Grid Effect

Just a few odds and ends to kick off the day here. The world of television is currently seeing the bottom fall out from under it in terms of quality (we don’t give a shit about Nielsen’s or quantity). Sure, we watched The Wire last night, and just like every Wire episode, it left us wanting more. Nip Tuck is officially off the schedule after Christian fucked an AIDS ridden girl off a balcony and she plummeted to her death, so that is no longer an option. Other than that…Well, HBO debuted a new series, which we chose to avoid.

For those who don’t know it is called In Treatment, and the basic premise is they make it as close to actual therapy without the viewer spilling any of his or her own guts. It’s a half hour long and airs Monday through Friday, taking place solely in the shrinks office. The therapist, played by Gabriel Byrne, treats the same patient once a week on the same day before visiting his own therapist to end the week. It’s an interesting approach, as therapy has become a popular TV tool ever since The Sopranos debuted. But with no back story, no frame of reference outside of the office, we’re not entirely sure what the drawing point is.

Television is ultimately about entertainment, and while it can be gritty, insightful, nuanced and metaphorical, there also has to be some enjoyable motive that keeps me watching or even convince me to watch in the first place. Random characters being portrayed on screen that I know nothing about sitting in a shrinks office does not qualify as such. Now, this series has gotten especially mixed reviews. Some like it, while others don’t. But while we can see the originality embedded in this series, were going to have to take a pass. If it had received universal praise, we would have sat down and at least taken in the first half hour (and we still might, should we be so restless). But with so many reviewers saying they were bored senseless combined with the unappealing premise, we opted to stay away.

This seems like yet another indicator to how far HBO has fallen. We’re not sure if Chris Albrecht is responsible for this or not, but the last few original programming efforts have been so futile, that it’s a wonder they didn’t hold a ceremony to officially hand the crown over to Showtime (who in their current success, isn’t anywhere as good as HBO in their heyday) with his departure.

Anyhow, what’s past is prologue, we’re sure to see HBO reclaim the throne eventually, they invest too much money in it to keep coming up empty. We will say that we are immensely looking forward to this John Adams miniseries with Paul Giamatti. Coincidentally, this miniseries is essentially as long as any series of television Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have produced. How patriotic. On this side of the pond we buy in bulk, baby!

Now this is something that draws our attention.

Switching gears, CBS has extended Survivor too a 17th and 18th season. It seems like CBS keeps adding seasons on to a series that no one is all that interested in seeing canceled, which is fine but the announcement like it’s something unexpected is getting tiresome, since they add new seasons every four-six months. Why don’t they just come out and say that despite not pulling the same audience it did in its inaugural season, it still draws a loyal 15 million viewers every week, is still easy to cross promote with morning shows, and with the right cast can be as suspenseful and entertaining as anything else on network television; thus they’re keeping it around indefinitely?

And yes, they have a new season starting in the next week or so, and we will be recapping it in spite of that horrible, 15th season.

And we also kept forgetting to mention, that there is a new series on Starz that we caught the pilot a few weeks ago entitled Hollywood Residential. It’s improvisational and takes place on the set of a home improvement-esque series. We have only seen about twenty minutes of the first episode (we no longer have Starz) but it showed promise, the cast seemed to have an instant repore and invoked some great situational humor. If you’re a fan of Curb and wish to give it a try, the first episode has been posted online.

That’s it for today, probably a “what’s on tonight!” post or more links tomorrow.