Grid Effect

Happy election day! Or wait, I guess this will only be a good day for roughly half of you. I wouldn’t much worry about it, whoever wins they will quickly become a grave disappointment as the economy continues to sag and tensions increase with every Asian country imaginable. Look on the bright side, at least if we fall into a depression you won’t have to go to work. I think it’s time we began to ponder what a depression would look like in the 21st century. Are we all going to be boxed up in our own Hooverville’s (McCain/Obama/Bush-ville’s, whatever we decide to dub it), huddled around our battery powered laptops for warmth? We all hope it doesn’t come to that of course, but I think an illustration of such a scenario would actually be funny. Sorry.

Anyhow, between waiting in line for what I can only imagine will be a couple hours to vote, work, eating and whatever else a normal person does to occupy the day, we won’t have time for much more than one post, and that one post will have to be mailed in, so here are some links. My apologies. Again. We’ll try to get to the Life and Times of Tim recap later tonight.

You may have heard that King of The Hill was getting canceled after this season by FOX. Here is some speculation wondering if ABC will “rescue” the Mike Judge animated series. Call me crazy, but if a series has been on the air for thirteen years, and the network decides it has had its run and wants to fill the timeslot with something new, is it really being “canceled” in the classical sense? Isn’t it just coming to an end? Thirteen years is a damn long time, not everything can be The Simpsons. My guess is Judge and the FOX executives have some sort of mutual agreement that its time to close the curtain on a successful run, or he has an open door for any other projects he thinks might benefit the network. In short, I wouldn’t expect to see this moved to ABC anytime soon.

You know television has become too important in this culture when every television critic is comparing Barack Obama’s campaign and presumptive win to every black television character from the 80’s. We still have yet to find an article comparing him to Uncle Phil, but if he wins, once Obama puts on some weight from the stress of leading the free world, we’ll certainly see one. …And just like when Will was taking speed to keep himself up at night in order to study but Carlton ended up accidentally OD’ing on what he thought was Vitamin E, Wall St. went into overdrive and completely collapsed in on itself, with Main St. being the primary victim. What did President Obama do? Just like Uncle Phil, he took back his season tickets to the Clippers.

Sorry, Heidi. If you weren't married maybe someone would give a shit if you left.

Since everything today is related to the election, why not this site? Reportedly Heidi Klum along with her disfigured and content to not work husband “Seal” (quotations because that’s not his real name) are planning to move out of the country should McCain win the presidency. Unlike all the rejects who claimed they would do the same in 2004 if Bush won, they actually have the means to do so. And despite me thinking that is completely absurd (considering democrats used to love McCain), they are well within their rights and I applaud them for sticking to their principals. No, what bothers me is the self-importance of it all, like they are giving us an ultimatum. “My candidate didn’t win, so I am taking my ball and going home”. What a pair of fucking idiots.

Roger Ebert is not pleased with his replacement. And if you have seen his replacement in action, you can understand why. Watching the new At The Movies is like listening to the two sycophants walking out of the theater spouting off their knee-jerk reactions to everything they just saw. It doesn’t feel professional or intelligent or particularly relevant, and the only reason I can think that they felt compelled to replace Ebert and Roeper with these two is that they’re “more attractive” than their predecessors. Which is yet another reason to hate the entertainment industry, even for those who critique it looks sue-proceed articulacy.

And finally, Chad L. Coleman, who played Cutty on The Wire and was last seen bagging groceries because no one in Hollywood watches that series because they are too self-absorbed to watch something produced in Baltimore, Maryland; has earned a role on a series from the creators of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. As you can imagine we couldn’t be more excited for this. Usually Wire alums take roles for shitty cop shows on broadcast networks, with this it wouldn’t even be necessary for us to seek it out.

Back later tonight.

So we hate to do these back to back, but this is something we could write before Survivor came on. Sorry but our vanity is just going to have to take precedent when we are posting for four times in one day from work. Besides, it is better to have this early in case you are a shut-in who actually watches network television on Friday nights.

NBC

8PM: Deal or No Deal

No one on the face of the earth is happier about this than Howie Mandel. The man went from being a hack comedian — who somehow built a reputation as being a charming hack — to landing a hosting gig for a prime time game show that requires an endless array and tolerance for dramatic mannerisms and voice inflections. Easy money, baby.

9PM: Crusoe

This series is actually getting some critical acclaim, which leads us to wonder why they put it on Friday nights. They seem to have a boner for their Knight Rider remake, which we are pretty sure is supposed to be ironically bad. But the core fan base doesn’t get the irony so their just watching a terrible TV series and taking it seriously. Anyhow, we would watch Crusoe if we had a masochistic need to write yet another post for Friday afternoons. Or, you know, had a thing for swashbuckling. But that’s not really our bag.

10PM: Lipstick Jungle

You know what’s hard in contemporary America? Being a rich, powerful corporate overlord with seemingly endless options in every facet of life. Oh, whoops. I meant being a rich, powerful female corporate overlord with seemingly endless opions in every facet of life. Man, its like, you know, like men are just intimidated by their success. Sure, millions of people are losing their savings and/or jobs; but try having two men chase after you in an obsessive but non-threatening manner all while they’re intimidated by you. Then you will know what real hardship is.

ABC

8PM: Wife Swap

One’s rich and one’s poor, one’s liberal and the other conservative, one’s lives in the city while the other in rural Oklahoma; when these two families cross paths, High jinks is sure to ensue. And hopefully in a bloody mess! That would be a ratings bonanza!

9PM: Supernanny

My God, how can anyone get away with putting this shit on the airwaves? This is infinitely worse than its lead in because at least adults can alter the course and tone of a given episode. This, however, is one woman going from house to house dealing with a different set of supposedly dysfunctional kids. Meaning the only thing that changes is the kids, whom are basically interchangeable. One snot nosed brat is the same as the next, that’s what I always say anyways. They do what their told if you have any will power at all; and the fact you let an ABC reality series into your house tells me you don’t. The parents in these would save more face if they just beat their progeny senseless.

10PM: 20/20

TV magazine journalism for the frighteningly domesticated. It’s probably about serial killers or something.

FOX

8PM: Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?

Tonight they are bringing on a the Celtics cheerleading squad that the ownership brought in immediately after Red Auerbach died, presumably just to further humiliate whatever schlub they convinced it was a good idea to humiliate himself on national television. At some point, one would assume the masses would grow tired of such tripe, but the verdict is still out, and we might have OJ like deliberation to determine just how insipid the American public can be.

Yeah, this makes sense.

9PM: Don’t Forget The Lyrics

I am still mightily confused as to what this show entails. Is it a competition show like American Idol, that takes place over the course of a few months? Or is it more along something like The Price Is Right, in which you have daily prize winners, but in the form of a talent show? Or rather, a karoke battle. It doesn’t sound like much talent is involved, but we are happy to see that it keeps Wayne Brady gainfully employed. I get the impression he has Dave Chapelle to thank for that.

CBS

8PM: Ghost Whisperer

Amazingly, this series is still on the air. I don’t even know what else to say. How long can they expect to stay on the air if they put a washed up film star into a dramatic series on a Friday night? Apparently for eternity. We might see Jennifer Love Hewitt doing the same uncomfortable line readings until people forget that she was ever a budding film star.

9PM: NCIS

This preview looks conspicuously similar to the last time we ran one of these, doesn’t it? So, uh, NCIS, NCIS, what is there to say in respect to this series that is either funny or informative? Oh, there is a goth female character on this series that wears a spiked collar to her work, which is some sort of Government agency. It appears the federalies have lowered their standards or else they’re all sadists on this series, because that is fucking ridiculous. The only television series we’ve ever followed that dealt with cops and criminals was The Wire, can you imagine Ronnie Pearlman showing up at the court house wearing a spiked collar?

10PM: Numb3rs

Can someone explain to me the concept of the “3″ in the show title representing an “E”. It’s a backwards “E”, but isn’t that just the thing? It’s backwards? Why not make the “b” a “6″ or the “r” a “7″ or just put the whole title in brail and tell us to go fuck ourselves if we can’t read it? Whatever. The fact I’ve had to write about this series more than once makes me want to cut index fingers off and jam them into my ears. I’d be willing to bet that if you were to take the synopsis’ of this series, CSI, Eleventh Hour, NCIS, The Mentalist & The Unit and asked a fan to distinguish the plot of his/her favorite series from the rest, we are looking at about a 20% success rate.

Recaps later.

A second day of links. Don’t blame us, blame the unbalanced television schedules from every network, cable and broadcast alike.

Not sure if anyone has noticed since it is on Friday night, but NBC has made a television adaptation for “Robinson Crusoe”, a book that every English Lit major has to read and 40% of them pretend to find it insightful or relevant in any way. The TV series, entitled Crusoe, is getting some favorable ratings, but it probably has a Titanic like budget and, again, is on Friday nights. We hope you fans get a full season out of this, but we’re skeptical.

If everyone is going to be so well groomed, they probably shouldn't have used the glossiest lense they could find.

Speaking of adaptations, Starz has brought a television version of the film Crash to the small screen that goes by the same name. The heavy-handed Oscar winner that is now hip to dismiss as self-important and cliched debuted sometime last week, we saw it on and skipped through it without batting an eye? Why, because we want to be hip, of course, but also since we can’t imagine a series being conjured up from that film. For the uninitiated, the film revolves around a bunch of freak occurrences in Los Angeles, intertwining the stories of several characters of every imaginable ethnicity and how each character’s subconscious racism/pre-set notions effects how they react under very abnormal circumstances.

Its fundamental purpose, as far as we can tell, was making white, upper-middle class baby-boomers feel good about their liberalism. But the basic premise was a stretch then and it’s even more so with a television series. I am sure it will deviate from the film quite a bit, but what is the motivation to watch? Much less recommend.

And this is probably the finest example of why television still isn’t respected as a narrative form: Kristen Cavallari will be making a cameo on CSI. I can’t think of a better reason to hate this country than this girl’s fiscal success. MTV markets her as something to aspire to be, keeps her on television for half a decade as people watch her and her friends have slow, inconsequential, mundane conversations while they shop, she claims to be an “actress”, and CSI throws her a cameo hoping to attract an even larger audience of shit heads than they already do. To some extent, you have to love how unwarranted and shallow and simple and cynical all of this is, and how excepting everyone seems to be of it. On another, it makes you want to move into the woods and forgo all levels of consumerism.

Jamie Lynn-Sigler is set to make cameos on How I Met Your Mother and Entourage in the coming weeks. We welcome Miss Meadow’s return to television, but when you are on such an iconic series it is hard to gain notoriety for anything other than said character. Just ask Jason Alexander, who I believe is making is 70th guest appearance on Bill Maher’s show this Friday. I mean, judging by the previews she is playing herself on Entourage, and I am confident there will be about a dozen mob references from Drama and Vince (she is supposedly going to be relationship interest for Turtle). To say the least, this isn’t going to help her cause if she wants a career after this fall.

CBS, desperate to prove they do not have a liberal bone in their bodies, has now contracted Rob Riggle to develop a sitcom for them. Making him the third Daily Show correspondent asked to deliver a second sitcom from the satirical news show. This is good news for CBS, Riggle, Jason Jones and Samantha Bee; and bad news for Daily Show, whose replacements for Ed Helms, Stephen Colbert, Rob Cordry and Steve Carell took a long, long time to find their respective groove that could even rival their predecessors. At least they still have John Oliver, and the occasional appearance from Larry Wilmore and Demitri Martin; but right now their bench is lacking depth.

And finally, FOX might be closing a deal with Will Arnett, who by all accounts, hasn’t been involved in anything funny since Arrested Development. That is just personal opinion. Admittedly we never saw Blades of Glory and several people seemed to enjoy that nonsensical internet video with cardboard cutouts of the Olsen twins. But for whatever reason we still regard this as a good thing, probably because it might lead to us watching a series on FOX for the first time since Arrested went off the air.

South Park recap tomorrow.

Given that we are in the middle of a tax audit at our work, we are extraordinarily late to posting today. We apologize for that. We also apologize for this being our only post of the day, given how unapologetically short it would seem, if we hadn’t already apologized. I dare you to try to get the word “apologized” or some conjunction of it into into one sentence more times than we just did.

But since it is 6pm and we haven’t watched any television outside of football for the 44 hours, all of you are getting some links, despite our promise for daily nightly previews this week. We’ll get around to that eventually, but since so many series’ are going to be canceled before they get to their third episode, we’re in no hurry.

Whoa, this is unexpected: FX has canceled The Riches. I assume it never reached the ratings heights of…Rescue Me? Nip Tuck? Whatever it is, its not like the expectations are all that high, and it was regularly nominated for Emmy’s or whatever else. The star power must have really ran up the budget costs to the point they deemed it not necessary. I would have watched this show, but for whatever reason Eddie Izzard annoys the hell out of me.

It’s not exactly Israel and Palestine, but David Letterman and John McCain are looking to make amends from the weeks endless subtrefuge, bringing an end to one sideshow in an election rittled with sideshows. If nothing else, this will bring Letterman’s nightly McCain joke average down to four from the standard 17 we’ve become accustom too. Hey, speaking of sideshows….

Sarah Palin has plans to mock Tina Fey in a similar fashion to how Fey mocks her. God, is there anything that isn’t cringe-worthy about this woman. For someone who is aspiring to the second highest office in the country, challenging a comedian seems like the least of her concerns. Anyhow, we’ve made our feelings clear on Fey’s impersonation, but her most recent skit covering the debate took it up a notch.

Do they really look alike, or do they both just wear glasses?

My Boys, probably the fluffiest fluff on television, has been renewed for a third season slated to premiere early 2009. This isn’t exactly hearing the Curb is coming back, but certainly has its niche audience and the cast seems to have good chemistry. We, for one, welcome the return of the most tolerable television show geared towards women that is currently making new episodes. Trust me, if you are dating someone you’d much rather hear you’re in for a night of My Boys than a night of Lipstick Jungle. For one, it’s shorter. Secondly, it doesn’t revolve around a bunch of rich women lamenting the hardships of being rich women.

Josh Whedon put his house on the market for $3.7 million. Josh Whedon, if you do not recall, was the creator of the critically acclaimed Buffy television series and directed at least one episode of The Office (among other accolades, I’m sure). Meanwhile, I am still getting free Maxim magazines from the guy’s subscription who lived in my apartment before me. You tell me, who’s the real winner here?

Sons Of Anarachy has been renewed, probably out of spite for us promising to review it and never doing so. Fuck off, FX. You might have our loyal viewership, but you’ll never have our respect.

The Mentalist is getting a full first season from CBS. For whatever reason 15 million people are watching this show, and that is understandable. I mean, yeah, it is another crime drama from CBS. But this is a crime drama lead by a psychic, and CBS viewers just aren’t privy to that kind of a twist in the premise, man.

And finally, Entourage earned a sixth season. I guess HBO producers came to this conclusion before seeing their most recent trainwreck. Seriously, upon further review, that might have been the worst half hour of television I’ve ever sat through without batting an eye. Clearly I need a social life.

Back with more tomorrow.