October 2006 Archives

If it's been a while since you've checked out our TeeVeePedia, you might want to give it another look.

Since we released this ultimate underground reference source for all things boob tube on April 1, a race of mysterious mole people has taken up residence there. Eschewing food and sleep, they have tunneled deeply into the strata of the televised world, expanding our humble little info-hole into a massive subterranean city of increasingly dubious content.

If you have a few hours to kill, bust out the frosty beverage of your choice and check out TeeVeePedia's coverage of the Fall 2006 Prime Time Schedule. And don't forget to hit the "Random Page" link for your very own whirlwind tour through TV absurdity.

This TV season's fall premieres have largely come and gone, as have the first couple of cancellations and full-season pick-ups. While it's pretty hard to come up for a formula to evaluate the prospects of a long-running show due to the sheer number of different variables involved, I believe that the same is not true of new shows.

Bottom line: new series stand or fall based on their ability to retain, or even grow, their audience. Because a show that starts small and builds from there shows promise, while a show that starts big and then loses viewers with every successive week is doomed, no matter how big that original premiere was.

Shows succeed because audiences like them and want to keep watching them. If the ratings ebb, it means people don't want to watch. And then it's all over.

With that idea in mind, I analyzed the ratings of the first few airings of most new network TV series, and assigned shows to three different categories: green (healthy), yellow (potentially good but with caveats), and red (audiences fleeing like rats from a sinking ship).

Green Shows

Jericho, CBS. I admit that I'm bored by the slow pace of this post-nuclear-attack drama series, but it appears to have found a solid ratings level and is generally keeping its viewers. CBS has already picked it up for the full season, and rightly so.

Shark, CBS. This James Woods legal show is an old-school, non-serialized series that's a lot of fun. It's also maintaining a very large audience. I think Shark's a winner.

Heroes, NBC. One of the key ratings points I looked at was the change in audience from the show's second week to its third week. Every show's ratings drop after the premiere episode -- people tend to sample new shows, and of course a certain number will drop out after one try. But if your show convinces someone to watch for another week, and then they drop out -- that's a really bad sign. Anyway, Heroes actually improved its rating from week two to week three. It exhibits all the signs of a show that's actually picking up steam, via word of mouth and re-airings. NBC's already picked the show up for a full year and I don't think they'll be sorry.

Men in Trees, ABC. As someone who expected this charming, quirky show to disappear beneath the horizon before very long, I'm a little surprised to report that it appears to have found its audience. It's been airing against soft competition on Friday nights, but the ratings suggest that audiences like Men in Trees. I think that's a really good sign.

Yellow Shows

The Class, CBS. This show appears to have that Yes, Dear effect -- namely, it's an apparently awful CBS sitcom that seems to have found an audience. Its ratings have vacillated somewhat, which is why I'm giving it a Yellow, but it's a borderline Green.

Brothers and Sisters, ABC. The alphabet network has already given this Sunday soap a full-season pick-up, but Mr. Amateur Ratings Guy is here to tell you that it might be a dangerous decision. What I see when I look at the B&S ratings is a slow erosion of viewers over its first four weeks on the air. It's doing great numbers and the loss of viewers is slowing down, so it's possible that B&S will end up stabilizing -- hence its Yellow rating. But I'm a bit surprised that ABC pulled the trigger on picking the show up this quickly.

Help Me Help You, ABC. Ted Danson's latest sitcom seems to have stabilized in the ratings; it's got a great lead-in, so there's that, but I'm a firm believer that people won't keep watching a show if they don't like it.

Ugly Betty, ABC. Just picked up for a full season, Ugly Betty is doing well on a brutally tough Thursday night. The reason this show gets a Yellow is that the rating keeps ticking down, and given how soapy and over-the-top parts of the show can get, I'm a little concerned that Ugly Betty may end up trying viewers' patience over time.

Friday Night Lights, NBC. This well-reviewed drama has been a ratings disappointment for NBC, but the people who have sampled it have stuck with it. Its third airing last night actually showed an increase in viewers from the week before. Whether this growth will be enough to combat the show's low ratings is debatable, but the ratings give NBC a good reason to stick with Lights -- it may legitimately be building a following.

Red Shows

Just about everything else falls into the realm of the Red show -- unless it's already been cancelled, that is. Among the shows that are simply hemorrhaging viewers: Vanished, Justice, Standoff, Happy Hour, Til Death, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Six Degrees, and The Nine. I don't like their chances, not one little bit.

Ugly Betty is an English-language telenovela, based on a show that, I'm told, was a big hit in Colombia. It's nice to see that the US Entertainment Conglomerate is expanding its list of countries to "borrow" from -- British sitcoms and Japanese horror films can only go so far.

When most people hear the word "telenovela", if they think anything beyond "huh?", they think of Bumblebee Man from The Simpsons. Producer Salma Hayek appears to be trying to change that by creating a smart show about characters that are either very likable or cartoonishly hatable. On the other hand, Ms. Hayek also stars in a show-within-a-show that's as stereotypical as possible (and also looks like a lot of fun), so it's possible that her goal is less "educate the public" than "make an entertaining television show". That's always nice. Perhaps Aaron Sorkin could take a few notes.

The premise of the show is that you've got this girl named Betty, who's ugly. She's not actually ugly, if you ask me; she's just got outlandishly unflattering hair, glasses, and braces. Sure, she's a little heavier than the other people on the show (who all appear to be models), but you wouldn't gasp in horror if you passed her on the street or anything. The other characters on the show, however, would. I assume this is because they all live in Perfect Model World, but I still got kind of tired of the constant shock that he would ever stoop to talk to someone who looks like that. Especially because Betty is cheerful, efficient, and smart. I admit the appeal of a show like The Office, but sometimes I like to see a show about people who are good at their jobs and appear to be actually good people. And if there are cartoon villains with entertainingly toadying assistants, so much the better.

Oh! I forgot to mention that there is a wide variety of unconvincing accents on display, which I always enjoy. I was particularly fond of Gina Gershon pretending to be Donatella Versace.

In TeeVee Podcast #3 our own Steve Lutz interviewed Michael J. Nelson, of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax.com. If you'd like to listen to the interview, listen to the podcast! If you're not someone who listens to podcasts, however, we've got you covered there too. Here's a transcription of our entire interview with Mike Nelson.

So I've been watching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip every week. The first couple episodes were slick and funny enough for me to stick around. The third episode, last week, started off incredibly frustrating -- "If all this show is going to be is characters standing up and giving monologues that are clearly just Aaron Sorkin pontificating, I give up," I told my wife -- but turned around in the second half-hour.

But I'm afraid the show may have lost me last night. Not with any one specific thing, but with a whole accumulation of things. I'm tired of the preachiness. I'm tired of the completely unrealistic situations (including going live repeatedly on the west coast feed, a network president hanging up on her boss with a wisecrack during a potentially large crisis). I'm tired of the sketch "comedy" that's not even remotely funny, and not remotely of the present day. (A sketch that hangs on a Juliette Lewis impression? State of the art... for 1996.)

But most of all, I'm tired of Aaron Sorkin letting his dirty personal laundry fly in public. I assume that if I knew enough about Sorkin's career and life, I could discover how every character in "Studio 60" is a duplicate of someone in Sorkin's life. Matthew Perry's Matt is Sorkin; Bradley Whitford's Danny is Tommy Schlamme; Sarah Paulson's Harry is Kristin Chenoweth; Amanda Peet's Jordan McDeere is Jamie Tarses.

But even the minor characters seem to be takes on people in Sorkin's past -- as well as being chances for Sorkin to settle old scores. I don't know what the past relationship is between Sorkin and the writing team of Jeff Reno and Ron Osborn -- the former Moonlighting writers were on the West Wing staff.

But it turns out that Ricky and Ron, the hack-ish writers who betrayed Matt and have been Studio 60's head writers during the show's dark years, are apparently modeled on Reno and Osborn. How did I crack Aaron Sorkin's clever code? Simple. Last night's episode revealed to us Ricky's last name: Tahoe. Jeff Reno, Rick Tahoe. Partner named Ron. Get it?

The name "Rick" is also probably a shot at writer Rick Cleveland, who became mildly famous during a dust-up about what Cleveland had contributed to a West Wing script he was credited with -- not so much, Sorkin suggested.

And of course, the character of Matt -- who refuses to let anyone in the show's "writer's room" write anything for the show, largely because he blames them for the show's decline and doesn't think what they can write can hold a candle to the gold he shits every week -- perfectly matches Sorkin's M.O., but supplies a fuzzy excuse for Sorkin's pathological behavior to reject any words that aren't his.

Is Aaron Sorkin a talented writer? Absolutely. Is he a complete egomaniac who allows his TV series to fall apart because he thinks that he's the only person talented enough to write for his shows? I'm gonna bet yes. And while I'm at it, I'm going to remove Studio 60 from my TiVo's Season Pass list.

The prodigal podcast returns, featuring Vidiot Steve Lutz's exclusive interview with Michael J. Nelson, formerly of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and now of RiffTrax. (Steve wrote about RiffTrax on TeeVee in August.)

TeeVee Podcast #3, 27-minute 6.7MB AAC file.

You can play back the AAC file with iTunes or even VLC. MP3 diehards like Rywalt can find a file to satisfy you behind this link. You can subscribe via iTunes -- and write a scathing review, even! -- or via conventional RSS feed.