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show." The Simpsons is at its best skewering popular media and this self-referential spoof was a brilliant satire that lacerated network television's propensity for churning out series after series of mindless, unoriginal tripe. From the kid focus groups to the humor by committee mindset of network executives, The Simpsons explains better than any Variety article ever could just why TV is so awful so much of the time.

2. "The PTA Disbands." This is my dark horse pick, an episode from season six that never gets mentioned when people talk about all-time greats. Yet The Simpsons lampoons education just as sharply as it does the media, especially this show, which features a Springfield Elementary teachers' strike and normal citizens filling in as substitutes. Barring the crayon-up-his-nose show, this episode may also feature the smartest Homer we've ever seen. When Lisa invents a perpetual motion machine, Homer gets to utter one of his best random lines: "Young lady, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"

3. "A Fish Called Selma." This episode featured Troy McClure's move from secondary character to star as he marries Marge's sister Selma in an effort to revive his flagging career. It continues the grand Simpsons tradition of flogging Hollywood, but even if it hadn't, this show deserves to be in the top five for its stunning off-Broadway interlude, "Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off." The Simpsons has always pulled off incredible musical parodies, but staging a song called "Dr. Zaius" to the tune of Falco's "Amadeus" was perhaps the most inspired moment in the entire history of the series.

4. "Last Exit to Springfield." This episode is on everyone's list, and for damn good reason. Make that dozens of damn good reasons. Take your pick: Burns' bizarre Dr. Seuss riff on the striking plant workers; Kent Brockman's immortal "Tonight on Smartline: The Power Plant Strike: Argle Bargle or Fooforah;" Homer's mistaken belief that Mr. Burns is coming on to him. But for me it all comes down to those 11 simple words from Dr. Wolfe, the evil dentist: "Why must you turn my office into a house of lies?" Unfortunately, that seems to be Boss Snell's motto here at TeeVee headquarters as well.

5. Tie: "Sideshow Bob Roberts" and "A Streetcar Named Marge" OK, so I'm cheating here, but "Streetcar" boasts the one of the best movie parodies in TV history: Maggie leading a baby rebellion at the Ayn Rand School for Tots in a beautifully goofy homage to "The Great Escape." "Sideshow Bob Roberts" is a political episode that finds Sideshow Bob sprung from prison and running for mayor of Springfield. Most people pick "Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish," the episode where Burns runs for governor, as The Simpsons' best political satire. It might well be, but "Sideshow" deserves a mention too for it's use of Sideshow Bob, Mayor Quimby and the introduction of a Rush Limbaugh clone, Birch Barlow. Bob gets to deliver the best line when he threatens Bart and Lisa: "No children have ever meddled with the Republican party and lived to tell about it."

--Gregg Wrenn

The thing that amazes me is that my favorite episode was produced back-to-back with "Simpson Safari," my least-favorite episode. Inflammable means flammable? What a country!

1. "Trilogy of Error." I'm a sucker for wacky narrative devices, and this one's got the wackiest in Simpsons history. Telling a story three different ways from three different perspectives, this episode features Linguo the ill-fated grammar robot, Bart's attempt to entrap Fat Tony, a police call to 123 Fake Street, and an important vocabulary lesson for Dr. Nick Riviera. It's 120 minutes of material in a 30-minute capsule, and there's no better episode.

2. "Marge vs. The Monorail." The Music Man-inspired song sequence is probably the series' high point, both musically and satirically. But there's more, including a Leonard Nimoy cameo and a deus ex donut. Is there anything those sweet pastries can't do?

3. "Treehouse of Horror V." One of the most clever recurring events in "The Simpsons" is the outside-of-continuity episode, whether it's horrific Halloween horror stories, Tall Tales, Bible Stories, or tales of mythology. The best entry in the lot is this one, featuring a parody of The Shining, a tumultuous time-travel tale where Homer learns how dangerous changing even one event in the past can be -- it's raining donuts! -- and a horrible visit to the Springfield Elementary cafeteria featuring a lunch made out of students.

4. "22 Short Films About Springfield." I'm actually not a big fan of "Pulp Fiction," which is parodied in this episode, but I love the scattershot collection of odd short stories told largely through one of "The Simpsons'" greatest strengths, its incredibly deep cast of supporting characters. Too bad we didn't get to see more of The Misadventures of Professor Frink, though -- someday that monkey is going to pay.

5. "You Only Move Twice." The Simpsons leave Springfield and move to a beautiful community. Marge begins to drink. Lisa has an allergy attack. But that's beside the point -- Homer is working for a James Bond villain (voiced by Albert Brooks), and the collection of Bond references and other bizarre nonsequiturs makes this one a classic.

--Jason Snell

These aren't really in any order. And I don't guarantee that I'd make the same list tomorrow, or even later today. My problem is that I've seen too much Simpsons. I quote it as part of my everyday conversation; it's part of the background of my life. So it's hard to think of which episodes I like best. So I just went through an episode guide and grabbed five that stand out in my mind. Honorable mention to "The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show" for that stuff about "attitude" and "paradigm".

1. "A Streetcar Named Marge." For my money, the best episode has to have both a great plot and a great subplot. And this episode's B plot, with the Ayn Rand School for Tots ("A is A") and Maggie's Stalag 17 breakout, has so many parodies per minute that it could stand on its own as the main plot. But the A plot is even better, with Marge playing Blanche to Ned Flanders's Stanley. The musical is characteristic of Simpsons parodies, with valuable screen time being taken out just so everyone can marvel at Apu's lovely singing voice. Plus, this episode features Jon Lovitz in two roles, surprising everyone with his versatility as he plays both Llewellyn Sinclair and his sister.

2. "Itchy & Scratchy Land." "The violentest place on earth." "Look at this bible I just got -- fifteen bucks! And talk about a preachy book: everybody's a sinner! Except for this guy." "Where nothing can possiblie go wrong. Possibly go wrong. That's the first thing that's ever go wrong." "Searing gas pain land?" "I repeat, we are sold out of 'Bort' license plates." "When you get to hell, tell 'em Itchy sent you." "Smashy smashy!"

3. "And Maggie Makes Three." I normally don't care for the Simpsons episodes that go for sentiment, because I think a lot of the time, that comes at the cost of the comedy. "Lisa's Substitute" just bores and irritates me. But the end of "And Maggie Makes Three," when it's revealed that Homer's used pictures of Maggie have been used to turn "Don't forget: you're here forever" into "Do it for her" -- that always makes me tear up. Plus, it's got Homer firing a shotgun and yelling "Bowling! Get yer bowling!"

4. "22 Short Films About Springfield." Plot? Who needs plot? I mean, when you can spend a whole episode wallowing in tertiary characters like Bumblebee Man, Dr. Nick, and Nelson. This episode's commitment to the supporting cast is such that Cletus and Professor Frink both get their own theme songs. And so does the Principal Skinner-Superintendent Chalmers relationship. Now that's obscure!

5. "Homer at the Bat." All I'm saying is that, as far as celebrity cameo episodes go, this one is my favorite. And if you're at a baseball game, you can quote pretty much any line, including the "Talkin' Softball" end-credits theme.

--Monty Ashley

Additional contributions to this article by: Philip Michaels, Jason Snell, Monty Ashley, Gregg Wrenn.

A sanitized version of HBO's Sex and the City has been turned down by three out of the four broadcast networks -- CBS is still sleeping on it, maybe.

I can see why HBO might want to sell the repeats to a network -- money is good -- but at the same time I don't understand it. Why would HBO lower itself to running its shows on a broadcast network? That's like publishing a Reader's Digest version of Allen Ginsburg's "Howl". Even if it's something you can do, and even if more people will be able to read and understand it in that form, is it something you should do? What will anyone gain by this?

Back in the olden times when HBO sold repeats of Dream On to Comedy Central, we weren't talking about seminal television, we were talking about HBO leveraging its synergy and Comedy Central trying to fill up its vast, empty schedule with something, anything, besides obscure Buck Henry movies and brick-wall comedians. We were also talking about a tepid sitcom, the only interesting part of which was the nudity; once edited, Dream On's tepid dropped to stagnant.

But these days HBO is a creative powerhouse, striding across the landscapes of both television and film -- often buying films which can't find theatrical distribution, funding unpopular documentaries, and producing some of the best TV shows ever seen on TV. And HBO's twin flagships are The Sopranos and Sex and the City. These are TV shows which often make the term "TV show" look like a pejorative, like we need to invent a new name for something this good, maybe "serial dramatic recording."

Who would win by convincing a network to run bowdlerized episodes of Sex and the City? The network? Who would tune in to watch these shows? Anyone who wants to see them that badly has already subscribed to HBO, except maybe for a handful of poverty-stricken dirt farmers who still use their old rabbit ears -- and isn't that a coveted demographic! HBO? Aside from getting a quick infusion of cash -- and how far would $3 million an episode really go in today's economy anyway? -- all they'd manage to do is tarnish a bright and shining reputation at the forefront of television. Networks are trying to be HBO (has anyone seen Kingpin?). HBO doesn't need to be on a network. The viewers? Yeah, I always like to tune in to edited, mangled crap with added commercials instead of the original. I do my best to hold off on seeing any movies until they show up on ABC, all right.

The only rational reason I can come up with for HBO's pitch to the networks is that the HBO marketroids don't have any contact at all with the HBO creative people. That makes sense: If HBO were programming based on what marketing people think is good, HBO'd be... NBC.

I think maybe my kids are watching too much TV. Just the other day we were all driving in the minivan and William was counting the dollar bills he's managed to collect and asking about buying a Buzz Lightyear DVD. He didn't have enough, but my wife has been thinking of starting the kids on something of an allowance, to get them to clean up their toys and also to have their own money pool for buying things like DVDs and more toys they can leave around the living room.

So my wife asked, "You know how you can make more money, William?"

And my daughter jumped in: "Train at home!"

I'm not much of a basketball fan, but what I was a little bit disturbed by what I saw of TNT's NBA all-star game coverage -- particularly the halftime show.

The NBA set aside halftime of the All-Star Game to pay tribute to Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest basketball player not named "Magic Johnson," "Bill Russell" or "Larry Bird." Jordan is retiring this year -- this time he means it! -- after a memorable and distinguished career, so the NBA saw fit to pay tribute to his greatness and how it's distracted most fans from how predictable and dull pro basketball has become. And that's fine.

Myself, I wouldn't have picked Mariah Carey to perform at halftime, but that's just me. She did a solid enough job, though I found her decision to sing a number of hymns incorporating the name "Jordan" -- "When the Jordans Go Marching In," "Prepare Ye the Way of Jordan," "Lamb of Jordan," and perhaps most curiously, "Hark, the Wizard Jordan Dunks" -- to be a bit inappropriate. However, the oddness of Carey's musical choices was immediately forgotten when NBA Commissioner David Stern appeared on the court to unveil a giant golden bust of Michael Jordan. I guess that's a fairly benign retirement gift for such a wonderful basketball player, but that still doesn't explain why, after unveiling the graven image, Stern said, "Behold, the greatest of all gods, before whom all other deities tremble."

That clearly made some of the other players uncomfortable, as did Stern's command for them to "bow down and pay homage to our great and fearful master." Stern threatened those who didn't bow down with fines, and those who still refused were tackled at the knees and held to the ground. I'm pretty sure the players' union will lodge some sort of formal objection to that.

The halftime ceremony seemed to drag on a bit when Stern paraded 73 virgins in front of Jordan, who then spent a considerable amount of time weighing their worthiness before deciding whether they were acceptable or not. Really -- that seems like the sort of thing that could have waited until after the game.

Come to think of it, Stern's decree that all of the shots Jordan missed during the first half would be considered legal baskets seemed a bit generous, even for an exhibition game, as did the announcement that subsequent Jordan baskets would count for five points apiece. I suppose Stern's most outrageous rule change was the one that stipulated any player guarding Jordan would be taken out and stoned -- Allen Iverson, who apparently thought that word meant something else entirely, seemed quite surprised when he was dragged from the arena. Hopefully, someone sent something nice to his widow.

The halftime ceremony for Jordan seemed to change the entire tenor of the game. Take, for example, the incident late in the fourth quarter when analyst Mike Fratello suggested a younger player like Orlando's Tracy McGrady take the final shot instead of Jordan. His broadcast partner, Marv Albert, was heard to scream, "Blaspheming infidel!" which struck me as rather unprofessional, though Albert's subsequent decision to put Fratello to the sword seemed beyond his regular play-by-play duties.

All in all, it was just a strange evening. But like I said at the beginning, I don't really know a Jordandamned thing about basketball.

Just some TV things I've been thinking about:

Malcolm in the Middle has been ticking along nicely and now they've managed to pull out the hoary old Our Show's in the Crapper, Let's Get a Baby in Here thing -- and it doesn't suck. It's amazing. Malcolm never reaches true greatness but it has yet to collapse, either -- it's like Wings, only not on the Dark Side.

I've caught a minute here and there of Cheers. Man, that show got mighty lame, didn't it? The best thing that happened was I discovered the alternate audio track, which claimed to be in Spanish, but which was actually just the same show minus the dialog track -- including background noise, sound effects, and the laugh track. The background noise was most interesting: How did they get that? Where does one get a half hour of undifferentiated bar noise? And does that mean that all those background actors were making no noise at all? Doesn't that sound like the hardest job of all time?

Six Feet Under is returning in March. My life is complete.

Even when it's not on, Boomtown is the best show on television.

I've been thinking of reviewing the Law & Order first season DVD set. That's like TV, isn't it? By the way, it rocks.

The most recent L&O: SUV featured a cameo by a restaurant I was in just a couple of weeks ago. I met the painter who did the mural which you can just see over the distraught mother's shoulder for dinner.

The phrase Jump the Shark was actually kind of clever the first hundred times it was used. But these days, it's become so popular that it makes me ill. Every Comic Book Guy in the land can now alternate the declaration that this was the worst episode ever with a snide comment about how such-and-such a series jumped the shark a long time ago.

But now is not the time to tear apart the followers of the shark. After all, I am on the record myself as believing in the life cycle of a TV series, and that's really what this whole shark-jumping phenomenon is all about.

Instead, this is the time for us to talk about the rare showrunner who has done the unthinkable: wrestle with the proverbial shark, swallow his pride, toss out all the elements of his show's premise that were unsalvagable, and haul his show back into relevance out of sheer force of will: The showrunner is J.J. Abrams, and the show is Alias.

When it debuted last fall, Alias was a breath of fresh air. A fun, action-packed, cliffhanger-filled action-spy-fantasy-drama-comedy-thingy, Alias was James Bond and Buffy mixed together. But as the first few episodes unfolded, it became clear that the premise just wasn't going to last. Even in a show that demanded not only that you suspend your disbelief, but take it out back, toss it in a shallow grave, and bury it, it stretched credulity to its limits.

For starters, the show was about a family of double agents. Double agents are a great source of spy-story tension; they're always one false move away from being exposed and executed. They're conflicted as they have to lead a double life, lying to so-called friends who they're actually working against. But there's a reason that there are more spy movies than TV shows -- after all, how can you keep up the charade indefinitely? At some point, even the most incompetent of spymasters has to realize that this particular set of agents never quite brings home the goods. And even the most competent of scriptwriters has to realize that the almost-found-out plot line gets old fast.

But Abrams' premise problems didn't end there. In putting the show's flashy pilot together, he had sown the seeds of his destruction in numerous ways. The show's protagonist, Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner), had a pair of essentially superfluous friends who lived outside of the spy drama and had very little to do except get in her way. Sydney also had a third life, beyond her agent and counter-agent lives, as a graduate student.

Worse yet, Sydney was falling into a Moonlighting-esque romance with her CIA handler, Michael Vaughn (Michael Vartan). The doomed workplace relationship, the star-crossed lovers... a nice plot if you can resolve it, but not one you can legitimately string along ad infinitum.

Now, most show-runners have a lot of ego invested in their series. Most of them are the shows' creators, or at the very least must take great responsibility for shepherding the show onto the air. And therein lies the root cause of many failed television series: a producer who loves his show too much to see its flaws and fix them. Or worse, a producer who understands his show's flaws but is too petrified that making changes will make matters worse, and who therefore is resigned to watch his show go down in flames, Viking-funeral style.

You can probably name your own shows who fit those categories. Let's take Ed, a former TeeVee favorite that's been summarily removed from most of our TiVo Season Passes. The show's producers, Rob Burnett and Jon Beckerman, showed great flexibility in drastically altering the show's premise, format, and pilot in order to get it on the air. Half-hour sitcom not working for you? Let's make it an hour-long dramedy. Ed running a bowling alley doesn't allow for enough plot points? Let's make him a lawyer. Anyone who remembers watching the first episode of Ed realizes how far those guys went to get the show on the air -- that show probably marks the first time in TV history that a series premiere began with a synopsis of the show's (nonexistent) previous episodes. All because the original pilot had been cut to ribbons before the series made it on the air.

But although surgery got Ed on the air, its premise wasn't built to last. The built-up romantic tension between Ed and his high-school crush, Carol? It originally seemed to look like a story arc, what with her breaking up with her longtime boyfriend and eventual gravitation toward a relationship with Ed. But rather than chart the arc of a normal, human relationship -- get together, go out for a while, move in together, get married, have kids -- the show plotted a more static course, playing the will-they-or-won't-they game, tossing in separate love affairs to keep them apart, the whole Dave and Maddie disease. Fortune favors the bold, boys. And these days, few viewers favor Ed.

Star Trek: Voyager started with a lame Gilligan's Island-in-space premise, of a ship shot to the far reaches of the galaxy. I understand the underlying point of the premise: it was meant to get Star Trek out of its rut by forcing the show's writers to eschew the Federation politics and retread alien villains that had made Trek to sterile. But fast-forward a couple of years, and the show had created its own, new retread-style villains, as well as using ridiculous plot devices to circumvent the rules of the show and drop in Klingons, Romulans, Borg, you name it.

So did the show's producers have the guts to admit their mistake, bring the Voyager crew home, and try to spin the show in a different direction? No, but they did bring on a blonde in a leather body suit, so there's something.

Yes, TV series do sometimes change in midstream. But it's usually done by casting -- either by firing a supporting character who isn't working out or being forced to replace an actor who has quit or died.

Which makes the boldness of J.J. Abrams' move on Alias all the more breathtaking. Abrams, in one single episode of the show (the one that that aired long, long after the Super Bowl was over -- and now one more song from Bon Jovi, plus Penn and Teller!) took his entire series premise apart without losing a single character from his cast.

A quick tally of some of Abrams' moves this season: The double-agent storyline is gutted; now our heroes work only for the CIA, not for the evil SD-6. Sydney and her forbidden love Vaughn are together. Sydney's useless friend Will now works for the CIA. Sydney's other useless friend Francie has been shot through the head and replaced by an evil twin, which is slightly less ridiculous than it sounds. Sydney's old boss, whom she hated but had to feign loyalty to, is now the show's ubervillain, and Sydney's contempt for him is out in the open. Sydney's former co-workers have now joined her at the CIA, working for the good guys. And that graduate school storyline? Sydney got her degree -- off-camera, of course.

Of course, the Alias fans are up in arms, because people always fear change. Some of the show's die-hard fans were freaking out even before the show had aired a single post-reboot episode, just based on their shock over the change in premise. People are strange and fans are stranger, but you've got to shake your head and wonder how someone could be so passionate about a person's work and yet so distrusting about the same person's judgment.

Of course, change is scary. It's scary for TV producers even more than it is for the fans of their TV shows. But wouldn't we be better off if more producers made the bold decision to pull over to the side of the road, pop the hood, and put out the fire before their show ended up as a careening pile of flaming wreckage on the Hollywood freeway?

J.J. Abrams would tell you we would. And he'd be right.

Just got through watching the Michael Jackson interview on ABC, and while it's obvious that he's pretty seriously deranged and he's an utterly horrible father, I no longer believe him to be a child molester. Mostly he just came off as pititable. Nonetheless, I have no doubt that the media frenzy over the next couple of days will focus exclusively on the molestation angle.

"What's that your wife said?"

"She said there ought to be a 24-hour home improvement channel."

"You mean there isn't?"

"Apparently turning your garage into a sitting room doesn't count."

"How does turning your garage into a sitting room not count as home improvement?"

"Not enough power tools."

"There are no power tools involved in turning your garage into a sitting room?"

"It's all frilly stuff. Decoration."

"Well, I just TiVoed this show, Ground Force...."

"You're not watching it for that chick's nipples, are you?"

"Oh God, I'm in love. I mean, there she is -- listen, TiVo had an ad for Ground Force in New York, this special where the Ground Force team comes to New York City to make a garden out of an empty lot between two buildings. It looked really interesting so I TiVoed the show, and there's this woman, this British chick, and at first I didn't think she was all that pretty; but then I see her get off the plane and start going around Manhattan braless, and I'm in love. She's a stocky strawberry blonde bouncing around, and to watch her shovel construction debris or haul a wheelbarrow -- I'm head over heels.

"The rest of the show is pretty good, too. It seems the premise of the show is the Ground Force team -- Alan Titchmarsh, the leader; Tommy Walsh, construction guy; Charlie Dimmock, braless Wonder Woman; and Will Shanahan -- attack a small piece of dirt and rubble and turn it into a lovely garden in a ridiculously short amount of time. Alan and Tommy snipe at one another as the problems mount. Sample exchange: Tommy comes to give Alan some bad news. 'I don't want to interrupt you...' 'Then go away,' replies Alan. Will stoically does the heavy work. Tommy complains while building things and inventing solutions to realize Alan's vision, apparently out of thin air. Charlie -- well, she is Charlie. She does everything the men do only she's a goddess.

"For their New York episode, the team descend upon a near-empty lot in Manhattan during one of the hottest summers on record and, in three days, turn it into a garden, with a paved walkway, raised flower and herb gardens, and a pergola. Aided by Bill Clinton's AmeriCorps volunteers (someone's got to keep college kids busy during their vacations) and a handful of people from the New York Restoration Project, they clear the lot, pour concrete, repair and paint the casita already on the lot, plant trees and grass, and hobnob with the locals, including an ancient Latino who built the casita originally.

"I don't know what I enjoyed most. No, that's not true: The best part is watching Charlie work, her assets gleefully unrestrained as she carts concrete, heaves bricks, throws her hair back to wipe sweat from her forehead -- oh lusty British Amazon!

"Besides Charlie, though, I don't know what I enjoyed most. Was it the nasty banter between Alan and Tommy? Was it watching these Britishers marvel at my native city's climate (it gets a lot hotter here in the summer and by the end of the episode poor Alan looked like he'd fallen in a swimming pool of perspiration) and cuisine (Tommy makes a lunch run for pastrami)? Was it seeing the cast interact with the locals, particularly their concrete guy, a typically colorful union guy from Brooklyn? (As Alan observes, quick-set concrete is wonderful, provided you get it out of the lorry before it sets.)

"Are you at your computer? You can check out more information at the BBC's Ground Force Web site. I can see from the site that Alan Titchmarsh has moved on from the show, leaving Tommy and Charlie in charge. I can also see that I am not alone, as the Web site declares of Charlie that she is 'famed for her lack of supportive underwear.' No doubt!

"So that's Ground Force. Very cool show."

"Dude, you download that piercing AVI I sent you the URL for?"

"Nope. I'm just going to stay here and watch Ground Force again."

You know when you know your sport is irrelevant? When your all-star game, your all-star game, barely beats the broadcast of an Arena Football game by a tenth of a ratings point. Hockey can barely do better than Arena Football. If I'm running the National Hockey League, I've gotta be feeling a little depressed. Arena Football is kicking my ass. That's just gotta hurt.

You've gotta give the prez credit -- he sure does have a way of explaining things. "I plan to make it my goal that a child born today, when he's getting laid for the first time, is getting laid in a car powered by hydrogen fuel. It's not only good for the environment. It's good for the national interest."

A dust storm howls in an arid churchyard. A dog -- looking suspiciously like Tom Hanks' costar in "Turner and Hooch"-- barks menacingly as two construction workers use a crane to haul a coffin up out of the ground. The wind rattles the coffin. It splinters and falls. One worker is knocked to the ground, impaling his hand on a nail. (Ooh, symbolism!) And staring back at him from the splintered coffin is the pale, zombieish, perfectly preserved face of a dead nun.

Eesh.

That's the first 30 seconds or so of Miracles, ABC's new Monday night drama in which Skeet Ulrich investigates creepy religious phenomena while (presumably) remaining celibate. At least until sweeps, I'm guessing. Backed by "The Sixth Sense" producers Spyglass and Touchstone, it's a blatant attempt to bring the distinctively chilly style of M. Night Shymalan to television. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

My inner cynic urges me to ream Disney for their lack of originality, but honestly, there are many, many worse people to imitate than Shyamalan. He has a sure grasp of human drama, a Hitchcockian way with silence and ambient sound, and a knack for mixing the terrifying with the utterly ordinary. All of which the folks behind Miracles' pilot episode seem to have taken to heart.

The cinematography -- sun-bleached and grainy -- adds considerably to the series' apocalyptic air. Camera angles and shot placement in the pilot were impressively sophisticated, blurry and stylish enough to create atmosphere without ever leaving you wondering who forgot to clean the lens.

Miracles also gives you the creeps because it's so quiet. In the echoes of the characters' footsteps, in the patter of rain or the constant chug of train wheels, there's an ominous certainty that something really, really bad is going to happen. The infrequent background music consists mostly of discordant, shivering violins. Not exactly the most comforting sound in the world.

And when the supernatural does intrude, it's employed with admirable restraint. Okay, maybe the rain-of-blood dream sequence midway through the pilot isn't a pinnacle of subtlety. But the startling train-crash sequence toward the end, or the sight of blood forming the words "GOD IS NOW HERE" in a cracked windshield definitely raise the goosebump factor beyond that of your average Monday night viewing. (Unless the sight of The Practice's precipitous decline fills you with mortal terror. Which it might.) Miracles gets as much shivery mileage out of split-second glimpses of a some kind of demonic face as The X-Files wrung from entire episodes' worth of mutants and flukemen.

Miracles also employs the less-is-more approach to characterization, and it works. Ulrich doesn't exactly set the screen on fire as investigator Paul Callan, but he's not quite sleepwalking either. The pilot's winsome blind woman, with her milky-white eyes, gets a few nice little character moments. And, while it can't be an M. Night Shymalan swipe without a cute but troubled child, the terminally ill healer-boy featured in the first episode does admirably with only a few lines. His refrain of "I hope you feel better soon" is heebie-jeebie-inducing, but also surprisingly poignant.

In the weeks to come -- that is, in the few remaining weeks before low ratings inevitably lead to its cancellation and replacement with Celebrity Bachelor Mole Millionaire Factor -- I'll be curious to see if Miracles spent all its style in its first episode (as the late, not entirely lamented Haunted did.) Top-notch Angel producer David Greenwalt's involvement leads me to believe it hasn't. But in an age when TV executives openly admit that they don't want intelligent people watching their shows, Miracles' conspicuous lack of scantily clad lesbians and exploding motorcycles suggests that it may need some divine intervention of its own.

So, tonight, for our nation: Death in the family. Once again, the horror unfolding before our eyes. But the fire this time came not from the quest for revenge from the point of a gun or a bomb, but from the quest for knowledge: the point of knowing what's out there, and what we can do there in space.

Instead of an omen, even as we take our first tetherless walks in space, we did it then, and they did it that day, because humans want to see and to hear, need to see and to hear and to feel. To be there.

Seven searchers died that day, doing what astronauts do. Doing what a good teacher does. Expanding the realm of the known. Pushing the edge of the envelope.

...Full out, full throttle -- reaching for the sky.

--Dan Rather, January 28, 1986

For twelve years, from 1986 to 1998, January 28th was the day the Challenger blew up. I remember exactly where I was, exactly what I was doing when I heard, and I thought that nothing would ever replace that memory. January 28th, for the rest of my life, would always be about one thing and one thing only: the day that seven astronauts died in a great, white plume out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Then, in 1999, January 28th became the day my first child was born. It didn't make the memory of the Challenger go away, but it subdued it somehow, muted it; made it -- the day -- part of a larger picture, part of the layers of memory that make up a life. January 28th is now my son Tom's birthday, and, dimmer, a tragedy from long ago.

Tom's fourth birthday party was today, and our backyard was filled with children who didn't have any idea that another seven astronauts had just died, in a craft that fell to pieces 200,000 feet over Texas. They laughed and played games and ate cake and -- I hope -- it will be that memory that I take with me this time. The destruction of Columbia is there too, of course, but dimmer, further away.

I truly believe that the most important thing we can do, as a species, is make our way into space. I also think that the most important thing we can do, as individuals, as parents, is make our children happy, make sure they are healthy and safe and loved.

One of those goals suffered a devastating setback this morning, a loss for seven families, the space program, the country, humanity. The other goal, though, took a tiny step forward. I choose to remember, or try to remember, the last as the more significant.

Because the real legacy that heroes like the crew of the Columbia leave behind, the real lesson they teach, is that determination trumps failure, and hope trumps despair, and joy trumps sorrow. Seven brave men and women died today, high up in the atmosphere, furthering the bounds of human knowledge. They died building a future that Tom and his brothers will live in. They died making the world a better place for my children, making the world a better place for all of us.

And I can think of no better way to commemorate their sacrifice than by remembering this day the way they would have wanted it to be: filled with laughter and games and cake, filled with determination and hope and joy, filled with the future they were helping create.

--Greg Knauss

The beautiful speech Ben refers to on the Claremont.org weblog was written by Peggy Noonan, who once again writes beautifully about a shuttle tragedy.

--Dave Burkhart

Ben Boychuk on Claremont.org's weblog:

My dad called with the news this morning. "Have you heard about Columbia?" he asked. [More...]

--Ben Boychuk

Mr. Onizuka

When I was fourteen years old I was determined to be an astronaut. At first it was a dream fueled equally by Star Wars and a desire to be very far from home when I grew up.

But then I met Ed Onizuka, a real-life NASA astronaut, engineer, and Air Force pilot. He spoke to students at a local school, signed some photos, shook some hands, and did a couple events in town. I made my mother drive me and a friend to each point on Mr. Onizuka's itinerary. He brought unearthly items with him—heat protection tiles from the space shuttle, the fishbowl inner helmet from a space suit—and spoke of his work with a quiet enthusiasm which was absolutely riveting. At his third event for the day, he recognized me as I came to the head of the line to shake his hand once again. I immediately started to blurt a much-considered technical question, wanting desperately to impress this astronaut, but he smiled and held up his hand to stop me. "Tell you what," he said, pushing his pen across the table to me. "This time, you write down your name and address, and we'll get all your questions answered."

A few weeks later, a large packet of material about the space shuttle program arrived, with a brief note from Mr. Onizuka. "This should help get you started." I devoured everything, covered my walls with pictures and technical diagrams of the space shuttle, and filled out every reply card for more information. A few months later, Mr. Onizuka flew in the space shuttle Discovery -- it was a Department of Defense mission, but I tried to follow every detail. I redoubled my efforts in math and science classes, and, the next summer, I wrote Mr. Onizuka care of NASA, thanking him and asking a myriad of questions about zero-G and astronaut training. Within a few weeks I received another reply, answering each question, and including a uniform patch for STS-51L, his next shuttle flight.

That January, Mr. Onizuka died in the Challenger explosion. Yes, I remember exactly where I was when I first heard of the disaster.

I did not become an astronaut, but I still follow the details of shuttle flights, and I regularly abuse the privilege of knowing a few people who work for NASA and JPL by peppering them with questions. I've been known to watch NASA TV for hours while an orbiter is in flight.

This morning, waking to television images of contrails racing across a clear Texas sky, all I can think about is the friends and families of the crew of the space shuttle Columbia. And Mr. Onizuka.

--Geoff Duncan