TV STUFF

Some thoughts on the state of television today, gleaned from the bits and pieces Victoria and I sampled tonight as we ate my superb veggie pasta which actually turned out to be horribly mediocre.

First up: Idol. I have always detested these kinds of shows, which I define as Glorified Karaoke. Yes, some of the performers are talented but please let's not fool ourselves into thinking these people are the cream of the crop. The cream, ladies and germs, is out there working. Victoria has had some inside experience with the making of these shows and she informed me that they are basically a soap opera; the producers decide what kind of people and stories they want to create on the show and they go out and get them. I watched maybe three minutes and that was enough; my stomach can only take so much corporate, slick, dream-factory guff. As soon as I sensed the slight nausea building in my tummy I changed the channel.

To, of all things, Cougartown, with the siliconed, botoxed piece of immovable plastic formerly known as Courtney Cox. Ms.Cox is charming enough but this show is everything that leaves me frigid about Hollywood today. Pop-culture references abound as artifical characters have artificial discussions about absolutely f&*%-all, as our Vice President would say. I have had it with this kind of 'comedy'... when was it decided that an intimate knowledge of pop culture made us smart, or writers' work funny? This show couldn't raise a smirk to my lips. My face, I hate to say, was as stoic and marblesque as Courtney's. For different reasons of course.

Added to those two shows were snippets of Victoria' cuddly blanket, Friends, starring a scarily lifelike Courtney Cox, my cuddly blanket the Major League Baseball Network (many more laughs than Cougartown) and every straight girl's secret cuddly blanket, Rachel Maddow (Victoria, like the rest of you randy, curious women denies this).

Finally, to wrap the evening up, we watched the sixth episode of Breaking Bad, starring the superb Bryan Cranston. We're motoring through it thanks to Netflix and yet even at that speed, this show allows itself to move slowly, which is a lovely novelty. It's taut and gruesome and Cranston and the excellent Anna Gunn lead a strong and quirky cast. Having said all that, this show is very masculine and for that reason it doesn't have me as fully in its clutches as other shows that touch around the heart more than the head. But that's a personal preference; this show has achieved everything it set out to do and is what it is, which is an excellent bit of TV.

So there you are, absolutely everything you need to know about television
circa spring, 2010.      

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