March 2005 Archives

Loyal reader Aaron wrote in to say: G4, which is known recently for committing hara-kiri with their viewership, has done it again. One of the formerly-great shows on the network, 'The Screen Savers', is going to undergo a name change. The new title: 'Attack of the Show'. This is the worst title for a television show in the history of the medium. I'd hate to see what they rejected.

O, for the halcyon days of The Screen Savers. Though you are gone now, long shall I revel in your thirty minute feature about the tit bounce algorithm from Dead or Alive 3. Undulating cleavage of Lei Fang, we hardly knew ye.

I'll probably get my dork card revoked for this statement, but I consider the new name an improvement in every possible way.

And let's hope Aaron doesn't read this post, because I happen to have the considered-but-rejected show titles right here:

• Return of the Show
• The Empire Strikes Show
• Attack of the Clerk at Gamestop That Won't Let You Return the Xbox Game You Copied
• Shut-Ins 'n' Stuff
• Game Eye For The Thirty Year Old Guy That Still Lives With His Mom
• G4-nicating Is Not Even An Option
• The Show With the Games
• Go Game Console! Game Console, Go! Go Go Go, Console, Game Console, Go!
• Spice is Two Channels Up, But Please Come Back After You've Wiped Off the Couch

Confession time. There are some things I like which I just shouldn’t. The arbiters of taste have declared that these things are too popular, or too just plain bad in some universal sense, to be liked by anyone intelligent. But in my perversity I persist in liking them. Justin Timberlake. “Titanic.” Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals. The comedic stylings of Gallagher. V.C. Andrews novels. Beef jerky. And John Stamos.

I can see that Full House was a lousy show. But if I find it on my TV, I’ll still watch it, just to see Stamos, Dave Coulier, and Bob Saget and the way they present the lousy lines they’re given. I find the three of them so likeable, I can’t help but feel with every line they give, they’re saying, “Yes, this show sucks. But we’re doing what we can with what we’re given.”

So when I saw that John Stamos was returning to TV in ABC’s mid-season series Jake in Progress, hell yes I put it in my TiVo!

I was not disappointed by the first four episodes. (Whether ABC is trying desperately to drum up interest in the show or burn off episodes so they can cancel it quickly I don’t know, but you should be able to find them running again soon.) I was not disappointed, but it would have been really, really hard to disappoint me, since my only expectation was that John Stamos would be in it. Then again Law & Order: Trial By Jury managed this feat by working poor Jerry Orbach into his grave.

Jake in Progress follows in the footsteps of such brilliant shows as Malcolm in the Middle and Scrubs — to say nothing of such crappy shows as Hidden Hills — in ditching the laugh track and sticking to a drama-style single camera. It also is set in New York City, like, um, what, thirty shows this season? My man John stars as the eponymous star, a womanizing “man-whore” who beds so many women he can’t even remember all of them. In between hot chicks Jake works as a publicist, further confirming that Hollywood writers can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t work in show biz. This does give the writers a chance to poke fun at celebrity culture, though, so maybe we can forgive them.

Given this information and sneaking a peek or two at the commercials the network’s been running, you might assume the progress Jake is in is that of becoming less of a he-man woman-hater and more committed and responsible. But Jake in Progress is notable not just for what it is but also for what it isn’t. While it might seem like the pilot would be set to “auto” — Jake the floozy meets a strong, beautiful woman, falls in love, and spends the rest of the series trying to rein in his baser impulses while pursuing a relationship with the girl of his dreams — the actual show, so far, has not even given a hint of wanting to reform Jake. In fact, the love interest from the first episode — the one Jake would be presumably in progress toward — didn’t show up in at least the next three episodes and, for all we know, may never be back. Apparently Jake’s a callow cad and the show likes him that way.

For contrast, though, Jake has a pathetic supporting actor. He is so pathetic he wasn’t even cast as himself in his wife’s autobiographical movie, but was forced to play his own best man: Perennial sad sack Ian Gomez co-stars as Jake’s married friend Adrian. When Jake asks how many gorgeous women with butterfly tattoos on the small of their back can he sleep with, Adrian tells him, “My wife doesn’t even have a small of her back.” And then about having a family, “One day you’ll have that again, and then you’ll find… it’s overrated.” And when we finally do meet the wife? She’s not some Hollywood idea of fat and married — i.e. thin and gorgeous — she’s actually a little scary.

Of course, none of this would matter if the show weren’t funny. And it is. It may not be the most original show on God’s green Earth, but it’s consistently offbeat and amusing.

There is Rick Hoffman, who drops into Stamos’ life as Patrick, the series’ resident Kramer. Patrick is a performance artist in the David Blaine mold, although he hates Blaine and also is not quite as dedicated to his art. For example, in the pilot, he’s locked himself in a glass box outside his ex-girlfriend’s apartment, from where he keeps calling her on his cell phone. Later he confronts Jake in the selfsame apartment; when asked what he’s doing out of his box, he replies, “I have errands, dude.” Patrick may be the Reverend Jim of the show but he’s an original character all the same.

There is also Wendie Malick, finally ditching the airhead persona and playing a woman with such enormous reserves of nastiness the only person in her office who doesn’t run away at the sight of her is Jake. Stamos and Malick show genuine chemistry as the two workmates in a refreshingly non-romantic way. I doubt we’ll be seeing a will-they-or-won’t-they between them, but the two actors crackle like no TV couple since Ted Danson and Shelley Long.

Jake in Progress, in short, may not be the greatest thing since All in the Family, but it is better than okay. As a comeback vehicle, many actors have done much, much worse. Then again, this is from the guy who likes liverwurst.

But I can’t help thinking: In a world where William Shatner can star in not one, not two, not three, but four hit series despite displaying all the acting ability of a tube sock, can’t we find room for John Stamos and his second act?

As the old saying goes, there are three things the average person believes he or she does better than anyone else: drive a car, perform sexually, and play poker.

Well, I guess I’m not an average person. Because I only do two of those three things better than anyone else.

I’m not much of a card player, I’m afraid. Oh, I have my streaks, but I’m in no danger of joining Phil Hellmuth and Phil Ivey to form a holy trinity of poker-dominating Phils any time soon. My problem is that I do too much of what the pros call “chasing” — hanging around with a marginally good hand on the off-chance that the next card dealt is going to give me some sort of unbeatable combination, even when the odds of such an event happening are gently whispering “no.”

The sad thing is, this little foible is not merely restricted to my poker playing — hoping that something better will come along when bitter experience suggests that it will not is also clearly influencing the poker-themed programming I watch. How else to explain the fact that I watched a full season of ESPN’s lackluster original series Tilt?

It’s not that Tilt is bad, necessarily. It’s just that it promises to be a whole lot better, only to fall ridiculously short of delivering. At any given point during a typical episode of Tilt, the dialogue started crackling, the storyline began to come together, and I started thinking that maybe we finally had a winner on our hands. And then, almost immediately — sometimes by the very next scene — Tilt spun wildly off the rails, undone by its latest round of narrative improbabilities. I can’t think of another show that seemed more likely to set a new standard for what an original scripted series can deliver, only to serve as a bitter reminder that basic cable remains, by and large, amateur hour, that for every Nip/Tuck and Monk, there’s a dozen shows like Cover Me and Bull bringing down the average.

Don’t remember Cover Me and Bull? You shouldn’t. And in a couple of months, you won’t remember Tilt either.

If you’re wondering what exactly a scripted show is doing on an all-sports network, you clearly aren’t familiar with ESPN’s stated goal of broadening its broadcast mission. Not content with drawing interest from the vast majority of the male population that simply can’t live a full and complete life until it knows the score of the Blazers-Cavs game, the Wolrdwide Leader in Sports aspires to offer a more complete slate of programming. So far, this strategy has led to shows in which sportswriters scream at one another, made-for-TV movies featuring character actors like Brian Dennehy and Tom Sizemore wearing horrible fright wigs, and scripted fare like the late, unlamented Playmakers. That was ESPN’s dramatic take on professional football in which a fictional football franchise had to contend with every conceivable hot-button issue of the day, including but not limited to: painkiller addiction, domestic abuse, closeted professional athletes, recreational drug addiction and gang violence. Playmakers was canceled after NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue began wondering aloud whether his league would be better served by moving its games to a network without a series suggesting that football players are drugged-up, oversexed wife-beaters, thus depriving us of a second season where the team members experimented with polygamy, formed a terror cell, fixed the Super Bowl and murdered an opposing linebacker on the field with the help of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

There’s no poker commissioner, so it’s unclear if Tilt will suffer the same fate, now that it’s wrapped up its first season and will soon air alongside World Series of Poker reruns on ESPN2 until the earth is a burnt-out cinder. But whatever Tilt’s ultimate fate — cult hit, long-running drama, answer to a bar trivia question about creative failures — it’s clear after one season that the show should have been much better than it actually was.

Tilt was created by David Levien and Brian Koppleman, who have previously collaborated to write the script for Rounders, which should be known as the best poker movie not called The Cincinnati Kid. (After much deliberation, the judges disqualified The Sting, which is really more of a movie about con men than it is about poker.) So you’ve got two solid writers returning to a subject they’ve absolutely nailed in the recent past — it’s not unlike asking Scorsese to do a weekly series about mobsters. (Look for “That’s My Capo!” this fall as part of ABC’s TGIF block of programming.)

This time around, Levien and Koppleman served up a classic narrative — three card players looking for vengeance against the legendary poker player what done them wrong. And they didn’t dig up just anyone for the villainous poker player role — they cast Michael Madsen, who has carved out a nice career for himself playing thugs, lowlifes, scumbags and, inexplicably, a kind-hearted mechanic in Free Willy. I mean, if I were to say to you that the character of Don “The Matador” Everest spends most of his time during Tilt’s first season cheating people at cards, breaking a guy’s leg during a stairway beatdown and participating in widespread institutional fraud with shady casino executives, who would you wind up casting? Exactly.

So — gifted producers, promising story, red-hot subject matter, and a character that indulges in every act of degradation save for cutting off a guy’s ear while dancing around to old Stealers Wheel tunes. What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a bit as it turns out. Because what might work well in a two-hour movie doesn’t play quite as smoothly across eight weekly installments.

Or to put it another way, there’s just too much happening at any given point in Tilt. Besides the central revenge plot, this inaugural season has featured a secondary revenge plot in which a midwestern sheriff looks to avenge his brother’s death at the hands of Don Everest, a power struggle between Everest and the head of gambling operations at the fictional casino where the show takes place, a drug-money laundering scheme, an FBI sting, a confrontation between the hero and his estranged father, a romance between the heroine and a casino impresario, and more shady Vegas dealings than I can keep track off. For brevity’s sake, I will not dwell upon the attempted murder, multiple beatdowns and three on-camera slayings, including one scene where the corrupt police chief shoots a would-be witness in the chest. In broad daylight. In the middle of his office.

Yeah, that’s the trouble with Las Vegas — there’s just no good place in that city for a law enforcement official to murder someone in cold blood. I mean, it’s not like the town is surrounded on all four sides by a barren desert.

(Sidenote: I can’t believe someone affiliated with the city of Las Vegas hasn’t pulled a Tagliabue and squawked to ESPN about Tilt’s central thesis, which seems to be: “If the card sharps don’t get you in this town, someone else will — casino executives, police, elected officials. We’re all on the take, and if you’re lucky, we’ll just rough you up and take your wallet.” Surely, Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman should be demanding equal time for some sort of “Visit Las Vegas: Odds Are Good You Won’t Be Killed Within the City Limits” or “Vegas: Not Complicit in Your Ruin Since 1982!” PSA. Also, I think it’s brave that ESPN would air a show that suggests amateur poker players — which, let’s face it, is 99 percent of Tilt’s likely audience — are fat, clueless slugs ripe for a justly deserved-fleecing.)

The problem with this kitchen sink approach to storytelling — where one improbable development follows another, often in consecutive scenes — is that it all becomes overwhelming. How can you be taken surprise by something you didn’t see coming when you’re too exhausted to look? The plot twists that should come across as shocking merely feel exasperating, like the scene in the penultimate episode of Tilt where Everest dashes off to Lake Tahoe — in the middle of a championship poker tournament, mind you — to whack a loyal henchman who has outlived his usefulness. And instead of being struck by the character’s bloodlessness and viciousness, you’re left thinking, “Man, doesn’t he have enough on his plate right now?”

Madsen does the best he can with this material, playing up Everest’s amorality with his usual relish. But the character is so unrelentingly vile, it isn’t long before Madsen’s performance is consigned to the realm of cartoon super-villainy. Where’s the football player with that Bradley Fighting Vehicle when you need him?

Madsen gets little to no help from the other lead actors. Eddie Cibrian, as would-be hold ‘em virtuoso Eddie Towne is pleasant enough to look at, I suppose, but he’s something of a non-entity — unfortunate, since most of the action appears to center around him. Kristin Lehman, playing the requisite tough chick role that comes standard in any gambling-themed entertainment, is even more of a human blank. Todd Williams completes the trio of players pitted against Madsen and turns in the finest work; unfortunately between the poker and money-laundering plotlines and whatever other nonsense the writers shovel his way, Williams gets lost in the shuffle.

As it turns out, the best acting work in Tilt happens on the periphery, courtesy of the hangers-on and hired goons who flit in and out of the background. Particularly impressive is the performance turned in by Don McManus as the aforementioned director of gambling operations. He plays a guy up to his eyeballs in dirty deals and corruption, knows that a day of reckoning is at hand, and still can’t do anything to extricate himself completely from the mire where he’s most comfortable. It as close to a tragic figure as Tilt has and McManus acts the hell out of the part. The entire show changes when McManus is on the screen, thanks in no small part to the brio with which he delivers even the slightest of lines. Given Tilt’s pattern of starting out with a promising draw only to leave you with a handful of nothing, do I have to tell you that as the season wore on, McManus seemed to get less and less screen time? I believe I do not.

(Which may or may not be just as well. One of McManus’ last roles right before Tilt was a guest shot on an episode of the inexplicably popular CSI where he played the husband of a transgendered doctor and got to deliver, with righteous indignation, the following line: “I performed fellatio on my wife… Is that a crime?” Whatever happens to Don McManus from this day forward — whether he wins an Oscar or gets an honorary knighthood or cures cancer or ascends bodily into heaven thanks to his good and righteous life — whenever I see him on my TV, a righteously indignant voice in my head will say, “I performed fellatio on my wife… Is that a crime?” If it’s any consolation, I have the sophistication of a five year old.)

But despite the efforts of McManus and some of the other, more memorable tertiary characters or even some of the more striking pieces of dialogue (“Should I raise or fold?” “Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.”), Tilt ultimately never pays off. Between the innumerable plot threads, the stories that stop and start and spin off in crazy directions before petering out, and the increasingly improbable on-camera homicides, there’s too much going on. Every time that it looked like Tilt had finally found its footing, some ridiculous new twist would come along and knock everything sideways. I wish it didn’t turn out that way, but that’s what happened.

And that’s something ESPN needs to address, whether it’s for a second season of Tilt or amid any one of its other attempts for worldwide sports-themed programming domination. Whether it’s screaming sportswriters, character actors wearing comical hairpieces or fictional football players commanding heavy ordinance, the end result is always the same — there’s too much going on. Even SportsCenter, the once-great centerpiece of the ESPN universe, suffers from the same surplus of background noise. When you can’t get through a Braves-Brewers highlight without sound effects, background music and an steady stream of Stuart Scott-spewed patter, what hope can you have of putting together a scripted show that doesn’t induce headaches or grand mal seizures?

So ESPN, I’m begging you: if you can’t be dissuaded from your ill-advised plan to be all things to all couch potatoes — and if loud-mouthed know-it-all Stephen A. Smith can get his own show, then it doesn’t appear you can be — at least figure out a way to dial it down. Patiently explain to Tony Kornheiser and Mike Lupica that modern-day microphones pick up everything they say, eliminating the need to shout loud enough for every home in America to hear them. Have a heart-to-heart with the creative team on your made-for-TV movies so we’re not treated to the sight of Michael Clarke Duncan appearing in “Shaq-tastic!: The Shaquille O’Neal Story” sporting a pony-tail, a monocle, and an 1890s handlebar mustache. And above all, stress to the people who want to try their hands at developing dramatic series for your universe of cable networks that good storytelling doesn’t necessarily mean you have to subject the main characters — and by extension, the viewers — to the 10 plagues of Egypt before the first commercial break.

It’s a lesson any poker player could teach you — even a lousy one like myself: sometimes, when you think you have a hot hand, it’s best to keep your cards close to the vest.

When watching The Amazing Race, it usually takes me about a week or two to pick out the teams I wouldn’t mind seeing taking home the $1 million grand prize and which ones I actively hope will be indefinitely detained in some foreign backwater far from CBS’s protective hand. This seventh installment has proven to be trickier when it comes to determining who has earned my favor and who needs to eat hot, fiery death (or at least, get slapped with a quick elimination). Part of the blame falls on the fact that first team to taste the back of Phil Keoghan’s hand was Ryan and Chuck, two delightful sons of the soil from the Carolinas. They fix cars! They’re oddly fluent in Portuguese! They bring a certain hillbilly joie de vivre to everything they do! How can you not want that on your TV every week? Normally, I forget about the first team eliminated from The Amazing Race before the closing credits of the season premiere are even completed; this time around, the show ran off the most enjoyable team in Week One. This does not bode well for the coming season.

(Fortunately, this week, lovable idiot brothers Brian and Greg managed to stave off elimination, sparing us another week of having to endure interchangeably bland blondes Megan and Heidi. Begone from my television, Team Blandina!)

The other problem that’s been keeping me from choosing up sides in this installment of The Amazing Race is the uncomfortable realization that, with this season, the show has apparently morphed into The Amazing Rob, in which we follow the adventures of ex-Survivor cast member and current meat head Rob Mariano and his colossally inconsequential life partner as they travel around the world, reminding us that they appeared on television. Occasionally, we are treated to glimpses of 10 other teams.

You know, if I wanted to watch Survivor… well, you can probably figure out where I’m headed here.

But, two weeks into the seventh season of The Amazing Race, I am ready to declare my loyalties. With the caveat that it’s a couch potato’s prerogative to change his mind, here’s who needs to take home the big prize and, more important, here’s who needs to suffer multiple on-camera humiliations.

Teams I Like

Brian & Greg: Yeah, I said that they’re idiots, but they’re my kind of idiots. You have to like a pair of guys who probably look upon the Wayne’s World movies as a documentary. Favorite moment from this week’s episode: when one brother let out a yelp in Chile’s Library of Congress only to be admonished by the other to “use your library voice.”

Debbie & Bianca: They seem like a nice couple of kids who keep their heads together when the bad craziness is going down.

Susan & Patrick: He’s just a nice boy who likes his mom — shouldn’t we all try and aspire to that? Though, seriously, the Begging Our Way Through South America tour needs to come to a close double quick.

Teams I Have No Feeling Toward Whatsoever

Lynn & Alex: I would have put them on the Teams I Like list, until the other night when one of the fellows — Lynn? Alex? Some sort of combination of Lynn and Alex? — mentioned that they wanted to win The Amazing Race to prove what a gay couple could do. Which would be a noble goal if a gay couple hadn’t already won on The Amazing Race , thus proving what a gay couple could do.

Remember Reichen and Chip? From The Amazing Race 4? I’m almost certain that was televised.

Besides, does a person’s success on a reality program have all that much effect on society’s assessment of them? Let’s pretend for a second that you’re a backward-thinking anti-gay bigot — the President of the United States, say, or any of the knuckle-dragging open-mouthed breathers who think he’s doing a bang up job. Do you watch The Amazing Race and think to yourself, “Boy, Lynn and Alex really handle that pack of llamas well. This totally makes me rethink that whole rewrite-the-Constitution-to-specifically-codify-discrimination-against-them-and-their-kind plan I had going.”

I put it to you that you would not.

Uchenna & Joyce: Whatever.

Teams I Dislike

Ron & Kelly: We need fewer beauty pageant contestants on our reality TV shows, if you ask me.

Meredith & Gretchen: Remember Jonathan and Victoria, the repellant couple from last season’s Race? Meet the geriatric version! And Gretchen’s Jonathan.

Ray & Deana: They have a whole diet supplements/Bowflex informercial-type vibe about them, don’t they?

Teams I Hate With the Ferocity of a Wounded Wolverine

Rob & Amber: You know, there’s nothing in the rules of The Amazing Race that says you can’t bribe people to withhold information from other contestants or con people you’re pretending to be aligned with into giving you money. There’s certainly not a rule that you shouldn’t act like a smug, preening jackass every time a camera is pointed in your general direction. But there’s nothing that says I’ve got to pretend you belong in the Good Guy Club either.

Above and beyond that, do Rob and Amber really need to be on television anymore? They have their $1 million. They have their 15 minutes of fame. Let someone else have a turn. If we keep letting the Rob and Ambers, the Ryan and Tristas, the fucking Ruperts appear on our television sets, we will never be rid of them.

Or to put it another way, to root for Rob and Amber to win The Amazing Race is like rooting for Bill Gates to find a satchel full of money, like hoping that the vain, stuck-up captain of the football team gets laid this weekend, like cheering for the tank to run over that kid in Tiananmen Square. They have the ethics of geckos with their tales caught and represent everything rotten and foul about modern life — excessive pride in worthless achievements, the inability to distinguish notoriety from accomplishment, the abiding belief that the ends justify how crappy you treat your fellow human beings. I believe that when you die and go to meet your maker, you will be asked three questions:

1) How did you try and make the world better than you found it?
2) Did you consider how your actions on earth affected other people?
3) Did you root for Rob and Amber on The Amazing Race 7?

Woe betide those who fail to answer that last one correctly.