August 2003 Archives

Want yet another reason to be grateful for VCRs and Tivo? Check your TV listings for Tuesday nights. In addition to the outrageous plastic-surgery drama Nip/Tuck on FX, you'll find the gripping British spy thriller MI-5 on A&E. Both shows are smart, daring, and light-years better than the sort of reality drivel the broadcast networks shovel upon summer viewers.

MI-5, known overseas as Spooks, is Britain's answer to the nail-biting intrigue of Fox's 24. It makes the usual BBC substitution of added psychological depth for flashy pyrotechnics-- they don't have the budget to show explosions so much as imply them-- which is not necessarily a bad thing. Each week, we follow a grimly professional team of the U.K.'s finest intelligence officers as they track, infiltrate and undermine hatemongers, abortion clinic bombers, and other real-world bogeymen. Authentic news footage is woven into each week's storyline, emphasizing the plausibility of MI-5's unnerving scenarios.

Like 24, MI-5 is packed with startling twists and a refusal to pull any dramatic punches. It's slower, and talkier, but it lacks its American cousin's conspicuous misogyny; all the characters, male and female, are both competent and fallible in believably equal measure. (Not surprisingly, MI-5's American characters are arrogant bullies who swagger around with little regard for the British agents' more cautious, moral approach.) MI-5 also spends more time getting to know its villains, notching up the creep factor by taking you into the homes and twisted family lives of these entirely monstrous-- but recognizably human-- individuals.

MI-5's most intriguing aspect is the way its heroes have to lie for a living. Their lives and the lives of countless others depend upon how skillfully they can deceive, betray and manipulate people-- vicious or kind, guilty or innocent. The lies don't stop when they leave the office, either; some of MI-5's most marvelous tension comes from the tightrope act hero Tom Quinn (Matthew MacFayden) walks in his off hours, living under a fake identity with his girlfriend and her young daughter. He loves them, but he can't be honest with them, and every suspicious glance from his girlfriend hits him like a punch in the stomach. Yet you understand why he keeps up the charade-- MI-5 doesn't hesitate to ram home the horrific consequences of an unsuccessful lie. Witness the alarming scene in episode two where a helpless Quinn watches in horror as race-baiting goons dunk his earnest rookie partner's hand, then her entire head, into a deep-fryer.

As stomach-turning as that concept may be, it's child's play compared to the smorgasbord of blood and guts served up by Nip/Tuck, FX's new summer drama series about a pair of Miami plastic surgeons. If nothing else, you've got to salute the show for refusing to glamorize the plastic surgery business. Patients don't magically go under the knife and, a few scenes later, reappear looking utterly stunning. No, Nip/Tuck gives you startling, lovingly filmed closeups of scalpels, bone saws, suction hoses and chisels doing to the human body the kind of things that you really, really shouldn't watch while eating. (Not that it ever stops me, unfortunately.) And then there are the recovery times, and the risk of secondary infections.

Bookworms like me can sit back on the couch and ponder the irony of such hideousness being undertaken in the pursuit of society's concept of beauty. But that sort of high-minded philosophizing doesn't exactly drag in viewers by the busload. Luckily for FX's bottom line, Nip/Tuck balances its gleeful amounts of gore with equally gleeful amounts of sex, pursuing naughtiness with all the delicacy and restraint of a passel of drunken frat boys. Dude, check it out! That doctor's doin' the nasty with a hot model just so he can land her as a client! And now he's in a threesome with those underage twins! And now those two teenage lesbians just got caught making out in their cheerleader outfits! This is awesome!

The funny thing is, Nip/Tuck could stick with the blood, and the sex, and its basic premise-- one doctor, Sean (Dylan Walsh), is a nice-guy family man, while his partner Christian (Julian McMahon) is an ethics-free playboy-- and still be a perfectly enjoyable guilty pleasure. It's got a great cast, plenty of dark wit, and a unique and well-explored central idea. But it's kept me watching week after week because it's consistently smarter and deeper than it needs to be, especially in regard to characterization.

Sean may be a nice guy, but he can also be a hapless schmuck. He's short-sighted, occasionally selfish and hamstrung by his own good intentions. He's a generally lousy husband and father, however hard he may try. He's also got a scarily calm dark side that emerges whenever he has to, say, dispose of a corpse by trussing it with hams and feeding it to alligators. Christian, for all his Lothario ways, demonstrates ironclad integrity in the clutch. He'll give up his health, his dignity, even a tryst with the one woman he gives a damn about, all for the sake of his well-hidden conscience. I mean, honestly, if some scary tattooed drug lord were about to shoot Botox into your most delicate of parts, would you have the nerve to keep quiet to protect your best friend?

So there you have it: the summer's best new shows are an explosion-free spy drama about a bunch of professional deceivers, and a lurid morality play that reserves its most smoldering love scene for a mostly clothed, middle-aged married couple. And they're on the same night. Warm up your Tivos and leave your expectations at the door.

Hey, lookee here. The WB has found the monkey who will be giving away a billion dollars (or not) this fall. Poor, poor Drew Carey.

Oh, there's also a chimpanzee on the show.

Former 21 Jump Street star Johnny Depp's latest starring role is in "Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl," a film that's one of the surprise hits of the summer. He's also been nominated for major awards and starred in major box-office successes.

In other news, former 21 Jump Street star Richard Grieco will be starring in an original basic cable movie, Sci-Fi's "Phantom Force."

Depp, Grieco, whatever -- who can tell those guys apart?

Rumor has it that NBC is interested in a second installment of The Restaurant, the Mark Burnett-produced reality show about the operating of a tony eatery.

The current edition of The Restaurant has been alternately tasty and unappetizing, and last week I officially asked for the check. It's not that the show's premise isn't an interesting one -- the idea of following the creation of a restaurant, from its business details to the personal conflicts of the management and staff, through the opening-night travails and the quirks of its customers, is pure TV gold.

No, the problems with The Restaurant are twofold. First, in insisting that the first subject restaurant open in a very short period of time, we're left with an almost untenable situation: from all appearances, Rocco DiSpirito's restaurant Rocco's is an unmitigated disaster, with terrible service, bad (and cold!) food, staffed by a bunch of drama queens and run by a chef so interested in being a personality that he's lost all connection to the thing that got him where he is today. (Hint, Rocco: it's in the kitchen, not schmoozing with the pretty girls at table 12.)

Second, and more egregious, is just how much goosing Burnett has done to the show in order to make it dramatic. On Survivor, it became clear over time that the editing was the real star of the show, emphasizing certain areas and de-emphasizing others in order to tell a good story. But on The Restaurant, Burnett's editing-for-story technique is uncharacteristically ham-handed. The show's "plot twists" feel completely fake, as if acts of desperation by a production staff who realized that the show wasn't going to be salvagable without intervention. Even Burnett's trademark in-show commercial endorsements are far more painful to watch than on Survivor (Imagine being a sponsor of The Restaurant: Bud Light! The beer served at horribly mismanaged eateries!)

Another installment of The Restaurant? I could think of worse things. But please, Mark Burnett, learn from your mistakes.

Out here in California -- State Motto: "Ask Us About Our Crazy Recall Laws" -- we may be on the verge of electing a new governor because, well, frankly, the guy we elected 10 months ago doesn't appear to be working out. As a result, we'll have an election in 56 days or so, and if more than half the electorate that bothers to show up on Election Day decides that the incompetently venal Gray Davis is too incompetent and too venal for their tastes, then we'll have to pick a new sucker to run this craphole of a state from a list of 135 hopefuls, including Hollywood strong man Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I'm guessing you might have read something about that in the funny papers.

Here's an unintended consequence of the recall campaign: because of equal-time rules -- that FCC requirement that allows all candidates access to equal amounts of airtime -- California stations will be unable to broadcast Arnold Schwarzenegger movies between now and Election Day. This is a terrible hardship, certainly, but considering that the Schwarzenegger canon includes "Red Sonja," "Twins" and "Hercules in New York," it is the price we Californians are prepared to pay for a free and unfettered democracy.

The beefy Austrian isn't the only candidate whose C.V. must go MIA between now and the October 7th election. Gary Coleman is also a gubernatorial candidate, so if you live in California and you're just dying to see that episode where Arnold Jackson and his friend Dudley are molested by Arthur Carlson from WKRP in Cincinnati, you're just going to have to wait until October 8th.

The full extent of the FCC's equal-time rules is not completely known. Even though the rule may not necessarily affect cable channels, FX and Sci-Fi announced they were yanking Arnold Schwarzenegger movies from their rotations, lest they have to devote two hours of airtime to having Bill Simon or Cruz Bustamante hunt down the Colombian terrorist who killed their families or save humanity from an army of killer robots.

And other scenarios promise to test the limits of the equal-time requirements. With Larry Flynt as a gubernatorial candidate, does that mean California will be spared broadcasts of Milos Foreman's gassy and well-nigh unwatchable "The People Vs. Larry Flynt?" And if so, can we fix it so that Flynt can run for political office in perpetuity, even after he passes away? And perhaps someone at the FCC could look into extending the equal-time provisions to all roles featuring Woody Harrelson. If I have to listen to that jackass tell me how I can use hemp to weave myself a three-piece suit one more time, I'm going to punch someone.

I... seem to have wandered off topic.

Under equal-time rules, are we forbidden from watching reruns of candidate Arianna Huffington espouse liberal positions on assorted talking-head shows? Or, are the stations off the hook if they show reruns of candidate Arianna Huffington from back when she espoused conservative positions on those same assorted talking-head shows?

And, perhaps most importantly, when voters head to their local video store to sample the cinematic offerings of candidate Mary "Mary Carey" Cook, will they be forbidden from renting "New Wave Hookers 7," "Double Air Bags 11," and "Girls School 4?" Or, if they rent "Last Action Hero" and "The Kid From Left Field" -- not the original, but the horrible made-for-TV remake with Coleman, Robert Guillaume and Ed McMahon as the owner of your World Champion San Diego Padres -- is everything kosher? I have no idea. But in the interest of clarifying an ambiguous law, I'm perfectly willing to head to the video store and rent as many Mary Carey movies as I can expense to TeeVee.org.

Because I'm civic-minded that way. Also, the wife's out of town this weekend.

In ancient times Ptolemy theorized that the moon, planets, sun and stars all revolved around the Earth. Later, Copernicus' handwritten book, the Little Commentary, purported that the Center of the Universe was near the Sun. Galileo was summoned to Rome as a heretic and confined for the rest of his life for publicly surmising that God Almighty hadn't designated Earth as the Center of the Universe. (The pope declared in 1992 that some mistakes were made in Galileo's trial for heresy, although he stopped short of dropping the charges. One wonders what, in another 350 years, Pope Oprah IV might have to say about the present-day Altar Boy Scandal.) But events of recent days indicate that the theory put forth in Ptolemy's Almagest is actually much closer to the truth that anyone might have guessed.

The actual truth is that (dramatic chord) the Center of the Universe is (drum roll) New York City. And, as viewers, we all know that if it happens to New Yorkers, it happens to us all. And so when those wayward country hicks in Ohio had the unmitigated gall to cause the electricity to stop flowing in Midtown Manhattan we all had to stop our lives and bear witness to the unfolding events.

News? Yes. Maybe even Hell, Yes! But continuing coverage? Let's examine the facts.

So, when Uncle Dan and his freshly Poligripped teeth broke into programming for one minute to inform us that it appeared he might not be able to take the Red Line to his Park Avenue penthouse after work because there was an apparent power outage in New York City, and, oh, it wasn't caused by terrorists, we all paused and thought, "Jesus, that's a lot of people without electricity!" Then we went on our merry little way surfing the net and watching Dr. Phil.

But then Uncle Dan came back on. It was worse than expected. Not only was Manhattan without power, but portions of Connecticut and the Hamptons were in the figurative "dark." This calls for Sustaining Coverage!

For the uninitiated, Sustaining Coverage is a condition whereby the Broadcast Networks declare special-report status and take over the television sets of viewers everywhere. It means that there will be no commercials, no breaks, and most of all, no entertainment (except for Dan's kicky aphorisms). Sustaining Coverage is what Broadcast Network anchors and news departments live for. It's where they earn their Emmys, Peabodys, astronomical raises, and bloated sense of self. Sustaining Coverage is a big deal.

That terrorists weren't involved wasn't good enough to allow Dan and his merry band to save face and exit Sustaining Coverage quickly. He had taken his place at the command post, his Rolodex of witticisms were at the ready, and he'd been catheterized to allow him to remain for as long as necessary. He had our attention and, by God, he was going to bask in the glow. If you ask him, his job during times like these is to reassure America that the almighty still favors us over the godless heathens in places like Liberia or Yemen or Philadelphia. And in this particular case, to reassure America that New York City is still alive and well... though its residents can't answer the phone or read their e-mail.

As time marched on Dan told us that some rural, backwards villages in America's hinterlands might -- might -- (Dan likes to emphasize subjective words) also be without power. Yeomen in Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit might have to milk their cows and shock their oats by the light of torches if power wasn't restored by the time night fell. It also seemed that power in the foreign nation of Canadia was lost, but the Eskimos there use battery-operated flashlights... and they have the midnight sun and whale blubber to keep them safe and warm. Besides, their Prime Minister, Peter Jennings, was vacationing near Ottawa (don't they pay him enough over at ABC?) and assured the citizens of Canadia that there was nothing to worry aboot.

No, the main story was that the commuters of New York were mightily inconvenienced. Some were trapped in elevators, others in subway cars. Some had to... walk!

Do I wish ill will on these folks? Nope. I've spent time in New York and I can imagine that it must have been a huge pain in the patoot to get from Point A to Point B. But the people of New York were no more or less inconvenienced than the people of Cleveland or Detroit (or Lansing or Oneida). Here's where my grapes get sour: had a major outage happened in Denver, or Austin or Minneapolis there would have been a story on the evening news... probably in the second segment. It might -- might -- have warranted a special report had it affected more than 5 million people. And they would have felt obligated to say Denver Colorado, Austin Texas, or Minneapolis Minnesota because cities without a huge body of water next to them need to be further identified as cities within the boundaries of the United States.

But Sustaining Coverage? Doubtful. Can you even imagine Dan and Tom/Brian and Peter/Ted sitting at their news desks looking concerned as we watch aerial shots of 50,000 people schlepping their briefcases and haversacks along Interstate 70 in St. Louis?

"We're entering hour number 2 of Sustaining Coverage of this CBS News Special Report of 'Blackout 2003, the Missouri Misery.' I'm Dan Rather and we have video now of a bus seemingly filled with what we think are people trying to get to the Mississippi River in an effort to abandon the town. You might say they are on a cruise ship to nowheresville and Isaac has run out of mixer. For those of you who are not aware, St. Louis a town located in Missouri approximately half-way between New York and Los Angeles. We also believe -- believe -- that St. Louis is the capital of Missouri, but we're waiting for confirmation from CBS' Ed Bradley on that. Meanwhile, in New York, the Dow Industrial Average is down two-and-a-third points on news of the power outage."

No way. Instead we wait for a breathless Byron Pitts to call from a pay phone.

BYRON: Dan, I'm at the corner of 34th and 5th (huff puff) near the hot dog stand with the really good (huff puff) mustard. I've just come from 33rd and 4th. I had to walk. (whew) The subways are out, the Walk/Don't Walk lights have failed, and people are worried about recharging their PDAs. I would describe the mood as "panicked, but businesslike." As you know, Dan, New York has weathered many other crises... the Battle of Brooklyn Heights, the 1968 Democratic Convention riots -- which technically took place in Chicago but were very New York-like in atmosphere -- and the Bicentennial. I'm sure New York will bounce back from this too. The only question that remains is how many people will die.

DAN: Byron! Before you leave us, please describe the mood there.

BYRON: Well, Dan, I'd have to describe it as not quite a panic, but not calm. Maybe I'd say "harried," or, as my producer just suggested, "frenetic." I heard someone else describe it as "alarmed." Some guy with a moustache used the word "consternated." I like that one, too. As you know each day millions of New Yorkers take the Holland Tunnel, not to mention the George Washington, Tappan Zee, Brooklyn and Queensboro bridges to leave the city and return to their sharecropping farms. If they weren't located in such remote areas of the city we'd get a camera crew over to one of those venues to shoot pictures of what I imagine must be a real bottleneck. One time, Dan, I actually had to go to New Jersey, so I know what it's like for rural folks to deal with this kind of crisis.

DAN: Thanks, Byron. That's Byron Pitts in the heart of Manhattan where millions of worried New Yorkers are milling about not panicking and where the mood could best be described as 'discombobulated.'

The fact that electricity was being restored to some areas within two hours was not enough to satiate the appetite of Uncle Dan. He cut in for updates during prime time. But ABC, in all of their wisdom, and apparently trying a new tack to gain viewers on a Thursday night, decided to chuck all of their programming plans for the night and do nothing but "Blackout 2003" coverage. Oddly, without electricity people have a hard time watching TV. The resulting audience was even smaller than their usual Thursday night line-up, which consisted of a dancing bear, a cooking show called Whoops, Where's the Cat? and a reality show based on Roseanne's hysterectomy.

They, like so many other Manhattan-based news organizations, failed to understand that the rest of us Americans really, deep down, didn't give that much of a shit about the power outage. Yes, we felt bad for people who were trapped and scared. Yes, we thought of ways we might be able to help. Yes, Packer fans worried that power wouldn't be restored in time for the pre-season game in Cleveland. But did we want to watch the power outage on TV? Would people in Seattle want to have KIRO cut in to the middle of Cupid to tell them about the Tornado Warning in Ada County, Oklahoma? I think not. The people who really cared about the blackout could tune in CNN or Fox News Channel and listen to their shrill anchors ask how long it would be until people in Syracuse understand the folly of living in the boondocks and move to the city where they belong.

Here's where the Broadcast Networks just don't get it. They think that in an environment that now includes CNN, MSNBC and Fox New Channel that things have changed. How wrong they are. Their job, on a day-in, day-out basis, is to gather the news, digest it, and provide viewers the facts about the events of the day. When the situation warrants it, they should provide special reports or coverage of events that truly affect virtually all citizens. It has nothing to do with getting a disc jockey from New Haven on the air and interviewing him about "potential fallout" from the blackout.

Speculation has taken over the chatfests passing themselves off as cable news channels. What the Broadcast Networks' news departments should be doing is concentrating on telling stories in a compelling manner. It's what they were doing in 1963, 1968, 1974, 1981, and on September 11, 2001. Doing it better is what the Broadcast Networks are all about. They are the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal of television and it's about damn time they understood that.

Instead, the next morning viewers were watching the morning circuses pull clowns out of the car and swing on the trapeze. Harry Smith, Hannah Storm and Rene Syler (I'm one of seven people who can list the hosts of CBS The Early Show and correctly spell their names) spent the morning discussing the "emotional toll" that the blackout took on people. Julie Chen, the 4th host, was in Los Angeles servicing Les as Big Brother hostess, so she was forced to put a West Coast perspective on "Blackout 2003."

Under circumstances like this all convention is thrown out the window. Matt, Harry and Charlie don't wear ties. The women are less made up and their hair is pulled back into utilitarian ponytails. They broadcast from "the plaza," or "the street," or their local affiliate station's news room. And everything else takes a back seat to the continuing crisis. They all seemed to return to one primary theme...how damn nice everyone was during the crisis. Apparently now that power has been restored it is expected that they will go back to mugging and mayhem.

"Here's a look at the weather, brought to you by Velveeta. Velveeta. Mmmm, cheese! Well, as we look at the map you can see flooding rains in Texas, the drought continues in the Pacific Northwest, Hurricane Jimmy is poised to strike the Florida Keys... but here at home we're looking at temps in the mid-80's. And Harry, Rene, Hannah and Julie, it'll be a muggy 84 degrees, so people will have to do their best to find some shade, since air conditioners don't operate without electricity. Looks like another tough day for New York, but we know that New York has suffered before, and New Yorkers will make it through this crisis, too. I harken back to the 1978 World Series where the Yankees were down 2 games to the Dodgers, then Graig Nettles turned into the human spiderweb and the Yanks came back to win the series in six games. Now, here's Rene with more schmucks."

The aphorism that all news is local holds true. Apparently New York is our hometown... we just didn't know it. At least they got some use out of those Y2K generators.

...And in Des Moines construction on I-235 has caused commuting delays of 30 minutes. Exclusive footage later tonight on your late local news.

Not that this has any relevance to Lisa's piece about The O.C., but in the fake sitcom featured in Project Searchlight, Peter Gallagher was cast to play Jesus... wearing a cowboy getup. He's replaced in the cast, however, after he gets hit by a car while filming the show's opening credits.

Project Searchlight is well worth TiVo'ing whenver it airs on Comedy Central in perpetuity, is what I'm trying to say...

By the way, just last night at the A's-Red Sox game, I amused myself as the A's won by turning to the obnoxious Red Sox fan sitting next to me and saying, "This is how we do it in the 5-1-0, bitch."

Sure, I said it under my breath, and after he was well out of earshot. But it was still a hoot and a half to say.

In Comedy Central's vastly underrated Project Greenlight parody Contest Searchlight, Denis Leary asserts with a completely straight face that Peter Gallagher is the greatest actor in New York City. The ostensible joke was that this was Peter Gallagher we were talking about.

Peter Gallagher and his eyebrows have been yoked together in the public imagination since about 1989 ("Sex, Lies and Videotape.") At one time, this could have been unfortunate, as I was too busy staring at the upper third of his face to notice whether Gallagher could actually act. Now, however, Gallagher has finally happened into a role that seems tailor-made for him and his eyebrows. As The O.C.'s well-meaning Sandy Cohen, a public defender who married extremely well, Gallagher uses those eyebrows to telegraph self-deluded earnestness. It works perfectly.

Sandy Cohen is the plot device that sets The O.C. in motion: not only does he pluck teenaged hood Ryan Atwood (Benjamin McKenzie) off the mean streets of Chino and transport him behind the Orange Curtain, he also represents the moral compromises OC elitists have to make to stay in their smug little community. Sandy's an idealist who can afford his self-righteousness because his wife bankrolls it; as a result, he's better at talking about his morals than he is at applying them. Anyone who knows about Orange County's reputation as a Republican stronghold can appreciate the irony in limousine liberal Sandy's characterization.

However, The O.C. is a soap opera, so you don't need to spend an hour pondering the semiotics of Sandy Cohen. You can spend time wondering when Tate Donovan got old enough to believably play the father of a teenaged daughter. Donovan, who plays next-door neighbor and financial charlatan Jimmy Cooper, is married to shallow Julie (played by Melinda Clarke, whose portrayal is wickedly intelligent) and parenting a troubled teen who also happens to be the love interest of outsider/juvie Ryan. It's also worth noting that Jimmy apparently has a long and occasionally romantic history with Sandy's wife Kirsten (Kelly Ryan).

Remember, this is a soap: everyone has to be connected to everyone else, or we wouldn't have any plot complications.

The biggest complication is Ryan, whose obvious outsider status will make him a lightning rod for everyone else's issues with social class and morals. Fortunately, Ryan's up to the task; McKenzie plays him as a wary, smart kid with a healthy sense of humor, and aside from one asinine scene in which he frets about Social Security, he's likable. I don't know whose idea it was to have McKenzie underplay Ryan's prole-at-the-black-tie-benefit scenes, but it was a good one: we already expected Ryan to be cautious about negotiating a tony social event, so showing him as constantly and discreetly on his guard is just right. The real stranger-in-a-strange-land moments are those in which Ryan bonds with Sandy and Kirsten's son, Seth. The kid is sheltered, good-hearted and socially awkward; he's also perceptive enough to know he'll never be able to crack the high school social code, and sensitive enough to let that knowledge hurt him. Adam Brody plays Seth to perfection, and his chemistry with both Gallagher and McKenzie make all those male-bonding scenes much better than they have any right to be.

The O.C. is shaping up as a guy's show: what interactions we see among the girls are as petty as anything on Melrose Place and the parent/child interaction between Julie Cooper and her daughter Marissa will inevitably inspire the girl to write a spite-fueled memoir during her creative nonfiction class in college. This may change over time -- if Sex and the City had any lasting influence, it's in proving that depictions of women's lasting friendship will pull in viewers. However, until The O.C. wises up, it's a little off-putting to watch the women preen while the men get all the real fun.

Lest you think the entire show is actually a trenchant look at parent-child relationships, class issues and adult compromise, let me assure you: there is still plenty of silly, soapy fun. There is a fashion show in the premiere, after all. There's also a classic jocks vs. nerds thing going on, which is how Seth and Ryan get crunchy beatings while the show's chief teen nemesis Luke (Chris Carmack) taunts, "Welcome to the O.C., bitch! This is how it's done in Orange County."

It is worth pointing out that Luke is about as street as B-Rad in Malibu's Most Wanted.

The show's unintentional humor quotient is high (I've amused myself for days with variations on Luke's little quip), but it's not without its deliberate charms. And yes, you can see every plot twist coming. However, the actors -- among them Peter Gallagher, who may or may not be the best actor in New York -- make the ride to each inevitable development entertaining. The O.C. is frothy fun with a surprisingly solid center. Given the dismal execution of other recent prime-time soaps (Pasadena and Titans, I'm looking at you), it's delightful to find one that manages to get nearly everything right.

The problem with Phil's theory about rooting for the most awful people in The Amazing Race is that they end up winning.

I was thinking about that as I watched the clowns -- the greatest pair of players to ever appear on The Amazing Race -- be eliminated last week. While the hateful Kelly and Jon (and the dull pair of friends) continue on, in position to win the whole damned thing.

I guess I'm pulling for the boys, Reichen and Chip, to win this thing. But I just know I'm going to be disappointed.

Dave Burkhart: Last Comic Standing was a travesty, but one that is very illustrative about America's approach to humor. On one side, the sweet, over-the-top, unfunny (to me) humor of Dat; and on the other, the sharp, sarcastic, cerebral humor of Ralphie.

Ben Boychuk: I predicted the outcome (to my wife) last week. The fix was in weeks ago. Dat Phan was the perfect dramatic foil. He was the unfunny anti-comic, the outsider, the underdog. He could not lose. He had to win. It wasn't just Ralphie May who got robbed. He's great. But the winner should have been Dave Mordal.

Steve Lutz: I saw the first episode, watched the extended, almost Olympic-coverage like Fight Against Adversity profile of Dat Phan, and knew immediately that he was the winner. It was confirmed a few days later when the U-T ran a profile of Phan, once again talking up all the adversity that he and his long-suffering people have endured. I didn't bother to watch the rest, assuming the conclusion was foregone.

Was Ralphie the big fat fucker? Because they spent an awful lot of time on him during the first episode, too. I liked his frank, highly sarcastic treatment of his obviously morbid obesity, but feared that he was a one-trick pony. Was I right, or did he have more than "I'm a big fat loser" in his repertoire?

Ultimately, I'm happy I decided to drink beer and play Vice City instead.

Monty Ashley: He did surprisingly little fat stuff, really. Usually it felt like it was obligatory, like he knew people were expecting some kind of reference to it. Although his finale material was all fat stuff. I'm not sure I'd call Ralphie "cerebral", considering that last week, his entire set was "Ooh, I'm saying to bomb Iraq, aren't I controversial?"

I can't decide whether it was a flaw in the show or not, but the comics never really bought into the show. When there were exemption challenges, which on any other show would result in everyone scrambling around and killing themselves, most of the comics either ignored the challenge or actively mocked it. And then they were surprised when the only sincere person (Dat Phan) won exemptions.

The show suffered from the same lack-of-drama flaw as American Idol: now that everyone knows who these people are, it's not clear that the winner is necessarily going to get more out of the show than the losers. Before the American Idol finale, Ruben and Clay already had matching recording contracts. And even though he was officially eliminated weeks ago, Dave Mordal's future could clearly include a sitcom deal if he wants it.

I liked Last Comic Standing a lot more than American Idol, probably because I enjoy stand-up comedy more than the Celine Dion warbling the kids keep doing no matter what the song is. I wish LCS had shown more of the Bad Comics, because I can't get enough of that sort of thing. And yet, I can't be bothered to go to Amateur Nights and get it in person. The montage of terrible impressionists was just great.

Here's yet another reason why I like satellite TV: Two houses over, some yahoo delivering dirt to a house across the street lifted the back of his dumptruck which, on its way back down, took my neighbor's cable TV coaxial with it.

You never hear about stuff like that on those pro-cable TV radio commercials.

I agree with my dear colleague Phil that The Amazing Race is an enjoyable show. However, last week's episode drove me nuts.

Was it because of the series' most hair-raising single-person challenge, namely swimming in a frozen lake beneath solid ice? Nope. Was it because of the squirming chopped-up octopus entree? Nope.

It was because the show insists on running several non-elimination legs of the race, meaning that after all of last week's shenanigans, nobody got tossed from the show. And as soon as everyone ends up bunched up in line at the airport in this week's episode, any advantages gained this week will evaporate.

Sure, the show was entertaining. But there was no jeopardy, and it felt like a rip-off in the end. Just like the week when they didn't kick anyone off of American Idol. I'm a big fan of surprise twists in reality shows, but this particular twist has been built into the show from the start, and it doesn't provide any real excitement. Just bitter feelings about wasted time.

And if I was Reichen or Chip and had dined on massive plates of squirming octo-chunks, I'd be royally pissed off that I invested so much work in such a pointless leg of the race.

I've felt like I've been living on borrowed time these past two weeks, and let me tell you, it's a nerve-wracking existence. The uncertainty, the sleepless nights, the anxious feelings about near misses following on the heels of close calls -- it's almost too much to bear. They say that dodging a bullet makes you stop and take stock of your life -- providing that kick in the ass you sometimes need to figure out what's really important -- and now I realize that's not just a bunch of touchy-feely psycho-babble. Now I know that nearly losing everything makes you appreciate what you have.

Because in each of the past two episodes of The Amazing Race, the team of Jon and Kelly has come within a hair's breadth of getting the boot, only to be spared at the last second. And their constant brushes with elimination -- the reality-show equivalent of the Grim Reaper -- has made me realize that life -- even the highly contrived, heavily edited reality-TV recreation of it -- is both precious and fragile.

What? Like it's somehow not as deep if your stop-and-take-stock-of-things moment occurs as the result of a reality TV show?

To recap for those folks who have shut themselves off from all reality programming lest it distract from a life of quiet contemplation and selfless charity, The Amazing Race is the show in which 12 teams consisting of two people connected through a unifying gimmick -- A father and son! A bickering married couple! A pair of chubby air traffic controllers! A brace of circus clowns! -- race around the globe at the whim of CBS. At the end of each week, after the physical challenges, plot twists and on-camera sniping we've come to expect from the reality genre, the last team to each destination gets handed their walking papers. And so it goes, until the competitors are whittled down to one last team, which takes home a valuable cash prize for mastering the art of getting from Point A to Point B without the help of Mapquest.

It's hard to put my finger on why I enjoy The Amazing Race exactly. Perhaps it's the inherent drama of watching people navigate their way through unfamiliar terrain. Maybe it's because my favorite part of travel is in figuring out which train, plane or automobile will get me to my final destination the quickest, and Amazing Race's on-the-fly travel logistics sates my inner geek. Or maybe, just maybe, it's the fact that I can backseat-drive with impunity -- no, idiot, turn right at the Champs Elysees! -- without running the normal risks associated with second-guessing, such as getting punched in the nose.

But mostly, I enjoy The Amazing Race because of Kelly and Jon. And their maddening ability to stay just one step ahead of the Reaper's scythe is driving me to drink. More than usual, I should add.

Two weeks ago, it should have been the last we saw of Kelly and Jon until the inevitable Amazing Race reunion special. The recently engaged couple -- she's a model who wants to write children's book and he's a real estate agent, according to their CBS bios -- were in dead last, the result of lousy strategy, poor communication, and halfhearted teamwork. So as Kelly and Jon trudged up the Malaysian beach long after the four other teams had finished this particular leg of the race, we prepared to bid a fond farewell to Kelly and Jon as Amazing Race's host -- the preternaturally tan and rugged Phil Keoghan -- handed them their lovely parting gifts. Instead, Keoghan announced that this was the first of three legs where no one would be eliminated, and as Kelly and Jon learned that they would live to race another day, the whoops of joy echoed throughout the Michaels homestead.

The next week, things weren't looking any brighter for Kelly and Jon. They started out well behind the other teams and pretty much stayed there through the usual combination of poor planning, comical bungling, and ill-considered impulse moves. The good news: the team of Millie and Chuck -- who, The Amazing Race producers are fond of reminding viewers, have been dating 12 years and remain virgins -- performed even worse, and Kelly and Jon wound up jumping ahead of them just before the finish line. Thus, Millie and Chuck were eliminated, just as their 12-year relationship appeared to dissolve on camera before an audience of millions. Not a very good day, not even if you're one of those glass-half-full types.

You might get the impression that I'm pulling for Kelly and Jon to win The Amazing Race. I'm not. (That distinction falls to Jon and Al, the aforementioned team of circus clowns, who, through a combination off good humor, gallantry, and good old fashioned circus moxie have reminded an otherwise cynical nation that not all clowns are remorseless, supernatural killing machines a la Tim Curry in "It" or hapless, vile drunkards like Bobcat Goldthwait in "Shakes the Clown.") In fact, of all the Amazing Race contestants -- those still in contention as well as those already dispatched to the Great Green Room in the Sky -- Kelly and Jon are my least favorite. More to the point, if there's one team I particularly don't want to capture the grand prize, it's Kelly and Jon.

Why? Quite simply, they irritate me. She's alternately bossy and whiny, rattled by the slightest setback and prone to saddling her competitors with demeaning nicknames. He's a self-assured blowhard with a talent for saying staggeringly stupid things whenever the cameras are rolling. (A loosely paraphrased sample of the wit and wisdom of The Amazing Race's Jon: "It's like a woman's orgasm: it takes a long time and it's hard to get there, but once she's had it, she's good for a week" -- which may explain why Kelly seems so agitated most of the time, come to think of it.) Together, they bicker with one another and sneer at everyone else -- during the Mumbai, India, leg of the race, Kelly made such a point of complaining about the overpowering odor emanating from the teeming masses, you were left waiting for someone in the crowd to turn to her and say, "You know, many of us here understand English perfectly well, and you're smelling a bit ripe yourself." Based on the sort of behavior frequently on display during The Amazing Race, if you ever found yourself sharing a train compartment with the two of them, I'd give you about 15 minutes -- 20, if you've got the patience of a saint -- before you've tuned out their yammering in order to silently weigh the internal injuries you'll suffer versus the mental relief you'll feel if you just fling yourself off the train at the next switchbox.

(Basic fairness along with a gnawing fear of fielding angry e-mails from Kelly and Jon's friends and relations compels me to point out the duo I've formed an instant chemical dislike for is the one presented to me courtesy of television's editing tricks. In real life, Kelly and Jon are doubtlessly pleasant people who pay their fair share of taxes and volunteer their time and energy toward community improvements. On The Amazing Race, however, they are at the mercy of the show's producers as to how they are presented. Neither you nor I would likely fare any better in a similar situation. Imagine for a second that a camera crew followed you around 24-7. That footage of you yielding to oncoming traffic or cleaning up after yourself or complimenting your next-door-neighbor on how her gardenias are coming in this year will probably never see the light of day -- not when that same camera crew has clips of you picking your nose and cursing like a longshoreman and trying to sneak through the 10-items-or-less line with 12 items. Now imagine how well you'd comport yourself if you were whisked off to a faraway land where none of the locals had the courtesy to speak English and you were asked to function on little sleep while Phil Keoghan messes with your mind. You'd probably be snappish and curt and prone to making disparaging comments about Millie's mole, too. Reality TV producers call that "the good stuff," and, as entertaining it may be for the home audience, it doesn't necessarily provide an accurate depiction of the people debasing themselves for our amusement. So, in all fairness, I recognize that Kelly and Jon -- or indeed, any of the Amazing Race contestants -- are probably just peachy human beings, no better or worse than you and me. But they're the ones on TV, and I'm the one with computer keyboard and the mean streak, and who said life was fair?)

So I spend a good portion of every Amazing Race episode taking perverse enjoyment whenever something unpleasant happens to Kelly and Jon. They have to handle eels at an Amsterdam fishery? Better them than me. They're packed like sardines onto a crowded train as it putters its way across India? Them's the breaks. They're reduced to sniping at one another as they get more and more lost on some Malaysian backroad? Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of kids. I revel in their miseries. I curse their successes. I await their weekly Old Testament-style beat-down for offenses both real and imagined.

And yet, every episode when it looks like the bill for their blundering will finally come due, I'm struck dumb with fear that Kelly and Jon will get eliminated from The Amazing Race. If they're sent away, who will be left for me to actively root against? Where will I get my socially acceptable weekly dose of schadenfreude?

>From the clowns? Hardly.

It is the great paradox of reality television -- every now and again, the shows are populated with people we instantly condemn as contemptible and amoral and, therefore, deserving of the worst punishments God (or, failing His intervention, Mark Burnett) can devise. And yet, without these people -- who we claim to despise so much that we beat feet to the nearest water-cooler or online bulletin board in order to say vile, possibly defamatory things about them -- reality shows are infinitely less interesting.

Think back to Joe Millionaire, quite possibly the most brilliant reality show ever conceived or executed. Most likely, of all the gold-digging hussies vying for Joe Millionaire's hand, you probably most remember Heidi, a frizzy-haired covetous blonde who had neither the artifice nor the inclination to hide her open lust for our hero's fake millions. So how satisfying it was to watch Heidi get her just desserts, whether it was watching her wrinkle her nose as she mucked out a stable or bugging out her eyes as Joe Millionaire gave her the ol' heave-ho. And how empty it felt the week after Heidi departed the chateau in a huff of ungracious behavior and broken French when she was no longer there to liven up the proceedings.

Or consider the granddaddy of all reality programming, MTV's The Real World. In the decade-plus that show has been on the air, who made the biggest impression? The unending parade of milquetoast young people who arrived at the house, made bland, forgettable pronouncements about embarking on an adventure of self-discovery, and then took up space and oxygen until it was time to leave? No -- you remember the jerks, the misfits, the borderline sociopaths who ate other people's food and violated everyone's personal space and generally made every occupant in the house feel both uncomfortable and murderous. Or, to put it another way, you remember Puck.

That's right -- Puck. The dirty, filthy reprobate who so terrorized the cast of the San Francisco edition of The Real World that he was asked to leave, either by his fellow housemates or the producers or quite possibly the Board of Health. But before his untimely demise, you didn't dare miss an episode of The Real World, on the off chance that you'd tune in to discover the Puck had been murdered -- his body riddled with six gunshot wounds from six different weapons while his six former roommates concocted six flimsy alibis. (Sensing the importance of having this sort of dynamic on the show, MTV has gradually upped the casting ante of The Real World in subsequent installments, taking the radical step of picking seven different Pucks to live in the same house. So we may see that on-air murder yet, is what I'm saying.)

Add to that proud history Amazing Race's Kelly and Jon. Like other reality TV participants before them, they may never gain the acclaim of the masses, but they still serve an important purpose. They are the Wile E. Coyote to the other teams' Roadrunner -- we don't want to see the Coyote ever catch the Roadrunner, but we sure are delighted whenever the Coyote runs off a cliff or crashes head-first into a train or accidentally triggers the Acme weapon of mass destruction and gets singed in the blast. With every wrong turn and catty comment and hissy fit, Kelly and Jon brighten up The Amazing Race immeasurably, giving us something far more important than someone to root for -- we have someone to root against. And so as the circus clowns continue their relentless march toward victory, Kelly and Jon have won a prize that's just as important if not as lucrative -- our admiration for a job of villainy well done.

So when exactly did USA become a real network? Last I checked in with them, their purpose was to provide some small solace for insomnia sufferers with low standards. Then, after the Internet made fresh porn freely available twenty-four hours a day, they became the network where octogenarians could tune in to see the episode of Walker, Texas Ranger they forgot they saw two nights previously. Now, seemingly out of the blue, USA is nominated for a small gaggle of Emmys. Are they under new management, or are we witnessing the law of averages in action?

Meanwhile, Monk just keeps getting better and better. If you haven't caught the show yet, you can't go wrong with this week's episode, "Mr. Monk Goes to the Theater." Rarely have I seen so many inventive ways of putting a protaganist into horrible -- and hilarious -- situations over the course of an entire season, let alone a single hour episode. If you run across one of the innumerable weekly reruns, do yourself a favor and watch it. It truly is one of the funniest things on (American) television.

Also, the pilot for Peacemakers, which I caught about half of last night before Mount Babysuvius erupted, looked very promising. The idea of slapping CSI into an Old West town, where the Law is allowed to shoot people at will, is nothing short of brilliant. I didn't see the whole thing, but it's possible that after almost 40 years, Tom Berenger has finally starred in something that he doesn't have to be slightly embarrassed by.

Between USA, BBC America, and Game Show Network, I'm fast running out of reasons to ever tune in to a major broadcast network.