On the Ninth Day Of Christmas

On the ninth day of Christmas my true loved (Television) gave to me – nine shows to look forward to?! (Man you can tell that I'm reaching now!)

Okay, so we're in the middle of a strike which seems like a war to the death, and it's not helped by guys like Jimmy Kimmel who on his first show back came across like that androgynous "Britney" lover (was that a guy? A girl? Did it know? Do I care? – Yeah, so maybe the answer to that last one was NO! but I'm just saying.). In case you didn't see his show Kimmel was upset that the WGA was picketing Conan and Jay's studios (no mention of his show, which may say a whole lot) and the president of the Screen Actors Guild (Alan Rosenberg though Kimmel didn't bother to mention him by name) had called on his members not to appear on their shows. It was so unfair! They don't understand; Jay had been out on the lines, Jay paid his staff when they were out and Conan did too! And those actors are working on movies! Those movies have writers! Actors have to cross picket lines to work on those movies. They should go on Dave and Conan's shows! It's so unfair! Okay, so Kimmel wasn't as crazed as that made it sound (though it would have made a great comedy bit; course that would have required writers because I don't think Jimmy's good enough to figure that one out on his own) but he clearly doesn't get it. Movie projects currently shooting were completed before the strike began. And painful though it may be to the actors their contract doesn't have a clause that says that they aren't allowed to cross picket lines so if their movie is shooting they are contractually obligated – unlike talk show hosts let alone talks show guests – to go to work.

Anyway, we are in this strike to the death but that doesn't mean that there aren't new shows – it just means that a lot of them are going to be a steaming pile of crap. Here are just nine of the shows that we have to look forward to in next four months.

First up there's Celebrity Apprentice (debuts January 3, 2008). The Apprentice, but with famous people! Because you know you've always wanted to see famous people do product placement while raising money for charity. Of course the definition of famous and celebrity is in flux on this one. I mean look at this star studded cast list:

• Gene Simmons of Kiss (but more recently playing straight man to Shannon Tweed and their kids in Gene Simmons' Family Jewels).
  
• Stephen Baldwin (saner than his brother Daniel but not as stable as Alec or Billy – and no relation to Adam).
  
• Lennox Lewis, the last undefeated heavyweight boxing champion of the world (and a darn smart fellow if for no other reason than because he quit while he was ahead and hasn't made any noises about coming back).
  
• Trace Adkins, country singer.
  
• Piers Morgan, newspaper man, talent judge (?) on America's Got Talent (which would have been much better in this time slot than bringing Trump back).
  
• Tito Ortiz, Ultimate Fighting champ (apparently there's real money in that).
• Vincent Pastore, Big Pussy on The Sopranos (the who man found training for Dancing With The Stars to be too strenuous).
  
• Carol Alt, model (and "Hockey Annie" – she was married to Ron Greschner and is now in a "commited relationship" with Alexi Yashin).
  
• Nadia Commenici, Olympic gymnast (Bart Conner's most recent "perfect 10," sorry but I can't say anything snarky about the lady).
  
• Tiffany Fallon, former Playboy Playmate of the Year (married to Joe Don Rooney of Rascal Flats and expecting a baby in May – she also gets a pass on the snarky).
  
• Marilu Henner, actress (and a redheaded dancer – I've been in love with her for decades).
  
• Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth, former Apprentice contestant (Trump is obviously into recycling).

Well, I suppose it's something new to watch while waiting the return of Lost and you can bet there'll be much fun to be had watching egos clashing, but can I really recommend it? Nah.

Passing over the revival of American Gladiators (though admit it, you'll be watching if only because you watched as a kid) we come to Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Anne. In which Dancing With The Stars judges Carrie Anne Inaba (with whom I am also in love – I do like dancers) and Bruno Tonioli form dance teams (there are dance teams?) made up of people who can sing and dance. Then the teams compete head to head in various forms of dance each week, with the losing team captain (Bruno or Carrie Anne) forced to cut a member of their team. Naturally the loser is determined by viewer voting. Needless to say this reality-competition show is not an original idea. Production company BBC Worldwide is adapting a BBC show called DanceX which featured dance teams put together by Tonioli and fellow Strictly Come Dancing (the British inspiration for Dancing with the Stars) judge Arlene Phillips. I am so glad this airs on my bowling night so I can probably avoid it.

Something I don't want to avoid is Commanche Moon, what is being described as the final chapter in Larry McMurtry's Lonsome Dove saga (chronologically it's the second story in the series but it was the most recently written). Starring Karl Urban as Woodrow Call and Steve Zahn as Gus McCrae, the cast also includes Val Kilmer, Wes Studi and Adam Beach. The mini-series airs over three nights, January 13, 15 and 16 on CBS. A definite must see as far as I'm concerned.

Cashmere Mafia on ABC debuts on January 6^th before moving to its regular Wednesday time slot. This is yet another one of ABC's "relationship" series, focussing on the lives and loves (I actually typed "lives and lovers" there, which when I think of it is probably equally valid) of four "ambitious and sexy" women who have been friends since business school. The show has an attractive cast with Lucy Liu, Bonnie Sommerville, Miranda Otto, and Francis O'Connor, and it was created by Darren Starr, who produced – among other things – Sex And The City, a show which this bears more than a slight resemblance to. You know minus the nudity and the extremely salty language, because after all this is broadcast TV. For me the problem is that ABC in particular has put out a lot of shows in this vein over the past couple of years – they apparently have a stated policy against new "procedurals" which has mostly held (if you don't count Women's Murder Club as a procedural which I'm kind of undecided about) which is fine if the show works like Brothers & Sisters, Desperate Housewives, and even Men In Trees. Trouble is you keep getting shows like October Road and Big Shots which don't work. I suspect that Cashmere Mafia will be closer to Big Shots than Sex And The City in terms of how well the audience takes to it.

And speaking of Sex And The City the author of the novel on which that show was based is back with another novel that has been turned into a TV series. Lipstick Jungle debuts on February 7^th on NBC and is the adventures of Wendy, Nico and Victory (played by Brooke Shields, Kim Raver, and Lindsay Price respectively) who are three New York's "50 most powerful women" (as defined by the New York Post). Why do I get the sense that Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle will be about as interchangeable as the words in their names, and probably about as successful.

ABC has an lawyer series called Eli Stone which will air on Thursdays' third hour following Lost! starting on January 31^st. The show has an excellent cast which includes British actor Jonny Lee Miller, Victor Garber, and Natasha Henstridge. Even with this cast I don't have much confidence in this one based entirely on the description given in the show's Wikipedia entry: "Co-written by Marc Guggenheim and Greg Berlanti, the series was described by Berlanti in Variety magazine as 'a Field of Dreams-type drama set in a law firm where a thirty-something attorney begins having larger-than-life visions that compel him to do out-of-the-ordinary things.' Pop Star George Michael will also appear on the show and each episode will be named after a song of his." Yeah, I'm sure the American public would stream to that if there weren't for the writers' strike ...or even with the WGA strike.

FOX may be the network best set up for this strike if only because they've been edging away from the traditional season format for a while with shows being deliberately saved for the second half of the traditional season. And this year scripted shows probably won't get that "two episodes and replaced with a reality series" treatment that has been the standard from FOX in previous years (remember Drive). They'll be stringing new series debuts out over the next four months, presumably based on the number of episodes they were able to get written before the strike. The first of the new dramatic series to debut is also one of the most anticipated, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles which brings the already incredibly tangled Terminator movie franchise to TV. It debuts on January 13^th before moving to its permanent time Monday time on January 14^th. In all honesty I can't say that I'm a huge fan of the Terminator franchise, although I really liked the first film as one of the great "chase" movies of all times. The trouble is that each sequel makes the timeline more convoluted. Still this one stars Summer Glau from Firefly as "Cameron," John Connor's latest Terminator bodyguard. Playing River Tam on Firefly is definite proof of her ass-kicking credentials. Still I'm more than a little dubious of how this show is going to come together.

Another FOX series that I'm interested in is New Amsterdam which debuts on February 22^nd. The series was originally on the FOX Fall Schedule but was pull just before it was to premiere. This was seen by some as a sign that the show might not be very good. This sense was heightened when the network shut down production on the series after seven episodes were completed although they indicated that the decision could be reversed, though that seemed highly unlikely to observers. The premise sounds vaguely promising; a 17^th Century Dutch soldier granted immortal life (or at least until he found his "true love") in return for saving the life of a female Native American shaman. He lives his life today as a police detective but when he suffers a heart attack he realises that his "true love" is living right now. The premise seems to have elements of Highlander mixed with vampire shows like Forever Knight, Angel, and Moonlight. It sound like it could be interesting. If anything the fact that FOX executives pulled the plug on it after seven episodes makes it seem even more attractive; these are after all the people who cancelled Firefly, John Doe, Wonderfalls, Tru Calling and Drive but kept The War At Home on for two seasons.

The fact that FOX has a number of scripted series waiting to debut doesn't mean they don't also have a well stocked supply of "unscripted" series. They wouldn't be FOX if they didn't. Besides the juggernaut that is American Idol (debuting January 15^th and 16^th) the big new show is The Moment Of Truth. Hosted by Mark L. Wahlberg it is based on a British show (of course) hosted by Jerry Springer! Before the show contestants are hooked up to a polygraph machine and asked between 50 and 70 questions. Then on the show itself the contestants are again asked 21 of the questions they had previously answered which the player must answer honestly, as determined by the polygraph results. The questions become increasingly personal the more that are asked. One "lie" and the player walks away with nothing, but if they answer all 21 questions correctly they can win $500,000. In other words if the polygraph detected a lie (not necessarily the same thing as actually lying, given the reliability of polygraph machines) and you gave the same answer to a question on the show, you would lose. I'm not sure about this one. I suppose it could work, depending on the questions, given society's fascination with the sleazier side of life, but part of me can't imagine them asking that sort of question. And part of me is glad of that.

So there you are, nine of many shows that you can watch – or not watch – this spring while waiting for this accursed strike to either end or expand.

On The Eighth Day Of Christmas

On the eighth day of Christmas my true love (Television) gave to me – eight female characters I enjoy.

But first check out Mark Evanier's blog News From Me for the story of how he spent part of New Years Eve. Hopefully his sentiment at the end – "'2008 will be a lot better.' For them, it almost has to be. But I sure hope it is for all of us." – will be true for the people he mentions but also for all of us.

Now down to business. I could have done seven female characters I enjoy, but the truth is that I'm a straight guy and I enjoy women. So sue me. It also means my objectivity may be suspect. I may be evaluating some of these characters on how attractive, physically, they seem to me. I know that comes into play for most of them, but I don't honestly believe it totally overrides my critical eye. So here we go, and as usual it is in no particular order.

• Detective Dani Reese (Life): You think it's just because when she lets her hair down Sarah Shahi is one of the most beautiful women on TV? Well, yeah, that's part of it but hardly all of it. Reese is a perfect match for her partner at the same time that she's the constantly frustrated perfect opposite of him. In her own way Reese is as broken as Charlie Crews. She's successfully fighting her addiction to drugs, less successfully fighting her addiction to alcohol, and apparently immersing herself in a new addiction to casual sex. It's pretty plain that even before she became a cop her home life was hardly great, with her father ruling her home life to the point where Dani's mother couldn't speak her native Farsi when he was at home. In the end, Reese admits to a breakthrough in her relationship with Crews – she may not understand him or like him, but she does trust him and he has come to trust her. For both of them, that is a huge step.
  
• Olive Snook (Pushing Daisies): This one is entirely due to my attraction to the actress. I haven't seen Pushing Daisies, but Olive is played by the fabulous Kristin Chenoweth, who played my favourite character from the John Wells period on The West Wing, Annabeth Schott, so that's good enough for me. Don't like it? Tough.
  
• Ellis Samuels (Cane): Okay, I admit it, I have in fact seen the first episode of Rome so that might influence my feelings about Polly Walker, who played Atia of the Julii in that series and who plays Ellis in this. The thing is that Ellis has a complexity to her so that I'm never completely sure where she's coming from. Does she really love Frank? Alex? Both? Neither? Is she a conniving bitch trying to destroy the Duque family, or is she just a pawn in her father, Joe Samuels's, complex game? Or both? Is she her father's accomplice or is she appalled by his actions? At one point he seemed to sell her out to the Federal authorities for a deal in Cuba that Joe had masterminded and she seemed like a genuine victim only to turn out to be a willing partner in a deception that weakened Alex's position with his adoptive father. At the end of the last pre-strike episode the question changed to whether she was an innocent, or Joe's greatest enemy, the one who had him killed at the moment of greatest advantage to her? Perhaps, in some small way, Ellis Samuels is Atia of the Julii for the 21^st Century.
  
• Miranda Bailey (Grey's Anatomy): I like my fellow Canadian Sandra Oh in her role of Christina Yang, but the fact is that Chandra Wilson's character of Miranda Bailey (the Doctor formerly known as The Nazi, and if you saw the recent two part episode you'll know why I added "formerly") is the heart and soul of the show. She's a kick-ass, take no prisoners woman, with neither time nor patience for BS from above or below. The great heart back of the last pre-strike episode of the show is her marriage is disintegrating because her husband (who has presumably been with her through internship and first and second year residency) suddenly can't accept that she isn't the sort of woman who is content to be a stay at home mom. The man is a jackass.
  
• Tami Taylor (Friday Night Lights): Connie Britton may be playing the most credible wife and mother on TV right now. Tami isn't perfect, and her decisions may not always be the best ones (telling Eric to take the Texas Methodist coaching job while she stayed in Dillon and had to cope with her job and her pregnancy and a teenage daughter (and in the season opener her new born second daughter) may have been a high in bad decision making but it's the sort of "Stand By Your Man" thing that a woman like her would do. And yet she's independent and more than willing to tell Eric that he's an idiot when he's being an idiot. As far as her elder daughter goes, she can be tough on Julie and at times just doesn't understand her, but she tries hard and in the end there's a lot of love there. One of the great characters on TV.
  
• Katherine Mayfair (Desperate Housewives): When the character of Katherine was introduced to the public in a press release, well before the current season of the show appeared on the air it was stated or implied that character played by Dana Delany would be Bree's sister though neither would be aware of the fact. So far that hasn't been revealed (yet if indeed that's the direction the writers intend to go in) but it doesn't really matter because in virtually every respect Katherine could be Bree's evil (if fraternal) twin. Both are obsessed with being the perfect hostess and of protecting their families. The difference is that Katherine is ruthless. She's like an iceberg – placid, and even beautiful, on the surface but cold, and hard and you definitely don't want to be on a collision course with her. The secret of her first marriage and how it caused Katherine's daughter Dylan to lose her memory is so huge that she seems almost willing to kill – at least by neglect – over it. (It's not clear if Katherine's Aunt Lillian died by some overt action of Katherine's, but it seems clear that Katherine kept her secluded and essentially ignoring her as she moved towards death.
  
• Nora Walker (Bothers & Sisters): I haven't seen many episodes of this series but in the episodes I have seen it has been abundantly clear that while it may have been intended as a way to bring Callista Flockhart back to TV the real star of the show is Sally Field in the supposedly supporting role of Nora Walker. Now part of this is the fact that even in those Boneva ads I have always thought that Sally Field is terminally cute and sexy as hell, but the fact is the character of Nora is the heart and soul of the family that is the focus of the show. She has been betrayed by her husband, whose death exposed his double life, and yet she drew on wells of strength that she probably never realized she had not only to persevere but to emerge strong and triumphant.
  
• Catherine Willows (CSI): Yes, she is always on my list and as long as Marg Helgenberger and the character are on the series she will always be on this sort of list. Catherine is smart, beautiful, doesn't take crap from anybody, doesn't regret any of the decisions in her life (even the bad ones like her late husband Eddie), and is absolutely comfortable in her sexuality. In all the brouhaha over Grissom being involved with Sara that has extended far beyond revelation of their relationship to viewers of the show, my question has always been why Grissom was so blind as to not hook up with Catherine from day one.

On The Seventh Day Of Christmas

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love (Television) gave to me – seven year end lists (or at least year end lists from seven favourites of mine).

I don't feel particularly like writing today, so I'll let other people do the writing while you lot do the clicking. The year-end list is one of the great traditions in which smart people tell people like us what the best and the worst of the past year was, frequently contradicting our own feelings about things. So this post gives you the links to seven different year end lists related to Television and created by smart people. Let's just see how often they agree with each other let alone us.

Let's start off with a favourite writer at this blog, Allan Sepinwall. His list of the 10 (or 11) best shows on TV starts with The Sopranos (which really shouldn't come as a surprise given how much he's written about the show over the years).

Next, let's look at the 10 best prime-time series as determined by Ed Bark, formerly of the Dallas Morning News. His best series of the year is FX's Damages starring Glenn Close and Ted Danson. One interesting inclusion on his list is Dan Rather Reports on HDNet. Nice if you can get it I suppose.

Brian Stetler, who used to run the TVNewser blog and is now gainfully employed by the New York Times has this list which he calls Eleven Television Trends In 2007's Top Ten Lists, which is in fact a compilation of information from various lists. Of note is that either The Sopranos or Mad Men is considered the best show on TV in 2007 in most lists, and that it is depressingly easy to pick a worst series of the year. While he notes the series that were cancelled quickly (like Viva Laughlin and Anchorwoman) he adds "perhaps even worse are the shows still on the schedule." I think he means the truly bad shows that are still on the schedule.

We have two lists from the Boston Globe. One comes from Joanna Weiss and the Viewer Discretion blog with the other is from the paper's TV critic Matthew Gilbert and comes as a "pretty" slide show. Me, I'd rather have text. For the record they both picked Dexter as the best show on TV though there's some disagreement further down the list.

Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune had a veritable flurry of lists: Best Shows (Mad Men was number one; the rest are in alphabetical order), Worst Shows (to make it a show had to be "...somehow spectacularly, memorably awful. It had to offend the universe and/or make me question my will to carry on as a critic."), Best Documentaries (all but three of them on PBS), Memorable Moments (not covered in her 10 Best list), and finally 2007's Low Points (It included Sanjaya and Melanie Griffith singing – mercifully not together – and the fact that "The CW showed very little class by pulling "Veronica Mars" in favor of "The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll," then canceling "Mars" entirely.")

Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle declares The War to have been the best thing on TV in 2007. The rest of his list is split into dramas and comedies and as he puts it, "I don't confine my lists to a tidy 10. There's always far more greatness than an all-inclusive list of 10 would allow. So even if such a catchall would be easier and do away with the need for a special Program of the Year category, it just wouldn't be fair.

And finally, I was able to find a Canadian TV critic with a top 10 list (bearing in mind that it's getting damned difficult to find Canadian TV critics at all, and our friend Jaime J. Weinman didn't do a top 10 list). It's Rob Salem of the Toronto Star and he not only provides us with a top 10 (Mad Men is number one, followed by Jekyll and Life; The Sopranos doesn't even make the list) but also a bottom five in which Viva Laughlin is number one...but does that means that it's the worst of the worst or the best of the worst. With a list that also includes Cavemen, Carpoolers, Big Shots, and John From Cincinnati it's not entirely obvious.

On The Sixth Day Of Christmas

On the sixth day of Christmas my true love (Television) gave to me – six male characters I enjoy.

I've got to admit I'm really reaching here guys. This is what you get for not starting to plan your 12 Days Of Christmas posts well in advance – like in January. Still I've got to provide content and there are characters that I really like so here they are, in no particular order. Mostly these are characters from shows that I watch regularly – a big handicap really – but I'm willing to name names outside my comfort zone. I can't judge Vic Mackey of The Shield or or the title character in Dexter, but a little out of my comfort zone I can manage. This isn't the reason why this is as late as it is – I'm not feeling that great as I write this to be honest, and sadly that has nothing to do with wine, women or song, on New Year's Eve (dammit). Oh well, when this is posted it'll still be the sixth day of Christmas somewhere right?

• Charley Crews (Life): This one is all about Damian Lewis. I saw him the first time in Band of Brothers and I was tremendously impressed. That increased when I discovered that he wasn't an American but was in fact British. Then I saw him as Charlie Crews and it clicked for me that this guy is a tremendous actor. It's not just the accent although that can be harder than you might think (see Michelle Ryan as proof; there are those who say that she was so occupied with doing an American accent that any acting ability she might have went out the door). Charlie is a character so full of emotional tics that one might doubt his sanity. It is a masterful job of acting.
  
• Joseph Konstantin (Moonlight): I admit that I gave Moonlight a bad review, but I watch it every week and it's growing on me. I still say that there's room for a film noir style series about a vampire private detective because this show ain't it, but the series definitely has something. One of the things it has is Jason Dohring as Josef, the friend and mentor of the lead character Nick St. John. I was initially disappointed by the fact that Dohring had replaced Rade Sherbedgia in the role, because I've generally liked Sherbedgia's work in the past and thought that casting Dohring was primarily a case of trying to make the show "young and pretty." However I think that Dohring works better in the part than Sherbedgia ever could have and it's because he's young. Josef's life – at least so far as we are privy to it – is amoral and even decadent, something that he shows every time he takes a presumably non-lethal drink from some sweet and willing young thing. The vampires in Moonlight aren't monsters, they are quintessentially amoral and decadent. And let's face it, amoral and decadent work best on someone who's young. Imagine a man in his fifty's nibbling on the veins of that same sweet and willing young thing and the scene comes across as creepy, and possibly even monstrous.
  
• Alex Vega (Cane): Another winner for Jimmy Smits. The essence of Alex Vega is that he is a good man forced by circumstances to do bad things or at least make dubious choices. He is a good family man but at the same time he can order a man killed. Everything he does is for the benefit of his family, both his wife and children and for the family which adopted him. He's a hard man formed by harsh circumstances, and there seems to be a point in one of the last episodes of the season where he comes to realize that he is part of the Duque family and not entirely out of love but because he's willing and able to do the hard things, and the realization is in a way devastating to him.
  
• Eric Taylor (Friday Night Lights): Well I didn't say they had to be new characters now did I? The thing about Eric is that while he seems eminently cable in his work milieu, dealing with a team of teenage boys, his family situation which is dominated by females (his wife and daughter) often leaves him flummoxed. And yet it all seems natural and real. Eric isn't TV's stereotypical "superdad" but neither is he the equally stereotypical "dad as idiot." Eric is doing the best that he can.
  
• Lt. Provenza (The Closer): I have been watching every episode of The Closer that I can and besides Kyra Sedgwick my favourite actor on this show is G.W. Bailey as Lt. Provenza. Bailey is one of those actors who has been around forever, primarily in comedies, such as the Police Academy movies and the TV series M*A*S*H. I can't help but think that that experience in comedy makes his portrayal of Provenza sharper. At times the Lieutenant is comic relief along with his colleague Lt. Flynn (played by Anthony Dennison, who has mostly made his name as a dramatic actor) but when the scene calls for it he can be quite effective dramatically. And in The Closer at least he manages to convey everything a manner so low key that it is amazing. He is able to convey more with an eyeroll or a grunt than many actors can with a line or two of dialog.
  
• Jack Donaghy (30 Rock): Well it was him or Earl the Angel from Saving Grace and while I have to admit that I've seen a bit more of Leon Rippy's performance as the enigmatic Earl who is trying to bring redemption to the totally out of control Grace Hanadarko and I love it, but in the end I have to give it to Donaghy. Why? Well the big reason is that he's played by Alec Baldwin, and I've always had a huge admiration for his versatility as an actor even in total crap like The Shadow. As for the Donaghy character, he is the essential character in 30 Rock. It's nearly impossible to imagine what the show would be like without Baldwin's character. He's slightly mad but it's madness mixed with power, and I have a suspicion he is a caricature of so many network "suits" who have been involved in shows that Tina Fey (and series co-executive producer Lorne Michaels) have known over the years.

On The Fifth Day Of Christmas

On the Fifth day of Christmas my true love (Television) gave to me...Five Naughty Shows! (As defined by the Parents Television Council of course.)

Naughty shows. There are a lot of naughty shows on TV, whether it's sex, language, violence or bad writing (sorry Writers Guild but it's not as if everything your members create is necessarily brilliant – there are a number of scripted shows that I'd pass up for a reality show like The Amazing Race...or even Big Brother). And the truth, which no one at the Parents Television Council will ever admit, is that bad writing (and bad acting and bad direction, but mostly bad writing) trumps sex, language, and violence for making a show bad. The critics – the real ones as opposed to amateurs like me – laud a show like Dexter because of the writing and the acting and the directing. But of course the PTC doesn't care about the quality of stories. The PTC are a bunch of bean counters who enumerate the number of incidents of sexual content, expletives (deleted or not) and acts of violence. And it is of course the PTC which defines what constitutes a "violent act" or a "sexual encounter" or even tells us what an expletive is.

So what is my methodology in defining these five shows that the PTC seems to consider the naughtiest on TV? Well, in this particular case being a bean counter is an appropriate technique. The PTC currently has four weekly – or mostly weekly – columns on their site that I regularly take apart in my "Who does the PTC hate this week" pieces. They are: Broadcast Worst of the Week, Cable Worst of the Week, Misrated, and TV Trends. My technique is to simply count up the number of times that the PTC has mentioned shows in different weeks in these columns. For example, if Family Guy was mentioned as being horrible in these columns on two different weeks it gets two points, but if (as actually happened more than once) Family Guy was mentioned in two different columns in one week it only got one point. There are a couple of faults in this methodology of course. For one thing, only Broadcast Worst of the Week (originally called Television's Worst of the Week) has run through the year. For another thing there were weeks in which I didn't record anything, not because the PTC didn't have anything to complain about but because I didn't write a piece. And last (and least in terms of methodology) the TV Trends columns tend to mention a number of shows. That one at least I'm willing to live with.

So what are the five worst shows as defined by the PTC? In something approaching reverse order they are:

• American Dad: Three mentions mostly for sexual content. In recent columns they protested the inclusion of a child molester as a character and managed to condemn the show for using homosexual stereotypes but at the same time criticized the show for depicting the main character's attempts at experimentation with homosexual activity.
  
• My Name Is Earl: Three mentions. Sexual content surrounding Joy's promiscuity and Catalina's work as a stripper of course but the main thing seems to be that the show doesn't do what they want it to. They want the show to be about personal redemption and doing good deeds. On the other hand the show has become about what some people would describe as "trailer trash." The trouble is that Earl, his family and friends have always been "trailer trash" and Earl's list has rarely been anything other than an excuse to show Earl's world.
  
• The Family Guy: Four mentions. As usual, sexuality is at the forefront, what with Lois having had numerous sexual encounters before her marriage to Peter. They are also disturbed by Stuey's repeated attempts at (or fantasies about) killing his mother, and Brian (the alcoholic talking dog) and his fantasies. In one incident Brian seemed to have a sadistic sexual reaction to means in which Stuey would try to kill Lois slowly.
  
• Nip/Tuck: Five mentions. Ostensibly the show the PTC hated the most. As usual the big argument was sex and nudity but a major contention this season was the presence of Eden, an 18 year old patient about whom one of the doctors had sexual fantasies and then sexual encounters with. The PTC contended that the depiction of one of these encounters would "validate" the sexual activities of pedophiles (the doctor was in his early 40s) undoubtedly forgetting that in every state in the United States an 18 year old has passed the age of majority and can have sex with whoever he or she wishes.
  
• Rescue Me: I've only got two notes for this one, but I know that the PTC has this show on their hit list and I just know that there were a lot of mentions in the weeks where I wasn't writing about the PTC. They loathe this show. They hate it for the repeated use of swearing, they hate it for the repeated sexual situations including an act of sexual violence – or was it something that started as rape and became consensual? – and they hated it for violence, real or supposed.
  

There are a lot of runners up, and a lot of that has to do with the way in which the PTC counts acts. The depiction of an autopsy, or indeed a dead body at the scene of a crime, is called a violent act. A brief (under five seconds) shot of the side of a stripper's breast (in a recent episode of Las Vegas) is so vilely sexual that the PTC actually had their minions in the Central and Mountain time zones initiate an obscenity complaint to the FCC. They claimed that at the end of an episode of Private Practice Addison "holding the showerhead preparing to masturbate." Except you know, she wasn't. But of course the PTC is so often all about the innuendo rather than the reality of the thing.

On The Fourth Day Of Christmas

On the Fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me....Four Reality-Competition Show Stars. (Well five really but two of these are so joined in the public imagination that they can safely be counted as one.) Okay, admittedly these are people from shows that I watch and I don't really focus on shows like Project Runway, America's Next Top Model, or American Idol, but do you really want to be reminded of Sanjaya?

Yau-Man Chan: Everybody's favourite loser on Survivor: Fiji. Yau-Man was smart, enthusiastic, agile, and beloved by his fellow competitors. He opened a sealed wooden box when brawnier members of his tribe failed through the simple expedient of dropping it on its corner. His childhood in Borneo gave him some knowledge of the jungle. He almost single handedly won an immunity challenge for his team by applying physics – by way of "unorthodox" techniques – to a challenge involving traditional Fijian weapons. He not only managed to tell his alliance that he had one of the hidden Immunity Idols when forced by two other players, he managed to build on his alliance by revealing that his belongings had been searched. He read his opponents so well that he knew the exact time to play his Immunity Idol – if he hadn't played it at just the right time he'd have been eliminated by a 4-2 vote. His one misstep involved the "car curse." In a Reward Challenge he won a new truck. He immediately decided to use it as a bargaining chip, offering it to cheerleading coach "Dreamz" in return for a promise that if "Dreamz" won the immunity challenge in the final four he wouldn't vote for Yau-Man. "Dreamz" took the truck and then broke his promise, with Yau-Man finishing fourth. The "car curse" turned out to be doubly powerful – "Dreamz" not only didn't win the million dollar first prize, neither he nor Cassandra (the other player who faced the final jury vote) got a single vote.

Dick Donato: "Evel" was by turns abusive, arrogant, tender, mocking and strategically brilliant during his time on Big Brother 8. The California National Organization for Women called for his removal from the show because of remarks he made about a female competitor, and online petitions circulated for and against him. And yet there was usually method in his supposed madness because when it came down to it, Dick's primary objective was not to win the half million dollar prize for himself but to win it for his daughter Danielle who was also a contestant. He was the first person in the history of the American version of Big Brother to have been able to used the Power of Veto to save himself and instead use it on the other nominee – his daughter Danielle (she later returned the favour). And although he tended to be less than successful at challenges his determination a marathon task that didn't work as planned (part of the mechanism for the challenge broke down early in the challenge leaving the two remaining contestants to hold onto a rope while being drenched in water) was only a prelude to his success in the remaining two parts of the final Head of Household competition. This in turn allowed him to go to the final two with his daughter, as he had planned. The quality of his game play (combined with his popularity with the public in a season where phone voting controlled one player) allowed him to win the season.

"Jeric" (Jessica Hughbanks & Eric Stein): You know you have something when you have two reality-competition players whose connection is so deep that they grow a compound name, and their fans petition for their inclusion in The Amazing Race. That happened to "Romber" (Rob & Amber from Survivor: All Stars, and one of the best teams ever to appear on The Amazing Race in my opinion) and it happened to Jessica & Eric. Admittedly they didn't win Big Brother 8, or even finish in the final four, but they had amazing chemistry together and their romantic relationship blossomed on the show. Admittedly things were complicated for Eric due to the whole "America's Player" thing, which allowed viewers at home to determine who Eric would vote for and some of his other actions – on his own Eric probably wouldn't have made some of the voting decisions that were made for him – but somehow they worked through it. True, Eric's first kiss with Jessica had been voted on by the fans, and it was their choice that he give his (supposed) childhood "woobie" to her but there was a definite connection there. Even their evictions from the house had an almost Romeo & Juliet quality to it – in a double eviction episode Eric was removed from the show just minutes after Erica. Since their appearance on Big Brother they are apparently still together, if in a rather long distance relationship at the moment. More to the point they were such fan favourites that when Eric made a comment about how he'd like to be on The Amazing Race, fans started a petition to get the couple on the show.

Julia Williams: Reality TV fans are a fickle lot, and nothing showed that more than the reaction to Julia. She became a fan favourite on the third season of Hell's Kitchen due to her underdog status. While most of the other competitors had experience in fine dining establishments, Julia was a short order cook for the Waffle House chain. The abuse started almost immediately, when she was relegated to chopping apples during dinner service. It was only after one of the "better trained" members of her team repeatedly failed to fry quail eggs that she let her frustration go. Even then, some members of her team wanted to eliminate her because she "worked at the (expletive) Waffle House." She was nominated later for "not knowing proper culinary terms," something so absurd that Ramsay voided the nomination. Julia's performance continued to improve, and when Ramsay was finally forced to fire her, he not only praised her performance on the show but even offered to pay for her to attend culinary school. She was most assuredly the fan's favourite at this point in the show. And then came the series finale. The final two were "Rock", an executive chef from Virginia, and Bonnie, a self-described nanny an personal chef from Los Angeles. The relationship between Julia and Bonnie had never been good – Bonnie was one of the people who thought Julia should have been fired in the first episode – and Julia seemed resentful that Bonnie in particular was there and she wasn't. The fans – some of them at least – turned on her. She was pouting; she wasn't sufficiently grateful for Ramsay paying her way to culinary school. Worst of all, she was a "sore loser" and may even have used her attitude to keep Bonnie from winning. Even I felt that if it were a real restaurant rather than the finale of a reality competition, Bonnie would have been justified in firing Julia's ass – after service was over. Still, no one can deny that at least for most of what was really a lacklustre season for the show, Julia was the one the fans were behind.

On The Third Day Of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas my true love (Television) gave to me....three cancelled series (before the strike).

How bad does a show have to be in order to be cancelled in a year in which the normal laws of supply and demand in the Television industry have been overturned? Usually supply of new shows far outstrips demand. There are always new pilots and people with ideas for new series so that if a show underperforms it is out the door. This trend reached an absurd height in recent years with a number of shows getting axed after four or five episodes. In in some cases that was a long run; 3 Lbs was pulled after two episodes while the late (and not overly lamented) game show The Rich List got one episode on FOX to fail to prove itself.

The WGA strike has changed the Hollywood dynamic considerably though. The supply of new scripted programming is finite, so demand for any series is outstripping supply. The net result is that virtually every show ordered by the five networks either have run or will run all of the episodes that were produced before the strike regardless of ratings. This is the sort of thing that viewers say they want – to see shows get a fair chance to build an audience and develop storylines. This was not a season when you could say that you weren't going to watch a new show out of fear that it would be cancelled just as you were getting cancelled. Now what happened after they shown their final pre-strike episodes is a different story. The networks did order "back nines" for a number of series, but the value of these "back nines" is questionable at best if the networks and studios maintain their current attitude toward the Writers Guild. Still, a lot of shows that would have been pulled for bad ratings after three or four episodes (I'm thinking Big Shots and probably Cavemen here) actually got a chance to show their stuff, such as it was.

Ah but the three series I mentioned, shows so awesome in the fullness of their awfulness that not even a writers strike could save them. They were Nashville the FOX "docu-soap" about aspiring musicians in the Country Music industry, Online Nation a series that ran videos from Internet sources like YouTube on network TV, and Viva Laughlin which was CBS's "musical dramedy" based on the BBC series Blackpool. Let's look at these shows briefly (as briefly as possible) and try to figure out why they were so bad that even in a year where content was in such short supply they weren't considered worth keeping.

Nashville was a reality TV/soap opera, presumably from the same mould as a show like Laguna Beach or The Hills. The show featured a variety of unknowns in various stages of trying to break into the music industry (the most recognizable name was a last name, Bradshaw – Rachel Bradshaw is the daughter of former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback and FOX football commentator Terry Bradshaw), but was full of the usual sort of soap opera nonsense that made you wonder just how "real" this "reality" was. Or as Matt Roush of TV Guide put it, "As on the MTV shows, just about everything in Nashville looks about as genuine as a feminine-hygiene commercial." Glenn Garvin in the Miami Herald added, "The show's dialogue feels scripted, its frequent hookups and breakups abrupt and phony, and its scenes from the music business out and out fraudulent." In my book, there's something to be said for the concept of following young people trying to break into Country Music, but it's something that could be done far better in a real night time soap – in other words a scripted drama. The series had the worst ratings for any FOX series airing in its Friday time slot in the 2006-07 season, including repeats: 2.72 million viewers for the first episode (1.31 million in the 18-49 demographic), and that dropped for the second episode (2.14 million viewers total).

Online Nation also died from excruciatingly bad ratings, which on The CW is saying a lot. It was the lowest rated CW show ever (and I have to suspect that includes ratings for shows on UPN and The WB as well) with the final episode drawing a 0.4/1 rating, meaning that only about 500,000 people saw it. I think it was inevitable. The show drew its material from Internet sources like YouTube, and I suppose was intended to be something like America's Funniest Home Videos for the Internet Generation. There's just one flaw in this logic of course: those who want to see this sort of stuff are going to find it online all by themselves, while those who have no interest in finding it online aren't going to have any interest in watching it just because it's on the big screen in the living room. No critic even bothered to review it.

The only scripted series to be cancelled before the strike was CBS's Viva Laughlin and it is less a surprise that it was cancelled than that it was ever approved in the first place. It seems that nobody at CBS remembered Cop Rock (and for all its numerous faults Cop Rock at least featured original musical numbers). The "musical" part of this "musical dramedy" came across more like badly done karaoke, with the voices of the actors on the show often being drowned out by the original artists. But that's wasn't the worst part of the show. As Tricia Olszewski of Pop Matters put it, "The biggest surprise about Viva Laughlin, CBS's new "mystery drama with music," is that the singing and dancing isn't the worst thing about it." She was right too. The plot was muddled, the actors took the material far too seriously and worst of all Melanie Griffith was in it. Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times wrote, "Viva Laughlin on CBS may well be the worst new show of the season, but is it the worst show in the history of television? It certainly comes close in a category that includes Beverly Hills Buntz in 1987 (Dennis Franz in a short-lived spinoff of Hill Street Blues), the self-explanatory Manimal in 1983 or last year's one-episode wonder, Emily's Reasons Why Not. Viva Laughlin is not even in the same league as Cop Rock, a 1990 experimental series created by Steven Bochco that leavened a gritty police drama with Broadway musical moments: cops and criminals breaking into song and dance. Viva Laughlin also features musical outbursts and is far worse." The fact is though, that if there was even the slightest hint of an audience actually watching this thing it would probably still be on TV. The debut on a Thursday pulled an adequate 8.83 million viewers with a 2.4/7 rating in the 18-49 demographic; adequate until you remember that the show lost almost half the viewers who had tuned in an hour earlier to watch CSI. When the show debuted in its regular time slot – Sunday night following 60 Minutes – it lost 40% of the audience of its lead-in (60 Minutes: 11.14 million; Viva Laughlin: 6.77 million), and dropped 20% of its own audience between the first and second half hours (and almost 30% in the 18-49 demographic). And this was the show that was replacing the supposedly weak Amazing Race (which the year before had drawn an audience of 10.89 million in the same time slot).

It undoubtedly takes a lot of bad to get a show cancelled with haste in the year of the Writers Guild Strike, but unlike previous years it seems obvious that none of these shows were cancelled in undue haste. In fact, with the possible exception of Nashville it was the approval of these series rather than the cancellation that was done with undue haste.

On The Second Day Of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas, my true love (Television) gave to me....Two singing shows debuting within 24 hours.

Who can forget the hilarity that ensued when The Singing Bee and Don't Forget The Lyrics debuted within days of each other? Okay, okay, who can remember the hilarity that ensued when The Singing Bee and Don't Forget The Lyrics debuted within days of each other? I wasn't sure America thought there was a need for one show where people filled in the missing lyrics to songs and NBC and FOX gave them two. Still there must be something to the format because both shows are still on. Of course that little business of the Writers Strike may have something to do with at least one of these shows still being on, maybe both.

The whole story began with the NBC upfronts in May 2007 when the network announced that The Singing Bee would be given the first hour slot on Friday nights, temporarily replacing 1 vs. 100. The show was described as one where people would give the correct lyrics to popular songs in order to win big prizes. The format would be along the lines of the Scripps-Howard Spelling Bee – hence the title. At the time there was no similar show announced from FOX either for their Fall schedule or their Summer schedule. This would change.

FOX revealed in mid-June that they would have a new summer show called Don't Forget The Lyrics in which contestants would have to correctly sing the lyrics to win big prizes. The series would debut on July 11, 2007 and would be hosted by Wayne Brady. Needless to say NBC was livid. On the other hand it wasn't the first time that FOX had taken one of their ideas and tried to put a look-alike series on the air. In November 2004 Fox sprang The Next Great Champ starring Oscar de la Hoya and produced by the Dutch multinational Endemol on an unsuspecting (and largely disinterested) public, about four months ahead of NBC's much hyped The Contender hosted by Sugar Ray Leonard and Sylvester Stallone, which was produced by Mark Burnett of Survivor fame. At that time NBC couldn't respond quickly but this time they could. Swiftly hiring former N'Sync singer Joey Fatone as host, they announced that their show would debut on July 10^th, the day before Don't Forget The Lyrics, and to make the similarities between the two shows even more apparent, the premiere episode was aired on the 11^th, starting a half hour before the debut of the ABC series.

Of course, the shows were quite different. From an originality standpoint, Don't Forget The Lyrics did not impress. If anything it bore a very strong resemblance to the game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, with some modifications. Instead of multiple choice trivia questions, the contestants on Don't Forget The Lyrics had to pick a type of song and after a period of singing karaoke style (with the words put up on a screen) they had to sing the next group of words correctly to win the money at that level. Like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire prizes went up as songs were done correctly while contestants risked losing it all if they got the line of the song wrong (although there was a "Millionaire") style plateau at $25,000. Finally players on Don't Forget The Lyrics had three different "Helps" (aka "Lifelines") that they could use throughout the game.

By contrast The Singing Bee seemed like a far more creative concept. There are several rounds in which contestants are removed until only one contestant is left standing. That contestant participates in "The Final Countdown" in which a player has to remember the correct lyrics for seven songs, each worth $5,000. If the contestant gets all seven right they win $50,000. Between the qualifying sing-off and the Final Countdown, the contestants can face one of at least five different challenges. And it's all presided over by Joey Fatone, who (on those very rare occasions when I watch either of these two shows) has always seemed to be having more fun as a host than Wayne Brady does.

After all the controversy surrounding the one-upsmanship by the networks which led to The Singing Bee being the second highest rated show that week the it debuted (behind Baseball's All-Star Game) the show turned out to be a less than stellar performer in the ratings, pulling a 1.7 rating the Tuesday before it was pulled from line-up. It returned on December 21^st, going head to head with a rerun of Don't Forget The Lyrics – it got creamed, finishing in fifth place, while the Don't Forget The Lyrics rerun tied for first in the 18-49 demographic even though it finished fourth in total viewers.

(Hey, these pieces can't all be winners.)

On The First Day Of Christmas...

On the first day of Christmas, my true love (Television) gave to me....An end to this cycle of strikes.

Yeah I said cycle. It obviously started with the Writers Guild strike and both the Directors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild are going to be in a position to strike at the end of June.

Really I am currently full of fear and dread about the Writers Guild strike. It came on me suddenly when I read something on Christmas Eve from Nikki Finke. Nikki has long been adamant on the side of the writers to the point where a Disney/ABC seminar on the strike referred to her as "Tokyo Rose". (She felt insulted by the comparison, but I for one think she should wear it as a symbol of pride; she is feared so much by the "moguls" that they feel obliged to denigrate her.) So it was with a certain amount of shock that I read the following in Deadline Hollywood Dateline in an article about an attempt by Jeffrey Katzenberger:

But the fact that it was unsuccessful dramatically points up disturbing realities, I have learned: that the CEOs are deeply entrenched in their desire to punish the WGA for daring to defy them by striking and to bully the writers into submission on every issue, and that the writers are sadly misguided to believe they have any leverage left. I'm told the moguls are determined to write off not just the rest of this TV season (including the Back 9 of scripted series), but also pilot season and the 2008/2009 schedule as well. Indeed, network orders for reality TV shows are pouring into the agencies right now. The studios and networks also are intent on changing the way they do TV development so they can stop spending hundreds of millions of dollars in order to see just a few new shows succeed. As for advertising, the CEOs seem determined to do away with the upfront business and instead make their money from the scatter market. I'm sorry to break this disappointing development right before Christmas, but I pledged to stay objective in my reporting and I can't ignore this major news development. The truth often hurts. But don't blame the messenger.

She adds:

I am now convinced that the 8 Big Media moguls pretty much have a vice-like grip on how this strike will get settled. And virtually no amount of external pressure will force their hand. I know from my many years of reporting on labor negotiations in the U.S. and abroad that, in any new contract negotiation, there is one watershed moment when the union and the companies can move the flag down the field in a meaningful way before ego, rhetoric, and the passage of time get the better of everyone involved. Has that moment come and gone? I honestly don't know, but if it hasn't, then it's soon -- very soon.

And that's coming from someone who is generally regarded as a friend to the Guild, or at least a more honest reporter than the "trades" which after all make their money from advertising from the studios. I don't know about you guys but for me, as a supporter of the Writers Guild, that's really scary stuff. Over my years of observing labour negotiations it has always seemed that the one thing that has let to strike settlements has been the realization on the part of industry that they can't go on without a skilled and trained labour force, and that the corporate bottom line will not sustain a long labour dispute. The Big 8, as Nikki Finke, calls them and particularly the TV network executives seem unconstrained by this. Not having to pay those pesky writers and going with "unscripted" reality shows might actually help make the fourth quarter financial statement look rosier than it would without the writers. And we as fans of good (or even just adequate) scripted television are relegated to the sidelines and no amount of sending pencils to the networks or the studios is going to change that. What will have an influence – and probably a very major influence – is if first quarter (and probably second quarter) revenues for the networks take a nosedive. And that means that American TV viewers (because we simple Canadians have no influence at all on American ratings) will have to reject the pap that the networks are going to be offering. Worst of all, if the Directors Guild settles a contract before the Writers Guild then that becomes the model for the rest of the industry. And the Directors Guild has a long history of being "friendly" to the producers; being a good little union that hardly ever strikes.

I really hate that the first of these pieces is such a downer.

On The Twelfth Day Of Christmas...

My true love (TV) gave to me - Twelve Fearless Predictions.

I'm not Carnac the Magnificent, the all-seeing all-knowing seer, sage, and soothsayer, but I have been known to make a few predictions in my day. On rare occasions they've even been right. The trick, I have found is to be as vague as possible so that when something happens it can be made to fit the predictions. Hey, it's been working for Nostradamus for over 500 years, and if it was good enough for him it's good enough for me. So now I will gaze into the crystal and get on with the predictions.

1. I predict that in February the Academy Awards will fit comfortably into the timeslot that ABC has allocated for the show. Despite this people will complain that the show ran too long and wonder out loud why the awards are being broadcast at all.
2. Also in February I predict that the Super Bowl will run far outside of the time slot that CBS will allocate for it, to the point where most of the episode of Criminal Minds that the network is planning to run following the game will run outside of prime time in most of the United States. Despite this only half the people in the United States will complain about the game being too long and they weren't watching it anyway. No one will wonder out loud why the game is being broadcast at all.
3. I predict that virtually every TV show that debuts between the beginning of January and the beginning of May will be canceled or put on indefinite hiatus by the networks, although none will be canceled after one episode like The Rich List. After two episodes I won't guarantee.
4. I predict that The O.C. will be canceled. Oh wait, that's already happened. Okay, I predict that it won’t be the only old favourite that will be gone be the end of this season. Besides King Of Queens Seventh Heaven, and Gilmore Girls.
5. I predict that Rob Mariano and Amber Brkich will continue to live their lives on reality TV. Besides being all but confirmed as being part of the cast of The Amazing Race: All Stars - and let’s face it, love’em or hate’em they deserve it – they already have a show about Rob wanting to be a professional poker player ready to debut on Fox Reality. I expect them to document a pregnancy and/or a divorce proceeding in the future. Don’t be surprised if they win The Amazing Race: All Stars either.
6. Donald Trump will continue feuding with Rosie O’Donnell long after Rosie loses interest in him. Meanwhile, despite the change of day to Sunday, The Apprentice will continue to decline in the ratings. If anything the move to Los Angeles will hurt the show. Admit it, when you think Donald Trump you think overdone, kitschy opulence, but you think overdone ktschy opulence in New York City.
7. I predict that the biggest housecleaning at the Upfronts in May will occur at The CW, with new series being created to try to create an identity of its own for the network rather than that of the two parent webs as well as build ratings. It will succeed in the first, not so much in the second.
8. I predict that the Emmy nominations in June will, quite predictably please no one and lead to yet more calls for reform of the nomination procedure even though no one can agree on what form a revised nomination procedure will take. Expect the greatest hue and cry from the fans of Battlestar Galactica (and science fiction in general), Heroes, viewers of Showtime and FX and anyone who likes any show on The CW. HBO executives on the other hand will be impossible to live with.
9. I predict that the summer reality shows will continue apace, with Ramsay yelling, Big Brother contestants “showmancing”, Piers Morgan grumbling about contestants on America’s Got Talent, Dave Navarro lording it over the people on whatever band they’re creating for Rock Star. There will be a number of new concepts which will in fact be knock-offs of previous concepts. No one will pay any attention to any of it unless it rains for days on end, which given the weather we’ve been having in the past couple of years is not out of the question. As usual there will be one bona fide new hit among the summer drek.
10. I predict that The Amazing Race will win Outstanding Reality-Competition series at the Emmy’s because it always does. The Emmy voters can separate the wheat from the chaff and they like the set. Either that or they just can’t bear to watch any reality show except The Amazing Race.. In other Emmy news, fans of Deadwood will be disappointed when no one from their show gets an Emmy including Ian McShane and Gerald McRainey. There will be more than one winner that will have viewers screaming “what the hell were they thinking!”. And of course, even though the show finishes well within the time allocated for it by whichever network is broadcasting it this year, people will complain that the show ran too long and wonder out loud why the awards are being broadcast at all.
    
11. I predict that the PTC will continue to rail against just about everything on TV, and will continue to bombard the FCC with their pre-packaged complaints about obscenity and violence and anti-family programming and the devious ways of the evil (liberal) networks. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin will make sympathetic noises but won’t actually do anything because he knows that the possibility exists that he’ll be out on his ass if a Democrat wins the election in 2008.
12. I predict that the first series cancelled by one of the five major networks during the 2007-08 season will be a drama cancelled after three episodes. Life on earth continues despite this.

Bonus prediction: Against any sense of realistic business thinking, MyNetwork TV will still be in existence at the end of 2008.

The crystal is getting cloudy. Please wash it and refill it with better quality scotch this time.

On The Elevent Day Of Christmas ...

My true love (TV) gave to me - Eleventh Day (January 5) Eleven dear dead TV folks.

Actually it was a lot more than eleven, and I had an awfully hard time boiling it down to eleven. In fact if you want to locate a complete - some might suggest obsessive - listing of everyone connected with TV who died in this year, check out the Inner Toob archives and search for "Hat Squad".

In 2006 we lost:

Dennis Weaver: Chester from Gunsmoke and Marshall Sam McCloud from the "McCloud" segments of NBC's Mystery Movie, plus the guy who was being chased by the big rig in Steven Spielberg's Duel.

Don Knotts: Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show and Ralph Furley, plus (let's admit it) The Don Knotts Show. He was also The TV Repairman in the movie Pleasantville and got his start on The Steve Allen Show.

Mike Douglas: The one-time Irish tenor hosted his eponymous afternoon talk show The Mike Douglas Show for 21 years, most of them based in Philadelphia. He and Merv Griffin set the gold standard that people like Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres strive to live up to.

Aaron Spelling: It is nearly impossible to list every TV show that Spelling was connected to, so here's just a sampler from each decade in which he worked in TV: Zane Grey Theater (1956-61, as a writer on 20 episodes), The Mod Squad (1968-73, Producer), Charlie's Angels (1976-81, Executive Producer), T.J. Hooker (1982-1986, Executive Producer), Melrose Place (1992-99 Executive Producer), Seventh Heaven (1996-his death, Executive Producer).

Jane Wyman Wyatt: Possibly TV's greatest mother - played Margaret Anderson on Father Knows Best and Amanda, wife of Sarek and mother of Spock on one episode of Star Trek.

Lister Sinclair: His name won't be familiar to my American readers but for longtime viewers (and listeners) of the CBC he was an institution. He was the first host of the science show The Nature of Things and was a frequent guest on shows ranging from Front Page Challenge to Wayne Shuster. Best known for his radio work, first as a plywright then as host of Ideas, he was the CBC's resident polymath. He seemed able to discourse on anything from Einstein's Theory of Relativity, to English grammar and word origins, to Disco (literally - his last work on CBC Radio was a ninety minute discourse on Disco music which made you think he was a fan when he barely considered it music).

Steve Irwin: The Crocodile Hunter left us far too young.

Ed Bradley: Who was on 60 Minutes for ages and was still the youngest one on the show until Katie Couric arrived. (Well not quite but you knew you were thinking it.)

Peter Boyle: From Everybody Loves Raymond of course but we'll also remember him from "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose."

Joe Barbera: If he'd only created Tom Jerry, that would have been enough. If he'd only created The Flintstones that too would be enough. But of course he not only created both but he did so much more.

Frank Stanton: Frank Stanton passed away on December 26, 2006 at age 98. As president of CBS from 1946 until his forced retirement in March 1973 he was in a very real way responsible for the creation of CBS Television (William S. Paley was initially focused on building the radio network rather than TV). Stanton oversaw the details, lobbied for the network before Congress, and stood up for CBS when the news division was under attack. He created much of what we know about TV today, good - the half-hour newscast came from Stanton - and bad - he actually came to the attention of CBS by creating a device to determine what people were listening too, the forerunner of the ratings box. He was even responsible for the CBS Eye. His relationship with his boss William S. Paley was by turns business-like and acrimonious but the two of them were a brilliant team. After Paley went through a series of other presidents he came to appreciate just how great he and Stanton had been together. Stanton summed up his philosophy about television in 1948: "Television, like radio should be a medium for the majority of Americans, not for any small or special groups; therefore its programming should be largely patterned for what these majority audiences like and want." And every TV executive since has been trying to accomplish that.

Correction: As Harry Heuser points out it was Jane Wyatt, not Jane Wyman who passed from the scene this past October. Jane Wyman is alive and presumably still kicking.

On The Tenth Day Of Christmas...

My true love (TV) gave to me - Ten Favourite Moments.

In no particular order:

Kristin Chenoweth in The West Wing: "He died." I've said it before and hopefully I'll say it many more times - Kristin Chenoweth is 4 feet 11 inches of utterly amazing talent, not just as a singer or comedic actor but as a dramatic actress. The way she says these words is heartbreaking, but it's her whole body language in the scene that sells it. We're used to seeing the confident Annabeth, who looks taller than she is because of the way she holds herself. In this scene she actually seems smaller than she really is, coping with the lost of her mentor, friend, lover (? - there was tension and I wouldn't be surprised if she eventually succumbed).

Ed Asner on Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip: "I won't pay a 73 million dollar fine; I won't pay a 73 cent fine; I won't time delay the news, and I won't say, 'I'm sorry.' I no longer recognize the authority of the FCC in this matter. I'm going to have to be ordered by a federal judge, and when they come to get my transmitter they better send a group a hell of lot more scary than the Foundation for Friendly Families or whatever the hell they are. Let those guys embed themselves with 2nd Marine Division for a while; they'll rejigger their sense of what's obscene." If only real network executives would stand up to bullies like the PTC and the American Family Association and the rest like this we'd have more quality shows like NYPD Blue was before Janet Jackson's nipple.

The tie breaker in the Survivor: Cook Islands finale: A moment of delightful ... something. Having shown mutual respect for each other by deciding that the final vote will be a draw between Sundra and Becky - though Yul offers Becky the "hidden Immunity 'Idol'" if she wants it - they are given the now traditional tie breaker challenge: make a fire using only twigs, coconut fibers, flint and a machete. Usually it doesn't take too long for one or both of he contestants to get fire. This time it dragged on, and on, and on. The Jury started yawning. Eventually - and apparently this was two hours after they started - host Jeff Probst gave the women some matches. Still no fire. Sundra eventually ran out of matches without getting a fire started. It all meant that Becky won the right to lose to either "Dolphin Boy" Ozzie or Yul "The Godfather" (who did win), but it was funny.

Jerry Springer doing the Waltz on Dancing With The Stars: I'm not a huge fan of Springer's at the best of times, and for the most part he was pure comic relief on Dancing With The Stars and he knew it. But when he danced the Waltz it was deadly serious. His only real goal on the show was to learn the Waltz so he could dance at his daughter's wedding. And when he finished and when to hug his daughter there wasn't a dry eye in the joint - including the judges. Sure he didn't have the ability of a Mario Lopez or the determination of an Emmitt Smith, but in that one dance he had heart.

The robotic foreplay scene on House: In the episode in which House is shot, he continues to treat the patient whose mysterious symptoms include a swollen tongue and an exploding scrotum (among other things). At one point House recommends that the patient undergo treatment using a surgical robot. He demonstrates the device on Allison Cameron. He caresses her cheek; he lifts the bottom of her blouse, exposing her navel and blows into it; he removes the top button of her blouse and pulls it open to expose the top of her lacy bra. It is an amazingly erotic scene that is revealing as to how House sees himself because (1) even while expressing intimacy he is still remote, clinical and detached, and (2) it is all an hallucination - even the degree of intimacy he shows there is beyond him in real life.

Hiro goes to New York on Heroes: Series premieres are full of great moments, and frequently the series themselves don't live up to those moments. In the pilot of Heroes the character of Hiro Nakamura is convinced that he has a special ability despite the ridicule of his friend and co-worker Ando who calls him "super-Hiro". Then he presses his power to the max and transports himself to Times Square in New York. He doesn't know the circumstances yet, but the sheer joy he feels as he stretches out his arms and shouts is amazingly endearing and makes him special among the people who are constantly trying to deny their abilities.

The death of Special Agent Graham Kelton on Vanished: Not all series can be winners and this series wasn't. People saw it as too derivative and not "realistic enough" or something. Derivative it probably was, a show along the lines of The DaVinci Code with huge conspiracies and a pair of FBI agents who weren't Mulder and Scully in terms of being attractive to the audience. Still, if the show had been a hit or at least popular enough to stay on the air for rest of the year people would have been amazed by what Executive Producer Josh Berman had up his sleeve. The show seemed to have been built around FBI Special Agent Graham Kelton (played by Gale Harold) but suddenly, at the end of the eighth episode Kelton is shot to death by an assassin, who intended to kill Senator Jeffrey Collins. It is the equivalent of Hitchcock casting Janet Leigh in Psycho and building her up as the apparent lead character in the film only to have her killed in the first third of the movie. And if Vanished had lasted 22 episodes instead of nine (with the remaining four episodes shot being relegated to the Fox web site where Canadians can't see them) it might have been far more memorable than it turned out to be.

The return of Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who:In just about every poll ever taken of Doctor Who fan(atic)s the favourite "companion" was always listed as Liz Sladen (who looks very good for 58) playing Sarah Jane Smith. She started on the show with the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) but really connected with the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker). Of all the companions - and I did check this out - she was the only one who left the TARDIS not of her own free will. So her reintroduction into the Doctor Who mythos in the episode "School Reunion" was not only most welcome but closed off a dangling plot line, albeit in a rather bittersweet manner. Apparently it was so well received that Russell T. Davis and Gareth Roberts have created a new children's drama called The Sarah Jane Adventures. Now if they could only bring back Lethbridge-Stewart and Ian Chesterton.

Bianca Ryan wins America's Got Talent: By all that is holy that little girl can sing. And she's only 11 years old. There was some great talent on the show in among the animal acts poor jugglers and repetitive quick change artists (who fans kept for even though the act they did the first week was the act they did in the finals), but from the moment I heard her sing I knew that she was going to be the winner. Oddly enough I've got a bunch for number ten - I suppose you'd call them runners up. There's the little Filipino-American winner of the big prize on Identity getting more and more excited as he gets answers right culminating with him leaping into Penn Jillette's arms (quite a leap believe me - this guy was half Penn's size in every respect). There was Coach Taylor's reaction to finding his daughter and Matt cuddling - chastely - under a blanket while watching TV and then his wife Tammi's reaction to his reaction: "You're an idiot." There was the shower scene at the end of the episode "...As We Know It" on Grey's Anatomy where the reality of Meredith, Christina and Izzie in the shower together (cleaning the "red mist" that had been the bomb disposal expert) off of her was contrasted with George's fantasy that began the previous part of the two part episode.

Starbuck kills "Leoben" again on Battlestar Galactica: The scene tells us so much about Starbuck and quite a bit about the Cylons. Starbuck stabs Leoben to death and then stays in her chair, calmly eating her dinner until the newly resurrected version of Leoben enters the apartment/cell and steps over his own "body", and sits down at the table. Kara is reacting the only way that she knows how to the Cylon even as she acknowledges the inevitability of her eventual failure. She knows that Leoben will be back. For his part even as Leoben knows that Kara will continue to seek any opportunity to kill him even though she knows what will happen, he is still determined to break her to his will, and eventually introduces a new factor into the relationship by bringing in "Kara's" baby.

On The Ninth Day Of Christmas...

My true love (TV) gave to me - Nine odds and ends.

Okay, I confess, I had nothing for Day Nine. For I while I was thinking of doing "Nine Thinking Man's Sex Symbols" except that I'm not exactly sure what a "thinking man's sex symbol" is except that breast size is not the primary or secondary consideration (but I wouldn't rule out tertiary). And I will include some of my picks, but there's still a lot of other stuff to mention (including one that I forgot entirely and still can't remember).

• How much fun was it to watch the PTC tie itself up in knots over Michelle Lamour's appearances on America's Got Talent? She first appeared as the Snow White stripper on the same episode as Bianca Ryan and the PTC went ballistic about the unfairness of having an 11 year old competing against that hussy. The second time she appeared on the show she was working with a version of KITT from David Hasselhoff's old series Knight Rider. I was expecting the PTC to attack her for contributing to the delinquency of a car, and they came very close to saying just that.
• America's Got Talent in general was a hoot. What a wild ride that show was. There were tears, histrionics, temper tantrums and over the top performances. And that was just from the judges! That doesn't consider acts like Rapping Granny, or the woman who shot a bow and arrow with her feet. And who can forget Leonid The Magnificent. I know I can't. And believe me I've tried.
• Another summer show that I have a fondness for is Hell's Kitchen and not just because the PTC hates it and Gordon Ramsey's swearing. This time at least the show had not only a deserving winner but a deserving loser. Heather won (hurray) because she knew how to run her line chefs with authority and was smart enough to pick the best people. Virginia lost (hurray) because she picked the weakest people to participate on her team -and told them so - then had to pay them out of pocket to motivate them to do anything for her. If you're in Canada by the way, Food Network will be rerunning Hell's Kitchen uncensored starting January 2.
• It is a known fact that people like to watch train wrecks. That may just possibly be why Show Me The Money lasted for five episodes. I watched the first episode in its horrific entirety. It gave me a headache, but I still kept coming back from time to time. But here's the kicker - the show had fans. I know this because I ran into one at my bowling league's Christmas party and I had to break the news to him that the show had been canceled the week before. I tried not to sound too happy, but I don't think I pulled it off.
• Does it strike anyone as being absolutely right that the type of show that the Parents Television Council finds most suitable for "family" viewing is a type of show that a lot of people find to be the worst thing to ever contaminate TV? I'm speaking here of reality shows, and while I watch and defend some of them (Survivor, Beauty and the Geek, Big Brother, Hell's Kitchen and of course The Amazing Race - be sure to watch The Amazing Race All Star Edition coming in February), most of them are a waste of the video tape they're shot on. Maybe it shows how out of touch the PTC really is with the public taste - or maybe not since so many of these shows are still on.
• Why is it that the current crop of prime time game shows aren't designed to give the players a shot at the maximum prize? Think about it; Deal Or No Deal is set up in such a way that it is extremely attractive for players to take the banker's offer unless the only cases left are all big money. In 1 vs. 100 the risk ratchets up as the number of mob members decreases making it extremely attractive to drop out when you reach over $100,000. 1 vs. 100 is about survival of the fittest and as mob members are knocked out the remainder are the fittest mentally. In fact there has only been one show in which I've seen the maximum amount won. It was in the second episode of Identity where through luck pluck and possibly a certain amount of not getting it, a Filipino-American managed to guess the identities of all twelve of the people on the stage. And his reaction as he climbed up the ladder (and Penn) was great. But that was the exception to the rule.
• This thinking man's sex symbol 3: I spent virtually all of the seven years that The West Wing was on the air dealing with a serious crush on C.J. "Flamingo" Cregg. She was intelligent, witty, willing to be "one of the boys" and not take herself too seriously, and she was 6 feet tall (I like women as tall as I am). Her love life was a catastrophic wreck. It may explain my fondness for the character of Annabeth Schott - she was C.J. in a smaller package and a better love life.
• This thinking man's sex symbol 2: I’ve been wracking my brains on this one. I think it might have to go to Lisa Cuddy on House. I mean set aside the fact that Lisa Edelstein, who plays Cuddy, played Sam Seaborn’s “friend” Laurie the hooker on The West Wing (and looked damned fine in a blouse and panties). No the reason that Cuddy fills the role of this thinking man’s #2 sex symbol is because she has to deal with Gregory House and amazingly hasn’t folded into the fetal position. She actually sort of stands up to him. She doesn’t win but she does stand up to him. Plus in the scene where she was holding a child under a shower after a diagnosis gone wrong she reminded me of nothing short of the Madonna in Michaelangelo’s Pieta.
• This thinking man's sex symbol 1: Catherine Willows has been this thinking man's sex symbol practically since she first appeared on CSI. I mean think of it, she's gorgeous and a redhead, she's very intelligent but doesn't rub your face in it, she is (for lack of anything near a better word) sassy, she's secure in her own sexuality - after all she used to be a nude dancer. And now, to top it all off she's probably rich, thanks to the guy who gunned down Sam Braun. I mean what man, when presented with all that, would choose Sarah Sidle over Catherine Willows. I know, I know, Grissom would.