December 2003 Archives

So I saw "Return of the King" the other day, and I thought it did an excellent job of of capturing Tolkein's message and portraying it on screen in a very moving and visually arresting way.

And that message is: do not hire orcs.

No, seriously -- the orcs are a bunch of fuck-knuckles. Whether it's losing the battle of Minas Tirith despite superior numbers, a demoralized foe, and unlimited use of giant, evil elephants or it's letting Frodo and his little helpmate wander unimpeded through Mordor, the orcs blunder away one advantage after another. (They even go so far as to kill one another in a Stooge-style brawl!) You keep waiting to see a shot of Sauron shrugging and saying, "It's so hard to find good help these days."

The orcs make Imperial Stormtroopers look like models of self-direction and resourcefulness. They make the Nazis of the Indiana Jones movies look like a solid bet to carry out their evil plans. Sauron would have been better off sub-contracting out to some of the jumpsuit-wearing lackeys from any one of a number of early Bond movies. At any rate, he should have expanded his hiring pool beyond orcs.

Other thoughts about "Return of the King," which may or may not include spoilers, if a book that's been published for several decades can actually be spoiled... ("Here's a spoiler on the Bible -- Christ rises from the dead!" "Damnit, I was going to read the Bible tonight, and you ruined it for me!):

* There's a shot near the end of the movie, after all the humans ride out to Mordor to face down the orcs in an effort to distract them from Frodo's approach to Mount Doom, of one of the Riders of Rohan... I don't know his name. He looks like a refugee from an '80s band. Warrant, maybe, or, perhaps more appropriately, Night Ranger. Anyhow, they're surrounded by every orc in Mordor, so he shoots Aragon a look like, "This was your fucking plan? Ride out to Mordor and get surrounded by orcs? That's some nice strategy there. Really nice. You are the worst king ever!"

* If you are looking for an opportunity to take a bathroom break during the three-and-a-half-hour runtime, do what I do: leave whenever there's an elf on the screen about to open his or her yap and speak entirely in metaphor. Do you suppose the other residents of Middle Earth sit around and say amongst themselves, "Oh shit, here come the elves. God, I hope they don't sing those dreary Enya songs again." [Editor's Note: I left the theater when Liv Tyler appeared on-screen and managed to not miss a thing or destroy my bladder.]

* I don't know if you've seen the preview for "Butterfly Effect" -- the movie in which Ashton Kutcher keeps travelling back in time to save his girlfriend from an early demise only to find out he's made the future worse -- but I'd like to shake the hand of the man who decided America was ready to see the guy from "Dude, Where's My Car" in a taut psychological thriller. Also, there's a scene in the trailer when Ashton finds himself in one of the wacky alterna-futures he's created, and he stumbles across his girlfriend (Amy Smart) only to find her covered in scabs and living in a rathole. You will get much greater enjoyment out of that scene if you do as I do, and say, in an Ashton Kutcher-like brogue, "Oh no, I've totally turned you into a crack whore."

The other patrons of the movie theater will reward you with stony silence and icy looks.

Ah, Christmastime -- a time for hopes and dreams and childhood wishes. And Orange Level terror alerts. And mad cow outbreaks. And the prospect of uninterrupted airings of Whoopi.

Huh. Maybe it's better to spend this holiday season sacked out in front of the TV watching more uplifting fare.

THE NETWORKS

Disney-owned ABC gives the holiday gift that keeps on giving -- corporate synergy, in the form of The Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade (Check local listings). Aw, really, ABC -- you shouldn't have. (The parade also airs on The Disney Channel at 8 p.m.) That's followed later in the day with an NBA Doubleheader (3 p.m. PT) featuring the Sacramento Kings playing the Dallas Mavericks and the Los Angeles Lakers taking on the Houston Rockets.

Just when your kids are about to flatline from their all-day gift binge, you can park themselves in front of the TV for back-to-back airings of The Rugrats Movie and Rugrats in Paris (CBS, check local listings) and enjoy a moment's peace while they stare unblinkingly at the talking box.

Nothing says "festive holiday" like apple-cheeked pixies in sequined uniforms skating around to Christmas music in Holiday Celebration on Ice (NBC, check local listings). "Festive holiday" or "unspeakable hell" -- either one, really.

How do you say "overwrought caterwauling" in French? Find out on World Idol (Fox, 8 p.m.), which pits Kelly Clarkson against Idol winners from around the world in an international celebration of tepid pop music.

WWE SmackDown! (8 p.m., UPN) heads to Iraq for a special performance in front of the troops, as Iraqis get their first sweet taste of Western culture.

MOVIE MARATHONS

You want to see The Christmas Story? Then, stray no farther than TNT, which began showing Peter Billingsley's greatest movie at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve and will continue showing it until 6 p.m. Christmas Day. That marathon is followed by Jack Frost ( 6 p.m.) -- a movie that will make you hate Christmas, Michael Keaton, and perhaps even life itself.

Ebeneezer Scrooge was haunted by three ghosts; you will be haunted by three Adam Sandler movies -- Billy Madison, The Waterboy and Happy Gilmore (USA, 6 p.m., 8 p.m., 10 p.m.). Scrooge got off easy.

The Cartoon Network serves up a pair of ill-advised animated sequels -- The Land Before Time III: The Time of the Great Giving (4 p.m.) and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (7 p.m.). Wedged in between is We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (5:30 p.m.), which is not a sequel, but is certainly ill-advised.

SpikeTV offers six Bond movies -- Live and Let Die (9 a.m.), The Man With the Golden Gun (12 p.m.) , The Spy Who Loved Me (3 p.m.), The World Is Not Enough (6 p.m.), The Living Daylights (9 p.m.) and For Your Eyes Only (midnight). Then again, SpikeTV is always showing Bond movies, so I hardly see what the big deal is.

It's really hard to say which is the most off-putting made-for-TV Christmas movie that Lifetime is showing in lieu of dead air. Is it The Christmas Gift (12:30 p.m.) featuring John Denver and a pre-Malcolm in the Middle Jane Kaczmarek? Or Unlikely Angel (2:30 p.m.), starring Dolly Parton as a dead country singer who gets into heaven by uniting a troubled family during the holidays? Or maybe it's Jason Alexander as The Man Who Saved Christmas (4:30 p.m.). I'm going to have to go with D -- all of the above.

A&E wishes you a very Columbo Christmas, with two movies featuring the rumpled detective (8 p.m. - midnight).

Do you find it odd that Oxygen, a channel ostensibly for women, has a marathon of Alfred Hitchcock movies, a man who made his bones with films about women being menaced or menacing others? No matter. Please enjoy Vertigo ( 9 a.m.), Rope (12 p.m.), The Man Who Knew Too Much (2 p.m.) and Rear Window (8 p.m.) in lieu of Oxygen's normal Xena reruns.

Turner Classic Movie's religion-themed movie marathon began Christmas Eve, but continues today with The Greatest Story Ever Told (6:30 a.m. PT), Ben Hur (10 a.m. PT) and King of Kings (2 p.m. PT). When Robert Montgomery appears as a prematurely dead boxer in Here Comes Mr. Jordan (5 p.m.), you'll know you've slipped into TCM's movies-about-angels marathon (which includes A Guy Named Joe, The Horn Blows at Midnight and Cabin in the Sky).

The Western movies on AMC kick off at 5:20 a.m. with Jesse James and wrap up around 2:35 a.m. on Boxing Day with Rooster Cogburn. In between, the highlights include High Noon (11:25 a.m.), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1:10 p.m.) and The Searchers (8 p.m.).

In case you missed all those Christmas specials ABC Family has been showing throughout December, the cable channel shows them again: All I Want for Christmas (12 p.m.), The Christmas List (2 p.m.), Borrowed Hearts (4 p.m.), Three Days (6 p.m.) and Picking Up and Dropping Off (8 p.m.). Those movies are bookended by two animated specials -- Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (10 p.m.) and The Year Without a Santa Claus (11 a.m.), which of course features the greatest Christmas song ever. A-one and a-two... I'm Mr. Green Christmas/I'm Mr. Sun/I'm Mr. Heat Bli....

(Thanks to the use of a carefully placed cattle prod, we've managed to sedate Mr. Michaels. We promise you he will not spontaneously break out into the Heat Miser song for the remainder of this article.--Ed.)

OTHER MARATHONS

It's nothing but Saturday Night Live reruns on Comedy Central (11 a.m. - 8 p.m). I assume these are Christmas episodes, but all TiVo tells me is "An ensemble performs sketch comedy." Which is sort of like describing "The Three Musketeers" as "A trio of swordsmen have adventures." You will get two Christmas episodes of South Park (9 p.m.) later that evening, however.

Having driven Trading Spaces (1 p.m. - 3 p.m.) into the ground, TLC now turns its attention to overexposing While You Were Out with a 10-hour marathon beginning at 4 p.m.

I missed the memo where VH-1 now only programs countdown shows, such as 100 Moments That Rocked TV, (2 p.m. - 6 p.m.) and 100 Greatest Songs of the Last 25 Years (9 p.m. - 1 a.m.)

Spend Christmas with Ally Hilfiger and Jaime Gleicher on MTV's four-and-a-half-hour Rich Girls marathon (begins at 8 p.m.) and suddenly Christmas dinner with Uncle Herb, Aunt Rita and the cousin with the drooling problem doesn't seem so dreary.

E! highlights the 101 Biggest Celebrity Ooops! (3 p.m. - 7 p.m.), which presumably highlights celebrity bloopers and other miscues as opposed to people who mistakenly became celebrities due to the cruel whims of the public. If it's the latter, however, my vote is for that big-haired kid from the first installment of American Idol. Him or Tony Danza.

If you've ever dreamed of spending Christmas with Tyler Florence, The Food Network indulges your odd fantasy with six hours of Tyler's Ultimate (2 p.m. - 8 p.m).

I'm not sure five hours of watching neglected and abused animals get rescued will stir up warm holiday feelings, but there's an Animal Cops marathon (Animal Planet, 5 p.m. - 10 p.m.) available for your viewing pleasure, regardless.

ESPN2 taunts the NFL with back-to-back episodes of the much-hated-by-Paul-Taglibue Playmakers (7 p.m. PT).

Bible stories, Bible stories, and more Bible stories still on The Discovery Channel, starting at 10 a.m. and wrapping up in the evening with a tribute to the birthday boy Himself, Jesus: The Complete Story (8 p.m.).

If a 14-hour marathon of Headliners & Legends (MSNBC, starting at 3 p.m.) is what gets your motor running, then you really watch too much television.

ODDS AND ENDS

At last, a chance to savor the genius of Gene Rayburn -- Match Game Merry Blank-a-Thon (Game Show Network, 5 p.m. PT) is a four-hour collection of Christmas-themed Match Game episodes.

It's the most bittersweet Christmas present of all on ESPNClassic, which re-airs Game Seven of the 2003 American League Championship Series (7 p.m. PT). On the one hand, it's another victory for the hated Yankees. On the other, it's a painful defeat for the Boston Red Sox, thus giving me my vengeance over the obnoxious Red Sox fan who taunted me at the A's-Red Sox playoff this year. I think, in this case, I shall choose vengeance.

Spend Christmas with the Governor, as Bravo shows the original Terminator (8 p.m.).

Kneel before Zod! Sci-Fi caps off a day of not-at-all-related movies with Superman II (11 p.m.).

Celebrate the holidays by reliving the corporate scandal that forced you to give your kids tin cans and pogs for Christmas on The Big Lie: Inside the Rise and Fraud of WorldCom (CNBC, 11 a.m. PT).

If you are the least bit excited about the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl (ESPN, 5 p.m. PT), you are either an alumnus of the universities of Hawaii or Houston or you are a degenerate gambler. I'm not trying to judge here.

Christmas carols -- they're as inescapable as traffic jams at the mall the day before Christmas. Some make us happy the holidays are here. Others bring out our inner demons. Below, some of our picks for the carols they're playing in Hell -- and the ones we'd probably hear if we made it Upstairs.

Happy holidays.

"Christmas with the Devil" (Spinal Tap)

No, we do not hate Spinal Tap. We admire the poignant juxtaposition of the secular and religious imagery with elves and angels alike in bondage gear, but this is the kind of song a dreary 15-year-old plays for Grandma, then lips off to his horrified parents, "You don't get the real meaning of Christmas!" And for that, it's on the Hell list.

"Have a Rosie Christmas" (Rosie O'Donnell)
"Do You Hear What I Hear" (Rosie O'Donnell & Elmo)

Because our cup runneth over when it comes to rotten Christmas music, we could not actually decide which cut from Rosie O'Donnell's ill-considered series of Christmas albums (yes, plural) to include on this list. So you can opt to hear the Queen of Nice belt her way through the modestly titled "Rosie Christmas" or listen to Rosie murder a beloved Christmas carol with Sesame Street's Elmo as her accomplice.

The question lingers, however: which song is actually worse?

If you have a Rosie, Rosie Christmas, you're splitting your time between running a magazine into the ground, backing a failed Broadway musical and hectoring others to give generously, all to the kind of overproduced backbeat Madonna relies on to placate her Ecstasy-addled fanbase. If you hear what Rosie and Elmo hear -- here's a hint: they're not listening to themselves sing -- you will hear a strident, self-important B-lister and a grating sock puppet declaring their unnatural love for each other. That is if you can listen that long.

So which is worse? All we know is, that if you make it through either song, you're made of sterner stuff than us.

"Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy" (David Bowie & Bing Crosby)

While we're on the subject of wretched Christmas duets, perhaps no holiday pairing has yielded more unintentional comedy over the years than the unholy union of the Thin White Duke and Der Bingle. "Every child must be made aware/Every child must be made to care," Ziggy and Bing croon. And if the nippers are still apathetic, then it's off to the study for a heart-to-heart session with Bing, Bing's belt and a thermos of Salty Dogs.

"I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" (The Jackson Five)

This song -- a creepily upbeat tune about a young child inadvertently stumbling upon his mother as she cuckolds her husband with Saint Nick -- is unbearable under the best of circumstances. When sung by the Jackson Five, unwitting witness Michael lends an unwholesome subtext to the number. "I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus... and it's screwed me up so bad, I made the plastic surgeons give me Joan Crawford's face."

"It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" (Kathie Lee Gifford)

It's beginning to look a lot like Kathie Lee is desperate to evoke anything other than snorting contempt. But too late! It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas because Kathie Lee's replaced her sweatshop's shackles with festive green and red tinsel.

"Please Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas)" (John Denver)

Hey, you know what would help us all get in the holiday mood? A lighthearted ditty about a gin-soaked loser who repeatedly ruins Christmas for his loved ones by coming home each year in a drunken stupor. The kids singing along seem to think so, anyway.

"Little Drummer Boy" (Chicago)

What this version needs is a little more David Bowie. Or a lot less Chicago.

"Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)" (Trans-Siberian Orchestra)
"Ave Maria" (Kenny G)

Sometimes, you don't need vocals to wreck the song because the instrumentation is enough. If you're listening to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, you'll wonder when Christmas became the angry holiday; if you're listening to Kenny G mangle Schubert's usually-exalted classic, you'll wonder when you scheduled that root canal.

"It's Christmas (All Over the World)" (New Edition)

Bobby Brown is joined by his friends Bell, Biv, and DeVoe to remind us that it's Christmas all over the world. Except in China. And Vietnam. And large swaths of Asia and Africa. And not until January in Greek and Russian Orthodox countries. And in several Middle East countries, it is most decidedly not Christmas. But everywhere else? Christmas. All over the world.

"O Holy Night" (Mariah Carey)

Make no mistake about it: "O Holy Night" is a very pretty song that, when performed modestly with minimal orchestration, can be quite moving. Sadly, for Mariah Carey, "performed modestly" means "Whitney Houston, I am gonna sing your ass out to President's Day!" and "minimal orchestration" means "you'll feel the percussion in your toes." Fall on your knees, y'all.

"The Christmas Shoes" (NewSong)

Let us tell you a story about a little boy, a magical pair of Christmas shoes, and the horrifically maudlin song that has a nation in its death grip.

When we were driving from Baltimore to Fredericksburg for the Christmas pilgrimage in '00, we were listening to WASH-FM, a local station that plays Christmas music non-stop from mid-November to midnight, December 25. After suffering through any one of the songs listed above, we heard this one: a treacly ditty about some smug yuppie who gets the real meaning of Christmas when the filthy little urchin in front of him requests help buying a pair of shoes for his momma so she'll meet the dress code in Heaven. "I knew that God had sent that little boy to remind me what Christmas is all about," the narrator warbles, apparently forgetting that a woman has been sent to an early grave just so he can be reminded to not be such a grump around the holidays. The Lord works in mysterious ways, we guess.

After hearing this song for the first time, we had to pull over to I-95's shoulder, lest our laughter cause us to drive into a tree. Later, when recounting this horrible song to our parents and/or in-laws, we noticed their faces grew ashen -- _they actually liked the song!_ And they weren't alone; apparently, when it comes to hating "The Christmas Shoes" and all it stands for, we are squarely in the minority.

We have never been happier that our tastes run so counter to the mainstream. Now won't you buy some shoes for this kid's mom already? What's wrong with you, Christmas grumpus?

(By the way, this song is now a book and a terrible, terrible TV movie, airing December 21!)

And now the good songs.

"O Tannenbaum" (The Vince Guaraldi Trio)

If you ever find yourself in one of those improbable "Sophie's Choice"-like moments where someone tells you that you can only listen to one Christmas album ever again, take our advice and make it the soundtrack to "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

"You're a Mean One Mr. Grinch" (Thur Ravenscroft)

Little-known fact: though the "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" CD credits Boris Karloff with this song, it's actually performed by Thurl Ravenscroft (better known to breakfast cereal lovers everywhere as the voice of Tony the Tiger). Thurl's other notable musical achievement: singing the haunting tune, "No Dogs Allowed" from "Snoopy, Come Home." Impress friends and bar patrons with this bit of arcana.

"Blue Christmas" (Willie Nelson)

It's wrong for the Redheaded Stranger to have a blue Christmas, lovely though it sounds. Now kiss him under this "mistletoe." You can smoke it later.

"Soulful Christmas" (James Brown)

James Brown loves you. He can't stop himself. Good God.

"Maybe This Christmas" (Ron Sexsmith)

Wonderful for those holiday moments when you're maxed out on forced cheer and poinsettias, and want only to curl up in bed and ease out of the egg nog hangover with a little hair of the dog that bit you.

"God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" (Barenaked Ladies & Sarah McLachlan)

Who doesn't love Canadians funking up a tune about escaping Satan's grasp and scoring some myrrh in the process? Not us!

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (Frank Sinatra)

You didn't think a list from the Schmeiser/Michaels family wouldn't include a track from the Chairman of the Board, did you?

"Silent Night" (Dinah Washington)

Anyone would sleep in heavenly peace if Dinah crooned this to them shortly beforehand. It's perfect -- simple and powerful.

Additional contributions to this article by: Philip Michaels, Lisa Schmeiser.

After all these installments, Survivor still kicks ass. It's the only show I watch that generates deep, intense discussion in my family. We pause the show on the TiVo constantly, talking about game theory, the strategies of the various players, counting the votes in Tribal Council. It's a fantastic combination of watching sports and watching a game show.

If you've not watched Survivor because you're afraid it's going to be more like The Real World or The Simple Life, you need to give it a try. It's the smart reality TV show for smart people. (Joe Millionaire -- the original -- was the dumb reality TV show for smart and dumb people, since you asked.)

As for last night's Survivor, it was a replay of one of the most insane decisions any contestant can make: choosing to face a person in the final round whom they like, rather than facing the person who is the most beatable. And so, yet again, the person who won the final immunity challenges ends up selecting the person who will defeat them for a million bucks.

Well played, Millionaire Sandra. And I can't wait to see someone kick Richard Hatch's ass on Survivor All-Stars, coming after the Super Bowl. Rupert, maybe?

I feel like I should apologize in advance for actually clapping eyes on the Trista and Ryan vows: I'm contributing to the ceaseless prattle surrounding this spectacle, and that realization makes me want to take a scalding shower until the shame is washed away. However, I did end up watching because the laundromat I was at had it on, and at some point I had to stop blowing quarters on Ms. Pac-Man and spend them on the dryers, and so there I was, twitching as I waited for the bride to walk down the aisle.

Prior to Wednesday night, I had nothing against Pachelbel's canon. I used to think it was a fine choice for the interlude before the bride's march down the aisle: as a child, a local rehab center used it as background music for their ads, and so I always associate the song with alcoholic excess -- appropriate enough for most wedding receptions and some marriages. However, after hearing a group of musicians play it interminably has permanently dulled my enthusiasm for that song.

Seeing the wedding permanently dulled my enthusiasm for pink. As Trista made her appearance, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching a very expensive live-action Barbie commercial. It doesn't help that the bride looked like a Barbie doll: a team of experts had buffed and shined her until she fit into some commercial template for "attractive," thus rendering her devoid of anything resembling personality or style.

Don't get me wrong: I have no idea if Trista has any personality or style on an average day. My first exposure to her was during ABC's ill-conceived tie-in with the Miss America pageant, where Trista was supposed to be offering a just-folks commentary on the proceedings. If the people of America are a bland, inarticulate and opinion-free bunch, then she did just fine. Otherwise ...

In any event, the Trista doll was walked down the aisle toward the groom doll, through a series of camera shots that more or less broadcast the harsh truth that the groom's rank in this spectacle was somewhere below the bouquet but above the pink chair slipcovers. A ceremony that provided neither spiritual context nor secular sentiment concerning a serious commitment commenced. And then the two dolls kissed.

When my girlfriends and I played Barbie wedding as children, this would have been the point where GI Joe and his friends crashed the wedding and made off with the groom for an escape to the French foreign legion, or where the Darcy doll, who towered over Barbie at 12.5", came stomping in with Amazon fury and took down Barbie WWE-style. Sadly, neither scenario played out during the live-action equivalent.

ABC missed their opportunity there. It's been plainly obvious from the word go that this wedding was less about two people cleaving to one another and more about at least one of them cleaving to the public spotlight. Based on their previous wedding specials and a deluge of ancillary press I skimmed while waiting in line at the grocery store, the newlyweds more or less roped friends and family into playing preordained roles in a scripted made-for-TV drama. There was nothing authentic about this entire experience; it was manufactured for public attention and should have rewarded the public accordingly. Having something in the wedding go hideously wrong in some way would have been great TV: The Bachelor's entire premise is predicated on heavy scripting, as are television weddings. That script inevitably includes jilting, natural disasters, appalling gaucherie or assassination attempts. ABC peeled off from the script and left me wondering, "A year's relentless hype for this? FOX would have at least insisted that Evan Marriott and Paris Hilton crash the bridal party."

Events like this illustrate why ABC is getting waxed by the competition: they spend money stupidly. I'm not saying they should have chucked the $3.8 million dropped on this nuptial snoozfest at a deserving charity instead; that would have done nothing to increase their viewership, and ABC's in the business of making money, not improving the world. (Their programming alone should tell you that.) I'm saying ABC should have spent their money better. They should have remembered that this made-for-TV spectacle was made for a TV audience, not for Trista and Ryan, and that this wasn't about her dream (as she was so fond of reminding anyone who came within 50 feet), but our petty entertainment demands. What I saw this week wasn't a TV-worthy event but a very expensive, very Barbie home movie. If I want to see Barbie movies, I'll watch Todd Haynes' "The Karen Carpenter Story." And from now on, if I want to see TV weddings done right, I'll try to do my laundry when the TV's showing Style channel's Melrose Place reruns.

Hey, say what you will about the Trista-Ryan nuptials -- the wall-to-wall pink, the tasteful sand art, the budget that could have fed, clothed and educated large swaths of the African continent until the next equinox -- I'm just grateful ABC allowed us to watch Trista and Ryan consummate their marriage.

What? You didn't see that part?

Man, you've got to start staying up past Nightline.

I somewhat disagreed with Chris Rywalt's initial assessment of Battlestar Galactica -- I don't have too many fond memories of the original, but I did like Sci Fi's "reimagining" of the show. I particularly liked the darkness of the miniseries, which didn't shy away from the realities of the original series' premise: just about every human being alive is murdered. The shots of the beautiful planet Caprica being repeatedly nuked were gorgeous and horrifying.

That's part of the reason I vociferously disagree with Chris's assessement of the series' second part. I liked the bit with the little girl for the same reason why I liked the mushroom clouds.

The original Galactica never appealed to me because I thought Dirk Benedict was a laugh riot or that fake robot dog was cool or that Boxey was somehow a person I identified with. I actually preferred the chilling aspects of it -- civilizations in tatters, people on the run, vile traitor Baltar, and scary Patrick MacNee appearing as some sort of weird satanic figure.

I also think Chris is being way too sensitive, in the same way that Ebert (whom I usually agree with) was. Showing the abandonment of the little girl after making what is clearly the right decision (to let thousands die instead of tens of thousands) is meant to be a direct counterpoint -- yeah, the president made the tough call! But look! It's going to kill the cute little girl! As if her life or death were any more important than any of the other thousands of people who have been killed as a part of a pragmatic choice made in the throes of war.

Sci-fi isn't necessarily silly -- and this new Galactica wasn't going for silly. Sci-fi can be a serious, important medium. Clearly the new Galactica folks think so, too. Using the little girl was certainly bringing out a big gun. But the entire Galactica miniseries was really one extended meditation on parents and children, and the little girl fit perfectly into that. Chris can dismiss this movie as silly "skiffy" -- I mean, it ain't "Moby Dick" -- but I appreciate popular entertainment that also tries to do a bit more than just blow stuff up good.

I actually paused Battlestar Galactica partway through the second installment on my DirecTiVo and took a break, going to the computer to do some ranting. And I sat there totally overwhelmed by the death of the little girl, Cami, who was left behind as the Cylons attacked the remaining human spaceships. It was something about the way she was shown playing with her doll as her death approached.

I understand why the filmmakers might have put that in there -- to put a face on the tragedy of genocide, to weigh us down with the sorrow of the extinction of mankind -- but I am angry with them over it. Because I think -- and I thought this before I had kids and I think it even more now -- portraying the death of a child is a big gun, and you're only supposed to drag it out if you've got something big and important to tell us. If you've got some place you need to take us, some place we absolutely must see, then, yes, pull out the big gun. I'm thinking of "Schindler's List" here, for example. Because I accept being manipulated by the movies: That's what movies are for, to manipulate us. And there are times when that's good.

But Battlestar Galactica is not the right place to haul out the big guns. Battlestar Galactica is a cheap piece of escapist entertainment. Yes, maybe, in some strange universe, it could have been more. But it isn't now and never was. It's just a crappy "Star Wars" knock-off made to sell cereal to the kiddies. No big guns allowed. The filmmakers, they stepped over a line, and they knew they were stepping over it, and they did it anyway.

And that's just crass.

You might see the violent origin of the Battlestar Galactica series as a strength of the show. I see it as the big weakness, especially when used as background for a foreground containing Dirk Benedict and daggets. It's almost like setting Three's Company in Dachau. ("Come and knock on our cell door/We've been waiting for food....")

This amazingly irritating poster on the BG message boards -- he's one of those who posts empty messages because, I guess, his subject says it all or something -- suggests that the girl wasn't obliterated but was kidnapped. Same with the infant in Part 1. I think one of two things: Either that's reading way too much into the script (and giving the writers way more credit than they deserve -- I'd rather imagine they just never thought about continuity or sense); or, it is true, but the writers should have hinted at it better or explained it more in the miniseries rather than making us wait for the series.

Roger Ebert notes in his review of "Beyond Borders" that the image of a starving child in the arms of Angelina Jolie is way too serious and important to be used as a backdrop for a movie romance, which is what the film was about. A letter-writer noted that the child was created using computers and that this absolved the film of its responsibility; Ebert denied this, saying that movie images presented as real have their own reality. Or as he wrote: "Whether or not the baby is really a starving stick-figure, it looks like one, and the image itself is offensive in a movie that uses his suffering as a backdrop for movie stars in love. In this era of CGI, it's important to note that movie images have a reality of their own, apart from their sources."

I agree with this. Even if at some later point it turns out the children were not killed, from the point of view of just this miniseries, that's exactly what happened, and it's just too horrible for the flimsy skiffy dramedy to support.

The miniseries, truncated as it was, is just a trial balloon for a possible revival of the Galactica series; but I'd only watch the series to see about the dead kids. Beyond that, I have no interest in watching yet another shadowy, digital video, someone-gave-me-a-gravitas-enema skiffy series in world already overfull with same.

Here I'm lumping the latest Galactica in with both installments of Dune, the American Doctor Who, all the Buffy/Angel shows, The X-Files, the mass of X-Files rip-offs that once dominated the airwaves, Deep Space 9, Babylon 5, Andromeda, Farscape, Stargate, and Flapdoodle and Pisswhistle. I might even be tempted to throw in Hercules, Xena, and those shows Monty's always writing about. Alias, too, come to think of it. Smallville. Cleopatra 2525. And judging by the ads run during Galactica, SciFi's got a bumper crop coming up.

I could probably come up with more if I spent more time searching. I'm not sure what's current, though.

A bunch of these are no longer in production, and even if they all were they're still hardly a pimple on the big TV ass of cop and lawyer shows, but there are a lot of them around. And we don't need one more, especially an offensive one based on an inoffensive, childish series fondly remembered by its fans.

One of my most prized possessions when I was younger was a giant-size comic book adaptation of Battlestar Galactica. I loved that comic book. I loved that show. I remember the Christmas my friends got their dangerous Vipers with real shooting plastic missles. I wanted one of those so badly. I remember wanting to grow up to be Starbuck -- with his courage in the face of danger, I'm sure he would've bought the missile-firing Viper instead of the crippled replacement version.

So now along comes the reimagined Battlestar Galactica on Sci Fi 25 years later. Time has changed our crew: Starbuck and Boomer are chicks, Col. Tigh's a honky, Adama is Lt. Castillo, and Apollo is really, really stuck up. Time has also changed TV standards: Now we have multiple uses of the word "asshole," near-nudity, simulated sex with a robot, and infanticide. But some things haven't changed: The Cylons are still the bad guys, they still have that one roving red eye, Baltar is still a traitor, the Galactica looks about the same, and some old Vipers, curiously similar to the ones from the original series, are pulled out of mothballs so I can recall that long-ago Christmas and write Santa a nasty letter. Boxey even has the same stupid Prince Valiant haircut.

The resulting miniseries is far better than it has any right to be. It is, in fact, too good to really qualify as good. Most of what made the original worth watching, back when I was seven, was the sense of goofy fun. The original was a random hodgepodge, from the Ancient Egyptian-inspired pilot helmets to Adama's Al Sharpton-in-space medallion. The new version, however, is extremely frowny. The original was Jenna Elfman goofy. The new Galactica is Cate Blanchett goofy.

That this works even a little bit is due to the presence of Mr. Serious Actor Edward James Olmos. If you need someone whose very expression simply says, "Who farted? Dammit, this is serious!", good ole E.J. is your man. I'm convinced that if he ever smiles, his whole face will fall off. Mary McDonnell, beloved of sci-fi movie geeks for her work in "Donnie Darko," is a close second in the "Take this script with a grain of uranium" contest. She gives scenes far more weight than they deserve throughout the miniseries' first installment.

The rest of the cast struggles manfully -- and, in Starbuck and Boomer's cases, womanfully -- to lift their super-heavy scenes of death and grief and pain, but the whole thing never really gets off the ground. Starbuck works better as a woman than you might expect but has lost some essential joy; Dirk Benedict played Starbuck as a devil-may-care playboy with a wink and a smile, but Katee Sackhoff takes her similar character off into ball-busting bitch territory with a short side-trip through self-destructive. Boomer as a woman is even less of a change than Starbuck's gender reassignment, since the original character wasn't much more than a sidekick anyway. At least homeboy Herb Jefferson Jr. gave the impression of being a military man, where Grace Park just seems a little too limp.

Baltar is given a lift here, along with being youthened; he's manipulated into becoming a traitor, although he shows a little too much aptitude for it. At least he has the decency to be slightly horrified when he finds out he's responsible for the deaths of almost the entire human race.

Maybe that's what's bringing the whole show low. The near-extinction of humanity is a huge downer. Maybe I'm remembering the fun episodes of the old series instead of the original TV-movie, which admittedly did kill the bulk of the human race, albeit in less gory mushroom-cloud detail.

Or maybe the whole show, genocide and all, is pretty hokey, and the only thing that can liven up the proceedings is a little camp. I mean, we're talking about a science fiction show made by people who know enough to know that there's no sound in space, but who still think we need some sound to punch up the space battles, so they use muted sounds in space. How seriously can we take this? About the only dim glimpses of fun in the entire first part of the miniseries were the passing references to the original show: An old-school Cylon in a museum (right next to the gift shop!); the original theme music used as soundtrack for a Blue Angels-in-orbit-style Viper revue; and yeah, Boxey's Prince Valiant.

I did enjoy the "reimagined" Galactica in a vaguely nostalgic way. But it falls into the same trap as so many other sci-fi extravaganzas in the brave new world of digital effects: Now that we can make everything look as pretty as a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster, we forget to include the little things, like good screenwriting. And fun. Shows like Doctor Who and Star Trek and the original Battlestar Galactica may have looked cheap, but they played like a million bucks. The new Battlestar Galactica looks like a million bucks -- maybe 15 million adjusting for inflation -- but plays like a lead nickel.

Shortly after this photo was taken, Mr. Michaels found a crumpled up piece of paper on the steps of Capitol Hill. Together, Mr. Michaels and the paper sang a charming ditty about how a bill becomes a law. However, when the crumpled-up piece of paper began lecturing Mr. Michaels on the multiplication tables and the proper use of pronouns, Michaels set the paper on fire and danced to the rhythm of its screams.

I've been out of the loop a while, TV-wise. First, there was the baseball playoffs, and then there was a cross-state move, robbing me of television's warm embrace for a couple weeks. And, of course, there was that bout of the death flu.

So imagine my surprise -- once the warm, embracing glow of television was restored to my life -- when I turned on the set to see Fox's relentless promotion of its American Idol Christmas special. That'd be the special that featured Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken -- or as they're known in the Michaels homestead, who?, huh?, and that yokel who inexplicably commands Christ-like fealty from the Wal-Mart nation -- singing all your holiday favorites. Oh, but not just singing them, the Fox advertisement stressed -- performing them "Idol-style."

If you're like me, you might be wondering just exactly what "Idol-style" is. Near as I can tell, it's a convenient shorthand for "belting out popular standards like you're an alley cat being stuffed in a sack in order to compensate for a lack of innate talent." But if it means having to watch the "American Idol" crowd murder "O Holy Night," I'm just going to have to live with that nagging uncertainty.

So the kids have started watching -- and therefore by extension, I have started watching -- Justice League, and this weekend they aired the episode where Superman is killed*. At his funeral, various crimefighters are decked out in various gear: Wonder Woman has either joined a seedy Vegas revue or is wearing Themyciran formal wear; Hawkgirl and the Flash are wearing their normal costumes, but, hey, maybe they're considered funeral-appropriate; I suspect Martian Manhunter doesn't actually have any other clothes.

But, Jesus, Aquaman didn't even bother to put on a shirt. Way to show respect there, Fish Boy.

* Yes, yes, not killed but hurtled forward in time, only to meet Vandal Savage and giant, mutant cockroaches, and return to thwart Savage's world-destroying plan. Let's leave it at "killed" for the normals, OK?

In what has become an annual Thanksgiving Day tradition, the wife and I were watching -- and, by extension, ruthlessly mocking -- the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the event that dares to ask the question, "What happens when you bring together the splendor of hot-air balloons, the pageantry of lip-synching pop stars and the forced servitude of the 'Today' show anchors?"

(The answer? High comedy? Particularly on close-ups of Matt Lauer, when you can see the self-loathing in his eyes as he prattles on about the Garfield balloon.)

It was my wife who noticed the multitude of young girls -- it may have been some national champion cheerleading group, though it could just as easily not have been -- performing a musical salute to America. And they chose, as their accompaniment to their tribute to all things red, white and blue, "Born in the U.S.A." by New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen and "American Woman" by shifty Canadian rock band The Guess Who.

I figure that whoever vets the musical selections for the cheerleading group didn't pay close attention to the lyrics of either song. I mean, I enjoy both ditties as much as the next guy, but if I'm looking for tunes with a "USA All the Way" or "My Country, Right or Wrong" vibe, I think I'd shy away from lyrics like:

Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man

Or:

American woman, said get away
American woman, listen what I say
Don't come hanging around my door
Don't wanna see your face no more
I don't need your war machines
I don't need your ghetto scenes

Then again, perhaps I'm not giving the cheerleaders enough credit. Maybe their choice of songs wasn't merely the result of some thick-headed lummox blindly selecting tunes with the words "America" or "U.S.A." in the title, but rather a stirring commentary on protest, a salute to patriotism by celebrating the right to dissent.

Or maybe the cheerleaders just hate America. Whatever the case, I suggest we haul them off to Gitmo post-haste until we can sort this thing out.