Short Takes (New TV Season, Part 2)

Private Practice (ABC)
I wasn’t crazy about the backdoor pilot that they presented on Grey’s Anatomy last season but I’m pleasantly surprised by the official debut (see cast above). The characters are all introduced fairly smoothly and all given a chance to strut their stuff a little. The melodrama is kept to minimum (though there is soap enough to go around.) And the people on this show are, more or less, adults…instead of the hormonal teenagers in adult suits on Grey’s…and though the remarkable Kate Walsh is the spun-off star they very carefully set this up as a true ensemble show and that’s all to the good.

Back to You (Fox)
Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton are back on a new series. It’s an old school type of work place sitcom. Comedy veteran Fred Willard offers up some welcome wackiness now and again. It’s all very familiar. It’s all very non-threatening. And the laugh track is too often having a better time than the viewers. Back to you, Fox, I’ll pass.

Dirty Sexy Money (ABC)
I think the title of this show (see cast below) is incredibly lame but the show itself has a breezy, engaging, audacious charm. Peter Krause is more than fine as the idealistic lawyer drawn into the service of the incredibly rich, incredibly famous, willfully reckless and spoiled Darling family (a family he watched grow up as his late father held the same job.) And Donald Sutherland brings a twinkly gravitas to his role as patriarch of the family. The writing on this show is fun…with just enough mystery and drama to keep things from getting too frothy…much in the way that I imagine Big Shots (see below) wanted to be.

Survivor: China (CBS)
I stopped watching Survivor a couple of editions back…the routine of the show is so rote now that there’s really not anything new to be discovered…but I checked into this one because of the decidedly exotic location. The Chinese government, eager to prove themselves a welcoming host before next year’s Summer Olympics, allowed this edition to be filmed in their country. The locale is the only interesting part of the show…the Survivors are again seemingly clueless about the game (doesn’t anybody who comes onto this show watch it before they apply?) and the intrigues have been indulged in so many times…in the same ways…that it’s only vaguely interesting. This edition’s cast is pretty colorless (as of this writing they’ve already tossed out the chicken farmer and the female pro wrestler) and the challenges are dull and predictable…but hey the scenery is nice.

Ugly Betty (ABC)
The consequences of the multiple cliffhangers from last season are explored and Betty, harried to the max, rushes around trying to put out emotional fires. The spark of discovery from the first season is gone but the writing is still taut (and at times audacious preposterous) and it looks like my favorite Americanized telenovela is going to keep the twists and turns…the humor and the romance and the pathos…coming. And that’s cool with me.

Grey’s Anatomy (ABC)
Sigh. I know it’s supposed to be a sexy soap opera but these people can be really trying sometimes :-) Actually I have some emotional investment in almost everyone except the central figures…Meredith and Derek…whom I continue to find tedious as a couple. This episode picks up on some of the threads from last season…including and especially Burke’s leaving, Izzy’s declaration of love for George, and Miranda being passed over for Chief Resident…and moves them along at a fairly smooth pace. The subplot in the first new episode of the season about the deer was silly but it allowed Izzy to have a moment with the interns she’s supervising and I guess that was okay. The romantic couplings at the end had me rolling my eyes but I’m guessing that others will find them to be wonderful. Whatever works. I’m on the record (see here) as having said that my favorite couple on this show was Burke and Christina and now that off-camera incidents have put the end to that relationship I got nobody to root for on the romantic front (I was kinda digging George and Callie but that’s not looking so good right now either) but I will continue to watch. As much as last season made me weary with its relentless pathos I’m still invested in these characters enough to stick around and hope for something more upbeat (at least as upbeat as a soap opera can get :-)

Big Shots (ABC)
If this show was twice as clever as it thinks it is it would still be a crashing bore. Nothing in this mess works…not the self-absorbed, whiny lead characters, not the limp writing, not the “clever” plot twists, not the absurd situations, nothing. And those critics that described this as a male version of Sex and the City owes the cast, writers, director, and crew of that far superior show a very big apology.

Kid Nation

After all of the controversy and finger pointing, Kid Nation is just another “reality” show. It’s Survivor in an Old West ghost town with a cast of 40 kids (8-15 years old), no tribal councils, and no million-buck prize at the end (though each week one of the campers will be given a literal gold star worth $20,000.) It’s Survivor with a more emotionally mature cast :-)

The thing about the kids building a new society alone is, of course, nonsense. They’re surrounded by an army of cameramen, sound men, producers, medics, technicians, etc., etc. (and that’s not to mention the host who shows up several times an hour) That aside, the show is mildly engaging (the kids often seem like they’re vamping for the camera but that’s to be expected…and when one little miss says in all earnestness that she doesn’t do dishes because she’s a “beauty queen” you wonder how many of these “ordinary” kids are looking towards a career in showbiz with this show as a stepping stone.)

The editing of the show will not show any danger or exploitation, of course…the kids seem to be having an adventure that is at turns fun, challenging, and instructive on the matter of social interaction (one boy, the youngest of the group, opts out at the end due to homesickness…a very understandable reaction, of course.)

It’s not, as some have opined, Lord of the Flies, it’s just a “reality” show whose purpose escapes me.

I was wondering if CBS was going to put Kid Nation on after the firestorm of protests but they did (“controversy” makes for great pre-broadcast advertising) and the end result seems hardly worth all of the sanctimonious hand-wringing. Any ire about the inappropriateness of putting children in a potentially dangerous situation…apparently a couple of the kids got hurt during the filming of the series but not, insofar as I’ve heard, really seriously hurt…should be directed not only at the producers and the network but also…and especially… at the 40 sets of parents who signed the onerous contracts required for participation and gave their children over to the tender mercies of “reality” TV stardom.

"Reality" TV updates

The photogenic folks above are, of course, the cast who set out on the current edition of The Amazing Race. The Emmy-winning Race is the “reality” TV competition that works best. Maybe it’s the exotic locales…maybe it’s the relatively diverse cast of characters (“relatively” because “type A’s”, whiny drama queens, and masters of the snarky comment dominate the racers…easygoing, well-adjusted folks apparently do not make for interesting reality TV)…maybe it’s the way the natives react (usually with a mixture of puzzlement and bemusement) to the activities of the hyperactive Americans…whatever it is, it just works.

And, of course, it works especially when the combination of bad behavior (a large percentage of the racers will, at one point or another, exhibit “ugly American” reactions to some of the countries they visit with special irritation often reserved for the fact that the natives have to temerity not to speak English) and good editing creates “villains” for viewers to root against.

This edition of the Race upped the ante a bit by including two-time “Survivors” Rob and Amber…who seem to have decided to make “reality” TV their new careers (I fully expect them to show up on Fear Factor or whatever other show will help them in their “15 minute”-extending attempt to hang on to their semi-celebrity)…which has irked a fair number of their fellow contestants.

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Speaking of Survivor, the current edition has not featured even one really interesting personality. But that is somewhat offset by the fact that it does (or rather did) feature the most inept “tribe” in the history of the show (and given some of the dim bulbs who have been paraded through tribal councils over the seasons, that’s saying something.) The total meltdown of the Ulong “tribe” has been a somewhat interesting (in a morbid, eye-rolling way) process to watch and now that they’ve been completely routed (down to one member as of this writing) one would hope that the boring Koror tribe will become more engaging now that they will have to start actively competing against one another.

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Meanwhile, American Idol steamrolls along in the ratings while giving the viewers both more and less.

The regulars are supplying “more”: Ryan Seacrest is giving more humor-free and charisma-free hosting than ever while Randy Jackson is more inane than ever, Simon Cowell is more bored than ever, and Paula Abdul, after a promisingly tougher stance during the preliminaries, is more of a “I love everything and everybody” cheerleader than ever (which may be good for the egos of the young singers but not very helpful in helping them to develop as artists and performers.)

The contestants, to keep things balanced, are dutifully supplying “less”: again after promising preliminaries for a lot of them, the would-be Idols have almost consistently offered up just fair to middling performances thus far…there have been a scant few highlights and a number of lowlights but mostly it’s been blandly average (and certainly nothing that would move me to buy CDs or concert tickets)…with nary a star standing out (in previous seasons, folks with star potential had started to break away from the pack by this point in the competition…not so this time.)

Survivor: Palau

Every time I watch this show, I just shake my head in wonder. The contestants often act like they've never seen the show before...they get out to whatever remote location they're assigned to and they seem shocked...shocked I tell you!...that's it not Club Med. (I'm just sayin'... )

This group of "Survivors" seems, at first blush, no better or no worse than any of the previous casts (this is, what, the 10th edition of the show? I've lost track.) The giddy (and annoying) singer and the take-charge woman have, quite predictably, already been given the heave-ho (not sure why that blond guy drew short straw at the first elimination but I guess somebody had to.)

This season (going out on a limb here :-) I predict much whining about being cold, hungry, and living in proximity with rats, sharks, and other critters...many silly stunts...some smoldering sexual tension between hormonal hardbodies...lots of manipulative editing...and in the end, and much to Darwin's dismay, survival of someone who almost definitely will not be the fittest.

Game on.