June 2004 Archives

I was walking along the Third Street Promenade a few weeks ago, people-watching as usual and musing that living in Los Angeles was a lot more fun now that I’d decided to spend all my waking hours pretending I was on an anthropological expedition. It’s my latest coping strategy: rather than give in to the urge to kill every time some spindly Bikram yoga addict manages to lose control of her Escalade and plow across three lanes of traffic because a) she is attempting to pilot something the size of Sherman tank in a space meant for commercial automobiles, and b) she’s trying to do so while on the phone, I figure I’ve been handed a fine opportunity for observational research. I’m the Margaret Mead of Marina Del Rey. Look for my findings in Coming Of Age in Santa Monica.

So I’m walking along, reflecting on how wearing a ruffled miniskirt in public is probably analogous to harrowing coming-of-age rites in other primitive cultures, when this woman stops me.

“Excuse me! Would you like to go on a TV show and get a makeover?”

“Um.” I searched in vain for a snappy comeback and eventually settled on blurting, “No!”

The woman jammed a flyer in my hand and hurried off before I could recover enough to ask, “Why? Do I look like I need a makeover? Are you going on the show too?”

And then I stood in the middle of the promenade, utterly gobsmacked. Until that very moment, it had never actually occured to me that I needed a makeover. I couldn’t fathom why I’d want one. Unlike the women I had seen sobbing their way through The Swan, I hadn’t assigned my looks credit or blame for whatever successes or failures I’d weathered. Unlike the people I’d seen on Extreme Makeover, my friends and relatives had better things to do with their time than meditate on how much more pleasant I would be if I’d lose the all-black wardrobe and invest in some volumizing spray. And unlike anyone I’d seen on I Want a Famous Face, I’m enough of an egomaniac to scorn the idea that I should be trying to emulate anyone else.

Yet this total stranger seemed to think I needed fixing. It finally occured to me: perhaps she passed along the paper because I’m not very attractive. My gob continued in its smackitude. It’s one thing to suspect, in the little-visited corners of your soul, that you’re on the left side of the bell curve in looks. It’s another to have someone else offer an unsolicited confirmation without warning.

“I’m going to go find out exactly why she pulled me aside for that nonsense,” I growled to the husband, since getting confrontational with a stranger who just told you you’re ugly is always a good idea.

“Catfight!” he cheered, as I charged down the sidewalk in hot pursuit of the woman.

Eventually, I found her pulling all sorts of women out of the crowd — older, younger, heavier, thinner. There wasn’t any pattern, which disappointed me because it would have been helpful in figuring out why she approached me. There was, however, a steadily growing crowd of women surrounding the Makeover Mary. And instead of crowding around her because they were about to form an improntu lynch mob out of outrage, they were demanding a chance to be made over.

Defeated, I turned around and began walking back to the husband. Makeover shows depress me — if not because so many people seem to willing to accept total strangers bossing them around, then for the usually dismal results. The so-called experts seem more intent on stamping people into a cookie-cutter ideal of beauty that is neither ideal nor beautiful: it’s more like what would happen if Barbie was real, and had just gone on a Vegas bender with the tigers at the Mirage. I had always figured the point to self-improvement was to make the most of what you had, not obfuscate or eliminate it because it didn’t fit in with someone else’s idea of appropriate.

But now the makeover shows depress me because of that Third Street Promenade incident. It’s not because a total stranger told me I could benefit from God-knows-what renovation. It’s because apparently, so many other people are more than willing to believe that they do. And they’re willing to tell the world on TV.

These days, to judge by television, Las Vegas is a clean and wholesome place, characterized by huge swimming pools, family entertainment, and the occasional poker tournament where celebrities get drunk and win money for charity. Sure, people get killed on CSI, but they're almost always brought to justice by Gil Grissom's Photogenic Posse. In this environment, it's good that Mark Burnett has brought The Casino to Fox, because it reminds us all just how sleazy and unpleasant Las Vegas can be.

Don't get me wrong. I love Las Vegas. But there's no denying that even with its attempts to spruce up the place, there's an underlying current of debauchery. And not the fun kind, either. The Casino embraces this and is not afraid to wallow in it. The result, as you might expect, is not particularly enjoyable to watch. But I'm convinced that's not the point.

Allegedly a "reality" show (but I'll talk about that later), The Casino features two guys named Tom and Tim who have bought the Golden Nugget, one of the less interesting casinos in Vegas. It's not even on the strip; it's in that shadowy netherworld known as "Downtown Las Vegas," which I always find to be a disconcerting place to go. On the strip, all you ever see are emblems of tourist-related industries, like cabs and prostitutes. But downtown there are real people going about their daily lives. It's like going to Disneyland and seeing Mickey taking out the trash; it ruins the illusion. But apparently none of the good hotels (or even Circus Circus) was within Tom and Tim's price range, so the Golden Nugget it is.

So far, the theme of the shows has been that Casino Owners Will Do Anything For Rich Idiots. They're always running after morons who look like they're about to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars by not really knowing how to play blackjack. And since that's what happens, I guess I can't call Tim and Tom idiots. I can, however, point out that they're constantly debasing themselves in front of self-styled "moguls" with zebra-print coats, begging them to lose their ostentatiously-flashed wads of cash there instead of at the Mandalay Bay. It doesn't seem like a way of life that would promote a healthy self-image.

Another theme of the show is that Sex Is Disgusting. Maybe it's just Vegas Sex they're talking about, but when you've got a man, his wife, and their girlfriend out trolling the casinos for couples to add to their sex party, it's amazing how uncomfortable and weird a simple orgy can look. And that's not even mentioning the frat boys who peer-pressured their probably-gay pal into licking whipped cream off a hooker. Or the "professional gambler" who took a transvestite back to his room and probably didn't realize she was a man.

At this point, you're probably wondering why I'm putting so many things in sarcastic quotes. I've given the punctuational stink-eye to "reality", "mogul", and "professional gambler", and that's only because I've been restraining myself. See, although The Casino is billed as a reality show, every scene is very obviously staged. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's "scripted" (because that would imply that someone sat down and wrote this terribly unconvincing dialogue) but there is not a single scene where it isn't obvious that a PA told the terrible lounge singer what to say or where Tom and Tim have been coached on what this episode's Manufactured Conflict is.

So, you might be asking, given that it's a terribly-made show, full of unpleasant and unconvincing people, is it worth watching? Well, I don't know. The only fun part of it is if you can find someone else who watches it so you can talk about how weird a show it is. But if there's no one saying "I know! And what's with the opening credit sequence, huh? What is that supposed to be?" then you're just sitting there fidgeting and hoping that someone makes it out of the show with their souls intact. It's probably a moot point, because I can't picture this atrocity lasting more than two or three more episodes. You might want to watch it once just so you can tell your grandchildren about the time you knew civilization was doomed.

A couple weeks ago, I spent a lovely Sunday afternoon where you'll usually find me on lovely Sunday afternoons -- siting in the right-field bleachers taking in a ballgame (second most likely place you'll find me: drunk and face-down in some gutter somewhere). It was, by almost every conceivable metric, an enjoyable day down at the ol' ballyard -- the conversations were interesting, the beer was refreshing, and the Forces of Good triumphed over their would-be conquerors from a foreign land. Nothing, it seemed, could take the luster off of such a day.

Nothing, except for the punk-ass kid seated to my immediate right.

The punk-ass kid was anywhere from 10 to 15 years younger than me. He came to the game by himself. And while me and the punk-ass kid both appeared to be fans of the home team, we expressed our support for the hometown nine in vastly different ways -- me, by cheering for the home team's successful hits and run-scoring plays, and the punk-ass kid, by showering the opposing right fielder with unceasing torrents of abuse.

The right fielder, it should be noted, was hardly an all-star or a hot prospect or anyone worth getting terribly worked up about; rather, he was an inconsequential rookie whose major league career had spanned all of 22 games. He was a warm body, penciled in to play right field because the rules of baseball suggest that you field a lineup of nine players. In short, not the sort of player worth straining your vocal cords to taunt. And yet, the punk-ass kid strained away, verbally assaulting the right fielder from the game's first pitch onward, with most of the ridicule being some variation on the theme of "you suck."

Well, after about two-and-a-half hours, this had become to much for me to bear. So as the punk-ass kid began his eighth consecutive inning of reminding the right fielder of his general suckiness, I decided to offer a helpful suggestion of my own.

"Hey," I said to the punk-ass kid. "Shut up."

Which he did, since I can look quite menacing, at least to people 10 to 15 years younger than me who also happen to be punks and/or asses. But he didn't look too thrilled about shutting up. And I got the distinct impression that the other people in my immediate vicinity didn't think too much of me either -- instead of murmuring their thanks that my gallantry had spared them another inning of adolescent vulgarities, the crowd seemed to regard me as a humorless killjoy who had bullied some poor dumb kid out of his God-given right to curse at opposing players.

It was at that point that I realized two things about myself, neither of which exactly have me brimming with self worth. First, I'm a bit of a jerk. I say impolitic things at inappropriate times to the wrong people -- so much so that on the few occasions when I am in the moral right (chastising foul-mouthed teens at ballgames, say), I wind up appalling and scandalizing onlookers.

Second -- and perhaps most troubling -- we are not all that different, that punk-ass kid and me. Both of us have opted to spend our precious free time on this earth ridiculing the achievements of others. Yes, he directs his wrath at mediocre outfielders while I reserve my vituperation for mediocre TV shows, and I like to flatter myself that I spew my invective with a touch more élan. But at the end of the day, we're still two misshapen peas from the same withered pod.

And that's humiliating to me, frankly.

Well, that painful incident was exactly the wake-up call I needed. Like that guy in one of McDonald's "I'm Loving It" ads who decides to shave his unibrow and take up salsa dancing all because the Golden Arches now makes Chicken McNuggets entirely out of white meat, I'm going to make some serious changes in my life. I'm going to be nicer, more even tempered, less prone to pointing out other people's failures and shortcomings. When people make a TV show that offends my delicate sensibilities, I'm no longer going to demand to know which TV executive they had to blackmail to get their dreck on the air -- instead, I'm going to let things slide. That way, I figure friends will now invite me into their homes instead of hiding behind the couch when they see me walking up the driveway and complete strangers will be less prone to taking swings at me in the middle of social functions. Also, if I start behaving myself now, there's the not inconsiderable benefit that I'll be able to fool God into thinking that I've always been the nice and, thus, can sweet-talk my way into heaven.

Any way you look at it, it's a brilliant plan. And I have UPN to thank for helping me see the light.

You may remember UPN as a Viacom-owned entity that seems to have gotten it into its thick skull that it's actually a TV network because it managed to trick a loose confederation of stations into airing its terrible programming. Nearly a decade into its run as a make-believe TV network, UPN's greatest contribution to date has been to spare ABC the embarrassment of being the worst-run broadcaster in the nation. So long as UPN exists, it seems, the television industry will always have a baseline.

Or maybe it won't. Because in a display of competence so unexpected as to be unnerving, UPN unveiled a fall schedule for 2004 that appeared coherent, reasonable, and well-planned. This stood in marked contrast to past years, in which UPN's lineup often resembled the results of a collaboration between particularly stupid lab monkeys and executives who had undergone prolonged exposure to paint fumes. I don't know where "surprisingly cohesive programming decisions by UPN executives" falls among the Signs of the End of All Worlds checklist -- somewhere between hailstones the size of medicine balls and pillars of fire appearing on the horizon, I'm guessing -- but if the most misbegotten of networks can finally get its act together, I figure the least I can do is say nice things about it.Ê

For instance, the old, mean grumpy Phil might point out that three shows UPN introduced last fall -- Jake 2.0, Rock Me Baby, and The Mullets (which the lab monkeys and paint-fume victims had particularly high hopes for) -- have been fitted for toe tags. But the new life-affirming, happy Phil would rather concentrate on the fact that two rookie shows -- All of Us and Eve -- will return for a second season on UPN. That's one more new show from last fall than NBC plans on bringing back in September, and, really, wouldn't you be bursting with pride if you could best the performance of NBC when it came to developing new shows?

No, me neither. But I'm trying to be encouraging here.

Having enjoyed some measure of success with "urban-themed" programming (or, if we can decode the euphemistic industry-speak for a moment here, shows starring African-Americans), UPN is adding to its arsenal. Joining a Monday night lineup that already features shows about a single dad looking for love (One on One), two half-sisters looking for love (Half and Half), four gal pals who do not appear to be half-sisters or single parents looking for love (Girlfriends) is Second Time Around, in which a divorced couple is looking for love... and finds it with each other. As part of our rigorous program of self improvement, we offer UPN our congratulations for having, at long last, found a programming niche, without even bothering to qualify our praise by noting that the success comes from shows that tend to be every bit as banal as their lilly-white counterparts.

Kevin Hill, appearing on Wednesdays at 9 next fall, centers around a hotshot attorney whose swinging-bachelor lifestyle undergoes a major transformation when he becomes the guardian to his dead cousin's infant daughter. And if you're thinking, "Hey, that sounds a lot like One on One, only far more downbeat" -- as opposed to the 95 percent of TeeVee readers who are thinking "I had no idea that was the premise behind One on One until you just told me" -- you're half-right, since Kevin Hill is an hour-long drama as opposed to a 30-minute sitcom. Another key difference: Kevin Hill stars Taye Diggs, an extremely talented actor who has stood out in everything from a West Wing guest shot to Malibu's Most Wanted. As for the fact that Kevin Hill's cast also features long-time TeeVee nemesis Jon Seda, I guess I'll just have to choke down my rage.

For a while, it looked like Enterprise -- UPN's government-mandated Star Trek spin-off -- was a goner, since only the fiercest, most socially backward Trek devotees even cared whether it lived or died. But Enterprise will be back in the fall, shuffled off to a Friday-at-9 time slot that normally translates to death for sci-fi programming. And while the old me might have tossed off some ham-fisted quip about how at least the fiercest, most socially backward Trek devotees don't have any prior obligations to get in the way of watching Enterprise on Friday nights, the new me is already composing a sincere letter of apology for all the angry e-mails this sentence is sure to generate.

Enterprise hands over its Wednesday night time slot to the most successful program in UPN's history, America's Next Top Model. Repeats of the program will also air on Fridays, thus sparing UPN's programming gurus from having to rack their brains for another way to fill up 60 minutes of their 10-hour broadcast week.

The final show to debut on UPN next fall will be Veronica Mars, about a 17-year-old girl detective who unravels mysteries in a wealthy, seaside town, aided by her pals Wallace, Duncan, Logan, and Weevil. Yes, you heard me -- Weevil. Think of it as Gilmore Gils meets Alias in The O.C. with just enough Buffy thrown in to make you forget you're watching a show created by people who thought it would be a good idea to name a character Weevil. Now, if I was still intent on coming up with some stinging put-down about the future of Veronica Mars, I might point out that it sounds exactly like the kind of brainless action-adventure show that liters UPN's schedule every fall for a few weeks before disappearing to make way for the next brainless UPN action-adventure show. But since I'm now a speak-no-evil, glass-is-half-full kind of guy, I'd rather say... uh... I...

I can't keep up this charade any more.

Look, I'm happy that UPN finally got its act together. I really am. But the whole time it took me to reach this paragraph, I really haven't been able to shake the suspicion that there's one too many broadcast networks in business nowadays and its name is still UPN.

The big three -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- have the tradition. Fox has the willingness to experiment. WB has -- for now, at any rate -- the interest of the young people. What does UPN offer? Pro wrestling, a reality program and a block of shows that may or may not appeal to a specified segment of the population -- or, as you might also recognize it, stuff you can find on cable. There has to be something more than that, a raison d'être for UPN's existence beyond just that Viacom hasn't gotten around to shuttering the building yet. And try as I might, I just can't see it.

Maybe that's going to change. Maybe UPN is rewarded for its vision and patience. Maybe wrestling will enjoy another late-'90s style boom. Maybe Taye Diggs' talent can counteract the Seda Effect. Maybe more viewers will discover UPN's brand of sitcom and find the style to their liking. Maybe America's Next Top Model takes its place alongside American Idol and Survivor in the pantheon of great reality shows. Maybe by this time next year, America will be swept up in a case of Weevil-mania.

And maybe the odds of all that happening are about as likely as me making it through an article without saying something nasty.

How badly did last Tuesday's premiere of Fox's The Jury do in the ratings? Let's just say I've seen SciFi Channel reruns of Stargate SG-1 get higher numbers. Ouch. If something doesn't change, and fast, I'm afraid that The Jury will swiftly go the way of Wonderfalls and countless other great shows that made the mistake of airing on Fox.

That's a damn shame, because The Jury is, at the very least, outstanding summer entertainment. Produced by Barry Levinson, Tom Fontana and James Yoshimura-- the same fellows who brought you a little show called Homicide: Life on the Street-- it's an intriguing look at the role that ordinary Joe and Jane Citizens play in the legal process. Can it compare even fleetingly to the glory of Homicide's best (Jon Seda-less) seasons? Not a chance. There's a definite sense that punches have been pulled here-- that the stories are a bit simpler and more straightforward than they could be, and the cast less vivid. Two episodes in, I don't know any of the recurring characters' names, and except for Barry Levinson himself as the amusingly gruff judge, sometimes I can barely tell them apart. (Which is not to say none of the regular cast make an impression-- the twitchy bailiff, his rotund deputy pal, and the judge's alarmingly adorable clerk are all fun characters who don't get nearly enough screen time.)

Even if some of the main cast tend to blend together, the members of the various juries who deliberate the show's cases tend to defy expectations. The lawyer sneaking into the bathroom to field e-mails on his Blackberry may be a jackass, but he analyzes the facts with impressive precision-- and in the end, he's right. And the compassionate woman fighting for the rights of a teen accused of murder is also letting her sympathies blind her to the details of the case. Without seeming any smarter than they ought to be, the jurors display a heartening sense of responsibility as they play amateur detective with the evidence at hand. The cases they tackle are never clear-cut; we're invited to be sympathetic to both the defendants and the families of the victims. By the end of each episode, we fully understand the consequences of the crime for everyone involved, which makes each hour's climactic revelation of what really happened downright riveting. Just as many of Issac Asimov's novels used paper-thin characters to discuss fascinating concepts, what The Jury lacks in personality it makes up for with thought-provoking moral questions.

If you enjoy TV that surprises and challenges you, then please, watch The Jury. And if you'd like to help the ratings, bring 11 of your friends with you

It’s become something of a self-imposed curse: I can’t watch 24 anymore without noticing how it treats its female characters. I’ve written before on how the first two seasons of 24 seemed to suggest some bizarre woman-hatin’ streak among the show’s writers. Nearly every female character came across as an idiot, victim, schemer or some combination of the three.

Granted, it’s a bit silly for me to examine 24 for mistreatment of women when the Fox network is offering up so many more rich, meaty examples of misogyny — this is your cue to think of The Swan and recoil in finger-curling, full-grimace horror. The crucial difference, in my opinion, is that 24 seems to be made by smart people who want to create reasonably high-quality television, instead of, say, chattering cacodemons from the ninth circle of Hell. 24 promises more, and deserves to be held to a higher standard.

The good news is that this season was a significant improvement from the series’ first two years. Female characters were mostly treated as something other than Satan’s Own Hausfraus. Mostly.

Male characters had their share of nasty experiences this season — tortured, executed, shot in the neck, virus-infected, deprived of a hand. But too many of the female characters suffered more dramatic and gratuitous fates than the men, and too few of them shared the sort of complex motivations granted most male characters. Which suggests that, while it’s no longer portraying the ovary-bearing members of its cast as crybabies, nincompoops or frothy-mouthed hellbeasts, it’s still got a ways to go before I can devote my 24-watching time to more important questions — like, say, whether Jack Bauer could take Alias’s Jack Bristow in a fair fight. (I’m betting no. Bristow looks like a biter.)

Without further ado, here’s your scorecard:

MICHELLE DESSLER
CTU agent, lone beacon of female competence.

THE GOOD: Michele got to play loving wife to Tony “Soul Patch” Almeida without losing any of her superlative ass-kicking abilities. From her cool, compassionate command of a virus-infected hotel to her thoroughly awesome one-woman escape from the clutches of heavily armed ne’er-do-wells, Michelle basically owned every storyline she was in.

THE BAD: One early-season episode made Michelle look like an idiot for worrying that the bleeding gunshot wound in her husband’s neck made him unfit for duty. Because, yeah, that’s an unreasonable expectation. When she escaped from the very nasty people who threatened to mutilate her, Jack and Tony ordered her to let herself get recaptured for strategic purposes. Weirdly enough, she’s been demoted to a recurring character for next season. And there exists the unhappy possibility that actress Reiko Aylesworth only gets such an awesome role to play because she’s star Kiefer Sutherland’s current sweetie.

OVERALL: Michelle continues her proud tradition of seriously rocking for a second year.

KIM BAUER
CTU computer tech, fetching cougar bait.

THE GOOD: Kim didn’t do anything egregiously stupid this year. She was generally portrayed at being good at her job. And, in an episode I missed, I’m told she turned the tables quite nicely on a would-be attacker. She also stayed fully clothed all season.

THE BAD: Kim didn’t really do much of anything this year. The producers’ solution to the Great Cougar Debacle of 2003 was to have her mostly in the background, fretting about her relationship with her boyfriend and doing vague computery things. (“Open up a socket and patch me into the satellite feeds!”) Also, she, uh, stayed fully clothed all season.

OVERALL: A year without cougars is a step in the right direction.

NINA MEYERS
Pure evil, in convenient womanly form.

THE GOOD: Nina actually got to stick around for a while this year, and she definitely made an impression. Fierce, uncompromising, and terrifyingly good at sowing mayhem, Nina was certainly no one’s victim.

THE BAD: Nina’s amped-up badassitude wiped away any sort of ambiguity about her character’s morals. Unlike last season’s brief glimpse or two of humanity, she was one-note evil all the way. And yes, she was reaching for that gun in her final moments, but Jack still shot her like a dog, in cold blood.

OVERALL: Next season won’t be as much fun without her.

SHERRY PALMER
Lady MacBeth meets Donna Reed.

THE GOOD: Penny Johnson Gerald turned in a marvelously malevolent performance as President Palmer’s whacked-out ex-wife. The producers openly acknowledged that Sherry’s Machiavellian scheming was ridiculous, hissable good fun.

THE BAD: Why did Sherry turn the Seven Deadly Sins into a handy to-do list this season? Because she wanted her ex-husband to marry her again. She even got a whole dewy-eyed scene to explain this as she clung adoringly to her baffled former spouse. Clearly, to win back the man you ruthlessly manipulated, why bother with flowers when murder, blackmail and extortion will do? Giving Sherry a twisted ideal of domestic bliss as her ultimate motive undermined all the initiative, intelligence and strength she’d displayed in the course of her evildoing. She’s a vicious bee-yotch, yeah, but deep down inside, she really just wants to bake cookies.

OVERALL: When Ann Coulter looks good in comparison, something has gone terribly wrong.

JULIA MILLIKEN
Rich wife; terrible role model.

THE GOOD: Gina Torres is a talented and lovely actress who’s made memorable appearances on shows like Alias, Angel and especially Firefly.

THE BAD: Julia Milliken went from unrepentantly unfaithful wife — married to a tyrannical, crippled husband solely for his money — to blubbering patsy for Sherry’s evil deeds. And when that wasn’t bad enough, the writers had her wig out, shoot Sherry, and then turn the gun on herself. 24’s sensitive, thoughtful portrayal of the American wife marches on!

OVERALL: If she keeps getting roles like this, Gina Torres needs to fire her agent. Out of a cannon.

CLAUDIA
Drug lord’s concubine; courageous and conscientious mother.

THE GOOD: Claudia, mistress to the less psychotic of a pair of Mexican drug lords, proved to be a refreshingly strong and resilient character. To protect her son and father, she daringly rescued a CTU agent from his torturers and helped him escape from her husband’s heavily guarded ranch.

THE BAD: Claudia’s reward? A stray bullet to the head. For most of her screen time, she was defined solely by her sexual relationships with both Jack and her trigger-happy novio.

OVERALL: Does 24 writers’ room include a Wheel of Stray Bullets with female characters’ names on it?

CHLOE
Annoying, puffy-faced CTU computer whiz.

THE GOOD: Chloe was damned good at her job, saving CTU’s computer network from a devastating attack. She consistently tried to act for what she considered the greater good, not her own good. She displayed rock-solid integrity when sticking up for her friends.

THE BAD: Chloe was whiny, sullen, prone to tattle on coworkers, and generally tactless.

OVERALL: I thought Chloe was this year’s most interesting character on 24, male or female. Was she obnoxious and short-sighted? Yes, but in an entirely ordinary way. She wasn’t a nigh-infallible saint like Michelle, or a grotesque parody of office politics like Season 2’s awful Carrie The Evil One. She was just a person, warts and all — a well-rounded approach that 24 could use more of, on both sides of the gender line.

JANE SAUNDERS
Loving daughter, hostage.

THE GOOD: Even when she discovered her dad was a sleazy superterrorist, Jane remained cool, calm and collected. She stayed touchingly devoted to her dad without failing to acknowledge just what a monster he was.

THE BAD: Can you say “human chess piece”? She wasn’t so much a character as a MacGuffin in the ongoing duel between Jack and her evil dad. There was even a lovely scene in which Jack bluffed her dad by having men in gas masks haul Jane, flailing and screaming, toward certain death inside a virus-infested hotel.

OVERALL: Still better than Season 2-era Kim.

KATE WARNER
Overly trusting sister, former Jack Bauer paramour.

THE GOOD: At no time did Kate attempt to bribe murderous arch-conservative yokels with brightly colored Euros.

THE BAD: Kate got a one-scene cameo at the beginning of Season 3, which mostly involved Jack breaking up with her via cellphone. Classy.

OVERALL: Kate who?

DR. ANNE WHATSHERNAME
Short-lived love interest to David Palmer.

THE GOOD: Wendy Crewson’s not a bad actress in the least.

THE BAD: Dr. Anne spent her entire brief time on the show being defined only through her relationship with President Palmer. As a result, she failed to make any impression at all.

OVERALL: Doctor huh?

BLONDE WOMAN OF QUESTIONABLE VIRTUE
Terrorist associate, former prostitute/spy.

THE GOOD: Unafraid to give Jack an eyeful as she changes to accompany him to an interrogation. Greets intruders in her home at gunpoint.

THE BAD: Gal pal of a murderous superterrorist. Ex-prostitute turned Heidi-Fleiss-ish madam. Killed by gunfire in a preposterous helicopter attack. Barely onscreen long enough to make any sort of impression at all.

OVERALL: If you’re going to bring in a character just to add some sex appeal to the show, at least have the courtesy not to kill her off 15 minutes later.

STUPID DRUG COURIER GUY’S STUPID GIRLFRIEND
Stupid girlfriend.

THE GOOD: Actress Agnes Bruckner looks very nice, if a bit too skinny, in a bikini.

THE BAD: Mostly exists to have sex with her idiot boyfriend, freak out, get captured, or scream.

SEMI-INTERCHANGABLE CDC WOMEN
Very smart doctor-people.

THE GOOD: Knew their stuff. Never freaked out. The one who used to be on NYPD Blue sussed out Jack’s entirely obvious heroin addiction in something like 20 seconds.

THE BAD: Turned up, said stuff, vanished.

NAKED MANDY
Nudity-prone lesbian murderess.

THE GOOD: Did nothing evil whatsoever this season.

THE BAD: Didn’t actually appear this season. And given her failure to successfully poison President Palmer at the end of last year, it would seem that she’s not all that good at the whole murdering business.

OVERALL: I’m surprised that Fox would exclude a nudity-prone lesbian murderess from any of their programming.

TERI BAUER
Still dead.

Since the National Basketball Association and its unwatchable playoffs only exist in a theoretical world to me, the first I heard about Jimmy Kimmel's Detroit controversy was yesterday when I had on the local sports talk radio station as I was driving home from getting soaked by the local auto-repair shop. (On a related note, if you have any odd jobs that need doing -- repairs around the house, assorted errands about town, people that you need killed -- I'm available for a fair price.) The radio station played the clip of Kimmel mocking Detroit. ("They're going to burn the city of Detroit down if the Pistons win, and it's not worth it.")

Me being the media-savvy guy I am, I figured that this would be one of those stories that gets the locals all-hyped up -- the meaningless kind of trash talk that takes place between cities involved in athletic contests that gets all blown out of proportion and then quickly dies down once cooler heads prevail. You know, like Mayor Bloomberg declaring that Pedro Martinez should have been arrested for assault for throwing at Jorge Posada during last year's baseball playoffs. Has that arrest warrant been issued yet? Didn't think so.

Getting back to this Kimmel thing, at least I was right about the blown out of proportion part.

The radio station then played clips from Detroit news reports about Kimmel's comments, complete with vox populi commentary. And if you were to base your knowledge of this entire incident solely on these man-on-the-street interviews, you would have concluded that Kimmel A) poisoned the water supply; B) sabotaged Detroit's infrastructure; C) undermined the local economy: or D) called for the systematic slaughter of Detroit's civic leaders and most of their constituents, instead of making an ill-advised wisecrack.

Here's an actual quote from Andrea Parquet-Taylor, who is the news director of the ABC affiliate and not, as you might suspect after reading what she has to say, some sort of lunatic:

âWe are pretty livid about the entire situation. [Station manager] Grace [Gilchrist] gave them an earful. We think that there is a lot of discussion about how Jimmy Kimmel has jeopardized his right to have clearance in this community. Totally out of line. We have got probably one of the strongest audience bases in the country for him. An apology is not going to cut it at all. We're not going to accept that from him. He owes this community much more.â

Oh, clearly. After all, Kimmel didn't just do something trivial like rob a bank or destroy a national monument or kill a guy. He told a joke that insulted Detroit residents! Clearly, no apology should can make up for that. He should be driven from the airwaves and barred from ever earning a decent living again and set on fire!

Er. Scratch that last one.

Increasingly, I have come to believe that we live in a nation of pantywaists and mollycoddles, and incidents like this are just more evidence for the file. It used to be that lightweight, not-terribly-original slights like Kimmel's were either laughed off, met with an eye-roll or -- best of all -- utterly ignored by their intended target. These days, every insult, real or perceived, must be met with cries of outrage and calls for vengeance. If we're ever going to advance as a people, we're going to have to start making a serious effort to learn when to let shit go.

Forget all the columns on what the dreary old networks are going to be doing in the fall. All the new shows suck, all the old shows are as bad as they were last year, and you don’t want to watch any of them. Tell you what: Next September and October, go outside and watch the leaves turn orange, see some sunsets, take a last swim before it gets too cold.

But here in June and July, as the temperature goes up and good-looking people put on increasingly tiny bits of clothing and start to sashay around showing off their new tattoos and piercings, crank the air conditioning down to 60, cuddle under an old comforter with someone equally overweight you love, and settle down to watch some of the good stuff that’s on right now.

Six Feet Under
Season Premiere Sunday, June 13, 9 PM/8 Central, HBO

Okay, we gave the third season of SFU our Biggest Disappointment Award just last year. But, damn, when the show was good, it was so good, I’m looking forward to its return despite myself. The teasers they’ve been running — showing the cast cavorting to the incredible strains of Nina Simone performing “Feelin’ Good” — are so amazingly cool. I’m actually feeling teased by the teaser, something I haven’t felt since, well, since the first season of Six Feet Under.

And I just caught the season finale from the pathetic previous season, and, okay, I’ll admit it, it wasn’t as bad as I remembered. It even had some good parts. Maybe the final show was a return to form, maybe it’s the new medication they’ve got me on. I don’t know.

All I know is, I’m dying to see this show. Ahem.

Nip/Tuck
Season Premiere Tuesday, June 22, 10 PM, FX

This is the show we’re all waiting for. The first season of Nip/Tuck was glorious fun, a trashy soap opera with all the nudity, sex, and gore one would expect from something on Showtime. The whole show came together with some fantastic performances, both up front and in walk-in roles. Seeing it for the second time around as FX ran the series again as a run-up to the second season premiere I only appreciated it more.

Various writers compared it to Six Feet Under but the show Nip/Tuck has the most affinity for is really Miami Vice. I don’t know if the locations of the two shows helped to lend a certain vibe to the proceedings — since Nip/Tuck, at least, is mostly filmed in California, I’m not sure how it could — or if there’s something more intentional going on. But, man, it’s been too long since we had cool cars cruising around to cool music while overly handsome guys had sex with ridiculously gorgeous gals. And at least this time the lifestyle makes some sense; how did Don Johnson’s cop ever afford his outfits?

The new season promises to be another rollicking ride. How will Christian deal with his new black son? Will Julia tell us who fathered Matt? Will Jude and his badly faked New Hampshire accent be back?

I could go on like this for a while, but then I’d start to sound like one of those breathless morons on electronic bulletin boards everywhere. So I’ll stop here and simply say: Watch this show.

Coupling
Season Premiere passed, but it’ll probably show on BBC America another hundred times or so, episodes first air Sunday, 9 PM, BBC America

After coming to America and making a mess of things with NBC and their version of Coupling, Steven Moffat and Sue Vertue return to Britain and the place where their show belongs. I don’t know if it was the casting that made the American version bad, or the general Americanization; I think it may just be that I know Americans don’t talk like the characters in Coupling (men of my acquaintance simply do not compare penis sizes) but I can believe British people do because, well, they’ve got accents. I mean, bottom line, the Giggle Loop is something I can imagine in British pubs, but in Chicago, it doesn’t fly.

Alas, the new season must go on without Richard Coyle and his character, Jeff. I’m not sure how the show will fare without him since Coyle was easily the best thing about it. The first episode writes him out as having flown off to the island of Lesbos (Steve helpfully explains, “It’s pronounced Less-BOSS”) and, while Steve’s end of the conversation was suitably Jeff-like, I missed Jeff himself. I have no idea why Coyle didn’t return; maybe he was having too much fun or something. I know I was.

Coyle’s replacement, meanwhile, is somewhat Jeffish. Oliver, as played by Richard Mylan, is missing that essential Welsh version of insanity, but at least can date Jane, thus neatly rounding out the sextet without leaving any dangling bits. Still, as of the first episode, he didn’t fit in entirely, and failed to fill Coyle’s shoes completely. But I’ll give Mylan time to settle in.

I have faith that Moffat’s writing will overcome the hurdles and continue as fresh and hilarious as in the previous seasons. Time will tell, of course. And I trust you’ll be along for the ride.

Rescue Me
Series Premiere Wednesday, July 21, 10 PM, FX

I don’t know much about this show. All I’ve learned about it I got from the commercials running during Nip/Tuck and the IMDb. But it looks great.

Denis Leary returns to TV in this show about New York City firefighters. Why it took so long in the wake of September 11th for FX to jump on this bandwagon I do not know, but here it is.

Leary’s last show was The Job and you know we loved that. He’s back on board as writer and star, along with the team from The Job, writer Peter Tolan and producer Jim Serpico. As a guy growing up working class Irish in Boston, Leary really knows cops and firefighters inside out; if this show has the same feel for firemen as The Job did for policemen, this is going to be one hell of a series.

The teasers lead me to believe Rescue Me is going to be more serious than The Job, and that’s okay. Hopefully there’ll be a balance of funny and real moments in the show. If they get the balance right, this could easily end up one of the best shows on TV.

We’ll see. In the meantime, check out the trailer over at FX.

I'm sorry I haven't been writing more for TeeVee lately. It's just that, in addition to work and recovering from being away for two weeks, I've also been spending the bulk of my time staring, glossy-eyed, at the gigantic monolith in my living room.

We bought a gigantic TV set a few months ago, but this week we truly entered the world of high-definition programming. And I've spent a lot of time staring at high-definition stuff that I would never even give a passing glance to if it were in standard definition.

For example, did you know that Square Pegs is offered in high-definition on Mark Cuban's HDNet channel? It, along with Charlie's Angels and several other old-time shows that were shot on film have been transferred to HD. They look really good, too, which only makes the shows seem even weirder and more dated than before.

HDNet also features some recently cancelled shows that happened to be shot in HD, which includes the occasional gem (Andy Richter Controls the Universe) among the crud (The Agency).

But tonight was the real gem of my HD life so far: the new, revamped Sportscenter on ESPN's high-definition channel. And there it was, a gorgeous new set in high definition. But all I could do was sit there and count anchor Linda Cohn's stray hairs and marvel at the detailed view I had of Chris Berman's comb-over, live from Tampa. Even weirder, although game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals was broadcast by ABC in HD (and ESPN took advantage of that footage for the after-game celebration and some postgame interviews), the actual game 7 highlight package was in... standard definition. So if you're watching HD SportsCenter expecting to see actual sports in HD, you may be waiting a while. But if you're watching to see what Linda Cohn really looks like close-up, you'll be in for a treat.

(Update: Turns out that the 11 p.m. Pacific edition of Sportscenter did indeed have HD highlights of the hockey game, inexplicably missing from the 8 p.m. edition. And on Tuesday's Sportscenter, not only were all the basketball highlights in HD, but the highlights of the Red Sox-Padres tilt from Fenway was in HD courtesy of NESN. Also, Linda Cohn looked as fetching as ever -- but Berman's comb-over and poor Stuart Scott's twitchy eye were just weird in HD. So it's a mixed bag.)

So now American Idol 3 is all said and done, and for the second consecutive year the pre-finals favorite has swept through to victory. While I did pick this year's winner correctly back in March -- not much of a feat, I'll grant you -- my other predictions were a mixed bag.

In March I correctly picked Leah and Matt as the first two to go. I correctly picked a shockingly early exit for Jennifer, but picked her to go a bit too early. Amy and Camile, I got. Diana Degarmo, I picked to finish seventh. Whoops! I think that goes to show how much better she got as time went along. And I correctly picked the exits of George and La Toya. (Anyone who thought the trio of Jennifer, La Toya, and Fantasia would be in the top three has not been paying attention.)

My biggest mistake, other than Diana, was the survival of Jon Peter Lewis. I admit, I thought his kooky personality would take him further, but his talent level was even lower than we first imagined. Swap Diana with JPL and my picks look a lot better. As for the survival of Jasmine Trias to the final three, all I can say is they must have some very nice power-dialers in Hawaii.

And an Idol finale aside (sorry for the delay, but I just got home from my European vacation and am catching up on May sweeps!): Were the final episodes basically one long apology to Tamyra Gray for hear early booting from the first season of Idol? And does this mean La Toya London will be gracing us with her presence at the finale of American Idol 5?

You know you’ve been at this gig too long when you start quoting yourself. And you know you’ve been at it for way too long when those quotes contradict one another. But come with me on a journey back in time to the the summer of 2001, when Fox’s fall preview moved me to write:

Instead of plumbing its treasure trove of past transgressions, Fox tried a novel approach for the upcoming fall season. It ordered a sitcom about college from Freaks and Geeks creator Judd Apatow. It finally found a spot on its schedule for the much-anticipated live-action The Tick series. It’s kept its Sunday and Monday night schedules complete intact. And fans of Family Guy, rejoice — Fox has seen fit to bring your favorite animated series out of mothballs. In other words, Fox is doing the sort of stuff we’d expect to see from a network that broke into the corporate bank account and withdrew enough money to buy a clue.

Boy, that takes you back, doesn’t it? And you know, I believe the author’s words ring as true today as they did back in his time.

But not in 2002, apparently:

It’s like the old allegory about the scorpion and the frog. Briefly: the scorpion wheedles a ride across a river from the frog by promising not to sting him, but halfway across the river, the scorpion stings him anyway, explaining, “It’s my nature,” as all who hear the tale stroke their chins and nod at the profundity of the story. Only in the Fox version, the scorpion and the frog ride across the river on a boat filled with swinging, sexy singles, and the scorpion pre-empts Family Guy to showcase “Glutton Bowl.”

Well, at least I didn’t repeat myself. Say, speaking of sweeping proclamations about Fox throughout the years, I’m sure the 2003 version of me had something relevant to add to this discussion.

Given its dodgy recent history with innovative shows that people care about, Fox apparently decided that the best course of action for the upcoming season would be to lower everyone’s expectations as much as possible. That way, at least, nobody will get terribly worked up when the shows are canceled or — since this is Fox we’re talking about — never even make it to the airwaves.

So, for those of you scoring home, that’s a Fox offers quality! followed up by a Fox is filthy!, with a good ol’ Fox offers neither quality nor filth! to wrap things up. If you think that’s confusing, you should watch me order dim sum.

But I think I can be forgiven the annual equivocation or three when the subject turns to Fox. The network itself can’t figure out how it wants to behave from one day to the next — how are pundits supposed to make heads or tails out of the havoc Team Murdoch wreaks? I mean, this is a network that can shepherd Arrested Development with one hand while lining up psychologically scarred women to physically mutilate themselves for the country’s amusement with the other, that can broadcast both Malcolm in the Middle at the same time it’s thinking up new hijinks for Paris and Nicole to bore us with. That’s enough split personalities to make Sybil envious.

Nevertheless, I’m going to give it one last go — one last attempt to get the Fox oeuvre pegged before one or both us meets our final reward. Here goes nothing:

Fox is the Goofus and Gallant of network television.

Seems like a stretch? Then consider:

• Gallant Fox makes bold programming decisions, often green-lighting and airing the kind of shows other broadcast networks are too timid to touch.
• Goofus Fox seems to think with its crotch, opting for the kind of crude, pandering program that other broadcast networks are too sensible to show.
• Gallant Fox’s lineup includes the original (Malcolm and Arrested Development), the influential (The Simpsons), the innovative (24), and even the underrated and under-appreciated (King of the Hill, The Bernie Mac Show, That ’70s Show).
• In the past 12 months, Goofus Fox has also given us The Littlest Groom, Joe Millionaire 2, My Big, Fat Obnoxious Fiancee, Playing It Straight and Forever Eden — those last two programs apparently so awful that not even Fox could stand to keep them on the air until their doubtlessly loathsome finales.
• Each year, you can expect Gallant Fox to announce an ambitious slate of shows for the upcoming season, some of which promise to be the most interesting new programs on network TV.
• And each fall, you can expect Goofus Fox to systematically cancel all of them.

We could go on like this all day, especially after Fox unveiled its latest scheduling moves earlier this month. Because once again, the network has pulled a Jekyll-and-Hyde number, following up a spectacularly brilliant maneuver with a just-as-spectacular-in-its-own-way pratfall. Gallant Fox plans to free us from the antiquated notion of the fall-to-spring TV season, sparing us the pain of reruns by switching to a year-round schedule refreshed by new shows every couple of months. And Goofus Fox?

Goofus Fox has filled up that new year-round schedule with shows that are destined to be lousy.

Let’s try and focus on the positive, first — the year-round schedule. For the past couple of years, Fox rolls out some premieres in August and September and then pulls everything off its schedule so that Joe Buck and Tim McCarver can spend October telling you how wonderful Derek Jeter is. Then, when November rolls around, Fox finally unveils all those show it relentlessly trumpeted during the baseball playoffs… and nobody but crickets tunes in, because we’re all sick to death of hearing Ron Silver scream that “His father is the district attorney!” or we started watching other shows on other networks that weren’t pre-empting most of their lineup in order to broadcast the Yankees dope-slapping the Minnesota Twins.

And that’s not helping the long-term fortunes of Fox’s development efforts. Of the seven new shows introduced last fall, only three are making it back for a second season — and really, The O.C. is the only hit in the bunch. Arrested Development and Tru Calling are answering the bell for a second round largely because Fox needs warm bodies if it’s going to pull off this year-round schedule thing, and those two shows are warmer than most.

So instead of spending another November getting its head handed to it, Fox decided to think up a different approach to programming. Starting next week, Rupert’s crew starts rolling out new shows, which will run from June through September, for a good three-month jump on its network rivals. For the month of October, Fox’s thoughts turn to baseball and the promotional opportunities it presents for the next wave of premieres, happening in November. Finally, the dawn of the new year will bring with it a third round of season premieres, with that lineup of shows carrying us through May.

All right, in the pantheon of intellectual achievement, this isn’t in the same league as inventing the telegraph or discovering radium. But in the cerebrally less demanding world of television programming, Fox’s effort to develop a year-round schedule qualifies as deep thinking. The scheduling machinations address a long-standing network problem — how to introduce new shows so that they aren’t immediately canned — in a way that also keeps a surplus of reruns off my Fox affiliate for the next three months. Considering how network TV executives usually regard risk — “Unless you’re talking about the classic board game of global domination, count us out!” — the fact that Fox would spurn four decades worth of programming tradition to go with a new approach is nothing short of remarkable.Ê

So naturally, Fox’s plan went over with TV critics about as well as a fart in church.

Fox “has responded with a cure that may be worse than the problem,” declared the St. Petersburg Times’ Eric Deggans, who’s normally much more sensible about these things. “It’s so confusing, viewers may give up before figuring out what’s airing when.” Alan Sepinwall of the Newark Star-Ledger joins the chorus of head-scratchers by musing, “Given the fact that some of these new shows will inevitably fail, that others may be more successful than expected, and that Fox has a long-standing track record of announcing shows that then disappear, it’s hard to imagine any of these schedules being written in anything more permanent than dry-erase marker.”

Guys… first off, if there’s one area where Fox boast ample expertise, it’s finding enough Simpsons reruns and Cops mini-marathons to plaster over the holes that can crop up in a network’s schedule, so any time spent fretting over Fox’s ability to field a full line-up is wasted effort. As to the point about the schedule being too confusing for the feeble-minded public to grasp, let’s consider three counterarguments:

• Fox ain’t exactly asking us to grasp quantum physics here;
• There’s this avant-garde publication known as TV Guide that actually prints up-to-date accounts of what nights and times shows are on, lest anyone not want to commit Fox’s schedule to memory; and perhaps, most importantly,
• The authorities aren’t stopping people on the street, demanding they know, upon penalty of incarceration, when The Bernie Mac Show is on.

So maybe we should give the year-round thing a chance before commencing with the full-scale rending of our garments, hmm?

Besides, if you want to kick Fox around, the actual shows the network plans to broadcast uninterrupted for the next year offer an inviting enough target.

The June Shows

Again, let’s get the positives out of the way first. On Tuesdays at 9 p.m., Fox has scheduled The Jury, a show from Barry Levinson, Tom Fontana and James Yoshimura — known ‘round these parts as them what brought you Homicide. We’re awfully fond of that show here at TeeVee. And keeping in mind that even when Homicide was at its worst — which history will record as the Jon Seda years — it was still perfectly watchable. There’s no reason to think that The Jury — a courtroom drama told from the perspective of the 12 jurors with flashbacks and narrative tricks a-plenty — will be any different, unless Seda shows up as the bailiff.

Andy Richter also has an encouraging track record, thanks to Andy Richter Controls the Universe, which Fox lovingly smothered with a pillow a few years back. This time around, Richter stars in Quintuplets (Wednesdays, 8:30 p.m.), where he plays the harried father of five siblings — the hot sister, the awkward sister, the him-bo brother, the freaky brother, and the horny kid. It all sounds… rather pedestrian, actually, but we can always hope that Richter knows something we don’t.

The other comedy coming to Fox this summer is Method & Red (Wednesday, 9:30 p.m.), starring Method Man and Redman. A quick check of the Internet indicates they are a rap duo, though they’re probably most well-known for appearing in a deodorant commercial and making a movie about how they attend a posh Ivy League school and freak out all the uptight white people. In their sitcom, Method Man and Redman will play two rap artists who move to a posh New Jersey suburb where they freak out all the uptight white people. It’s good to find your niche in life, I guess.

With The O.C. successfully reviving the “pretty young people romancing and feuding in exotic locales” genre, Fox hopes to catch lightning in a bottle for the second season in a row with North Shore (Monday, 8 p.m.). This time, Hawaii stands in for Orange County as the exotic locale, and the pretty young people work at a posh hotel instead of a high school. Otherwise, it’s safe to assume this is The O.C., only with much more poi.

This being Fox, there’s also a pair of reality programs on the schedule. The Casino (Monday, 9 p.m.) follows the adventures of two knuckleheads with more money than sense who’ve decided to squander their fortune on a downtown Las Vegas hotel and invite a film crew to capture the carnage. And because you people watched it the first time around, Fox has brought back The Simple Life. This time, instead of confining Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie to an Arkansas backwater, the producers unleash their reign of terror upon Interstate 10 on a cross-country road trip. Again, you people who watched The Simple Life the first time around only have yourselves to blame for the fact that we’re stuck with these two meatsticks, just like you’ll be blamed 10 years from now when Paris has her own variety show and Nicole is running for Congress.

The Fall Shows

Just after George Steinbrenner wraps his fat fingers around another World Series trophy — or, if you prefer to live in hope, just after his head explodes when his millionaire SuperTeam falls short for another fall — Fox introduces one more new drama from a Homicide alum. Series creator Paul Attanasio tries to wash away the stink of Century City with House about a cranky doctor who handles complex medical cases with his hand-picked team of smokin’ hot young people.

But November is really the time for Fox’s Parade of Derivative Reality Shows, as the network hopes your love of reality TV will blind you to the fact that you’re watching second-rate knock-offs of shows you’ve already grown tired of. The Billionaire: Branson’s Quest for the Best features Sir Richard Branson taking over Donald Trump’s role as corporate benefactor to a group of would-be apprentices. And why settle for one Apprentice homage, when you can have two? The Partner pits a team of Ivy league law-school graduates against “street smart” lawyers with less prestigious academic pedigrees as they vie for a job with a top law firm. No word on whether there’ll be a sweeps cross-over stunt in which Method Man and Redman show up to freak out the uptight white people.

Finally, The Next Great Champ pulls of the very rare copycat achievement of ripping off a show that hasn’t even reached the airwaves yet, when it shows Oscar De La Hoya training a gaggle of wannabe boxers. Any similarities between this and the NBC show where Sylvester Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard train a gaggle of wannabe boxers is for the lawyers to sort out.

It’s probably worth mentioning the Fox shows that will be returning in the fall. All your comedy staples are back — King of the Hill, That 70s Show, The Simpsons, Malcolm, and Bernie Mac — with those last two programs switching time slots three times depending upon the direction the Earth is tilting toward the sun. Fox is bringing back the second funniest comedy on its schedule — Tru Calling — even if it is comedy of the unintentional variety, and it’s also bringing back The Swan because we apparently aren’t pressing our luck with God enough these days.

And Arrested Development is back, which is worth noting because there was some pearl-clutching and teeth-gnashing amongst normally reasonable TV writers and even some folks around here in which our learned friends began preemptively cursing Fox for canceling the show. Meanwhile, your old pal Phil didn’t fall for the doom-and-gloom act, predicting that Fox was going to give the show every chance at sticking around for another year. And now, months later, we discover that those people were wrong and I am right.

Or to put it another, more visible way: I am right. About everything. Doubt me at your peril.

The O.C. returns in November. 24 does not. Instead, The Perils of Keifer will return again in January, so that it can run, rerun-free, until the spring.

And speaking of the spring…

The Spring Shows

Fox unveils six new shows in January, and if that seems like a lot to keep straight, the good news is you’ve seen most of the dramas already.

With Athens, O.C. creator Josh Schwartz tries to successfully transplant the problems of young people from one coast to the other — New England specifically, so I guess we can look forward to the Peter Gallagher role being played by the Pepperidge Farm Guy. The Inside is about a young woman leading a double-life as a government agent, which sounds an awful lot like Alias, until you read a little further and learn that she’s undercover at a high school, which sounds a lot more like 21 Jump Street. And Jonny Zero — you can just hear the headline writers warming up their keyboards in anticipation of this show’s reviews — focuses on a young man, fresh out of prison, who gets a job using his criminal know-how to infiltrate the New York club scene and solve crimes. This sounds an awful lot like Players in which Ice-T, Costas Mandylor, and Frank John Hughes had to use their criminal know-how to solve crimes, and if Jonny Zero is, in any way, influenced by that show, perhaps someone should explain to Fox that they should really focus on ripping off programs that ran for longer than year.

As for the comedies, Related by Family employs Family Comedy Template No. 8 — mouthy teenagers brought together when his dad marries her mom, with kooky best friends and a precocious eight year old thrown in — to entertain us all with (canned) laughter and (contrived) love. In Kelsey Grammer Presents: The Sketch Show, the titular star takes time off from counting all his Frasier residuals to preside over a sketch-comedy program. And American Dad marks Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane’s triumphant return to the network that once wronged him with an animated series about a… um… family guy, who’s also a CIA agent.

Oh, and speaking of Family Guy, Fox happened to notice the stellar ratings tallied by reruns of the animated show over on The Cartoon Network and the strong DVD sales and wanted a piece of the action. So the network ordered new episodes of Family Guy which should appear by this time next year.

It will be interesting to see how Goofus Fox screws it up.