Who Does The PTC Hate THIS Week? - January 24, 2008

I've been taking a bit of a break from writing lately. For one thing I've had other stuff that I wanted to get written and then for the past couple of days I've been feeling like the stock market – in a decline. But the big thing has been that there hasn't been that much I wanted to write about. I wasn't feeling great when I watched Dance Wars: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann but that was the least of the reasons I had for not reviewing this. Once you got past the words "It stinks" there isn't that much more to say. Oh wait, maybe there is. Let's try this: "it was like a non-kosher hot dog – too much filler and not enough meat." But you can see where I'm going with this. You can tell people how bad a show like this is, but unlike a scripted show it is hard to give a deep explanation of why you hate it but there's no depth to it.

Which brings us to the Parents Television Council. I've been giving the PTC a free ride for the past couple of weeks because they seemed to have taken some time off and hadn't been reviling new shows for a while. Oh they went on about how TV writers all hate religion and provided figures to prove it (of course they compiled the figures of "anti-religious" items themselves using their self-defined criteria), how TV was now making disgusting Christmas specials like Shrek The Halls, and hailed Hollywood for eliminating smoking from movies and TV – while not so subtly attacking a favourite PTC target, Seth McFarlane ("It is inevitable that some TV programs would defy this positive trend. It is equally inevitable that the shows doing so would both come from the pen of Seth MacFarlane."). But for the most part the PTC has been quiet and hasn't aggravated me enough to bother to write about them...until now. So who does the PTC hate this week?

Dianne Keaton, ABC, CBS and the Second Circuit: On January 15^th Dianne Keaton appeared live on Good Morning America and in the course of an interview with Dianne Sawyer about the new movie Mad Money, Keaton used the dreaded "F"-word. Almost immediately the PTC was in action with a complaint form letter that members in the Eastern Time Zone could cut, paste and fill out and send to the FCC and presumably their members of Congress to protest the comment. It is specific to the Easter Time Zone of course because unlike a lot of network programming Good Morning America and the other morning shows are all tape delayed and appear across the country at their appropriate times, which also meant that ABC was able to bleep out the "F"-word in every other time zone. Where CBS comes into the picture is an apparent incident (which I didn't see) on "an episode of 60 Minutes featuring a music video in which several people raise their middle fingers while singing '[Bleeped f-word] the feds.'" In this case the PTC was apparently objecting to the one finger salute although, as I say I have no knowledge of the context of the situation or the actions taken by CBS on it. In the PTC's press statement they claimed "The networks have made weak apologies time and time again for incidents like this, but they steadfastly refuse to take any action to prevent a recurrence. Diane Keaton's 'f-word' on national television and the lack of remorse by ABC that accompanied it cannot go unnoticed. In fact both Ms. Keaton and Ms. Sawyer appeared to be amused by the profanity, making no sincere effort to apologize to the viewers whom they sucker-punched." In fact ABC took action as swiftly as possible to apologize for the incident, which was followed very quickly by an apology from Dianne Keaton. I have to wonder what measures the PTC would have ABC implement? A five, or seven, or ten second tape delay on live programming so that an overworked sound editor could bleep an obscene word? That might be fine if a show like Good Morning America had a reputation for people coming on and cursing, but the very fact that this incident was so newsworthy is an indicator that this isn't the case.

As for the Second Circuit Court, well I'm sure you all will recall that the PTC has made them their pet whipping boys since the court struck down the FCC rulings on "fleeting obscenities" as being ill-defined and overreaching the Commission's mandate. Of course that's not how the PTC sees it. "Thanks to the inexplicable decision of two judges in New York City, the issue of so-called 'fleeting' profanity remains unresolved at the FCC." Well, no, not really. The court's decision was perfectly clear: "the FCC had not adequately, or constitutionally, explained why it changed its mind on the fleeting use of profanity." (Washington Post: June 5, 2007) I believe that this means that pending a decision by the Supreme Court – to which the decision is being appealed, but which has not yet decided to hear the case – the policy should revert to the previous policy which had been in place for at least 50 years. The PTC is using these issues as a clarion call for tighter regulation: "These instances are blatant reminders of why the Supreme Court must grant review of this case and overturn the ridiculous New York court ruling. It's also time for Congress to consider the existing and languishing legislation, sponsored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), that would address the problem." It is entirely possible that the Rockefeller legislation is languishing for a very good reason. Like the question of whether any such law would survive a legal challenge on constitutional grounds given that the Second Circuit's decision was in part based on whether the change in FCC policy could be justified constitutionally. Maybe Congress is wise enough to let this one die at least until after the Supreme Court decides whether or not to hear the case.

Broadcast Worst Of The Week – Ugly Betty: I think that the PTC has decided to elevate Ugly Betty to the level of one of its pet peeves. This is an exalted status, shared by shows like the Seth MacFarlane series, Las Vegas, Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me and a select number of others. In the case of Ugly Betty the reason for this is that the show is one of the series promoted by the Family Friendly Programming Forum as a product of the script development fund and more recently has been honoured with the Forum's Family Television Award as Best Comedy. Presumably this serves as a marker for the PTC, not unlike blood in the water for a shark. The PTC seems to be going out of its way to find something to complain about with this show. Here's what the introduction has to say about the show: "But contrary to what the Forum and ABC-Disney apparently believe, bright settings, colorful costumes, and braces do not automatically make a television show 'family-friendly.'" So what do they find objectionable this time? According to them, the January 10^th episode, "Airing at the top of the Family Hour, the episode featured a character stealing her deceased lover's semen, heavy sexual innuendo, and a mind-boggling scene set in a pornographic video store." And just to "prove" it the PTC not only describes the scene in the video store in great – if heavily slanted – detail but also include a clip of the scene on the web page. This may have been a mistake because you can actually see the scene which is nowhere near as disgusting as what the PTC describes. Here's what the PTC writes (Cliff and Marc are two gay characters in a relationship): "Meanwhile, Cliff and Marc visit the adult section of a video store. They make multiple references to pornographic video titles, including one film entitled 400 Blows – with dialogue making it clear that the film is definitely not the Francois Truffaut classic. Marc announces in disappointment that he sees straight porn, military porn, and shaved porn, but no gay porn. Both are startled when they see Wilhelmina's surrogate Brandy on the cover of one video, dressed as a dominatrix. Before the scene ends, the program's writers take the sexual dialogue to a grotesquely explicit level: Cliff exclaims, 'If she could do that with a ping pong ball, it'll make for an easy delivery.'" A viewing of the clip they provide (and btw does the PTC pay anyone for the rights to use these copyrighted clips – I'm just asking) shows a fairly innocuous scene that only a thorough prude would find "mind-boggling" or "grotesquely explicit." They conclude their review by stating, "If this episode represents the entertainment industry's idea of 'family-friendly content,' the American family has little, if anything, to gain from prime-time broadcast television." In my opinion if the PTC believes that it represents "the American family" then I'm not sure that I want "family friendly programming" that caters to that sort of family.

Cable Worst Of The Week – Nip/Tuck: The PTC is maintaining its ongoing vendetta against the FX series Nip/Tuck. Although the PTC has only just started maintaining an archive of their Cable Worst of the Week posts, I can tell you that Nip/Tuck was named at least five times last year as the worst cable show of the week, and remember, my records on that were incomplete. This time the PTC doesn't even hid behind the pretense of claiming that they are trying to protect Americans who have to "subsidize" this basic cable show with their cable fees, they simply give a listing of the "evil content" (the following is taken directly from the article although I have eliminated specific examples that were included):

• Three scenes/segments containing visual depictions of sexual behavior or activity
  
• Four scenes/segments containing discussions or dialogue about sexual behavior or activity
  
• 23 instances of Foul Language including:
  

  The word "shit" was used six times in this episode. "Asshole" and "screw" were used three times apiece. "Goddamn," "Jesus," (profanely) hell," "piss" and "bitch" were used twice apiece. "Come" was used once.
  

• One scene/segment containing violent content
  

By the way, the "violent content" was apparently a scene of a surgery to remove bone fragments of a suicide bomber from the body of a patient.

It is interesting to note that although it is patently obvious what the people in the sexual scenes are doing, if you are looking for specific uncovered body parts you would be disappointed because they aren't there. Of course for the PTC that doesn't matter any more than what the main content of any show that they "review" is: objectionable words or content – objectionable being defined solely and exclusively by the PTC of course – is the only standard by which a show is to be measured. The percentage of a show that such content occupies doesn't matter either, its very existence is enough to condemn a show.

Misrated – Carpoolers: The PTC continues in its efforts to "prove" that the networks rating their own shows doesn't work. In fact, what they prove to me at least is that the PTC doesn't understand what the ratings are supposed to mean. Take their position on the episode of ABC's comedy Carpoolers which aired on January 8^th. This show was rated as TV-PG DL. At the TV-PG level the "D" stands for "suggestive dialogue (mature themes)" while the "L" stands for "mild coarse language"; the "S" descriptor, which the PTC would add to the rating, indicates "mild sexual situations" and refers to visual depictions of activities rather than verbal descriptions (which are covered under the "L" descriptor). To understand the importance of this you can probably think of the basic ratings as basic blood types like "A" "B" "AB" and "O". The descriptors are like the various subtypes defined by antibodies in the blood, the most famous of which is the Rhesus or Rh factor that is always included in blood types, for example "A+". For the V-Chip to be an effective tool the ability to differentiate between the various factors is important. Do you block all TV-PG13 shows because you don't want your child to see depictions of sexual situations but are fine with violence, coarse language and suggestive dialogue at that level? Without the descriptors you'd have to and in turn the producers would have no reason not to include such scenes in their programs.

So why does the PTC think this show should get the "S" descriptor? Well I'm not quite sure really. Laird, the divorced playboy of this group of men who share a ride to work every day, finds himself fantasizing about Dorrit, a woman who has been brought in to lead a sex harassment seminar in the workplace. To get close to her, he pretends to be a victim of sexual harassment. His friend and fellow carpooler Aubrey has been appointed office "Harassment Captain" (complete with badge) and is horrified by Laird's scheme. Well let's let the PTC take it from there: "In one particularly non-PG scene, Laird demonstrates a gadget that allows him to watch pornography in the privacy of his office. Laird shows off his extensive collection of Swiss porn. Aubrey is outraged and takes the box away from his office, only to crash into another worker, sending porn flying everywhere. Later, Aubrey confronts Laird about his having crossed out the 'Har' in 'Harassment,' leaving Aubrey with a badge that says 'Ass Captain.' Aubrey tackles Laird and pins his arms behind his back on the floor. As Dorrit walks by she sees the two men struggling. 'It hurts, doesn't it?' demands Aubrey. 'It hurts,' groans Laird, as the two lie on the ground in a compromising position." Compromising position perhaps, but does it come anywhere close to being a "mild sexual situation?" I wouldn't say so, and the PTC apparently either does not have or has lost any rights to show a clip from the show which would undoubtedly show this "filthy" moment.

In another "example" of the "sexualized" content of the episode, Dougie – another member of the carpool – confesses to his wife Cindy that he has "cheated" on her...by seeing a few minutes of some of Laird's pornography involving a "a woman having sex with a donkey" (or at least that's what the PTC says the porn showed). Cindy demands to see who her husband has "cheated" on her with and they go to Laird's house to see his collection of porn. In the end the two of them "decide to make their own pornographic video."

In their conclusion the PTC makes this statement: "In the face of all this sexualized material, one wonders whether the network officials who rated this program TV-PG without an S-descriptor even bothered to watch it. From beginning to end, this episode was chock-full of sexual content highly inappropriate for any child who might have inadvertently been exposed to it – and with the V-Chip unable to block the program due to this misrating, who knows how many children were?" Well let's get into this. The "S" descriptor is quite clearly intended for visual depictions of sexual content. How do I know that? I know that because the "D" descriptor for "suggestive dialogue (mature themes)" exists. And the "D" descriptor is used for this episode. The PTC doesn't give us any example of material that would qualify in any way shape or form as a visual "mild sexual situation" (the boundary for the "S" descriptor) beyond two fully clothed men who "lie on the ground in a compromising position" in one scene. And you know that if they had more than that they'd describe it in excruciating, if highly biased, detail. Yet again the PTC proves that they have little or no grasp on the realities of the TV ratings system.

TV Trends: The FOX Monday Night Schedule: TV Trends is the PTCs weekly editorial in which they tell us what's bad in TV. This time around their target of choice is the FOX Monday night schedule of Prison Break and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Actually it is an attack on most of the network's lineup that isn't the reality and game shows that the PTC loves to trumpet as the "Best Shows Of The Week," shows like Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader, Don't Forget The Lyrics, and even American Idol. The PTC says "At these times, parents seeking entertainment safe and suitable for the entire family couldn't do better than tune into Fox."

However then the PTC attacks FOX: "But the rest of the time, they couldn't possibly do worse. On the same nights that American Idol airs, Fox also features the gruesome and graphic forensic crime program Bones and the often sexually-charged medical drama House. The timing of these programs varies; sometimes they have been aired after Idol, and at other times before it. On Saturday the network airs the long-running reality programs Cops and America's Most Wanted. While these do not sink to the levels of many scripted crime dramas, neither would most parents find them appropriate for young children. And at 9:00 p.m. ET Sunday nights, Fox tops off its parade of perverse programming with Seth MacFarlane's twin titans of trashy TV, Family Guy and American Dad." Well setting aside the fact that House and Bones can't actually air on the same night as a two hour American Idol, not to mention the claims that the former is "often sexually-charged" while the latter is "gruesome and graphic" the PTC may have a point that the shows may be unsuitable for younger audiences. Perhaps that's why there's a tuner on your TV set so that you don't have to watch one network every day for the rest of your natural life. But that's not the focus of the PTC's attack in this article of course. The focus is "the brutal drama Prison Break" and the "ultra-violent science-fiction drama Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles."

Now I have gone on record in the past as saying that it is my opinion that Prison Break is not a show that is suitable for the first hour of Prime Time, the period that the PTC chooses to label "The Family Hour" even though the actual Family Hour concept has not existed since the 1970s. The violence is graphic, although inevitably the PTC description of it emphasizes the violent aspects of the show at the expense of any redeeming storylines or content. Thus the PTC takes extreme delight at disapproving of violence and torture while graphically describing it: "in the January 14^th episode viewers saw the innocent Michael confined to a sweatbox; inmate Whistler tied up and roughly interrogated; and, most disturbingly of all, the character Gretchen is strapped to a chair and waterboarded – plastic wrap is stretched over her face and a hose is turned on her, thus simulating drowning. As Gretchen thrashes about in agony, Michael and Whistler are forced to listen to the torture. (Perhaps Fox feels that, with 24's strike-imposed hiatus, Prison Break must keep up Fox's tradition of depicting vicious torture.) Additionally, viewers saw Gretchen stabbing, kicking and shooting a man dead; prisoners Octavio and Bellick fighting in a barbarous boxing match to the death, with Bellick hitting Octavio in the face, then in the groin, their inmate audience cheering as Octavio falls to the ground with a blood-covered face, apparently dead; and the sadistic T Bag kicking the drug-addicted Mahone while saying, 'When you're up all night and diarrhea is running down both your legs and vomit is in your hair, don't come crawling back.'" By the standards that the PTC itself applies to programs this very description would probably make the PTC's own site "not family friendly".

Much of the article is saved for the first episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. There is an extensive description of a dream (nightmare) sequence in the pilot: "police aim their pistols at Sarah and her teenage son John, pushing them into police cars; Sarah punches a policeman in the back seat of the squad car, apparently breaking his nose; a Terminator cyborg pulls a sawed-off shotgun from his jacket and begins shooting into the car, it being clear from the mayhem that police officers have been killed; Sarah grabs an officer's gun and shoots the cyborg, and then screams as the cyborg guns down John, whose body sprawls on the pavement with a bloody chest wound." That is followed by this statement: "The entire scene proves to be a dream; but this would be little consolation to a horrified child who inadvertently witnessed the scene." Of course the PTC failed to explain how a child could have "inadvertently" witnessed the scene. I am tempted to go into my best Ebenezer Scrooge voice (Alistair Sim version please) to say, "Are there no parents? Are there no guardians? Is there no V-Chip?" But of course in the PTC's universe parents and guardians are inattentive so that children watch whatever they please and the V-Chip exists only to persuade Congress that the networks are making an effort which they then immediately undermine by misrating their shows. Because in the real world most parents have probably seen the Terminator movies and know that anything bearing that movie's title and featuring lead characters from the show will probably be violent and unsuitable for children. And people who have TVs with V-Chips (and who know how to use them) who also have children who might be "horrified" by the violence of any TV-PG or PG-13 series with a "V" (for violence) descriptor would also be prevented from seeing it.

This of course is not the end of the catalogue of violent content from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles that PTC lists. These include teacher who turns out to be a cyborg gunning down a high school class that includes John Connor and a fight between the evil Terminator and the good Terminator played by Summer Glau. "The two robots in human flesh engage in multiple hyper-violent battles, choking and beating one another, throwing each other through walls, shooting and electrocuting one another, and the like." The go through a similar exercise in describing the second episode which aired at the show's regular time on Monday night, concluding that litany of excesses with the following: "The episode ends with a truly gruesome depiction of the evil Terminator's robot body walking about, with a severed human head placed atop its torso as a disguise."

The PTC concludes its argument with this statement: "And so, parents now have one more night of the week during which they must beware of the Fox network's propensity for violence. It is a pity that Fox, or another broadcast network, does not take advantage of its prime-time opportunity to provide safe, family-friendly programming every night of the week…because there is a huge, untapped – and increasingly frustrated – audience hungering for it." I find this statement very hard to take for a number of reasons. First, I find it objectionable because despite their perpetual complaining about the content of programming on television – and at all hours of the day and night, not just the Family Hour as they persist in calling it, the PTC has done nothing to actually develop a family friendly show of their own. For another thing, despite their claim that there is a "huge, untapped – and increasingly frustrated – audience hungering" for "safe, family-friendly programming every night of the week" the fact is that the one new scripted dramatic series that meets the PTC's criteria to be considered totally family friendly – Life Is Wild on The CW on Sunday night – has an audience so miniscule that on any given night it is smaller than the membership of over 1 million that the PTC claims to have. If indeed there is such a huge untapped audience hungering for family friendly programming they should be flocking to this show and the fact is that they aren't. It's a shame that they aren't, not just because I think it is a good and worthy show, but also because while I believe that there is a place for a show like Prison Break and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, there should also be a place in the TV schedule for a show like Life Is Wild. Not every show has to appeal to the same audience and not every night has to be made up entirely of "safe, family-friendly programming." They say we are (or were before the strike) in the midst of a new Golden Age of Television. If we are (were) it is because of a diversity of content of a like that hasn't been seen since TV was new and people were trying different ideas. Notions like the PTC's demand that networks provide "safe, family-friendly programming every night of the week" will strangle that diversity.

A Triumph Of Quality

We are coming to the end of the twelfth rotation of The Amazing Race on CBS, and it is my sincere opinion that someone at that network deserves an ass-whuppin'. It's probably Les Moonves but I'm sure he has lackeys who take that sort of punishment for him. But the person who not only gave the green light to Viva Laughlin but decided that there should be only one season of The Amazing Race produced, and that one season should be shortened by having fewer competitors than previous seasons, well that person deserves an ass-whuppin' so severe that he won't even think of sitting down until this time next season – if then. CBS has ordered a thirteenth season of The Amazing Race but what I find to be worthy of an ass-whuppin' is that the next season of this quality unscripted show isn't already in the can ready to dominate network TV starting this February. Instead we will be subjected to Big Brother and a show about people taking lie detector tests.

Now you know that I love The Amazing Race, and you know how much I love The Amazing Race. So I know that you will probably take a statement from me that The Amazing Race is the best reality competition show on TV with a grain of salt about the size of the Windsor Ontario salt mines. So I'm not going to say it. Instead Canwest News Service TV writer Alex Strachan is. This is what he said in his
Fine Tuning: Sunday column which appeared in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix among other places:

The Amazing Race is one of the most watched, highest rated and most admired reality competition programs on TV – more popular with Canadians than it is with Americans, where it has already been renewed for 12 seasons. And small wonder.

The madcap race-around-the-world is more than just a time filler for a dark winter's night. It's a reminder – an exciting and splendidly visual reminder – that there's a wonderful and mysterious world out there. And a reminder, too, that even though we may be suddenly transplanted into in a different culture in a different land, many of us remain who we are – for better of [sic] for worse.

Part Around the World in 80 Days, part MTV's Real World and all adrenaline rush, The Amazing Race can be jaw-droppingly good. It can be both maddening and emotionally uplifting, frustrating and beautiful, and at times – this season, especially – inspiring.

The Amazing Race was a product of the post-Survivor reality competition boom, which spawned such shows as Murder In Small Town X on FOX, The Mole on ABC and Lost on NBC. The latter two series, along with The Amazing Race had two things in common. The three shows traded on exotic locales and they all were victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I know it sounds callous to put reality TV shows on a par with the human victims of that tragedy (including the winner of FOX's Murder In Small Town X, a New York City paramedic), but I think it's an accurate assessment. The three shows featured travel to exotic locales at a time when a lot of Americans thought that the world away from their own shores was too dangerous a place to explore. The ratings for Lost soon consigned it to TV's ash heap, while ABC took The Mole (which was in its second series) off the air and eventually burned it off as a summer replacement. Only CBS stuck it out with The Amazing Race, if you can call bouncing the show to every night except Saturday (and Season Six was supposed to run on Saturday nights before sanity prevailed), and spending two seasons as a summer series "sticking with it." The show has endured such indignities as Allison from Big Brother 4 and of course the Family Edition in season eight (which had one contestant lamenting "Why are we going to Phoenix, Arizona for? I want to go to New Zealand!" It was a sentiment echoed by viewers. Fortunately subsequent seasons have erased that taint. In the process the show has won the Emmy for Outstanding Reality-Competition Series in each of the five years that the award has been presented. It has beaten such shows as American Idol (which was responsible for the delay of season 4), Survivor, The Apprentice, Dancing With The Stars, and Project Runway. It is an amazing record and I don't know of any other series that has won Emmys as outstanding program in any other category for five straight years.

The secret to any reality-competition show is casting and this season of the show has had perfect blend of people, the right mix of people we can hate like Nate & Jen, or Ari & Staella (but mostly Ari), people we hope and even expect will win (TK & Rachel; Kynt & Vyxsin), and even people we can be surprised by (Nick & Don; Christina & Ronald). While we may expect the younger and fitter T.K. & Rachel to win, there's a sense of hope that Nick and his plucky and at times abrasive grandfather Don will surprise us, or that the sometimes domineering sales executive Ronald will complete his growing realization about how intelligent and resourceful (not to mention very attractive) daughter Christina is by crossing the finish line first. For me that's a key aspect of the show. It is objective not subjective. People aren't eliminated because other competitors viewed them as a threat, they are eliminated because they finish a stage in last place. And the winner of the show will not be the people who are the most popular among viewers regardless of actual ability. The partnership that wins The Amazing Race will be the one that has surmounted all the obstacles in their path – those created by the show's producers and those that are a result of the nature of international travel – and finished ahead of all the others. There's no manipulating, no alliances and backstabbing, there's just the need to finish ahead of your opponents, and I for one like that.

It is arguable that this season has been the one in which the American TV audience has really rediscovered The Amazing Race in terms of ratings. Checking the Nielsen network ratings, as reported at TVSquad.com (you're going to have to go through a number of unrelated posts to find the weekly "Top 20 Network Shows" reports) The Amazing Race has finished in the Top Twenty in the Nielsen ratings in eight of the ten weeks it has been on the air, and on two of those occasions it has finished in the Top Ten. Credit or blame what you wish – the Writers Strike (although the only shows in The Amazing Race's timeslot that are scripted are the FOX animated shows, and The CW's Life Is Wild) for the dearth of scripted product; NFL Football overruns which push back 60 Minutes (but not every week); 60 Minutes itself which serves up a ready-made if aging audience (which obviously hated Viva Laughlin) – the fact of the matter is that people are watching the show. I personally attribute it to the American public finally realizing what Alex Strachan stated in his article on the show:

There's a reason why The Amazing Race has won five consecutive Emmy Awards, over competition like Survivor, American Idol and Dancing with the Stars.

It's more than just entertainment. In a good season – and this season has been one of its best to date -- The Amazing Race is both a white-knuckle rollercoaster ride and an affirmation of life. It's feel-good TV programming at its best, reality TV made the way reality TV ought to be."

Season 12 of The Amazing Race finishes on Sunday night after 60 Minutes on CBS and at 8 p.m. Eastern (7 p.m. Central – which is where I am) on CTV in Canada.

The Things I Do For You

Like on Thursday night. I subjected myself to a tape of the second episode of Cashmere Mafia.

Now it is absolutely clear that I am the wrong audience for this show. For one thing I pee standing up and for another my taste in porn features breasts rather than abs. In other words, I am a straight guy. There are certain shows that I find more enjoyable than others. I have never watched October Road or What about Brian? I will admit to watching Sex And The City which may sound like it goes against my stated tastes but I watched primarily in hopes that Cynthia Nixon would show off her goodies, something that happened far too infrequently to be really tolerable. I had to settle for Kim Catrall getting her clothes off in just about every episode. Does it hurt my "man-cred" to say that after a while (a very long while) seeing Kim's boobs and ass and whatever else HBO let her expose got sort of boring? One thing is for sure, I never ever watched for Sarah Jessica Parker. Frankly I could care less about Carrie Bradshaw and Big; for me Chris Noth will always be Detective Mike Logan not the guy who was the obsession of a chain smoking writer. And I don't even really like Law & Order (however I am a fan of Law & Order: Criminal Intent). Now I know that whole thing sounds sexist and shallow and what have you, but I'm willing to bet that if you asked most straight guys who watched Sex And The City they'd give you similar reasons for watching.

I'm getting off track here. I'm supposed to be telling you what I thought about Cashmere Mafia. The thing is that the two shows share a lot in common. Sex And The City was about four best friends who were in influential positions in New York City. It was about their lives and loves and about the fact that when you're a woman and have a best friend she's there to hold your hair when you throw up, and presumably that that's more than you can say for any man except the right one. Cashmere Mafia is about four best friends who are in influential positions in New York City. It's about their lives and their loves and the bond that they share that is bigger than anything that they could share with a man except maybe the right man and even then probably not. I think you're beginning to see a pattern here. Now Cashmere Mafia doesn't have the nudity and frequently dropped "F-bombs" that Sex And The City did but after all this is broadcast television. No vomiting and hair holding yet either, but it is only the second episode.

So who are these women and (almost as important) who do they match up with in Sex And The City. First up there's Mia Mason (Lucy Liu), who probably matches up with Carrie. She's just become the big boss at a major publishing company. All it has cost her was her relationship with her boyfriend in the first episode. He proposed to her at the start of that episode, was pitted against her in a competition to get the big job (and lost), and at the end of the episode decided that she wanted a more traditional wife. I'm just guessing but he probably wouldn't have been as quick to dump her if he had the corner office and she was his underling. Then there's Caitlin Dowd (Bonnie Sommerville). I'd say that Caitlin is this show's answer to Miranda. Like Miranda she's absolutely focused in her work life – she's in advertising while Miranda was a lawyer – but she's confused and almost neurotic in her personal life. Of course Caitlin's confusion is a bit deeper than Miranda's – she finds herself attracted to another woman for the first time ever (Alicia, played by Lourdes Benedicto) which naturally enough comes as a surprise after thirty some years. Zoe Burden (Frances O'Connor) is this show's answer to Charlotte. She's a working mother of two kids who are in a tony private elementary school, totally devoted to them and her stay at home architect husband Eric (Julian Ovenden) and is trying to balance work and home, with less than perfect results. In other words she's trying to have it all. Finally we have Juliet Draper (Miranda Otto). She had it all – or thought she did. Then she found out that her husband Davis (Peter Hermann) is not just having an affair (he'd had them before but kept them tastefully out of town) but was having an affair with someone they both knew. At a black tie event she told him that her revenge would be to have an affair of her own with one of the men in that room.

So there you have the set up. The second episode, which is in most shows is probably closer to what the series as a whole is going to be like, went something like this. As in the first episode there were four story lines that came together because of the relationship between the women. I just wish that most of the individual stories weren't absolutely trite. Take Mia's for example. Having won the big job with the corner office at the expense of her personal life, the big boss tells here she has to find new creative director, which means firing the existing creative director who just happens to be the guy who'd first hired her for the company. Naturally she puts it off and puts it off and then manages to fire him in the most public and embarrassing (to her) manner possible. It sounds familiar because it is – I had seen exactly the same storyline in an episode of How I Met Your Mother a couple of weeks ago, and it was old and trite then (but funnier than when Lucy Liu did it). Caitlin's story was almost as bad. The core of it was that she decided to explore her feelings for Alicia by going out on a date with her only to be accosted by a former (male) lover just when they were sharing a hot kiss. Caitlin's embarrassment at the situation and not immediately blowing the guy off somehow drove Alicia off. This in turn led to a reconciliation in which Caitlin admitted that she sucked at relationships but was ready to try with Alicia. About the only thing new about this story line was that Alicia turned around and told Caitlin that they weren't at the "R-word" stage yet, they hadn't even had a complete first date. And I'm not altogether sure that Sex And The City didn't try that during Samantha's involvement with a lesbian (played by Sonia Braga). Juliet's storyline was slightly more original, but only because of her circumstances. Juliet is frightened about getting a date after so long "off the market" so her friends help her out. That's standard sitcom fare and about the only thing that makes it even a little more original is that Juliet isn't divorced or widowed, she's still married to her husband – but it's the same thing because he's a cheating rat-bastard. Juliet's friends help her by picking out the man she should have her affair with (an old friend of the groups from business school and who Juliet had been attracted to back then). Caitlin gives her an extra push by livening up her look courtesy of the hair and makeup crew on an advertising shoot that Caitlin's working on. The transformation is, quite frankly, spectacular and manages to perk up her husband's interest. But Juliet seems determined on getting her "revenge" and goes to meet the man. Naturally it turns out that all those years ago he was attracted to her as she had been to him and the only thing standing in their way back then was her then boyfriend, now cheating rat-bastard husband.

About the only storyline that really showed any originality was Zoe's. She confronts the "stay at home mom from hell" who has become close with stay at home dad Eric. She seems relentless in needling Zoe about her lifestyle choice, pointing out that only three parents can go on a planned field trip with the class, implying of course that Zoe is so busy with her career that she didn't know enough to sign up weeks in advance. Even worse was when she bought Zoe a "working mom teddy bear" – complete with a Bluetooth headset – that said "not now, I'm on a conference call." It rattles Zoe, and when the woman suggests that she and her husband get together with Zoe and Eric for dinner in a few days, Zoe feels pressured to agree. It turns out to be a ruse – the woman's husband is away on business and just Zoe is arriving – late – the seemingly staid stay at home mom propositions Eric. Once Zoe sits down the woman tells Eric that she wants her him to design a new kitchen for her (and the suggestion of coverage in Architectural Digest as a sweetener to get Eric to accept), as cover. Once they get home, Eric makes it clear to Zoe that he knew exactly what was going on and that unlike Juliet's husband Davis, he wasn't interested in fooling around with another woman. The next day before the field trip Zoe makes her victory complete (her triumph included the other excluded parents and a Grey Lines double decker touring bus and the words "not now, I'm on a conference call."). The storyline isn't that original really, the harried working woman faced with a threat to her marriage from someone who doesn't spend all of their time working, that is seemingly in her imagination but which turns out to be all too real, but there is something about the way that the character triumphs that somehow brings something new to the table.

As you can tell, I was less than impressed with this whole thing. It isn't the acting; for the most part it seems quite good based on what they're given to work with. Lucy Liu has more than a little comedic ability of course, and I was quite taken with Frances O'Connor. Miranda Otto was of particular note when she was transformed from the "ice queen" who was trying marriage counselling with her husband Davis, to the newly revealed "hot babe" ready for vengeance sex and capable of attracting not only a prospective lover but also the wandering eye of her husband. The only one I really felt ambivalent about was Bonnie Sommerville. I just don't feel anything special about her.

No, the discontent I'm feeling is that this whole show just feels like a retread of other things. Darren Starr seems to be quite blatant in trying to create a broadcast-friendly version of Sex And The City, right down to giving the women a regular hangout table in a bar. (That location, one of the few time all four were physically together in the episode, had a couple of cute moments; when the three were trying to pick out a lover for Juliet, and Caitlin revealing her possible change in orientation which led to Mia and Zoe revealing their own experimentation with same sex sex.) I could probably accept that, but what I have too much difficulty in accepting is the way in which the storylines seemed recycled. There seemed to be little or no attempt, depending on the storyline, to turn those elements into something with even the vaguest hint of originality. In truth I expected something better from Darren Starr. From now on I think I'll stick to CSI: New York. But then I may be missing something – after all I'm someone who pees standing up, whose preference in porn features breasts not abs.

On The Twelfth Day Of Christmas

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me....twelve Fearful Forecasts.

Normally I would say twelve fearless forecasts. I learned long ago that the trick with predicting the future is to be as vague as possible in making your predictions so that after the fact you can form the prediction to fit the facts. Either you do that or to come up with something so blatantly obvious that no one could possibly miss getting it right. Take this one for example, from last year: "I predict that the biggest housecleaning at the Upfronts in May will occur at The CW, with new series being created to try to create an identity of its own for the network rather than that of the two parent webs as well as build ratings. It will succeed in the first, not so much in the second." I pretty much nailed that one but it was patently obvious that The CW was going to have to cancel many of the series that they put on the air last season. It was equally obvious that those changes would give the network an identity that was more its own than it had in the first year. And in all honesty there was little or no chance that the network would make significant gains in the ratings. I had a pretty good record last year following those simple rules.

Ah but this year – this year you have the thrice damned Writers Strike, and while I support the writers 110%, it makes it hard to predict the future. I mean take a prediction about the Oscars. I can make a prediction that they'll be boring and generate complaints that they go on too long – that's a perennial one that you can make every year and I usually do – but how do you make that sort of prediction when you don't know whether the Academy Awards will be given on the scheduled date, if the Writers will still be on strike, if they'll grant a special waiver for the broadcast if they do go on the scheduled date and they are still on strike, and if anyone except the six Moguls and the Below the Line workers represented by IATSE will actually show up if they do and they are. I mean you can see the problems for wannabe Carnacs. Still, I've got my crystal ball out of hock and am sitting yogi like before it and with a growing sense of trepidation I look deep, deep into its depths to predict....THE FUTURE!

1. I predict that the Super Bowl will run far outside of the time slot that FOX will allocate for it, to the point where most of the episode of whatever show the network is planning to run following the game will run outside of prime time in most of the United States. Despite this only half the people in the United States will complain about the game being too long and they weren't watching it anyway. (This is one of the "perennials" I mentioned earlier. In fact I just cut and pasted it from last year's list.
   
2. I predict that the first quarter profits for the five networks will go down slightly despite the fact that they don't have to pay for those nasty old writers and for actors and such. The advertisers will start demanding give backs as ratings decline, but at the moment the networks have enough scripted product available in the form of shows that they held back as mid-season replacements that it won't be huge. But what happens when that material is gone and the nets have to rely on reality series, game shows and news department shows?
   
3. Outside of the established reality programs such as The Amazing Race, American Idol, Big Brother, Hell's Kitchen The Apprentice, and Survivor new reality series brought out by the networks will be abject failures in terms of ratings. Despite this, the networks will run them to the bitter end rather than go back to the negotiating table with the Writers Guild.
   
4. The networks will have greater success with repurposing shows from their various cable networks. There are people who don't watch the USA cable network let alone Showtime.
   
5. The Writers Strike of 2007-08 will last longer than the Writers Strike of 1988. Neither side will be entirely happy with the result but one side will be far happier than the other when it is eventually settled.
   
6. The Parents Television Council will continue to whine, bitch, moan, complain about language, violence, sexual content, and the "fact" that cable subscribers are forced to "subsidize" content that no one wants (despite strong ratings). They will continue to make protests at stockholders meetings imploring companies to not advertise on bad shows and work with the PTC to choose where to spend their advertising dollars. They will continue to insist that the ratings system is a failure and there needs to be an outside board to "correctly" rate shows presumably with considerable input from the PTC. They will continue to crow whenever they agree with an FCC ruling, and insist that the word of the FCC is unappealable when the evil networks take those decisions to court, but will insist that the FCC reverse its position immediately when the PTC doesn't agree with one of their positions. They will continue to send in obscenity complaints to the FCC for material that most sensible people would never regard as filth. The FCC, mindful of being overturned by the Second Circuit Court on the "fleeting obscenities" case will ignore all but the most blatant and obvious transgressions. Which will be nonexistent because networks are, on the whole, too afraid of the FCC's ability to levy fines of $325,000 per station. (This by the way is another one of those "perennials.")
   
7. The 2008 Olympics will be the biggest thing on NBC all year, despite the fact that nothing will be shown live (because the damned foreigners didn't put the Games in the United States where they belong perpetually), the Opening Ceremonies will be totally messed up by Brian Williams and Bob Costas, there will be far too many "up close and personal" pieces profiling (American) athletes. Naturally the only ceremonies that are show will be ones where the USA wins, and the only time some events will be seen is when an American is competing. Meanwhile CBC (and it's various partners) will do a much better job of covering the Olympics by showing events when they happen, regardless of the nationality of the competitors. And they'll do the whole thing – from buying the rights to paying staff, renting locations and housing staff – for a fraction of the total what NBC spent to get the rights. Olympics junkies will flock to border areas where they can see the Canadian coverage and there will be a bump in the purchase of "gray market" Canadian satellite dishes to American households and sports bars. (This is a "biennial" – it is accurate every even numbered year.)
   
8. Despite being named by everybody and their cousin as the best new series of the year, Mad Men will receive no Emmy nominations when the Emmys eventually occur. Also overlooked will be anything on The CW and every show on most basic cable networks regardless of quality.
   
9. Despite the ample opportunity presented by the Writers Strike, Canadian private TV networks will continue to miss the opportunity to expose their product to their domestic audience continuing to adhere to the mantra that Canadians won't watch Canadian shows so why bother.
   
10. Bill O'Reilly will continue to be Keith Olberman's favourite target for calendar 2008, primarily because O'Reilly continues to be such an easy target and he gets so upset when Olberman calls him on something. Why just this weekend Bill O (as Keith O continuously calls O'Reilly) shoved Obama campaign staffer Marvin Nicholson for standing in his way, had the Secret Service intervene, and lied on air about what happened. Olberman probably can't wait to get on the air Monday night. (For the record, I don't see FOX News – it's available but the cable company requires viewers to buy a specific package to get it and I can't be bothered with Bloomberg TV. For some reason that I don't entirely understand – well really I don't understand it at all – I do see MSNBC, and am rapidly becoming an Olberman fan.)
    
11. Despite the concerted (I nearly – and foolishly – said "best") efforts of the US Federal Government and the Television industry, the conversion from analog to digital television in the United States will be screwed up so that there will be a small but vocal number of people whose TV stop receiving signals when the switch-off occurs in February 2009. I mention this now because publicity about the switch-off has already started, and the coupons to buy the converter boxes needed for analogue TVs to receive digital signals are already available.
    
12. Katie Couric will be hosting the CBS Evening News at the end of 2008. I confess that she's gotten better at the job and watch her more often than either Brian Williams or Charlie Gibson. Her ratings will improve although by the end of the year they still won't take the CBS News out of third place, or even close to second place.
    

Bonus Prediction: Election night will be very interesting. (And yeah, for me that's another perennial, no matter what election we're talking about. There's something amazing about watching the votes come in and the results being decided.)

On The Eleventh Day Of Christmas

On the eleventh day of Christmas (plus a few hours), my true love (Television) gave to me....eleven Odds and Ends.

This is basically stuff that doesn't fit into any other category. Well there are a couple that could have been stuffed into lists that I did before but hey, this is my blog and I'll put stuff where I want them so there!

1. Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant: Okay, she's 16 and her mom thinks it's okay if she's living with a 19 year-old guy, and America's national shrink, Dr. Phil thinks that Lynn Spears – who is not only the mother of Jamie-Lynn but also of celebrity train-wreck Britney Spears – is "a great and dedicated mother," who has "her feet squarely and solidly on the ground." But that's not the amazing part of the reaction to Jamie Lynn's pregnancy. The moralists immediately declared her to be an unfit role model for teenage girls and demanding (as these groups do) that her TV show, Zoey 101 be removed from the air. Of course they don't know – or more likely don't care – that the planned final season of the show had already been shot before Spears got pregnant. So there'll be no scenes of a pregnant Zoey (or whatever the character's name is) to corrupt the minds of teenage girls in the USA. For that they'll have to go to school and see the girls in their classes who got pregnant, probably because they haven't had any sex education at school or at home.
   
2. Reality-competition show contestant deaths: Two of them. Rachel Brown, who was a contestant on the second season of Hell's Kitchen was found dead in her home in May 2007, killed by a gunshot wound. The circumstances were under investigation at the time, but as far as I can tell there's been no further determination. She left behind a girlfriend and two cats. Second, Cheryl Kosewicz, the fourth person voted off in the truly awful Pirate Master died on July 27, 2007 – a few days after the show had been cancelled by CBS with the remaining episodes being streamed on the networks InnerTube online service – an apparent suicide. Kosewicz, a 35 year old deputy District Attorney from Sparks, Nevada killed herself two months after her 26 year-old boyfriend. According a post that Kosewicz made on fellow contestant Nessa memir's MySpace webpage about a month before her death, "Truthfully, I've lost the strong Cheryl and I'm just floating around lost. And this frik'n show doesn't help because it was such a contention between Ryan and I and plus its not getting good reviews."
   
3. Sanjaya and Terry Fator: You couldn't get two more different performers. People were stunned and amazed at Sanjaya Malakar's continued presence on American Idol which became a fandom phenomenon for no apparent reason other than he was so bad (I can't comment – I have better things to do than watch American Idol – like just about anything). Or maybe it was the hair. It certainly wasn't any ability as a singer. Meanwhile ventriloquist Terry Fator stunned audiences and the judges on America's Got Talent with his performances which were an amazing mix of ventriloquism, vocal impressions, and actual vocal chops as a singer. In fact about the only person who didn't seem to get the fact that Terry Fator is an amazing performer is comedian Bill Maher who stated in the New Rules segment of his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher on August 24^th, "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." After watching his diatribe on medicine on David Letterman's show the other night, I'm beginning to wonder if Maher (who I liked on his show Politically Incorrect) may be proof that "America Hasn't Got Talent." Or maybe it's just the hair (which has looked like it had enough product to start its own beauty salon).
   
4. Don't Hassle the Hoff: Unless of course you're his daughter. A highly controversial video emerged in May showing Hasselhoff in a drunken stupor trying to eat a hamburger. It was shot by his eldestdaughter in an effort to get him to stop drinking by showing him how he looked when he drank. At the time, Hasselhoff was involved in a custody battle for his two teenage daughters. His visitation rights were suspended. However, some six weeks after the video appeared on YouTube, Hasselhoff won "primary physical custody and full legal custody" of his daughters.
   
5. Hugh Laurie didn't host the Emmy's: Ryan Seacrest, who is about the least important person on American Idol was the host of the 2007 Emmys and he performed just about as well as he does on American Idol. The more interesting thing is that Hugh Laurie, the star of the Fox series House was seriously considered for the hosting job by FOX (which broadcast the Emmys in 2007). Laurie is a multi-talented performer who is not only a dramatic actor but also a comedian and an extremely talented musician. Reportedly FOX executives eventually chose Seacrest because they "felt Seacrest would draw a larger TV audience and because viewers might be confused seeing Laurie in an unfamiliar role." Or even his (real) British accent. And knowing the sort of people that FOX executives believe their audience to be – given some of the shows they put on and many of the shows they take off almost as soon as they debut – they might have been right. But the rest of us lost something special.
   
6. Musical Executives: Kevin Reilly was manoeuvred out his job as President of Network Entertainment at NBC (or as it's known by people outside of NBC, "dying for Jeff Zucker's sins") a few weeks after the 2007 Upfronts. It was also about three months after he signed a new three year contract with NBC. His sin was apparently releasing what some described as a "lacklustre" list of new series for the 2007-08 season. Part of the reason for that may have been the fact that he "could do only half the number of pilots of the other Big Four broadcast networks for the 2007-08 season." Reilly, who had been a champion for such series as Friday Night Lights, Heroes, The Office, My Name Is Earl, and 30 Rock, was replaced by former agent and independent producer Ben Silverman whose shows include Ugly Betty, The Office, and such reality shows as Biggest Loser, Nashville Star, Parental Control, Date My Mom, Blow Out, 30 Days and House of Boateng. About a month after being effectively fired at NBC, Kevin Reilly was named President of Network Entertainment at FOX.
   
7. Most overexposed celebrity: Britney Spears of course. She exposed her scalp, she exposed her hoo-ha, and although this happened just a few days ago (in 2008), she exposed her weak grasp on sanity (or something) when she was involved in a confrontation with police that led to her being taken to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in hysterics. It's a sad situation when Kevin Federline is considered a more suitable parent to have custody of a one and a two year-old. Other candidates included Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Anna Nicole Smith's corpse, and O.J. Simpson. And whose fault is this really? Not the celebrities really but the fans who want to know every detail of their lives and the news editors who pander to those fans.
   
8. Dumb network practice: Well one of many anyway – the mid-season hiatus. The practice of shooting only 22 episodes of most series, combined with the probably excessive emphasis on the three major sweeps periods in November, February and May, and the observation on the part of networks that some shows "don't repeat well" has led in recent years to the practice of taking shows off the air for extended periods of time rather than show them in repeats. The theory is that rather than letting the ratings drop (and possibly not recover) for an extended period of time the show would be taken off the air and something else would run its time slot. I think it can safely be called a disaster. It nearly killed Lost which aired a mere six episodes before the series went on an extended planned hiatus – the six episodes were in theory meant to stand alone – while ABC aired 13 episodes of Day Break starring Taye Diggs, which was meant to run until March 2, 2007. There was a minor problem in that ratings for the show tanked and it was pulled in mid December 2006. However Lost still didn't return immediately, it was kept off the air untilthe beginning of February. The practice did kill Jericho (but see the next item) which was replaced by CBS with the first eleven episodes being shown before the end of November and the final eleven starting in mid-February. In the meantime viewers were supposed to watch a reality show called Armed And Famous about a group of "celebrities" who trained as cops. Meanwhile NBC's game show Deal Or No Deal was running new episodes while FOX was rerunning episodes of Bones. People didn't watch Armed And Famous, and when Jericho returned, people didn't watch it. The audience for Jericho dropped by 25% between the first and second half seasons. Obviously the mid-season hiatus won't be a problem in 2008 – the strike has meant that most shows have run all the episodes they have while others will start in the new year and run their complete run uninterrupted, but the question for a lot of people is whether the networks have learned anything from the experience. I doubt it.
   
9. Nuts to you CBS: That was the response of Jericho fans to the announcement that the series would only run one season. They sent over twenty tons of nuts to CBS as well as flooding the network with letters and emails. The nuts were a reference to the last line in the final episode in which Jake Greene, leading the outnumbered and outgunned defenders of Jericho, Kansas against the forces of a larger town responded to a demand to surrender with General McAuliffe's response to the German demand to surrender Bastogne: "Nuts." Commenting on the situation, CBS president Les Moonves said, "You have to tip your hat to their ability to get attention and make some noise." The campaign had a positive result. CBS first announced that they would "provide closure" for fans (something they wouldn't do for most cancelled series) and later announced an eight episode "mini" season to air as a mid-season replacement with the possibility for more episodes if ratings justified it. The campaign also spawned imitators. Fans of Veronica Mars were encouraged to send Mars Bars and/or marshmallows to The CW before June 15, 2007 to get the network to bring the series back as a mid-season replacement. It didn't work despite the fact that 1400 pounds of Mars Bars (which have been discontinued in the US), Almond Snickers Bars, and Marshmallows were sent to the network. United Hollywood is encouraging fans to send pencils to the six major Hollywood moguls – Les Moonves (CBS), Jeffrey Immelt (NBC/Universal), Rupert Murdoch (FOX), Jeffrey L Bewkes (Time-Warner), Robert Iger (Disney), Sumner Redstone (Viacom) – to pressure them to settle the Writers Strike. At present just over 650,000 pencils have been sent to "The Moguls" and just look at the effect it's had.
   
10. Dumb decision department: Okay I'm reaching for content here (it's late and I'm a day behind), but I think that CBS should get some sort of award for dumb decisions related to the way they handled the hour after 60 Minutes and The Amazing Race. Now I'm biased because I am a huge
    Amazing Race fan who only regrets being a Canadian when I see that the show is looking for new contestants. The show has won the Emmy for Outstanding Reality Competition Series since the category was created, and it finally seemed to find a stable time slot last year in the hour following 60 Minutes. So what happens to the show in the 2007-08 season? Why CBS not only replaced the show with Viva Laughlin but also announced that only one series of The Amazing Race would be run this year and that would have fewer episodes than previous seasons. Karma – being a bitch – rewarded CBS with the cancellation of Viva Laughlin after two episodes (only one of them in the time slot), the Writers Strike, and the show has finished in the Nielsen top ten in two of the past four weeks (and one of those weeks the show wasn't on the air because of the Survivor finale). Another season has officially been ordered though there is no indication of when it will air.
    
11. Blog comment that angered me most: Now I really am reaching, but this comment still gets me angry. It's also Amazing Race related. In response to the article I posted on the Racers in the current season of The Amazing Race which featured Kate and Pat, a lesbian couple who are also members of the Episcopal clergy, I got this "lovely" comment from "John 3:16: "Homosexuals posing as and claiming to be God's people?!... Leave it to the pawns at CBS to promote a lifestyle that is offensive and straight from the gates of hell." Except from obvious commercial spam I don't censor comments but I was sure tempted to that time.
    

On The Tenth Day Of Christmas

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love (Television) gave to me...ten dead people.

Yeah, it's that time in the awards show....sorry....the list of lists that my 12 Days Of Christmas posts really are, to do the obituary montage. Now obviously there were a lot more than ten prominent TV people who left us in calendar 2007, and if you want a far more complete list that I am going to provide, check out TV Squad and my good friend "Tele-Toby's" great blog Inner Toob.

So what am I doing with this list? Basically I have picked out ten people who, for one reason or another, have either had great significance for me in my life as a TV viewer or for one reason or another were (in my oh so humble opinion) towering figures in the history of the medium. I'll try to give some explanation but I will tell you right now, inclusion on this list is extremely arbitrary and is in no particular order.

Charles Lane (January 26, 1905-July 9, 2007): One of the great grouchy old men, whether it was in Frank Capra's movies, working with his good friend Lucille Ball on a number of her films and TV shows, or as the prototypical flint-hearted businessman, Homer Bedloe on the TV series Petticoat Junction, Charles Lane was one of the great character actors. Primarily known on TV for his comedy work he was equally comfortable in dramatic parts, particularly later in life. He was a founding member of both the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Honoured at the TVLand Awards on his 100^th birthday, he stated "In case anyone's interested, I'm still available!" Apparently someone called because his last IMDB credit is as the narrator in a 2006 animated short, The Night Before Christmas.

Tom Snyder (May 12, 1936-July 29, 2007): One of my favourite talk show hosts, in part because he was an involving (and involved) conversationalist. You usually got the sense that he was at least interested in his guest and unlike Larry King (who Snyder apparently had some animosity towards) you knew that Tom actually read the books. He could bear right in on a guest when necessary or at other times just let them talk. You could tell when Tom really liked a guest. One of the best things that David Letterman did when he came to CBS from NBC was to put Snyder (who had been replaced by Dave at NBC in 1981) on after him. It was joy to just listen to him talk to people but in the opinion of CBS at least the time for his type of talk show had passed and I at least think that television is the worse for it.

Verity Lambert (November 27, 1935-November 22, 2007): The first woman to become a producer at the BBC, and later headed her own production company, Cinema Verity, she will forever be linked with the first series that she ever produced at the BBC – Doctor Who. In fact she passed away one day before the forty-fourth anniversary of the debut of the series.

Merv Griffin (July 6, 1925-August 12, 2007): Merv Griffin was one of the titanic figures of the Television industry. The former big band singer would have been numbered among the most memorable figures in the history of the medium just for his landmark talk show, which ran mostly in the afternoons, except for an unhappy three year period when his show ran on CBS in the late night time slot opposite Johnny Carson. It was after the CBS debacle that he took his show to syndication with Metromedia where it ran until 1984. For most of this time Merv's own production company was creating game shows, of which the two most famous are Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. Griffin sold his production company to Columbia Pictures Television in 1984 for $250 million, although he continued to dabble in Television, most recently creating the syndicated game show Merv Griffin's Crosswords, which debuted after his death.

William Hutt (May 2, 1920-June 27, 2007): Though probably best (or only) known to American readers for his performance as Charles Kingman in the third season of the series Slings And Arrows, a generation of Canadians were riveted by his performance as Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, in the 1974 adaptation of Pierre Berton's National Dream. He actually did relatively little film or TV work, but was a fixture at Ontario's Stratford Shakespeare Festival from its beginning in 1953 until 2005. He was recognised as one of Canada's greatest actors of the last half of the 20^th Century.

Charles Nelson Reilly (January 13, 1931-May 27, 2007): Best known on television as one of the regular panellists on Match Game where he regularly crossed wits with Brett Somers (who also passed away in 2007), he was in fact a talented actor, stage director and raconteur. The first time I remember seeing Charles Nelson Reilly on TV was in the TV version of The Ghost And Mrs. Muir as Claymore Gregg, one of three roles for which he was nominated for an Emmy, which preceded his time on Match Game. He developed a close friendship with Burt Reynolds and was a frequent guest director at the actor's dinner theatre in Jupiter, Florida. Reilly showed his dramatic abilities playing Jose Chung in an episode of the X-Files and on its sister show Millenium. Although he was long a gay icon on TV he didn't actually reveal his sexual orientation until his one man stage show Save It for the Stage: The Life of Reilly in the 1990s.

Tom Poston (October 17, 1921-April 30, 2007): A fixture, along with Louis Nye and Don Knotts on the old Steve Allen Show Tom Poston was a serious dramatic actor (he played opposite Jose Ferrer in Cyrano de Bergerac he would come into his own as a comedic actor on television and the movies. He was a regular on a number of game shows of the 1960s including What's My Line. In 1975 he appeared on his friend Bob Newhart's series The Bob Newhart Show along with Suzanne Pleshette, who he would eventually marry in 2001. Later he would be a regular on Newhart as the easily befuddled George Utley. He was in high demand as a supporting actor in both comedic and dramatic roles until shortly before his death.

Bob Carroll Jr. (August 12, 1918-January 27, 2007): Writer and sometimes producer, he forged a professional relationship with Madelyn Pugh that lasted for 50 years. The pair's relationship with Lucille Ball was shorter lived only because Lucy died on them. Along with Jess Oppenheimer they created Ball's 1948 radio series My Favourite Husband, and followed her to TV to write most of the episodes of I Love Lucy. Later they would write for The Desi-Lucy Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Ball's last series Life With Lucy (an unfortunate project for all involved). They also wrote the story for the Lucille Ball-Henry Fonda movie Yours, Mine and Ours, which was remade in 2006.

Yvonne DeCarlo
(September 1, 1922-January 8, 2007): Although she is best known today for playing Lilly Munster on The Munsters, the actual amount of television work that she did was quite limited. She had been very popular in films playing sexy exotic roles in 'B' movies (like Princess Scheherezade in The Desert Hawk) under contract at Universal. The Munsters was her only series though she did a number of guest appearances including the first episode of Bonanza. She took the role of Lilly Munster to pay the medical expenses of her then husband, Bob Morgan, a stuntman who had been severely injured during the making of the movie How The West Was Won (that was also the reason why John Wayne hired her for another of her better known roles these days, Mrs. Warren in the comedy western McLintock. Not bad for a little girl from Vancover B.C.

Tammy Faye Messner (March 7, 1942-July 20, 2007): No one personified the excesses of the Evangelical Christian movement of the 1980s more than Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and in the case of Tammy Faye there was never anyone involved in that situation who was more of an innocent victim. Unlike her husband Jim Bakker she was never tried or even charged of involvement in the financial improprieties that brought down the PTL Club, the organization that they headed. She had always had a far more tolerant attitude towards homosexuals than most evangelical religious figures, and she revealed a sense of humour over her own excesses – mainly makeup and her propensity to weep at the least excuse. She appeared on Larry King Live a number of times during her final illness, the last time the day before she died.

On the Ninth Day Of Christmas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On The Eighth Day Of Christmas

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

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

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

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