Grid Effect

Well, there isn’t a whole lot of news to pass along, and we still haven’t watched any television since Life and Times of Tim on Sunday night, so here are a few random thoughts on the state of television.

-A new South Park is on tonight, and my guess is Parker and Stone are going to have a field day with the country’s and world’s abject misery, as those guys are two of the more clever satirists on the planet. They are notoriously secretive with their episode plots before a season starts. You know who is dropping the ball though, is Time Warner. Who probably doesn’t put a description of the new South Park episode under the 10pm EST. listing in their guide per Comedy Central’s request, but doesn’t remember to delete it for the midnight replay, that’s why we can tell you tonight’s episode is about China. Unless the whole thing is a giant ruse to throw off curious fucks like myself, that looks like a terribly stupid oversight. I can’t wait for yet another series to be exclusive to DirectTV customers.

-In case you haven’t noticed: Somehow, someway, every single television series we review on this site has migrated closer and closer to the same day. And we are now at a point where every series we enjoy and write about airs on either Sunday or Thursday night. Every single one (unless you count Friday Night Lights, which airs on Wednesdays in a far off world where people pay for DirectTV). So when the new fall season was rolling around we did a quick overview of what was coming back, what was canceled and what was new. The former didn’t surprise us in any way. Generally you can determine what will get renewed based on the title of a series, word of mouth and what night it airs on. The latter presented two intriguing possibilities: The Life and Times of Tim and a series premiering this Thursday on ABC called Life On Mars.

Apparently this is a remake from a popular BBC show...so this is a picture of their cast. It's semi-related.

Now, we were fully intent on reviewing both of these series, giving each one a fair shake as they looked promising relative to anything else the networks were hammering down our throats during football coverage. Then we found out they were both on already busy nights, and made room for Life and Times of Tim since it is only a half hour and when an HBO series looks like something we might enjoy, we make a point to squeeze it in. But Life On Mars, on the other hand, is a broadcast network cop drama on our most hated channel (ABC) that really only has one good thing going for it: the cast.

It stars Michael Imperioli, Harvey Keitel, Dean Winters (Oz and Rescue Me), Gretchen Mol and Lisa Bonet (The singer from High Fidelity). That was enough reason for us to look the other way on all the other intangibles that would steer us away from such a series. But since it is on a Thursday night, we regret to inform you that we are not going to be recapping it. We’ll link to some reviews or something, but we already do recaps for three series’ on Friday (Mad Men, It’s Always Sunny & The Office), we don’t need a fourth.

-Is there anyone watching the presidential debates anymore hoping to see anything other than one of the candidates humiliate himself? Daily Show clearly doesn’t think so, and their coverage has been unparalleled for the past few months. We definitely recommend tuning in if you can look at the humorous and pathetic side of the fall of the industrialized world. Yes, they do tend to focus on the follies of the right wing, and it is a close race, but the conservative end of the political sphere has taken the prize for ridiculousness this political season. We tend to notice that is true for whichever party is on their heels.

Anyhow, my point is, does every fucking network have to air the political debate? Especially FOX and NBC, who have their own news channels that virtually every household in America has access too? It really isn’t a big deal, its not like we would watch whatever they would regularly air, but when you bring up your cable guide and the first five channels are all airing the same thing, it’s a little monolithic. Just once I would like to see a network say “fuck you, dysfunctional American politics, we’re airing Deal or No Deal“.

That’s it. That is all we’ve got. Back with a South Park recap tomorrow.