A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

Bad TV Ponderings - Verminators

One of the things the Discovery Channel's new show Verminators has going for it is the way it allows the network to finally show humans wasting other animals. Sure, Deadliest Catch brings us the killing fields of the king crab, and Bear Grylls always ends up eating some invertebrate, but you know DC has been dying to get its murder on ever since the first Shark Week.

"There's nothing more humane?"
"I could drown him."

The lamentations of Geralyn, the animal lover in Episode 4, who somehow can't reconcile her leaving food lying around for the neighborhood animals with the giant attic rat keeping her up nights. I credit the producers for the classic move of showing her in close-up while amplifying the sounds of J.D. shooting the thing in the background.

But like all-time favorite Cheaters, the real purpose of the show is to make us feel better about ourselves. 'Hey,' you think, 'I may be and uptight asshole who's no closer to realizing my dreams of writing professionally in spite of the looming specter of my 40th birthday, but at least I don't have an inch of bedbugs coating my floor.'

Naturally, it's loaded with the same ominous, self-important score and the military-style graphics that plague all these programs, but I suppose it'll enter the semi-regular rotation of shows I'll watch after SportsCenter when I can't find anything good on HBO but want to stay up to have one more beer.

It's a pretty prestigious rotation.

On a side note, I think I figured out why Frank Caliendo's show is doomed to fail. Certainly, he does a fine John Madden impersonation (which merely comprises 50% of his stand-up act), and his George W. Bush is decent, but if you're a...somewhat heavy impressionist who doesn't bear a passing resemblance to a dozen celebrities, your voice talents better be top notch.

Unfortunately, that isn't the case with Caliendo. Honestly, I didn't know who his Al Pacino or Donald Trump were supposed to be until I thought about it. And even then, all that came to me was that he was playing a fat Al Pacino.

Bad TV Ponderings - High School Reunion

I blame the writer's strike.

We weren't that much of a reality TV household, really. There was the first season of Survivor, and the odd episode of Top Chef, and of course my long-standing love of COPS, which isn't so much a "reality" show as it is an art form unto itself.

So while we were casting our viewing net a little wider, we reconnected with some old favorites (No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain), discovered some mediocre fill-ins (Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares), and hit upon one charity case, namely High School Reunion.

Having fessed up to this, I feel I should present my excuses. First, these people graduated the same year I did (1987), and I must confess no small amount of morbid curiosity regarding relative levels of fatness and hair loss among the cast. Second, they're also from Texas. Granted, Richardson (a suburb of Dallas) is whiter and more affluent than College Station ever was, but Lone Star State solidarity counts for something.

Or it did. Until I started watching these douchebags.

I'm not a complete idiot: I realize that so-called "reality" shows are always edited to make things more interesting than they actually are while not-so-subtly trying to get us to side with certain personalities. So naturally they're going to make the Jock with the recently deceased wife the sympathetic protagonist, while the Drama Queen will - of course - be a drama queen. The Stud "surprisingly" shows glimpses of self-awareness, the Bully is slower to anger, and the Lesbian may only be bi-curious, etc. And I guess it's hard not to lapse into familiar high school territory (drunken hot tubbing, non-penetrating makeout sessions) when you're back with your old chums, but this is the first show to come along in a while that actually makes me resent myself for watching it. And I watch Cheaters.

The thing is, I can't decide if I'm honestly put off by the cast's obvious shallowness or if it's one of those "staring into the abyss" things.

Two of the "storylines" are, admittedly, mildly engrossing. For example, there's the Pipsqueak; one of those late bloomers who came into his own after graduation and wastes no time here hooking up with the Popular Girl he always had a crush on. But as great authors like Thomas Wolfe and...Erma Bombeck...have taught us, wanting something is often more satisfying than having it, and the Pipsqueak proves himself a normal guy in more than stature as he does his best to engineer a poist-coital withdrawal.

Then there's the token Geek, brought into the mix midway through the season, to confront the Bully who terrorized him throughout his teen years. Unfortunately, the prospect of Jolt-fueled vengeance quickly dissipates when the nerd allows himself to be assimilated by the popular clique, undermining the cause of victimized dweebs everywhere. Worst of all, it culminates in his playing golf with them. I almost tore my copy of Dieties and Demigods in twain out of rage (barely in time did I remember it was a rare first edition).

For a while I blamed John Hughes for the ongoing trend of reducing high school to simple personality archetypes, but apparently he wasn't too far off the mark. More likely, the ones that allow themselves to be easily categorized make for better TV.

At any rate, it's comforting to know that the high school lesbians in Richardson had to fake interest in guys just like their College Station counterparts. Specifically, the ones I dated.

I wish I was joking.

Bad TV Ponderings - The Boondocks

At Bad TV Ponderings, we reserve the right to look at shows that aren't necessarily bad.

Finally caught the debut episode of The Boondocks. It aired Sunday night on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, but seeing as how I’m old and grizzled, I taped it and watched it at a more hospitable hour.

For those who haven’t heard of it, Boondocks started as a newspaper comic strip written and drawn by Aaron McGruder. It features two young black kids - Huey and Riley Freeman - who move from the inner city to live with their grandfather in the suburbs. The strip (and the cartoon) features often scathing commentary from the Freeman kids, and McGruder has caused some hyperventilation in the past by daring to take on such sacred cows as Jar Jar Binks, materialistic hip hop artists, and America’s post-9/11 patriotic fervor. It's not great art, but that's probably beside the point.

The show finds Granddad, Huey, and Riley attending a garden party thrown by a nearby banker. It was intermittently amusing, but nowhere near as shocking or controversial as people were touting/fearing it would be. Asserting that Jesus was black or Ronald Reagan was the devil just isn't very out there these days, and the funniest part for me was the song by the banker's servant, Uncle Ruckus, warning the white party guests not to trust those "new niggers."

I suppose I could see the uproar if this show was running in a prime-time TV slot, but the kind of people watching Adult Swim on Sundays at midnight are also the ones who were fans of TV Funhouse and Family Guy reruns, the latter featuring plenty of tasteless gags without the benefit of even shallow social commentary. The “N word” and – more importantly – race itself, are still pretty touchy. Even more so when it’s a black guy making the jokes, I guess.

It's just too bad The Boondocks wasn't that funny. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but too often the cartoon seemed to rely on mild screeds with only minor laughs to offset them. Maybe McGruder's still getting his feet wet and will punch things up as time goes on, or maybe the voices threw me off (Huey and Riley are both played by Regina King, who is nowhere near how I heard them when reading the comic). Either way, I'll keep watching to see if it improves and to see if any of his more vocal critics get special treatment.

I'm crossing my fingers for a Frank Cho appearance.

Bad TV Ponderings - Blue Collar TV

You might be a redneck if you have an unhealthy interest in Bad TV Ponderings

Finally, the 21st century has its Hee Haw.

When I first saw commercials for Blue Collar TV, I knew it was just a matter of time before it made it on to the Bad TV Ponderings roster of distinction. As Marion Ravenwood once said, "Something made it inevitable." All that was left was for me to set aside 30 minutes one evening to strap myself into the Barcalounger, Clockwork Orange-style, and power through it. The other night my chance presented itself. I managed to lock myself out of the house and subsequently failed to take She Who Shall Not Be Named to her water babies class, what better time to go for the trifecta of personal failure?

BCTV features the sketch comedy stylings of Jeff "I Made a Career On a Joke That Wasn't Funny the First Time I Told It, Much Less the 10,000th" Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, and Larry the Cro-Mag Cable Guy, whom we'll discuss a little later. In overall quality, I'd put it just under the Simpsons Smile-Time Variety Hour and just over whacking your penis with a mallet to get all the congealed gonorrheal pus out. But only just.

Foxworthy opened the show I saw with what can charitably called "stand-up comedy," provided you're still a fan of "Baby on Board" jokes a mere 20 years after George Carlin used the same material. Then we go to the sketches. No sacred cow is left unmilked: from an adult playing a 12 year-old on steroids to three grown men dressed as babies in a prolonged backseat vomiting gag (it appears puking is used as a punchline at least once a show). You'll laugh harder than you did at the latest Ben Stiller movie, and then your own entrails will strangle you, for this is the closest thing to Vogon poetry I hope we as a species ever experience.

Almost everyone involved with this miserable exercise in comedy suicide deserves to be given a blanket party. I can almost, almost, cut Engvall some slack. I've heard his routine, and it isn't without entertainment value.

Larry the Cable Guy, on the other hand, makes me believe - if there is a god - he either abandoned his creation some time around the Pleistocene Era or is actually consciously evil, a la, Prince of Darkness. I first became aware of him on Sirius' uncensored comedy channel, where he's quite popular (probably because many Sirius subscribers are truck drivers who have consumed such insane quantities of crank they can no longer discern human speech from the incessant drone of their own engines). The majority of Larry's shtick is predicated on how women think differently than men and thinly veiled slurs against homos, which are immediately made better by his please for forgiveness from Jesus. Then he'll trot out the defense that the country has gotten "too P.C." for comedy, which is still the best refuge for the guy who wants the freedom to make jokes about "niggers" and "faggots."

There are three possibile explanations for the phenomenon that is Larry:

1) The redneck act is total bullshit. Not to say the dude is from Finland (he's actually from Nebraska, which makes the Stars and Bars cap a little suspect), but the only way his alleged "jokes" work at all are when they're delivered in conjunction with the sleeveless plaid shirt, trucker cap, and exaggerated moronic drawl. Played straight, his routine would get him booed from the stage at Bob's Country Bunker.

2) It's all an elaborate gag at his own expense. In other words, he's making himself the joke by presenting an outre image of the undereducated, ignorant American. Trouble is (and this one's a long shot), the vast majority of his audience aren't grasping the subtlety of the gag. You can make the argument that Andrew Dice Clay was attempting something similar with his "Diceman" persona, but his fans were overwhelmingly Iroc-driving mooks who shared Diceman's affection for the word "gash."

3) He's n a successful biological project financed by a joint venture between Clear Channel and NASCAR, who cloned him from genetic material collected from the port-o-johns of Talladega Superspeedway.

Whatever the answer, I'm clearly in the minority. He has the highest charting comedy album since 1978 (Steve Martin's A Wild and Crazy Guy) and his 2004 tour outgrossed Chris Rock's.

Meanwhile, Bill Hicks is still dead.

Bad TV Ponderings - Hit Me Baby One More Time

Bad TV Ponderings is an infrequent look at low quality television. Because someone has to.

I love summer. Sure, I hate the fact that temperatures in Houston top out in the 90s until October, and that we spend the entire season with one eye nervously affixed to the Weather Channel's "Tropical Update," and that there's still four months until college football season.

But I love summer TV.

It's like the networks know nobody is spending their balmy evenings in front of the tube, and so they don't even try. For example: Dancing With the Stars? I suppose if this was Slam Dancing with the Stars and Evander Holyfield got to piledrive Joey Mcintyre into a wall, I might dredge up some enthusiasm, but otherwise, nuh-uh. Even so, you have to admire the balls it takes to float a prime time ballroom dancing special.

And then there's Hit Me Baby One More Time, wherein one-hit wonders get a chance to drag their tired asses out on stage again to lip synch along with "Working for the Weekend" or "Finally" to the alarm/delight of Gen-Xers and post-ironic adolescents everywhere. And if that wasn't enough of a train wreck for you, they also do cover versions of a more current hit (I think covering Enrique Iglesias effectively negates any bad-boy cred Loverboy might once have possessed).

Last night saw A Flock of Seagulls (who I missed), the aforementioned Loverboy, Arrested Development, Tiffany, and CeCe Peniston, with AD taking the glory. Just what the "glory" is was never really clear, however. Since the coming weeks will feature other bands (The Motels! Wang fucking Chung!), I assume there will be some sort of final competition, after which the winner will be dismembered and fed to man-eating narwhals.

You really owe it to yourself to check out the videos on the official site though, if for no other reason than to do a before-and-after evaluation of Mike Reno ("It was just as if everyone had swelled.") and Tiffany, who - from what I saw last night - must be breastfeeding. It was a bold ensemble, to be sure.

Arrested Development are still pretty good, even if it always looked like they needed to thin the ranks a little. There were no less than four vocalists ("A game of HORSESHOES!") and, I assume, one DJ, but that still leaves a half dozen people doing nothing more than jumping around or bobbing their heads in somewhat rhythmic fashion.

Hell, hand out a couple of horns and they could start calling themselves Ska-rrested Development.

Bad TV Ponderings - Hercules Everwood

Nope. Couldn't bring myself to watch NBC's latest desecration of Greek mythology. I lasted about 15 seconds before Hercules' Irish accent and Leelee Sobieski's astounding fake tan caused me to pop my own eyeballs out with my thumbs.

So let's talk about Everwood. I mostly avoid the WB's offerings (Gilmore Girls being an exception, for some reason), but The Wife started watching this back when it started and I occasionally find myself checking it out as well. It's not really hard to keep up with the adventures of Dr. Andy Brown (Treat Williams) in the sleepy sort of Wyoming Colorado town that only exists in the memories of the elderly and on WB shows.

One of the reasons I usually find something else to do on Monday nights is the character of Ephraim, Dr. Brown's son. I don't know if he's meant to be written as the whiniest little bastard on television, but that's how he comes across. It's intolerable. Mr. Williams, I've seen your Substitute movies (except for Failure Is Not an Option, which is in my Netflix queue)...I know how depressingly easy it would be to bring the pain to that little shit. You say the punk is disrespecting you in your own home? Bust some kneecaps like you did in Winner Take All. What's that? He blew off his Juilliard audition to meet up with that little hussy you ran out of town last year? How about getting all Daniel Ciello on his ass?

What would Critical Bill do? What would "Stretch" Sitarski do? What would...Xander Drax do?

Oh, and the whole "Rose has cancer" thing? Cheese. More faux schmaltz for the 7th Heaven crowd. What the producers ought to do is have Dr. Jake try a sneaky new gene therapy treatment on Rose that goes awry, turning her into something like Nemesis from the Resident Evil games. She goes berserk, killing Dr. Jake, Ephraim, and her entire family before Dr. Brown blows her and half the town to hell, just like in Deep Rising. Afterwards, he heads out on the road to battle supernatural evil using only his surgeon's wits and a crate of dynamite he liberated for an abandoned mine.

This is probably why I don't work in TV.

Bad TV Ponderings: Kenny Loggins on Ice

Some people seek out bad television, some have it thrust upon them. I didn't go searching for this little gem, which aired yesterday opposite the Colts-Broncos game, but when I saw the listing on my program guide, there was no way I could pass it up. Who among us could resist the siren call of 1982's answer to Bryan Adams? On ice? With Brian Boitano? Not I, pilgrim. Not I.

Immediately upon our discovery, The Wife was dispatched to obtain beer and jalapeno chips (actually, she volunteered, but it sounds more macho when presented the other way). The Thing That Walks Like a Man found himself in attendance as well, though not intentionally. I liken it more to the kid who hitched a ride in the Great Red Shark with Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, unknowingly swept up in an atavistic display of horror and excess.

[Only instead of five sheets of blotter acid and a tank of ether, we had Miller Lite. Other than that, it was exactly the same. Really.]

Unfortunately, we must have missed the "Danger Zone" performance. We started watching a little late, after Loggins had already gone into full-on "rock" mode by removing his blazer. The first vignette we did catch may have been "Leap of Faith" or "For the First Time"...it's hard to keep track when innundated with such genius. This particular one featured the toothsome Yuka Sato ice dancing suggestively in front of one, then two, and finally four dudes in jeans and tight-fitting t-shirts. I was a little hazy on what they were going for thematically until they hoisted her into the air, them it all fell into place: lone woman in miniskirt and tube top, four working class shmoes, bad music playing in the background...it's The Accused on Ice! I was waiting for the zamboni to come out pushing a pinball machine.

That took a lot out of me. Luckily, there were plenty of commercials. And let me point out that this picture - shown during the breaks in the program and also gracing his home page - simply cannot be Kenny Loggins:

On the show, Loggins was still sporting that "fluffer" 'do so often favored by victims of male pattern baldness. Maybe it was the hot lights on the stage in the Broome County Arena, or perhaps the incandescent performances from Todd Eldredge and Brian Effing Boitano melted his pomade. Whatever the reason, Loggins looked like he had a hedgehog on his head for the bulk of the show. No, some well-intentioned member of the Kenny Loggins Fan Club obviously decided to use a picture of one of Loggins' entertainment contemporaries in the desperate hope that a more appealing visage might draw more viewers. Therefore, I can only conclude that the picture above is none other than that of T.J. Hooker heartthrob Adrian Zmed.

Next up, a dazzling interpretation of Loggins' song, "The House on Pooh Corner." In the intro, he described this as a song to "make and raise babies" to. The alacrity of that statement (and who hasn't imagined laying some pipe to a song about Winnie the Pooh?) was satisfactorily reinforced by the ice performance, which depicted a typically dimunitive female skater cavorting playfully in a guy's lap. I think it's brave and, dare I say, heroic of Loggins to ignore societal conventions about sex and children by featuring such a daring ode to illegal love in a major network television special.

We were a little disappointed that no skating gophers were in evidence for "I'm Alright," or that John Lithgow didn't make a guest appearance for the thrilling finale, "Footloose." No doubt he had a prior engagement. Plenty of Brian "Kong" Boitano though, resplendent in enough sequins to make Donny Osmond weep for days over his Joseph Smith Edition Memorial Gila Monster.

So I decided, about one song/three beers in, that I would've gotten thrown out within ten minutes of the start of this thing. Hell, I might not have made it past the lights dimming. I imagine people who live in Binghamton, NY get a lot of drinking done in the winter, so I'd already be well into it before I even got into the arena. Once there, the full enormity of what was about to happen would hit me (and that I'd just spent $40 - minimum - on a ticket), and I'd be pounding $7.50 cups of Bud Light in the men's room in hopes of bringing about an amnesiac stupor. Failing that, I'd resort to loud catcalls. For the record, I couldn't decide which would be more likely to get me tossed: "Where's MESSINA?!" or "Play the GOPHER SONG!"

Or maybe the classic, "Your mama don't dance 'cause your daddy's GOT POLIO!"

Bad TV Ponderings - American Idol

Bad TV Ponderings is an infrequent look at low quality television. This is not a redundant expression.

What's that you say? Making fun of AI is old hat? Out of date? Too 2003? Could be you're right, and mostly because the sorry Gong Show-Star Search amalgam itself offers so many avenues for ridicule, such as:

1. Simon Cowell - Along with Anne Robinson, he single-handedly necessitated Tony Blair's personal intervention to keep our two great countries from going to war
2. Ryan Seacrest - Any ABC execs who caught his embarrassing turn on last night's Dick-less New Year's Rockin' Eve are probably telegraphing Cayman bank account numbers in order to get Clark a new baboon heart
3. William Hung - The closest ABC could get to having a recurring character who says nothing but "Me rikey flied lice."
4. Clay Aiken - Who says gay nerds are doomed to obscurity and heartbreak?
5. Paula Abdul - A tone deaf former Laker Girl giving singing critiques is almost as embarrassing as a 265-pound Texas psychiatrist and friend of Oprah giving weight loss advice

The show itself is quite the phenomenon. When auditions came to Houston, delusional wannabes camped out under the Highway 59 overpass for days waiting for their chance to be humiliated. Even so, I thought the popularity of AI would fade out in time. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the very reason I felt sure the show's days were numbered is now being twisted around to suit Fox's nefarious agenda, and is the primary reason for this screed.

I didn't know how many people lined up to have the cold water of reality thrown into their faces, so I looked it up: 100,000. In seven cities. Some were willing volunteers, others dragged there by parents unwilling to believe what most talent agents had already told them about their unspectacular offspring, and I suspect a growing contingent consist of people showing up to do the worst job possible in the hopes of making the initial abuse reel.

What bugs me is the promo showing judge Randy Jackson describing how this season will feature the best talent the show has ever featured. How the hell is that possible? Logic would seem to dictate that the "best" our country had to offer would already have made the cuts the first three years. Those left would then consist of those who didn't make the cut all the other times they tried.

This, along with the return of Las Vegas and The Bachelorette, are what TV viewers have to look forward to in the coming months. Happy new year.

Bad TV Ponderings - The Biggest Loser

I remarked once, maybe here, that television entertainment is pretty much all about voyeurism and schadenfreude these days (or words to that effect). The glut of reality programming and things like America's Funniest Inguinal Hernias bears that thinking out, but I never thought I'd see a show that represented the theory as perfectly as The Biggest Loser.

Think of it as Survivor at fat camp. Two teams of overweight/obese individuals vie to see who can lose the most weight. One team each week has to vote off a member. I haven't been following the show from the beginning (in fact, last night's episode was the first I'd ever watched), so I assume there are various challenges and temptations thrown at the players, who run the gamut from merely plump to dangerously heavy. Voting someone off appears to be at least partially governed by how much weight that person stands to lose in coming weeks. The more flab shed, the better your team does.

I've witnessed some sadism in my time. In my more unpleasant years, I've even participated. But damned in NBC doesn't give my salad days a run for their money. No man boob, no ponderously jiggling thigh, no near-cardiac arrest is left without a close-up. The only rationale I can see behind putting something like this on the air without providing free hand sanitizer is that it gives legions of doughy Americans someone they, too, can point at and laugh.

Lording over all this, and doing her best Trump, is Caroline Rhea. Resplendent in pink sweater and Jane Fonda Klute hair cut, Rhea desperately wants to appear stern and Jeff Probst-like, but all I could think of were my shameful fantasies involving Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Aunt Hildy. I thought The Swan was pretty bad, and it is, but The Biggest Loser doesn't even give these poor schlubs the former's access to liposuction and tucks, just week after week of grueling calisthenics and dangling Krispy Kremes in front of their faces.

What the hell, pass the Cheetohs.

Bad TV Ponderings - Joe Pantoliano

It would seem that reviews coming in for the new TV series Dr. Vegas are somewhat less than encouraging. Variety sets the tone by calling it "an ill-conceived medical franchise providing further evidence that some things that happen in Vegas really should stay in Vegas" (a joke that most reviewers, notorious for our their lack of creativity, seem to be parroting).

Having seen the previews, I can't say that this is all that surprising. Rob Lowe has elevated committing career suicide to an art form, though the fact that he can still get work proves we're all willing to forgive a celebrity that takes Huey Long's old "dead girl/live boy" adage to heart, even if the live girl they're caught with happens to be underage.

However, I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone ever bothers to put Joe Pantoliano in a television series. The guy's arguably worse than Ted McGinley, since McGinley only kills shows that have reached a decent level of maturity, Pantoliano murders them in their cribs. To prove this theory (which I refer to as the Pantoliano Premature Hollywood Homicide Hypothesis), I've compiled a list of his TV series apperances, exhaustively researched at great taxpayer expense:

Free Country (1978) - Rob Reiner's first post-All in the Family TV gig was billed as the story of Lithuanian immigrants in turn-of-the-century New York City. With an action-packed plot like that, and a cast including the likes of Larry Gelman and Hot Shots! Part Deaux's Judith Kahan, it's a wonder this never took off.

The Fanelli Boys (1990-1991) - AKA Everybody Loves Guido. The cancellation of The Fanelli Boys served notice to lovers of Italian stereotyping everywhere that America would no longer tolerate jokes at the expense of hairy mooks in wife-beater t-shirts.

Beethoven (1994) - Remember the good old days, when the networks would make a half-assed aninmated series out of every marginally successful movie featuring a Saint Bernard and Charles Grodin? Good times.

EZ Streets (1996) - By all accounts, this was a pretty good show. The presence of Joey Pants and the alleged association with EZ Wider rolling papers were all the government needed to pull the plug, sadly.

Godzilla (1998-2000) - Remember the good old days, when the networks would make a half-assed animated series out of every excruciatingly horrible Roland Emmerich monster movie? Unfortunately for Pantoliano (the voice of "Animal"), this could never compete with Godzooky and the superior Godzilla Power Hour.

The Lionhearts (1998) - I don't actually know much about this MGM animated series, but I suspect any cartoon featuring characters with names like "Leo Lionheart" was either a belated attempt to cash in on the success of The Lion King or a series that was too ahead of its time to survive.

Sugar Hill (1999) - Another alleged comedy that ran for less than a season. And another series about which I can find little info. It co-starred pre-rehab Charlie Sheen and pre-Meet the Parents Teri Polo, if that tells you anything.

The Sopranos (1999-2006) - Some may feel The Sopranos negates my theory, while I consider it the exception that proves it. The show was around for four seasons before Pantoliano showed up, and - let's be honest - did anyone honestly think he was going to last that long? Call it Corollary #1 to the Pantoliano Hypothesis: the only way a series will survive the addition of Joey Pants if is his character doesn't.

The Handler (2003) - This one got decent reviews, but CBS dropped the ball when it failed to promote the show as a gritty crime drama and presented it as a glossy vehicle for Pantoliano to be a smart ass. And his stupid hat didn't help.

Dr. Vegas (2004-?) - Isn't this where we came in?

The problem, as I see it, is that Joe Pantoliano will forever be Guido the Killer Pimp in the minds of millions of Americans. They're rarely, if ever, going to buy him as a romantic lead, or a lovable buffoon, or anything other than a borderline psychotic SOB, and that goes for the majority his movie roles as well. One of the reasons his turn as Ralph Cifaretto in The Sopranos was so successful was because Ralph was Guido with a death wish and a penchant for playing "bottom." Who doesn't love that?

Bad TV Ponderings - The Undecided Vote

This probably shouldn't surprise anyone, but it appears people who have yet to choose a side in the upcoming Presidential election also happen to like really crappy TV shows:

Politicians looking to buy spots on television shows to sway undecided voters learned Tuesday that the most popular one among the undecideds is CBS's Everybody Loves Raymond. A study by media buyers Interactive Media Worldwide said that the undecideds also favor My Wife and Kids, CSI: Miami, JAG, and Will & Grace. The same study indicated that Will & Grace is also the Democrats' favorite show, while Raymond is the Republicans'.

Further proving that lack of taste knows no political affiliation. Small surprise the undecided voter's inability to take a firm stand on issues coincides with their love of poorly written, hackneyed programming.

Though I can think of at least two reasons to watch JAG.

That last part really gives ammo to both sides of the spectrum. Republicans can mock the Dems for watching a TV show that cloaks its homosexual stereotyping as "cutting edge comedy," while Democrats should feel free to point out that Raymond is network TV's latest case of 'the emperor's new clothes.' Repeatedly claiming that a show is "the funniest ever" doesn't make it true, and the continued success of Everybody Loves Raymond continues to mystify.

Makes sense, of course. If one is too wishy-washy to have figured out which candidate to support by now, it stands to reason their intense feelings of confusion would be assuaged by these programs, which are the TV equivalent of comfort food: empty calories that leave one with a lingering feeling of self-loathing and bloat.

There's hope, though. The new season of The Wire starts September 19.

Bad TV Ponderings - Six Feet Under

I'm done with Six Feet Under.

My entry from about a month ago mentioned the show's recent problem of veering away from its comedic roots in order to plunge the characters into misery (Lisa's death, Claire's disastrous string of boyfriends/lovers, and David and Keith's unendingly on again-off again relationship, to name a few examples). This week's episode might have finally sent me away for good, however.

For starters, I understand the grieving Nate is going through a lot right now, but wouldn't the wise move - from an alleged black comedy standpoint - be to put that in the background for a little while instead of focusing on what a pathetic wretch the man's becoming? Throwing this red herring out there about the possibility of Lisa being alive is just further torture for the character,

I don't see much humor in Ruth's new marriage either, except that - Babe aside - James Cromwell's past acting roles are making it hard to believe the man is going to turn out to be anything less than a Grade A bastard. I mean, what do you have to do to your son to get him to mail his own shit to you? I think the worst I ever did to my old man was teabag his Stroh's.[1]

And as funny as I may find it, there's no way Rico inexplicably playing house with a stripper is going to end well. Finally, does anybody really belive Brenda's relationship with the bad guy from Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle[2] is going to last?

Truth be told, I probably would've continued to put up with that stuff. The few bright spots (read: laughs) this season have come from David's experiences as a bodyguard and Brenda's manipulative uber-bitch of a mother. But this latest episode may just have put me off for good. The final half hour was nothing more than the adventures of David and the guy he stupidly gave a lift to as his passenger: robs him; beats him; makes him smoke crack; beats him some more; then steals his van and leaves him in a Long Beach alley. Not only was the audience subjected to 30 minutes of pointless sadism (and David's incredible inability to escape, even after the time the shmuck got out of the van without him, or the other time David got the drop on him and made the guy lose his gun), but - if the previews are to be believed - we can look forward to episode upon excruciating episode of David's PTSD. Not a lot of laughs there, I predict.

Maybe this was Alan Poul's vision all along, gradually turning what was once a darkly amusing show into a weekly cavalcade of angst and physical or emotional brutality. If so, I wish him and his show luck. For now, I can finally get caught up on Arrested Development.

[1] Just kidding. Dad drank Bud.
[2] Maybe if it was Demi Moore.

Bad TV Ponderings - The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour

Bad TV Ponderings is an infrequent look at low quality television. Fortunately, it will never lack for material.

For everyone who looks back fondly on the salad days of the television variety show...you're all idiots. The reason there were no entries during the day on Sunday was because my synapses had been completely shorted out attempting to watch The Nick and Jessica Variety Hour on Saturday night and I spent the better part of yesterday trying to get them refiring.

The variety show doesn't need to return from the dead. One of the reasons we can all agree the '70s were crap was the constant presence of people like Sonny, Cher, and Tim Conway on our televisions. Why ABC saw fit to return to this particular format would seem a real head-scratcher, except that this is the same network that showcases Jim Belushi as a marquee star and saw fit to run Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? 5 nights a week. In that light, it makes sense that they'd trot out something that makes The Simpson Family Smile-Time Variety Hour seem like a good idea.

Jessica Simpson plays a fine Booberella, showcasing her impressive cleavage in order to distract us from the odd fits she has when performing. Hanger-on husband Nick Lachey performs as if visualizing his future lounge act at the Rumpus Room in the Poland, Ohio Ramada. Jewel emerges to sing a duet with Simpson, proving that ABC execs know the best way to distract us from bad music is by keeping the mammaries coming, while Lachey is shown up by both Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds and KITT, the car from Knight Rider (you heard me) in their musical numbers. '70s stalwarts Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy are trotted out for a nonsensical segment, and Johnny Bench further embarrases himself in a sketch celebrating Simpson's ability to kill with thrown bats. In between are jokes that would've drawn jeers on Hee Haw...and more boobs, of course.

Last Saturday's airing was apparently a repeat of the show's debut perfromance in April. Ratings were apparently sufficient the first time around to warrant another run, but I can't believe they'll hold up after the initial freak interest factor. Call me an optimist, but even the American public can't be so stupid as to make this show a hit.

Can it?