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(04/26/01 4:25am)
This is it, my final column -- ever. My editors have one less reason to drink, and you have one more reason to read the Bloomington Independent.\nI've been writing this column for three days solid, but every draft ends up being 500 words too long. I tried to trim it down by getting rid of all unnecessary words, like "the."\nBut that didn't do it. So instead of deleting all the prepositions, I started over.\nHow to describe NBC's new game show, "The Weakest Link" (8 p.m. Mondays)? The best thing to do is to describe the show's host, Britain's own Anne Robinson.\nShe's a sadistic, smart-mouthed sourpuss whose sarcastic remarks about contestants prove once and for all that the British have no sense of humor.\nCase in point: "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life."\n"The Weakest Link" will not last long if Robinson remains the cruel host who should be clubbed over the head like a baby seal. If the show is to survive, Robinson must embrace the Tao of Ash from the "Evil Dead" trilogy.\nMore later.\nI could explain how the game works, but trust me, you wouldn't get it. As one of my friends says, it's an evil cross between "Jeopardy" and "Survivor" in which during eight rounds, contestants vote off the weakest link: whoever screws up the most.\nThe setting is just an excuse to let Robinson rail at the contestants. She just stands there wearing black leather with her hands behind her back as if she were handcuffed, chicken lips puckered, ready to tell you, "You are the weakest link," adding in an irritatingly condescendingly light tone, "goodbye!"\nShe just made me want to scream "Erin Go Braugh!" -- Ireland forever! Robinson is still upset because someone dropped a house on her sister.\nIn the first show, she got meaner as the contestants banked less money.\n"You banked a miserable, pathetic $7,500," she told contestants one round. Shortly afterward, she said, "You banked a magnificent $0!"\nShe told one contestant, who was still in high school, to come back after college. And when a contestant gets voted off, she elicits insults from the remaining contestants, asking one guy if he'd hire the woman he just voted off.\nAs you can see, Robinson is a jerk. If I could, I would use a certain word to describe her. But the IDS won't let me be obscene in my last column, so I will substitute the offending word with a name that I think captures its essence: Bobby Knight.\n Moving on, although Robinson is a real Bobby Knight, she is so nasty that she fails to translate her raw Bobby Knight-ishness into a character you will stick with.\nYou know the type of Bobby Knight I'm talking about. Denis Leary summed up the Bobby Knight ideal in his "No Cure for Cancer" routine. You were horrified by his monstrosity and astounded by his audacity when he sang, "Sometimes I park in handicapped spaces while handicapped people make handicapped faces, I'm [a Bobby Knight]!"\nA bold statement by Leary. Audacity is what Robinson lacks. To gain it, she needs to learn the Tao of Ash.\nDeftly played by Bruce Campbell, Ash is the Luke Skywalker of horror films. By "Army of Darkness," the third "Evil Dead" movie, Ash has become what Robinson only strives to be: The "Bobby Knight" you look up to, or in some cases you wish you could be.\nIn "Army of Darkness," there is a scene in which Ash brushes off a woman, being so rude to her that she slaps him. Then he grabs her by her neck, undoes her hair and says, "Gimme some sugar, baby."\nCampbell describes the way Ash treats the woman as "chauvinistic and reprehensible." \nYet many viewers stick with Ash because, like Leary, both his good and bad qualities show us that he has balls -- something which Robinson lacks.\nNot just because she's a woman. She picks on helpless victims. Being a "Bobby Knight" is a hard-fought right, not a privilege. She needs the gall to face down situations that the rest of us flinch away from.\nDon't ask me how. It's a game show for God's sake. But she needs to be bold before she can be a like Denis Leary, Ash and Bobby Knight.\nSo, until demons possess her contestants and Robinson has to leap into the air and blow them all away with a Winchester 30.30 rifle, she does not have the right to grab another woman by her neck, say "Hail to the king, baby" and kiss her.\nWatch the end of "Army of Darkness," and this will make sense.\nRobinson, get in touch with the ideal Bobby Knight that Ash represents.\nHail to the king baby.
(04/26/01 4:00am)
This is it, my final column -- ever. My editors have one less reason to drink, and you have one more reason to read the Bloomington Independent.\nI've been writing this column for three days solid, but every draft ends up being 500 words too long. I tried to trim it down by getting rid of all unnecessary words, like "the."\nBut that didn't do it. So instead of deleting all the prepositions, I started over.\nHow to describe NBC's new game show, "The Weakest Link" (8 p.m. Mondays)? The best thing to do is to describe the show's host, Britain's own Anne Robinson.\nShe's a sadistic, smart-mouthed sourpuss whose sarcastic remarks about contestants prove once and for all that the British have no sense of humor.\nCase in point: "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life."\n"The Weakest Link" will not last long if Robinson remains the cruel host who should be clubbed over the head like a baby seal. If the show is to survive, Robinson must embrace the Tao of Ash from the "Evil Dead" trilogy.\nMore later.\nI could explain how the game works, but trust me, you wouldn't get it. As one of my friends says, it's an evil cross between "Jeopardy" and "Survivor" in which during eight rounds, contestants vote off the weakest link: whoever screws up the most.\nThe setting is just an excuse to let Robinson rail at the contestants. She just stands there wearing black leather with her hands behind her back as if she were handcuffed, chicken lips puckered, ready to tell you, "You are the weakest link," adding in an irritatingly condescendingly light tone, "goodbye!"\nShe just made me want to scream "Erin Go Braugh!" -- Ireland forever! Robinson is still upset because someone dropped a house on her sister.\nIn the first show, she got meaner as the contestants banked less money.\n"You banked a miserable, pathetic $7,500," she told contestants one round. Shortly afterward, she said, "You banked a magnificent $0!"\nShe told one contestant, who was still in high school, to come back after college. And when a contestant gets voted off, she elicits insults from the remaining contestants, asking one guy if he'd hire the woman he just voted off.\nAs you can see, Robinson is a jerk. If I could, I would use a certain word to describe her. But the IDS won't let me be obscene in my last column, so I will substitute the offending word with a name that I think captures its essence: Bobby Knight.\n Moving on, although Robinson is a real Bobby Knight, she is so nasty that she fails to translate her raw Bobby Knight-ishness into a character you will stick with.\nYou know the type of Bobby Knight I'm talking about. Denis Leary summed up the Bobby Knight ideal in his "No Cure for Cancer" routine. You were horrified by his monstrosity and astounded by his audacity when he sang, "Sometimes I park in handicapped spaces while handicapped people make handicapped faces, I'm [a Bobby Knight]!"\nA bold statement by Leary. Audacity is what Robinson lacks. To gain it, she needs to learn the Tao of Ash.\nDeftly played by Bruce Campbell, Ash is the Luke Skywalker of horror films. By "Army of Darkness," the third "Evil Dead" movie, Ash has become what Robinson only strives to be: The "Bobby Knight" you look up to, or in some cases you wish you could be.\nIn "Army of Darkness," there is a scene in which Ash brushes off a woman, being so rude to her that she slaps him. Then he grabs her by her neck, undoes her hair and says, "Gimme some sugar, baby."\nCampbell describes the way Ash treats the woman as "chauvinistic and reprehensible." \nYet many viewers stick with Ash because, like Leary, both his good and bad qualities show us that he has balls -- something which Robinson lacks.\nNot just because she's a woman. She picks on helpless victims. Being a "Bobby Knight" is a hard-fought right, not a privilege. She needs the gall to face down situations that the rest of us flinch away from.\nDon't ask me how. It's a game show for God's sake. But she needs to be bold before she can be a like Denis Leary, Ash and Bobby Knight.\nSo, until demons possess her contestants and Robinson has to leap into the air and blow them all away with a Winchester 30.30 rifle, she does not have the right to grab another woman by her neck, say "Hail to the king, baby" and kiss her.\nWatch the end of "Army of Darkness," and this will make sense.\nRobinson, get in touch with the ideal Bobby Knight that Ash represents.\nHail to the king baby.
(04/13/01 1:44am)
April 3, I hugged Matt Roush, head TV critic at TV Guide. When I buried my face into his flesh, I had a conversion not seen since Paul was struck by lightning on the road to Damascus. I was reborn!\nI now realize ripping terrible TV shows to shreds isn't just my job, it's my calling, my raison d'être, my destiny!\nTherefore, I watched Matt Stone and Trey Parker's new series, "That's my Bush" (9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Comedy Central), a supposedly satirical sitcom about the first family.\nThis is the first show I have reviewed that I couldn't finish. And I sat through all of "Jailbait" last year! I drafted my friend to sit through "Bush" with me, and exactly 20 minutes into it, we both ran away from the TV, screaming like banshees being attacked by King Kong.\nI nearly gouged my eyes out like Oedipus just so I'd never have to view this vile, fetid, putrid, miserable piece of crap again. \n"Bush" fails as both a satire and a sitcom as my good friend -- and fanatically loyal fan -- Roush would say. It has no overt political message like "South Park" did back in the day, and its jokes are about as funny as getting your penis stuck in your zipper.\nThere are four types of jokes on the show: The ones that make you want to vomit, the ones that weren't funny enough to make it on "South Park," the ones that make you cringe and the jokes that are lifted from other sitcoms.\nFirst type of joke: In the show's pilot, Bush has to meet with the head of the anti-abortion movement, who happens to be a 30-year-old, partially aborted fetus whose eyes are sealed shut because they've never fully developed.\nParker and Stone were not trying to insert some political message by being disgusting, like one woman whom I nicknamed "Obnoxious Homicidal Maniac," who came into the copy center where I worked late at night and asked to make color copies of abortions in the third trimester.\nThey were just being shocking for the sake of being shocking, as my soulmate and long-lost brother Roush would say.\nOn a side note, I have to add that it's hypocritical for me to criticize Parker and Stone for being shocking without providing the old insight from "South Park."\n"Bush" also disappoints with its so-called lewd jokes, the second type of joke. For example, in one scene, G.W. tells his wife, "I feel like such a pussy."\nTo which she replies, "That's my Bush."\nHa friggin' ha.\nThirdly, there are the jokes designed to kick you out of complacency, but they end up just making you say, "Ouch."\nIn one scene, George tells the White House maid to do the laundry, and she responds, "I've got to do what your father did, separate the whites from the coloreds."\nThat might sound funny to you, but you have to realize that the majority of the jokes on the show are just plain bad references to other shows. In one scene, Bush says "Diff'rent Strokes"-style, "What are you talking about, Larry."\nAnd in a wholly crappy tribute to "The Honeymooners," Bush opens the show by telling his wife, "One of these days, Laura, I'm gonna punch you in the face."\nI just realized that sounds funny when I write it down. But when you hear it, any impulse to laugh is suffocated by the laugh track, which Parker and Stone stole from "Married With Children." The audiences hoots, howls and guffaws during jokes that numbed my friend and me into silence.\nFor example, the "audience" gives Kelly Bundy hoots and hollers when Bush's dumb-blonde assistant walks in. Then they roar with laughter when she can't tell a video game from a cheeseburger, and they give catcalls and whistles as she shakes her behind as she leaves.\nI realize you might not fully appreciate how crappy this show is because I've focused on the better jokes. But you have to believe me, this ain't "South Park." It isn't funny either. If anyone reads this review and actually sees "That's my Bush," I will quit the IDS within the next three weeks!\nThen maybe I could get a job at TV Guide so I could work for Matt Roush, a man who makes Yoda and Jesus Christ look like Myles Brand.\nPeace out, Matt.
(04/12/01 4:00am)
April 3, I hugged Matt Roush, head TV critic at TV Guide. When I buried my face into his flesh, I had a conversion not seen since Paul was struck by lightning on the road to Damascus. I was reborn!\nI now realize ripping terrible TV shows to shreds isn't just my job, it's my calling, my raison d'être, my destiny!\nTherefore, I watched Matt Stone and Trey Parker's new series, "That's my Bush" (9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Comedy Central), a supposedly satirical sitcom about the first family.\nThis is the first show I have reviewed that I couldn't finish. And I sat through all of "Jailbait" last year! I drafted my friend to sit through "Bush" with me, and exactly 20 minutes into it, we both ran away from the TV, screaming like banshees being attacked by King Kong.\nI nearly gouged my eyes out like Oedipus just so I'd never have to view this vile, fetid, putrid, miserable piece of crap again. \n"Bush" fails as both a satire and a sitcom as my good friend -- and fanatically loyal fan -- Roush would say. It has no overt political message like "South Park" did back in the day, and its jokes are about as funny as getting your penis stuck in your zipper.\nThere are four types of jokes on the show: The ones that make you want to vomit, the ones that weren't funny enough to make it on "South Park," the ones that make you cringe and the jokes that are lifted from other sitcoms.\nFirst type of joke: In the show's pilot, Bush has to meet with the head of the anti-abortion movement, who happens to be a 30-year-old, partially aborted fetus whose eyes are sealed shut because they've never fully developed.\nParker and Stone were not trying to insert some political message by being disgusting, like one woman whom I nicknamed "Obnoxious Homicidal Maniac," who came into the copy center where I worked late at night and asked to make color copies of abortions in the third trimester.\nThey were just being shocking for the sake of being shocking, as my soulmate and long-lost brother Roush would say.\nOn a side note, I have to add that it's hypocritical for me to criticize Parker and Stone for being shocking without providing the old insight from "South Park."\n"Bush" also disappoints with its so-called lewd jokes, the second type of joke. For example, in one scene, G.W. tells his wife, "I feel like such a pussy."\nTo which she replies, "That's my Bush."\nHa friggin' ha.\nThirdly, there are the jokes designed to kick you out of complacency, but they end up just making you say, "Ouch."\nIn one scene, George tells the White House maid to do the laundry, and she responds, "I've got to do what your father did, separate the whites from the coloreds."\nThat might sound funny to you, but you have to realize that the majority of the jokes on the show are just plain bad references to other shows. In one scene, Bush says "Diff'rent Strokes"-style, "What are you talking about, Larry."\nAnd in a wholly crappy tribute to "The Honeymooners," Bush opens the show by telling his wife, "One of these days, Laura, I'm gonna punch you in the face."\nI just realized that sounds funny when I write it down. But when you hear it, any impulse to laugh is suffocated by the laugh track, which Parker and Stone stole from "Married With Children." The audiences hoots, howls and guffaws during jokes that numbed my friend and me into silence.\nFor example, the "audience" gives Kelly Bundy hoots and hollers when Bush's dumb-blonde assistant walks in. Then they roar with laughter when she can't tell a video game from a cheeseburger, and they give catcalls and whistles as she shakes her behind as she leaves.\nI realize you might not fully appreciate how crappy this show is because I've focused on the better jokes. But you have to believe me, this ain't "South Park." It isn't funny either. If anyone reads this review and actually sees "That's my Bush," I will quit the IDS within the next three weeks!\nThen maybe I could get a job at TV Guide so I could work for Matt Roush, a man who makes Yoda and Jesus Christ look like Myles Brand.\nPeace out, Matt.
(04/05/01 4:00am)
It is impossible to describe Fox's latest "Survivor" rip-off "Boot Camp" (9 p.m. Wednesday) without referencing "Full Metal Jacket."\nMy reliable source, "Deep Throat," quoted the movie to describe one "recruit," as contestants are called: "I didn't know they stacked shit that high," Mr. Throat said.\nThe recruit complains during the premiere that boot camp is not what he expected. He thought everyone was just going to "screw around," have fun and get to know one another. Instead, he moans, the recruits barely talk to each other.\nYou just want R. Lee Ermey, who played the drill instructor in "Full Metal Jacket," to pop up and start screaming, "Looks like the best part of you rolled out of the crack of your mamma's ass and ended up as a brown stain on the mattress! I think you've been cheated!" \n"Boot Camp" puts recruits through one month of basic training exercises with real-life Marine drill instructors. The recruits get to dismiss one of their peers every week, and that person gets to pick another recruit to get dismissed.\nThe show makes a mockery of basic training. Not that I would know: I tried to join the Navy in 1996, but I got rejected because my member is an inch-and-a-half long -- that extra half-inch that kept me out of Naval ROTC.\nBut considering what I do know from people much stronger and more capable than I who have gone through real boot camp, Fox's "Boot Camp" is a debacle. It's not about bringing recruits together; it's about scheming and forming cliques. \nIn my humble opinion, we should send "Dolphin" or "Butterfly" or whatever the name of that hippie in the tree is to boot camp. In fact, we should start a war in some Third World country where we can send all those environmentalists. Maybe it will thin them out a little. (Please direct all hate mail to me and not my wonderful IDS editors.)\nBack to Fox's "Boot Camp": On the show, there is no real sense of unit cohesion. There are no friendships on the show, just strategic alliances. The platoon is just a group of money-hungry "Survivor" rejects.\nThe worst of them is a recruit named Meyer. Now, if R. Lee Ermey were a host on this show, he would just have screamed at Meyer a string of obscenities until he permanently expelled Meyer's smug expression. But the instructors on "Boot Camp" would let him get away with murder.\nIn the first episode, he loses the respect of his peers by moaning, "We're getting brainwashed." But the next day he wins support by giving a bogus apology and conjuring up fake tears -- he smiles when he tells the cameraman how impressed he is with his acting skills. Then he stabs another recruit in the back, befriending him and then convincing the women recruits he's a sexist pig who wants to tell them what to do.\nRight before the dismissal at the end of the show, Meyer gleefully claims that if he doesn't get kicked off the show, "Meyer (will have) orchestrated one of the biggest upsets in military history."\nHe's right. The other guy gets axed.\nIn the next episode, Meyer appears to fake a shoulder injury to avoid doing pullups.\nJames Morris, a first sergeant in the Hawaii Civil Air Patrol from when he was 14-17 years old, explained what he would do to Meyer, "If anyone ever told me he couldn't do pullups because his shoulder hurt, I'd say ,'Fine, how do your legs feel?'"\nAfter making Meyer run, Morris would have a medic check Meyer out. If the medic thought Meyer was faking it, Morris would wake Meyer at 1 a.m. and make him guard a wall. Then he'd make Meyer train with the rest of the platoon the next morning without any sleep.\nI want you all to write to Fox and petition the network to give Morris one hour alone with Meyer.\nThen I want you to write to the IDS and petition the editors to make the entire staff go through one week of boot camp. They thought I was mad when I announced over the IDS intercom that I thought it would help my column if we all went through boot camp so I could ask them how their experiences measured up to the show.\nBut those peaceniks wouldn't go for it.
(04/05/01 3:53am)
It is impossible to describe Fox's latest "Survivor" rip-off "Boot Camp" (9 p.m. Wednesday) without referencing "Full Metal Jacket."\nMy reliable source, "Deep Throat," quoted the movie to describe one "recruit," as contestants are called: "I didn't know they stacked shit that high," Mr. Throat said.\nThe recruit complains during the premiere that boot camp is not what he expected. He thought everyone was just going to "screw around," have fun and get to know one another. Instead, he moans, the recruits barely talk to each other.\nYou just want R. Lee Ermey, who played the drill instructor in "Full Metal Jacket," to pop up and start screaming, "Looks like the best part of you rolled out of the crack of your mamma's ass and ended up as a brown stain on the mattress! I think you've been cheated!" \n"Boot Camp" puts recruits through one month of basic training exercises with real-life Marine drill instructors. The recruits get to dismiss one of their peers every week, and that person gets to pick another recruit to get dismissed.\nThe show makes a mockery of basic training. Not that I would know: I tried to join the Navy in 1996, but I got rejected because my member is an inch-and-a-half long -- that extra half-inch that kept me out of Naval ROTC.\nBut considering what I do know from people much stronger and more capable than I who have gone through real boot camp, Fox's "Boot Camp" is a debacle. It's not about bringing recruits together; it's about scheming and forming cliques. \nIn my humble opinion, we should send "Dolphin" or "Butterfly" or whatever the name of that hippie in the tree is to boot camp. In fact, we should start a war in some Third World country where we can send all those environmentalists. Maybe it will thin them out a little. (Please direct all hate mail to me and not my wonderful IDS editors.)\nBack to Fox's "Boot Camp": On the show, there is no real sense of unit cohesion. There are no friendships on the show, just strategic alliances. The platoon is just a group of money-hungry "Survivor" rejects.\nThe worst of them is a recruit named Meyer. Now, if R. Lee Ermey were a host on this show, he would just have screamed at Meyer a string of obscenities until he permanently expelled Meyer's smug expression. But the instructors on "Boot Camp" would let him get away with murder.\nIn the first episode, he loses the respect of his peers by moaning, "We're getting brainwashed." But the next day he wins support by giving a bogus apology and conjuring up fake tears -- he smiles when he tells the cameraman how impressed he is with his acting skills. Then he stabs another recruit in the back, befriending him and then convincing the women recruits he's a sexist pig who wants to tell them what to do.\nRight before the dismissal at the end of the show, Meyer gleefully claims that if he doesn't get kicked off the show, "Meyer (will have) orchestrated one of the biggest upsets in military history."\nHe's right. The other guy gets axed.\nIn the next episode, Meyer appears to fake a shoulder injury to avoid doing pullups.\nJames Morris, a first sergeant in the Hawaii Civil Air Patrol from when he was 14-17 years old, explained what he would do to Meyer, "If anyone ever told me he couldn't do pullups because his shoulder hurt, I'd say ,'Fine, how do your legs feel?'"\nAfter making Meyer run, Morris would have a medic check Meyer out. If the medic thought Meyer was faking it, Morris would wake Meyer at 1 a.m. and make him guard a wall. Then he'd make Meyer train with the rest of the platoon the next morning without any sleep.\nI want you all to write to Fox and petition the network to give Morris one hour alone with Meyer.\nThen I want you to write to the IDS and petition the editors to make the entire staff go through one week of boot camp. They thought I was mad when I announced over the IDS intercom that I thought it would help my column if we all went through boot camp so I could ask them how their experiences measured up to the show.\nBut those peaceniks wouldn't go for it.
(03/29/01 5:00am)
The Job" (9:30 p.m. Wednesday, ABC), starring and produced by Denis Leary: It's not just a cop show and a comedy. It's about balls.\nThe program showed real cajones in its pilot episode by creating a bastard genre from "Police Squad" and "NYPD Blue." But the show's second episode wasn't as ballsy as the pilot. Observe the difference.\nIn the pilot, Leary's character Mike McNeil tells a bike cop, "Your balls are showing. Wait, you're a bike cop, you don't have them."\nIn the second episode, McNeil berates his partner Terrence (Bill Nunn) after his wife comes in and talks to their lieutenant. He urges Terrance, "Get your balls out of her (the wife's) purse, slap them back on and scream bloody murder."\nSee how old the joke got? Leary's humor is muzzled. He pushes the limits a little; then stops. He seems afraid to go on the type of brilliant, piercing tirade that he perfected in his "No Cure For Cancer" routine because he has to be believable as a cop. And therein lies the show's dilemma: What is it? \n"The Job" tries hard to let the audience decide what kind of a show it is: Is it a cop show trying to be funny or an irreverent comedy cloaked in a cop show's trappings? But unless the show can figure out for itself what it is quickly, it will either be too ludicrous for a cop show or too stagnant and stale for a comedy.\nRight now, "The Job" is the best-looking half-hour show on TV, but this might confuse many viewers used to watching sitcoms because "The Job" is formally coded as an hour-long drama, specifically a cop show. \nThe set is three-dimensional, typical of dramas. The lighting is anything but high key. It gives everything a washed-out feeling, like "Hill Street Blues." And the show is shot like a movie: Single camera with a lot of movement on the camera's Z axis -- backward and forward -- instead of the lateral movement common to half-hour shows. There's more lens movement than in Robert Altman's movie "M*A*S*H." \nIf the show were a straight-up parody, the directors might be able to use these cinematic formal techniques to poke fun at "NYPD Blue"'s ludicrously high production values. If it were a cop show, they would give "The Job" an aura of believability. But the show tries to be both genres at once, and the result is it feels like neither.\nSpeaking of trying to do two things at once, Leary himself adds to the show's identity crisis. For much of the show, he plays his character straight. His general pissed-offness comes out rarely, only in brief spurts of unrepentant humor.\nFor example, in one scene in the show's pilot, McNeil tells a prisoner that he's got the guy's grandmother in the next room and that the police are going to kick her ass. This catches the prisoner off guard, but he doesn't buy it until he hears the sounds of his grandma screaming his name in the next room.\nThe police, it turns out, told his grandma that he was dead and tape-recorded her laments. They play it on a boom box and trash the room. Terrence comes in to get McNeil, saying "Grandma is out of control!"\nThe prisoner confesses.\nAlthough the scene made me laugh, it seems way too subdued for Leary. It was like something the detectives might pull on "Law and Order." Where is the moment where Leary is so pissed off that he explodes and goes on an insightful rant, like he did in "Demolition Man"?\nYou know what the only thing more disappointing than "The Job" is? This column. I didn't manage to make one decent joke in the last 636 words. You readers, especially you Dennis Leary fans, should be furious with me!
(03/29/01 3:31am)
The Job" (9:30 p.m. Wednesday, ABC), starring and produced by Denis Leary: It's not just a cop show and a comedy. It's about balls.\nThe program showed real cajones in its pilot episode by creating a bastard genre from "Police Squad" and "NYPD Blue." But the show's second episode wasn't as ballsy as the pilot. Observe the difference.\nIn the pilot, Leary's character Mike McNeil tells a bike cop, "Your balls are showing. Wait, you're a bike cop, you don't have them."\nIn the second episode, McNeil berates his partner Terrence (Bill Nunn) after his wife comes in and talks to their lieutenant. He urges Terrance, "Get your balls out of her (the wife's) purse, slap them back on and scream bloody murder."\nSee how old the joke got? Leary's humor is muzzled. He pushes the limits a little; then stops. He seems afraid to go on the type of brilliant, piercing tirade that he perfected in his "No Cure For Cancer" routine because he has to be believable as a cop. And therein lies the show's dilemma: What is it? \n"The Job" tries hard to let the audience decide what kind of a show it is: Is it a cop show trying to be funny or an irreverent comedy cloaked in a cop show's trappings? But unless the show can figure out for itself what it is quickly, it will either be too ludicrous for a cop show or too stagnant and stale for a comedy.\nRight now, "The Job" is the best-looking half-hour show on TV, but this might confuse many viewers used to watching sitcoms because "The Job" is formally coded as an hour-long drama, specifically a cop show. \nThe set is three-dimensional, typical of dramas. The lighting is anything but high key. It gives everything a washed-out feeling, like "Hill Street Blues." And the show is shot like a movie: Single camera with a lot of movement on the camera's Z axis -- backward and forward -- instead of the lateral movement common to half-hour shows. There's more lens movement than in Robert Altman's movie "M*A*S*H." \nIf the show were a straight-up parody, the directors might be able to use these cinematic formal techniques to poke fun at "NYPD Blue"'s ludicrously high production values. If it were a cop show, they would give "The Job" an aura of believability. But the show tries to be both genres at once, and the result is it feels like neither.\nSpeaking of trying to do two things at once, Leary himself adds to the show's identity crisis. For much of the show, he plays his character straight. His general pissed-offness comes out rarely, only in brief spurts of unrepentant humor.\nFor example, in one scene in the show's pilot, McNeil tells a prisoner that he's got the guy's grandmother in the next room and that the police are going to kick her ass. This catches the prisoner off guard, but he doesn't buy it until he hears the sounds of his grandma screaming his name in the next room.\nThe police, it turns out, told his grandma that he was dead and tape-recorded her laments. They play it on a boom box and trash the room. Terrence comes in to get McNeil, saying "Grandma is out of control!"\nThe prisoner confesses.\nAlthough the scene made me laugh, it seems way too subdued for Leary. It was like something the detectives might pull on "Law and Order." Where is the moment where Leary is so pissed off that he explodes and goes on an insightful rant, like he did in "Demolition Man"?\nYou know what the only thing more disappointing than "The Job" is? This column. I didn't manage to make one decent joke in the last 636 words. You readers, especially you Dennis Leary fans, should be furious with me!
(03/22/01 5:00am)
Paranoia isn't funny.\nOh sure, my friends laughed at me when I freaked out after learning how various agencies can stalk you online using tracking devices innocuously named "cookies." But after three months, I was still convinced that diabolical corporations were tracking me online, reading my e-mails and logging everything I had ever said in a chat room or posted on a discussion board to create a damaging psychological profile of me, which they would sell to every employer who ever received a resume from me.\n"So," I expect every manager to ask me during a job interview, "you actually looked for naked pictures of Ashley Judd in the university computer labs?"\nYup, paranoia is a Pandora's box of worry and fear, but paranoia can be interesting because sometimes your fears are real. \nThe old conspiracies on "The X-Files" used to be endearing because they originated from a premise chillingly close to the truth: After World War II, the United States changed from a peaceful democracy to a militant superpower. It breathed new life into fascism in Spain and other countries such as Chile, and it engaged in secret policies that would have made Woodrow Wilson cringe, such as bombing Cambodia, all in the name of combating global communism. \nUnfortunately, "X-Files" producer Chris Carter has taken reality and nailed it to the cross of slapstick for his new show "The Lone Gunmen" (9 p.m. Sunday, Fox). While the three conspiracy theorists -- Byers (Bruce Harwood), Langly (Dean Haglund) and Frohike (Tom Braidwood) -- might have been excellent supporting characters on "The X-Files," their solo adventures are self-parodying and dumb.\nWhy? Because not even Oliver Stone would believe some of the tripe the Lone Gunmen pass off as conspiracy theories.\nThe show is about three modern day muckrakers who drive around in their 1972 Volkswagen minibus, uncover conspiracies and write about them in their newsletter, The Silver Bullet. On "The Lone Gunmen," believability goes right out the window. One of their headlines screamed Teletubbies are a form a of mind control.\nIn the pilot episode, the Lone Gunmen try to learn if the Department of Defense tried to kill Byers' father because he learned the government was planning to crash a plane into the World Trade Center via remote control and blame it on terrorists to get more funding.\nSound far-fetched? The episode climaxes when Langly hacks into the plane's autopilot, using a special chip -- "Sneakers" anyone?\nBefore I go on, I have to quote the movie "Airheads," which is about a group named The Lone Rangers: One character asks them, "How the hell do you pluralize 'lone' ... If there are three of you, you're not lone."\nThat's enough pop culture.\n"The Lone Gunmen" didn't have to be this stupid.\nOn "The X-Files," the Lone Gunmen used accurate historical and technical data. They didn't explain; they revealed.\nIn the episode "Wetwired," the Lone Gunmen showed how TV images can influence viewers. The episode begins with a premise that we can believe: TV is an extremely influential medium. If it weren't, there'd be no TV ads.\nThe Lone Gunmen sound credible when they discussed how TV could be used to force people to act, thanks to writer Daniel Sackheim, who had the Gunmen explain in a few brief sentences of understandable prose how TV works and how a signal can be inserted in the VBI, Vertical Blinking Interval -- where the close captioning usually appears.\nFor more about this, take Telecommunications T 207.\nIf "The Lone Gunmen" weren't a comedy, it might have been able to explore real issues in paranoia today, like data mining. Did you know, for example, that when supermarkets started giving out those discount cards, the kind that you scan at the register, they noticed the beer-diapers connection -- men who got told by their wives late in the week to pick up diapers would also pick up beer for the weekend. Hence, many stores now put beer next to diapers.\nI'd like to know what else they know about us and how safe is this information -- if IU gives us an indication, a lot of bad people can steal our personal info very easily.\nThese are the kinds of anxieties that "The Lone Gunmen" should play on. If they just did a little research, it could be a good show, as long as it stopped being a comedy. As I said before, paranoia isn't funny.
(03/22/01 4:23am)
Paranoia isn't funny.\nOh sure, my friends laughed at me when I freaked out after learning how various agencies can stalk you online using tracking devices innocuously named "cookies." But after three months, I was still convinced that diabolical corporations were tracking me online, reading my e-mails and logging everything I had ever said in a chat room or posted on a discussion board to create a damaging psychological profile of me, which they would sell to every employer who ever received a resume from me.\n"So," I expect every manager to ask me during a job interview, "you actually looked for naked pictures of Ashley Judd in the university computer labs?"\nYup, paranoia is a Pandora's box of worry and fear, but paranoia can be interesting because sometimes your fears are real. \nThe old conspiracies on "The X-Files" used to be endearing because they originated from a premise chillingly close to the truth: After World War II, the United States changed from a peaceful democracy to a militant superpower. It breathed new life into fascism in Spain and other countries such as Chile, and it engaged in secret policies that would have made Woodrow Wilson cringe, such as bombing Cambodia, all in the name of combating global communism. \nUnfortunately, "X-Files" producer Chris Carter has taken reality and nailed it to the cross of slapstick for his new show "The Lone Gunmen" (9 p.m. Sunday, Fox). While the three conspiracy theorists -- Byers (Bruce Harwood), Langly (Dean Haglund) and Frohike (Tom Braidwood) -- might have been excellent supporting characters on "The X-Files," their solo adventures are self-parodying and dumb.\nWhy? Because not even Oliver Stone would believe some of the tripe the Lone Gunmen pass off as conspiracy theories.\nThe show is about three modern day muckrakers who drive around in their 1972 Volkswagen minibus, uncover conspiracies and write about them in their newsletter, The Silver Bullet. On "The Lone Gunmen," believability goes right out the window. One of their headlines screamed Teletubbies are a form a of mind control.\nIn the pilot episode, the Lone Gunmen try to learn if the Department of Defense tried to kill Byers' father because he learned the government was planning to crash a plane into the World Trade Center via remote control and blame it on terrorists to get more funding.\nSound far-fetched? The episode climaxes when Langly hacks into the plane's autopilot, using a special chip -- "Sneakers" anyone?\nBefore I go on, I have to quote the movie "Airheads," which is about a group named The Lone Rangers: One character asks them, "How the hell do you pluralize 'lone' ... If there are three of you, you're not lone."\nThat's enough pop culture.\n"The Lone Gunmen" didn't have to be this stupid.\nOn "The X-Files," the Lone Gunmen used accurate historical and technical data. They didn't explain; they revealed.\nIn the episode "Wetwired," the Lone Gunmen showed how TV images can influence viewers. The episode begins with a premise that we can believe: TV is an extremely influential medium. If it weren't, there'd be no TV ads.\nThe Lone Gunmen sound credible when they discussed how TV could be used to force people to act, thanks to writer Daniel Sackheim, who had the Gunmen explain in a few brief sentences of understandable prose how TV works and how a signal can be inserted in the VBI, Vertical Blinking Interval -- where the close captioning usually appears.\nFor more about this, take Telecommunications T 207.\nIf "The Lone Gunmen" weren't a comedy, it might have been able to explore real issues in paranoia today, like data mining. Did you know, for example, that when supermarkets started giving out those discount cards, the kind that you scan at the register, they noticed the beer-diapers connection -- men who got told by their wives late in the week to pick up diapers would also pick up beer for the weekend. Hence, many stores now put beer next to diapers.\nI'd like to know what else they know about us and how safe is this information -- if IU gives us an indication, a lot of bad people can steal our personal info very easily.\nThese are the kinds of anxieties that "The Lone Gunmen" should play on. If they just did a little research, it could be a good show, as long as it stopped being a comedy. As I said before, paranoia isn't funny.
(03/08/01 5:00am)
I now know what it feels like to bomb.\nTwo people told me last Thursday my most recent review was below par, and I agree.\nAll I can do is bow prostrate before IDS Weekend readers and vow to work harder.\nYou'd think this newly found humility would make me more sympathetic to shows that are off the mark, such as the "The Andy Dick Show" (MTV, 10:30 p.m. Tuesday). You'd think I'd respect comedian Andy Dick's efforts, even if his show is a steaming turd.\nBut I gotta be me. So, I proclaim that Andy Dick should be tied to a stake and kneed in the groin by everyone in show business.\n"The Andy Dick Show" is an example of what happens when high production values go horribly, horribly wrong. The show is a schizophrenic collection of shot vignettes that are masterfully shot and edited. In fact, most of the skits are shot cinematically with one camera, sometimes a steadicam, and most of the program is letterboxed. \nBut the sketches themselves are a series of relentlessly unfunny parodies, mostly of MTV movies and TV shows. Written and directed by Dick, they are excruciatingly annoying, such as one sketch in which Dick dressed up in drag and parodied both Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears. \nThey are so bad that I had to call up the IDS editor in chief and ask what words I could use to describe it.\nShe allowed me to write that during the pilot's first skit, Maura Tierney from "ER" and Dick's former co-star on "News Radio" claimed in a mock "E! True Hollywood Story" that Dick had showed her his penis 17 times. This was one of the hilarious jokes that punctuated Dick's self-effacing mockumentary.\nNow normally, I wouldn't feel the need to check with the IDS editor in chief before writing the word "penis," but this sketch used the word "penis" so casually and so tastelessly that I wanted to make sure that I didn't compromise my journalistic integrity by writing about Andy Dick's penis.\nGetting back to the story, I am also allowed to write that during the same skit, Dick smoked a water bong during a parody of an anti-drug public service announcement. But the editor in chief warned, I cannot advocate the use of such objects -- bongs or any other drug paraphernalia.\nBelieve me, there is no way I can advocate using drugs after watching this show. It might be libelous for me to write that I suspect that Dick wrote most of the show's sketches, such as a parody of the "The Tom Green Show," after smoking crack. When Dick impersonated Green in one parody, he simply acted stupid, thrusting his pelvis a lot, throwing groceries on the ground and mock-humping everything in sight.\nI will just say Dick is a better anti-drug spokesman than I could ever be.\nI also have permission to use the terms "salad-tosser" and "prison bitch" in reference to one sketch that parodied MTV's "Scared Straight." After one convict hit Dick with a barrage of foul language, most of which was bleeped out, the unrattled Dick decided to show him how to really intimidate people.\nHe humped one guy's head and unleashed an even bigger barrage of foul language. I know he used the term "prison bitch," and I'm sure he mouthed the term "toss his salad." Now, I can write the term "tossing one's salad" because the editor in chief didn't know what it meant. I told her to ask someone who would know.\nWhen I asked the IDS editor in chief if I could write "ball slapping and ass cracks," a phrase used on the show, she asked me if it was really necessary. "I'm letting you get away with a lot here," she says.\nOnce again; she let freedom of speech prevail.\nSo backtracking, in the parody of Dick's life, he was portrayed sinking into a life of gay porn. But the narrator adds his movies weren't all just "ball slapping and ass cracks."\nNow I realize I haven't told you a lot "about" this show, but as you can see, I had to go to a lot of trouble to tell you these little tidbits of information.\nI also wanted to call up a psychic hotline and ask what the show's chances for getting renewed were, but the IDS wouldn't let me charge a 900 number to its account.\nBut I must close by thanking the IDS for putting up with my antics for the last year. And I can promise my readers who were disappointed with my last column that I will continue to do stupid things for your amusement.
(03/08/01 4:42am)
I now know what it feels like to bomb.\nTwo people told me last Thursday my most recent review was below par, and I agree.\nAll I can do is bow prostrate before IDS Weekend readers and vow to work harder.\nYou'd think this newly found humility would make me more sympathetic to shows that are off the mark, such as the "The Andy Dick Show" (MTV, 10:30 p.m. Tuesday). You'd think I'd respect comedian Andy Dick's efforts, even if his show is a steaming turd.\nBut I gotta be me. So, I proclaim that Andy Dick should be tied to a stake and kneed in the groin by everyone in show business.\n"The Andy Dick Show" is an example of what happens when high production values go horribly, horribly wrong. The show is a schizophrenic collection of shot vignettes that are masterfully shot and edited. In fact, most of the skits are shot cinematically with one camera, sometimes a steadicam, and most of the program is letterboxed. \nBut the sketches themselves are a series of relentlessly unfunny parodies, mostly of MTV movies and TV shows. Written and directed by Dick, they are excruciatingly annoying, such as one sketch in which Dick dressed up in drag and parodied both Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears. \nThey are so bad that I had to call up the IDS editor in chief and ask what words I could use to describe it.\nShe allowed me to write that during the pilot's first skit, Maura Tierney from "ER" and Dick's former co-star on "News Radio" claimed in a mock "E! True Hollywood Story" that Dick had showed her his penis 17 times. This was one of the hilarious jokes that punctuated Dick's self-effacing mockumentary.\nNow normally, I wouldn't feel the need to check with the IDS editor in chief before writing the word "penis," but this sketch used the word "penis" so casually and so tastelessly that I wanted to make sure that I didn't compromise my journalistic integrity by writing about Andy Dick's penis.\nGetting back to the story, I am also allowed to write that during the same skit, Dick smoked a water bong during a parody of an anti-drug public service announcement. But the editor in chief warned, I cannot advocate the use of such objects -- bongs or any other drug paraphernalia.\nBelieve me, there is no way I can advocate using drugs after watching this show. It might be libelous for me to write that I suspect that Dick wrote most of the show's sketches, such as a parody of the "The Tom Green Show," after smoking crack. When Dick impersonated Green in one parody, he simply acted stupid, thrusting his pelvis a lot, throwing groceries on the ground and mock-humping everything in sight.\nI will just say Dick is a better anti-drug spokesman than I could ever be.\nI also have permission to use the terms "salad-tosser" and "prison bitch" in reference to one sketch that parodied MTV's "Scared Straight." After one convict hit Dick with a barrage of foul language, most of which was bleeped out, the unrattled Dick decided to show him how to really intimidate people.\nHe humped one guy's head and unleashed an even bigger barrage of foul language. I know he used the term "prison bitch," and I'm sure he mouthed the term "toss his salad." Now, I can write the term "tossing one's salad" because the editor in chief didn't know what it meant. I told her to ask someone who would know.\nWhen I asked the IDS editor in chief if I could write "ball slapping and ass cracks," a phrase used on the show, she asked me if it was really necessary. "I'm letting you get away with a lot here," she says.\nOnce again; she let freedom of speech prevail.\nSo backtracking, in the parody of Dick's life, he was portrayed sinking into a life of gay porn. But the narrator adds his movies weren't all just "ball slapping and ass cracks."\nNow I realize I haven't told you a lot "about" this show, but as you can see, I had to go to a lot of trouble to tell you these little tidbits of information.\nI also wanted to call up a psychic hotline and ask what the show's chances for getting renewed were, but the IDS wouldn't let me charge a 900 number to its account.\nBut I must close by thanking the IDS for putting up with my antics for the last year. And I can promise my readers who were disappointed with my last column that I will continue to do stupid things for your amusement.
(03/01/01 5:11am)
Someone asked me the other day if I just seek out bad shows to bash them. The answer is no. I don't look for bad shows. \nThey find me.\nBut every now and then I come across a good show, something that reminds me of a time before I became totally disenchanted with television.\n"Futurama" is such a show. It takes place about a century from now and features characters such as Bender, the pessimistic, hedonistic and sarcastic robot that reminds me a lot of myself; Dr. Zoidberg, a large crab creature who is more fond of parasites than defense attorneys; and Fry, a stupid oaf who was cryogenically frozen in 1999 and thawed out in 2099.\nBut it's not as dumb as it sounds.\nWhile "Futurama" (Fox, 7 p.m. Sunday) is no "Simpsons," it has developed its own sense of humor that deserves praise. Even though "Futurama" is less concerned with exposing fundamental truths than "The Simpsons" used to be, it does espouse a contempt for all living things that translates into pseudo-Mark Twain wit.\nBy now you should be reading this and screaming, "Oh my God, he's writing a positive review!" Don't worry; hell hasn't frozen over. \nIn fact, I was talking to God last night. Communicating with me telepathically through a 6,000-year-old dog, God said to me: "Jeff, I want you to write something positive about my son, Matt Groening. If you don't, I'll have Fox renew 'Grounded for Life.'"\nSo to save civilization, I must write about the virtues of "Futurama." But it wasn't always like this. When it premiered in 1999, every episode featured the same gag over and over again: They went to some planet and got into a wacky situation. "Futurama" was as predictable and unenjoyable as a Shakespearean comedy.\nNow I don't know where the writers get the ideas for "Futurama"'s plots, but the show's episodes have the energy of an anal-retentive caffeine freak. For example, the episode I saw about a race of aliens known as brain spawns bent on destroying all thought in the universe gleefully sacrificed one of my favorite sacred cows: literature.\nThrough a series of events too complicated to explain, Fry ends up throwing down with the big brain in a library. He tortures the big brain, which reads people's thoughts, by reading from "The Bonfire of the Vanities."\nThe big brain fights back by literally pulling Fry into the supposed classics such as Moby Dick and Tom Sawyer, calling them "dense, symbolic" drab and a "cheesy slice of Americana" respectively. \nWhy did I laugh during this scene? Because I have been fighting a four-year war against symbolism. "Futurama" gets high marks for iconoclastically smashing the American obsession with symbolism! Take that Mrs. DeLuca, my senior year English teacher.\nI tried to determine if other people liked "Futurama" as much as I do, so I called up my editor's roommate. I tried typing as he spoke, and this is what I wrote: Some guy named "Bhavin" said, "I don't tbink it's wuite 0as good as the 'Simpsons,' but I think it serves its purpose."\nYou see, I'm not alone. I can loudly proclaim: Behold, I actually like a show!\nDon't get used to it though.
(03/01/01 5:00am)
Someone asked me the other day if I just seek out bad shows to bash them. The answer is no. I don't look for bad shows. \nThey find me.\nBut every now and then I come across a good show, something that reminds me of a time before I became totally disenchanted with television.\n"Futurama" is such a show. It takes place about a century from now and features characters such as Bender, the pessimistic, hedonistic and sarcastic robot that reminds me a lot of myself; Dr. Zoidberg, a large crab creature who is more fond of parasites than defense attorneys; and Fry, a stupid oaf who was cryogenically frozen in 1999 and thawed out in 2099.\nBut it's not as dumb as it sounds.\nWhile "Futurama" (Fox, 7 p.m. Sunday) is no "Simpsons," it has developed its own sense of humor that deserves praise. Even though "Futurama" is less concerned with exposing fundamental truths than "The Simpsons" used to be, it does espouse a contempt for all living things that translates into pseudo-Mark Twain wit.\nBy now you should be reading this and screaming, "Oh my God, he's writing a positive review!" Don't worry; hell hasn't frozen over. \nIn fact, I was talking to God last night. Communicating with me telepathically through a 6,000-year-old dog, God said to me: "Jeff, I want you to write something positive about my son, Matt Groening. If you don't, I'll have Fox renew 'Grounded for Life.'"\nSo to save civilization, I must write about the virtues of "Futurama." But it wasn't always like this. When it premiered in 1999, every episode featured the same gag over and over again: They went to some planet and got into a wacky situation. "Futurama" was as predictable and unenjoyable as a Shakespearean comedy.\nNow I don't know where the writers get the ideas for "Futurama"'s plots, but the show's episodes have the energy of an anal-retentive caffeine freak. For example, the episode I saw about a race of aliens known as brain spawns bent on destroying all thought in the universe gleefully sacrificed one of my favorite sacred cows: literature.\nThrough a series of events too complicated to explain, Fry ends up throwing down with the big brain in a library. He tortures the big brain, which reads people's thoughts, by reading from "The Bonfire of the Vanities."\nThe big brain fights back by literally pulling Fry into the supposed classics such as Moby Dick and Tom Sawyer, calling them "dense, symbolic" drab and a "cheesy slice of Americana" respectively. \nWhy did I laugh during this scene? Because I have been fighting a four-year war against symbolism. "Futurama" gets high marks for iconoclastically smashing the American obsession with symbolism! Take that Mrs. DeLuca, my senior year English teacher.\nI tried to determine if other people liked "Futurama" as much as I do, so I called up my editor's roommate. I tried typing as he spoke, and this is what I wrote: Some guy named "Bhavin" said, "I don't tbink it's wuite 0as good as the 'Simpsons,' but I think it serves its purpose."\nYou see, I'm not alone. I can loudly proclaim: Behold, I actually like a show!\nDon't get used to it though.
(02/22/01 6:39am)
I'm on a sugar high as I write this. And I just had my first cup of coffee in two weeks, so I've got enough energy to pull a bus from here to Indianapolis with my teeth. Yet I still can't write anything enthusiastic about CBS' new cop show "C.S.I.," or Crime Scene Investigation (9 p.m. Thursdays).\nIn all fairness, "C.S.I." is a decent show: It's shot like a movie, it uses some interesting formal techniques, and it offers several plot lines. The problem is "C.S.I." just can't outdo a formerly great show that also dealt with crime scene investigators: "The X-Files."\nMore on that later.\n"C.S.I." deals with members of the Las Vegas Police Department crime lab. Every time someone drops dead, they get called in to do batteries of forensic tests. You know how in "The A-Team" there had to be one scene in every episode where they make a hot air balloon out of trash bags and hair dryers, a flame thrower out of lumber, or a PVC pipe out of a soda can? Well, there's one scene like that in every "C.S.I." where the detectives reassemble a skeleton or use strange chemicals to find blood stains.\nThere are about four main characters, but I didn't catch their names. Since they're just caricatures anyway, let's refer to them as "the blonde," "the brunette," "the socially awkward guy" and "the black guy."\nSounds like characters from "Dick Tracy."\nIn the episode I saw, "the blonde" proves her powers of deduction. Fifteen minutes into the story, after the police find human bones with jagged marks on them strewn over a hilltop, she exclaims, "He was chopped up! That's homicide."\nTurns out the wife did it as part of a Social Security scam. But she gets off because she did it out of love.\nMeanwhile, by analyzing a woman's vagina, "the brunette" and "the black guy" discover a woman's fiance murdered a male stripper whom she was banging, but the two tried to put the incident behind them and get married. As they're about to get hauled away, "the black guy" tells them, "Laws don't end when you come to Vegas."\nAs you can see, one of the main failings of "C.S.I." is that the scientific tests the main characters perform only seem able to prove the obvious. They're not like Dupin in "The Murders In The Rue Morgue," who realizes that to truly understand how the world works, he must begin the analytical process outside the limits of the rational.\nThis was the basis for "The X-Files" before everything went to hell. Reason was a monstrous blindness for Scully, who always began the analytic process in the wrong place, limiting the question "who is guilty" to simply human terms. \nWhile Mulder was great at beginning the analytic process with irrational assumptions to prove the impossible is possible after all, he looked for the truth in the wrong place. He tried to get inside the minds of his opponents, allowing them to get inside his. \nThese two characters rarely found what they expected to find. In fact, they usually made the frightening discovery that the world operated differently than they expected. Episodes like "Bad Blood" proved neither agent had a true understanding of how the world works. \nBoth the older "The X-Files" and current "C.S.I" use low key lighting, relying on black hues to create deep, impenetrable shadows. But there is one main difference: Vancouver. When "The X-Files" was shot in British Columbia, the lighting was just right to make everything feel off kilter. The nights were chalkboard black, and even during the day, only a few rays of sunshine managed to penetrate the gray clouds to illuminate the pale, shivering agents.\nFilmed in the U.S., "C.S.I" looks like some kind of film noir porno. Everything is sunny during the day, and even the black of night is made innocuous by the bright, neon signs on the Strip. Despite its use of shadows, the whole lighting design feels as cheesy as a made-for-TV Showtime movie or a USA original series.\nIn summary, "C.S.I." is as hollow as the Trojan horse. It lacks the existential ethos of "The X-Files" in its golden years: The truth is out there, but it can be within your field of vision while remaining completely outside your field of understanding.
(02/22/01 5:00am)
I'm on a sugar high as I write this. And I just had my first cup of coffee in two weeks, so I've got enough energy to pull a bus from here to Indianapolis with my teeth. Yet I still can't write anything enthusiastic about CBS' new cop show "C.S.I.," or Crime Scene Investigation (9 p.m. Thursdays).\nIn all fairness, "C.S.I." is a decent show: It's shot like a movie, it uses some interesting formal techniques, and it offers several plot lines. The problem is "C.S.I." just can't outdo a formerly great show that also dealt with crime scene investigators: "The X-Files."\nMore on that later.\n"C.S.I." deals with members of the Las Vegas Police Department crime lab. Every time someone drops dead, they get called in to do batteries of forensic tests. You know how in "The A-Team" there had to be one scene in every episode where they make a hot air balloon out of trash bags and hair dryers, a flame thrower out of lumber, or a PVC pipe out of a soda can? Well, there's one scene like that in every "C.S.I." where the detectives reassemble a skeleton or use strange chemicals to find blood stains.\nThere are about four main characters, but I didn't catch their names. Since they're just caricatures anyway, let's refer to them as "the blonde," "the brunette," "the socially awkward guy" and "the black guy."\nSounds like characters from "Dick Tracy."\nIn the episode I saw, "the blonde" proves her powers of deduction. Fifteen minutes into the story, after the police find human bones with jagged marks on them strewn over a hilltop, she exclaims, "He was chopped up! That's homicide."\nTurns out the wife did it as part of a Social Security scam. But she gets off because she did it out of love.\nMeanwhile, by analyzing a woman's vagina, "the brunette" and "the black guy" discover a woman's fiance murdered a male stripper whom she was banging, but the two tried to put the incident behind them and get married. As they're about to get hauled away, "the black guy" tells them, "Laws don't end when you come to Vegas."\nAs you can see, one of the main failings of "C.S.I." is that the scientific tests the main characters perform only seem able to prove the obvious. They're not like Dupin in "The Murders In The Rue Morgue," who realizes that to truly understand how the world works, he must begin the analytical process outside the limits of the rational.\nThis was the basis for "The X-Files" before everything went to hell. Reason was a monstrous blindness for Scully, who always began the analytic process in the wrong place, limiting the question "who is guilty" to simply human terms. \nWhile Mulder was great at beginning the analytic process with irrational assumptions to prove the impossible is possible after all, he looked for the truth in the wrong place. He tried to get inside the minds of his opponents, allowing them to get inside his. \nThese two characters rarely found what they expected to find. In fact, they usually made the frightening discovery that the world operated differently than they expected. Episodes like "Bad Blood" proved neither agent had a true understanding of how the world works. \nBoth the older "The X-Files" and current "C.S.I" use low key lighting, relying on black hues to create deep, impenetrable shadows. But there is one main difference: Vancouver. When "The X-Files" was shot in British Columbia, the lighting was just right to make everything feel off kilter. The nights were chalkboard black, and even during the day, only a few rays of sunshine managed to penetrate the gray clouds to illuminate the pale, shivering agents.\nFilmed in the U.S., "C.S.I" looks like some kind of film noir porno. Everything is sunny during the day, and even the black of night is made innocuous by the bright, neon signs on the Strip. Despite its use of shadows, the whole lighting design feels as cheesy as a made-for-TV Showtime movie or a USA original series.\nIn summary, "C.S.I." is as hollow as the Trojan horse. It lacks the existential ethos of "The X-Files" in its golden years: The truth is out there, but it can be within your field of vision while remaining completely outside your field of understanding.
(02/15/01 5:00am)
I was sick. My sinuses were clogged, and my head was pounding as I watched NBC's new sitcom "Three Sisters" (9:30 p.m. Tuesday on NBC).\nSo forgive me if I'm a little too negative.\n"Three Sisters" is about as enjoyable as watching your grandparents have sex. It's scheduled after "Frasier" and before "Dateline NBC" to attract viewers. But not even this clever scheduling maneuver, which we in the industry call a "crap sandwich," can save this show.\nI spit on everyone associated with "Three Sisters."\nSteven (David Alan Basche) is the show's narrator. Only, unlike "The Wonder Years," we really don't care what he's thinking. Steve's married to Bess (Katherine La Nasa), who's so warm, friendly and outgoing that she's even more annoying than those (SHUT UP!) voices in my head that keep screaming at me: "Destroy them, Jeff. Destroy all of them!"\nI SAID SHUT UP!\nAnyway, here's the show's premise: Bess' two sisters and her parents all hang around in Steven's house, turning it into a pressure-cooker of forced cheeriness and repressed rage. In other words, it's constantly like Christmas at Steve and Bess' home, but in a nice, sarcastic "Murphy Brown" way, not like the tense, claustrophobic and overheated environment of "I Love Lucy." \nThat's one of the things that makes "Three Sisters" shallow: There's no dark side to it. Steve and Bess aren't sitting on a boiler ready to explode like Lucy and Ricky.\nThe producers turned up the heat in the episode I saw, putting their legs behind their head and farting on all that smoldering resentment, creating a fireball of wackiness: Steve's divorced parents came over for a visit!\nHere's where things really get funny: Steve's dad is obsessed with sex. He hits on Bess' sisters, telling her that he enjoys spending the entire day in his apartment naked! It's like a weekend with the Kennedys.\nAnd if you liked that, you'll love this: Steve's mom drives Bess and all the other women in the house crazy because she's an anal-retentive control freak! How do the show's producers keep coming up with original material like this?\nThe episode reaches its hilarious climax when Steve's mom gives Bess a gift: the lingerie she was wearing when Steve was conceived!\nUsually, I would try to make a joke about this event, but I can't. "Three-Sisters" just sucks in all surrounding humor like a vacuum. Once inside, the joke implodes like a cosmonaut, leaving only silence, deafening silence.\nI noticed the studio audience barely laughed. This is particularly eerie, since even the studio audience for "The Michael Richards Show" managed to chuckle a couple of times.\nIf I were a broken record, I'd make some comment here about the demise of sitcoms, or I'd extol "The Simpsons" at "Three Sisters"' expense. But instead, I decided to call up random people and ask what they thought of the show.\nOne student I called, Christopher, "hadn't seen the show."\nAnother student told me he was "waiting for a call" and hung up on me.\nTom Shales, TV critic for The Washington Post was "not in." When I called back, I was told I had "the wrong number."\nTV critic and editor Ken Tucker from Entertainment Weekly was out too. But I did leave a detailed message on his voice mail asking why TV critics like us watch shows like "Three Sisters," and if he'd ever thought of just giving up his job.\nAs you can tell, I'm not a good journalist. And as I have nothing else constructive about "Three Sisters" to write, I'm simply going to pray.\nPlease God, cast the producers of "Three Sisters" into hell. Spare us from this abomination. \nAnd then please explain to me the popularity of Rod Stewart.\nAmen.
(02/15/01 4:08am)
I was sick. My sinuses were clogged, and my head was pounding as I watched NBC's new sitcom "Three Sisters" (9:30 p.m. Tuesday on NBC).\nSo forgive me if I'm a little too negative.\n"Three Sisters" is about as enjoyable as watching your grandparents have sex. It's scheduled after "Frasier" and before "Dateline NBC" to attract viewers. But not even this clever scheduling maneuver, which we in the industry call a "crap sandwich," can save this show.\nI spit on everyone associated with "Three Sisters."\nSteven (David Alan Basche) is the show's narrator. Only, unlike "The Wonder Years," we really don't care what he's thinking. Steve's married to Bess (Katherine La Nasa), who's so warm, friendly and outgoing that she's even more annoying than those (SHUT UP!) voices in my head that keep screaming at me: "Destroy them, Jeff. Destroy all of them!"\nI SAID SHUT UP!\nAnyway, here's the show's premise: Bess' two sisters and her parents all hang around in Steven's house, turning it into a pressure-cooker of forced cheeriness and repressed rage. In other words, it's constantly like Christmas at Steve and Bess' home, but in a nice, sarcastic "Murphy Brown" way, not like the tense, claustrophobic and overheated environment of "I Love Lucy." \nThat's one of the things that makes "Three Sisters" shallow: There's no dark side to it. Steve and Bess aren't sitting on a boiler ready to explode like Lucy and Ricky.\nThe producers turned up the heat in the episode I saw, putting their legs behind their head and farting on all that smoldering resentment, creating a fireball of wackiness: Steve's divorced parents came over for a visit!\nHere's where things really get funny: Steve's dad is obsessed with sex. He hits on Bess' sisters, telling her that he enjoys spending the entire day in his apartment naked! It's like a weekend with the Kennedys.\nAnd if you liked that, you'll love this: Steve's mom drives Bess and all the other women in the house crazy because she's an anal-retentive control freak! How do the show's producers keep coming up with original material like this?\nThe episode reaches its hilarious climax when Steve's mom gives Bess a gift: the lingerie she was wearing when Steve was conceived!\nUsually, I would try to make a joke about this event, but I can't. "Three-Sisters" just sucks in all surrounding humor like a vacuum. Once inside, the joke implodes like a cosmonaut, leaving only silence, deafening silence.\nI noticed the studio audience barely laughed. This is particularly eerie, since even the studio audience for "The Michael Richards Show" managed to chuckle a couple of times.\nIf I were a broken record, I'd make some comment here about the demise of sitcoms, or I'd extol "The Simpsons" at "Three Sisters"' expense. But instead, I decided to call up random people and ask what they thought of the show.\nOne student I called, Christopher, "hadn't seen the show."\nAnother student told me he was "waiting for a call" and hung up on me.\nTom Shales, TV critic for The Washington Post was "not in." When I called back, I was told I had "the wrong number."\nTV critic and editor Ken Tucker from Entertainment Weekly was out too. But I did leave a detailed message on his voice mail asking why TV critics like us watch shows like "Three Sisters," and if he'd ever thought of just giving up his job.\nAs you can tell, I'm not a good journalist. And as I have nothing else constructive about "Three Sisters" to write, I'm simply going to pray.\nPlease God, cast the producers of "Three Sisters" into hell. Spare us from this abomination. \nAnd then please explain to me the popularity of Rod Stewart.\nAmen.
(02/08/01 5:00am)
It's finally happened: I've stopped being fazed by historical inaccuracies in movies. I used to get angry when historical dramas took dishonest dramatic licenses, like when Leonardo DiCaprio's "The Man in the Iron Mask" claimed that Louis XIV was France's most beloved and benevolent king.\nBut last week, I just sat back and watched USA's miniseries "Attila." I didn't mind that accuracy took a back seat in this chronicle of the life of Attila the Hun. Instead, I spent four hours watching men with swords yelling, "AAARRRGGGHHHH!"\nMaybe I could watch "Attila" because I know so little about Attila the Hun, other than he was the role model for former Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo. Or perhaps I sat through the entire thing because they've upped my dose of Risperdal to 1 mg, which means I can enjoy anything, even stubbing my toe and falling down a flight of stairs.\nWatch me laugh as I explode a zit on my nose with a nail clipper: Ha ha!\nFor whatever reason, I spent four hours of my life watching "Attila" -- four hours I can never get back. And in hindsight, "Attila" was not worth my time. The miniseries was lavishly produced, offering swooping crane shots of countless battle scenes. But it also feels hollow and contrived, like 1998's "Godzilla."\nFirst of all, everyone in "Attila" looks and sounds out of place. Whether they be Gauls, Goths or Huns, all the barbarians look like the villagers in "Fiddler on the Roof" dropped into the movie "Conan the Barbarian" wearing old Soviet army uniforms.\nI think that the miniseries' producers also spent so much money on battle scenes that they couldn't afford a dialogue coach. Some characters had English accents, others had an Irish brogue, like a witch at the beginning who was a composite of the three witches in "Macbeth."\nPowers Boothe, who plays Roman General Flavius Aetius, aka "Effluvium," sounds out of place with his soft-spoken, southern style of speaking when everyone around him recites clipped, declarative sentences.\nAnd Gerard Butler, who plays Attila, slips into a New York accent every now and then. At one point, Attila tells his uncle that he has been inside Roman territory, and "Dere's no legions!" Butler must have studied under Tony Curtis, who proclaimed with a thick Brooklyn accent in "The Black Shield of Falworth," a campy medieval epic, "Yonda is the castle of my fadda."\nNow down to the nitty-gritty: The miniseries is too long. The first two hours are about Attila's rise to power. We don't get to know much about Attila the man, but we do get to see that he had great pecs.\nActually, there's just one scene where he has a terrific chest. For the rest of the miniseries, he has flabby man-breasts like Bob in "Fight Club."\nAnd in establishing Attila as a mythic figure, the miniseries unrepentantly borrows from other myths. Attila comes to the Huns as a savior -- the Jesus myth. He is also in search of the war god's sword. Even though Attila did think he had found the god's sword after he became supreme ruler of the Huns, the miniseries refers to the legend of King Arthur.\n"Attila" also bears a striking resemblance to the ancient German epic "Die Niebelungenlied," which portrayed Attila the Hun as a shepherd of the peoples. Both works show the Hun king as a strong, just man who demands loyalty. And both "Die Niebelungenlied" and "Attila" climax with former friends forced into fighting each other.\n"The miniseries steals mercilessly from other movies too. The pitched battle scenes have that strangely hypnotic appeal that grips your attention, like Bob Ross' "The Joy of Painting." But they are also pulled straight out of "Braveheart."\nQuestion: How can you equate the movie version of William Wallace, portrayed as a freedom-fighter in "Braveheart," with Attila the Hun, whose goal was to conquer and enslave the world?\nIt seems appropriate that the life of the man who was deemed "the scourge of God" in his day should be portrayed on the USA network, a plague worse than anything Pharaoh endured. I hope "Attila" will bankrupt USA, which will go down like the great Hun king.
(02/08/01 3:49am)
It's finally happened: I've stopped being fazed by historical inaccuracies in movies. I used to get angry when historical dramas took dishonest dramatic licenses, like when Leonardo DiCaprio's "The Man in the Iron Mask" claimed that Louis XIV was France's most beloved and benevolent king.\nBut last week, I just sat back and watched USA's miniseries "Attila." I didn't mind that accuracy took a back seat in this chronicle of the life of Attila the Hun. Instead, I spent four hours watching men with swords yelling, "AAARRRGGGHHHH!"\nMaybe I could watch "Attila" because I know so little about Attila the Hun, other than he was the role model for former Philadelphia mayor Frank Rizzo. Or perhaps I sat through the entire thing because they've upped my dose of Risperdal to 1 mg, which means I can enjoy anything, even stubbing my toe and falling down a flight of stairs.\nWatch me laugh as I explode a zit on my nose with a nail clipper: Ha ha!\nFor whatever reason, I spent four hours of my life watching "Attila" -- four hours I can never get back. And in hindsight, "Attila" was not worth my time. The miniseries was lavishly produced, offering swooping crane shots of countless battle scenes. But it also feels hollow and contrived, like 1998's "Godzilla."\nFirst of all, everyone in "Attila" looks and sounds out of place. Whether they be Gauls, Goths or Huns, all the barbarians look like the villagers in "Fiddler on the Roof" dropped into the movie "Conan the Barbarian" wearing old Soviet army uniforms.\nI think that the miniseries' producers also spent so much money on battle scenes that they couldn't afford a dialogue coach. Some characters had English accents, others had an Irish brogue, like a witch at the beginning who was a composite of the three witches in "Macbeth."\nPowers Boothe, who plays Roman General Flavius Aetius, aka "Effluvium," sounds out of place with his soft-spoken, southern style of speaking when everyone around him recites clipped, declarative sentences.\nAnd Gerard Butler, who plays Attila, slips into a New York accent every now and then. At one point, Attila tells his uncle that he has been inside Roman territory, and "Dere's no legions!" Butler must have studied under Tony Curtis, who proclaimed with a thick Brooklyn accent in "The Black Shield of Falworth," a campy medieval epic, "Yonda is the castle of my fadda."\nNow down to the nitty-gritty: The miniseries is too long. The first two hours are about Attila's rise to power. We don't get to know much about Attila the man, but we do get to see that he had great pecs.\nActually, there's just one scene where he has a terrific chest. For the rest of the miniseries, he has flabby man-breasts like Bob in "Fight Club."\nAnd in establishing Attila as a mythic figure, the miniseries unrepentantly borrows from other myths. Attila comes to the Huns as a savior -- the Jesus myth. He is also in search of the war god's sword. Even though Attila did think he had found the god's sword after he became supreme ruler of the Huns, the miniseries refers to the legend of King Arthur.\n"Attila" also bears a striking resemblance to the ancient German epic "Die Niebelungenlied," which portrayed Attila the Hun as a shepherd of the peoples. Both works show the Hun king as a strong, just man who demands loyalty. And both "Die Niebelungenlied" and "Attila" climax with former friends forced into fighting each other.\n"The miniseries steals mercilessly from other movies too. The pitched battle scenes have that strangely hypnotic appeal that grips your attention, like Bob Ross' "The Joy of Painting." But they are also pulled straight out of "Braveheart."\nQuestion: How can you equate the movie version of William Wallace, portrayed as a freedom-fighter in "Braveheart," with Attila the Hun, whose goal was to conquer and enslave the world?\nIt seems appropriate that the life of the man who was deemed "the scourge of God" in his day should be portrayed on the USA network, a plague worse than anything Pharaoh endured. I hope "Attila" will bankrupt USA, which will go down like the great Hun king.