The State of a Striking Tube
Normally I would have weighed in by mid-October on how the new fall television season is shaping up, what's hitting, what's missing, and so on. Well, I've had the luxury of time this year because of course the writers are on strike. There's no chance of me falling behind on new episodes and shows because right now, there aren't any. We're in a lull right now between the shows that launched in the fall running out of fresh episodes and the shows that the network held back until 2008 (wise move and I'll say more about that later).
First of all, for those of you who are new to reading these State of the Tube Addresses that I give each year, this will be my 5th one of these, and I do not profess to be a "qualified" television critic. In other words, I find stupid things funny, whereas most TV critics would wonder why those things were even on television. One thing I am now that I was not last year is one semester into grad school as a Media Studies student. Really, all that means is I've taken a class on television criticism and I can use big fancy terms like "audience fragmentation" to explain why things are as they are... I can but I won't. Most importantly, when I write about TV, I only write about the shows and topics that interest ME... because this is MY blog. So without further ado, State of the Tube 2007...
We start on Sunday nights because that's the first day on the calendar (duh). Actually there really isn't much to watch on this particular night of the week, because I'm not really into crime dramas like "Cold Case" and I think you can guess without much effort that I don't watch "Desperate Housewives". Ergo, there's "The Simpsons" on Fox at 8, then hope for a second "Simpsons" at 8:30, then "Family Guy" at 9; still the funniest show on television. I especially have to applaud Seth MacFarlane for his 100th episode special where he primarily interviewed people who hated the show. As far as the rest of the Fox Sunday lineup, "King of the Hill" got old YEARS ago. I was a fan the first few seasons but really there's nothing more you can do with that show. As for "American Dad", well I'm a Republican, so I'm not interested in watching 30 minutes of non-stop GOP bashing every Sunday night.
Moving on to Monday nights... "How I Met Your Mother" on CBS at 8:00 is one of the best shows out there. The writing is fantastic, the actors are top-notch, and they continue to pump out fresh takes on the way our social lives operate. The best example was the episode where everyone had their ideal visions of each other "shattered" (appropriately enough, with a glass shattering sound effect). And I actually found myself excited about "Slapsgiving". CBS has struck out once again trying to follow this show with something even approaching funny. "The Big Bang Theory" is as unfunny as "The Class", and probably will meet the same fate as its predecessor: one (season) and done.
A lot of people have trashed "Heroes" for the way the second season unfolded, and I will admit it wasn't quite as good, but it wasn't enough to drive me away either. When you start with as good a first season as this show had, it's natural to have a sophomore slump. I still don't get the point of Maya (and I was a little disappointed that they chose to kill off Niki instead of her in the finale), and it almost seemed like they wanted to write an "ending" to the season due to the impending strike but they were ambivalent about it. I know the original plan was to have a cliffhanger followed by "Heroes: Beginnings" where the audience would be introduced to new heroes and get the chance to vote on who got to join the regular show when it returned. I get the feeling that the strike messed up a lot of good ideas.
The breakout show on Tuesday nights (in my opinion) is "Reaper" on the CW. How can you go wrong with Kevin Smith consulting your show? It's a perfect show for people who miss "Buffy the Vampire Slayer": a good mix of comic-book style crime fighting and slapstick slacker humor. There are still a couple of fresh episodes left, so make sure you jump on that one. "Bones" and "House" are both on Tuesday nights on Fox... two good shows that I don't watch often enough. Maybe the strike will give me a chance to catch up (more on that forthcoming as well).
My Wednesday night recommendations fall in the 8-9 hour, both on Fox. The prime-time sitcom is not dead, despite the continuing efforts of "According to Jim" to kill it. "Back to You" is a great behind-the-scenes TV news sitcom, following the pedigree of past hits of that genre like "Mary Tyler Moore", and Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton have already proven that they can carry a show. "Til Death" follows at 8:30, and Brad Garrett is hilarious, and it was a stroke of genius casting Eddie Kaye Thomas ("Finch" from the "American Pie" movies) as the next-door newlywed husband/comic foil for Garrett.
Thursday night still means "Smallville" for me, despite what I hear from comic book devotees ("They've done everything they can do and they've totally messed up the Superman story") and non-devotees ("You watch THAT show?") After that, it's over to NBC for two more first-rate sitcoms: "My Name Is Earl" and "30 Rock". Two more shows I need to get caught up on.
Then, it's Friday and Saturday... or as I like to call it, "the black hole of programming". I'm usually watching my Sabres on Friday nights, so that makes it tough to watch anything else, but if I were to watch something, it would be "Friday Night Lights" on NBC. At first, I didn't like it when it debuted last year, but in watching some marathons on Bravo (way to go, corporate synergy), I warmed up to it. Now, of course, I'm behind again. School and pro hockey will do that to you. Meanwhile, the networks have given up on Saturdays... repeats, repeats, repeats.
Of course, most of these shows that I have recommended are out of new episodes or will be shortly due to the writers strike. Now for those of us who have fallen behind on our favorite shows, it wouldn't be a bad thing if the networks actually ran reruns other times than in the black hole on Saturday nights. Unfortunately, when a lot of the shows ran out of fresh episodes, the networks promptly replaced them with REALITY SHOWS. I'm not a fan of reality shows, to put it mildly. I have no interest in what Gordon Ramsay thinks of a restaurant kitchen, I don't care who wins "Dancing With the Stars" (I'm only glad the Spice Girl didn't win), and well... "Clash of the Choirs"? "Dance Wars"? Dueling beauty pageant contestants and their MOMS? NO... THANK... YOU!
Now I do like some of the prime-time game shows, like "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader" and the soon-to-be-returning "Power of 10", but I wouldn't consider myself to be someone who HAS to tune in each week for each new episode.
Fortunately, most of the network shows are online now, so I encourage you all to visit their websites and enjoy these shows on your time, or when you're stuck with nothing but "The Singing Bee" to watch. I'm currently catching up on "Big Shots", a show that ABC has already canceled (yet "Dirty Sexy Money" stays? It's the SAME SHOW, only not as good). As I mentioned in my last entry, I have also discovered "Scrubs" through syndicated reruns. And if you can DVR it or stay up late enough, there's always "Robot Chicken" on Cartoon Network, the funniest 10 minutes on television, because it wouldn't work if it wasn't so fast-paced.
And soon enough, there will be a limited run of other popular shows making their 2007-08 debuts, like "Law and Order" on NBC and "Lost" on ABC. "American Idol" will probably get a huge bounce from the lack of scripted shows when it debuts next month. However, the strike has naturally caused a lot of damage, most notably the fact that there will be no "24" this season or maybe ever again (although it does give Kiefer Sutherland time to serve out that DUI sentence). And there are all the shows that currently sit on hiatus with their destinies unknown, such as... "Cavemen". Yes, I'll say it; I LIKE the show. While other critics congratulate themselves on their self-fulfilling prophecies that the show would tank, I think it was better than a lot of the crap that passes for shows right now.
So here we are... two months deep in the strike with no end and lots of awful reality shows in sight. Praise god and pass the online reruns...
First of all, for those of you who are new to reading these State of the Tube Addresses that I give each year, this will be my 5th one of these, and I do not profess to be a "qualified" television critic. In other words, I find stupid things funny, whereas most TV critics would wonder why those things were even on television. One thing I am now that I was not last year is one semester into grad school as a Media Studies student. Really, all that means is I've taken a class on television criticism and I can use big fancy terms like "audience fragmentation" to explain why things are as they are... I can but I won't. Most importantly, when I write about TV, I only write about the shows and topics that interest ME... because this is MY blog. So without further ado, State of the Tube 2007...
We start on Sunday nights because that's the first day on the calendar (duh). Actually there really isn't much to watch on this particular night of the week, because I'm not really into crime dramas like "Cold Case" and I think you can guess without much effort that I don't watch "Desperate Housewives". Ergo, there's "The Simpsons" on Fox at 8, then hope for a second "Simpsons" at 8:30, then "Family Guy" at 9; still the funniest show on television. I especially have to applaud Seth MacFarlane for his 100th episode special where he primarily interviewed people who hated the show. As far as the rest of the Fox Sunday lineup, "King of the Hill" got old YEARS ago. I was a fan the first few seasons but really there's nothing more you can do with that show. As for "American Dad", well I'm a Republican, so I'm not interested in watching 30 minutes of non-stop GOP bashing every Sunday night.
Moving on to Monday nights... "How I Met Your Mother" on CBS at 8:00 is one of the best shows out there. The writing is fantastic, the actors are top-notch, and they continue to pump out fresh takes on the way our social lives operate. The best example was the episode where everyone had their ideal visions of each other "shattered" (appropriately enough, with a glass shattering sound effect). And I actually found myself excited about "Slapsgiving". CBS has struck out once again trying to follow this show with something even approaching funny. "The Big Bang Theory" is as unfunny as "The Class", and probably will meet the same fate as its predecessor: one (season) and done.
A lot of people have trashed "Heroes" for the way the second season unfolded, and I will admit it wasn't quite as good, but it wasn't enough to drive me away either. When you start with as good a first season as this show had, it's natural to have a sophomore slump. I still don't get the point of Maya (and I was a little disappointed that they chose to kill off Niki instead of her in the finale), and it almost seemed like they wanted to write an "ending" to the season due to the impending strike but they were ambivalent about it. I know the original plan was to have a cliffhanger followed by "Heroes: Beginnings" where the audience would be introduced to new heroes and get the chance to vote on who got to join the regular show when it returned. I get the feeling that the strike messed up a lot of good ideas.
The breakout show on Tuesday nights (in my opinion) is "Reaper" on the CW. How can you go wrong with Kevin Smith consulting your show? It's a perfect show for people who miss "Buffy the Vampire Slayer": a good mix of comic-book style crime fighting and slapstick slacker humor. There are still a couple of fresh episodes left, so make sure you jump on that one. "Bones" and "House" are both on Tuesday nights on Fox... two good shows that I don't watch often enough. Maybe the strike will give me a chance to catch up (more on that forthcoming as well).
My Wednesday night recommendations fall in the 8-9 hour, both on Fox. The prime-time sitcom is not dead, despite the continuing efforts of "According to Jim" to kill it. "Back to You" is a great behind-the-scenes TV news sitcom, following the pedigree of past hits of that genre like "Mary Tyler Moore", and Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton have already proven that they can carry a show. "Til Death" follows at 8:30, and Brad Garrett is hilarious, and it was a stroke of genius casting Eddie Kaye Thomas ("Finch" from the "American Pie" movies) as the next-door newlywed husband/comic foil for Garrett.
Thursday night still means "Smallville" for me, despite what I hear from comic book devotees ("They've done everything they can do and they've totally messed up the Superman story") and non-devotees ("You watch THAT show?") After that, it's over to NBC for two more first-rate sitcoms: "My Name Is Earl" and "30 Rock". Two more shows I need to get caught up on.
Then, it's Friday and Saturday... or as I like to call it, "the black hole of programming". I'm usually watching my Sabres on Friday nights, so that makes it tough to watch anything else, but if I were to watch something, it would be "Friday Night Lights" on NBC. At first, I didn't like it when it debuted last year, but in watching some marathons on Bravo (way to go, corporate synergy), I warmed up to it. Now, of course, I'm behind again. School and pro hockey will do that to you. Meanwhile, the networks have given up on Saturdays... repeats, repeats, repeats.
Of course, most of these shows that I have recommended are out of new episodes or will be shortly due to the writers strike. Now for those of us who have fallen behind on our favorite shows, it wouldn't be a bad thing if the networks actually ran reruns other times than in the black hole on Saturday nights. Unfortunately, when a lot of the shows ran out of fresh episodes, the networks promptly replaced them with REALITY SHOWS. I'm not a fan of reality shows, to put it mildly. I have no interest in what Gordon Ramsay thinks of a restaurant kitchen, I don't care who wins "Dancing With the Stars" (I'm only glad the Spice Girl didn't win), and well... "Clash of the Choirs"? "Dance Wars"? Dueling beauty pageant contestants and their MOMS? NO... THANK... YOU!
Now I do like some of the prime-time game shows, like "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader" and the soon-to-be-returning "Power of 10", but I wouldn't consider myself to be someone who HAS to tune in each week for each new episode.
Fortunately, most of the network shows are online now, so I encourage you all to visit their websites and enjoy these shows on your time, or when you're stuck with nothing but "The Singing Bee" to watch. I'm currently catching up on "Big Shots", a show that ABC has already canceled (yet "Dirty Sexy Money" stays? It's the SAME SHOW, only not as good). As I mentioned in my last entry, I have also discovered "Scrubs" through syndicated reruns. And if you can DVR it or stay up late enough, there's always "Robot Chicken" on Cartoon Network, the funniest 10 minutes on television, because it wouldn't work if it wasn't so fast-paced.
And soon enough, there will be a limited run of other popular shows making their 2007-08 debuts, like "Law and Order" on NBC and "Lost" on ABC. "American Idol" will probably get a huge bounce from the lack of scripted shows when it debuts next month. However, the strike has naturally caused a lot of damage, most notably the fact that there will be no "24" this season or maybe ever again (although it does give Kiefer Sutherland time to serve out that DUI sentence). And there are all the shows that currently sit on hiatus with their destinies unknown, such as... "Cavemen". Yes, I'll say it; I LIKE the show. While other critics congratulate themselves on their self-fulfilling prophecies that the show would tank, I think it was better than a lot of the crap that passes for shows right now.
So here we are... two months deep in the strike with no end and lots of awful reality shows in sight. Praise god and pass the online reruns...
Labels: television, writers strike
posted by Dave | 3:30 PM
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