Short Takes – October 1, 2007

Yeah, I know, I didn't do my DVD piece this week. Well are you really surprised? With the volume of new shows that popped up this week (and the backlog of reviews for me to still write), it didn't make sense for me to do a DVD list, and I don't know that I'll get around to one next week either. But I am doing my Short Takes piece because I enjoy it, new news is starting to flow and the PTC continues to make a collective ass of itself. That last one is my bread and butter).

(Incidentally, in case you were wondering my DVD Pick of the Week is the The Complete Thunderbirds Megaset. I was a huge fan of the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson "Supermarionation" series that I saw – particular favourites were Fireball XL5 and Stingray – but the king of them all for me was Thunderbirds The various ships were terrifically realised (my favourite was the submarine Thunderbird 4 for some reason – maybe it's the same reason why I felt sorry for John, always stuck in the space station) and the way that the characters got to their ships how the ships were launched was unique to an Anderson series. Having seen the show after my childhood enjoyment of it I've noticed details I never picked up on before or forgotten about (the smoking puppets besides Lady Penelope being one of them, as well as the times when human hands are used in close ups) but while my appreciation of it has changed, I still love it.)

Dead and alive: While Jorja Fox's character of Sara Sidle survived last season's CSI cliffhanger, the character won't be with the show much longer. Fox's contract with the show ran out at the end of last season and the parties were unable to come to terms on a new one, however she has apparently agreed to appear in six or seven episodes in the current season, I suppose to move the character's departure up to November sweeps. Fox's contract came up for renewal a year before most of the other actors on the show because she refused a raise that she considered to be "terrible, to be frank." A condition of accepting that wage increase was an extension of the contract for one year, Fox told TV Guide's Michael Ausiello. Part of the reason for her decision not to renew at that time was fallout from her brief firing from the show (along with George Eads) in 2004. At that time Fox was fired for not returning her contract for the fifth season of the show (which required that actors show up on the set on time); in fact she had sent her contract to CBS but unlike other cast members she sent hers by the mail and it was delayed. This time however, it appears that Jorja – and Sara – are really going.

Gomer Pyle makes Corporal – after 43 years: Well actually it was Jim Nabors who became an honorary Marine Corps Corporal. Nabors played Gomer Pyle on the Andy Griffith Show from 1962-1964 and then on his own spin-off Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. from 1964 to 1969. In the latter show Pyle was a good natured but sometimes slow witted member of the Marines whose constantly aggravated his platoon commander, Sergeant Carter. In the series Pyle never advanced beyond the rank of Private First Class. Nabors, on the other hand, was made an honorary Marine in 2001 by then Commandant General James L. Jones and was immediately promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal. However, a Lance Corporal is an appointed rank and is not a Non-Commissioned Officer. On September 25, 2007 Nabors was promoted to the rank of Corporal by Lt. General John F Goodman "based on his outstanding contributions to the Marine Corps and the United States." Nabors was presented with an NCO's sword, the oldest weapon in the US Military today (it is based on the 1859 model Infantry Officer's Sword). The Marines are the only branch of the US military that authorizes NCOs to carry swords. Among other honorary Marines are/were Lon Chaney Sr. (made an honorary Marine following the 1926 movie Tell It To The Marines), Joe Rosenthal whose photo of the raising of the second flag on Iwo Jima was the model for the Marine Corps Memorial in Washington, and Chuck Norris who was somewhat controversially given the title in April of this year. As a Corporal, Nabors is superior to Norris, however both men have to take orders from a rabbit. Bugs Bunny was made an honorary Marine Corps Master Sergeant in 1943.

Nashville not "cancelled": In other news about things that were too long delayed, FOX has pulled their new reality soap Nashville from the line up after two dismally rated episodes, which was at least one too many. But the show isn't cancelled – oh no. The show will be returning FOX says. It's being "rescheduled" for later in October, after the Baseball playoffs (you know, the albatross that traditionally breaks the FOX line-up into two halves and gives the other networks a freeroll against the network because they don't do Baseball as well as NBC did). Or least that's what FOX says. Trouble is, after Baseball vacates Friday nights the network has The Next Great American Band which I gather is sort of like American Idol for bands. So where does FOX stick Nashville (and don't give me the answer I know you're all thinking – the PTC wouldn't approve)? And should they stick a show that drew 2.1 million viewers and a 0.8 rating 3 share against reruns any place but in the trash bin? FOX's promises to bring this show hasn't been cancelled are the equivalent of saying that "it's pining for the fjords." Lovely plumage though.

Is BEN SILVERMAN the reincarnation of Brandon Tartikoff?: Probably not but he is making a couple of moves on shows that Brandon would have found very familiar. First Ben Silverman announced that NBC would be looking at reviving American Gladiators as a prime time series. I'll let that concept sink in for a moment or two. American Gladiators. As a prime time series?! This past week it was announced that NBC was looking to revive Knight Rider as a two hour movie that could serve as a possible pilot. Knight Rider! Most of you know that Knight Rider was created and produced by Glenn Larson (the guy who gave us Battlestar Galactica and The Bionic Woman both of which have been re-imagined by NBC-Universal) but what you may not know is that the original concept came from the musings of Brandon Tartikoff. According to the The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present (of which I desperately need a new copy) Tartikoff and one of his assistants were talking about the problems of leading men who looked good but couldn't act. The solution they came up with was called "The Man With Six Words." Each episode would begin with the handsome (but talentless) leading man getting out of a woman's bed and saying "Thank you," after which he'd chase down the bad guys and at the end of the chase would shout "Freeze!" Finally, after the grateful people he'd saved thanked him, he'd quietly say "You're welcome." (Yes I know that's only five words; I suppose the guy would get a different wild card word each week.) The car – which could be portrayed by an actor with real ability since he wouldn't actually be seen – would do the rest of the talking. And while David Hasselhoff might not have been as bad an actor as in the original concept, it is still worth noting that William Daniels (who voiced the car) could act circles around him without ever being seen.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: Well not themselves of course. They were promoting a new website – www.howcableshouldbe.com – with a calculator which purports to inform us of the relative costs of various cable channels and how much the American consumer could save if only they were allowed the freedom to pay for only those stations they want to receive. One of the problems is the price they assert for the various networks. In a footnote at the bottom of the page the organization notes, "Cable companies and programmers do not reveal their contracted programming rates. Each of the 1,000+ cable operators in the US negotiates their network agreements separately, which will result in a range of programming fees. While every effort has been made to offer an accurate and representative picture of average programming prices, these rates should never been presented or published as fact." In other words, though the PTC says that ESPN costs the consumer $3.80 a month they're also saying that they don't know the actual prices because those prices vary between service providers, presumably with the bigger providers like Time-Warner having more clout with the networks than the small local companies (if any of them still exist). Another interesting point is the price that is charged on their lists. With the exception of seven networks (ESPN, Nickelodeon, ESPN2, TNT, CNN, The Sci-Fi Channel and what they label Regional Sports Network – by which they probably mean something like NESN or the various Fox Sportnets) none of the networks are priced at over $1 per month. Choosing to eliminate frequent PTC cable worst targets E!, MTV, FX, Comedy Central, and Spike would save the consumer $3.25 per month or $39 a year off a current cable bill of $375.60 per year. Among the stations absent from the PTC's list are religious stations – mostly of the conservative fundamentalist variety – and home shopping networks. Do Americans get those for "free"?

The PTC also seems to be branching out from "impure" TV content. They've always been adamant in attacks on video games but their new crusade is in support of a law that would restrict the sort of video content that the airlines can show on monitors in their cabins. In a press release in relation to a bill (which the PTC inaccurately refers to as legislation; legislation refers to a bill that has been passed and enacted as law) introduced in the House of Representatives related to airlines' in-flight entertainment programming. (The PTC also doesn't mention any details about the bill they're talking about, like the number or the member of Congress who introduced it.) In the press release, PTC President Tim Winter writes "We are asking the airline industry to take responsibility for the new barrage of adult-oriented entertainment they are forcing on captive audiences in the form of in-flight entertainment. It is ridiculous that this issue has become so commonplace, so outrageous, that our elected officials feel they have been left with no choice but to intervene." The "adult content" that Winter refers to includes the TV series Las Vegas and Desperate Housewives, the HBO series Rome ("that has been described as sadistic") and the Anthony Hopkins film Fracture which "features a graphic depiction of Anthony Hopkins shooting his wife in the face." The PTC uses some typically fallacious logic by saying, "Air travelers don't purchase tickets based on the airline's sexual or violent content on the in-flight entertainment system; therefore, there is no market demand for this type of material on airplanes with mixed audiences that regularly include children." Extending that logic, air travelers don't normally purchase tickets based on there being in-flight entertainment (or the food, or anything beyond the fact that the plane goes where they want to go at a price that they are willing to pay) therefore there no market demand for this type of service at all. Now it's been some time since I've flown and when I did there was no movies or video provided on flights to or from Saskatoon, but I was under the impression that airlines are increasingly moving to personal in flight entertainment systems of this sort which allows individual travellers a greater selection of what they want to watch rather than having to watch what everyone else watches no matter what. If these services are widely offered then surely it is the responsibility of the individual traveller to choose what they want to watch and what they want their children to see on their screens. And given that shows like Desperate Housewives and Las Vegas are broadcast on network TV without complaint except from organizations like the PTC it would seem to be an area that government shouldn't involve itself with.

So now we turn to the PTC's Broadcast Worst of the Week. Not surprisingly it's Prison Break on Fox, primarily for the violent content in the first hour of prime time. But they start with a scene that they object to for an entirely different reason: "The show opens with Michael trapped in a Panamanian prison run by a dictatorial warden. One of the warden's mistresses is shown getting dressed after an implied sexual encounter with the warden. As she stands exposed in her bra and panties, she picks up a crucifix and holds it close to her partially covered breast. There is no apparent meaning to this shot other than to show a disregard for the sanctity of such a symbol." Far be it for me to contradict the PTC...oh hell, I love to contradict the PTC. The PTC is so busy being outraged that they don't bother to offer context to a scene that they're ripping to pieces. From this description we have no knowledge of the status of the woman involved. Rather than the warden's willing mistress she might very well be the wife/lover/girlfriend/sister/mother of a prisoner forced to surrender her sexual favours in return for better treatment for her husband/lover/boyfriend/brother/father. Her action in holding the crucifix to her breast could – and indeed would – be seen as a part of a prayer, an act of contrition of a devout woman for her sin. And the warden? He isn't the warden, he's the meanest toughest inmate in the Sona Prison who has engineered the takeover of the place. There is no warden; there are no guards. That's important for the next two scenes that the PTC cites. In one "the warden threatens an inmate, to the point that the inmate wets his pants in terror." But of course he's not "the warden", he's one of the inmates which takes away all of the protections that even the warden of the worst South American prison would be bound by. In other words if this guy threatens to cut off your testicles and make you eat them to you there is absolutely no reason to believe that he won't do it. And then there's what the PTC calls the most violent scene of the episode, "when Michael is forced to fight to the death with another, much larger, inmate. Michael and the man engage in a fierce battle that ends when Michael breaks the man's neck, killing him." But as the preview in TVSquad says, "Internally run by inmate Lechero (Robert Wisdom), Sona is like one big Thunderdome where people settle their differences by killing each other. Lechero calls all the shots within the prison, including who fights, who eats, who gets water and, as we see early on of Bellick, who gets clothing."

Now here is where I'm going to shock you. The PTC's conclusion is that "After two seasons of Prison Break, it is still shocking that Fox has such a lack of concern for family viewers at 8 o'clock in the evening. Violent content such as this is suited for extended cable and R-rated movies, not the Family Hour." Set aside the comment about the non-existent "Family Hour" and the claim that the scene is suited only to R-rated movies or extended cable. I honestly don't think that Prison Break should be on in the first hour of prime time. It is violent. It should be on at a later time. But since Fox only programs two hours a night (for legal reasons that are too complicated for my poor wee brain, and also because their affiliates make a lot of money from early local news and an extra hour of old sitcoms) they can't put their most violent shows at a later hour. That said, if you don't know after two seasons that this show is totally unsuitable for kids under a certain age then I feel sorry for you.

Next up is the Cable Worst of the Week and this week it is the TNT series Saving Grace about a female cop played by Holly Hunter, whose lifestyle is on a self-destructive downward spiral of sex and booze. For whatever reason (I don't watch the show) she has a "last chance angel" beside her, named Earl. In the season finale, Grace has gone off on one of her typical assignations. I'll let the PTC pick up the description here: "To differentiate this instance of gratuitous sex from the many others, a naked Grace is tied down on her bed. But this unconventional foreplay comes at a cost: Grace is abandoned by her lover, and is left confined to her bed. Grace seeks Earl's help, but his own hands are tied. This angelic creature can transport Grace instantly to the Grand Canyon, but apparently untying Grace would violate a divine prohibition—or TNT's salacious ideas about programming. But worry not: Grace is eventually freed by her partner Ham." Now I'm not entirely sure what the PTC is objecting to here so I clicked on their handy video file. As it turns out Hunter is in fact naked but she is lying on her stomach and for most of the scene she is shot in such a way that we most we see is the side of her buttocks. The final shot in the clip is an overhead shot where we actually see her whole ass but frankly it is no more than we used to see on NYPD Blue in the days before Janet Jackson's nipple. Now I don't get why the PTC objects to the angel Earl not being allowed to untie Grace, except as being an instance of TNT's "salacious ideas about programming" it allows us more time to look at Holly Hunter's (not unattractive for a woman of 49) bare butt. I'm sure that in the context of the show it makes perfect sense – probably something about being found in this humiliating situation being a necessary step on the road to redemption or something. But then the PTC offers what to my puny brain is a non sequitur: "And what do viewers see after this sexually-charged instance of supposed character development? The dead body of Ella Duncan, with a knife lodged in her chest. Fellow investigators Butch and Henry offer graphic detail to Ella's death:
Butch: "She was tortured."
Henry: "Yeah. These slash marks, none of them are fatal. The killer spent some time hurting her."

I'm really not sure what the PTC is getting at with this juxtaposition except, I suppose, to say that the show is evil not just because of sex but also because of violence as well. Anyway, here's the PTC's conclusion with my own editorial content in parentheses: "Not long ago programming like Saving Grace was relegated to premium cable, permitting consumers to choose what kind of cable fare they paid for. (Untrue. As I pointed out the scene described and viewable on the PTC's website is not unlike scenes that were seen on broadcast TV until three and a half years ago on NYPD Blue.) But basic cable programming has dramatically changed. A&E re-runs HBO's Sopranos (without the nudity and with the obscenities removed) and TNT now emulates the FX network's successful expansion into TV-MA programming. While some basic cable subscribers may revel in this expansion of original basic programming, others are stuck with the bill. Households merely wanting CNN or ESPN must now subsidize programming they would find repulsive and would never watch." And here we run into the usual PTC nonsense about "subsidization of programming." Apparently we are supposed to believe that the $12 a year that the PTC claims that cable subscribers pay to get TNT underwrites this show without considering that profits from the network might also go to pay for other shows that the network presents that the PTC doesn't object to. Surely if you object to a show on TNT the proper course of action isn't to throw out the baby with the bathwater – not subscribe to the network even though it has more shows that you like than you object to – but to just not watch the show in question in the hopes that the decline in ratings will make it unattractive to advertisers.

Finally (and this has turned out to be a long piece hasn't it) we come to the PTC's Misrated section, which never fails to give me something totally ridiculous to, well ridicule. This time around the show was the series debut of Private Practice. The rating was TV-14 but the PTC felt it deserved a "D" (suggestive dialog) descriptor. The reason seems to be the use of the word "sperm." The episode's plot revolved around a couple, Ken and Leslie, who were trying to get pregnant. Because Leslie is having difficulty conceiving, the couple turns to Oceanside Wellness Group for help. Ken is required to produce a sperm sample, leading to crass dialogue like:
Ken: "Put my boys in a cup! We're gonna get Leslie pregnant."
Leslie: "I'm ovulating, finally."
Sam: "Uh, congratulations. That's great."
Ken: "I've never done it in a cup before."

Setting aside the fact that it was only one of about four plots in the episode (the others were Addison being forced to perform and emergency C-Section on a teenage girl; Violet and Cooper dealing with a woman having a psychological episode in a department store; tension over Naomi hiring Addison without consulting the partners in the clinic) and not even the dominant one (that would probably be Addison's case) the question is one of what, even in the context of the plot, deserved the "D" descriptor. Well the PTC tells us: "Over the course of the episode, the word "sperm" or a reference to sperm was used 22 times. But according to ABC, discussion about ejaculating into a cup, and then hearing the act being performed, and then a woman asking for a dead man's sperm, is not "intense" enough to warrant the "D" descriptor, indicating sexual dialogue, in the episode's rating.The Private Practice premiere's TV-14 rating gave parents no warning of the constant and consistently intense sexual dialogue that this episode contained." In my opinion the answer is that the TV-14 rating, which means that such programs are "unsuitable for children under the age of 14 without the guidance of a parent." The "D" descriptor is used "for highly suggestive dialogue" and I don't think that the material in the episode reaches that standard. (By the way, what the PTC interpreted as the sound of "the act being performed" sounded to me more like the sound of a man having a stroke. It was interpreted by the doctors standing outside as the sound of "the act being performed" because that's what "Ken" went into the room to do.) As usual the PTC not only takes material out of context and interprets it in the most salacious form, but they tend to impose a standard with an extremely low threshold for what it takes to trigger either a change in rating or the use of a descriptor. Of course that's not surprising given the PTC's central contention that the ratings system is irretrievably broken and the only way to make television safe for all viewers (since they attack shows at all hours not just when children are likely to be watching) is through legislative intervention, presumably with the PTC as the sole advisor to the government or the FCC as to what should be allowed.

K-Ville – Not There Yet But Maybe With Time

I frequently worry about writing about the debut episode of a new series. Pilots are, on the whole, not typical of the totality of a show. Sometimes a show is better than you'd expect based on the pilot. Sometimes the pilot is as good as it gets (and in some cases that's damning with very faint praise). The fact is though that a pilot serves two very big purposes – to sell the show to the network and to get the viewers to watch next week's episode instead of something else. A pilot has to be packed with exposition to introduce us to the principal characters, but it also has to grip the audience, whether it's an audience of TV Executives or an audience on Monday nights. FOX's new series K-Ville certainly gets a grip on the audience and holds it but to use another metaphor, at times the pilot feels like it's a mile wide and an inch deep and if they don't improve on that they could have problems.

K-Ville sets its location most effectively. Marlin Boulet and his partner Charlie are trying to help refugees on the I-10 freeway during Hurricane Katrina. Sent to their car to get a blanket to help someone with an injured leg, Charlie instead takes the car and speeds off, leaving his friend and partner alone. Cutting from that vignette to today we see a montage of images of devastation before we are eventually reintroduced to Marlin. He's making a sandwich when he spots a kid digging up a tree outside his house. The kid is stealing the tree "because people gotta landscape." Marlin is personally insulted by this – not only is the tree his but it's a cypress of the type that used to grow all over the city but now doesn't because the salt water from the flooding killed them all. Still the kid is one of his neighbours and in an ordinary place he wouldn't be stealing anything, let alone his neighbour's tree. We're soon introduced to another of Marlin's neighbours, a jazz singer who just bought a classic car ("cost two FEMA checks").

When Marlin gets to work – his police unit is based out of what looks like an old warehouse because their new HQ isn't finished yet – his boss introduces him to his new partner, Trevor Cobb. Cobb is from Cincinnati, an ex-soldier who did a tour in Afghanistan; these facts are enough for Marlin to question his motives or at least his sanity: "What is he, some kind of nut job?" They soon get their first job together; security at a benefit for the 9^th Ward, the area where Marlin lives (and which is usually featured on real world news reports about the continued devastation in New Orleans). The featured performer is Marlin's neighbour and the host is the daughter of one of the city's wealthiest men, the owner of a major casino. Things seem calm enough until gunfire erupts killing Marlin's neighbour. Marlin and Cobb go off in hot pursuit, a pursuit which ends at the casino. They lose their suspect in the building. Marlin initially suspects the murdered woman's ex-boyfriend and goes to "question him"; questioning being a kinder and gentler word for tying him up and dropping him off the side off his commercial fishing boat until he gives them an alibi. When the alibi checks out they're forced to go back to square one. Another charity event is shot up. There's no high speed pursuit this time – the bad guys have put a bomb in the police car. Marlin and Cobb figure out that going to the casino wasn't random – it was part of the escape plan all along. They go to the casino to check the security footage of the entrance in hopes of figuring out where the shooter went but mysteriously, the security cameras at that moment were out of position (suspicious in itself). After another encounter with Charlie, who is now working security in the hotel attached to the casino, Marlin discovers that the casino's head of security and some of the other people he met with was actually a Gulf War vet who became a mercenary working for a company – Black River – which had provided security during the clean-up. They immediately become suspects, particularly after

Earlier Marlin's wife had been introduced. She's living in Atlanta with their very young daughter. The little girl was so traumatized by the storm that the sound of rain terrifies her, and even the sound of the wind means that her mother is up all night with her. They still love each other, but Marlin's attempt at a romantic evening with his wife are shattered when their daughter comes screaming down the stairs with a torrent of water following. A fire hose has been inserted into the daughter's room to flood it. Outside they find an ominous piece of graffiti – the address of Marlin's wife and daughter in Atlanta. Suddenly Marlin is mad. He brings in the three Black River mercenaries for questioning but between political interference – Black River is important for the war effort – and the fact that he has nothing proving positively that they are responsible for the murder or even the flooding of his house. They're let go. However Marlin discovers a motive for the attacks on the fund raising event. Large chunks of the 9^th Ward have been bought up buy a development company, Orleans Renewal. The company is owned by Christina DuBois, the daughter of the Casino owner. She organized the relief events that were shot up but she also organised the attacks to scare people out of the 9^th Ward. Her brother was killed in the area two years before the hurricane and she saw the aftermath of the storm as an opportunity to keep the people who had been forced out by the storm, people she felt had no sense of the value of human life, from coming back to the city. Cobb and Marlin arrest her, but before they can take her to jail, the Black River men attempt to silence her. They fail, but Marlin and Cobb take off in pursuit. The mercenaries seem to be getting away until Charlie crashes his car into theirs. He's taken hostage and the pursuit begins again, ending at a dock where the Black River men have a helicopter waiting. As the car with the wounded Charlie in it rolls off the dock, Cobb dives into the water to save him while Marlin uses a heavy chain to secure the helicopter to the dock. The denouement of the episode is a block party in Marlin's neighbourhood where his friends burn their "For Sale" signs because he has restored their confidence.

I am really torn about this show and I think it's because of the pilot. Anthony Anderson is superb as Marlin, a man suffering as much from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as his ex-partner or his little girl. In Marlin it's held back but from time to time it shows up: he drinks on duty and doesn't give a damn and at a crucial moment he flashes back to his time on the bridge. It shows up in his choice not to follow the wife and child, both of whom he clearly loves, in abandoning the city that he's sworn to protect. What he went through during the storm made the city more important to him than his family; leaving it would be surrender. I'm less impressed with Cole Hauser as Trevor Cobb. Maybe it's because Cobb has a secret beyond what he's told anyone else – a secret that Marlin unravels in a single episode – or it may be that Cobb is currently a less interesting character because he doesn't have Marlin's faults (at least not that we know about yet). The fact remains that Hauser seems rather flat when compared with Andrews...and since most of his scenes are with Andrews that weakness is quite obvious. John Carroll Lynch is his usual workman-like self playing Marlin and Cobb's boss, Captain James Embry. Lynch clearly has a talent for accents – Embry's slight Nawlins patois is a long way from his most famous role as Norm Gunderson in Fargo, and while it's not as heavy as Dennis Quaid's accent in The Big Easy it is noticeable. We really don't get much time with most of the other cops on the team. In a guest role as Gordon Wix, leader of the Black River security team, William Mapother does his usual good job playing a superficially civilized but secretly very dark and dangerous man.

Where I really have a problem with K-Ville is in the writing. Strip away the whole post-Katrina New Orleans aspect and you have a standard cop who breaks the rules but gets results partnered with a straight arrow who is his exact opposite set-up. There's even the boss who isn't always in love with their methods but keeps them together because they're effective. It's pat and clichéd and the fact that it works in this case says more about Anderson and to a lesser extent Hauser than it does about the writing. I'd like to see a lot more character and story development here. In the episode there really wasn't much in the way of plot development; instead there were two big car chases. Right up until the revelation that Christina was behind the entire plot there was no indication that she was even connected to the Black River men. They could literally have been working for anyone at all. While her motivation was intriguing (not to mention more than slightly insane) we as an audience had absolutely no clue that it existed until it suddenly appeared seconds after Marlin found out about Orleans Renewal. I swear it seemed like it was revealed because they needed a mastermind and they needed to shoehorn everything about why everything was happening in between the incident at Marlin's home and the big car chase finale. More thought – and more time – was give to giving us the clues about Cobb's deep dark secret and how Marlin figures it out than was given to revealing the identity and motive of the person behind the major event of the episode. I find that to be extremely sloppy and poorly paced writing but it also doesn't entirely surprise me in a pilot episode where you are introducing not just the antagonists for the episode and their motivation but also the protagonists for the series. The question for me is will this continue.

I look at K-Ville and right now I see a lot of potential which in the pilot episode at least hasn't really been tapped. FOX promoted the series as the next groundbreaking drama but except for making the city of New Orleans, recovering from one of the biggest natural disasters to hit a major American city probably since the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, almost a character in the show it isn't breaking new ground but rather going over well tilled soil. I hope that in later episodes the series does push the envelope more. I want this show to live up to its potential; I want it to succeed if only to remind people each week about New Orleans and what still needs to be done. The pilot episode was something of a disappointment but there's a ton of room in which to grow and to become what Fox promoted it as being, a groundbreaking new drama. It is definitely a show that I'll be checking in with to see if it lives up to what it can become. I can't call it a failure but right now, by most measures I can't whole heartedly call it a success either. It is definitely one to keep monitoring.

Short Takes – September 3, 2007

I have depressingly little today. Part of it was my week spent goofing off, but part of it is this sort of "calm before the storm" period that we're in. In a sense the Emmys do what the start of the new car year used to do; mark the end of the old TV season and the beginning of the new one. But we're two weeks away from the Emmys and there isn't that much right now that's worthy of my usual commentary. I mean even the PTC has take the week off. But let's see what we can come up with.

NBC pulls out of iTunes: This one literally has no impact on me; Canadians haven't been able to get any video content through iTunes since they started offering it. Well I take that back since there've been some short material from Pixar and movie trailers, but when it comes to the commercial content (like stuff you buy), the Canadian iTunes Music Store offers nothing. However it's different in the United States where ABC and some fifty other networks offer content online through the iTunes Store. One of those networks is NBC, or rather it was. NBC-Universal has decided to end its contract with iTunes despite the fact that the company's networks were the top provider of downloaded content, with shows like Battlestar Galactica, The Office and Heroes representing over 40% of the video material downloaded from iTunes. Initial reports claimed that NBC wanted to increase the price of their content from the standard $1.99 to a whopping $4.99 which would mean that a complete 22 episode season, downloaded to your video capable iPod would set you back $110. In fact what NBC proposed was somewhat different. They wanted the right to offer "flexible pricing" with some shows being under $1.99, while others would be priced higher. Furthermore some shows would be offered as part of a bundled package. For example you might get an episode of The Office "free" if you bought the movie Evan Almighty. In response Apple has stated that they will not offer new episodes of NBC shows that they currently sell between the start of the new TV season and December when the contract runs out. In other words when the new season of The Office debuts you'll still be able to download last season's episodes but not those from the coming season. According to the San Jose Mercury-News the two sides are still negotiating, at least as of the end of August. The situation is a difficult one for both companies. Apple's product lines – which include the iPhone (which you can't get in Canada because they can't find a cell partner that will offer affordable Internet access), Apple TV which allows people to play their iTunes video content on their home TVs (which is available in Canada but is kind of useless because there's virtually no video content available – see above), and a reported revamping of the iPod line which is expected to include a video model with a larger screen, like the iPhone – is becoming increasingly oriented towards video offerings. However the amount of content available has been relatively small. According to the Mercury-News, "The loss of NBC's television shows would mark a big hole in iTunes' catalog. If consumers don't have readily available video for their iPods, iPhones and Apple TV's, Apple could have a harder time selling those products, analysts say." At the same time NBC faces its own risks with dropping away from iTunes: "The NBC network came in fourth place in the Nielsen ratings last year and has struggled to come up with new hit shows. Not only does iTunes provide an extra source of revenue, but it can serve as an important buzz generator and audience builder for new programs, something NBC arguably could use." Just as an example, at least some of the initial success of The Office has been credited to it becoming available on iTunes. The Mercury-News article seems to suggest that this sort of thing is likely to become the norm: "The entertainment companies' traditional business models are starting to crumble in the face of digital distribution. While they are all dabbling with distributing their content online, digital sales have yet to make up for the traditional revenue they're losing. And some analysts doubt that the entertainment companies can ever make a legitimate business out of selling individual songs or TV shows a la carte. Until they do – or figure out a better model – dust-ups with iTunes and its rivals are likely to be the norm, analysts say.

Katie Couric goes to Iraq: I'm not a huge Katie Couric basher – I think she was the wrong woman for the job (I would have loved it if they'd hired someone like Dianne Sawyer or Christianne Amanpour – someone with a serious news background) but I will give her credit for getting better at her job. And now she's headed for Iraq for what is, coincidentally (or is it), the anniversary of her taking over the reins as anchor. Starting on September 4^th she will be broadcasting from Baghdad for two days and then from Damascus Syria for two days. She will be the second network anchor to go to Iraq since the roadside bomb that severely injured former ABC co-anchor Bob Woodruff. Couric, who stated at the time that she took the job that she wouldn't necessarily travel to places like Iraq (unlike her predecessor Dan Rather) in part because she's a widow with two teenage children and in part because she felt that they didn't necessarily add to the story: "I'm not just window dressing to show that I'm at a particular story, which I think does happen quite frankly in certain situations." In this particular case the trip is timed to precede the release of the Petraeus report on the war in Iraq about which Evening News Executive producer Rick Kaplan has said "The future of our involvement in Iraq will be decided when the Petreaus report is released; if you're going to go to the Middle East at all, this is the time." It is also something that will likely have a major impact on the 2008 elections which is another part of the effort to rebrand Couric as a more traditional anchor after her rather disastrous debut. Kaplan's opinions on anchor trips seem similar to Couric's. Kaplan told Television Week, "Great coverage trips are not based on interviews. There may be great interviews, and I can't imagine taking a trip that didn't have great interviews, but that's not how you gauge a trip. When somebody goes over and interviews the head of a country or whatever, that's wonderful. But that's just not a lasting accomplishment, and that's not what we think will benefit this program, this network or Katie. If you're overseas, you want to get extraordinary interviews, but what you will find is going to distinguish the trip is the caliber and content of the stories that we do: where we go, the stories we choose to tell, the situations we describe, the situations we get into. It's the old Nightline in me. When we go somewhere, we want to come back and we want you to understand where we've been. That's what makes a great trip. That's the take-away for the CBS Evening News."

FOX underestimates intelligence of American TV viewers: I know, so what else is new. This time around it has to do with who would host the Emmy Awards which will be on FOX on Sunday September 16^th. The network chose American Idol host Ryan Seacrest to host the broadcast. It was an unusual choice since most networks tend to go for a comedian when they host the show – previous hosts have included Wanda Sykes, Conan O'Brien, Ellen DeGeneres, Gary Shandling and Jon Stewart. Gold Derby now reports that FOX was close to naming House star Hugh Laurie as the Emmy host. Although he's best known on this side of the Atlantic for the dramatic role of Dr. Greg House, Laurie is an accomplished musician who made his name in comedy with frequent partner Stephen Fry in shows such as Jeeves and Wooster, Blackadder and of course A Bit of Fry and Laurie. According to the Gold Derby site, "In the end, Fox decided to go with its Idol star over its House star because exex felt Seacrest would draw a larger TV audience and because viewers might be confused seeing Laurie in an unfamiliar role." (Italics mine) For me this logic is up there with the CBS decision in 1970 to make have the lead character of the Mary Tyler Moore Show be a single woman rather than a divorcee because they were worried that viewers would think that Laura Petrie had divorced Rob (and then moved to Minnesota and changed her name to Mary Richards from Laura Meehan). But maybe the American public is that easily confused. They still expect FOX to let shows like Newsanchor run to a conclusion after all.

War of words possible over The War: With the new Ken Burns documentary The War coming to PBS later this month stations seem to be taking positions on exactly what they will and won't let go on the air. The documentary will use the words of World War II veterans including four which are no-nos on TV. According to the San Francisco Chronicle "two are f-; one is s-; and the fourth is –hole. They are words that 1940s military personnel and countless other Americans use every day, but expletives that The Chronicle doesn't ordinarily publish and that the Federal Communications Commission says can't be uttered on public airwaves between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m." Note that this isn't repeated use of the four words, merely four incidents when the words are used (they are "shit", "asshole" and the full versions of FUBAR and SNAFU – "Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition" and "Situation Normal, All Fucked Up"). The problem is that, as usual, the FCC hasn't made its position clear on whether stations can air the documentary uncensored and the individual stations are afraid of the $325,000 fine that the Commission can levy if the material airs and is found "offensive" by the FCC. It's more than a little circular in terms of logic – the FCC won't tell the stations beforehand if the material can be fined so they know where they stand, but will fine them if they step over the line that hasn't been clearly defined. And the line isn't clearly defined. After all, the FCC okayed the broadcast of Saving Private Ryan during primetime (in a 2005 ruling), which the Chronicle points out "included at least six times as many f- bombs" (than The War I suppose) because "the words weren't 'used to titillate or shock'," but in a 2006 ruling they fined a PBS station, KCSM in San Mateo, for airing an uncensored version of Martin Scorcese's documentary The Blues: Godfathers and Sons because "The gratuitous and repeated use of this language in a program that San Mateo aired at a time when children were expected to be in the audience is shocking." The FCC ruling came after exactly one complaint from a viewer, and was apparently overturned on appeal in June of this year. As a result of the potential for fines stations are being offered both the uncensored version and a censored version which removes the "offensive" words. Our old "friend" Tim Winter of the Parents Television Council has stated "I don't know why the stations wouldn't just air the version without those words in it.... It's hard to believe that removing four words are going to significantly damage the program." The PTC will evaluate the show when it premieres. For his part Burns has stated that he understands the position that PBS stations that will air the censored version are in; it is "absurd and yet, at the same time, I understand it. Public television has this impossible mandate to be all things to all people." He also wonders at the fact that there has been no negative reaction over the graphic nature of the violence in the documentaries, which include beheadings and "the dead bodies stacked up like cordwood" to which Winter has replied "it's hard to make a movie about war without showing what war is like." Of course part of showing what war is like includes hearing soldiers say "fuck" and "shit" but Americans are more willing to accept violence over harsh language. As a partial explanation Burns offers this assessment: "'We are both a permissive and a puritanical culture," he said. And the discussion over the language in The War 'is like one of those intersections where an old jalopy filled with drunken revelers is headed toward a bus full of evangelicals.'"

Who does the PTC hate this week?: Nobody. Well at least nobody new. There are no new press releases, no new "Worst of the Week" for either broadcast or cable, and no new "Misrated." Either they've taking the week off or the week they would be drawing their shows to hate from was pristine and totally up to PTC standards in every way. ... Nah!

Bill Maher: Fator hater: I generally like Bill Maher. I enjoyed his series Politically Incorrect and I think he got a genuinely raw deal when ABC cancelled the show after his comments about the 9-11 attacks in 2001, not to mention the reaction of then White House Press secretary Ari Fleischer who said "...they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that..." I would love to be able to see his current series, Real Time With Bill Maher on Canadian TV but it's not available. That said, I take exception to something that Maher said on his August 24^th show in his "New Rules" segment: "New Rule: If your winner is a ventriloquist, then "America Hasn't Got Talent." Besides, if there's one thing Americans have had enough of, it's the guy who puts words in the dummy's mouth. [photo of Bush and Rove shown] Oh, we kid President Bush. It's all with love." Now I know that he's taking a shot at President Bush and Karl Rove (and probably Dick Cheney), and I defend to the death his right to say it (unlike Ari Fleischer) but Mr. Maher, until you can actually do this you are really in no position to say that Terry Fator doesn't have talent.

Short Takes – July 17, 2007

After the length of time that it took to crank out the last Short Takes I was tempted to make this one a PTC only column to get it done on time. And really this post is pretty much that, only not quite because there are a couple of things that I wanted to talk about.

Gizzie probably going away: The Grey's Anatomy relationship between George (T.R. Knight) and Izzie (Katherine Heigl), which in typical modern media fashion has been given the vaguely obscene sounding designation Gizzie (and if you don't get why that's vaguely obscene sounding, I won't explain it to you – I can be embarrassed by such things) may not survive into the next season. According to Mike Ausiello in TV Guide the George and Izzie storyline may be ended because "A source close to ABC tells me that George and Izzie polled 95 percent negative, leading one of the 200 or so participants to conclude that, 'Gizzie will be dropped.'" Which of course is how all decisions in literature are done; by polling 200 people. Like it or not we the audience aren't the final arbiters of the directions that story lines proceed in. If we were, Gone With The Wind would probably have ended with Rhett Butler knocking on the door of Tara and saying "Frankly my dear I made a mistake when I left you."

Money talks, Art walks: It seems that part of the plan for this coming season of 24 involved shooting in Africa. It was such a major part of the storyline that the decision by studio executives not to shoot in Africa meant a three week delay in production because the entire story for the show's seventh season had to be thrown out. According to Ausiello again, the network found that the idea of shooting in Africa too expensive, and the show's producers couldn't find anywhere in the greater Los Angeles area that looked like Africa. Apparently these picky producers never heard the statement from a old time network executive who, when asked to sign off on an extensive location shoot, said (in a quote generally ascribed to Ronald Reagan) "A tree's a tree."

Some differences between Americans and Canadians: Denis McGrath did what a lot of broadcasters used to do during the summer and put on reruns in his blog last week while he was struggling with some real world writing. One of these typically long posts – Denis is a very opinionated guy and he does go on (and on), although it's almost invariably strong and thoughtful ranting – had some nuggets about the differences between Americans and Canadians when it comes to TV. The article – Getting Schooled – is Denis's responses to an e-mail interview from a journalism student named Nicole. Here are a couple of major points. I won't touch on most of the points though if you're interested in Canadian TV it is a must read. To the question of the differences between writing shows for Canadians and Americans Denis responds that Canadians are on the whole less insular than Americans, and that shows which use irony do better with Canadians than they do with Americans. There's truth in this idea that Canadian and American tastes don't always mesh, though I'm not really prepared to quantify it the way Denis is. I do know that even in the last year of its run, when Americans writing in rec.arts.tv were screaming for its cancellation, Caroline In The City was in the top ten (and maybe the top five) in the Canadian ratings. Similarly, Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip was never as unpopular in Canada as it was in the States. Then McGrath adds:

On a more practical level, the differences have to do with social pressure. Because the religious right isn't quite as militant or influential in Canada, you can portray things that you simply can't in the USA: teenagers can have sex on TV here, without immediately getting pregnant. If they do get pregnant, they could actually have an abortion, not be forced to keep the baby or have a magic miscarriage. Degrassi actually had lots of trouble getting some of their shows past the N, though it's their most popular show. Shows that aired here and were no big deal were too hot to handle down south. That's telling. The Sopranos
runs on CTV here unbleeped. Dropping an F or an S bomb won't be thought of as bringing the whole of western civilization to a halt.

He forgot to mention nudity but it falls into the same consideration as "dropping an F or an S bomb." You can show bare breasts – and not just nipples either but the firm round and fully packed object – without anyone demanding fines or that your license be pulled. And they've been doing it for decades –the first bare breast I saw on conventional TV was in the early 1970s. Movies can be shown uncut, but tend not to be because Canadian TV networks get their TV prints from the studios who cut them to shreds so that they can be broadcast in the USA.

But it's in response to a question on the impact of American TV on Canada that McGrath makes a telling point.

We're the only country in the world that receives U.S. network feeds in their entirety on our cable systems. So their shows are all on at the same time as in the USA. No other country has this burden, and it is a burden, because in many ways we really are what Hollywood would like us to be: an extension of the U.S. domestic market.

The USA is the largest and most successful exporter of culture the world has ever known. And we're right next door. In other countries, people love U.S. shows, but they also love their own cop shows, their own lawyer shows, or family dramas, or soaps, or talk shows. Canada is an anomaly in the sense that most of our top 20 shows are American.

What makes it even stranger is that you'll see lots of Canadians stand up and wave the flag for Canadian music, or Canadian books, -- hell, they'll get all misty eyed at Hockey Night in Canada
and the 'I Am Canadian' beer ad, but they're more than happy to watch another nation's values and obsessions on TV every night.

And of course he's right. Just ask a Canadian about his Miranda rights sometime – a concept that doesn't exist in Canada because our constitution and our legal protections are different here. It's part of why I almost never review Canadian shows, and part of the reason why I constantly rail at the Parents Television Council for their efforts to treat every viewer like a "pre-tween" child. Because what shows up on American TV is what I'm spoon-fed by Canadian television networks – except for the CBC who have problems of their own – even without cable systems sending an unadulterated stream of the stuff into my home. And yeah I watch it, in part because the Canadian networks arrange their schedules to make it hard to see Canadian shows or even to know that they're on, but also because, too frequently my choice isn't between a Canadian cop show and an American cop show but between an American cop show and an American lawyer show. So sue me for wanting the PTC and the FCC to stop making all TV into pap suitable for a 9 year-old but come close to criminalizing (due to huge FCC fines) programs suitable for adults.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: Anyone who disagrees with a " broadcast decency amendment" to the "Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill" – in other words a bill that otherwise has absolutely nothing to do with broadcasting but which is necessary to pass. The amendment was proposed by Kansas Republican Sam Brownback, who just happens to be a member of the PTC's advisory board; imaging that. PTC President Tim Winter stated "If Senators are sincere about support for what Brownback's amendment would accomplish, why would they oppose it? The Senate – and the public – are not in a position to wait around for the other committees to act. The recent 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that allows the f-word and s-word to be aired at any time of the day combined with the upcoming September hearing on the Janet Jackson case dramatically underscore the importance and urgency of this issue. The Senate must not adopt the "wait and see" attitude that it did for two and a half years following the Janet Jackson incident – the entertainment industry's lawsuits do not permit it." Remember of course that the PTC denies the legitimacy of any appeal against what it sees as its victories – most of which come from a regulatory body (the FCC) rather than the courts – and this amendment is an attempt to, as good old Barney Fife would put it, "nip it in the bud – nip it!" There is so much wrong with this effort that it is difficult to know where to start on it. What Senator Brownback is attempting is familiar to online Poker players as the same tactic used to pass the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 as part of the SAFE Port Act, a necessary piece of law that had no connection with Internet Gambling or the Internet at all. The Brownback amendment is an attempt to make FCC policy as defined by Kevin Martin into rule of law and pre-empt any attempt by the television networks to obtain legal definition of boundaries. The Brownback amendment is an attempt to reinstate legislatively what the Second Circuit called an "arbitrary and capricious" policy. It is a perfect example of the "social conservative" agenda.

Opposition to the Brownback amendment has come from some interesting quarters including the United States Chamber of Commerce which sent a letter to the Chairman and ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, expressing a view which disagrees with the PTC's position on the amendment. In the letter they state that "It is important to note that while the decision affects the FCC's ability to find broadcasters liable for the airing of fleeting or isolated expletives, it does not impact the FCC's ability to assess fines of up to $325,000 per utterance in cases where multiple or repeated expletives were aired in violation of FCC rules. Therefore, the only effect of the amendment would be to unreasonably subject broadcasters to a $325,000 penalty for the random utterance of an expletive at a live sporting event, convention, or performance." This of course is a point that the PTC and FCC chairman Martin are desperate to make people forget. It is their claim that any use of the "f-word and s-word" is by the very nature of the words not only obscene but in the case of the F-word can only be seen in a sexual context, and that by overturning the FCC decision on fleeting obscenities the "liberal" 2^nd Circuit has permitted writers to fill their scripts with those words. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also states in their letter that "Senator Brownback's amendment on 'excessively violent video programming' is fatally flawed because it fails to acknowledge that descriptions or depictions of violence on television are protected as free speech by the First Amendment of the Constitution," and that "The amendment is also unconstitutionally vague and overly broad. It appears to cover everything from fictional violence to war coverage to sporting events. The resulting regulatory uncertainty would needlessly harm the ability of the broadcast industry to supply the type and variety of television programming sought by the American television viewer. Indeed, the amendment could severely distort the market and alter business models by forcing programming and all associated advertising onto alternative media platforms, such as the Internet."

The Chamber's letter also cuts to the heart of the difference between economic conservatives and social conservatives – because I'm sure that at its philosophical heart the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a conservative organization – and that is the need for government to regulate. In the second paragraph of its letter the Chamber states, "Government regulation over broadcasting should be kept to the minimum and exercised only to the degree clearly required by the public interest. Parents currently have the tools necessary to protect their children from inappropriate content.... Moreover, two-thirds of all U.S. households do not even include a child under 18. Therefore, there is not a public interest justification for further government regulation of the broadcasting industry." They state this point again in the next to last paragraph saying that, "Moreover, the amendment would constitute government intervention where there is not a market failure. If a show does not achieve high enough ratings, it is removed from the schedule. At the same time, parents have the tools needed to protect their children." But of course the PTC has argued and continues to argue to anyone who will listen that the tools that parents have (and the letter specifically mentions the V-chip) not only don't work but are worse than useless, and that parents need government to intervene in order to protect their children (and, though the PTC doesn't come out and say it, themselves). This is in stark contrast to the TVWatch survey that the letter quotes that states that "92% of parents agree with the statement: "Government involvement in curbing the amount of violence on television is okay in theory, but at the end of the day, the best way to prevent a child from seeing content deemed inappropriate is a parent in the home...not a politician in Washington."

The PTC's Broadcast Worst of the Week is a show which was on the list a couple of weeks ago and which was cancelled even before that; The Loop. The PTC cites "multiple instances of casual sex, infidelity, and strong sexual innuendo" as reasons for naming it as the Worst of the Week. The storyline they describe has Sam, wearing a fat suit after a complaint from some passengers on the airline for which he works, being seduced by his boss's girlfriend who he was meant to spy on because she was suspected of being unfaithful. The PTC takes a certain pleasure in detailing a "graphic scene is shown of Sam receiving implied fellatio and moaning in the airplane lavatory." The big thing though is the conclusion that the PTC emerges with: "The Loop represents some of the worst and most inappropriate programming for the family hour, unapologetically polluting prime time with raunchy sexual themes. The Loop is exactly the type of program that parents should guard their families against." Set aside inflammatory adjectives like "polluting" and the reference to the non-existent "Family Hour" which only the PTC believes still exists. It's that last part of that last sentence that counts: "...parents should guard their families against." The PTC's entire point in their lobbying is that parents don't/can't/won't guard their families against objectionable programs so that an organization like the PTC has to do it for them by lobbying and pressuring government to do the "right" thing – the right thing being defined by the PTC, rather than by parents themselves who know their own families and know what they themselves want and don't want their kids to see.

The PTC's Cable Worst of the Week (all the Cable Worst of the Week links go back to the current WOTW so you may not see this) is Kathy Griffin's My Life On The D-List (on Bravo) which the PTC says, "started as a mock-umentary, chronicling Griffin's pseudo-celebrity misadventures. But now the show documents her climb to A-list fame. Not only has Griffin performed in Carnegie Hall and garnered an Emmy nomination, she may just become the newest addition to ABC's The View." This may come as a news flash, but none of that puts her on the A-List or even rising to the A-List. Still, that's not the PTC's objection, though they warn ABC to "look over this comic's raunchy and crude reality series." What caught their attention in this particular episode is Griffin's appearances as hostess of the "GayVN Awards" (which is an off-shoot of the Adult Video News – AVN – Awards). A the PTC puts it, "If you aren't familiar with the GayVN awards, they highlight 'acting' accomplishments within the homosexual pornography industry. Homosexual Porn Oscars, if you will. A niche market, yes—but one near and dear to the heart of Kathy Griffin." The review then describes Griffin picking out her wardrobe for the show, which given that this is Kathy Griffin we're talking about, was probably done with an indescribable edge that doesn't come across when read on the printed page. But greater anger seems to be derived from the venue for Griffin's appearance, the awards show itself. Now I have no doubt that the PTC would be just as irate if Griffin had been hosting the main AVN Awards, which are more oriented to the mainstream side of porn (though they don't object to Gay porn there either) but because it's the GayVN awards, there's a bit of a patina of homophobia. The highlight this moment in particular: "An unnamed presenter and presumable porn star, gives this introduction before handing out one of the gala's many awards: 'Best all-sex video. That would be that slap on it, spit on it, stick it in the ass kind of video you love to see.' The crowd's reaction? Effusive cheering." After noting that Bravo airs the episode "at noontime and even at eight in the morning" they add, "It's clear that BRAVO pushes this indecent content in pursuit of ratings. What's less clear is why all cable subscribers — whether they watch it or not — are forced to subsidize it every month." Setting aside the fallacy that cable companies "subsidize" shows that don't perform well in the ratings – and it is a fallacy – the material that the PTC describes in their review hasn't shown me any indication of "indecent content" except that the appearance was at an awards show that honoured Porn – Gay porn at that – and I'm not entirely sure that the objection isn't primarily due to Gay Porn being the focus of the awards.

Don’t Forget The Singing Lyrics Bee

When I heard that NBC would be airing an episode of their new series The Singing Bee on the same night that FOX would be debuting their new show Don't Forget The Lyrics, it seemed obvious to me that I should watch the two shows on the same night and review them at the same time. It's the sort of a "compare and contrast" thing that we used to do in high school, but that makes it a classic. It concerned me slightly that the episode of The Singing Bee that I'd be watching would apparently be the series' second episode...but not that much. Of course it turned out that NBC wasn't airing a new episode of the show but rather a rerun of the previous night's debut show, something that could be regarded as a mistake if what you're intent on is taking a big shot at a show which basically stole your premise. But hey, what do I know.

Let's start with The Singing Bee since the show has at least a vaguely original premise. It's not totally original but it "borrows" from an interesting source – the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee! Host Joey Fatone – second place finisher of Dancing With The Stars who seems to be alternating this gig with appearing on the DWTS live tour – goes into the audience and selects six players at random. I mean supposedly he's listening for people who sing the song that is being played correctly but it certainly helps to be in the front row or the first couple of seats on the aisle. The players are brought on stage to compete. Each player is given the name of a song and the date it was released after which the song is played when the music and the professional singer with the house band "The Buzz" (Bee – Buzz, get it? Good, 'cause I don't want it) stops they have to sing the next line correctly. Correctly means without added "yeahs" "ohs" and various other words that singers – even pros - sometimes add to a song. The first four players to get their line correct go on to the next round, which in theory means that if the first four players get their lines correct on the first try the other two players don't even get to try. In the second round, the four players are paired off. Each has to sing a longer line of a song once the music ends but this time the words of the line are visible to them on a large monitor. The problem is that they're scrambled and the player has to figure out the order. If both players get it right, or both get it wrong, they go on to another round, but when one gets it right he is paired off with the winner of the other match. This leads to the Championship Match. It's similar to the first round but with a higher degree of difficulty. Players have to sing the chorus of a song correctly. As in the second round if both players get their chorus right, or if both get it wrong, they get another song to sing, but if there's a winner he goes on to face "The Final Countdown."

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned the word "money" yet. That's because to this point in the game no one else has either. That's left until "The Final Countdown" – everything else has been an elimination process for this. "The Buzz" have seven songs for the "Final Countdown." For each song in which the player correctly sings the line after the band stops he or she wins $5,000, but if the player gets five songs correct the prize becomes $50,000. "The Final Countdown" can also end if the player gets the final line of three songs wrong, in which case the player takes home however much has been won up to the time of the third strike.

Don't Forget The Lyrics has a more familiar vibe about it, like most of the other game shows on TV. The biggest similarity though is to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, though FOX would probably prefer a comparison to Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader. Host Wayne Brady welcomes a contestant who is given nine categories to choose from. Each category has a choice of two songs. The contestant picks one song and sings along to it until the music stops at which point the player has to sing the next words, with the number they have to sing depending on the monetary level they're at. Money start at $2,500and goes up until the fifth question at $25,000. The $25,000 level is a plateau; if you get the words wrong after this point you are guaranteed to win $25,000. After this things get increasingly difficult. Until this point each song has had four missing words; now the number of missing words increases to as many as ten. Players have a total of three "Backups" which are the equivalent of "Helps" on other shows. The three are "Backup Singers," where the player can ask the two family members or friends that they brought with them for help; "2 Words," where the player can check to see if two words from the lyrics they gave are right; and "3 Lines," where the player can see three possible lines for the song one of which is the correct line. If the player gets the correct answers for all nine categories they have the option of facing "The Million Dollar Song," however what the rules for this final obstacle are is as yet unclear.

NBC rushed to get The Singing Bee on the air after FOX announced Don't Forget The Lyrics and I think it's a good thing that they did. The show, which was originally slated to alternate with 1 vs. 100 is more innovative than Don't Forget The Lyrics but I have difficulty seeing it succeeding outside of the summer TV season without some serious retooling. Selecting players "randomly" from the audience gives it a real game show feel, but it takes a long time for the players to get into a position where they can win any money and the prize amount is relatively small. The show seems too compressed for the current half-hour time slot but at the same time I don't see how you could expand it to fit the hour time slot that 1 vs. 100 manages easily. Maybe the best thing about The Singing Bee is Joey Fatone, who has a natural ease and presence as host. I could easily see him hosting a non-singing game show at least as well as a comedian like Bob Saget.

As for Don't Forget The Lyrics, it suffers from mimicking an established format that has been used with variations on other shows. The only thing that really makes it unique is the application of the "singing" gimmick. Certainly the ability to pre-screen contestants has the potential to deliver some "interesting" performances, at least if the performance of the show's first contestant is any benchmark. The woman's voice had only a casual relationship with concepts like pitch and key. The show is quite clearly suited to an hour time slot although the half-hour time period that it occupies also allows for creating drama by way of cliff-hangers, and it doesn't hurt that the show airs on consecutive nights. As host, comedian Wayne Brady is adequate, but doesn't have the freshness of Fatone. I can't shake feeling that any other stand up comedian who is reasonably well known on TV could fill the role of host for this show and no one would really notice.

I can't say that I'll be watching future episodes of either The Singing Bee or Don't Forget The Lyrics. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I am not a huge music fan and my tastes tend to be towards shows that reward people for being smart – or retaining useless trivia, take your pick. Both of these shows did well in the ratings, drawing numbers that would be respectable during the main season and are spectacular for the summer. I have no doubt that both shows will be showered with the "coveted" accolade of "Best of the week" from the PTC. Both shows are innocuous and sincerely good family viewing even if they do deal with "rock and or roll." No, there's nothing really wrong with the shows; the problem is that there's not enough that's really right about them for me to generate any real enthusiasm for them. I can't recommend either show even though I don't really have anything against them. It's going to be telling to learn if either or both are able to maintain the ratings that they received in their debut episodes. They do seem to be ideal shows to plug holes in the Fall line up when (not if for either network) those holes develop. I probably won't be any happier about the prospect than I am now though.

Short Takes – July 10, 2007

It's funny how this regular feature has sort of migrated. I meant it to be something to run on the weekends but somehow it keeps moving further and further into the week. Of course since it's summer it really doesn't matter all that much, but if I start thinking like that I start wondering if any of this matters and of course the answer is "No it really doesn't" and it gets all sort of weird and philosophical. I guess all I can really hope for is that by the end of the summer this will have migrated back to the weekends.

Goofy Censorship: I don't normally refer to Entertainment Weekly or its website but their TVWatch is the only TV specific news feed available through iGoogle which is one of my home pages. I sometimes comment on their recap pages and as a result I've become aware of their comment censorship. When someone typed "Ding-Dong, the girls are gone" (related to On The Lot) what appeared on the page was "Ding-****, the girls are gone." It gets better though. In the comments for Big Brother, where one of the houseguests is named "Dick" – or as he wants people to call him "Evil Dick" – when you type his name in the comments section it is printed as "****" or "Evil ****". Very strange.

Reilly good news: Okay, I couldn't resist the pun, but it is good news – at least right now – for Kevin Reilly. Reilly, you may recall, was unceremoniously fired as President of the NBC Entertainment Division after three years of trying to ameliorate Jeff Zucker's long history of mistakes, a project made more difficult by Zucker's meddling ways. Reilly was fired just weeks after signing a big contract renewal with the network and days after the somewhat lukewarm response from advertisers to the shows that he presented at the Upfronts. Now, less than two months after Reilly left NBC he is the new President of Entertainment at FOX where he replaces Peter Ligouri who becomes Chairman of FOX Entertainment. In fact it was Ligouri who made the move to FOX attractive to Reilly. The two men had previously worked together at News Corp's F/X cable channel, in positions that pretty much mimic their new responsibilities. At F/X Reilly was responsible for developing such shows as Nip/Tuck and The Shield. At FOX, his duties will include destroying new shows that he was responsible for approving at NBC and serving as shepherd for a number of shows that he had nothing to do with getting on the air. The question that Reilly's appointment raises almost immediately is whether he will continue his policy of pushing quality programming that he advocated at NBC and which may well have been responsible for his replacement there. There's some worry on that front, given FOX's tendency to cancel programs very quickly and often replacing them with low cost reality shows. Then there's the record of people holding the job of President of Network Entertainment at FOX. Except for Gail Berman, who held the job for five years, the network averages a major executive change roughly every two years. This includes Ligouri, altouh his major move is up rather than out.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: A while ago our local police force finally joined the last half of the 20^th century and began air patrols over the city of Saskatoon. I don't think they actually bought a plane but are leasing a Cessna or something similar. It doesn't really matter. What does matter – at least in the context of this is that the plane frequently flies at night. Most people don't notice because they're asleep. Indeed, as you know from looking at the time stamps of many of my posts on this blog I'm awake late into the night and until recently I had never noticed the airplane. However there are a vocal group of complainers for whom any sound seems to be sufficient to rouse them from their sleep and keep them up to a point where they are apparently dangerous at whatever job they hold. They are vocal in their opposition to the police flights. To the very notion that the flights actually make the police more efficient in catching criminals they respond that no matter what the flights accomplish in crime fighting, it's not worth it because they are losing sleep and it makes them dangerous and less efficient at their workplaces. The plane complainers are a small group – possibly no more than a literal handful – but as I said they are vocal group. They write letters to the newspaper demanding that the airplane be grounded forever, and that police aerial patrols be banned, and they appear before City Council demanding that "something" (like grounding the plane and banning the patrols) be done to save their sleep. But they don't say it's "their sleep" they say that it is the sleep of everyone in the city that is being disturbed by the police aircraft and that presumably we are becoming a city of sleep deprived zombies. That's how I feel about the Parents Television Council; a small group that speaks with a very loud (and frequently obnoxious) voice claiming that they are speaking if not for everyone then for a far larger group than they actually represent - in the case of the PTC, all parents, and indeed all "right" thinking people (and no that wasn't a political "right"). They are defending "us" against "evil" authority in the form of the networks, the cable companies and obviously left-wing judges who think that it's alright to say bad words on TV (bad words, of course being defined by the PTC – remember they wanted to fine ABC when Helen Mirren said that she nearly fell "ass over tits" at the Academy Awards).

So who does the PTC see as a threat to our very existence this week? On the Broadcast side it's the CW's summer burn-off – which has already finished being burned off by the way – Hidden Palms. The PTC strikes out at Hidden Palms this time – since you'll recall that they also made the pilot the worst of the week for depicting a father's suicide and the effect it had on his teenaged son who witnessed it – because of sex. Specifically because one of the characters, high school junior Cliff, had sex with older women including his "best friend's mother." Of course the PTC gave us detailed, if out of context, descriptions of Cliff's "activities." "Before the opening credits had finished, Cliff was shown in bed with two different women. The first scene featured Cliff emerging from under the covers with a much older woman, implying that he has just performed oral sex on her. Suddenly, Cliff jumps out of bed to go meet another girl. The woman he is with seems disgruntled by his behavior, but Cliff tells her that she can't be upset since she has only given him 'one booty call in nine months.' Cliff makes his way to teenager Nikki's house and we find him once again under the covers with a girl. It is implied that Cliff and Nikki have just had sex.... Later in the show, Nikki walks-in on Cliff once again having an intimate exchange with the older woman (Maria) and becomes upset. Cliff apologizes and promises himself to Nikki. The show concludes with Maria meeting Cliff in his bedroom and once again seducing him into having sex. Cliff's mother walks in the room to discover them in his bed." Ah but it's the "nine months" remark that really has the PTC "hot and bothered": "High school junior Cliff is having sex with his best friend's mother – and he acknowledges doing so over nine months previously, meaning that Cliff was clearly underage when the act occurred. The CW is not only accepting but actually glamorizing statutory rape. Is this behavior we want to encourage teens to view as normal or even acceptable?" That of course is a huge logical jump without any knowledge of the background of the event. The implication of the term "statutory rape" is that the older person was the "aggressor" and from the description of Cliff and his sexual antics it seems far more likely that Cliff was the persuasive one in this situation and that the older woman who "has only given him 'one booty call in nine months,'" was the one who was seduced by Cliff. As for its impact on the attitude of teen viewers, since the ratings appear to be low even by CW standards, one should perhaps ask what the impact is of a show that virtually no one – regardless of age – is watching?

As for the worst cable show of the week, the PTC returns to an old favourite Paris & Nicole in The Simple Life on the E! Network. In the episodes in question, the "girls" (aka "skanky hos" though that may be offensive to skanky hos – you can tell I don't like Paris & Nicole) are counsellors at "Camp Shawnee" which, like most of the things in the reality show isn't real – the facility is a real camp but as the Wikipedia article on the show puts it, "The campers are not the camp's real campers, and at least one of the counselors, Hunter Cross, admits he is an actor who auditioned for the role. Also, the camp nurse is an actress according to IMDB." The series premiere earned the PTC's ire for among other things, enemas. In this episode, which was the series finale, Paris and Nicole are helping to run a "love camp." According to the PTC, "Guided by Dr. Diana, the girls helped five couples reconnect. And by reconnecting, E! meant a hearty mixture of sexual innuendo, graphic body waxing and sex toys." There is a discussion of the anus as an erogenous zone and a couple who have been married for 43 years talk about how much he likes her boobs and how much she likes a certain "position." The PTC article culminates with the usual railing against the "forced subsidy from cable television subscribers" which is apparently used to prop up the show. And of course this is a huge load of what Norman Schwartzkopf (remember him?) once called "bovine scatology." Comcast, which owns E!, is a business, and as with all businesses is run with a sharp pencil (and if you want proof of that, just look at the history of programming on their G4 network – it makes one weep). The bottom line with them is the bottom line; they are not a charity. If the audiences for The Simple Life weren't there, advertisers wouldn't buy time on the show and paris & Nicole would be out on their anorexic little bottoms faster than you can say rehab. In other words E! doesn't "prop up" The Simple Life, the show pays its own way without the "forced subsidy from cable television subscribers" which most of the rest of the world calls fees. And here of course is the big one: not every show on E! is The Simple Life. Shocking, I know, but true. There might even be some that the PTC might actually approve of (though heaven alone knows what they might be). Given that the structure of Cable Television is what it currently is – and as I've said before I do support the concept of cable choice, and wouldn't have E! or its Canadian doppelganger Star on my TV line-up if I had the choice even though it isn't costing me more – the simple answer is that if you disapprove of The Simple Life turn the TV off or watch a channel that you do want to see.

Short Takes – June 26, 2007

Welcome back to your favourite NC-17 blog. Actually I think of that NC-17 in the same way that Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert regarded it when it replaced the X Rating. They hoped that the rating would be applied to films with artistic merit which also included adult themes but not to movies that were pornographic or "dirty". Mostly they wanted a rating that allowed deserving films to get newspaper and TV advertising because most theatres wouldn't book films that they couldn't promote. It didn't work out that way of course – NC-17 replaced X entirely, newspapers still refused to take the ads and films like most of Pedro Almadovar's work either wasn't shown in most North American cities or, once they figured things out, simply weren't submitted to the ratings boards at all. Anyway, I probably won't be using any of the words that got me the NC-17 for a while. Well okay, I'll probably use "dead" and "death" a bit. And I may use "enema," if only because it's sort of a silly word.

We`ll always have Paris: Which I guess is what I`m vaguely afraid of. I mean sure, I liked Paris Hilton in the Carl`s Jr. Ad, but what red-blooded North American male who didn`t have a stick permanently wedged up their backside (by which I of course mean the males in the PTC) didn`t. But mostly I`m like Evil Willow on Buffy The Vampire Slayer – "bored now." But they keep giving her to us. And sadly by "they" I don't just mean the tabloid TV shows and the stupid reality show. No it's now the mainstream news shows. ABC bids $100,000 to get the first interview with Hilton after she got out of the "Big House" after her harrowing 23 days in "Stir," but they get outbid by NBC, the network that piously proclaimed that that the story wasn't newsworthy. Or at least it wasn't until they could spin it in such a way that it was. NBC offered $1 million, and then when it became public knowledge and there were protests from the news division they not only withdrew the bid but proclaimed that the thing was only a rumour. So now we'll see Paris Hilton interviewed by Larry King – and presumably Larry's research staff will read any necessary books for him and provide him with questions that aren't too tough for either of them. CNN claims not to have spent any money to get this interview, and maybe they're even being honest about it, but setting aside whether Hilton got a sentence that other people in a similar situation – except for not being rich or "famous" – would have received (and there's plenty of evidence to suggest that she was treated differently by the judge because of her celebrity) what has she got to say that could possibly be worth a million dollars, a hundred thousand dollars, or whatever "consideration" CNN might be giving her. There is probably a story – even an hour-long news magazine report – on how the justice system treats celebrities (good and ill treatment alike) but this hype around Paris Hilton hasn't done anything like that.

(By the way, once upon a time I used to like Larry King. That was when he was the King – so to speak – of late night radio and operated out of Washington. He worked well with callers – except for anyone calling in to criticise Psychiatrists, who were immediately labelled Scientologists and cut off – and had interesting guests. These days, operating out of Los Angeles, he has his lips so firmly attached to the backsides of anyone in Hollywood that there are still some parts of the United States where he could be arrested for unlawful sexual activities. And he still doesn't read the damned books.)

Couric-watch: Which network has seen its evening news audience drop more since Katie Couric debuted as the host of the CBS Evening News. If you said "Well duh, that would be CBS," You would be, well duh, wrong (come on, you didn't think I'd post something like this if the answer was the obvious one did you). According the Nielsen ratings, as reported by TVNewser, the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric has lost 287,000 viewers from the same time last year. That's a drop of about 4%. The NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams has lost 533,000 viewers over the same period, a drop of 5%. It is almost twice as many viewers as CBS lost (185.71% to be exact) but then CBS obviously had a smaller audience to begin with. And while it can be argued whose fault that is, the one thing that is abundantly clear is that you can't blame Couric for having a smaller audience before she even arrived.

FOX – the clone network: A funny thing seems to happen when some networks come up with a reality or game show idea; FOX comes up with an idea that's almost exactly the same. Sometimes they even get it on before the network that came up with it in the first place. ABC brought Supernanny to American audiences, but FOX had Nanny 911 on the air three or four months earlier. ABC had Wife Swap; FOX came up with Trading Spouses and put it on the air before the ABC series. The similarities between the two shows were so great that ABC sued FOX for copyright infringement. And now Fox is doing it to NBC. One of the "highlights" of NBC's new fall line-up was a show called The Singing Bee in which contestants have to sing a song and remember the lyrics accurately after the music stops. The "bee" part comes in because the format is supposed to be like a Spelling Bee with eight people from the audience competing against each other. The show was supposed to start airing in the Fall, sharing a Friday time slot with 1 vs. 100. Except, FOX announced a new series called Don't Forget The Lyrics. In Don't Forget The Lyrics contestants have to sing the correct lyrics to songs of various genres. Oh there are "differences" – the FOX show doesn't use the Spelling Bee format. Instead a single contestant sings at various levels with the difficulty of the song increasing as the prize amount increases. So you can see, they're totally different shows. As I said, NBC planned to debut The Singing Bee in the Fall but when they got wind of FOX's plan to start Don't Forget The Lyrics on July 11 from 9:30 to 10 p.m. Eastern, that plan went out the window. NBC will debut The Singing Bee on July 10, with a second half hour episode appearing on – wait for it – July 11 from 8:30 to 9 p.m. Eastern; in other words an hour before the debut of Don't Forget The Lyrics. I love this, if only because if both of these shows suck as much as I anticipate (and to be honest devoutly hope) they may kill each other off before the start of the Fall season which will give 1 vs. 100 (a show that I really do like) a straight run.

Who does the PTC hate this week: Boy the stuff you miss when you skip a week. Before I get to that though, I want to remind all of you of the single issue on which I agree with the PTC, which is unbundling cable services and allowing consumers to choose which channels will be seen in their homes. This came up because Representatives Dan Lipinski (D, Illinois) and Jeff Fortenberry (R, Nebraska) introduced a new bill called the "Family and Consumer Choice Act of 2007" which would allow consumers to pick and pay for the channels they want. Of course the PTC and I totally disagree on why this should be done. I just don't want to pay for TV channels that I only see when I'm clicking through the channels to get to the shows I want to see. I don't particularly care for most music channels so why should I pay for Muchmusic, CMT, or MTV Canada. And if I save money by not watching those channels maybe I'll spend the money on other channels I want to watch but can't afford at present. The PTC on the other hand sees "pick and pay" as a way to punish the evil entertainment industry. Almost as soon the PTC's press announcement finishes praising Lipinski and Fortenberry (praise that consisted of most of the first paragraph) it spends eight paragraphs talking about the evils bestowed on the poor, innocent American public by cable and network TV (despite the fact that Lipinski and Fortenberry's bill probably wouldn't negate the FCC's "must carry" rules that were further strengthened by the US Supreme Court in 1997). Here's a little bit of the overheated rhetoric of PTC Governmental Affairs Director Dan Issett:

Last year, Congress acted to increase the maximum possible fine for violation of broadcast decency law, but the reaction from the entertainment industry was to file suit, claiming that the 'F-word' and 'S-word' were appropriate to air during prime time television, and that – of all things – a striptease in the middle of the Super Bowl was somehow not indecent. Clearly, the entertainment industry has lost its way, and is failing to live up to its legal obligation to broadcast in the public interest.

Last week, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals rendered a decision inexplicable to Americans families: that the 'F-word' and 'S-word' should be ok to be broadcast on the public airwaves at hours when tens of millions of children are in the audience. While we're a long way from the end of the judicial process in that case, and Congress may weigh in yet again, one thing is clear – if the entertainment industry really want to give parents 'complete control' of their televisions, as it says it does, then it would endorse the concept of cable choice.

And then there's his conclusion:

We commend Congressman Lipinski and Congressman Fortenberry for their excellent leadership on this critical issue, and we thank Chairman Martin for his thoughtful and forthright determination that parents must be given more and better tools to control the graphic sexual and violent content that comes into their homes. It takes real political fortitude to side with families and stand up to the millions of dollars the entertainment industry spends to buy influence in Washington. But make no mistake - the American people are grateful that this legislation is being offered today.

My viewpoint? If the vast majority of the "American people are grateful that this legislation is being offered today" it isn't because it will keep them from seeing the shows cited in the PTC's press announcement – Rescue Me from FX, South Park on Comedy Central, and the cleaned up version of The Sopranos that airs on A&E. It will be because it will save them money and maybe allow them to rid their TVs of multiple shopping channels and religious networks that they never watch. It is also a fact that the "American people" will vote with their pocket books and if the cable industry is smart – and there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that they aren't – they package their product in such a way as to make picking and paying for individual channels the least attractive option, and packages with a mixture of channels based around an apparent theme the most attractive. Those packages are what most people will buy.

I confess that one of the reasons why I look forward to Hell's Kitchen is because of the fulminating (a particularly appropriate verb for any pronouncement from the PTC – one always gets the impression that an over-abundance of righteous indignation on their part will lead to a massive explosion) they engage in when his show airs. Last week's Worst of the Week was no disappointment. The PTC had this to say of Ramsay (who "clearly plays the role of the Devil in Hell's Kitchen) and the show "What makes this show so bad for family viewing is that it is presented as "reality," when in reality no one would endure the Nazi-like persecution Chef Ramsey dishes out. In that sense, this show is unlike all other reality shows, as it tells young viewers that this type of behavior is what one can expect to encounter in life, and that obscene language, backstabbing, and vile personal attacks are acceptable in the workplace." Well setting aside the assertion that Gordon Ramsay is somehow Hitler-like, the fact is that Ramsay's own early training made Hell's Kitchen look like a stroll in the park. Marco Pierre White was notorious for his rages and bullying – indeed White's recent biography has a picture of Ramsay in tears after being screamed at by White making a mistake. Ramsay's behaviour in his working kitchens as depicted in the documentaries Boiling Point and Beyond Boiling Point is exactly as seen in the show. But perhaps the most telling proof that people will "endure the Nazi-like persecution Chef Ramsey dishes out" is that his restaurants have an astounding 85% retention rate for staff since 1993. (I'd ask Orac for the loan of the brain eating Hitler-zombie, but of course this is the PTC and the poor critter would starve looking for brains among that bunch.)

This week the PTC's Worst of the Week is the FOX series The Loop. This is a series that the network is burning off – airing the episodes during the summer – and doing so in a way that is reminiscent of a high powered industrial incinerator. FOX ordered episodes of this series as a midseason replacement after a brief run in the 2005-06 season but then changed their minds, first cutting the order from 13 to 10 episodes, then not running it at all during the main season, and finally running two or three episodes in a single night instead of one a week like even the weakest series being run in the summer. In other words it's business as usual for FOX where the network weasels are particularly obtuse. And yet the PTC treats it with far more respect than the network does, viewing it as "one of the crudest shows on television" terrible threat to the (non-existent) "Family Hour." The episode in question is called "The Window" (except that it isn't – the actual title is "Windows" which shows the usual PTC level of accuracy). The PTC quotes five "vulgar examples of sexual innuendo and dialogue from this week's episode," including "Sam: 'Did my package come?' Sully: 'No, but mine did.'" I'm not even sure I understand what that means out of context – and all of the quotes in question are out of context – let alone why I should regard it as vulgar. They finish their hatchet job review by saying "The Loop is has a simple formula: place the main character in a random conundrum, litter the script with taboo sexual dialogue and situations, and put it on the air in the family hour. The writers of this program show no regard for younger viewers or families who may be watching their program." I'm not going to defend this show as not being full of sexual innuendo; even though I haven't seen it I have seen reviews by people who have and either hate the sexual content and think that the show is getting what it deserves, or enjoy it and think that the network is treating it shamefully. But you know as well as I do that this series could air in any hour of primetime and the PTC would be condemning it as filth, all in the name of protecting the children.