We watch... so you don't have to.
Choose Life. Choose a Big Fucking TV. Choose Bad Shows
It used to be so easy. There was a time, maybe five years ago, when a fella could pick up TV Guide's annual Fall TV Preview and just know what would hit and what would sink faster than the Lusitania. Shows like "Earth Force" and "Moon Over Miami" made us crass, lazy, arrogant. We could mock them and know we were inherently superior beings. We thought we knew about programming, about ratings. Maybe we did. Then again, maybe we didn't know as much as we thought we knew.
It used to be that one could approach the new season almost like a pathologist. It was a very technical business, requiring adherence to certain well-defined and understood rules--for instance, never, ever cross Larry Tisch. Gil Gerard learned that lesson all too well. Poor Buck Rogers, beaten like a red-headed stepchild, never to be heard from again.
Other more obvious rules included: NBC is invulnerable on Thursday, CBS is invulnerable on Sunday, and Roseanne is very, very fat.
Things change, people change--except for Roseanne, of course. But NBC "Must See" Thursday isn't what it used to be, and Jessica Fletcher is gone, to the considerable chagrin of my parents and the AARP.
Above all, the one thing we could count on most was a manageable hierarchy. There were good shows, there were mediocre shows, and then there were the Damned. The truly bad shows were few and far between, offered up as sacrificial lambs to an audience not so mindless as to be totally devoid of standards.
But then something happened, something funny. Most of the new shows were bad--really bad. The wretched of the earth. And what was once a process easily grasped by reasonable men suddenly defied all rational explanation. How could it be that all four networks--plus two upstarts--would produce such unwatchable garbage so willingly, so gleefully?
This year, CBS has spent millions of dollars on a show, "Ink," which is reportedly so bad that the first four episodes had to be burned and much of the cast and crew fired, executed gangland style, and buried in shallow graves along the Sepulveda Pass. NBC has entrusted its highly coveted Thursday nights at 9:30 to Brooke Shields--Brooke Shields! CBS had to bury its bodies on top of the original cast and crew of "Suddenly Susan." And all Warren Littlefield can say is "I'm not sure if this means it's TV's worst season ever or it means it may be the best ever. You'll know the answer to that when the new shows rill out and we see the ratings."
Oh, I don't think it will take that long.
But, the fact is, a process once suited for men of reason has become a contest fit for mental patients. So much for the rules. So much for pathology.
Since I have never come close to winning this contest, I'd probably do just as well looking for inspiration in chicken guts splayed across my kitchen floor. Well, that's exactly what I've done, and boy what a mess!
Like Socrates said, the only thing I know is that I know nothing. That, and practically every new show this year stinks worse than the rotting chicken entrails on my green linoleum -- everything except for "Everybody Loves Raymond." Now that's good, wholesome comedy. Too bad I'll be watching "Millennium" on Friday nights.
But enough about Raymond. He'll be spared the wrath of Les Moonves--for now at least. Besides, if Academy Award®-winning actor Ernest Borgnine can ride the comeback trail, why not Peter Boyle?
No, if anybody is deserving of Moonves' terrible, swift justice, it's Steven Bochco and his collaborator, '80s hitmaker Jay Tarses. He's about due for another bomb, I'd say, and if anything has the mark of disaster, it's "Public Morals."
Take "Barney Miller," subtract Fish), and add lots of bad language and flatulence jokes, and you have "Public Morals." It has a relatively weak lead-in with "Almost Perfect" on CBS Wednesdays at 9:30. It competes with another new show marketed to the Dumb and Dumber set, "Men Behaving Badly" on NBC, which has a strong lead-in with "News Radio." Its other competition is the inexplicably popular "Party of Five" on Fox and the irritating yet strangely appealing "Drew Carey Show" on ABC.
I say "Public Morals" will get busted, big time. If Bochco is so fascinated with toilets (see Entertainment Weekly), #344, Sept.13, 1996), he should work on getting "NYPD Blue" out of the one it's stuck in this year. Emmy-schmemy, Blue blows.
So "Public Morals" goes early, but not first, second, or third--that's only because the Machiavellian Moonves is saving it for mid-October, presumably after most of the carnage is over. I really just needed the excuse to bring up "Fish." There, I said it.
No, I have my sights on two Fox offerings for the first of the Fall to fall. My mistake these last two years was to assume that since Fox has virtually no standards, the network boys are far less inclined to pull the plug on abysmally and irredeemably bad shows. Although that is generally true--a lot of bad shows are permitted to limp along for the duration before the Old Yeller treatment--I seem to recall that at least one or two Fox shows have been consistently among the first to get the hook, usually by way of indefinite "hiatus."
The new Fox shows to which I refer are, of course, "Party Girl" and "Lush Life." Now, these shows premiered last week, so the clock is ticking already. The reasons for their certain doom ought to be readily apparent. "Party Girl" is a spin-off of a mildly successful 1995 art house film by the same name which stars the cutey who played Marcia Brady in the Brady Bunch movies. It's about a dumb girl who works in a library so she can buy cool clothes and hang with the beautiful people. Where do they get these ideas? Who was the visionary who decided to put this loser on the air? And against Monday Night Football, for God's sake. The stench of impending doom is almost overpowering. That cutey who played Marcia Brady deserves better.
(And Fox should have known better. It's batting .000 with half-hour sitcoms based on critically-acclaimed independent films. Remember the small screen version of "My Life's In Turn Around" last year on Sundays? Neither do I. The only surprise with that show was that it wasn't among the first to go. Well, if I know Murdoch's boys, they aren't going to make the same mistake twice.)
Same deal for "Lush Life." I was never very good at math, but Lori Petty's screeching voice and grating presence plus Football equals Imminent Death. Get ready for "Fox Monday Night at the Movies." Better Lori Petty in "Tank Girl" for one night than "Lush Life" for 22. Some sacrifices have to be made.
Alright, so "Party Girl" goes first and "Lush Life" gets the heave-ho shortly thereafter.
For my third pick, I turn my attention to the Peacock Network on Saturday night. There are three candidates here, every one of which would have been better off as USA originals. But Warren Littlefield and the boys are evidently drunk with power, and perhaps, in a moment of altruism or pity or giddiness decided that an "X-Files" rip-off, a "Fugitive" rip-off, and a "Millennium" rip-off would attract an audience.
Well, like the song says, "you may be right, or you may be crazy." I happen to think that none of these shows--"Dark Skies," "The Pretender," and "Profiler" will last the season. But since I have to make a choice, I say "The Pretender" goes first.
This is a bold statement, for a couple of reasons. NBC seems to be giving it special treatment. It premieres this Thursday at 10:00, with the new Must See Thursday night shows. It starts for real the following Saturday, so it could have a nice boost.
Or it could really suck. From what I hear, the show is shockingly bad--not just bad, but hokey. No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public, but even they have their limits. "The Pretender" will be a spectacular failure. I'll give it a month. After that, get ready for "TV's Super Bloopers and Practical Jokes."
So, to recap, my picks for the first cancellations of the 1996-97 television season are, first to last:
- Party Girl
- Lush Life
- The Pretender
