Why teen shows can appeal to a crone: from Reunion on 9/22/05 - "1987" episode by producer Jon Harmon Feldman (who has made a career out of high school angst):
Jenna (Amanda Righetti): Just when you think you're out of high school, you keep getting sucked back in.
Carla (Chyler Leigh): Something tells me that you never really escape high school. It just haunts you for the rest of your life... .
Aaron (Dave Annable): Have you ever felt like you are some place and the whole time you feel like you should be someplace else?
Carla: Yeah, it's called high school.
Another form of guilty pleasure, on repeats when there's nothing else new on, is watching gruesome "procedurals" just for the hunks (even though the spokesperson for the NYC Medical Examiner’s office I spoke to when she called in for a WFUV public radio membership drive said zero of these shows are credible). As Lorne Manly described in “The New Middle Ages: TV’s Silver Age” in The New York Times 5/6/2007: “This approach favored multigenerational casting and, in dramas, surrounding a middle-aged authority figure (often grizzled) with a group of young, attractive acolytes. It appealed to younger viewers without driving away older ones. Take a look at CBS’s prime-time lineup, and you will find nine shows built on this boomer-and-the-cool-kids blueprint,” like the grim CSI: NY (CBS) that I sometimes watch for Carmine Giovinazzo and Gary Sinise (though I resent that it's not filmed in NYC like the L & O's are - the Hollywood set back alleys that don't exist in real NYC are a groaning give away), let alone all those new continuing stories of kidnappings, trials and other violent mayhem. (I never particularly liked CSI: Miami but after an absolutely ridiculously inaccurate episode on eminent domain as a murder motive I won't even watch for its moderate eye candy.) I even watched CSI temporarily for Liev Schreiber’s arc. I catch L & O: SVU for the not-used-enough Adam Beach so no wonder he asked for a dramatic departure so I won’t bother to watch any more, and L & O for Jeremy Sisto partnering with Jesse Martin, and Sam Waterston is the Acting D.A. (though my sons prefer the eternal Jerry Orbach repeats). BBC America had an older Hunk Fest in Ultimate Force on Nitro Tuesday, noteworthy amidst its imitation American-style violence is that the hunks have all gone on to more interesting roles. (updated 5/20/2008)
To see more of Clive Owen, as he was a TV star when I first fell for him on Chancer (out on DVD) and the Second Sight mystery series, check out a classy series of noir car commercials that are really ads for why Clive should be the next James Bond whenever Pierce Brosnan retires the franchise. Complete info on Clive at the most intelligent fan site. For other hunky Brits from TV check out this fan site, though it's no longer updated. (updated 10/16/2007)
Burn Notice (on USA summer Thursdays at 10 pm, repeated on a couple of overnights. 1st season on DVD. Renewed for 2nd season.) Jeffrey Donovan is finally in an appealing show that will be lasting more than one season! And I’ve watched them all, though he’s clearly been working out to be more buff as an ex-CIA agent trying to get back in The Company. Nice combination of comedy, action and cynicism. Less silly than the rest of the “characters welcome” shows on the channel, his co-stars also make this worth watching – even chain-smoking Sharon Gless is a lot less blowzy and more entertaining Mom than in Queer as Folk. Gabrielle Anwar has her best role in years as the ex-IRA operative, clothes-shedding ex-GF, as does Bruce Campbell as the improbable playboy drunk ex-agent. And the show got Alex Carter out of the usual Canadian-based productions into the Miami sun for a couple of episodes. (updated 6/15/2008)
Costumes-that-Come-Off Dramas:
Crime Does Pay:
Dirt (On FX, running over a few minutes, repeated several overnights. 1st season on DVD.) Not nearly as good as the other FX gritty dramas and comedies, but I was going to watch anyway just for Josh Stewart, of the last season of Third Watch, here as tortured Sean Penn-Lite actor "Holt McLaren". But Ian Hart as a just barely functioning schizophrenic paparazzi "Don Konkey" is stealing the show. (updated 1/20/2008)
Entourage (on HBO almost every night, repeated On Demand. 4 seasons on DVD. Renewed for a 6th season.) A half-hour of executive producer Mark Wahlberg good-naturedly making a bit of fun of himself, transposing his own rougher South Boston crew to a Queens group (and they really are local boyz who do sound like Queens high school grads) attached to the irresistibly angelic-looking bad boy Adrian Grenier as a Hollywood himbo (and amusingly he played a similar character cameo in Woody Allen's Celebrity). In "Three's Company" in the 3rd season by Lisa Alden, "Vince" defies the head of Warner's: Don't fuck with the boy from P.S. 154!
Geek Love Maybe it started with the irresistible “Jim” on the American The Office (episodes and extras streaming online), but a trio of lovable not-so-losers blossomed on hour-longs on network TV in 2007 that manage to be both funny satires and poignant:
Nip/Tuck (Tuesday and Sunday nights at 10 pm, Friday nights at 11 pm and repeated frequently on FX – but episodes run over by several minutes so they can cram the commercials in. 4 seasons on DVD, with extended and deleted scenes. Last run of 19 episodes take the series from 2009 through 2011.) Whew creator Ryan Murphy (of the daggers-out exaggeration of high school Popular - 1st season out on DVD) has been able to maintain the crazy serious-swinging-to-satirical tone beyond the first episodes. I would have watched anyway as there's hunks Aussie ex-pat Julian MacMahon (the primary reason I was watching Profiler and Charmed) and Dylan Walsh (from Brooklyn South and a recurring role on Everwood), both of whom usually get stuck with secondary, one-note roles and are now absolutely relishing being complicated leads as they explore their explicit ethical, sexual, and business challenges while reconciling their past dreams and nightmares with their 40-year-old selves. When not flashing his glutes, Julian's "Christian" gets to say the sharpest retort ever to a lover's claim of lack of orgasm: "What was that muscle contraction I felt? 3 times? You were just doing your Kegel exercises?" Through him we've gotten the most charming and brutal look at the why and how to's of a damaged sexaholic beyond even Six Feet Under that ties into current news on child abuse. Cute, (formerly) shaggy John Hensley of Witchblade gets to be a teenage son with the kinds of problems as the progeny in HBO series. Yeah, I turn away from the gruesome surgical scenes, but, heck I even do that on E.R.. Too bad they still balked at something even Everwood dared -- a sympathetic woman having an abortion. How silly that advertisers except hard liquor steered away from the show. Whew -- the 2nd season is even more frank, in language and situations. Of all the outrageousness in the series, Murphy had real guts in the religiously-themed "Agnes Ripp" episode by writing the lesbian anesthesiologist to have a legal abortion of a fetus with a possible birth defect, because she honestly felt she could not handle a special needs child on her own, even one whose sperm was from pretty "Christian Troy".
Sci Fi Shows: Now and Into Rerun Infinity On the Sci Fi Channel most recent episodes before cancellation were on Friday nights (with online deleted scenes and other extras) of Stargate: SG1 closed out with a lively Welcome Back! for Farscape's Ben Browder and Claudia Black (in syndication on odd times on the weekends on broadcast channels, earlier seasons on Monday nights on Sci Fi and 10 seasons worth on DVD - it does help to keep up as the mythology is mind-boggling, literally, to follow; direct to DVD movies coming to tie up the cliffhanger conclusion of the final season); Stargate: Atlantis (4 seasons on DVD, 5th season to be its last with Stargate: Universe to literally spin off instead - ironically added cast member Jason Momoa is more effective here as an alien than he has been in soaps set in his native Hawaii); the delightful but not silly new Doctor Who (3 seasons on DVD) with first Christopher Eccleson who then morphs into the Tenth Doctor David Tennant, also repeating on BBC America on changing nights) and its off-shoot Torchwood (BBC America Saturday nights and On Demand, 2 seasons on DVD) with TV’s first bi-sexual sci fi hero. There’s even a strong-female, family offshoot, - The Sarah Jane Adventures by the same producer, shown on the Sci Fi channel Friday nights. (updated 10/7/2008)
The problem with the proposition that television is an art is that art is meant to be deathless, while television shows are always being canceled. New sitcoms, for example, come on like your best friend forever the first time you meet, only to vanish without a trace when the network pulls the plug. They’re like grifters that way. Suspicious. Sitcom sets are built to look like monuments to eternal friendship — everybody-knows-your-name Central Perk, WKRP monuments — but if there’s one false move in the ratings, they’re axed to splinters, and no one seems to shed a tear.
Then there are hour long shows. Even the plainest network drama in these days of The Wire and Nip/Tuck sets up mortal stakes — with plane crashes, tanks, spinal-cord injuries, point-blank executions — as well as tormented characters invented to seize the brain.
These shows ask more than the comedies do: they don’t demand friendship as much as fealty. In an unsuccessful drama this ambition seems laughable. In a successful one it just works. You fall in thrall. You accept the series as your master. Such is the case with The Sopranos, Rescue Me and, it seems, Jericho.
I probably should call that last series, which CBS canceled earlier this month, “the late Jericho, but it makes me nervous to write those words. That’s not because I was an obsessive viewer of that postapocalyptic survivalist show (though, having finally caught up, I like it), but because its fans are die-hards. Anything about the demise of Jericho at the hands of the CBS brass should therefore be whispered. Those Jericho people are way, way, way in the denial phase of grief. As you can imagine, fans of a postapocalyptic survivalist show — especially those who have not quite faced that Rover’s with the angels in heaven now, right, Mommy? — have a tendency to be somewhat defensive. Vehement. Sensitive.
Jericho lovers write fan fiction, original stories based on the show’s characters. They argue over fine points. They make knowing, intimate references. They pull off stunts and skits that pick up on the attitude and logic of the show. They haze outsiders. They embark on campaigns. Lately, too, they buy nuts: more than 26,000 pounds so far, nearly all of them roasted peanuts from an online retailer called NutsOnline.com. That’s 13 tons. These nuts are shipped in boxes to CBS executives, who fans persist in believing might bring the low-rated Jericho back to prime time.
Just as other battles — for Everwood, Arrested Development, Veronica Mars— have taken on the particular character of the show being fought for, so the one for Jericho has been put in terms you might expect from people who have been watching an embattled community in Kansas fight to survive after the nuclear destruction of major American cities. For some the war seems more than a little holy: it pits an endangered home-and-hearth drama set on the Plains against American Idol, a chintzy Hollywood reality competition that is invariably called a “juggernaut.” At the same time, the Jericho call to arms doubles as a referendum on universal suffrage, charging that the Nielsen ratings system, which takes only passing notice of digital video recorders and new ways of watching television, is no more reliable than American voting machines. (Jericho features all kinds of makeshift and jury-rigged technology and suggests that the combination of munitions and TiVo can be formidable in the red states.)
Arguably, though, Jericho fans are just television fans at their most fannish, meaning (still, and after all these years) most Trekkie-like. Fans of Star Trek continue to represent the gold standard for American fandom, not only because they were the first to love a television show to distraction (and communicated that love before the Internet), but also because they spun from that love the breath of life. They not only reincarnated their postapocalyptic series, which was nominally canceled in 1969, they also generated, as they see it, no fewer than five television shows , 10 feature films and hundreds of novels. With that effort still yielding dividends in the form of video games, computer games and memorabilia, what committed fan wouldn’t fight for a beloved show’s second season? Earlier this month, at the upfront presentations, at which the networks unveil fall shows to advertisers, the buzz among journalists, executives and media buyers focused on video players, personnel changes and a handful of striking pilots. People who cared about struggling shows tended to talk about NBC’s Friday Night Lights or 30 Rock which had both been renewed. Jericho viewers generally got the news on the Internet: no more Jericho. In videos, on message boards and in e-mail messages came the rallying cry: Nuts. The idea crystallized quickly: “Say nuts to CBS.” The quaint use of nuts to mean both “that’s rubbish” and “go jump in a lake” came to fans from the final episode of the series, called “Why We Fight,” after the award-winning propaganda films by Frank Capra. In that last episode Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich) uses the word nuts to refuse his enemy’s suggestion that he surrender. The G-rated expression is justified in a flashback to pre-apocalypse days: it comes from his grandfather’s story about an American commander who stood up to the Nazis at Bastogne.
“Nuts” is a nice fit for this true-blue show, then: a flinty, Greatest Generation word, with a slightly bawdy bite. (Just before the grandpa story, hay is made over a mispronunciation of the word “peanuts,” as if to sex up “nuts” as a catchphrase.) In the final episode the rogue-turned-team-captain of the town called Jericho — that’s Jake — sees his father urge him to keep fighting the forces marshaling against him before he expires on a kitchen table. Finally comes an attack on Jericho that looks like the big one, and a blackout. A textbook cliffhanger. No wonder some of the first fans to protest the cancellation recut the final episode with Jake and the boys fighting CBS. They uploaded their efforts to YouTube, and began the supremely popular “Nuts to CBS” campaign. How CBS thought it could peddle heady patriotic stuff like this — not to mention run a series with episodes titled “Semper Fidelis,” “One if by Land” and “Coalition of the Willing,” if that gives a stronger sense of the soul of the series — and not expect a citizen-army to form in the show’s defense is folly. It’s almost like creating Vulcans, the Enterprise and Starfleet and not anticipating that some children of the ’60s and ’70s, who didn’t feel altogether embraced by life on Earth, might see themselves in the mirror of that new universe and devote hours, days and years of their young lives to ensure its survival. (Copyright 2007, The New York Times Company)
Smallville (on the CW Thursdays at 8 pm. 2 soundtracks out. 7 seasons out on DVD with a few extras. Reruns weekdays from the first season on ABC Family, to run for several years.) This young Superman is too old to be believable as a high school student (so his Metropolis and outer space rebellions actually made sense), his longing for little Miss Perfect Lana Lang is just plain boring (I enjoyed her interim relationship with "Jason", the hunk from Dark Angel) so it was nice to get a young Lois Lane under his burr, and his understanding of his super-powers is a bit confusing, but heck, he's sure easy on the eyes, which the directors, thankfully, frequently use him for his visuals.
Sons of Anarchy (On FX Wednesday nights at 10 pm, running over by a few minutes and repeated on several over nights. Renewed for a 2nd season.) I’m mostly watching for Charlie Hunnam. (updated 10/7/2008)
Supernatural (on CW Thursdays at 9 pm, streaming free online; 3 seasons on DVD: 1st season on DVD that has: "Commentary on "Pilot" by creator Eric Kripke, director David Nutter, and producer Peter Johnson; Commentary on "Phantom Traveler" by Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles; "Supernatural: Tales from the Edge of Darkness" - 15 minute making of documentary; "Day in the Life of Jared and Jensen" - featurette focusing on Jared and Jensen on the set; Gag reel; Unaired scenes; Still gallery; DVD-ROM capabilities with link to exclusive website content, original pilot script, access to Dean's computer and much more". 2nd season DVD has audio commentary, deleted scenes, featurette, gag reel) Yeah, it's just the Hardy Boys version of The X Files with only a trace of mythology (with a funny reference to that in the 2nd season's "The Usual Suspects" by Cathryn Humphris as each claims to be "Mulder" but "Dean" insists: No, I’m Mulder. You’re a red-headed woman.), but, oh heck, I'd follow Jensen Ackles (of Dark Angel and Smallville) and Jared Padalecki (of Gilmore Girls) anywhere while I'm folding laundry.
Without A Trace (on CBS Tuesday nights at 10 pm. Repeats of earlier seasons frequently on TNT so might as well catch them then. 2 seasons out on DVD.) Welcome back to TV Aussie-born, Brooklyn-living Anthony LaPaglia (so good in movies like Lantana and past quality show Murder One) and Eric Close (for whom I have watched any number of cancelled shows, like Now and Again and even Magnificent Seven (sometimes rerun on the Hallmark Channel) after he was on Sisters) -- and I enjoy that he's put down as a pretty boy being eyed by gay men. And Enrique Murciano as "Danny" is really growing on me, probably because he's one of the few characters who get to reveal something about his past and they gave him something of a relationship with a colleague. Each episode is mostly stand-alone like CSI with just a hint of continuing story lines about the personal lives of these FBI agents in NYC (though I doubt it's filmed here, boo), that I haven’t bothered to keep up with on first-run.
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN: WATCH FOR REPEATS ON CABLE OR DVD/VIDEO
Angel (On TNT weekdays at 8 am and 5 pm; 5 seasons on DVD.) Quickly became much more interesting than just a hunky vampire solving crimes. Starting from his redemptive interaction with "Faith," the rogue slayer, to his clashes with the cute lawyer (Christian Kane - and don't ask how many "B" TV movies I've been watching on cable to see him and of course like so many of my favorites he has a rockin' band-- 0y will I bother to pay money to see crappy movies like Life Or Something Like It or Just Married just for him? Whew, no! But TV's Crooked E was good so I hope he does better or hits with his country music-- and OMG the Prodigal Lawyer has returned for the conclusions!) who made a pact with the Devil firm to the woman who first converted him to immortality, there's been much more literal soul-searching about choices -- especially that now he's a dad, albeit a dad being punished for his wicked ways. It was even more worth watching for Angel's tortured teen son (Vincent Kartheiser -- and I seem to be the only one who enjoyed his Oedipal relationship with Cordelia. And that he learned to talk in complete sentences - though he went off to live happily ever after normally at the end of the season), but also to watch Wesley (in real life Alexis Denisof is the fiancé of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Willow" who squeezes in guest appearances) explore his sexy dark side, especially with Wolfram & Hart's seductive senior evil-doer, who now is immortal (hey, when you sell your soul, it's for forever). And Spike joined the battle as well, setting up some mano a mano competition, as creator Joss Whedon got to focus his magnificent mythological talents all here with no Buffy outlet anymore. Recommended episode guide and more. (updated 9/14/2005)
Carnivale (HBO still repeats it; both seasons on DVD. According to a Reuters/Hollywood Reporter piece by Andrew Wallenstein on 7/17/2005, HBO chairman and CEO Chris Albrecht "deemed [it] ultimately too expensive to continue given its huge production costs and ensemble cast. 'It's not a big show in the foreign (market), there's not a lot of investment to recoup from that." HBO was talking about a 2-hour wrap-up movie, but the creators rejected that as too short and are exploring a graphic novel finale instead. I originally put this under Quality Shows, but it didn't completely live up to its promise, as it was obvious that the producers were changing the story line as they edited to string us along. But it's still worth watching because of cutey Nick Stahl, as I join with the showgirls' admiration of him. Not as deep as other HBO dramas, it's basically another The X Files (which had its fair share of episodes set in freak shows), with its own iconography. Snatches of Katharine Dunn's Geek Love here and there, and you can hum David Bromberg's "Sharon (Main Street Moan)": "She was wearing nothing but a scarf and a sneeze... Roared that red-headed bear -- 'What do you do to these men/You know that same rowdy crowd that was here last night is back again'. . . When the carnival left town it took a little bit of my heart." (BTW Bromberg in an interview notes that this song is inspired both by the Coasters's "Little Egypt" and his dirty-dancing sister-in-law Sharon. He prefers the recording on Fantasy rather than Columbia.) But at least the HBO Web site is providing a music guide to the period (Dust Bowl) pieces. The second season is trying to make the whole mythology make sense, yeah right -- it's even more turgid, confusing and complicated. At least Stahl got to change his shirt finally and looks mighty fine even when the poor guy is filthy. That was surely the sweetest, most romantic what we certainly thought at the time was incestual coupling on "The Road to Damascus" ever seen on TV. The second season finale wasn't particularly satisfying as it seemed a bit desperate to make a cliffhanger though renewal prospects are dim. (updated 7/15/2006)
Due South (1st two seasons now out on DVD/video. 2 soundtracks released.) "I first came to Chicago to track down the killer of my father. . ." was a repeating line by Paul Gross's Mounty for one of the best fish-out-of-water/reverse Northern Exposure series. Made in Canada and proud of it, it particularly spotlighted Canadian music.(posted 8/2003)
Felicity (repeats of complete series on cable channel WE various times. 4 seasons on video/DVD - but not with the original songs, as they couldn't get the rights. Soundtrack available.) I gave up on it the second season as too melodramatic and there was just too much else on at the same time, but didn't I get hooked again on the cute and appealing guys on this show, which has about the same relation to college life as Sex and the City does -- and the same story of single women not using protection, getting pregnant and keeping their babies. I do think that Scott Foley was sexiest with the woman who became his wife the ex-wife, Jennifer Garner, so I guess that makes him not such a great actor -- like who cares?
Firefly (Sci Fi Channel reruns the series at different times, including three episodes never aired on Fox that are also on the DVD. Movie version is Serenity.) This has none of the intellectual earmarks of its creators, Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Tim Minear who was also associated with The X Files. It started as just a run-of-the-mill could be on weekend-syndication sci fi show with no shortage of clichés and steals from other sci fi shows. But oh heck the male eye candy (like Sean Maher, who I'm supposed to believe is a doctor and no longer a rookie cop or Wall Street broker like on his last failed Fox shows, and the captain played by Nathan Fillion, who is a prime reason I’m watching Fox’s Drive) and the jokes are worth the ride. I like the sexual tension hanging in the air between the dense doctor and the girl mechanic, as well as with the captain and the call girl, er Companion.(updated 4/24/2007)
The Guardian (will doubtless show up on cable reruns) A bit too earnest, so I tended to doze, but the corporate lawyer (a la Traders-type negotiations) balancing required community service as a child's advocate (a la Judging Amy) is one Ozzie hunk, Simon Baker (though he started out trying to do a Canadian accent for some reason in a show that's supposed to be in Pittsburgh). But why have such a Hunk and have few realistic romantic possibilities the first season? Off-screen sex with a 29-year-old posing as a 16-year-old doesn't count! Though a sudden sleazy affair with an annoying married attorney in his new firm was intriguing and different, or telling a tempted and tempting colleague that he has "certain tendencies" that he has to keep in check, even while she resists their mutual attraction and goes off and marries a jerk.
I guess the point is to make him Job-ian, sigh. (Like Jakob Dylan sings in the new title song, "Empire of My Mind," he has light and dark sides, and like with Jakob parent/child issues are paramount themes throughout the series for all the characters). Ah, at least the second season had him in bed with a cop with a jealous ex-husband, whew he does look nice in T-shirt and boxers, while he was pining for his unhappily married co-worker, whew, who finally got divorced. So they're hooking up now -- but he certainly does seem to have some kind of "intimacy issues" preferring sudden lust attacks (as she says, "when you get that look in your eyes") to a romantic relationship with her, let alone if she's off to CA. But it's nice to see that gorgeous smile more! We'll see what happens now that he's beginning to get the idea that he's a bit emotionally repressed, whether anger or love.
And at the start of the third season, he can still get Lulu into bed, but not express his feelings to tell her he loves her and not to go to California, sigh. Ah, they found a way to give her a promotion to stay in Pittsburgh -- and add more tension to their relationship as now she's his boss! Oh my, now they're living together! Now she's pregnant -- and he's willing to get married, she's not, she wants to buy a new house, but he's insisting on paying the whole mortgage. And on top of everything, he's finding ways to screw it up, losing his dad's clients and dallying and drinking with a pretty social worker -- who gets that lovely smile out of him that Lulu can't. His solution? Swimming laps -- rich in metaphor, that. (Oh, and opportunities for us to see even more of Simon Baker.) Yup, he literally blew everything on drugs again and 12-step amends can't fix everything, ah, such tortured eyes. Oh no, now Job'll have a Down's Syndrome kid -- as if we believed for a nanosecond that a main character on a network show would have an abortion! So he smiles more is why Lulu takes him back -- house and all? Oy, and now he's even been fired, just when he's completed his community service requirement. Just as well the series was cancelled, the season finale wasn't setting up enough of the conflicts that had kept the show off-kilter interesting: "Nick" now a FT public interest lawyer (uh - doesn't he need board approval to take over?), a still unforgiving girlfriend who refuses to give his baby his last name and has decided to only work PT to spend more time with their special needs kid, and a restless retired father.(updated 5/17/2004)
The music is trendy (like Rufus Wainwright, Ron Sexsmith and Alexei Murdoch's "Orange Sky" which was first introduced to the general public on the Creek.) And turns out the featured band Rooney is really an up-and-coming band. Go to Features then weekly music listings (Schwartz was quoted in the 11/4/04 Entertainment Weekly: "We're all obsessed with finding that perfect song. We're such music geeks." The music supervisor is Alexandra Patsavas: "We dig deeper to find good music that fits the mood of the show." and in Billboard about the cool music selections.
Forget the integrationist gays of Dawson's Creek, Will and Grace or The Sum of Us. These are guys who only heard half of James Brown's chorus "It's A Man's World." According to an interview in New York Times "Ron Cowen, who, along with Daniel Lipman, adapted Queer as Folk from the original British series, said, "I write out of a lot of anger." Mr. Cowen added that the show reflects his day-to-day experience as a gay man. 'In almost everything we do, we have to deal with issues of discrimination and all of the ways in which we're deprived of first-class citizenship,' he said." So now we see that Lipman and Cowen, who created one of my fave estrogen-fests Sisters (streaming online) and Richard Kramer, a fine writer for Once and Again, were then really pulling a Tennessee Williams by projecting gay sensibilities onto women characters.
Showtime thinks this American adaptation of a British show will appeal to women as a bodice-ripping hunkfest of mostly naked men, true, but also for relationships. Relationships? Rooms full of strangers down on each other? We know from Madonna's Truth or Dare and Sex and the City that women don't really like anal and oral sex, let alone doing it every hour around the clock with only one partner satisfied, so these guys have a solution: do it to male strangers. Relationships are denigrated as hetero behavior and heteros are uniformly denigrated as homophobic breeders and worse (gee, even the charming chiropractor who wanted to have a relationship, with him always on top, used to be married to a woman so is therefore used to that kind of partnering). The queen sees his choices only as being between club-hopping quickies and conversion to heterosexuality. In the second season, in the first episode written by a woman, such critics were attacked head on with even more nasty satire against monogamous gay couples, this time attacking such male duos as if they are hypocritical women. Similarly, the lesbian couple could have more easily won support of their parents by appealing to irresistible grandparenthood instead of nastiness and flaunting sexuality in their faces.
The central amoral character of "Brian" is envied and lusted after even by every friend that brands him "a heartless shit," so there's no attitudinal balance like there is in Sex and the City. But he's like Amanda in Melrose Place: the gorgeous villain. This U.S. version upped his teenage lover from 15 years old to 17, but I'm not sure that excuses his seductive manipulation of a minor (3 cheers to the Mom who threw a pile of the kid's clothes at him, saying You seduced him. You fucked him. Now you make sure he has clean underwear, takes his allergy medicine and gets to school on time! Gee, what a surprise that "Justin"'s turning into the same heartless seducer as his initiator into sexual behavior.) And I'm supposed to be more sympathetic about them taking turns at making each other jealous once he turned 18? I didn't consider it romantic when they passionately kissed in the club back room while standing side-by-side each screwing strangers down on all fours in front of them and bringing home strangers together. Three cheers for when the romantic fellow student violinist was his boyfriend! Healthier relationship all around, for them and us. Boo to returning to Brian! Brian's problems supposedly stem from his learning that his mother and father "had" to get married. For goodness' sakes! But I think he really believes in Original Sin -- he can't stand that he's born from a man fucking a woman. Which explains his intense loyalty to his son conceived through artificial insemination with a lesbian, the only female with whom he's able to maintain a long-term civil relationship.
The women are demanding harridans or ineffectual maternal forgivers or the usual homophobes. But then all of "Brian's" "do the right thing" epiphanies are at the expense of a woman's feelings. Just because his mom is a religious condemner of gays doesn't make her scorn of his irresponsibility wrong. However, the out and out misogyny of the first season has been eased a bit, probably as Showtime discovered that a lot of straight women are watching (evidently something like 40% of the audience), so the nice girl from the K-Mart store who "Michael" was so mean to was brought back for a nicer closure and the P-FLAG Mom has been given some (confusing) humanity, and there's some effort at putting a priority on relationships over hourly shallow sex. The series is consistent with Showtime's soft-core porn of more full-frontal female nudity than male, just better written and with better looking, talented actors and the occasional come thither tearing open of condoms. Other aspects of the show are noted in my review in the Fall '01 issue of LILITH Magazine.
And of course at the start of the 4th season the mother turns out to be an hysterical homophobe. At least the characters showed some different sides, so the actors got to break out a bit as the characters become more human and less blithely hedonistic (especially "Emmett" - though gosh, now he's back to being a less interesting party animal after re-discovering his "inner fairy" - though his break-up with his closeted football player lover was a dignified defense that he'd never hidden who he was and wasn't about to start though his lover's comment that he also loved the fiancée he was lying to "and I want a wife and children just like everybody else" was moving, despite a cop out compared to how Playmakers dealt with the same issue, and then echoed as another couple in the group unconventionally acted on such goals) -- it makes for better TV, but what motivated them to suddenly care about something beyond an anonymous blow job a minute? Even when "Brian's" got a conscience, it's annoying he keeps coming out the hero (he claims he only brought down the corrupt homophobic politician "to keep open the back room at Babylon. Otherwise we'd have to fuck like breeders.") as he nobly participates in a charity ride. And while some characters do finally start to challenge him that constant, anonymous sex is a vital part of being queer, his too-young lover insists that the comic book hero he modeled on him isn't really arrogant, just defending queer culture. Will "Justin" finally get to be on top in sex with him now that he's an empowered vigilante? Here's an interesting discussion with some of the actors and producers on how the series has changed -- but with no mention of its misogyny or heterophobia, though even "Justin" now accuses "Brian" of being a heterophobe. But it does almost feel like a completely different series as the characters and the plots gained notable and more interesting depth -- perhaps due to some new writers and producers -- as by the end of the season some of the heteros were just afraid of AIDS not full of hateful bile. Even the music was much more diverse this season, not just dance club electronica. Their issues became now the more mainstream agenda of adoption, anti-gay-bashing, testicular cancer, legalized gay marriage, heck, even the tricks are in stable relationships at home! Ironically, more complex characterizations mean less naked hunks for hetero women to watch, even with glimpses of dancers at the Babylon dance club, some even full frontal. I guess I'm supposed to be satisfied with the long lingering kisses between the now monogamous male couples.(updated 1/13/2005)
For the 5th and final season, I'm tracking "Melanie Marcus", but how nice we're getting to see Gale Harold in most of his glory again, which must be why other straight women are watching as well--amusing that he clearly demurs from being photographed full frontal regardless of what bacchanalia his character is doing-- as "Brian"'s open relationship allows for lots of explicit coupling, even as he hurls bile at the "Stepford queers" settling down with kids and houses. And he was also sexy stretched out playing with his biological son "Gus" - how did they find a toddler who looks so much like Gale? How touching that he really missed "Justin" who was off in La La Land being equally promiscuous such that they could have full on reunions in various, open combinations - but he's still a dozen years older than him. At least the show is starting to deal with issues of gay obsessions with youth and beauty that relate to these kind of relationships. To bad the new straight male and female characters continue to be harridans and homophobes.
In an episode by producer Shawn Postoff, even "Justin" is getting tired of "Brian"'s Peter Pan approach to gay rights, with babysitting and "Brian"'s case of the clap helping raise his consciousness towards what "Brian" derides as "imitation heterosexuals" living as monogamous married couples. "Brian" poses a philosophical Are you surrendering to what the straight world thinks it means to be a man? which "Justin" translates to his graphic novel super hero alter ego "Rage" as answering the plea When will you stop fucking everything that moves? with a defiant NEVER! Though in the next episode by producer Del Shores, "Rage" gets married. "Brian" does score his own points in criticizing another friend's "Queer Eye"-type role on a TV news show for repeating the asexual stereotype of laughable, lovable clowns. Do you still think they'd love you if they knew you took it up the ass and loved it?
Urged on by "Michael"s mom, "Brian" attempts an unusual reconciliation in the next episode, in a teleplay by executive story editor Brad Fraser: If it makes you happy being a Stepford fag, go for it. Be the biggest Stepford fag in the world. Surprisingly, both personally and for the series, "Mikey" stands up to "Brian" for the first time in his life - We no longer have anything in common. So let's just admit that the Brian-Mikey Show is over and get on with our lives. Will this series really tame "Brian" and his alternative lifestyle?
Meanwhile, the producers have thrown a bone to the straight women watching by having "Justin"'s divorced mom have a relationship with the hunkiest, motorcycle riding, 25-year-old (I did go to college.) 8th grade science teacher on the planet, and their arguments about young/old dating with the hypocritical kid are hilarious. If the stud boyfriend really turns out to be gay or a bastard, I'll be really disappointed in this series! Even the music selections were atypical in this episode as a Celtic dirge plays in "Brian"s mind over the usual superficial dance pop at Babylon. It then took even more anti-gay violence than they've faced in previous seasons to get "Brian" to utter "I love you" to Justin and ask him to marry.
The finale by Lipman and Cowan was surprisingly sweet as the characters showed mature self-understanding and I presume "Michael"s speech on human rights was their philosophy: I am just like you -- I have a loving partner, two kids, a small business, a home. In a lot of ways I am just like you. I want to be happy, I want some security, a little extra money in my pocket. But in many ways my life is nothing like yours. Why should it be? Do we all have to have the same lives to have the same rights? I thought diversity was what this country is all about. In the gay community we have drag queens and leather daddies and couples with children, every color of the rainbow. My mother. . .once told me people are like snowflakes, special and unique and in the morning you have to shovel them off the driveway. While "Brian" finally realizes that "Justin" was too self-sacrificing and has to have a life of his own to live, he did get off one final riposte to a client in favor of sex. The last dance to Heather Small's "Proud" with the chorus: "What have you done today to make you feel proud?" capped the best year for music on the series. (updated 1/22/2007)
The Hunger (one of the Showtime channels repeats this intriguing '80's series overnights) Soft-core porn met The X Files in this exotic-looking anthology series of tales of sex with vampires, werewolves, ghosts, ninjas, shapeshifters, etc. Strong scripts based on short stories, even by recognizable and occasionally classic writers like Gautier, with visiting, talented but usually clad hunks like Giancarlo Esposito, Phil Casnoff, Daniel Craig, Chad Lowe, etc. filmed in beautiful Montreal. However, the women are all nude, vapid, Continental-looking French-Canadian models with zero acting talent who drag down the series for women viewers. Terence Stamp was the usual, campy host, though David Bowie did an occasional turn. (updated 4/20/2003)
John Doe (cancelled from Fox) It took me awhile to accept the show past its hokey premise of the mystery genius with amnesia, and then it got all mystery complicated about his origins. But it also took me awhile to get into The Pretender which it imitates a lot. But gosh tall, dark and handsome Dominic Purcell is appealing, and then I found out he's Australian. And then they added Jayne Brook for some sparring and then I was on board, though TPTB brought in another actress for romantic interest for awhile. But then they keep throwing in his confusing relationship with his teenage girl assistant which can be creepy rather than fraternal. I preferred the mystery-solving to the conspiracy stuff. (updated 7/24/2003)
Men in Trees (cancelled from ABC) Yeah, it was no Northern Exposure in this silly view of Alaska, I saw Anne Heche act way better on Broadway in Proof, and that it has writers from Sex and the City just shows they're tired, let alone forgot about friends with benefits, but darn if the guys aren't appealing and adorable as guilty pleasure eye and talk candy, especially James Tupper, Nicholas Lea (if that’s in fact his real life GF than they are atypical for having onscreen chemistry as well), Snow Plow Guy, and the various older barflies. Aw, shucks, him cutting her hair, in "The Buddy System" by Chris Dingess, was a cute demonstration of trust in friendship. Welcome the half-naked Scott Elrod as “Cash” the carpenter! Fairly good music selections – such as nice use of Josh Ritter’s "Wolves” (from The Animal Years which was on my Best of 2006) when real wolves showed up. But the last season just dragged in nonsense. (updated 5/20/2008)
Mr. Sterling (not sure if NBC showed all episodes before they cancelled it) Just when I had finally successfully resisted re-watching for a very young Josh Brolin as Wild Bill Hickok in the constant reruns of one of my guilty pleasure favorites The Young Riders on various cable channels (his character did have a thing for an older woman), lasting way longer than the Pony Express did and sometimes running on Hallmark Channel Saturdays as part of their Western marathon --and don't ask how many "B" TV movies I've been watching since to see him (and whoa, that was him with older Diane Lane at the Academy Awards! Go Diane!)-- here he was now as an accidental Senator talking West Wing-producer snappy dialogue. There's errors here and there (whoops! He wouldn't have grown up in L.A.! As the governor's son he would have grown up in Sacramento), but gosh it's charming, even his hair is irresistible, and the other senators and political handlers are entertainingly well-cast, modeled on Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Hmm, would he have gotten the job if he didn't have the extra irony of being Barbra Streisand's stepson? So where's his West Coast girlfriend already?(updated 5/13/2003)
The Nine (Cancelled from ABC, not sure if all the episodes were streamed online and if I saw all of them.) I didn't want to get involved in yet another quality serial drama with a great cast and workmanlike pedigree (with brother and sister producers Hank Steinberg of Without A Trace, which I now only watch on reruns, and K.J. Steinberg of Judging Amy which always kept my interest for strong women characters) because I figured it's sure to get cancelled. Lesser fare like Fox's Vanished (which killed off Gale Harold for goodness sake!) and NBC's Kidnapped (even though it was filmed in NYC) were shunted aside by the nets, and this is much better than ABC's Six Degrees despite the NYC setting and very attractive cast (sorry, the wonderful Campbell Scott in bed with young Shiri Appleby jumped my shark, much as I like Hope Davis) and the way too soap opera-ish Brothers and Sisters which has already gotten a full season pick-up. But maybe I can open up my heart, despite the usual evil conspiracy, and almost identical dialog and relationships as, believe it or not, One Tree Hill (viz. compare
The O.C. (SoapNet re-playing the series from the beginning. All seasons on DVD, even in a special box set. 6 soundtrack "mixes" out. And a grown-up fan reference book to convince you to watch.) I hadn't realized I missed Dawson's Creek until I tuned into this CA soap (as in "Orange County") with more twenty-somethings pretending to be high-schoolers in what is a delicious LOL satire of the genre. Not only do we get the adorable Adam Brody (formerly of Gilmore Girls) and Peter Gallagher (playing father-son Cohens, though the mom --of course, as usual -- isn't Jewish (for my take on the Jewish woman angle) but also Benjamin McKenzie as "Ryan," who gosh-darned it, really does live up to the hype as looking like a young Russell Crowe, as I've seen his early movies and he really does, though no way does he match the intensity, let alone acting chops. (Which led to a cute joke about Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World in "The Countdown" episode by producer Josh Schwartz -- "Ryan"'s girlfriend complains about being dragged to see "a 3-hour movie about ships" and says of Crowe: People say he's good looking but he just doesn't do it for me. "Ryan" with a straight face
says, I've never thought about it. and offers that for New Year's Eve they could stay home and rent a bunch of Russell Crowe movies.) The fourth season first episode "The Avengers" repeated the joke, as "Seth" prepares a graphic novel version of the importance of "Ryan" to the "Cohens": One day The Litigator brought his work home with him - only this time his work looked strangely like a Young Russell Crowe., with a comic book version of McKenzie in a tight undershirt.
Playmakers (women had to first find ESPN or ESPN2 to watch it. Out on DVD. Brit cable TV had the sense to pick it up.) I didn't follow any of the discussion of football plays or strategies or positions or game shots, but we get to see a lot of bulked up guys in various stages of undress, even if some of them, particularly cute Christopher Wiehl, would be dwarfed by real life football players (my mother was once in a hotel elevator with NFL'ers and felt she was penned in by giants). And not just the younger guys were worth watching for - it was a treat to see Anthony Denison from one of my very favorite guilty pleasure TV movies, Sex, Love and Cold Hard Cash. Creator John Eisendradth could barely keep up with the bad news in the press about athletes, so this isn't rawer then Real Life, but it is as frank as basic cable can get comparable to Oz in showing an all-male environment - including legal and illegal and quasi-legal drugs - the steroid angle has been done literally to death on TV, but not much have we seen the impact of anti-depressives and kidney damage from painkillers. (And the big bald lug suffering from depression and father and best-friend issues has really gotten to me as a sweetie.) Too bad the women were either loyal wives or greedy or naive groupies, and were not as fully realized as the players, who get to voice-over their inner thoughts. But HBO nixed the planned series on baseball wives, so we'll have to settle. The domestic violence story-line went in an odd nice guy angle, maybe that's why they stopped running the PSA's urging women to report rape, but ESPN couldn't get their usual sexist beer advertisers. The gay angle almost caught up to the play Take Me Out, culminating in the terrific and fiercely honest "The Outing" episode by Craig Sweeney, Peter Egan and Stephen Hootstein (gee, I learned Viagra is the drug of choice of closeted gays with female beards), but, of course, they lost their nerve on an abortion. The Wall Street Journal reported that the NFL was furious at the show and ESPN had to pull promos from running during NFL games. The Philly Eagles owner taunted the Disney-owned network if they'd like it if "Minnie Mouse were portrayed as Pablo Escobar and the Magic Kingdom as a drug cartel." Such fuming from the folks who hired MTV to do the Super Bowl half-time show! ESPN caved in to pressure from the teams and did not renew the show for a second season. Even FX was too chicken to pick it up, maybe because the NFL could probably pressure Fox through its football coverage. In the meantime, we can watch occasional episodes of the soapier Footballer's Wives on Trio from Britain, though I'm not sure how many episodes we'll be getting.(updated 9/21/2004)
Queer as Folk (Showtime will doubtless repeat the series and keep it On Demand. Repeating on the Logo Channel, but probably at least somewhat bawdlerized as that's basic cable. All seasons on DVD/video. 4 soundtracks available.)
The second season also moved beyond the Brit scripts, to more of an ensemble piece. The third season continued the odd tendency that the few scripts either written or directed by women are even more virulently anti-heterosexual/all heterosexuals-are-homophobes (especially mothers) and filled with heterosexual stereotypes than the male-oriented episodes. Why should I suddenly believe the habitually lying runaway that it was his abusive mother who led him on his dangerous course? Did the accountant suddenly realize the depths of his drug depravity when he was a victim or did he realize the sexual shallowness of all his compatriots regardless of who was the victim?
Standoff (cancelled from Fox during its one season, but the final episodes were burned off online.) I've been charmed by Ron Livingston since Band of Brothers even if he's always referred to as "Carrie's boyfriend from Sex and the City who broke up with her via a post-it." (I even liked his younger brother John in one of my little indie romance faves Dopamine). And Ron is quite appealing here negotiating nonviolent solutions to violent confrontations while flirting with his co-worker and always trying to get her into bed. I seem to be the only one to enjoy writer Craig Silverstein's jaunty and double entendre dialog between the two that flows with their chemistry -- can he and they keep it up and will Fox let them? Uh, no, industry trades
are reporting: "that Standoff is shutting down production for 10 days. That extra time will allow new consulting producer Tim Minear [one of my fave writer/producers] to get up to speed ('You see, Tim, they're hostage negotiators and they're sleeping together. There. You're up to speed.')."
Resurrection Boulevard (re-run on various Showtime channels various times since it was cancelled after 3 seasons. 1st season available on DVD.) is a Latino melodrama with mighty good looking boxers and their family and associates and occasionally good salsa and other Latin music. Brian Austin Green was killed off after one season; I was watching quite a bit for him, but the Latino fans vociferously objected to an Anglo in the ensemble. I don't mind if they focus on "Alex" and his potential romance more (the gorgeous hunk re-surfaced on seriously on American Family and stereotypically on The O.C.). I'm delighted that the creepy romance between the father and the girl his daughter's age got dropped. The Lou Gosset story-line was B-O-R-I-N-G! A bit icky that actors who play brother and sister are in fact now husband and wife; luckily they don't have too many scenes together.(updated 10/15/2004)
Robbery Homicide Division (cancelled from CBS -- even before the lead was arrested for alleged domestic violence. Unshown episodes were among the repeats on USA) Visually interesting in the Michael Mann style as he comes back to TV post-Miami Vice and Heat, the eye-candy is helped by an underutilized Canadian hunk David Cubitt (for whom I have watched many cancelled shows -- American Embassy, Michael Hayes, an arc of That's Life and he fits in as a cop well here--though yet again with an addicted sibling, and will be in another series next season) and oh yeah the lead Tom Sizemore's interesting too. But this is all flash and no substance, with boring, extravagant Hollywood cases, to be just another cop show. (updated 4/20/2003)
Roswell (repeats on the Sci Fi Channel. Soundtrack and all episodes out on DVD - but warning about the music on the DVD according to John Lippman in "Vintage TV Faces the Music" in The Wall Street Journal May 5, 2006: "same. . .tack was taken by Fox for the DVD version of Roswell about alien teenagers stuck on Earth. Songs by hit artists such as Hole, Beck and Counting Crows have been replaced with songs by virtual unknowns Eleventeen, Goldo, and Glen Phillips, respectively, among many others.") It started out as a metaphor for those high school years as alien territory (and the older looking cast barely attended by the time of their graduation), it ended up as a good-looking sci fi adventure. What's this TV epidemic of barely high school graduates getting married? It's bad enough on Seventh Heaven, where at least marriage is an allusion to sex. And didn't the third season renewal of the romance contradict the warning from the Max From the Future that Liz and Max together would doom his planet? Definitive "Roswell" fan website. (updated 5/12/2006)
Saved (cancelled from TNT after one season) I've liked Tom Everett Scott on various arcs and cancelled shows, but I especially like him wild-eyed and woolly here. Though the story of the slightly crazed EMT was already portrayed by Nicholas Cage in Bringing Out the Dead, let alone better in Third Watch with a dash of Rescue Me. The flashbacks of how the patient got to that point in their lives manages to avoid CSI gimmickiness and could even be longer. But the tension between his med-school drop-out/rebellion from Dr. Dad and his ex gf the ER doctor (Elizabeth Reaser so deserves her Indie Spirit for being irresistibly luminous in Sweet Land, and good too as "Annie Reed" in the "Heroine" episode of Standoff) is a bonus to the eye-candy -- so I don't like it when she's getting along with her older surgeon boyfriend and his teen daughter. So they're going to destroy the sexual tension because her Mom reveals that she was preggers and hadn't told him and he was angry because he thought she was going to have an abortion, but it turned out she'd TV-typical miscarried? Huh? At least we got to see flashbacks to their former romance -- hey bring it back! (updated 12/15/2006)
Street Time (still being repeated on various Showtime channels) Scott Cohen and Rob Morrow were a complex tandem, plus at least a couple of the characters are non-stereotypical Jews (including Morrow's pot-smoking wife "Rachel Goldstein" who is not incognizant of her family's continual role in drug-dealing -- including her ex-hippy/art dealing dad, played incongruously by a Native Canadian), much more believably than I'd expected. The show was weakened at first by wives who it took ten episodes to go from bland to active and make the romance (and, um, the sex) more interesting, plus the director not yelling "Cut!" when Canadian actors betray the Toronto shooting with an "oot" instead of an "out." The traverse of the story line is intriguingly ironic, unpredictable, and twisty, as the two leads' lives have reverse parallels, though I had trouble following the criminal machinations. The sexual tension has ramped up in surprising ways as well between them, as the women have grown backbones and taken control of their lives while their husbands are floundering. The format settled down into guest star parolees, who can be interesting, such as finally getting to see Gale Harold of Queer As Folk in a hetero role, around the continuing story of the ironically teamed up central characters. But, yuck, to the second season romantic finale that made zero sense and had even less sexual magnetism so I didn't care that will be no third season.(updated 1/16/2004)
Tilt (miniseries on ESPN may yet get repeated - out on DVD) I was attracted because Eddie Cibrian and his dimples of Third Watch co-star, along with Chris Bauer (also of the second season of The Wire) and the always interesting Michael Madsden. I'm tired of shows with Las Vegas as a background which is usually just an excuse to show nearly naked women, but there's surprisingly less skin than usual here -- even with a threesome thrown in. The characters' back stories are at least a bit different than the usual. I still know zilch about poker so the game tension is lost on me, even after seeing Rounders that the same creative team produced. But I do like the seedy darkness of it all. Will ESPN get pressured by casinos to shut this down due to the card sharks, cheating and rigged games at the heart of each episode like they caved to the NFL with Playmakers? This certainly makes gambling seem like more an addiction than appealing. But this must be at least the fourth series that has the venerable Robert Forster playing a returning prodigal father. (4/10/2005)
Undressed (MTV reruns it sometimes on overnights) Despite all the criticism of this as too racy for MTV's audience, it is in fact sensitive sex education: an anthology series that features three simultaneous story arcs --one set in high school, one in a college dorm and one by working 20somethings-- played out over several episodes, it puts (very attractive) young people (with broad Canadian accents) in outrageous yet believable sexual confrontations that result in every character growing through a better appreciation of gender roles, intimacy, communication, and mutual respect (nommed for a GLAAD award -- though that seems to have gone to the producers head -- this season is repetitively dealing with coming out issues). Each co-written by men and women (though less women in its final year) to deal with both viewpoints of discovering sex in every combination possible for teens to 20somethings--race, orientation, post-sex break-up etiquette, virginity, masturbation, STDs, premature ejaculation, breast fetishism, orgasms, techniques, fidelity, honesty, 3somes, size, turn-on's, cross-dressing, romance vs. sex, body parts size sensitivities, etc. etc. The "new-faces" actors' arms must get tired in rehearsals from taking their shirts on and off. The frankest non-premium cable dialogue and camera shots on TV. And unexpected not-necessarily-happy-ever-afters as characters who go off into the bedroom reappear weeks later. There is a moral here about being true to yourself and being sensitive to other people's feelings. So this is what co-ed dorm living is like--taking showers 24 hours a day in uni-sex bathrooms, among other goings-on. Oy, not sure I wanted to know this much, but I'm surprised how much the anti-MTV censors don't get the Lessons in Each Episode.
Veritas: The Quest (disappeared from ABC -- there are doubtless some unshown episodes that could yet turn up somewhere like the Sci Fi Channel) is absolutely third-rate Indiana Jones done by the same people who did Lara Croft: Tomb Raider -- but heck they're the people who figured out that Daniel Craig was a hunk. And they put square-jawed Canadian Alex Carter on a regular network series, a fave of mine from the second season of Traders, and who now appears occasionally on CSI as a cop (hey, why not make him a regular already, perhaps a romantic possibility, especially as they so nastily eliminated Nicholas Lea from X Files promising relationship with "Catherine.") And there's the goateed devilish Eric Balfour from the first seasons of Six Feet Under and 24. And even Ryan Merriman, the child flashback of Jared on The Pretender, has grown into an almost Mrs. Robinson-worthy teen. Even spooky Arnold Vosloo is fun to watch. So time to dump getting-boring Boston Public (which I eliminated from my "Quality" rankings) for hunky thrills. Though the romance potential didn't look too promising as the women were pretty boring - they're not going to have the graduate student tutor as jealousy bait between father and son are they? (updated 9/24/2004)
The Whistler (summers on The N, bumped around, but not clear if they'll run the 2nd season from Canadian TV, which fans will doubtless post on YouTube as they did when The N kept moving it beyond findability) gives us Nicholas Lea in his 2nd TV series of 2006 after a too long absence in an atypically less dangerously sexy mode as a Dad than his sci fi mode on The X Files and Kyle XY, a precursor to his lovin’ preacher on Men in Trees. And I'm sure rooting for "Uncle Ryan" not to be a bad guy as he's winning over the girl who got away in high school. (updated 12/2/2007)
Wolf Lake (it went from CBS to UPN, which reran some episodes over the summer, and is now rerunning on the Sci Fi Channel). The back story got changed so much in pre-production that it no longer made a lot of sense. I was a fan of co-creator John Leekley's previous hunky fright fest Kindred: The Embraced, but he got quickly canned from the series, then I figured Lou Diamond Phillips was worth the ride. But then along came Scott Bairstow a few episodes in literally tearing up the furniture as a sexy villain; oy, no shortage of cancelled TV series and "B" cable movies I've watched just for him. I glimpsed the actor playing the bad boy on NBC's gooey American Dream and similarly on The O.C.. (updated 7/27/2007)
BRING 'EM BACK THEY WAY THEY WAS AND NEVER WERE: A PLEA FOR RE-RUNS/COMPLETE FIRST RUNS
The Beat - UPN briefly thought it would get into quality TV in 2000 with Tom Fontana (of Oz and Homicide), but barely gave the show more than a few weeks try-out. Mark Ruffalo's listing on the IMDB doesn't even include it but the series may get unearthed now that In The Cut is giving him movie star buzz. It was uneven, especially the odd women's roles, but an interesting, visually different and original take on the young cop buddies TV series. Aren't there a few episodes we never even got to see? (updated 11/12/2003)
Boomtown (foolishly cancelled from NBC. TNT and Bravo ran it for awhile. Subscription channel HDNet is rerunning some episodes. 1st season out on DVD) Started with an overly flashy style that the network made them tone down and salacious cases but I appreciate again seeing the little they show of Jason Gedrick (no shortage of what I've watched really for him -- from quality shows like Class of '96 and EZ Streets to pretentious ones like Falcone to strictly B-level mini-series and cable movies, and notable guest spots like the car wash guy on Ally McBeal and it only took three weeks before they got his shirt off for a scene -- how about more time for him?) and Donnie Wahlberg (of one of my indie faves Diamond Men) and other actors from cancelled series on Showtime etc. The interplay between pretentious personal and professional lives doesn't always work out -- but then The Wire has raised the bar on cop shows that no broadcast series may ever climb over. Did we really need "Fearless" playing Rambo to get across how the Gulf War haunts him? It's taken half the season for them to make the adulterous D.A. less annoying and more human, but I cheered when his wife left him finally. The second half of the season they settled down into figuring out how to link the personal and professional and link the ensemble more clearly. I finally figured out why I've screwed up taping every episode: the mid-point commercials go on past the pause limit on my VCR! so I have to press record not just pause to re-start. Aw, no more trying to edit the commercials out as I miss too much. Creator Graham Yost says the series title was inspired by the title of a David and David LP. But the first episode of the second season was just a conventional cop show; big deal that we saw first the cops then the criminals' viewpoint. Even Law and Order: Criminal Intent does that. (updated 7/16/2006)
Dream Street - Killed by the beatified Brandon Tartikoff, NBC ran the six episodes in 1989 with a terrific cast of future TV mainstays -- Peter Frechette, Dale Midkiff, Cecil Hoffman, Thomas Calabro, Jo Andersen -- in a Springsteen-inspired New Jersey Tunnel of Love setting. Ahead of its time in looking at a group of 20-something friends. It was produced by NBC, so why don't they just sell the rights to some cable channel or bring it out on DVD? (updated 7/11/2006)
Eyes (cancelled on ABC but maybe some cable channel'll burn off the unshown episodes) I was just kind of aware of Tim Daly all these years -- until The Outsider turned me into a real fan and I've been playing catch up with his TV shows, mini-series and movies, whether the commercial drek, more daring bad guys, and the charming little romantic indies. While this show comes from the creator of the bold Profit, it's still a bit too breezy as it skims between serious and superficial Robin Hood to rise up to Quality Television, so I'm happy settling for feasting my eyes on Daly and Eric Mabius (of The L Word). We fans will doubtless get to see some romantic sparks for our time invested, though at least they're not stooping to a romance a week with a client or client's wife. (10/2/2005)
Wonderland - Killed by ABC after showing only two episodes in 2000, filmed here in Queens, created by actor Peter Berg with a strong cast of Ted Levine), (now on Monk -- and the producers even let his captain reconcile with his hippie wife!), Martin Donovan, Michelle Forbes, etc., it was a graphic look at a modern mental hospital. So why can't some cable channel (Trio? Bravo?) just burn off whatever episodes were made? Especially as the episodes
have been shown overseas! (updated 11/24/02)
To Mandel Maven's Nest Television Remote Patrol
To the Mandel Maven's Nest Lilith Watch: Critical Guide to Jewish Women in the Movies, TV & Pop Music
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These Web pages obviously aren't joining the campaign to boycott Yahoo, but shame, shame, shame:
“Suppose that Anne Frank had maintained an e-mail account while in hiding in 1944, and that the Nazis had asked Yahoo for cooperation in tracking her down. It seems, based on Yahoo's behavior in China, that it might have complied. . . .( Representative Chris Smith . . . drew the Anne Frank analogy.) . . . Chinese court documents . . . say that Yahoo handed over information that was used to help convict [dissidents]. We have no idea how many more dissidents are also in prison because of Yahoo. . .Yahoo sold its soul and is a national disgrace.”
From China's Cyberdissidents and the Yahoos at Yahoo by Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, February 19, 2006