Grid Effect

Welcome back to the work week, kids. That was a helluva television weekend, unfortunately, none of it consisted of weekly series’. And why would it? If it was a great weekend for TV, it generally means that television series were explicitly not involved. Why? Because 90% of television series suck donkey nuts. We actually tried to watch twenty minutes of Desperate Housewives because we were burnt out on NBA around 9:15 or so, and it was just repetitive, poorly-acted crap.

Actually, “Desperate” is probably the appropriate adjective in this case. The twenty minutes we watched consisted mostly of Eva Longoria battling with her newly blind husband’s seeing eye dog for domestic supremacy. Eventually she gives it back to the shelter or whatever that she took it from and the dog follows her back home, only to lead to one of the more cliched scenes we’ve ever watched on television in which the dog finds its way back home, shows up at the window seal and begins barking, only for his wife to “hilariously” lie about his reappearance when the husband asks if that barking is coming from his dog and not the neighbors. It just struck me as the type of scene that this show has done a hundred times before. Except with a dog and a blind man, it is an unwitting boyfriend/husband and a guy in a closet. Or with some sort of borrowed appliance and the owner wanting it back.

But that didn’t lower the bar as much as the next scene we caught. A cop pulled over a girl for speeding either earlier in this episode or the episode beforehand, he follows her to a park and acts real ominously in asking if he can sit down. At first he sounds like he is going to try and get some sort of intimate compensation for letting her out of the ticket, until he asks about her mother and ultimately reveals that he is, indeed, her father.

It was just the least surprising surprise one could possibly imagine, and it was stretched out over close to five minutes. Ugh. Just horrible pacing and storytelling, especially if someone who doesn’t watch the series can guess what is going on within 30 seconds of what is probably considered a revealing scene. Given how much this show thrives on “twists”, my guess is that by the end of the season, everyone will discover that while he is actually her father, he tried to throw her off the Empire State Building when she was six months old. He came across as way too menacing to be an innocent on this show.

Anyhow, if this is the best Sunday night has to offer without HBO, then it is going to be a long five months, as they are going on hiatus until the fall. Really, it shouldn’t be too bad. NBA playoffs run until June, Generation Kill picks up shortly thereafter, and then we’ll have about a two month stretch of virtually no redeemable television on Sunday nights. Be prepared to break out the violins for this blog, because it is going to be in some dire straits, even more so than it is now.

This nonsense is not getting it done.

And really, more so than this blog’s well being, we’re worried about our weekly Sunday schedule, which generally consists of sitting around idly watching movies or sporting events (not an option in July and August), exercising at some point, eating a steak, the idly watching some HBO original programming. If HBO makes us do shit on the night of the sabbath, we might have to form our own picket line.

Consider this an endorsement and an indictment of the pay cable network. One on hand, they are responsible for the two greatest series of all time according to this website (just guess), a pop culture phenomenon (Sex and The City), one of the better comedy series’ ever (Curb), and countless other achievements (Deadwood Six Feet Under, Real Sports, Costas Now, etc.). And television in general is so fucking terrible that it’s generally the only salvation of the medium.

On the other hand, people pay hard-earned money for their product, and the only new series they have coming out for the next five months is a miniseries about the Iraq war, and episodes of Real Sports peppered throughout the months. To top if off, their last four original efforts have been mediocre at best and inexcusable at worst (In Treatment, Tell Me You Love Me, John From Cincinnati, Lucky Louie). We love what HBO has given us in the past, and the potential for what they have to offer. And while we are looking forward to Generation Kill as much as, anybody, probably, we don’t think we can justify paying for movies we’ve already seen in theaters or from Netflix for the next five months, while waiting for season premieres to air.

Yes, this is all a result of the writer’s strike. And yes, for the run they had through the earlier part of the decade they are allowed a few clunkers afterwards (note: all the good will they built up is officially gone). But if they literally aren’t even giving us something to mock, then it might be time for us to sideline the network.

At least until the fall.