August 2004 Archives

The Amazing Race is without a doubt the greatest reality TV show ever created and, quite possibly, one of the best TV programs on the airwaves these days. But I'm noticing an alarming trend with the show that needs to be nipped in the bud.

Charla, a contestant on the current edition of The Amazing Race born with a form of dwarfism, has stated early and often that one of the reasons she went on the show was to prove that little people can do anything the rest of us folk can (with one of those things apparently being "behave every bit as contemptibly"). The Bowling Moms, another current team, said a few weeks back that they wanted to be the first all-female-team to win The Amazing Race to prove what moms can do. This parade of affirmation and self-actualization follows on the heels of last season's victory by Reichen and Chip, a gay couple who felt they had proven something, vis-a-vis the ability of gay couples to compete and win on reality TV programs.

Which is great and all. But what about succeeding on The Amazing Race because you want to win the prize money?

They give out $1 million to the team that wins The Amazing Race, you know. That's a fairly significant outlay of cash -- certainly enough to move me to a higher tax bracket.

Which is why, should I ever be a contestant on The Amazing Race -- and I think you realize as well as I do that that's a simply fabulous idea -- I will not be out to prove that fat, sarcastic Lutherans can hang-glide or eat two pounds of caviar or parse airline schedules just as well as regular people. I will not take to the airwaves with the goal of serving as role-model for doughy white guys who have suffered for so long without someone to speak for them. And the only people I hope to inspire with my victory are my accountant and my broker.

I just want the pretty money. And among reality TV contestants, that makes me a rare bird indeed.

It used to be so easy to knock the Olympic television coverage, because it was such an easy target. Not so much because it was much worse than today's coverage, but because there was so much less of it to watch. It was easy to focus our ire on NBC's prime time Olympics coverage.

But now, our rage is diluted by the vastness of the Athens Olympics coverage. Prime time on NBC is supplemented by a zillion more hours on Bravo, MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo, the Food Network, Sci-Fi Channel, UPN, and NASA TV. Plus there's NBC's new high-definition coverage, on a channel that's tape-delayed nearly two days behind the actual events.

It's hard to even find where to begin. And that seems as good a place as any: for the first time in my memory, these Olympics seem utterly random. There's no center to these games, and I think the massive amount of coverage -- and how NBC has handled that coverage -- is the reason why. But who knows? Maybe that's okay.

It's been standard procedure to complain about NBC's policy of tape-delaying every event that anyone might care about, meaning that everyone who's got access to a Web browser can know the results of what they're supposed to be watching at night when they get to work in the morning. There are lots of reasons NBC does it, all of them economic. NBC wants everything to air in prime time (on the East Coast, which is why during the Sydney Olympics people on the West Coast had to wait more than a day to see the results of some events), because that's when people watch.

But if you've watched any of NBC's prime-time coverage, you've probably noticed that it's boring. The broadcasts have been stretched out to as much as four hours, and marquee events don't appear until after 11 p.m. Meanwhile, the events that they do show are often butchered, the best example being the road bicycle race, which was introduced as if it were "plausibly live," covered as if it were a live event... and yet we only saw the race's first and last 10 minutes.

Let's face it -- treating a prime time telecast from a far-off land as if it were happening live just doesn't work. So why not turn the prime time show into a reality-TV-inspired magazine show, featuring more highly edited packages that tell the stories of the day? (The bike race would've been much better if it had been edited together as a package, and not vivisectioned as a "live" event.) For the casual, non-sports-fan viewers NBC seems to be most interested in courting, wouldn't that approach to these events have more resonance?

Those casual sports fans aren't looking for results of sporting events on the Internet -- and they probably won't care if they catch a glimpse of the highlights on their local newscast. That want to know about the people and the personal dynamics that lead to the results of the competitions. They want to be told stories -- so NBC should tell those stories with every storytelling method in its arsenal.

Meanwhile, the network should broadcast everything live on cable, with repeats later in the day once the events have stopped. That said, the Athens cable broadcasts -- despite how scattered they were -- could be a lot of fun. Want to watch beach volleyball? Got a zillion hours of that. How about synchronized swimming? Yes, the lacquered ladies are swimming regularly on your screen.

But you know what? It doesn't matter. Because I have seen the future. Or to put it more accurately, rather than watching the present's Olympic telecast, I have been largely watching the one that's time-shifted from Mars, the NBC High-Definition channel.

I bought my high-definition TV after last season ended, and as a result I haven't had much to watch of a highly defined kind yet. But the past few weeks I've had eight hours of high-definition Olympic programming to choose from. Yes, it's mostly been swimming, diving, gymnastics, and track -- but the clarity of the picture has been stellar.

Even more amazing than the pictures has been the commentary -- not that the commentators NBC has assigned for the twelve people receiving the high-def signal are themselves anything to write home about. But they are blessedly free from the massaging and over-scripting that you get on the other NBC networks. High-def viewers got no sugary-sweet parade commentary from Bob Costas and Katie Couric during the opening ceremonies. Instead, we got to see the parade of athletes in remarkable clarity and only had to suffer through the much lower-energy stylings of Al Trautwig and Mary Carillo.

This won't last. In four years (and perhaps even in two, at the Winter Olympics), everything will be simulcast in HD, so we'll get to see the evaporating credibility of Costas in incredibly high resolution. That's good in some ways, but bad in others. I'll miss having a channel that's not under the watchful eye of the NBC image-makers. But it'll be nice to be able to watch Olympic action that hasn't been delayed from the previous Olympiad.

I don’t think that I have ever read anything positive about Elisha Cuthbert’s role as Kim Bauer on 24, nothing that wasn’t in TV Guide or E! Online at least. It’s safe to say that the general response to Kim ranges from ambivalence at best, to lament, contempt and pure hatred at worst. What is more remarkable is the universality of this sentiment. It is understandable for critics like Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle — whose m.o. is apparently to try to hate what everybody loves before they start to hate it, or to love even more what everybody already loves a lot — who have turned against 24 to single out Kim’s storyline as a turnoff. But even the show’s biggest supporters are likely to say that they would like 24 more if Kim’s nine lives ran out sooner rather than later.

In a way, I’d like to see such a development only for its emotional effect on Jack — we might see parental warnings about graphic violence after every commercial break if that were to happen. But that is beside the point. I want to be the first to say that 24 might be a different show when Kim is phased out next year, perhaps for the worse.

To be sure, I can understand the reaction to Kim. Her plotline interrupts Jack’s and she does so many “dumb” things that make her a big pain in the ass if you’re her father and also trying to stop freedom-hating evildoers. If she only did what Jack told her to, like we all would, she’d be OK, right? Why DO the writers keep her around, and why do they use such ridiculous plot points to do so? Something can be said about that gratuitous nipple shot in Kevin Dillon’s bathroom, but her presence on the show isn’t as superficial as that.

From interviews with 24’s creators regarding the show’s conception, we know that the fundamental structure of the show is a conflict between work and family, which is at least as fundamental a component as the counter-terrorism angle. Every character, good or bad, goes through the exact same dilemma. And there you go, there’s your answer, that’s why Kim has stuck around for so long.

But more importantly, I think that Kim actually adds a very interesting dimension to Jack’s storyline. Without question, it’s Kiefer Sutherland’s show. We know it, the critics know it, and the producers know it, even without the studio’s audience polling, which tells them the same thing anyway. However, because the show is so much about the “present,” we have very little idea about Jack’s past beyond little resumé factoids. This is where Kim fills in those blanks. She really isn’t some ditzy piece of eye-candy to get young boys to watch 24, as much as she really is Jack’s daughter in so many ways.

Forget about how Elisha Cuthbert, like Kiefer, has pointed eyebrows, a slightly downturned mouth and cleft chin. Kim is so much like Jack mentally that we get this weird insight into Jack’s past, how he might have been when he was younger and how his character would exist in different situations. Think of all the times that Kim has walked right into danger with little regard for consequences — you know, all those little subplots that tick people off? Maybe she really does know that it’s unsafe. In the very first episode, doesn’t it just sound perfect that the guy who shoots his boss in the office with a dart also has a kid who does things that drive her parents up the wall? Could it be that on all these occasions, she did so because she has Jack’s hard-headed, headstrong independence and absolute sense of right and wrong? Remember, Jack is da man exactly because he puts those values ahead of authority. Maybe he wouldn’t do everything Kim does, but people fuck up when they’re young, and maybe Jack fucked up a few times before. After all, Kiefer did pick some bad movies too. And he gets into these drunken bar-fights, although, that’s actually a plus where I’m concerned.

I don’t want to make excuses for every absurd thing that happens on 24. Goodman’s big gripe is that the show lost its “realism,” which I think is redundant and silly anyway. I just think that Kim was always an integral and interesting part of the psychological narrative, even without the nipples.

Allow me to veer ever-so-slightly off-topic from the site to note the general release of "Garden State," the directorial debut of Zach Braff, otherwise known as Dr. John "J.D." Dorian on perennial TeeVee favorite Scrubs.

My wife and I went to see "Garden State" last week. We ended up missing the showing we intended to see and had to hang around for three hours waiting for the next one since the theater was full (despite our tickets) when we went to sit. This is due to the fact that "Garden State" is only playing in tiny artsy movie houses around here, because, geez, it only is written by, directed by, and starring New Jersey's own Zach Braff, who also stars in a very successful sitcom, and the movie just happens to be named "Garden State," so who in New Jersey would want to see it?

The movie has its flaws, I'll grant you that, but let me just say that for the first fifteen minutes, I felt like someone had pulled out my heart and spread it across the screen. If you were to analyze that quarter hour of film, frame by frame, I think you'd understand everything about how I see the world.

I spent the rest of the movie stunned and amazed. Like I said, the film's not perfect by any means, but it found something inside of me. I cannot promise it'll do the same to you.

But I do recommend you give it a try.

Some people must think I’m a superhero junkie. Here at TeeVee, I seem to write almost exclusively about the day-glo spandex set: Birds of Prey, Teen Titans, Tarzan. (OK, the ape-man lacked spandex.) I could understand someone forming the perception I’m a pale, asthmatic shut-in eagerly ordering large batches of archival acetate dust jackets to preserve my untouched first-run copies of Sandman, Swamp Thing, and Richie Rich.

Well, it ain’t entirely true. (Wheeze, cough.) I own exactly one comic book. (It was a gift, all right?) And most of the comic books I have read? Didn’t like ‘em. All because of Super Friends.

For TeeVee’s age-challenged readers, Super Friends was an awful Hanna-Barbera animated television series featuring DC Comics’ Big Three (Superman, Batman & Robin, and Wonder Woman), Aquaman, cameos from various second-tier DC heroes (like Firestorm, Green Lantern, Apache Chief, and Hawkman) with The Dorks bringing up the rear. The Dorks changed from season to season — sometimes teenagers wanting to be heroes, sometimes grapejuice-colored teens — but we’ll just note that their main contribution to popular culture is the phrase Wondertwin powers activate!

I feel dirty just typing that.

When Cartoon Network announced it was making a new animated series called Justice League (the comic series upon which Super Friends was based), I was less than enthused. But it was being produced by Bruce Timm and some of the principals who’d pulled off the often-outstanding animated Superman and various Batman series in recent years, and so I held out some hope. Nonetheless, the first season of Justice League was a bit of a mess: long stories, poorly defined characters, and a preposterous scale caused by the outlandish power of Superman and his friends.

But something special happened with Justice League’s second season. Suddenly the characters took center stage. Internal tensions surfaced, until some members hardly spoke to each other. We discovered Batman silently admires Superman, but — always anticipating — has been ready to take him out should the need arise. Superman’s grimmer: we learn he sometimes thinks things would be simpler if he just, you know, took over the world. One of the League’s opponents is just a normal guy with a gizmo, not some arch-villain bent on multi-dimensional domination. Wonder Woman considers all men (save Superman) inferior, but she meets the ever-suave Bruce Wayne and suddenly she and Batman have this certain undefined, um, subtext. Beneath Flash’s corny wisecracks we start to see him as the moral compass of the League — and that he’s learning from Batman, of all people. Hawkgirl mourns the death(!) of simpleton villain Solomon Grundy; J’onn J’onzz comes to terms with being alone amongst strangers, and — surprise of surprises — romance blooms between Green Lantern and Hawkgirl. Watching Justice League’s second season, I forgot about Super Friends: these are great characters in gripping stories, almost all of which have real-world implications and overtones which leave you thinking. Great stuff.

And now, Cartoon Network brings us Justice League Unlimited. It’s sort of Justice League’s third season, and it’s sort of an all-new show. And I’m starting to have Super Friends flashbacks.

See, the new Justice League features not its original seven world-saving members, but as many as seventy. Superman’s in charge; J’onn J’onnz will coordinate everything from orbit, assigning and dispatching appropriately-powered teams of heroes to cope with emergencies as they arise. Everyone else serves as guest-stars-on-demand.

Each episode (and, except for the season finale, they'll all be standalone half-hours, not the multi-part arcs of previous seasons) now features one or more of the Justice League’s core characters (Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and/or Green Lantern) combined with new faces from DC’s enormous stable of second-, third-, and fourth-string costumed freaks. On one hand, this could be a good thing: characters like Captain Atom, Hawk & Dove, Booster Gold, The Question, Green Arrow, and Zatanna are unlikely to see screen time any other way.

On the other hand… uh, screen time for who? Isn’t Captain Atom (voiced by CSI’s George Eads) the guy who can shrink down really tiny? Or was that The Atom (voiced by Scrubs' John C. McGinley)? And who’s Atom Smasher? So much for character development.

Even in a comic-based series, I want to see characters, settings, and stories develop. For one thing, it makes a story more realistic. Ongoing development not only expands the types of stories you can tell, but it’s also what keeps an audience hooked in for the long term. Dickens didn’t become a famous novelist because each of his serialized chapters were self-contained wonders; rather, readers couldn’t wait to find out what happened next! Similarly, Guiding Light hasn’t been on TV since 1952 because episodes stand by themselves.

If I were running Cartoon Network, I can see how Justice League presented a problem. For the targeted demographic — kids — the show might become a never-watched Purgatory of too-long, nonsensical episodes: viewers were more likely to stumble into into the second or third part of an arc than to catch all the parts in a row.

With Justice League Unlimited, that problem's solved. For kids, the end result is engaging: episodes move fast, feature lots of action, and the characters are reasonably iconic. Green Arrow is a high-tech Robin Hood; Green Lantern is grumpy; Captain Atom, um, blows up; and Supergirl is Superman’s younger cousin, and, like, ya know, blonde and in a miniskirt, right?

Where Justice League Unlimited takes a big risk is in straying from established, recognizable characters to give some limelight to lesser-known DC heroes, in addition to villains-of-the-week. Most viewers will recognize the Big Three, but Zatanna? The Question? Booster Gold? The Atom? These characters will each appear in upcoming JLU episodes, but even hardcore comics fans may not have seen them before. Instead, most viewers are going to have to be carried along with the iconic-verging-on-clichéd appearances and behaviors of better-known Justice League members and hopefully-engaging stories.

Timm and company have more than proven they’re capable of handling superheroes and crafting engaging half-hour stories. My worry is that, with original Justice Leaguers now serving primarily as familiar elements to provide consistency between episodes, the universe of Justice League Unlimited will become static. The individual episodes may stand by themselves — and even be absorbing — but unless the story builds somewhere, the universe changes, and the gargantuan scale of events typical of Justice League stories have some consequences, the mere presence of the Big Three will not be enough to sustain an audience’s interest — or mine! After all, the Big Three were in Super Friends too. They may not have had a way-cool computer-generated Invisible Jet for Wonder Woman, but, heck, the Super Friends once went to Oz. Now that’s a frickin’ alternate universe.

If none of these Justice League Unlimited episodes are going to count for anything, I say, let’s send The Flash and, oh, say, The Elongated Man over to Law & Order. Or, better yet, send Darkseid to Teletubbies. That’d be engaging... for about ten seconds.