January 2005 Archives

I was wondering if I wanted to write a follow-up to my Carnivàle skewering of last year when Lisa sent her piece around the office. That means I can scribble up something shorter and even less coherent than usual and get away with it, so here goes.

I'm still following the show religiously (pun not intended but worthwhile anyway) and I still don't quite understand why. The best I can come up with is to say this: Carnivàle is like methadone. It's no fun, but you can't stop taking it.

Especially since the new episodes seem as determined as ever to say, "Nope, nothing going to happen this week, either."

Maybe it was last season's finale, which was so incredible, it made the whole season worth it. Although I wondered, after seeing it, if the episode was so great only because so much nothing had happened all season or if they could've made every episode just as good. Maybe I'm expecting something similarly awesome this entire season. Perhaps I'm willing to suffer through uncountable shows about nothing much at all just to get the rush of that finale. I don't know.

It could be that I want to see Cynthia Ettinger naked some more. She was on one of the L&O shows last season, I think it was, and I remember shouting to my wife, "There she is! There she is! But she's NOT NAKED!"

The only thing better than that would be seeing Amanda Aday brought back from limbo or wherever she is so she can get naked. But then, she's Meat Loaf's daughter, so that would mean another hot bath and some iodine to wash off the icky feeling.

Whatever my reasons for sticking around, I am sticking around Carnivàle. I'm just not sure if that's a good thing.

Most of the time, I demand things from my television shows like narrative logic and dialogue that doesn’t sound like it was written by shaking the Magic 8-ball, but every once in a great while, I’ll make an exception and sink a considerable amount of my precious free time in a show that’s real pretty, but as lucid as an Ann Coulter column. This is a roundabout way of justifying my season pass for Carnivàle. I watched all of last season, yet I am incapable of identifying what are presumably the key points of the plot line. After season one, the only Carnivàle-related statements I could make with any confidence were these:

1. There’s a filthy, slack-jawed Okie whose eyebrows are gearing up for a career move to Peter Gallagher. This gaping yokel is evidently humanity’s savior. Or maybe not. It depends on whether or not you think the creator of the show really hates people, or merely hates Type-A people.

2. Although Michael Anderson adds a warm, morally complex touch to the show, every time I see him delivering some spooky bit of mumbo-jumbo dialogue to the aforementioned gaping yokel, I immediately channel Peter Dinklage from “Living in Oblivion” and his rant:

“Have you ever had a dream with a dwarf in it? Do you know anyone who’s had a dream with a dwarf in it? No! I don’t even have dreams with dwarves in them. The only place I’ve seen dwarves in dreams is in stupid movies like this! ‘Oh make it weird, put a dwarf in it!’ Everyone will go ‘Woah, this must be a fuckin’ dream, there’s a fuckin’ dwarf in it!’ Well I’m sick of it! You can take this dream sequence and stick it up your ass!”

This diminishes the intended mystical effect on the viewer.

3. Somewhere, there is a group of Undeclared fans who had their wildest fantasies realized the minute Carla Gallo peeled off her top.

3a. However, it is very disturbing to see Artie, the Strongest Man in the World, pimping his wife and daughter.

4. David Lynch is cackling into his Lucky Charms. Or possibly drawing deep breaths off an oxygen mask and crowing, “Whose symbolism-fraught show is running off the rails now, Mommy?!”

5. Them credits sure are pretty. Viva photo-manipulation software!

I’ve since stashed the first three episodes of this season on the TiVo, hoping that watching them sequentially will help me grasp the subtle, intricate, symbolism-freighted plot machinery that Daniel Knauf and company must surely be erecting behind the scenes. After all, all those cast members are trudging around smudged in show dirt for nothing, right?

Well, maybe they are. Watching this show is akin to watching Kingdom Hospital or Twin Peaks, where I’m left with the creeping suspicion that I should have waited until the entire series was over before tackling it, so I could at least have the assurance that there was a beginning and an end. So why am I still tuning in?

Because of Clancy Brown. Oh, sure, he may be working for Satan. And yes, he’s just tattooed a big tree on his chest and inflicted a number of truly disturbing and incomprehensible hallucinations on hapless bystanders. Plus there’s that weird relationship Brother Justin has with his sister. But who cares? Brown has one of the best smoothly evil voices in the business, and the reason it’s so enjoyable is because he’s mastered the art of amiable malevolence. Moreover, he’s got a great expression — carefully polite, yet shot through with a glint of “Ain’t it great to be me?” self-regard.

So now, in addition to wondering if I’m mentally defective because I still can’t succinctly sum up what this show is about, I’m now plagued with the worry that perhaps I’m evil for digging Clancy Brown. Oh, Carnivàle, what a dark and twisty road you’ve set me on.

Johnny Carson, the greatest entertainer that the medium of television ever produced, died Sunday morning at age 79 at his home in Malibu, Calif. He died of complications from emphysema.

As host of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” from 1962 to 1992, Carson stood, or rather sat behind a desk, at the center of popular culture. Movie stars, politicians, musicians, zookeepers, raconteurs, everyday people and two generations of comedians, appeared on Carson’s show and enjoyed his uniquely intimate access into millions of American homes...

Read the rest of Aaron Barnhart's excellent Carson obituary at TV Barn.

There's another excellent obituary at The New York Times.

I TiVoed a bunch of episodes from BBC America's marathon of Benny Hill last Saturday. Thank the God of Television (the little-known Greek muse Zworyia) that I had some free boob tube time a week earlier and tuned in to Fawlty Towers (my favorite episode, too: "Going to see Mr. O'Reilly, dear!") where I saw the promo for the Benny Hill run. I mean, I haven't seen Benny since his show ran on channel 9 in New York back in the day -- so long ago, channel 9 wasn't UPN and occasionally ran Doctor Who too.

Today I had a free moment to watch a couple of skits and I caught Benny introducing his singing group saying, "They'll now sing a bowlful of salad,I mean a soulful ballad."

Can you believe that putting "bowlful of salad" into Google only brings up sincere pages on dieting?

Ah, January. The start of a new year full of hope and possibilities (or, if you’re a Democrat, dread and foreboding). January is a time to reflect on the year behind us, imagine the year ahead of us, and infiltrate the Red Division’s secret base to recover those all-important plans for the Kandinsky Device.

OK, maybe not that last part—but you’d never know it from the TV listings. After an autumn full of mysterious castaways and desperate housewives prone to towel malfunctions, television is suddenly packed once again with spies and secret agents as three old favorite series return to the airways. One is better than ever, one’s getting back to its former glory, and… well… the other one is 24.

If any of you out there are expecting another edition of my annual 24 Misogyny Watch come May, prepare for disappointment. After three years of gravelly-voiced threats and stuff blowin’ up good, I think I’m finally done with the Jack Bauer Hour of Power. The first four hours of the season showed me absolutely nothing I hadn’t seen a zillion times before in the first three seasons. Dissent at CTU! Shifty Arab terrorists! Jack talking on a cellphone while driving a big honking SUV! Gosh, the novelty is just zzzzzzzzz. Worse yet, after a fairly subdued third year, at least by 24 standards, the series seems to sport a renewed dedication to maligning the womenfolk. Day Four’s hardly begun, and already we have:

- A steely, arrogant bosslady who makes bad calls for selfish reasons, and neglects her heavily medicated, schizophrenic wreck of a daughter. (Not to sound callous, but I can practically smell the impending suicide in that plotline.)

- A spiritual successor to Carrie the Evil One, Season Two’s hateful exemplar of all things awful, in the form of a CTU member who’s snooping, spying and scheming, apparently to get back at the fellow agent who dumped her.

- Yet another icy matriarch—played by Oscar nominee Shoresh Agdashloo, no less—cold-bloodedly poisoning her son’s teenage girlfriend.

- A full-grown woman cowering behind her silver-haired, aging dad as he grabs a Kalashnikov and Rambos his way out of terrorist captivity.

Uh, yeah, guys. You go do that. Me, I’ll be watching something else. Like A&E and the BBC’s outstanding MI-5, 24’s distant British cousin, which has returned from an eighteen-month hiatus leaner, darker and more compelling than ever. A welcome infusion of American production money has allowed the show to stage some terrific action set pieces, and the writing and acting remain top-notch. There’s a palpable sense of menace in the way these cagey spooks conduct their business. Living under false names, ensuring silence and cooperation with almost Orwellian efficiency, MI-5’s spies have to fill out forms and get official clearance just to start dating civilians.

Agents Tom, Zoe, Danny, Harry and Adam are good people at the core, and not without conscience. What makes them scary is how they ignore and repress that conscience to make sure the job gets done. If you cross them, you’re not just screwed—you’re so far past screwed, you can’t even see it with a telescope. And even if you cooperate with them—even if you’re completely innocent—you’re almost certain to suffer in the end. Their world is a corrosive one, destroying or corrupting everything it touches, and that makes for refreshingly bleak and bracing television.

And unlike 24, where Jack Bauer can have a heart attack and a drug habit and about five distinct illegal mutinies and still not be imprisoned or dead, MI-5 allows the pressures of the job to have permanent consequences on its characters. As of the second episode of the season, the show’s hero Tom Quinn (Matthew MacFayden) is apparently gone for good. After years of unflinching deception, his conscience overtakes him, and he suffers a complete, career-destroying meltdown. Though Tom leaves the show with his head held high, the writers make it clear he’s neither a well man nor a happy one.

Terrific as it is, MI-5 can be heavy stuff. For those who like their spying light and frothy, J.J. Abrams’ revitalized Alias will doubtlessly hit the spot. After a mostly dull and depressing third season, the adventures of girl-next-door superspy Sydney Bristow (the suddenly ubiquitous Jennifer Garner) have sacrificed a certain amount of plausibility in exchange for a significant and much-need infusion of pure fun.

Syd working as a super-secret agent, unhindered by protocol? Check. A return to the contrast between her daring undercover exploits and her charmingly ordinary life outside the agency? Check. Operations run by marvelously malevolent ex-criminal mastermind Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin)? Ridiculously unlikely, but oh so much fun. Syd’s dad Jack (Victor Garber) is back to his astoundingly badass ways; his manipulations of Sydney and her friends make him less sympathetic, but the cracks in his icy facade, and the aching loneliness that’s beginning to show through, balance that quite nicely. And though Syd’s evil mom is out of the show with a bullet, thanks to Lena Olin’s ridiculous salary demands, the producers promise return appearances from other old favorites like Will Tippin (Bradley Cooper), the dastardly Julian Sark (David Anders), and femme fatale Anna Espinosa (Gina Torres).

Still, there’s a whiff of “greatest hits” about Alias’s revamped direction. It’s good that Abrams and his writers, including several top-notch Joss Whedon vets, are bringing back some of the things that made the show great in the first place. But at least thus far, Alias is still missing the weird, spine-tingly edge of novelty it used to have. (It seems to have migrated over to Lost, which remains as eerie and compelling as ever. Perhaps some artifacts from Alias’s Renaissance-era superscientist Milo Rambaldi will start dropping from the palm trees?) Bringing back the best of the old has helped Alias regain its footing. If it really wants to take off running, though, it’s going to have to start bringing in the new as well.

It takes a supremely naive TV viewer to believe that reality TV is the same thing as nonfiction TV. When you compare the staggering amount of footage that has to be generated compared to scanty portion shown in a typical season of a series, you can only conclude that the show's editors get the footage, look for narrative trends, and edit accordingly to make for a good story.

It takes an even more naive person to believe that it's possible to be on reality TV and have some control over how you're edited. Yet that's what Jonathan Baker's attempting to do.

For those living under a rock, or spending their Tuesdays watching something other than the Amazing Race, Baker's an extended argument for a life of spinsterhood. The guy continually pelts wife Victoria Fuller with tirades untethered to reality or rhetorical finesse. He blithely slams car trunks on her head, shoves her while she's panicky and exhausted, and threatens to backhand her. To call his behavior repellent is to master the fine art of understatement.

Evidently taken aback by the way people have responded to him, Baker is claiming, with rising stridency and frustration, that he was only playing a role. It's the power of his acting that make him seem like a toad. The Red Bull chugging made him act out. And also, his medication for some malady addled his judgment. And it's really the producers' fault for egging on a villain storyline. When those claims were greeted with raised eyebrow, Baker trotted his friends out in front of the press to say likewise.

While it's entirely possible that Baker is indeed such a thoroughly immersive actor as to maintain his "character" through weeks of sleep deprivation, strenuous physical activity and stressful logistical challenges, it's highly improbable. However, if we are dealing with the DeNiro of reality TV, the raging bull of the Amazing Race, let us ask another question: is there any really good reason to savage someone you love on national television? I was watching a recent MTV reality show, You've Got a Friend, and contestants have decided there was not a scant 24 hours into their nearest and dearest being put through the wringer. What kind of person willingly torments his wife for a month?

Also worth asking: What kind of person consents to being a verbal punching bag? How does that conversation go over?

Baker: Baby, we can be on television! We'll get very little sleep for a month, fly coach for hours at a time, eat catch-as-catch can, and do crazy physical tasks. Also, we might win a million bucks.

Fuller: Okay, then.

Baker: And wouldn't it be swell if we got a lot of camera time by appearing to be a study in marital pathology?

Fuller: Yeah! I could be a high-maintenance bitch on wheels, and you'd be all cringing, and --

Baker: Actually, I was planning on screaming at you nonstop for a month while you played the victim.

Fuller: Oh, that's cool too. I can't imagine that would get to me.

There's a lot to be said for supporting one's spouse in his work, but eventually, one must draw a line.

Even if it turns out to be a role, Baker's still a jerk for taking it. Why? Because he didn't have to play it to completion. He claims he tried to quit the role after the wife-shoving stunt, and the producers wouldn't let him -- a claim made after the producers repeatedly said they asked him to turn down the jerkitude. Let's assume for a moment Baker's telling the truth. What's a guy to do? That's easy -- lose. If Baker's half as smart as he thinks he, he could have easily engineered a blunder and sent the team to the sequestering pen. Then it's out of the role and back to what he assures us is a life of uxorious contentment. Surely anyone who claims to love the person they made lifelong vows with would decide that $500,000 isn't enough for a month of abuse and years of making up the damage, plus the contempt of a TV-watching nation. $500,000 isn't even real riches -- it's just messing-up-the-taxes dough.

That Baker stuck out the role means one of three things: he's the pinnacle of professionalism; he wanted a lot of screen time; or he wanted the money. Since Baker's whined nonstop about how he was depicted, that eliminates the first possibility. As for craving the other two ... I ask again, what kind of person thinks it's worth national attention or money to subject your spouse to an unceasing barrage of hostility?

The kind of person who also assumes the editors won't be the final arbiters of the story that the public sees, and that the public's not going to take its version of events from the TV show, that's who.

Baker's not the first person to complain about how he's depicted on reality TV. But he is the first to complain about how his attempt to manipulate the audience was manipulated in turn.

Poor Jonathan Baker. If you can't trust a fix, what can you trust?

I know that I'm always right, but since not everyone seems to agree on that, occasionally I do like to find proof that I am right.

So here's your proof that Committed is a steaming puddle of diarrhetic dog poop: Heather Havrilesky stepped in it, and she likes the smell. Or, in her words: "the jokes on this show are a little bit bolder and scrappier and less p.c. than they are on other sitcoms" and "leads Jennifer Finnigan and Josh Cooke aren't anything like the typical guy-girl sitcom leads of recent memory. In other words, they're funny."

Oh, no they're not. They're so unfunny, metaphors fail me. They're as funny as the least funny thing in the universe. I believe it might be possible to prove mathematically that they are not only the least funny people in history, but that they are the least funny it is posssible for humans to be.

Compared to Committed, Dharma & Greg... metaphors fail me again. Compared to Committed, Dharma & Greg was the funniest TV show of all time.

Just in case you didn't get my point yet: DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, WATCH NBC'S Committed.

Everyone clear now?

I recorded Committed with the idea of reviewing it. But I'm afraid I didn't make it past the 10-minute mark. I wanted to shut it off after two minutes, but my wife said we should at least try to watch some of it. Then we just had to turn it off.

So I'd like to write a more detailed review -- to say nothing of scathing -- but I can't, because I refuse to see anything else having to do with the show, including the cast list, the names of the producers, or even the time slot. Committed, in short, was easily the most godawful, unwatchable show I've ever seen in my time writing for TeeVee.

If you really want to know what I think of it, go back and read every negative thing I've ever written for this site, then multiply it by ten, then shoot yourself in the head.

So a friend of mine lives in London, and apparently keeps bumping into TV producers and telling them about TeeVee. Or at least she bumped into one: Peter Serafinowicz, the producer of the very odd BBC import Look Around You. So Peter dropped us a line, encouraging us to check out his show on BBC America: "It's a series of surreal parodies of 1970s educational films and was a cult success over here."

That's about right. Look Around You (airing on BBC America at -- appropriately enough -- very odd times) is strange, short (about 10 minutes per episode), and really hilarious. Every episode has a weathered '70s film look and makes bizarre pronouncements about the nature of the universe. For example, did you know that science is an acronym for Super-Corroborative Information on Everything and Nothing in the Cosmos and Earth?

Look Around You is a TV show for smart people full of really dumb jokes. And it's definitely worth 10 minutes of your time.

Quite possibly the greatest moment in cinema from the last few years -- maybe even of all time -- is contained in Woody Allen's "Anything Else." In this scene, Christina Ricci and Jason Biggs are having a conversation. I can't remember what it was about -- honestly, I'm not sure I remember what the entire movie was about -- but the important part is, Ricci spends the entire scene in her underwear.

This is easily one of the most noble uses of the medium of film.

The other night I found PBS running "Annie Hall" -- in widescreen, no less -- and what I discovered, watching it for the first time, is that Woody Allen is not just a dirty old man. He was a dirty young man, too, and apparently has always filmed his actresses in their underwear. "Annie Hall" has, not one scene, but two in which conversations are held with women in their underwear. In this case, the women are Diane Keaton and Shelley Duvall, so we're not talking Great Moments in Film, but there they are nevertheless.

In case you want to check it out -- it's not a bad little movie, "Annie Hall" -- it's playing on channel 13 (PBS in New York City) Tuesday, January 4, at midnight. It is almost certainly showing on other PBS stations across this fair land of ours.

There were a lot of parallels between Carmela Soprano and Adriana La Cerva on the most recent season of The Sopranos. Both could have probably done better in the dating pool had they actually left the tri-state area. Both demonstrated to the viewers that standing by your man is quite possibly the worst thing you can do when dating a mobster. And both were ably portrayed by fine actresses. However, it is not perpetual award magnet Edie Falco who got our TeeVee Award for Best Actress in 2004, but Drea de Matteo.

Thanks to her work, Adriana elbowed Carmela aside as the moral center of The Sopranos . Granted, it wasn't a huge challenge: Carmela's brief stint as a singleton demonstrated how her marital compromises had eaten away at whatever moral center or courage she once had, and she eagerly sold herself back to Tony for the price of a tacky McMansion, so Ade really didn't have to shoot much higher. However, Carmela's story should have been more riveting -- she was, after all, the woman who used to agonize over the immortal souls of her family, and she sold hers for a song. It wasn't, because Falco's performance had a shrill, snappish edge to it, an undercurrent of contempt for Carmela that led viewers to suspect that she deserved everything that happened to her. On the other hand, Adriana -- lying, lazy, drug-using, self-indulgent Adrianna, who flipped because it seemed like the easiest thing to do at the moment -- was such a sympathetic character, you found yourself hoping against hope that she wouldn't get what she had coming.

de Matteo is responsible for that. Her portrayal of Adriana was generous to the character, letting us see the simple, good heart that pushed the reactive, unreflective, superficial brain. de Matteo's Adriana had potential; anyone who could emanate such wholly unconditional love for Christopher Moltosanti had access to reserves of generosity and forgiveness. She could have been a great person, but she struggled just to figure out what it meant to be good. Whenever we saw her with the prim and duplicitous Agent Sanserverino, it was hard not to wince through Adriana's alternating, conflicting desires for self-preservation and approval from others. Adriana should have been detestable, but you found yourself rooting for her -- and against the "good guy" Feds.

Credit how wholly de Matteo inhabited Adriana. What could have been a one-shot joke -- the Joisey Moll, cheap and corrupt -- became a complex characterization: get distracted by the big hair and bling-bling pedicure, and you won't notice that what she's really hiding is her painful moral evolution. And she kept growing right up to the moment when she realized that the thing she had counted on to save her -- her unconditional love -- had doomed her instead.