December 2004 Archives

On a recent episode of CSI: NY, one of the bit characters looked so familiar that I couldn't think about anything else until I figured out who it was. A glimmer of recognition suggested that the not-particularly-special guest star, playing a sleep doctor, was once a beloved dolt whose vacant stares kicked the laugh track knob all the way up to 11.

I began playing back sitcom simpletons in the IMDB lobe of my brain, finally hitting a match: Under a mass of gray hair and droop was Scott Valentine, a name that should be instantly recognizable to any American male in his 30s who wanted his first experience of sexual congress to be with Mallory Keaton.

Mallory, the only child of the Family Ties family who suffered from the soft bigotry of low expectations, was played by Justine Bateman. Her girl-next-door good looks and limited faculties combined to create the perfect storm of attainability. Though I was a high school student whose skills as a dungeon master and BBS programmer translated poorly to dating, I believed that I could get a girl like Mallory. Anything I lacked in looks, money, or style could be compensated for with my strong suit: clever wordplay.

Even today, I can't look at Justine's brother Jason Bateman on Arrested Development without seeing their familial resemblance and feeling unexpectedly passionate about the issue of gay marriage.

Valentine played Mallory's boyfriend, motorcycle-riding dropout Nick Moore. A rebel without a clue, Nick reached the absolute zero of 1980s cool in his feathered mullet, purple-belted acid-wash jeans, and leather jacket bunched up to the elbows -- fashions I adopted for several years beyond their expiration date.

As a child raised on a fortified diet of 'round-the-clock television, I judge the passage of time in my own life by its effect on beloved sitcom characters.

Unfortunately, time has dealt a serious pass-kicking to Valentine in the 18 years since I saw him last in The Art of Being Nick, a spinoff whose importance to our culture may have been overlooked by its cancellation after one episode.

The steel-toed boot of time has ground its heel into Valentine's face, turning the monosyllabic heartthrob into a middle-aged character actor, my generation's Dennis Boutsikaris.

Valentine's James Dean scowl has been replaced by James Whitmore eyebrows; his Flock of Seagulls hairstyle migrated to his ears and nasal passages.

One look at him, and I'm channeling J. Alfred Prufrock. I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the sleeves of my Members Only jacket rolled.

Though there are still a few Heather Locklears and Nicolette Sheridans staving off the inevitable with a little clean living and more reconstructive surgery than the Six Million Dollar Man, I must now acknowledge that the TV stars of my youth have become the TV stars of my aging.

Valentine's appearance was the most disturbing thing in CSI: NY, and I'm talking about an episode in which Gary Sinise, his nostrils flaring like an Oreck XL, stabbed the trussed-up carcass of a pig.

In slow motion.

I haven't felt this badly since the day I fell out of the coveted 18- to- 34-year-old demographic and I realized that television, music, and film producers would never look at me in the same way again.

We joked about it at the time, but now it's come true: the FCC is investigating NBC because the opening ceremonies of the Athens Olympics included classical greek art, some of which -- shockingly -- features nude figures.

Not to get all Libertarian here, but maybe it's time that the FCC stops regulating content entirely. Or to put it in a way that more accurately maps with my feelings on this matter:

Fuck the FCC.

Thank goodness they don't regulate the web... yet.

Last night it turned out that once again Malcolm in the Middle was pushed out of its slot by that most inane of televised events, football, and no one told our TiVo. Basically, my wife and I have to wait until the repeats start before we can see the new season of Malcolm.

So I turned to the love of my life and said, "Darling, would you like me to cause a series of sequential images to appear on our cathode ray tube, such that we may be amused for a period of time?" For her part, Dawn grunted noncomittally. I translated that as, "Play with the remote all you want, I'm just waiting until I fall asleep on this here comfy couch."

The TV was surprisingly broken. There was just absolutely nothing on, despite the nine billion or so channels we receive through DirecTV. I couldn't even put on Gitanas with the sound off, which is what I generally do when I get really bored.

Then I spied, on the usually unwatchable HBO Family channel, a movie I haven't seen since -- and this should ring a distant bell for New Yorkers -- it was on Wometco Home Theater in the early 1980s. The film was "Fatso," starring the inimitable Dom DeLuise.

If you can't write the entire screenplay yourself from just those two bits of information, you need to ask your gardener to give you more water and maybe a nitrogen fertilizer.

I loved that movie. Mainly because it starred Dom DeLuise. He plays a fat Italian guy named Dominic whose even fatter cousin dies before his fortieth birthday, leading Dom to try to lose weight. In my memory, much hilarity ensued.

In real life, I discovered, watching the movie last night, much hilarity failed to ensue for quite a few minutes at a time.

After a little bit I turned to my wife, who was rapidly entering her evening coma, and said, "The really funny thing about this is, Dom DeLuise in this movie isn't really very fat. He's not as fat as he is now, that's for sure. In fact, he's not even as fat as I am now."

Another grunt emanated from the vicinity of the other end of the couch, which I translated as, "Turn off the TV already, you idiot, and carry me up to bed." So I turned off the TV and fired up the forklift.

This morning, for fun, I checked Roger Ebert's review of "Fatso" from 1980. He gave it one single star, presumably because most of the movie was shot in focus, and closed his review with this: "I don't want to be picky, but... Dom DeLuise isn't really that fat."

Across the span of decades, Roger Ebert and I agree. I hereby invite him to share my couch with me and my wife.

I have watched with some amusement as the tabloids ran out of things to write about besides Kirstie Alley and how much weight she's gained. It seems like every week brings a new rash of cover stories on this terribly important phenomenon.

Today I wandered out of my local establishment of legal pharmaceuticals and saw the latest photo. This time, we can see Kirstie from behind, possibly working in her garden, down on all fours, wearing white sweatpants. From the rear, Kirstie's ass looks like... well, it looks like... it looks like my wife's ass.

Which is, er, you know, not...

Hey, Snell, how do I cancel one of these entries so it doesn't get posted?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Shocking government observers, President Bush today named actor Terry O’Quinn to replace Tom Ridge as secretary of homeland security.

Bush hailed the character actor as a “dedicated, innovative reformer who insists on getting results.”

“Security has long been a concern of Terry O’Quinn, whether as the shadowy representative of the Millennium Group or as the mysterious John Locke keeping order on an uncharted desert isle,” the president said.

“Also, he was able to walk again after being crippled, so it’s obvious that he possesses some sort of freaky devil magic.”

O’Quinn conceded he was shocked as anyone that Bush would tap him to oversee homeland security. “But I’ve never turned down a role,” O’Quinn said. “Christ, I’ve appeared in SpaceCamp and Amityville: A New Generation. A fellah’s gotta eat.”

Despite O’Quinn’s lack of experience in government or counter-terrorism, Bush effusively praised the actor’s background. “He seems to know the mysterious secrets of the island, so infiltrating Al Qaeda shouldn’t be too much of a challenge,” Bush said. “And he’s managed to gain the trust of Sayid, who seems kind of shifty to me.”

When told that he was describing fictional characters on a TV program, the president blinked and stared off into space for five minutes, until aides were able to restore his focus through a series of grunts, single-syllable words and finger puppets.

O’Quinn was reluctant to get into specifics about how he would run the Department of Homeland Security. “But I think, in keeping with past roles, I plan to operate with a hint of sinister ambiguity,” he said.

“He’ll fit right in with this administration,” the president added with a chuckle.

I admit that as I was feeling tingles of fright rush up my spine while watching this week's excellent episode of Lost, that another, more cynical fear was hanging over my head.

We've said it twice already: Lost is the coolest new show on TV. Most of us here at TeeVee (yes, we're still here, thanks for asking) are hooked on it. It's well written, well acted, and is as much about character interplay as it is about creepy, scary things thrashing around in the jungle of an uncharted tropical island.

The show's last two episodes suggest that the early episodes, fraught with issues of surviving a hideous plane crash and learning how to survive on an island with no hope of rescue, were actually the light and fun part. Now comes the creepy kicker: the island is also home to a crazed (or... is she?) French woman (Mira Furlan, Babylon 5's Delenn, and it's sure great to see her working again) who's been trapped there for the better part of two decades. And it's also apparently home to a sinister group of "others," not to mention a forest full of buzzing, rustling voices.

So with the apparent (I'm using that word a lot, aren't I? Things on Lost are not always what they seem) kidnapping of two of the series regulars by a character who may not have been on the crashed plane at all!, things have gotten even darker in a hurry. If you haven't taken a ride down this particular rabbit hole yet, jump in fast or wait for the DVD. (This show is so intense, I'm almost wishing they'd put out a "Lost: The First Half of The First Season" DVD, so I could get it now rather than waiting for the inevitable release next fall.)

So what cynical fear is hanging over my head? Simple: that I'm loving this show so much, it will never be able to provide me with a satisfactory resolution. That like 24 or, worse yet, Twin Peaks and The X-Files, it'll become a complete mess that will leave me wondering why I wasted my time, rather than making me appreciate the incredible thrill ride that led me to the messy conclusion.

Don't get me wrong: I loved Twin Peaks, even as it began to disintegrate. I was truly brokenhearted when we never got to see the apparent demonic possession of upstanding FBI Agent Dale Cooper get resolved. Not since Don Davis (now famous for his role on Stargate) uttered the creepy line, "The owls are not what they seem," have I felt so creeped out by the dark possibilities of a TV show's storyline.

It worries me, though, that Lost seems to be toying with concepts of light and dark (stones, backgammon pieces, the mysterious "black rock" that the French lady talks about) as if we are being led into a Stand-like cataclysmic battle between good and evil. Yeah, I liked The Stand... but I've already read it... twice! I want Lost to blow me away. I don't want it to be a rehashed Stephen King novel, or a story about time travel, or nanotechnology, or genetically tailored viruses run rampant. I want to be surprised, not to be cheated.

And most of all, I want it all to end in something other than a disjointed mess.

In my original review of Lost I wondered if the show could really hold up for more than a single season. At this point I think it can, because its characters have so much depth and because the story is playing out a day or two per episode, meaning the first season will only encompass about 40 days on the island. Whether or not the show's writers can stick to their plans and not get distracted into creating another Twin Peaks is still open to question.

The moment I see a dancing dwarf speaking backwards, I'm outta here. Until then, I'll be visiting The Fuselage more often than I probably should.