June 2003 Archives

A few years ago, my wife and I were delighted to discover a series of travelogues by Monty Python's Michael Palin on PBS. Unlike your usual (dull) travel show, these series were equal parts funny and bizarre, as Palin attempted to circumnavigate the Earth using only surface travel in Around the World in 80 Days, and do likewise from north to south pole in Pole to Pole, and even go 'round the pacific rim in Full Circle.

Expertly shot by a BBC crew that keeps itself out of the way so well that it's hard to believe you aren't there alone with Palin, just the two of you, these shows make for high drama and higher adventure. Best are the parts in out-of-the-way parts of the world that aren't covered much in the media, such as central Africa, the Arabian peninsula, southeast Asia, and the Andes.

The good news is, Bravo TV has brought back all of Palin's old classics (as well as a new one, Sahara), in a new package called Michael Palin's Travels, airing on weekends beginning this month. These are remarkable non-fiction programs that play like a wild work of fiction, and I can't recommend them highly enough.

Perhaps I've been watching too much Ed, or anyway was watching too much Ed before the season ended, but I've picked up this interesting habit from Tom Cavanagh's wonderful yet irritating everyman: Whenever I'm thinking, and there's one available, I fidget with a baseball bat.

Now I don't live in a very athletic household so I don't get a lot of chances to play with baseball equipment. But sometimes there is a bat around and I find myself swinging it and practicing that funny Mark McGwire grip where he curls his pinky around the bottom of the bat. It helps me think, it gives me something to do while I'm thinking, and it looks cool. Well, no, it doesn't look cool, I look like an idiot holding a bat, since I've got about a hundred pounds on Babe Ruth. I look more like John Goodman as Babe Ruth.

One day Dawn and I were out driving and there was a bat in the front seat. I started playing with it (not swinging it -- we were in a moving vehicle after all). Trying different grips, tapping it on my shoulder, weighing it in my palm.

"Can I tell you something?" my lovely wife asked. "It's really sexy to see you holding that bat."

Another man might have been excited or flattered by this. But then another man might not have been holding his six-year-old son's teeball bat. She might as well have said to me, "It's sexy to see you toying with your undersized manhood."

Now when I hold a bat I find myself twisting it in my grip, giving it the mother of all Indian rope burns.

A couple of weeks ago, as a perk of my job, I got to go on a cruise around the Hawaiian islands. Aboard the ship was a computer-related conference that my company sponsored, and I was presenting three different sessions to the conference attendees. Pretty nice, huh? But -- and I swear this is TV-related -- also aboard the ship was another group, one perhaps even geekier than the computer crowd.

Yes, there was a floating "Star Trek" convention aboard the same ship.

Now let me say that in the entire time I was aboard, I saw not one person dressed in official Starfleet uniforms, nor did I see any Klingons. (Which is probably wise, since anyone wearing Klingon gear would have quickly expired in the tropical heat.) I have to admit, I was a bit surprised -- I haven't been to a sci-fi convention since I was in high school, but my memories of the last one I attended included plenty of people wearing pointed ears and long Doctor Who scarves.

I hope the people who came to my sessions learned some things during our weeklong junket, because I sure know that I did. Among the things I learned is that "Star Trek" guest actors are not as glamorous as they look on television, but are really approachable and polite. A woman notable for playing a space floozy with a heart of gold on "Star Trek" was very sweet with my daughter at the pre-cruise luau. A character actor who has played almost every race, both human and alien, over the years complimented my daughter as well. Okay, let's admit it -- most of the interaction that went on between the Snell family and "Star Trek" celebrities came courtesy of my daughter. Cute toddlers have this effect. And yes, one day I can tell my daughter that she once met "Q" himself. Which she will roll her eyes at in the universal body language equivalent of, "Dad, you're so lame."

I also learned that eating coconut can give Mister Sulu the bad tummy music, but fortunately I learned that second-hand. (An aside about George Takei, "Star Trek's" Sulu: He's been doing this for almost as long as I've been alive, and he's a pro at it. When they introduced him at the luau, not only did he stand up and give everyone the Sulu Smile, but he performed the freakin' Vulcan hand sign. That's above and beyond the call.)

But of all the Trek people I interacted with, the one who impressed me the most was Wil Wheaton, famed for playing Wesley Crusher on TV's Star Trek: The Next Generation. Wheaton was a double-booked guest, appearing both at the technology conference (he's got a weblog) and in the Trek events.

First off, let me say that Wil Wheaton is a talented public speaker and a pretty good writer and weblogger as well. His recounting of his tumultuous first meeting with "William fucking Shatner" (Wheaton's phrase) is one of the funniest TV-related stories I've ever heard. (It's available in book form.)

But the thing that impressed me the most about Wheaton was his generosity with the people who came up to him on the cruise, either out on deck or in one of the sessions. The business I'm in is one with its own share of hard-core fans, and I have to admit that from time to time it gets hard to stay friendly and polite when people keep coming up to you and asking you the same questions. I try really hard to do that, but Wil Wheaton puts me to shame. Every "Star Trek" fan that came up to him, he put immediately at ease. It was amazing to watch. Everything they would tell him, he would listen with interest and give a kind response to. Now, granted, Wil Wheaton is an actor, but whether he's interacting these people out of genuine interest or sheer politeness, either way it was an astounding thing to watch.

It's okay if you don't like Wesley Crusher. (It's not easy being the somewhat misguidedly-conceived kid's wish-fulfillment character on a sci-fi TV series.) It's fine if you don't care about "Star Trek." (I'm a mostly relapsed Trek fan myself.)

But I've decided that I really like Wil Wheaton. Not just because I got to see that he's a real person, roughly my age and with a lot of my same interests. But because I saw how he was at handling the attention, the adoration, the weird and the wacky that comes with being a known "Star Trek" actor. He could easily have been a grade-A dick of the Shatner variety. But instead, he was a kind, decent human being.

No wonder Wil Wheaton doesn't work in TV much anymore...

We've established that I'm enough of a sucker to pony up for the premium cable package, and since I'm on digital cable, that also means I get a staggering number of channels. I get approximately six different sports channels -- something I can appreciate since I think it's the solemn duty of any sports monolith to air something like the national cheerleading and dancing championships at all times, and having lots of sports channels lets the monolith fulfill this noble cause -- and intriguing Asian-language channels, and roughly twenty different iterations of the Starz Channel, which seems to be peculiarly devoted to reminding us of Alicia Witt's film career with its near-constant airings of Bongwater and Mona Lisa Smile.

Despite this bounty of riches, despite the fact that it takes me ten minutes to surf the dial even if I'm just clicking on the remote and droning, "Nope, no, seen it, hate that, no, no, no, no, never!" -- despite a cable cornucopia stuffed with channels, I am lacking one which I desperately crave. I am lacking Trio.

And I want it. Oh, how I want Trio. I want a channel devoted to "pop, culture, television." I want to watch its failed pilots, its documentaries on bad humor, its offerings that seem exquisitely tailored to my viewing tastes. I yearn to TiVo Trio all the livelong day. Well, I yearn to TiVo anything, but I believe the spouse already covered that obstacle to my happiness. This time, I'm whining about a new obstacle: Comcast's obdurate refusal to dump TBS, TNN or some other mediocre channel to give me Trio. I crave this channel, yearn for it worse than I do for VH-1 Classic, which I had previously believed would be the key to my permanent residence on the couch.

I was wrong: I do want VH-1 Classic because I live in hope of seeing Duran Duran videos back before the boys got kind of old and creepy-looking, but I want Trio more.

O, cable gods! Why hast thou left me with three channels that are airing Reign of Fire? Why?

So I just deleted Coupling and The Office off my Tivo Season Pass list, because I didn't like either of them.

This, as with many things I do, raises the question of what the heck is wrong with me. Everyone loves Coupling! Except me, because I just sit there watching the show wondering where the funny part is. I stuck with it for three or four episodes, at least until I was able to tell one character from another, but I was never able to tell why any of the characters hung out with each other. In the pilot, half of the characters had never met each other, but I think they were all buddies in the second episode. Or something.

It's hard to tell, because they were too busy trying to coin naughty phrases. Just because Seinfeld invented phrases that entered the cultural lexicon (that's how they talk in Entertainment Weekly!) doesn't mean that every show has to try it, does it? Because the format always looks like this:

WACKY CHARACTER: "What about [NEW PHRASE]?"
NORMAL CHARACTER: "[NEW PHRASE?]"
WACKY CHARACTER: "Yeah, [NEW PHRASE]."
OTHER CHARACTER: "You guys talking about [NEW PHRASE]?"
WACKY CHARACTER: "Yeah, but he's never heard of [NEW PHRASE]" OTHER CHARACTER: "You've never heard of [NEW PHRASE]?"
ME: "I wonder what else is on."

It does not matter if the phrase is "the sock gap" or "the zone" or "the giggle loop" or whatever; by the time the characters get around to telling me about the joke, I've lost interest.

It might also have something to do with the fact that watching television characters have a whole bunch of sex makes me bitter.

As far as The Office goes, I guess there's the basis of a good show there, but I don't think I'll watch until they can afford microphones so I can hear the dialogue. Professional cameramen might help, too, because the thing keeps going out of focus every time the camera lurches from one character to another. Oh, and adding one or two characters I don't find loathesome would help. And also, in my sitcoms, I sometimes like to hear a joke or two.

Okay, that sounded a little harsh. And I'm trying to think of something to soften the blow, but I can't, really. I didn't laugh at all while watching The Office, and it was usually a pretty irritating experience.

But, you know, I'm in the minority here. Lots of other people like these shows. They're probably right, too.

Some of you may have surfed by TeeVee lately and thought to yourself, "Boy, what's the deal with Michaels lately?" (Actually, none of you have probably thought this -- most likely, you simply don't care, and while that realization stung at first, I've long since resigned myself to the universe's indifference -- but if you could play along for purposes of this introductory 'graph, I'd greatly appreciate it.) Maybe you've noticed the infrequency of articles bearing my byline and wondered just exactly what is up. Have I been too drunk to write? Too lazy? Some combination of drunkenness and laziness?

The answer is yes, to all of the above. But that hasn't stopped me from writing in the past.

No, what's thrown a wrench into the works this time around is that my TiVo -- beloved family member and provider of many hours of recorded entertainment -- is in its death throes. And the grief, the pain, the sense of loss has been nearly too much for me to bear.

Also, it's quite difficult to write about television when you can't actually watch it.

The problem started a few months ago. Every now and again, the wife and I would be watching live TV or one of the many dozens of programs we record so that we may later write nasty things about the show, thus delighting a readership in the dozens when all of a sudden, the TiVo would skip noticeably. At first, the skips came infrequently, momentary glitches where the sound would drop out and the picture would freeze only to lurch forward by a few seconds. But over the time, the skips became frequent, longer, and more annoying. One moment, Tony Soprano would be barking out orders to his trusted lieutenants; then, the picture would freeze, and the next thing you know, the Sopranos end credits are rolling and a voice-over announcer is inviting me to stay tuned for "Beastmaster" over on HBO2.

"Wow, that's a real puzzler of a problem," you're probably saying. "So why don't you contact a helpful TiVo service representative and explain the trouble to them. Surely, TiVo will be more than willing to help. It's not like you did anything stupid that would void your warranty."

Um.... yeeeeaaaah.

About a year ago, I cracked open the TiVo and replaced the adequate-if-minimalist 30-hour hard drive with a gargantuan 100-hour hard drive, all the better for recording all those Miami Vice reruns on Spike TV. Or, more accurately since my idea of home repair involves hitting the side of devices until they work to my satisfaction, I had Snell come over and crack open the TiVo to replace the adequate-if-minimalist 30-hour hard drive with a gargantuan 100-hour model. I mostly hovered over his shoulder and asked if he would be done soon.

Oh, and I did I mention Snell left the mainland United States for a multi-week vacation at the exact moment my TiVo's sputtering and pausing and increasingly frequent crashes became unbearable? I didn't? Because that's a key detail.

So I find myself in an unfamiliar position -- eagerly awaiting the reemergence of Jason Snell and having to make do with a barely functioning TV set for the first time since my freshman year in college, when picking up UHF stations required a RadioShack antenna, an extension cord and a tinfoil hat. Now when I wake up in the morning and turn on the TV, I usually find that the TiVo has frozen, requiring me to reboot the entire system and further fry the hard drive beyond repair. The other morning, after watching an Oakland Athletics game the night before on Fox Sports Net, I flipped on the television set to find TiVo frozen in place on an image of Tom Arnold from one of the cable channel's umpteen showings of The Best Damn Sports Show Period.

Which is when -- staring at the frozen mug of Tom Arnold, his lips curled back in a pixelated, smug smile -- I may have pinpointed the problem with my TiVo. I think it may be shutting down in self-defense.

Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 09:31:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: Billie Cagney
Subject: The Vidiots
To: teevee@teevee.org

Dear Madam/Sir:

I am just curious as to what credentials "The Vidiots" hold?

Thank you,

Billie Cagney

Dear Billie,

Thank you for your inquiry. We're pleased to share with you the credentials of The Vidiots, perhaps the most credentialed bunch of writers ever assembled by a dot-org Web site.

Jason Snell began his career with the Sonora (California) Times-Advertiser, where he won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles exposing corruption within the Sonora PTA. In the early '80s, Snell began writing a television criticism column; it's now syndicated in more than 50 weekly Christian newspapers across the country. Snell's commentary can also be heard on 1450AM (Martinez, California) on Thursdays during the Morning Wake-Up Call with Bob and Cap'n Skiffy from 5:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Greg Knauss, our senior director of technology, is the author of an acclaimed series of "Star Trek" novelizations written in the original Klingon. He is acting past president of the Southern California Association of TV, Film, and Radio Critics, Sherman Oaks chapter.

Lisa Schmeiser, a professor of kinesiology at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California, is perhaps best known for her book, "Drop Those Coconuts, Gilligan: Muscle Control and Movement in the Works of Sherwood Schwartz." She's currently on sabbatical to finish up a three-volume collection of poems about her cats.

Philip Michaels is a writer, actor, singer and dancer who can currently be seen as the Rum Tum Tugger in the Alameda Civic Light Opera Company's production of "Cats." He also has a degree in Television Repair that he received after watching that Sally Struthers commercial. You know the one.

Steve Lutz has written several dozen spec scripts for some of television's most beloved shows, including a very special episode of Charles in Charge in which Charles (Scott Baio) accidentally kills Buddy (Willie Aames). Steve was also a production assistant on "Willie Tyler & Lester's Christmas in Newark," a 1999 holiday special that achieved some of the highest ratings ever enjoyed by the Pax Network.

Christopher Rywalt comes to us from the New York Times, where he covered several national news stories under the byline Jayson Blair. At least, that's what Chris tells us, and we have no reason to doubt his veracity or to ask him for any references.

Ben Boychuk died several years ago in a freak ballooning accident. We keep his name on the masthead as part our settlement with his widow.

Monty "Monty" Ashley is a Canadian Broadcasting Company correspondent and a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. His interviews with some of Hollywood's biggest stars -- Greg Evigan, Conrad Bain, and Della Reese -- have appeared in the pages of a weekly newsletter he mails off to family and friends.

Peter Ko is a token hire who only writes for us whenever the EEOC starts breathing down our necks. The rest of the time, he starches our shirts.

Gregg Wrenn is best known to most readers for his portrayal of the beloved Ephram Winkler on TV's Father Murphy. His insider knowledge of the workings of television is an invaluable resource to TeeVee, and his employment here helps meet the conditions of his parole.

These are the credentials of the Vidiots -- experienced, trustworthy professionals with the talent and know-how to bring you respected, well-informed TV commentary and not at all the sort of people who just make shit up for a cheap laugh.

I did not begin watching The Wire last season because I have some sort of mutant ability to sniff out quality programming that's little-publicized and written about only by people who are going to assert that "this is the best show you're not watching." I began watching it because one of my fundamental fiscal philosophies is to justify my exorbitant HBO subscription by watching that channel as much as possible. Therefore, I will watch nearly any series HBO airs, with the notable exceptions of Arli$$, The Mind of the Married Man and Curb Your Enthusiasm . I avoid the first two because my brain shut down basic respiratory and circulatory functions in protest after I watched five minutes, and I don't like Curb Your Enthusiasm because, while I realize it's funny on a cerebral level, Larry David's character repels me on a visceral level and I can't make it through an episode without wanting to see him suffer, preferably in a gruesome, epic, Biblical way.

(No doubt all of you who love Curb Your Enthusiasm will write in to tell me how I'm comedy tone-deaf and missing out, blah-de-blah. Don't. You will not convert me. I disliked Seinfeld, and I dislike Curb Your Enthusiasm; clearly, I am never going to warm to the Larry David oeuvre so you're wasting your time.)

But this isn't about how HBO probably hit its comedic high-water mark with Larry Sanders and Mr. Show back in the day. This is about how I came to watch The Wire -- in some part because I like David Simon's work, but largely because I wanted to amortize the cost-per-hour of my HBO subscription. Two episodes in, I was hooked.

I still can't explain why. I've read other people's explanations for why you should watch The Wire, and frankly, reading things like "What marks The Wire is its verisimilitude and its finely honed sense of the absurdity and pettiness that exist on both sides of the criminal battle lines" and "Among the more extraordinary aspects of the original was the way it revealed complexity, gray areas, in all its characters, even the drug dealers" don't do a lot to tell people why to tune in. Fine pieces of criticism, but nobody's going to charge into the living room bellowing, "Gimme the remote, honey! I gotta see some of that there finely honed sense of the absurd and some of that there verisimilitude!"

The reason you should watch The Wire -- above and beyond all the high-flying critical assessments about moral ambiguity and all that -- is because it's damned entertaining. Unlike other shows on television, it's hard to tell who you're supposed to root for, so you're forced to follow everyone and draw your own conclusions about them. You can hold conflicting loyalties -- personally, I was fascinated by drug dealer Stringer Bell, and rooted for him even as I cheered on police lieutenant Cedric Daniels. One pleasant result of rooting for both sides is always being able to watch an episode while hoping everyone will turn out okay, knowing they won't, yet not being able to stop watching. It's a lot more entertaining than going into an hour of drama where you know who the good guys are supposed to be and the only mystery is how they'll prevail this week.

The other reason you should watch The Wire is because it's hard to figure out what the hell is going on. There's a cast of dozens, little details get introduced and dropped all the time, and there are few obvious hand-holding devices to tell you what you should be paying attention to. For example, in last night's episode (the season 2 premiere), there's a scene in which junior drug trade employee Bodie drives to Philadelphia to make a connection for his crew. Putting aside his hilarious consternation at losing his rap radio station and being subjected to Prairie Home Companion, the real sit-up-and-take-notice moment during the trip was when he carefully wrote down his car's mileage on a notepad. Why, I wondered, would he do that?

It became apparent when he returned to Baltimore and had to submit his mileage as proof that he didn't screw up his unfruitful trip. It was a beautiful moment -- a tiny, baffling detail that threw a lot of light into how the Barksdale drug crew worked later on. It was also a stark contrast to the self-protecting chaos of the police department, something I figured out as I watched a scene where an evidence room clerk asks Daniels for overtime when Daniels makes him clean up his sloppy work.

The Wire lets you draw your own connections, and to be that subtle, it's got to be carefully written -- which it is. The dialogue is snappy and often irreverent-bordering-on-offensive -- in one scene, Detective "Herk" Hauk comes in to drop some case news on former colleague Shakima Greggs' desk, and comments that compared to trying to take down the Barksdale crew (which employed a dazzling array of codes, complex communications protocols, and contingency procedures), busting white drug dealers is a cinch. He then tells Kima, who happens to be an African-American and a lesbian, that what Baltimore needs are affirmative-action laws protecting the business of white drug dealers and that what she needs to do is recognize that she's whipped, tell her girlfriend what's what, and get back on the streets. The entire exchange is shockingly un-PC and funny as hell.

With The Wire, you've got a show that trusts your intelligence to a point where it lets you decide who you're going to root for and what you're going to pay attention to. You've got snap-crackle-pop dialogue. You've got a story that's so well written, it delivers small payoffs in each episode (the mileage incident being one example) that often lead to bigger dramatic payoffs throughout the season. What's not to like about a show that can give you all that?

So that's why you should watch The Wire. Because it's different from nearly everything else on television, and those differences make it fun. You'll have fun watching. And if you're lucky, you just might catch some of that verisimilitude everyone else is raving about too.

"You know, Fox turned into a hardcore sex channel so gradually, I didn't even notice."
-- Marge Simpson, from the "Lisa's Wedding" episode of The Simpsons

Fox will not be turning into a hardcore sex channel -- not in the immediate future, anyway. There will be no weekly showings of "Babes in Joyland," no Sweeps month marathon of the Ashlyn Gere canon, not even a "Behind the Green Door" spinoff. For now.

But whatever Simpsons scribe penned that pointed little dig at Fox back in 1995 was more prescient than he or she could possibly realize. After all, who would have thought that, eight years later, we'd be sitting here awaiting the Fall premiere of Skin, an hour-long Fox drama about warring families, with the patriarch of one family headed by, to quote Fox's promotional material, "the most successful producer of adult entertainment in L.A."

To repeat -- Fox will not be going all-porno-all-the-time when the new fall season rolls around. But here's guessing it probably wouldn't have surprised you all that much if it did.

After all, this is Fox we're talking about. Ever since Rupert Murdoch got it into his pretty little head that what this country really needed was a fourth television network, there has been no taboo that couldn't be broken, no line that couldn't be crossed, no cow so sacred that it couldn't be hustled off to the abattoir, sliced into ribbons, grilled over an open pit and served up Texas-style to horrified worshippers with a side of slaw. Fox is the network that keeps trying to marry off complete strangers -- sometimes to failed stand-up comics and phony millionaires, other times in the wilderness of Alaska or in the gaudy mansions in the south of France, but always with disastrous consequences. It's the network that gave Danny Bonaduce and Joey Buttafuoco boxing gloves and managed to tap into their primordial instincts to kill. It's flown a bevy of young lovers to an exotic tropical isle and encouraged them to deceive and betray one another via meaningless sexual liaisons with paid strumpets and boytoys -- and then, when society didn't immediately crumble, brought the show back for a second season. And that's just the reality programming. Fox's long and glorious history of scripted shows has bombarded a weary nation with the sights and sounds of Ed O'Neill belching, Luke Perry's sideburns growing ever longer while his hairline retreats ever faster, and emaciated lawyers singing horrific covers of '60s R&B hits in their unisex bathrooms. We're Fox, the network seems to shout at every opportunity. We're outrageous.

So it's hardly surprising that Fox would roll out an hour-long drama in which the MacGuffin is stacks and stacks of vile, filthy, eminently fascinating pornography. The only question is why it took the network nearly two decades to do it.

No, if there's any surprise to all of this -- whether it's Skin in particular or Fox's 2003 fall schedule in general -- it's how tame and inoffensive and middle-of-the-road the network and its offerings have become.

Look at the history of Fox. Once you get past all the sex jokes and the outraged protests from overwrought prudes and the canned whoo-whoo-whooing from the studio audience, you'll see that Fox has spent most of its 16 years on the air taking risks -- or, at least in the context of network television's crippling timidity and emasculating pandering, offering viewers edgier fare on average than which Friend Rachel will wind up schtupping this season. Fox, after all, is the network that decided an animated series about a family of ne'er-do-wells was ready for prime time when other channels were feeding us a steady diet of Cosby sweaters and Urkel. Fox figured viewers might like a show about alien-chasing FBI agents at a time when most networks' idea of a good conspiracy show was why so many people wound up dead whenever Jessica Fletcher rolled into town. Before it descended into a crudity-for-crudity's-sake parody of itself, Married With Children was actually a fairly subversive thumb in the eye to the sweetness and light of insipid family sitcoms. And back in the days when The Bachelor was just a drunken gleam in some reality show producer's beady eye, Fox was helping Rick Rockwell find his soul mate.

I'm not saying Fox deserves one of them genius grants for any of this, or even a laurel and a hearty handshake. But give the devil -- or in this case, his minion Rupert -- his due. More than any other network, Fox has adopted a "why the hell not?" kind of attitude toward programming choices, and it has served them reasonably well.

Which is not to say that Fox has always stayed true to that "why the hell not?" attitude, particularly when it comes to deciding which programs live and die each spring. A year ago at this time, Fox was the home for Andy Richter Controls the Universe -- a wildly inventive comedy we've expressed a fondness for -- and Futurama -- which, we've simply argued, has been the best show on TV for some time now. Both shows are now, through the mercy of Fox executives, dead as Dillinger. The Bernie Mac Show will, thankfully, return to Fox next fall, but without show-runner Larry Willmore, who got the bum's rush from the network after some programming genius decided that -- aside from all the critical praise and the Peabody Award -- the show just wasn't up to Fox's exacting standards of outrageous hilarity. Meanwhile, Fox rolled out a pair of shows -- John Doe and Firefly -- that, given their sci-fi premises, weren't all that interesting to me personally but, if the TeeVee mailbag is anything to go by, struck some sort of chord with the fanboys and shut-ins who go for that sort of thing. Apparently not enough of a chord for Fox's liking, however, since it pulled the plug on both programs.

Given its dodgy recent history with innovative shows that people care about, Fox apparently decided that the best course of action for the upcoming season would be to lower everyone's expectations as much as possible. That way, at least, nobody will get terribly worked up when the shows are canceled or -- since this is Fox we're talking about -- never even make it to the airwaves. "We're tired of people pestering about us about how 24 went of the rails this year," Fox executives might have said when they unveiled their fall schedule earlier this month. "So here's a lineup of programming so bland and uninspired and zestless, it might as well air on CBS."

Take the porno show. Set aside the salacious subject matter of Skin, and you're basically left with a show as old as the hills themselves -- the story of two crazy teens in love, much to the chagrin of their parents. He's a 17-year-old Latino from East L.A., she's a gringo from the affluent Westside. Her dad's made a killing in the porn industry, his parents are the judge and district attorney trying to put Daddy Porn King away. Name the families Montague and Capulet, and you've essentially got Romeo & Juliet, albeit with more fake boobs than Shakespeare probably envisioned for the original.

And while Fox certainly wouldn't mind if you tuned into Skin in the vain hope of catching the occasional and purely accidental glimpse of full-frontal nudity, the network is going out of its way to tell viewers not to expect too much wocka-chicka for their buck. Fox Entertainment President Gail Berman told the New York Times that Skin would "stay within the standards of broadcast television," as if the network is making some principled concession there rather than trying to stave off the wrath of the FCC. Or, given the political tenor in Washington these days, the wrath of something worse.

"Ms. Berman? Attorney General Ashcroft and a team of black-clad shocktroops are here to see you about the adult content on 'Skin.' They're right outside your office right now with a battering ram, and I think they're going to try and... OH GOD, MY JUGULAR! GAAA... gurgle..."

And Skin -- which debuts this fall on Monday nights at 9 p.m. -- constitutes Fox's "daring" offering for this coming season. More familiar and theoretically comforting to anyone who's happened to turn on a TV set over the last 20 to 30 years will be The O.C., a program about incredibly beautiful young people and the problems they face by virtue of living in a wealthy southern California enclave. If this sounds like somebody took Beverly Hills 90210, threw it on a flatbed truck and drove it 30 miles south down the 405, Fox would like to plant a big, sloppy kiss on your forehead.

Of course, maybe you've gone to go to Fox's promotional site for The O.C. and read: "The O.C., otherwise known as Orange County, California, is an idyllic paradise -- a wealthy, harbor-front community where everything and everyone appears to be perfect. But beneath the surface is a world of shifting loyalties and identities, of kids living secret lives, hidden from their parents, and of parents living secret lives hidden from their children." And if you're thinking, "Man, that sounds suspiciously like Pasadena -- another Fox show from a few years back about an idyllic Southern California paradise where everything and everyone appears to be perfect, but for the world of shifting loyalties and identities beneath the surface -- and Pasadena really stunk up the joint," well, Fox would prefer you keep your big, fat mouth shut. Would another sloppy kiss help persuade you?

Look for The O.C. to begin stinking up the joint its own bad self sometime in late July or early August. Fox, you see, has decided that premiering new programs in September only to yank them off the air every October to televise George Steinbrenner's annual acquisition of a World Series championship -- known as the baseball playoffs in markets outside of New York where teams must foolishly earn their victories -- prevents these newer shows from developing an audience and, thus, dooms them to failure. There's something to that line of reasoning. Besides, this year, Fox is apparently confident that its lineup can fail on its own merits and without any help from Derek Jeter and the boys.

Preceding The O.C. on Thursday nights will be another hour-long drama Tru Calling. Eliza Dushku -- who recently appeared in one of those silly sci-fi shows for the kids that I don't watch -- stars as a recent college graduate who lands a plum graveyard shift gig with the New York City morgue. Each night, the meat wagon drops off another stiff, and each morning, our heroine awakes to find that it's the preceding day, and she can go around stopping the untimely demises of assorted guest corpses and setting right what once went wrong. Think of it as Quantum Leap with less time travel and more dead bodies! Or Early Edition with fewer magic newspapers and a slight increase in dead bodies! Or Groundhog Day, only this time the groundhog is a dead body!

Or think of it as the kind of show that Fox normally schedules for Friday nights when its target demographic of 18-to-35-year-olds are out painting the town red and then abruptly cancels after the expected ratings never materialize. Well, Fox has a surprise for you, Mr. Cynic! This year, it's scheduling shows like Tru Calling on Thursday nights, so it can get pasted by Friends and Survivor. And then Fox can abruptly cancel it.

No, this year, Friday nights are reserved for comedy. Fox kicks off the night with returning midseason replacement show Wanda at Large -- which I've never seen and therefore wouldn't feel right saying anything particularly malicious about -- followed by newcomer Luis at 8:30. Luis is about a donut shop owner in Spanish Harlem who's surrounded by a cast of wacky eccentrics, and if that doesn't sound very promising, the show at least stars the lovely and talented Luis Guzman, who is one of my favorite character actors. For a time, it looked like Guzman was going to be sentenced to a lifetime of playing "Ugly Gang Member No. 3" roles before he fell in with the Steven Soderberghs and Paul Thomas Andersons of the world and got cast in things like "The Limey" and "Boogie Nights" and "Traffic" and turned out to be wonderful in all of them. He's also great in dreck like "The Count of Monte Cristo," a movie I once watched on an airplane only because the alternative would have been to leap to my death 30,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean. Only the presence of Guzman made things bearable and kept me from jumping, so direct all complaints to him.

Boston Public follows Wanda at Large and Luis on Fridays, and if you're thinking, "Hey -- that's not a comedy," just remember that David E. Kelley is laughing all the way to the bank.

As for the other new comedies on Fox this fall, there's not much in the way of innovation, save for maybe The Ortegas which combines your standard sitcom fare ("doting immigrant parent builds layabout son his very own TV studio in the backyard") with an improvisational twist ("layabout son uses backyard TV studio to host talk show featuring actual celebrity guests"). It also happens to be a carbon-copy of a BBC comedy, with Latinos subbing in for Indians. It also stars Cheech Marin, or as my parents think him, Nash Bridges' little friend. Which probably explains Cheech's motivation for taking the gig.

Joining The Ortegas amid Fox's other Sunday night comedies (The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle, King of the Hill, and, inexplicably, Oliver Beene) is Arrested Development, in which Jason Bateman plays a single father who's all set to start a new life in Phoenix, when his own gets arrested for crooked accounting. Before you can say "Contrived sitcom premise," Bateman is sticking around Orange County -- which, as we all know, is an idyllic paradise where everything and everyone appears to be perfect -- to be with his family. His older brother is a magician! His younger brother is a perpetual grad student! His brother in law lost his license to practice medicine thanks to a hilarious misunderstanding! Why, if I don't know any better, I'd say the family depicted in Arrested Development is comprised entirely of wacky eccentrics.

Hey! Turns out I don't know any better. Though in my defense, neither do the people who produce TV shows apparently.

Norm MacDonald stars in Fox's final new comedy, A Minute with Stan Hopper, which will get wedged between That '70s Show and Bernie Mac on Wednesday nights. MacDonald plays a Charles Kuralt-esque newsman who longs to live the simple life in fly-over country that he's been evangelizing all these years. So he packs up the family and moves them all to a small town in Wisconsin. Is the town filled to the breaking point with wacky eccentrics, you ask? Why, you must watch a lot of television. Just Fox, you say? Well, that explains your familiarity with the concept.

Even Fox's upcoming reality programs cover over already-trodden ground. Joe Millionaire returns to Monday nights in September as Fox desperately, frantically, and -- ultimately -- futilely tries to capture lightning in a bottle twice in the same calendar year. Fox is being coy about how exactly it's going to trick 20 more women into flinging themselves at some revolting turd who may or may not be an actual millionaire, which probably means that executives have no earthly clue how they're going to pull this off. And assuming the network doesn't steal any of the perfectly reasonable suggestions I made earlier this year -- and my legal team is standing at the ready if you do, Rupert -- I can only assume the shocking twist in Joe Millionaire 2 will be that the one of the 20 women is a millionaire this time and everyone else is a golddigging pauper, or that they're all millionaires except for Joe Millionaire himself or that Joe Millionaire is actually a woman or an actor or a registered sex offender of some sort. At any rate, the butler's back, and, really, that's all you're tuning in to see, isn't it?

The other reality series, which actually debuts next Tuesday, is American Juniors, a stone-cold ripoff of American Idol that Fox is rushing to the airwaves before America can even grow weary at the sight of Ruben Studdard. This time around, it's the pre-adolescent set who will be given a chance to make auditory mincemeat out of our most treasured and insipid pop standards, adding a poignant subtext to that old adage about children being seen and not heard. Sadly, Simon Cowell will not appear on American Juniors to make 10-year-olds cry. This "is not a show where we're going to be ripping children apart," Gail Berman told the Washington Post. Instead, American Juniors will get its schadenfreude kicks by turning the cameras on Mom and Dad as they insist that their tone-deaf rug-monkey who just bleated an ear-splitting rendition of My Heart Will Go On is, in fact, the next Pavarotti. Throw in the butler from Joe Millionaire, and I'm there.

Since this is Fox we're talking about, any or all of the shows I've just detailed could be canceled by Veteran's Day, so we should probably take a moment to look at the network's midseason replacement programs. They include Still Life, in which a slain narrator watches over his family's triumphs and traumas from beyond the grave; Cracking Up, in which a psychology student moves to observe an affluent family that appears to be both eccentric and wacky; and Wonderfalls. What of Wonderfalls, you ask? I think I'll turn the proceedings over to Fox's p.r. team, lest you think I've gone crazy from lack of sleep.

"Set against the backdrop of Niagra Falls, Wonderfalls is a funny, provocative, and magical one-hour dramedy about Jaye Tyler, an underachieving twenty-something souvenir-shop worker whose life is forever changed... when inanimate animal figures -- toys, cartoon images, anything in the form of an animal -- begin talking to her, and their cryptic messages set into motion a chain of events that invariably lead her into the lives of others in need."

And about the time that makes it to the airwaves, I figure Fox will be ready to give full-frontal nudity a try.