There are many reasons to watch TV: to be numbed, to be entertained, to simply avoid boredom. Occasionally, television can even make us feel good about ourselves, particularly reality TV. The main benefit of watching addicts in need of an intervention, or bartender/models in need of a good slap, is to be able to lie on the couch thinking, "At least I'm not that person." For those of you in need of a good dose of superiority, I highly recommend A&E's houses of horrors, Hoarders. It's on Mondays; the second season just began this week.
If you even spend even a minute thinking that you really shouldn't be such a slob, or a moment wondering why you can't bring yourself to get rid of those jeans that don't really fit anymore, this is the show for you. At the end of the hour, you'll first maniacally clean your kitchen and bathroom, and will then lie in bed feeling good about the fact that you live in a house where you can at least find the bed. You will know that, no matter how much of a pig you think you are, you can feel good about the fact that your city codes office isn't about to condemn your property.
Monday night's show centered on Augustine, a 68 year-old living in Gretna, LA. When I think of hoarders I think of people accumulating piles of possessions, or scores of cats or dogs, but Augustine had clearly spent decades accumulating tons of trash. Her house was so full of trash the cleaning crew needed to shovel it out. She had electricity but no heat or hot water; her bathroom looked like it hadn't functioned in at least a decade. Augustine collected not only garbage and sewage but also mold, mildew, and general filth, three or four feet of it in every disgusting room of the house. By the end of the episode, 4,000 pounds had been hauled away.
Augustine had lost her dentures in the filth, so she spent the episode gumming fast food, uncooked hot dogs, and I don't know what else. She clearly suffers from at least depression and probably also some sort of antisocial disorder, and sat in a chair eating while her children and a crew cleaned things out. The upper set of her dentures were found amid the debris. Also found were the carcasses of two cats, which had apparently either been flattened by the garbage or which had expired and then been crushed. Either way, two cats died and decomposed in her "living room" and Augustine didn't notice.
Are you disgusted yet? But wait, there's more. The bathroom was a Haz Mat zone, filled with dried excrement, mold, crud. I could smell it through the TV. Since her toilet didn't work, Augustine had one of those portable toilets for the elderly in her, what, dining room? I guess the notion of "rooms" doesn't really apply, but at any rate there the toilet sat, with what appeared to be bags of feces piled up around it and tied to the arms.
Yes, this woman is clearly in need of physical and psychiatric help and yes, this is an incredibly sad story. Yes, it is perhaps wrong to film this family's plight, to televise it, and then to lie on the couch, rapt, watching it. But in the end, I will never again worry about the fact that I could definitely clean my cat's litter box a little more often. In the end, at least I'm not that person.
Showing posts with label crappy television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crappy television. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
What to Watch
I'm a huge fan of The Wire, still mourning the fact that the series ended. If, like me, you need a fix of gritty reality, tune in to the Sundance Channel next week for the documentary mini-series Brick City (it airs M-F at 10 PM). It's probably unfair to compare the two, as The Wire was realistic fiction while Brick City is reality without fiction, but the focus on lives large and small and on the ways various people struggle to find meaning in the middle of crushing poverty, racism, and crime, and the ways these same people must function within and against institutions while they carry on this struggle, is the thematic center of both series. If you loved one, you'll love the other.
Brick City presents approximately six months in the life of Newark, NJ. We watch first-term mayor Cory Booker cheerlead, exhort, and politically manipulate. We watch Booker's new Director of Police attempt to reform the department, focus on Comstat in attempting to reduce the murder rate, and battle against the old school Chief of Police for control of the men. We watch Jayda, an ex-Blood, and her boyfriend Creep, an ex-Crip, attempt to make a life together and raise a family despite the odds. We watch the residents of Newark's Central Ward fight to get a new high school opened, and we watch the principal and vice-principal of that school fight to keep their students in the classroom and off the streets.
Because this is reality rather than fiction, small plot arcs structure the individual episodes, while the series begins and ends in medias res. Solutions to the failure of the American city are in short supply, and wouldn't be found in six months at any rate. If the series has a failing, however, it's the fact that it feels truncated; five hours is just enough to make you want to see more. All in all, it's worth watching, and undoubtedly better than whatever else is on weeknights at 10 PM. I recommend it.
Brick City presents approximately six months in the life of Newark, NJ. We watch first-term mayor Cory Booker cheerlead, exhort, and politically manipulate. We watch Booker's new Director of Police attempt to reform the department, focus on Comstat in attempting to reduce the murder rate, and battle against the old school Chief of Police for control of the men. We watch Jayda, an ex-Blood, and her boyfriend Creep, an ex-Crip, attempt to make a life together and raise a family despite the odds. We watch the residents of Newark's Central Ward fight to get a new high school opened, and we watch the principal and vice-principal of that school fight to keep their students in the classroom and off the streets.
Because this is reality rather than fiction, small plot arcs structure the individual episodes, while the series begins and ends in medias res. Solutions to the failure of the American city are in short supply, and wouldn't be found in six months at any rate. If the series has a failing, however, it's the fact that it feels truncated; five hours is just enough to make you want to see more. All in all, it's worth watching, and undoubtedly better than whatever else is on weeknights at 10 PM. I recommend it.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Let's Hear It for 1987
The time has arrived to break out the shoulder pads and high-waisted jeans, pour some Chardonnay, give your dog a pretentious literary name, and settle in to an evening of thirtysomething. perhaps i should compose this post entirely in the lower-case? I won't do that, but I will express my happiness that at long last the series is being released on DVD. In the late 80s I religiously sat before the TV every Tuesday night at 10 to witness the trials and tribulations of this group of Philly yuppies.
I'm really not sure why this show spoke to me. At the time I was a decade younger than the protagonists, and an important decade at that. I had no youthful 60s idealism to lose, unless that idealism can take the form of a love of the Jackson 5. I was a poor graduate student who couldn't afford even an old Volvo and was years away from even the thought of undertaking a nightmare renovation of an Arts and Crafts home. I wasn't married, trying to be married, or fretting over the choice between raising children and having a career. In short, I had nothing in common with these characters, yet still I loved them. Perhaps there just really wasn't anything else good on TV, or perhaps it's something about Marshall Herskovitz, who 10 years earlier worked on Family, and who would go on, with Ed Zwick, to produce two of my favorite shows of the 90s, My So-Called Life and Once and Again.
What became clear after watching an assortment of the Season One episodes is that the thirtysomething I loved was later season thirtysomething. I loved it when Nancy had cancer, and Michael and Elliot worked for and battled Miles Drentell, and everyone hated Susannah. I loved it when Melissa became a character in her own right and not comic relief. I loved it when the show became more of a high-concept soap and less of a meditation on the horror of turning into one's mother or father. All of the things I loved happened later, so I will patiently await the release of the next three seasons and in the meantime contemplate Michael's obsession with suspenders and the fact that Ellyn is continually attracted to men much less good-looking than herself. Seriously, Woodman? The fug married guy she met at the pool? The comic book guy who was about one day from being fat? Oh, Ellyn.
Last week's release of this set led to all kinds of rumination on the importance of the show, how it ushered in a new era of naval-gazing and a new kind of serialized drama. But did it, really? When it went off the air in 1991, did anything of quality replace it? Those were the years of 90210 and Melrose Place. I'd venture that its greatest impact was on situation comedy rather than drama. By focusing on a group of friends who don't share a home or a workplace, by focusing in many ways on the commonplace and everyday as the stuff of plot, it paved the way for Friends and Seinfeld. The situations were played for laughs rather than bathos, but the concept of a group of urban professionals creating their own family as a shield against the alienation of urban striving, well, that was pure thirtysomething.
I'm really not sure why this show spoke to me. At the time I was a decade younger than the protagonists, and an important decade at that. I had no youthful 60s idealism to lose, unless that idealism can take the form of a love of the Jackson 5. I was a poor graduate student who couldn't afford even an old Volvo and was years away from even the thought of undertaking a nightmare renovation of an Arts and Crafts home. I wasn't married, trying to be married, or fretting over the choice between raising children and having a career. In short, I had nothing in common with these characters, yet still I loved them. Perhaps there just really wasn't anything else good on TV, or perhaps it's something about Marshall Herskovitz, who 10 years earlier worked on Family, and who would go on, with Ed Zwick, to produce two of my favorite shows of the 90s, My So-Called Life and Once and Again.
What became clear after watching an assortment of the Season One episodes is that the thirtysomething I loved was later season thirtysomething. I loved it when Nancy had cancer, and Michael and Elliot worked for and battled Miles Drentell, and everyone hated Susannah. I loved it when Melissa became a character in her own right and not comic relief. I loved it when the show became more of a high-concept soap and less of a meditation on the horror of turning into one's mother or father. All of the things I loved happened later, so I will patiently await the release of the next three seasons and in the meantime contemplate Michael's obsession with suspenders and the fact that Ellyn is continually attracted to men much less good-looking than herself. Seriously, Woodman? The fug married guy she met at the pool? The comic book guy who was about one day from being fat? Oh, Ellyn.
Last week's release of this set led to all kinds of rumination on the importance of the show, how it ushered in a new era of naval-gazing and a new kind of serialized drama. But did it, really? When it went off the air in 1991, did anything of quality replace it? Those were the years of 90210 and Melrose Place. I'd venture that its greatest impact was on situation comedy rather than drama. By focusing on a group of friends who don't share a home or a workplace, by focusing in many ways on the commonplace and everyday as the stuff of plot, it paved the way for Friends and Seinfeld. The situations were played for laughs rather than bathos, but the concept of a group of urban professionals creating their own family as a shield against the alienation of urban striving, well, that was pure thirtysomething.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
A Fern in Every Pot
Remember the Lawrences, our old friends from Pasadena? Kate is a housewife; Doug is a bushy-eyebrowed lawyer and Matthew Broderick's real-life father. They live in a nice suburban house with lots of ferns and outdoor seating and their three children. Nancy is a divorcee who is trying to finish law school while every man in California tries to sleep with her; Willie is so sensitive and artistic he dropped out of high school and is both a photographer and a writer, and even though (or perhaps because) he really should be gay he has one tragic girlfriend after another - one who is pregnant, one who dies, etc. Then there's Letticia, the baby. She's a tomboy who insists on being called "Buddy" and who, despite her penchant for wearing overalls and mesh football jerseys, manages to attract the affections of every 70s tween idol who happens by Pasadena. Willie Ames is her boyfriend until he moves down the street to his own TV show, then Leif Garrett tries to pressure her to have sex with him. She wears the football jersey through it all.
Yes, I'm talking about family, my favorite hour of television circa 1976. How I wished my family could be like this! I wished my parents would let me drop out of school and live in an apartment in our backyard decorated with faux antiques and macrame. I wished my parents would be completely understanding if I brought Willie Ames up to my room. I wished I had an older brother who would let me drive even though I was 12 years old. I wished we had a hammock in our yard and that my father drove a Maverick rather than a Buick Skylark.
family is out on DVD and, laid low with yet more poison ivy, I spent last night watching highlights from the first two seasons. I can't believe I once loved this dreck, and I also can't believe how slowly the show is paced. We had a lot more patience back in the days when we only got a handful of channels; the title credits alone last about a minute and a half. What makes this show unique is that each and every episode is a very special episode. Not a week goes by where one social problem or another is not the focus. It's a good thing Buddy didn't have sex with Leif Garrett or she undoubtedly would have gotten herpes in the next episode and pregnant in the one after that. This poor family was absolutely besieged, I tell you.
Which makes sense, because despite its liberal trappings, this is one of the most reactionary shows of the period. Yes, the elder Lawrences take a liberal approach to their single-mother eldest, their drop-out aimless artist son, and their independent tomboy daughter. But it's important to note that all three of these children live at home, even those in their early 20s. The real lesson of the show is that beyond the confines of the family lurks danger. If an old flame comes to visit, he's a speed freak. If an old neighbor visits, she's an alcoholic. If you serve on a jury and the criminal is acquitted he will seek out and attack your child. The family is surrounded by perversion, drug addicts, thieves, dissolution of every stripe. Family is the only defense.
So really, I should be glad that I lived in a home without ferns and macrame, a home where one graduated high school and got the hell out of there for good. America in the mid-70s probably did seem scary. The economy was a mess, Watergate had eroded all faith in government and authority, cities were dying, suburban kids were all smoking pot, polyester was ubiquitous. To say that the nuclear family is an anecdote to social ills in 1976 is to say pretty much the same thing Reagan had been saying all along, and in that sense was an early pop culture manifestation of the conservative revolution that had been coming for years and would be completed in 1980. In many ways family is about precisely that moment when the liberal dreams of the 1960s are transformed, when the garden of Woodstock becomes the manicured lawn of suburbia, and when the focus becomes the family.
Yes, I'm talking about family, my favorite hour of television circa 1976. How I wished my family could be like this! I wished my parents would let me drop out of school and live in an apartment in our backyard decorated with faux antiques and macrame. I wished my parents would be completely understanding if I brought Willie Ames up to my room. I wished I had an older brother who would let me drive even though I was 12 years old. I wished we had a hammock in our yard and that my father drove a Maverick rather than a Buick Skylark.
family is out on DVD and, laid low with yet more poison ivy, I spent last night watching highlights from the first two seasons. I can't believe I once loved this dreck, and I also can't believe how slowly the show is paced. We had a lot more patience back in the days when we only got a handful of channels; the title credits alone last about a minute and a half. What makes this show unique is that each and every episode is a very special episode. Not a week goes by where one social problem or another is not the focus. It's a good thing Buddy didn't have sex with Leif Garrett or she undoubtedly would have gotten herpes in the next episode and pregnant in the one after that. This poor family was absolutely besieged, I tell you.
Which makes sense, because despite its liberal trappings, this is one of the most reactionary shows of the period. Yes, the elder Lawrences take a liberal approach to their single-mother eldest, their drop-out aimless artist son, and their independent tomboy daughter. But it's important to note that all three of these children live at home, even those in their early 20s. The real lesson of the show is that beyond the confines of the family lurks danger. If an old flame comes to visit, he's a speed freak. If an old neighbor visits, she's an alcoholic. If you serve on a jury and the criminal is acquitted he will seek out and attack your child. The family is surrounded by perversion, drug addicts, thieves, dissolution of every stripe. Family is the only defense.
So really, I should be glad that I lived in a home without ferns and macrame, a home where one graduated high school and got the hell out of there for good. America in the mid-70s probably did seem scary. The economy was a mess, Watergate had eroded all faith in government and authority, cities were dying, suburban kids were all smoking pot, polyester was ubiquitous. To say that the nuclear family is an anecdote to social ills in 1976 is to say pretty much the same thing Reagan had been saying all along, and in that sense was an early pop culture manifestation of the conservative revolution that had been coming for years and would be completed in 1980. In many ways family is about precisely that moment when the liberal dreams of the 1960s are transformed, when the garden of Woodstock becomes the manicured lawn of suburbia, and when the focus becomes the family.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Of Heisenberg and the Gosselins
A year ago, I'd never heard of the Gosselins. Although I watch plenty of crappy television, shows about weird, large, or Christian families, or any combination thereof, don't appeal to me. Even though it turns out Jon and Kate and their eight live only about 50 miles from me, I knew nothing about them or their reality fame. Then, suddenly, in March, their names jumped from the cover of every tabloid that stood guarding the supermarket checkout line. Bored one rainy Sunday, I noticed a marathon of their show running on TLC, and watched a few epsiodes throughout the day and evening.
There was Kate during what must have been the first season, struggling to change and dress and feed six babies, showing off her disgusting stretched-out stomach, working long weekend shifts as a nurse to keep them all in diapers and baby food. There was prematurely balding Jon, getting up at the crack of dawn to trudge off to work, helping out evenings with the kids. Everyone looked exhausted, but the babies were certainly cute.
Several hours later, there was a Jon who had clearly gotten hair plugs, quitting his job to "work from home" and help out more. Kate, meanwhile, was suddenly dressed with much less frump, and the family had acquired all kinds of expensive kid stuff, stuff it was hard to imagine a family of 10 with no working parents could afford. Finally, at the end of the night, there was the family getting ready to move into a new million-dollar house, taking a week-long vacation at the Outer Banks, everyone looking even better dressed and better coiffed.
Then the deluge. Jon is cheating on Kate! Kate is cheating on Jon! The kids are being exploited! Kate charges people $20 for an autographed photo! And last night, the premier of the new season, filmed approximately two weeks ago, where Kate, currently sporting some kind of weird Soccer Mom's Mullet (business in front, spikey in back) and Jon, driving a Nissan Nismo, celebrate the sextuplets' 5th birthday while avoiding any kind of contact whatsoever with each other. In confessionals, Jon admits he behaved stupidly, Kate cries and ponders the divorce rates of parents of multiples. The episode was undoubtedly viewed by millions.
Why do we watch this? By watching this we are ensuring an outcome for those children that will almost definitely include drug and alcohol abuse followed by eight memoirs detailing the nightmare that was growing up Gosselin. I have no doubt some are fans of the show because the kids are adorable, and because watching the struggle to get out of the house with eight children, let alone to raise them responsibly, must appeal to parents of one or two or three kids. Some people watch because they see themselves in Jon and Kate, just parents doing the best they can.
Most people probably watch instead because no one can turn away from a train wreck. No matter what the producer's intentions may have been, the show is not documenting the everyday struggles of raising two sets of multiples, it's documenting the way fame and fortune is destroying a marriage, changing the spouses before our eyes. We're watching people become "famous," and not dealing with that very well. We're watching two people go from cute spats to barely tolerating each other. We're watching what looked like decent, normal folks turn into entitled assholes.
In 1973, PBS broadcast An American Family and inadvertently invented reality television. The series was to document the lives of a typical American family, but then during filming one son came out and ran off to the Chelsea Hotel, and then by the end the marriage fell apart. It was a huge hit not because it depicted "real" life but because it depicted real life falling apart. The act of observation changes the nature of that which is being observed. There's no better demonstration of this principle than reality TV.
There was Kate during what must have been the first season, struggling to change and dress and feed six babies, showing off her disgusting stretched-out stomach, working long weekend shifts as a nurse to keep them all in diapers and baby food. There was prematurely balding Jon, getting up at the crack of dawn to trudge off to work, helping out evenings with the kids. Everyone looked exhausted, but the babies were certainly cute.
Several hours later, there was a Jon who had clearly gotten hair plugs, quitting his job to "work from home" and help out more. Kate, meanwhile, was suddenly dressed with much less frump, and the family had acquired all kinds of expensive kid stuff, stuff it was hard to imagine a family of 10 with no working parents could afford. Finally, at the end of the night, there was the family getting ready to move into a new million-dollar house, taking a week-long vacation at the Outer Banks, everyone looking even better dressed and better coiffed.
Then the deluge. Jon is cheating on Kate! Kate is cheating on Jon! The kids are being exploited! Kate charges people $20 for an autographed photo! And last night, the premier of the new season, filmed approximately two weeks ago, where Kate, currently sporting some kind of weird Soccer Mom's Mullet (business in front, spikey in back) and Jon, driving a Nissan Nismo, celebrate the sextuplets' 5th birthday while avoiding any kind of contact whatsoever with each other. In confessionals, Jon admits he behaved stupidly, Kate cries and ponders the divorce rates of parents of multiples. The episode was undoubtedly viewed by millions.
Why do we watch this? By watching this we are ensuring an outcome for those children that will almost definitely include drug and alcohol abuse followed by eight memoirs detailing the nightmare that was growing up Gosselin. I have no doubt some are fans of the show because the kids are adorable, and because watching the struggle to get out of the house with eight children, let alone to raise them responsibly, must appeal to parents of one or two or three kids. Some people watch because they see themselves in Jon and Kate, just parents doing the best they can.
Most people probably watch instead because no one can turn away from a train wreck. No matter what the producer's intentions may have been, the show is not documenting the everyday struggles of raising two sets of multiples, it's documenting the way fame and fortune is destroying a marriage, changing the spouses before our eyes. We're watching people become "famous," and not dealing with that very well. We're watching two people go from cute spats to barely tolerating each other. We're watching what looked like decent, normal folks turn into entitled assholes.
In 1973, PBS broadcast An American Family and inadvertently invented reality television. The series was to document the lives of a typical American family, but then during filming one son came out and ran off to the Chelsea Hotel, and then by the end the marriage fell apart. It was a huge hit not because it depicted "real" life but because it depicted real life falling apart. The act of observation changes the nature of that which is being observed. There's no better demonstration of this principle than reality TV.
Monday, May 18, 2009
More Hours of My Life Wasted
Dear Survivor Contestants,
Why are you always so dumb? I've been watching you for years, and your pattern of stupidity continues unabated. When you arrive in your exotic location, the other players are strangers, but then you live together in close quarters for more than a month. You have plenty of time to look around you and see who is liked, who is disliked. You have plenty of time to figure out who among you is motivated by what. You have plenty of time to see who will beat you in the final vote, and who will not beat you.
And yet, every season, or what feels like every season, some person who will clearly be rewarded by his or her peers ends up in the finals against someone who clearly can do no right. Usually this eventual winner could have been voted off earlier, but wasn't. Usually this eventual winner has won several immunities, but has been spared when he or she was not immune and could have been eliminated. And yet you don't do it. And then it's too late, and the entire finale becomes a snoozefest with a predictable end.
And why do you always carp about "intergrity"? You're playing a game, people, the point of which is to get rid of others before they get rid of you. Integrity has nothing to do with it. Honesty has nothing to do with it. You will have to lie. Just do it, and then own it. Don't scheme, plot, and lie and then pretend you have done so with "integrity." And jurors, just stop with the bitterness and recriminations. Someone is eliminated every few days. You are mad because it was you and not the finalists. But if it hadn't been you, and you were sitting in the finals, you would have done the same to someone else, and would be bragging about your "integrity." So shut up.
And everyone, all of you, please stop talking about how the million dollar prize is so, so much money. After taxes it's more like $600K, which is a nice amount of dough but not enough to last a 24 year-old bartender/actor/model the rest of his or her life. Lottery winners make more, and blow through it just the same. It might be the biggest check any of you will receive in your lifetime, but it's not generational wealth. Each and every one of you will disappear from our TV screens, from our collective memories, and will go back to the lives you lived before you were cast in this aging reality television franchise. It's a game, with rules and set rewards. Stop pretending there's anything momentous about it.
The show is over, and I won't miss any of you because I won't even think of you, not for a minute. In September a new bunch of people will appear on my screen, all of them making the same mistakes you made, all of their heads filled with notions of "intergity" and the "life-changing" nature of a game show. So farewell, Survivor contestants. It's time to sit down and shut up.
Why are you always so dumb? I've been watching you for years, and your pattern of stupidity continues unabated. When you arrive in your exotic location, the other players are strangers, but then you live together in close quarters for more than a month. You have plenty of time to look around you and see who is liked, who is disliked. You have plenty of time to figure out who among you is motivated by what. You have plenty of time to see who will beat you in the final vote, and who will not beat you.
And yet, every season, or what feels like every season, some person who will clearly be rewarded by his or her peers ends up in the finals against someone who clearly can do no right. Usually this eventual winner could have been voted off earlier, but wasn't. Usually this eventual winner has won several immunities, but has been spared when he or she was not immune and could have been eliminated. And yet you don't do it. And then it's too late, and the entire finale becomes a snoozefest with a predictable end.
And why do you always carp about "intergrity"? You're playing a game, people, the point of which is to get rid of others before they get rid of you. Integrity has nothing to do with it. Honesty has nothing to do with it. You will have to lie. Just do it, and then own it. Don't scheme, plot, and lie and then pretend you have done so with "integrity." And jurors, just stop with the bitterness and recriminations. Someone is eliminated every few days. You are mad because it was you and not the finalists. But if it hadn't been you, and you were sitting in the finals, you would have done the same to someone else, and would be bragging about your "integrity." So shut up.
And everyone, all of you, please stop talking about how the million dollar prize is so, so much money. After taxes it's more like $600K, which is a nice amount of dough but not enough to last a 24 year-old bartender/actor/model the rest of his or her life. Lottery winners make more, and blow through it just the same. It might be the biggest check any of you will receive in your lifetime, but it's not generational wealth. Each and every one of you will disappear from our TV screens, from our collective memories, and will go back to the lives you lived before you were cast in this aging reality television franchise. It's a game, with rules and set rewards. Stop pretending there's anything momentous about it.
The show is over, and I won't miss any of you because I won't even think of you, not for a minute. In September a new bunch of people will appear on my screen, all of them making the same mistakes you made, all of their heads filled with notions of "intergity" and the "life-changing" nature of a game show. So farewell, Survivor contestants. It's time to sit down and shut up.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Last Call for the Delusional
The end of the "regular" TV season means the beginning of the "summer" season, which is in many ways good news. Mad Men returns in August, for example, and True Blood will be back this summer as well. The bitter always comes along with the sweet, though, and this week will be the last time to watch, possibly ever, two of reality television's most ridiculous and despicable participants. Of couse I'm talking about Ben "Coach" Wade on Survivor and Kelly Bensimon on The Real Housewives of New York City. Who else could it be?
If you haven't been watching, let me catch you up. I have no idea what Coach's real biography would include, but he claims to have been a trumpet prodigy, to hold the record for longest solo kayaking trip down the Amazon, to have been captured by pygmies on said trip and to have escaped from them just as they were about to slice apart his ass and eat it, to hold the world's highest honors in a martial art so secret no one knows about it and he can't even say its name, to be a world-class symphony conductor, and to be the most successful women's soccer coach in the world, ever.
In confessionals he calls himself "Dragonslayer" and then claims that the tribe has nicknamed him "dragonslayer." He believes he can control minds with his eyes and that he is in control of the game, even as each of his "allies" has been voted off, one by one. His body is covered with fake tribal tatoos, he wears his hair in a Steven Segal style adorned with feathers, and his delusions seem to know no bounds. Despite his claims to physical strength and mental acumen, he is completely ineffectual in challenges, and has been carried along late into the game precisely because he is nonthreatening and expendable. It's worth watching to see the clash between his self-regard and the disdain of all around him. You can watch the last regular episode of the season Thursday at 8 on CBS; the season finale airs Sunday at 8.
The facts of Ms. Bensimon's biography are better known. She was a model, and she did in fact serve as "editor" of the short-lived Elle Accessories magazine. She was in fact married to a famous fashion photographer. She was also recently arrested for assaulting her boyfriend, although I doubt she includes that on her resume. Also withheld from the bio is the fact that she appears to either be stupid or drug-addled, that she has trouble putting a simple sentence together, and that, like Coach, her self-regard has no limits. She is clearly a person that everyone, everyone, ends up hating. On a show built around cat fights and strangers hating strangers, Kelly has managed the singular feat of making each and every other participant cringe at her presence.
I don't know and will never know Kelly, but I hate her as well, for two simple reasons:
1. She is always seen flitting from place to place in completely inappropriate outfits, like short skirts with flourescent green Wellies, which is bad enough, but what's incomprehensible is the fact that she appears to never have a purse, bag, wallet, or keys. As if she expects her bill will be paid by someone else, as if she expects someone will appear to unlock her door, as if she expects whatever needs arise during an outing will be met by those around her. Hate.
2. In one memorable clip, a Kelly VO intones, "I love running in NYC. You just throw on some shoes and you go." We then pan to a shot of Kelly, sans purse, keys, bag, etc., jogging down the middle of 5th Avenue in midtown, surrounded by traffic. Plenty of people go running in Manhattan; no one runs in the middle of traffic. Of all the unrealistic things about this scene, the most unrealistic thing of all was the fact that a cabbie didn't just run her over.
The title of this series is ironic. It is not about the "reality" of "housewives" in the OC, Atlanta, NY, or, beginning tonight, New Jersey. It is instead about the fake, the pursuit of youth through chemicals and surgery, the replacement of class with lifestyle, the substitution of shopping for intimacy. In a world of fakery, Kelly stands out as fake, and that's really saying something. The season ended last Tuesday, but Bravo runs marathons pretty much endlessly. You don't need to have seen a second of the show to enjoy the reunion show airing at 10 tonight (with part two airing Thursday at 9). Housewives reunion shows are always filled with acrimony, accusations, tears, and cocktails, and this one promises all of the above.
In a fair and sane world, this will be your last chance to see these two in action. In a fair and sane world, Coach will be banished from screens both large and small after Sunday, and Kelly will not be asked back for the next NYC season. Let's hope that the world is in fact fair and sane, and tune in this week to catch them while you can.
If you haven't been watching, let me catch you up. I have no idea what Coach's real biography would include, but he claims to have been a trumpet prodigy, to hold the record for longest solo kayaking trip down the Amazon, to have been captured by pygmies on said trip and to have escaped from them just as they were about to slice apart his ass and eat it, to hold the world's highest honors in a martial art so secret no one knows about it and he can't even say its name, to be a world-class symphony conductor, and to be the most successful women's soccer coach in the world, ever.
In confessionals he calls himself "Dragonslayer" and then claims that the tribe has nicknamed him "dragonslayer." He believes he can control minds with his eyes and that he is in control of the game, even as each of his "allies" has been voted off, one by one. His body is covered with fake tribal tatoos, he wears his hair in a Steven Segal style adorned with feathers, and his delusions seem to know no bounds. Despite his claims to physical strength and mental acumen, he is completely ineffectual in challenges, and has been carried along late into the game precisely because he is nonthreatening and expendable. It's worth watching to see the clash between his self-regard and the disdain of all around him. You can watch the last regular episode of the season Thursday at 8 on CBS; the season finale airs Sunday at 8.
The facts of Ms. Bensimon's biography are better known. She was a model, and she did in fact serve as "editor" of the short-lived Elle Accessories magazine. She was in fact married to a famous fashion photographer. She was also recently arrested for assaulting her boyfriend, although I doubt she includes that on her resume. Also withheld from the bio is the fact that she appears to either be stupid or drug-addled, that she has trouble putting a simple sentence together, and that, like Coach, her self-regard has no limits. She is clearly a person that everyone, everyone, ends up hating. On a show built around cat fights and strangers hating strangers, Kelly has managed the singular feat of making each and every other participant cringe at her presence.
I don't know and will never know Kelly, but I hate her as well, for two simple reasons:
1. She is always seen flitting from place to place in completely inappropriate outfits, like short skirts with flourescent green Wellies, which is bad enough, but what's incomprehensible is the fact that she appears to never have a purse, bag, wallet, or keys. As if she expects her bill will be paid by someone else, as if she expects someone will appear to unlock her door, as if she expects whatever needs arise during an outing will be met by those around her. Hate.
2. In one memorable clip, a Kelly VO intones, "I love running in NYC. You just throw on some shoes and you go." We then pan to a shot of Kelly, sans purse, keys, bag, etc., jogging down the middle of 5th Avenue in midtown, surrounded by traffic. Plenty of people go running in Manhattan; no one runs in the middle of traffic. Of all the unrealistic things about this scene, the most unrealistic thing of all was the fact that a cabbie didn't just run her over.
The title of this series is ironic. It is not about the "reality" of "housewives" in the OC, Atlanta, NY, or, beginning tonight, New Jersey. It is instead about the fake, the pursuit of youth through chemicals and surgery, the replacement of class with lifestyle, the substitution of shopping for intimacy. In a world of fakery, Kelly stands out as fake, and that's really saying something. The season ended last Tuesday, but Bravo runs marathons pretty much endlessly. You don't need to have seen a second of the show to enjoy the reunion show airing at 10 tonight (with part two airing Thursday at 9). Housewives reunion shows are always filled with acrimony, accusations, tears, and cocktails, and this one promises all of the above.
In a fair and sane world, this will be your last chance to see these two in action. In a fair and sane world, Coach will be banished from screens both large and small after Sunday, and Kelly will not be asked back for the next NYC season. Let's hope that the world is in fact fair and sane, and tune in this week to catch them while you can.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Another Reason to Garage Your Car
Every once in a while something comes along to prove the cliche that no matter how much one has seen one hasn't seen it all. Last night, that thing was a documentary on BBC America entitled My Car is My Lover. The producers set out to document instances of mechaphilia, a desire to have sex with machines, undoubtedly hoping to find a thriving subculture in which lawn mowers, computers, crock pots, and ipods are violated on a regular basis. Instead, they found Ed Smith from Washington state, a loner who has sex with Vanilla, his white VW Beetle.
How does someone end up transferring their sexual feelings from human to machine? According to Smith, an encounter with a photograph of a classic Corvette when he was 13 changed him this way forever. Through Smith the producers meet Justin, a 20 year-old from Missouri who is just accepting his feelings for cars. Justin believes his romantic leanings stem from his days as a child playing in the yard, with only a rusting car for a companion. When he reached the age of sexual exploration, naturally he'd masturbate in the car.
If I were a hot-blooded American man trying to tryst with an automobile I'd head right for the tailpipe, but Smith seems to enjoy raping every crevice of his vehicle. In keeping with the tenet that the act of observation changes the observed, participation in the documentary seems to embolden Smith. The producers decide it would be a great idea to have these two mechaphiles meet face to face (they are message board acquaintances) at a large automobile swap meet outside LA. When they stop for the night during the drive down, Smith fondles a Chevy Suburban parked in the motel's lot. In the middle of the night, he ravages the producers' rental car.
Justin's first love is his Beetle, but an oil leak forces him to drive to CA in Todd, a Grand Prix he has recently acquired. Justin is more the romantic than Smith; during the journey he slowly falls in love with Todd, admitting at the end that he can't wait to get home to %#*& the $#@* out of it. Alas, on the night Justin and Todd meet, while Todd reclines in a peaceful slumber, Smith has sex with Todd, caught in the act by the documentarians. Both Todd and Justin seem sanguine about this turn of events, but I'm sad that Justin won't get to be Todd's first.
The auto swap meet appears to send Smith over the bend. He's caught on camera wandering the site, randomly fondling, licking, and kissing cars, his erection barely concealed by his baggy chinos. For the record, this section of the program contained some of the best reaction shots imaginable. It was also sad, and creepy, and very American in the way that this kind of thing can only be American, in that only this culture could produce a man who sexualizes machines, acts on those urges, is happy to tell the world, and encourages the 15 minutes of fame that might ensue.
I probably still haven't seen everything. Perhaps this show will enbolden other mechaphiles to come forward. Surely somewhere in this vast land of ours a man is right now, even as I write these words, creeping into the kitchen, lovingly and quietly opening a cabinet door, and ever so gently yet with great anticipation lifting to his breast a stainless steel Cuisinart 4-slice toaster.
How does someone end up transferring their sexual feelings from human to machine? According to Smith, an encounter with a photograph of a classic Corvette when he was 13 changed him this way forever. Through Smith the producers meet Justin, a 20 year-old from Missouri who is just accepting his feelings for cars. Justin believes his romantic leanings stem from his days as a child playing in the yard, with only a rusting car for a companion. When he reached the age of sexual exploration, naturally he'd masturbate in the car.
If I were a hot-blooded American man trying to tryst with an automobile I'd head right for the tailpipe, but Smith seems to enjoy raping every crevice of his vehicle. In keeping with the tenet that the act of observation changes the observed, participation in the documentary seems to embolden Smith. The producers decide it would be a great idea to have these two mechaphiles meet face to face (they are message board acquaintances) at a large automobile swap meet outside LA. When they stop for the night during the drive down, Smith fondles a Chevy Suburban parked in the motel's lot. In the middle of the night, he ravages the producers' rental car.
Justin's first love is his Beetle, but an oil leak forces him to drive to CA in Todd, a Grand Prix he has recently acquired. Justin is more the romantic than Smith; during the journey he slowly falls in love with Todd, admitting at the end that he can't wait to get home to %#*& the $#@* out of it. Alas, on the night Justin and Todd meet, while Todd reclines in a peaceful slumber, Smith has sex with Todd, caught in the act by the documentarians. Both Todd and Justin seem sanguine about this turn of events, but I'm sad that Justin won't get to be Todd's first.
The auto swap meet appears to send Smith over the bend. He's caught on camera wandering the site, randomly fondling, licking, and kissing cars, his erection barely concealed by his baggy chinos. For the record, this section of the program contained some of the best reaction shots imaginable. It was also sad, and creepy, and very American in the way that this kind of thing can only be American, in that only this culture could produce a man who sexualizes machines, acts on those urges, is happy to tell the world, and encourages the 15 minutes of fame that might ensue.
I probably still haven't seen everything. Perhaps this show will enbolden other mechaphiles to come forward. Surely somewhere in this vast land of ours a man is right now, even as I write these words, creeping into the kitchen, lovingly and quietly opening a cabinet door, and ever so gently yet with great anticipation lifting to his breast a stainless steel Cuisinart 4-slice toaster.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
I Pay a Cable Bill for This?
One thing Richard Nixon had right was his statement that only Americans can humiliate the United States. Several years ago, the writers of a popular BBC program were faced with a dilemma. Although they had planned out a long-running series centered around a mystery, their star was leaving the show after two seasons. The star was so central to the mystery that he appeared in every shot, every scene. They would have to wrap things up prematurely.
The series was Life on Mars, in which a cop from contemporary Manchester is hit by a car and wakes up a cop in Manchester in 1973. Was he dead? In a coma? A time traveler? Insane? Whatever direction the show's creators initially envisioned, they found themselves bound to quickly wrap things up. So here's what they came up with: the hero, Sam Tyler, was in fact in a coma, 1973 some netherworld between life and death but a world that felt quite real. The coma was caused by a brain tumor that the car accident shook loose, or something. Contemporary Sam Tyler undergoes surgery and awakens, restored to his real life. But he finds himself alienated, unable to feel, unable to fit in. He realizes that he was happier in the dream world of 1973. So he jumps off a roof in order to return to that world. The seconds before the real Sam's death become years lived in his ideal world of the past.
Someone had the great idea to remake the series in America. American Sam is hit by a car and wakes up in 1973 New York. Same situation, same characters. But American Life on Mars never caught on, and the show was canceled. However, the writers were allowed to finish the series, bring everything to a close. Like their UK counterparts they had to do this quickly, and had to find some way of ending things despite whatever long-term plotting they had envisioned.
What do they do? They decide to take the title of the show literally. Sam Tyler is in fact an astronaut, lying in suspended animation on his way to Mars in the year 2035. For whatever reason he asked that the dream he be given for his two-year sleep be that he is a cop in 2009. The spaceship hit a meteor shower, it turns out, causing a computer glitch that made him dream that his 2009 dream self had been sent back to 1973. He awakens, we discover that all the 1973 characters are his coworkers on the voyage, and they land on Mars. There was no mystery. End of story.
WTF? Our teeth may be better, our most disgusting food may be much less disgusting than their most disgusting food, but clearly the British are much better at providing sensible narrative closure. The BBC ordered a sequel to LoM, and the only good that comes out of the American ending to the series is the fact that it renders the possibility of a US sequel moot.
The series was Life on Mars, in which a cop from contemporary Manchester is hit by a car and wakes up a cop in Manchester in 1973. Was he dead? In a coma? A time traveler? Insane? Whatever direction the show's creators initially envisioned, they found themselves bound to quickly wrap things up. So here's what they came up with: the hero, Sam Tyler, was in fact in a coma, 1973 some netherworld between life and death but a world that felt quite real. The coma was caused by a brain tumor that the car accident shook loose, or something. Contemporary Sam Tyler undergoes surgery and awakens, restored to his real life. But he finds himself alienated, unable to feel, unable to fit in. He realizes that he was happier in the dream world of 1973. So he jumps off a roof in order to return to that world. The seconds before the real Sam's death become years lived in his ideal world of the past.
Someone had the great idea to remake the series in America. American Sam is hit by a car and wakes up in 1973 New York. Same situation, same characters. But American Life on Mars never caught on, and the show was canceled. However, the writers were allowed to finish the series, bring everything to a close. Like their UK counterparts they had to do this quickly, and had to find some way of ending things despite whatever long-term plotting they had envisioned.
What do they do? They decide to take the title of the show literally. Sam Tyler is in fact an astronaut, lying in suspended animation on his way to Mars in the year 2035. For whatever reason he asked that the dream he be given for his two-year sleep be that he is a cop in 2009. The spaceship hit a meteor shower, it turns out, causing a computer glitch that made him dream that his 2009 dream self had been sent back to 1973. He awakens, we discover that all the 1973 characters are his coworkers on the voyage, and they land on Mars. There was no mystery. End of story.
WTF? Our teeth may be better, our most disgusting food may be much less disgusting than their most disgusting food, but clearly the British are much better at providing sensible narrative closure. The BBC ordered a sequel to LoM, and the only good that comes out of the American ending to the series is the fact that it renders the possibility of a US sequel moot.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Culture High and Low
There's so much television and so little time it's hard for me to even know where to begin. I'll start by noting that, if you're a fan of Life on Mars, either US or UK version, you'll want to know that BBC America will be running Ashes to Ashes, the UK sequel, beginning Saturday night. Sam's story is done; in the sequel, another cop finds himself in the past, this time the past of 1981. I've never seen it so I can't comment on its quality, but I do look forward to finally seeing it.
I felt iffy about Big Love in its first season, liked it a lot more in its second, and am finding the third season frankly incredible. The long hiatus caused by the writers' strike appears to have allowed the writers time to intricately plot this season, and the way various threads hinted at in the past have been brought to the fore and woven together is something to behold. If you haven't been watching there's still time to catch up via On Demand, but you better start now; only three new episodes remain. Prepare yourself emotionally before playing catch-up, though. One of my complaints about the first two seasons has been that the toll of the Hendricksons' chosen life - not just polygamy but the fact that they have chosen a life of secrets, lies, and isolation, and the way their choices effect and affect not only the adults but also the children - had not been dealt with sufficiently. The toll of all choices is dealt with again and again in this season. It's tragic in many ways, and sad, and affecting. Don't miss it.
I have no idea how or why I became addicted to Bravo's Real Housewives shows, but here we are. The OC girls have been put out to pasture for the year not a moment too soon, because the level of downright nastiness between and among them had become as hard as it was fascinating to watch, but now we're back in NYC for a second season, which is reason to rejoice. Like most of America, I spent last season laughing at Alex and Simon's quixotic quest to be something other than the pretentious wannabe poseurs that they so clearly are, but this year they have been supplanted in my affections by the Countess.
The Countess is Luann Somethingorother from Connecticut, who parlayed a minor modeling career into marriage to some minor Eurotrash Count whose family bought a title a couple of generations ago. The Countess hangs onto her title in the way only a chick from working-class Connecticut can. She insists on being called Countess Luann and presents absolutely no indication of any knowledge that the words "Countess" and "Luann" should probably never be placed next to one another. She often referes to herself in the third person, as befitting a royal. "The Countess does not drink from a bottle," she chastised the wait staff at a benefit during the season premier, and I thank her for providing me with a new catchphrase.
Countess Luann is working on a book of etiquette, because people named Luann are naturally savants in this area. In last week's episode she became angry that those attending a funraiser were talking amongst themselves as she was being introduced as a contributor to the charity in question, so she strode onto the stage and shushed the crowd. She then strode back to her seat and proceeded to talk to her tablemates while the M.C. continued with the program. She's an expert, that one.
Catch it on Bravo, Tuesdays at 10, with marathons running pretty much anytime during the week that a Top Chef marathon isn't. You will not be sorry.
I felt iffy about Big Love in its first season, liked it a lot more in its second, and am finding the third season frankly incredible. The long hiatus caused by the writers' strike appears to have allowed the writers time to intricately plot this season, and the way various threads hinted at in the past have been brought to the fore and woven together is something to behold. If you haven't been watching there's still time to catch up via On Demand, but you better start now; only three new episodes remain. Prepare yourself emotionally before playing catch-up, though. One of my complaints about the first two seasons has been that the toll of the Hendricksons' chosen life - not just polygamy but the fact that they have chosen a life of secrets, lies, and isolation, and the way their choices effect and affect not only the adults but also the children - had not been dealt with sufficiently. The toll of all choices is dealt with again and again in this season. It's tragic in many ways, and sad, and affecting. Don't miss it.
I have no idea how or why I became addicted to Bravo's Real Housewives shows, but here we are. The OC girls have been put out to pasture for the year not a moment too soon, because the level of downright nastiness between and among them had become as hard as it was fascinating to watch, but now we're back in NYC for a second season, which is reason to rejoice. Like most of America, I spent last season laughing at Alex and Simon's quixotic quest to be something other than the pretentious wannabe poseurs that they so clearly are, but this year they have been supplanted in my affections by the Countess.
The Countess is Luann Somethingorother from Connecticut, who parlayed a minor modeling career into marriage to some minor Eurotrash Count whose family bought a title a couple of generations ago. The Countess hangs onto her title in the way only a chick from working-class Connecticut can. She insists on being called Countess Luann and presents absolutely no indication of any knowledge that the words "Countess" and "Luann" should probably never be placed next to one another. She often referes to herself in the third person, as befitting a royal. "The Countess does not drink from a bottle," she chastised the wait staff at a benefit during the season premier, and I thank her for providing me with a new catchphrase.
Countess Luann is working on a book of etiquette, because people named Luann are naturally savants in this area. In last week's episode she became angry that those attending a funraiser were talking amongst themselves as she was being introduced as a contributor to the charity in question, so she strode onto the stage and shushed the crowd. She then strode back to her seat and proceeded to talk to her tablemates while the M.C. continued with the program. She's an expert, that one.
Catch it on Bravo, Tuesdays at 10, with marathons running pretty much anytime during the week that a Top Chef marathon isn't. You will not be sorry.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Scary Women
It's not hard to find disturbing content on TV. The nightly news, Bush speaking about anything, Gray's Anatomy, disturbing, all. Perhaps the most disturbing thing on TV right now, though, is a show that previously had been a guilty pleasure, a show that I used to watch because it made me laugh, a show that was once seemingly innocuous. That show is The Real Housewives of Orange County, and if you want to see how vapid, how cruel, how stupid a bunch of adult women can be, you must tune in Tuesdays at 10 on Bravo (although you can catch "marathons" of the show almost any day of the week, so don't worry if you have other plans Tuesday nights).
The five featured women are supposed to be rich, and it's supposed to be a glimpse into the Botoxed and carefree lives of people who live in a gated community in the Republican capitol of the West. Naturally they're all slaves to plastic surgery, shopping, and chardonnay. Nothing disturbing there. What's become clear this season, though, is that they're slaves to their own basest instincts. These women hate each other, and enact their hatred in front of the camera week after week. Watch this show to learn how not to be.
Last night Tamra, who believes she is the "hottest" housewife, held a formal dinner party in her backyard. Said party involved many courses, but also a lot, a lot, of alcohol. There's a new "housewife" this season, Gretchen. Gretchen is 30, well-groomed, and has a millionaire fiancee who happens to be dying of cancer. Tamra hates Gretchen. She's jealous. So, she spends the whole dinner party plying Gretchen with shots of tequila. After all, what's a formal dinner without shots of tequila? Tamra's husband and 22 year-old son help in the plot to get Gretchen drunk. Tamra tells the camera it's her intent to get Gretchen "naked drunk" so that everyone can see her "dark side."
Gretchen, meanwhile, has just spent the day in the hospital with her dying fiancee. I know what it's like to watch someone die. Sometimes getting drunk is the only way to help yourself forget that particular painful reality. Gretchen gets drunk. Tamra's son sits next to Gretchen, leers, eggs her on. Tamra makes sexual innuendo about Gretchen to the other guests. The other guests try to take alcohol away from Gretchen, but Tamra's husband and son keep slipping her more. Finally, Gretchen is so drunk she's slurring and out of control. Tamra won't let anyone give her a ride home, insisting she stay the night. The episode ends with Tamra's son following Gretchen into the bathroom, asking for a hug. Gretchen rebuffs him, saying she's engaged. Her persists nonetheless. It's all "to be continued."
Last week, the group all went to the racetrack, where Tamra and her co-conspirator Vicky shunned the other housewives, acting like eighth graders in the junior high cafeteria. Two weeks ago, the "gang" all went to Havasu, got drunk while their young children watched, and spent the episode talking trash about one another. I know I'm not making the show sound fun. It's no longer fun; it's simply the most disturbing thing on TV.
It's a trainwreck. You want to turn away, but you can't.
The five featured women are supposed to be rich, and it's supposed to be a glimpse into the Botoxed and carefree lives of people who live in a gated community in the Republican capitol of the West. Naturally they're all slaves to plastic surgery, shopping, and chardonnay. Nothing disturbing there. What's become clear this season, though, is that they're slaves to their own basest instincts. These women hate each other, and enact their hatred in front of the camera week after week. Watch this show to learn how not to be.
Last night Tamra, who believes she is the "hottest" housewife, held a formal dinner party in her backyard. Said party involved many courses, but also a lot, a lot, of alcohol. There's a new "housewife" this season, Gretchen. Gretchen is 30, well-groomed, and has a millionaire fiancee who happens to be dying of cancer. Tamra hates Gretchen. She's jealous. So, she spends the whole dinner party plying Gretchen with shots of tequila. After all, what's a formal dinner without shots of tequila? Tamra's husband and 22 year-old son help in the plot to get Gretchen drunk. Tamra tells the camera it's her intent to get Gretchen "naked drunk" so that everyone can see her "dark side."
Gretchen, meanwhile, has just spent the day in the hospital with her dying fiancee. I know what it's like to watch someone die. Sometimes getting drunk is the only way to help yourself forget that particular painful reality. Gretchen gets drunk. Tamra's son sits next to Gretchen, leers, eggs her on. Tamra makes sexual innuendo about Gretchen to the other guests. The other guests try to take alcohol away from Gretchen, but Tamra's husband and son keep slipping her more. Finally, Gretchen is so drunk she's slurring and out of control. Tamra won't let anyone give her a ride home, insisting she stay the night. The episode ends with Tamra's son following Gretchen into the bathroom, asking for a hug. Gretchen rebuffs him, saying she's engaged. Her persists nonetheless. It's all "to be continued."
Last week, the group all went to the racetrack, where Tamra and her co-conspirator Vicky shunned the other housewives, acting like eighth graders in the junior high cafeteria. Two weeks ago, the "gang" all went to Havasu, got drunk while their young children watched, and spent the episode talking trash about one another. I know I'm not making the show sound fun. It's no longer fun; it's simply the most disturbing thing on TV.
It's a trainwreck. You want to turn away, but you can't.
Monday, December 22, 2008
All I Want for Christmas
'Tis the season to give DVD box sets, and a quick perusal of Amazon demonstrates the fact that nearly each and every TV show, no matter how stupid, eventually finds its way into release. Are there really that many people interested in owning the complete According to Jim? Apparently so. Meanwhile, all sorts of really good television sits in the vaults, unreleased. Santa, I've made my list. Please release the following on DVD for me, and place the box sets in my stocking. You'll be doing the entire world a favor.
China Beach. How is it possible that this excellent show is not available on DVD? Sure, it was depressing, but isn't the Vietnam War by definition depressing? It had a great cast, including but not limited to Dana Delaney and Marge Helgenberger, and it was ahead of its time in its use of flash forwards, flash backs, intercut interviews set in the present, and all kinds of storytelling that was, at the time, unique for television. I have been baffled for years by the fact that not a single season or episode of this series is currently available.
Homefront. Remember Homefront? You should. It replaced thirtysomething Tuesdays at 10 on ABC. It had a great ensemble including Kyle Chandler and John Slattery. Sure, it was a period drama, and I'm one of the few people who likes period dramas, especially those set in mythical, midwestern American in the middle of WWII. It was really good. It only lasted two seasons. The whole series could fit on about four discs. Release it already! And while we're on the subject, another series in serious need of DVD treatment is
thirtysomething. Oh, those self-obsessed Philadelphia yuppies with their shoulder pads and their careers and their search for fulfillment. Gary looked just like Bjorn Borg, and he died! Nancy was a saint, and she had cancer! Melissa was a goof, and had a great loft! Ellen was punished for being a single career woman by hooking up with men who were way too ugly! Miles! Miles! Michael and Hope's dog was named Grendel! Seriously, who wouldn't buy this?
Sisters. Yes, it was an evening soap and yes, at times it was stupid. But come on, George Clooney was on for a while. And it starred Sela Ward and Swoozie Kurtz. This show was too fun to be locked away in a vault somewhere.
All My Children. No, I'm not crazy enought to desire each and every episode of the past 38 years released on DVD. All I want is a couple of discs that feature highlights from the 1970s, the show's golden age. I want to see some Tara. I want Donna when she's a prostitute, and the evil Billy Clyde Tuggle, who filled the void left by the evil pimp Tyrone. I want some young Erica Kane. This doesn't seem to me like too much to ask.
Life on Mars (UK series released for Region One, USA). Everyone says the original UK version is superior to the US remake. I like the remake fine, but have only seen maybe two of the original episodes on BBC America. It's out on DVD for Region 2, which of course won't work on my player. Please, people, reformat the thing so I can make unfair comparisions between the two just like everyone else.
Ed. Oh, it was somewhat dopey and sappy. A high-powered lawyer is cuckolded by his fiancee, ditches everything, and moves back to his picture-perfect hometown, where he buys a bowling alley for his law practice and pines for his high school love, who is now a high school teacher. But the performances were strong, and on cold winter nights, there's nothing like some sap to warm you up. This lasted a couple of seasons on NBC, and there's no reason in the world why it hasn't been released.
OK, Santa, get to work.
China Beach. How is it possible that this excellent show is not available on DVD? Sure, it was depressing, but isn't the Vietnam War by definition depressing? It had a great cast, including but not limited to Dana Delaney and Marge Helgenberger, and it was ahead of its time in its use of flash forwards, flash backs, intercut interviews set in the present, and all kinds of storytelling that was, at the time, unique for television. I have been baffled for years by the fact that not a single season or episode of this series is currently available.
Homefront. Remember Homefront? You should. It replaced thirtysomething Tuesdays at 10 on ABC. It had a great ensemble including Kyle Chandler and John Slattery. Sure, it was a period drama, and I'm one of the few people who likes period dramas, especially those set in mythical, midwestern American in the middle of WWII. It was really good. It only lasted two seasons. The whole series could fit on about four discs. Release it already! And while we're on the subject, another series in serious need of DVD treatment is
thirtysomething. Oh, those self-obsessed Philadelphia yuppies with their shoulder pads and their careers and their search for fulfillment. Gary looked just like Bjorn Borg, and he died! Nancy was a saint, and she had cancer! Melissa was a goof, and had a great loft! Ellen was punished for being a single career woman by hooking up with men who were way too ugly! Miles! Miles! Michael and Hope's dog was named Grendel! Seriously, who wouldn't buy this?
Sisters. Yes, it was an evening soap and yes, at times it was stupid. But come on, George Clooney was on for a while. And it starred Sela Ward and Swoozie Kurtz. This show was too fun to be locked away in a vault somewhere.
All My Children. No, I'm not crazy enought to desire each and every episode of the past 38 years released on DVD. All I want is a couple of discs that feature highlights from the 1970s, the show's golden age. I want to see some Tara. I want Donna when she's a prostitute, and the evil Billy Clyde Tuggle, who filled the void left by the evil pimp Tyrone. I want some young Erica Kane. This doesn't seem to me like too much to ask.
Life on Mars (UK series released for Region One, USA). Everyone says the original UK version is superior to the US remake. I like the remake fine, but have only seen maybe two of the original episodes on BBC America. It's out on DVD for Region 2, which of course won't work on my player. Please, people, reformat the thing so I can make unfair comparisions between the two just like everyone else.
Ed. Oh, it was somewhat dopey and sappy. A high-powered lawyer is cuckolded by his fiancee, ditches everything, and moves back to his picture-perfect hometown, where he buys a bowling alley for his law practice and pines for his high school love, who is now a high school teacher. But the performances were strong, and on cold winter nights, there's nothing like some sap to warm you up. This lasted a couple of seasons on NBC, and there's no reason in the world why it hasn't been released.
OK, Santa, get to work.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
A Very Good Thing
I have no doubt that everyone's in need of a laugh right now, so I'm happy to report that I have discovered what is probably the most hilarious show on TV. Maybe you've read about it: Whatever, Martha, on the Fine Living Network. Actually, the Fine Living Network is itself pretty hysterical. It is, essentially, a bunch of repeats from Bravo and HGTV, one constant loop of Queer Eye and Emeril and other shows from the recent boom discussing cooking, gardening, and other points of accessible luxury none of us can any longer afford or even care about. Really, gracious entertaining feels very 2006. These days entertaining no doubt involves a 12-pack of Milwaulkee's Best and some tuna casserole, but I digress.
Whatever, Martha is Mystery Science Theater 3000 with the sci-fi B-movies replaced by old clips from the Martha Stewart Show and the robots replaced by Alexis Stewart and her friend Jennifer Koppelman Hutt. The clips play and Alexis and Jennifer snarkily comment on them. What makes the show funny, beyond the quick wit of the hosts and the ridiculous datedness of the clips, is the fact that Martha's daugher is one of those doing the snarking. Alexis isn't entirely mean, but she does enjoy making fun of her mother as much as the rest of us.
A block of shows runs weeknights from 8 to 10 PM (each show is half an hour, but be sure to record rather than watching live - there are way, way too many ads, probably 15 minutes of them in each show). One of last night's shows featured face painting with a very scary "clown" named Peanut Butter, who looked eerily reminiscent of a club kid from the Michael Alig era and who inisisted on glueing beads to the faces of Martha and some of her staffers. In another segment, Martha demonstrated how to make tools for the maintenance of your terrarium while Alexis and Jennifer mercilessly mocked not only the tools but the entire endeavor. No description does the show justice. You really must tune in and see for yourself.
Each show ends with some absolutely random and inappropriate sex and dating chatter between Alexis and Jennifer. It's amusing enough to listen to someone defend getting drunk and having sex on the first date, but to hear a exegesis on the joys of drunken first-date sex coming from the mouth of Martha Stewart's daughter is pure ironic genius.
The best part of all this? Martha herself is the executive producer, proof that she's not only a master markerter but also has a wicked self-depracating sense of humor. "Who doesn't have a bunch of 1990s video segments and B-roll lying, unused, in the basement?" I hear Martha asking. "On today's program, I'll show you how to repackage those used segments and make them look like new!"
Whatever, Martha is Mystery Science Theater 3000 with the sci-fi B-movies replaced by old clips from the Martha Stewart Show and the robots replaced by Alexis Stewart and her friend Jennifer Koppelman Hutt. The clips play and Alexis and Jennifer snarkily comment on them. What makes the show funny, beyond the quick wit of the hosts and the ridiculous datedness of the clips, is the fact that Martha's daugher is one of those doing the snarking. Alexis isn't entirely mean, but she does enjoy making fun of her mother as much as the rest of us.
A block of shows runs weeknights from 8 to 10 PM (each show is half an hour, but be sure to record rather than watching live - there are way, way too many ads, probably 15 minutes of them in each show). One of last night's shows featured face painting with a very scary "clown" named Peanut Butter, who looked eerily reminiscent of a club kid from the Michael Alig era and who inisisted on glueing beads to the faces of Martha and some of her staffers. In another segment, Martha demonstrated how to make tools for the maintenance of your terrarium while Alexis and Jennifer mercilessly mocked not only the tools but the entire endeavor. No description does the show justice. You really must tune in and see for yourself.
Each show ends with some absolutely random and inappropriate sex and dating chatter between Alexis and Jennifer. It's amusing enough to listen to someone defend getting drunk and having sex on the first date, but to hear a exegesis on the joys of drunken first-date sex coming from the mouth of Martha Stewart's daughter is pure ironic genius.
The best part of all this? Martha herself is the executive producer, proof that she's not only a master markerter but also has a wicked self-depracating sense of humor. "Who doesn't have a bunch of 1990s video segments and B-roll lying, unused, in the basement?" I hear Martha asking. "On today's program, I'll show you how to repackage those used segments and make them look like new!"
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
The Real Reality Show
In a fit of boredom I watched The Hills last night. If you've never seen it, you're probably either smart or lucky. It's a "scripted reality" show, whatever that means, and it's probably the dumbest show on TV. The "plot" centers around a bunch of self-involved twentysomethings having fake conversations about each other at night spots around Los Angeles. As far as I can tell, that's the show's entire premise: relatively telegenic people talking about each other while they eat or get drunk. The experience led me to wonder why my life hasn't been made into a reality show, "scripted" or otherwise. I'm at least as interesting as that bunch of dimwits.
Here, for example, would be the past 24 hours of my life:
Shot of me pinned down in bed, dog holding down my legs, cat holding down my arms. VO: I knew it was morning and time to get up. What I didn't know is how much I would change by the end of the day.
Shot of me at the computer, while the dog jumps up and down and runs in circles around me. VO: The internet is so interesting! I knew it was time to take a shower and leave the house, though. I smelled.
Shot of me in my car. VO: It's time to get gas!
Camera pans through my living room, close-up of me lying on the couch reading the NY Times. VO: Monday's op-ed pages suck. I knew I was hungry, but I didn't know what I would eat.
Montage of me pulling things from the refrigerator while the cat rubs against my legs and the dog stares longingly. VO: Anjou pears are a healthy and delicious snack. Will I ever get my work done for the day? I wonder if anyone is out to lunch right now, talking about me.
Cut to shot of empty restaurant. No one is talking about me.
Evening, living room in darkness. Camera finds me lying on my couch, watching LBJ documentary. As screen fades to black, VO: How could I have known that morning that the evening would find me tired all over again? It was a lesson I had to learn the hard way.
End credits.
Next week on "A Real Boring Life": interior of diner, where I am sitting at the counter reading the paper. VO: I wonder if they'll poach eggs for me today?
Here, for example, would be the past 24 hours of my life:
Shot of me pinned down in bed, dog holding down my legs, cat holding down my arms. VO: I knew it was morning and time to get up. What I didn't know is how much I would change by the end of the day.
Shot of me at the computer, while the dog jumps up and down and runs in circles around me. VO: The internet is so interesting! I knew it was time to take a shower and leave the house, though. I smelled.
Shot of me in my car. VO: It's time to get gas!
Camera pans through my living room, close-up of me lying on the couch reading the NY Times. VO: Monday's op-ed pages suck. I knew I was hungry, but I didn't know what I would eat.
Montage of me pulling things from the refrigerator while the cat rubs against my legs and the dog stares longingly. VO: Anjou pears are a healthy and delicious snack. Will I ever get my work done for the day? I wonder if anyone is out to lunch right now, talking about me.
Cut to shot of empty restaurant. No one is talking about me.
Evening, living room in darkness. Camera finds me lying on my couch, watching LBJ documentary. As screen fades to black, VO: How could I have known that morning that the evening would find me tired all over again? It was a lesson I had to learn the hard way.
End credits.
Next week on "A Real Boring Life": interior of diner, where I am sitting at the counter reading the paper. VO: I wonder if they'll poach eggs for me today?
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
High and Low
In today's movies one finds two approaches to comedy. On the one hand we have literate and witty characters whose banter surrounds dramatic events; the comedy is a product of character, not of plot. On the other hand we have comedy entirely driven by plot, either in the form of a genre spoof or through a series of untenable, wacky situations. This second approach features type rather than character; the comedy is produced through action or sight gag. One form is "high," descended from Woody Allen, the other is "low," descended from American Pie. Whether you prefer one or the other approach goes simply to taste. One doesn't work better than the other, in theory. Last night, I saw how drastically different the results could be in practice.
I started my comedy double-feature with Smart People, a film that had somehow garnered some decent reviews last spring. It stars Dennis Quaid as a widowed, depressed, misanthropic professor of Victorian literature; Sarah Jessica Parker as a wounded and neurotic doctor, Quaid's ex-student and love interest; Ellen Paige as Quaid's depressive, caustic, Republican daughter; and Thomas Haden Church as Quaid's "zany" brother. I wish someone had given me a call before this script was green-lighted. I could have easily explained that dumpy, overweight, arrogant, pompous, and depressed English professors are not the stuff of comedy but are instead the stuff of nightmare. A complete lack of social skills and of empathy is very hard to make funny. A love story about two people who can't communicate is not engaging. A daughter who reacts to her mother's death by withdrawing from life and becoming a perfectionist right-winger is not "zany." The film didn't succeed as a comedy, and didn't fare much better as drama, since the sum of Quaid's growth as a human was depicted as his ability to sit in the passenger seat of a car. I'm guessing that this was a big thing because his wife perished in an accident where she was a passenger, but this was one of several mysteries that were never explained.
I followed this with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Here we had no pretense to smartness, no pondering of any of life's questions. It was simply a spoof of the rock bio-pick, and it was, in parts, hysterically funny. It would be worth watching for the Dylan impersonation alone, but when you add in an animated riff on Yellow Submarine and scenes from Dewey's 70s television variety show you end up with a complete triumph of the lowbrow. If there's a lesson in all this it's that sometimes it's better to not try so hard, sometimes it's better to aim low. Sometimes, the stupid is all the more pleasurable simply on account of being stupid.
Another high/low contrast awaits me tonight, this time centered on drama: the premier of the new 90120 followed by the premier episode of the last season of The Shield. Whether 90210 will benefit from a lack of ambitions will be the question of the night.
I started my comedy double-feature with Smart People, a film that had somehow garnered some decent reviews last spring. It stars Dennis Quaid as a widowed, depressed, misanthropic professor of Victorian literature; Sarah Jessica Parker as a wounded and neurotic doctor, Quaid's ex-student and love interest; Ellen Paige as Quaid's depressive, caustic, Republican daughter; and Thomas Haden Church as Quaid's "zany" brother. I wish someone had given me a call before this script was green-lighted. I could have easily explained that dumpy, overweight, arrogant, pompous, and depressed English professors are not the stuff of comedy but are instead the stuff of nightmare. A complete lack of social skills and of empathy is very hard to make funny. A love story about two people who can't communicate is not engaging. A daughter who reacts to her mother's death by withdrawing from life and becoming a perfectionist right-winger is not "zany." The film didn't succeed as a comedy, and didn't fare much better as drama, since the sum of Quaid's growth as a human was depicted as his ability to sit in the passenger seat of a car. I'm guessing that this was a big thing because his wife perished in an accident where she was a passenger, but this was one of several mysteries that were never explained.
I followed this with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Here we had no pretense to smartness, no pondering of any of life's questions. It was simply a spoof of the rock bio-pick, and it was, in parts, hysterically funny. It would be worth watching for the Dylan impersonation alone, but when you add in an animated riff on Yellow Submarine and scenes from Dewey's 70s television variety show you end up with a complete triumph of the lowbrow. If there's a lesson in all this it's that sometimes it's better to not try so hard, sometimes it's better to aim low. Sometimes, the stupid is all the more pleasurable simply on account of being stupid.
Another high/low contrast awaits me tonight, this time centered on drama: the premier of the new 90120 followed by the premier episode of the last season of The Shield. Whether 90210 will benefit from a lack of ambitions will be the question of the night.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Here Comes the Future
If Rip Van Winkle fell asleep in 1960 and awakened in 1970, he’d be a confused man indeed. “What happened?” he’d ask himself. “Men are walking around looking like women, women are acting like men, and what’s with this loud music? Plus, everyone’s dressed like a six year-old on a play date or a circus clown. What’s with the marijuana? Doesn’t anyone drink rye whiskey anymore?”
Rip’s question would be a hard one to answer, even today, with the perspective of hindsight. Change doesn’t happen in visible moments, so how do you pin change down, understand it? We often don’t notice change until it’s already happened and we suddenly find ourselves on the wrong side of it, feeling old. Who’s young, who’s old, and the underlying dread that comes with the recognition of changes that are occurring but still too incomplete to yet understand was the theme of last night’s season two premier of Mad Men.
The unspoken but underlying tension caused by change about to happen was what made me love Mad Men in the first place. Watching season one I marveled at the attention to detail, how period specific it was, in essence feeling nostalgia for a world so recently present but so irretrievably lost. The characters, of course, didn’t know that their world was about to be lost, and the tension between what the audience knows about the 1960s and the way the characters seem to think the new decade will just be a continuation of the 1950s was central to the mood of the show.
Based on last night’s premier, this tension will be central to the plot, rather than the mood, of season two. We first see Don Draper at a physical, being told to start taking it easier; his blood pressure is high, and he’s 36, considered middle-aged at the time. Duck, Sterling Cooper’s new Client Services director, wants to go after the Martinson Coffee account. All the young people are now drinking Pepsi, and he wants to hire some young creative talent to show Martinson they can induce the young to switch over to coffee. Duck has also insisted the office buy a Xerox machine.
Upset by the news of his physical, Don has lunch at a bar, where a beatnik-type next to him is reading Frank O’Hara’s Meditations In an Emergency. Don asks if the book is good. “I don’t think you’ll like it,” the beatnik states. Don doesn’t see the need to hire young creative talent. “The young don’t know anything,” he complains. His boss insists, though, and Duck has won this battle; Don will hire new talent, talent that it’s clear he doesn’t understand, as we see when he interviews a writer and designer who come as a team, a concept alien to Don.
Things have changed on the home front as well. Don seems to be coming home every night to be with his family rather than whoring around Manhattan. His wife Betty, though, has come out of the depression of season one; we first see her in a commanding position, astride a horse, and Betty’s recognition of her power, sexual and otherwise, would seem to be foreshadowed throughout the episode. Don, on the other hand, seems emasculated, literally impotent on Valentine’s Day despite Betty’s hot lingerie, later waiting in front of the TV for his wife to get home for dinner.
Don buys and reads the Frank O’Hara book, perhaps as an attempt to keep up. The episode ends with a Don VO quoting O’Hara’s poem “Mayakovsky”: “Now I am quietly waiting for/ the catastrophe of my personality/ to seem beautiful again,/ and interesting, and modern”. What will happen to all these characters as the 1960s unfold? We’ll have to watch to see, and in fact this is the reason that we will watch.
This season will take place entirely during 1962. What the characters don’t know, but we do know, is what is still to come in this one year alone. This episode takes place on Valentine’s Day. By New Year’s Eve, the Cuban Missile Crisis will have come and gone; James Meredith and the National Guard will have integrated Ole Miss; Marilyn Monroe will have OD’d; the members of SDS will have written the Port Huron Statement; and John Glenn will have orbited the earth. Even more to the point, 87% of American homes will have a television set and CBS radio will have broadcast the final episodes of its last serials, thereby officially ending the Golden Age of Radio. The Beatles will have released their first single, “Love Me, Do.” And Andy Warhol will have had his first solo gallery show, of Campbell’s Soup paintings, at the Stable Gallery.
Frank O’Hara was a poet of immediacy, of the now. His writing was a rebellion against the academic studiousness of American Modernism. Even the title of this book, and that particular prose poem, indicates this fact; these aren’t meditations on an emergency, they are meditations in, or during, one. But Meditations In an Emergency was actually published in 1957. By the time Don Draper discovers him, O'Hara is about to be of the past himself. O’Hara was and is associated with the New York School of writers and painters, with the Abstract Expressionists that Warhol and Pop Art would succeed. He is of the 1950s. By 1966, he would be dead.
We don’t yet know what Sterling Cooper does with the Martinson Coffee account. In 1964, Andy Warhol will open the Factory and paint hundreds of plywood boxes, some replicating Brillo boxes, but some replicating Martinson Coffee. A new world not of immediacy or of its opposite, nostalgia, will be replaced by a world that ironically celebrates mechanical reproduction, and a world where the tools of mechanical reproduction can make everyone an artist, writer, musician. Warhol makes Martinson Coffee something for the young at heart in a way Sterling Cooper could never imagine.
And the Xerox machine? It’s the first in a long line of technological innovation that will lead to the decline of print media and the monopoly of the national glossy magazine. Soon, anyone will be able to put out a ‘zine. Fast forward 40 years and here we are, me writing and you reading, the means of production and consumption at our fingertips, change all around us, but we don’t truly know it yet. The future happens every day, in small increments. The pleasure of Mad Men is watching it slowly unfold.
Rip’s question would be a hard one to answer, even today, with the perspective of hindsight. Change doesn’t happen in visible moments, so how do you pin change down, understand it? We often don’t notice change until it’s already happened and we suddenly find ourselves on the wrong side of it, feeling old. Who’s young, who’s old, and the underlying dread that comes with the recognition of changes that are occurring but still too incomplete to yet understand was the theme of last night’s season two premier of Mad Men.
The unspoken but underlying tension caused by change about to happen was what made me love Mad Men in the first place. Watching season one I marveled at the attention to detail, how period specific it was, in essence feeling nostalgia for a world so recently present but so irretrievably lost. The characters, of course, didn’t know that their world was about to be lost, and the tension between what the audience knows about the 1960s and the way the characters seem to think the new decade will just be a continuation of the 1950s was central to the mood of the show.
Based on last night’s premier, this tension will be central to the plot, rather than the mood, of season two. We first see Don Draper at a physical, being told to start taking it easier; his blood pressure is high, and he’s 36, considered middle-aged at the time. Duck, Sterling Cooper’s new Client Services director, wants to go after the Martinson Coffee account. All the young people are now drinking Pepsi, and he wants to hire some young creative talent to show Martinson they can induce the young to switch over to coffee. Duck has also insisted the office buy a Xerox machine.
Upset by the news of his physical, Don has lunch at a bar, where a beatnik-type next to him is reading Frank O’Hara’s Meditations In an Emergency. Don asks if the book is good. “I don’t think you’ll like it,” the beatnik states. Don doesn’t see the need to hire young creative talent. “The young don’t know anything,” he complains. His boss insists, though, and Duck has won this battle; Don will hire new talent, talent that it’s clear he doesn’t understand, as we see when he interviews a writer and designer who come as a team, a concept alien to Don.
Things have changed on the home front as well. Don seems to be coming home every night to be with his family rather than whoring around Manhattan. His wife Betty, though, has come out of the depression of season one; we first see her in a commanding position, astride a horse, and Betty’s recognition of her power, sexual and otherwise, would seem to be foreshadowed throughout the episode. Don, on the other hand, seems emasculated, literally impotent on Valentine’s Day despite Betty’s hot lingerie, later waiting in front of the TV for his wife to get home for dinner.
Don buys and reads the Frank O’Hara book, perhaps as an attempt to keep up. The episode ends with a Don VO quoting O’Hara’s poem “Mayakovsky”: “Now I am quietly waiting for/ the catastrophe of my personality/ to seem beautiful again,/ and interesting, and modern”. What will happen to all these characters as the 1960s unfold? We’ll have to watch to see, and in fact this is the reason that we will watch.
This season will take place entirely during 1962. What the characters don’t know, but we do know, is what is still to come in this one year alone. This episode takes place on Valentine’s Day. By New Year’s Eve, the Cuban Missile Crisis will have come and gone; James Meredith and the National Guard will have integrated Ole Miss; Marilyn Monroe will have OD’d; the members of SDS will have written the Port Huron Statement; and John Glenn will have orbited the earth. Even more to the point, 87% of American homes will have a television set and CBS radio will have broadcast the final episodes of its last serials, thereby officially ending the Golden Age of Radio. The Beatles will have released their first single, “Love Me, Do.” And Andy Warhol will have had his first solo gallery show, of Campbell’s Soup paintings, at the Stable Gallery.
Frank O’Hara was a poet of immediacy, of the now. His writing was a rebellion against the academic studiousness of American Modernism. Even the title of this book, and that particular prose poem, indicates this fact; these aren’t meditations on an emergency, they are meditations in, or during, one. But Meditations In an Emergency was actually published in 1957. By the time Don Draper discovers him, O'Hara is about to be of the past himself. O’Hara was and is associated with the New York School of writers and painters, with the Abstract Expressionists that Warhol and Pop Art would succeed. He is of the 1950s. By 1966, he would be dead.
We don’t yet know what Sterling Cooper does with the Martinson Coffee account. In 1964, Andy Warhol will open the Factory and paint hundreds of plywood boxes, some replicating Brillo boxes, but some replicating Martinson Coffee. A new world not of immediacy or of its opposite, nostalgia, will be replaced by a world that ironically celebrates mechanical reproduction, and a world where the tools of mechanical reproduction can make everyone an artist, writer, musician. Warhol makes Martinson Coffee something for the young at heart in a way Sterling Cooper could never imagine.
And the Xerox machine? It’s the first in a long line of technological innovation that will lead to the decline of print media and the monopoly of the national glossy magazine. Soon, anyone will be able to put out a ‘zine. Fast forward 40 years and here we are, me writing and you reading, the means of production and consumption at our fingertips, change all around us, but we don’t truly know it yet. The future happens every day, in small increments. The pleasure of Mad Men is watching it slowly unfold.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
You Know You Want to Watch
It's been a while, and it's time for a roundup of crappy TV. Sure, Generation Kill started Sunday night, and Mad Men returns at the end of the month, but summer really isn't the time for edification. It's the time for half-drunkenly watching fluff. It's the time for I Love Money.
I Love Money is on VH1. It's repeated so many times a week I have no idea when new episodes air. Just turn to VH1, and an episode will surely be playing. It appears to be some sort of 'all star' competition, where contestants from other VH1 shows I've never watched have been asked back to compete not for "love" but for $250K. I don't know where they found these people, I really don't. Since even the contestants seem to understand the inherent loss of self-respect that goes along with their participation in this program, they all go by pseudonyms: Toastee, Heat, Real, Destinye, Niblz, and (my favorite) Whiteboy, who is a tatooed Jewish guy who undoubtedly just graduated from Brandeis.
The contestants live in a "mansion," are divided into two teams, and eliminate each other. It's a low, low rent version of Survivor meets Big Brother meets a train wreck. There's no purpose to anything other than being on TV and winning some money, and the show and the contestants are honest about this fact, and it's for this reason that the show is brilliant. Isn't every reality competition finally "about" the love of fame and money? Isn't every reality contestant ultimately playing a character, having been cast for "dramatic" effect? Here, it's all in the open, and in that sense I Love Money is a meta-reality show, a reality competition about reality competitions where generic convention is laid bare. It's so bad it's wonderful. You must watch it.
If you can't bring yourself to spend an evening contemplating the feud between Toastee and Niblz, try The Greatest American Dog instead, on Thursdays at 8 on CBS. Here, we have crazy dog people and their dogs living in a house together, competing for the title and, of course, money. Each week, one dog/human pair is eliminated. It's Survivor meets Big Brother meets America's Next Top Model, with cute dogs thrown into the mix. Brody and I watched last week's premier together and were happy to see that one of the contestants is Star, an orange and white Brittany. "Look," I said to Brody repeatedly, "that's what a good dog looks like. Look! That's a good Brittany performing tricks rather than running in circles chasing bugs while it's human gestures wildly, trying to get its attention." Brody was nonplussed, but he enjoyed the show, and you will too.
I Love Money is on VH1. It's repeated so many times a week I have no idea when new episodes air. Just turn to VH1, and an episode will surely be playing. It appears to be some sort of 'all star' competition, where contestants from other VH1 shows I've never watched have been asked back to compete not for "love" but for $250K. I don't know where they found these people, I really don't. Since even the contestants seem to understand the inherent loss of self-respect that goes along with their participation in this program, they all go by pseudonyms: Toastee, Heat, Real, Destinye, Niblz, and (my favorite) Whiteboy, who is a tatooed Jewish guy who undoubtedly just graduated from Brandeis.
The contestants live in a "mansion," are divided into two teams, and eliminate each other. It's a low, low rent version of Survivor meets Big Brother meets a train wreck. There's no purpose to anything other than being on TV and winning some money, and the show and the contestants are honest about this fact, and it's for this reason that the show is brilliant. Isn't every reality competition finally "about" the love of fame and money? Isn't every reality contestant ultimately playing a character, having been cast for "dramatic" effect? Here, it's all in the open, and in that sense I Love Money is a meta-reality show, a reality competition about reality competitions where generic convention is laid bare. It's so bad it's wonderful. You must watch it.
If you can't bring yourself to spend an evening contemplating the feud between Toastee and Niblz, try The Greatest American Dog instead, on Thursdays at 8 on CBS. Here, we have crazy dog people and their dogs living in a house together, competing for the title and, of course, money. Each week, one dog/human pair is eliminated. It's Survivor meets Big Brother meets America's Next Top Model, with cute dogs thrown into the mix. Brody and I watched last week's premier together and were happy to see that one of the contestants is Star, an orange and white Brittany. "Look," I said to Brody repeatedly, "that's what a good dog looks like. Look! That's a good Brittany performing tricks rather than running in circles chasing bugs while it's human gestures wildly, trying to get its attention." Brody was nonplussed, but he enjoyed the show, and you will too.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Jennifer Love Hewitt, We Hardly Knew Ye
Hurray! Party of Five is now available on Hulu. All of season 3 is posted; that's the season where Bailey goes to college and becomes an alcoholic, his descent into inebriation made complete when he attends Owen's third birthday party as a mean, drunken, sad, lonely clown. Julia (the fetching Neve Campbell) is still in high school and hasn't yet achieved complete solipsism. Charlie is still a rogue and hasn't yet matured through cancer. Little Owen still can't talk, and the show is better for it.
It's full of flannel and Gap henleys. It's 1997. Fiona Apple sings in the background. Without commercials each episode is only 43 minutes long. You know you want to. You've got the time - there's nothing new on TV anyway. Just watch it.
It's full of flannel and Gap henleys. It's 1997. Fiona Apple sings in the background. Without commercials each episode is only 43 minutes long. You know you want to. You've got the time - there's nothing new on TV anyway. Just watch it.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
A Bicentennial Minute
It's entirely possible to view America between 1960 and 1980 as a national nightmare. In some ways everything fell apart. True, the shattering of the post-war cultural hegemony was needed, but did we really need to kill each other in order to loosen up a bit? Kill each other we did: racists killing civil rights protesters, war protesters killing themselves, cops and National Guardsmen killing war protesters, rioters killing bystanders, cops killing rioters, on and on. President after President lied to the public. The economy went to hell. Drugs stopped being freeing and turned deadly and ugly.
In the middle of all this can be found one brief reprieve, one shining year filled with a bit of optimism. "Aaah," I imagine millions of Americans thinking, "That horrible war is truly over. Nixon has been banished. That Jimmy Carter seems like a nice fella. Time to put some ferns in macrame hanging baskets around the split level, buy a flag-decorated wastebasket and celebrate. It's the Bicentennial!" 1976 was a good year indeed.
It was a year when polyester was celebrated without irony. It was a year when avocado and harvest gold looked really good in a kitchen. It was a year when divorce was socially accepted, women were working, gay men were inventing disco, cocaine was everywhere. It was a year when swingers could have key parties in suburban living rooms or just go to Plato's Retreat. It was a year when the new social and sexual freedoms could be enjoyed, before AIDS, family values, crack.
1976 was the last time patriotism would be kitschy. I remember flag sneakers, flag cut-off shorts, flag beach towels and floats. The Bicentennial was an orgy of merchandising. Tall ships, fireworks, commemorative coins given out with fast food. Love of country at its finest.
1976 featured an Olympics unmarked by radical gestures on the medal podium or terrorist kidnappings. 1976 was the year my menses commenced, for whatever that's worth. It was a year when it must have felt as if a long period of national pain and struggle was finally over and relief was in sight. It was a year when it was possible to feel good about yourself and your country.
1976 is when the action of Swingtown takes place. It premiers tomorrow (Thursday, June 5) at 10 on CBS. If it's any good, it will do for the Bicentennial what Mad Men did for 1960, which is to bring the period to life through studious costume and set design while at the same time allowing through character a glimpse of the dark undercurrents at work in the culture. I doubt it will be that good, but sometimes I miss 1976 all the same, so I'll be watching, if only for the fun of it all.
In the middle of all this can be found one brief reprieve, one shining year filled with a bit of optimism. "Aaah," I imagine millions of Americans thinking, "That horrible war is truly over. Nixon has been banished. That Jimmy Carter seems like a nice fella. Time to put some ferns in macrame hanging baskets around the split level, buy a flag-decorated wastebasket and celebrate. It's the Bicentennial!" 1976 was a good year indeed.
It was a year when polyester was celebrated without irony. It was a year when avocado and harvest gold looked really good in a kitchen. It was a year when divorce was socially accepted, women were working, gay men were inventing disco, cocaine was everywhere. It was a year when swingers could have key parties in suburban living rooms or just go to Plato's Retreat. It was a year when the new social and sexual freedoms could be enjoyed, before AIDS, family values, crack.
1976 was the last time patriotism would be kitschy. I remember flag sneakers, flag cut-off shorts, flag beach towels and floats. The Bicentennial was an orgy of merchandising. Tall ships, fireworks, commemorative coins given out with fast food. Love of country at its finest.
1976 featured an Olympics unmarked by radical gestures on the medal podium or terrorist kidnappings. 1976 was the year my menses commenced, for whatever that's worth. It was a year when it must have felt as if a long period of national pain and struggle was finally over and relief was in sight. It was a year when it was possible to feel good about yourself and your country.
1976 is when the action of Swingtown takes place. It premiers tomorrow (Thursday, June 5) at 10 on CBS. If it's any good, it will do for the Bicentennial what Mad Men did for 1960, which is to bring the period to life through studious costume and set design while at the same time allowing through character a glimpse of the dark undercurrents at work in the culture. I doubt it will be that good, but sometimes I miss 1976 all the same, so I'll be watching, if only for the fun of it all.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
What I Didn't Watch
I was one of the five Americans who didn't watch the American Idol finale last night. I've never seen one episode of the show. I don't have any good reason to not watch it; I just don't. Sitting in a restaurant last night surrounded by people glued to the television above the bar while I focused obliviously on some really good pizza made me think about all the television I haven't watched. I didn't have a TV for most of the 1980s, so there's a good lot of it.
I've never seen a single episode of St. Elsewhere or Hill Street Blues, for example. Never watched Cheers, Family Ties, any of that stuff. Name a show that was popular in the 80s and I haven't seen it. While I'm admitting things I may as well confess that I also didn't watch Seinfeld; I thought it was horribly misogynistic and participated in a one-woman boycott. I've never seen even one episode of Murder, She Wrote. I recall nearly my entire college gathering to watch The Thorn Birds together in various commons rooms (yes, I'm so old that no one brought their own TVs to college) but I must have read a book instead.
I never saw any of the nighttime soaps - no Dallas, no Dynasty, no Falcon Crest. In the 1990s, once I had a TV, I did partake of their spawn: I'm talking about you, Melrose Place. Still, I managed to miss an entire generation of television. I don't regret it, but it's odd. My cultural memory jumps from early SNL straight to Party of Five with pretty much noting in between.
What did I do without a TV? I read, wrote a dissertation, worked, listened to music. I met friends for drinks or for dinner. I sat enjoying really good pizza marveling as everyone around me guffawed at The Cosby Show. I lived. I left the restaurant last night just before Idol's winner was announced. I have no idea who won, but here I am, still alive.
I've never seen a single episode of St. Elsewhere or Hill Street Blues, for example. Never watched Cheers, Family Ties, any of that stuff. Name a show that was popular in the 80s and I haven't seen it. While I'm admitting things I may as well confess that I also didn't watch Seinfeld; I thought it was horribly misogynistic and participated in a one-woman boycott. I've never seen even one episode of Murder, She Wrote. I recall nearly my entire college gathering to watch The Thorn Birds together in various commons rooms (yes, I'm so old that no one brought their own TVs to college) but I must have read a book instead.
I never saw any of the nighttime soaps - no Dallas, no Dynasty, no Falcon Crest. In the 1990s, once I had a TV, I did partake of their spawn: I'm talking about you, Melrose Place. Still, I managed to miss an entire generation of television. I don't regret it, but it's odd. My cultural memory jumps from early SNL straight to Party of Five with pretty much noting in between.
What did I do without a TV? I read, wrote a dissertation, worked, listened to music. I met friends for drinks or for dinner. I sat enjoying really good pizza marveling as everyone around me guffawed at The Cosby Show. I lived. I left the restaurant last night just before Idol's winner was announced. I have no idea who won, but here I am, still alive.
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