Listen up.

I have really just about had it with Lost. I tune in every week because I feel like I’ve invested too much time to just stop, but honestly, how long can they keep this up? It feels like they’ve been circling the airport forever and need to just land the guhdingdang plane already. And no, that does not mean to crash yet another plane with yet another cast of castaways, for Pete’s sake. Oh, right – they did that.

It’s as if the writers painted themselves into a corner long ago, establishing storylines and plot points that they could never dream of resolving in any meaningful way (did they think they’d get canceled?), so instead of even trying, they just keep adding more layers. It doesn’t heighten the tension and it doesn’t add to the intrigue. It just annoys. All the dramatic crescendos and shots of characters’ shocked faces just don’t work when they’re thrown in every other scene.

And hey, Lost! Here are some things you don’t do: You don’t give Kate Claire’s child, who is really Jack’s nephew, and have Jack serve as a father figure to him for a couple of years, and then take the kid away from Kate, only to have her say to Jack when he asks about his whereabouts, “Don’t ever ask me what happened to Aaron!” just before she climbs into bed with Jack. You don’t have Sawyer, Juliet, and whoever the hell else live with the Dharmas for three years without having them meet young Ben, or without telling us that they’ve met young Ben, because you’ve already established that young Ben is there. Are you even paying attention? You don’t keep presenting Ben as this uber-evil genius whom no one can trust without giving us at least a tiny hint about his motives for doing what he does, and you don’t let him keep delivering his lines in an ever-escalating Katharine Hepburn imitation. You don’t mess with time travel, Marty McFly. And you don’t waste time by presenting the same damn scenes again and again, only from different points of view. You’re an hour-long drama. You’re not Rashomon.

Why do I keep watching? Because you owe me explanations. And because I invest myself emotionally in television. What? No, you need a better hobby. Maybe you might deign to join me this Friday for the series finale of Battlestar Galactica. Now there’s a show that knows how to wrap shit up. Such as at the beginning they told us that there were other Cylons among the crew, and you know what? They told us who they were! Can you imagine? End of line.

The new show, Better Off Ted, that used the lead-in to Lost slot last night actually looks pretty promising. Although I must once again ask that we as a nation come together and demand that programs stop being named with stupid puns. It’s about a guy (guess what his name is!) who’s an R&D guru for some company populated with caricatures of office types, but the writing is tight enough that some tired TV conventions (talking to the camera, small child as voice of reason/conscience) actually work. Portia de Rossi plays to her comedic strengths as an uptight middle manager and the whole thing works pretty seamlessly. And can you even go wrong with Jonathan Slavin? I think not.

Carrying it.

I’m never shocked when television doesn’t work. Most of it just doesn’t, and it’s up to heroes like me – the selfless, the givers – to sift through the crap for the watchable stuff. What’s really interesting, though, are the shows that would utterly fail if not for the presence of one actor who keeps the whole operation from plunging into the abyss of Full Houses and Cop Rocks. The Mentalist has a comfy berth in this category, thanks to one Simon Baker, the handsome, handsome man who, episode after episode, saves it. It is, by all accounts, retarded. Most of the cast is hopelessly dull (save for Tim Kang’s awesome short sleeves with ties and deadpan delivery), and the writing defies all common sense. The premise is absurd – a trickster has carte blanche with the California Bureau of Investigations because he has a knack for reading people’s physical and verbal cues. Oh, and his motive for abandoning his tricky ways and pursuing justice is that his wife and young daughter were brutally murdered by an ever-lurking serial killer. It’s the kind of broad, ham-fisted, hit-you-over-the-head emotionalism makes me pull out my hair in frustration. It’s silly at best, insulting at worst, and it doesn’t work. On the other hand, Simon Baker is very, very handsome. And charismatic. And an awesome actor. In one typically ridiculous episode Baker’s character, Patrick Jane, investigates the brutal (as always) murder of a young woman in a motel room, and because he is magic, he notes some clues around the crime scene that tell him the victim’s baby is in one of the cars in the parking lot. Sure enough, at least eight hours after he was left there, a baby emerges from the car clean, happy, quiet, and not covered in his own poop. At the end of the episode, the murder having been solved and the perpetrator having been cornered into a confession, Mr. Jane gives the baby, as one would give an old sweater, to the father of the victim and his wife, who didn’t know he’d had a child out of wedlock some twenty years prior. They were sad, but now they’re not, because poof! Instant grandchild. More believable plots can be found in any given episode of Scooby Doo, and yet… Baker sells it. Whatever CBS is paying him, it isn’t enough.

Another show that’s saved by its leading man – and a few others – is Eureka, a series on Sci-Fi that manages to pull in a decent amount of viewers despite the fact that few people I know have heard of it. Now in its third season, Eureka is about a town of supergeniuses in Oregon and the average sheriff who keeps everyone in line. The town’s residents are capable of scientific advancements that border on sorcery, but no attempt, apart from reminding us that everyone’s, like, way smart, is made to make it even the tiniest bit realistic. Lots of big, science-y words are thrown around in an attempt to confuse the viewer and drive them back to what’s important, which is the characters’ story, but anyone with an eighth grade education will know they’re talking out of their asses. (I find that Eureka requires more suspension of disbelief than Battlestar Galactica or ALF.) But it’s such a sweet show, and its star, Colin Ferguson, like Baker, sells it with excellent comic timing and, of course, handsomeness. Luckily most of the rest of the cast is pretty strong, especially Joe Morton and Neil Grayston, and the writing doesn’t try to make the show anything more than it is, which is a quirky character piece.

One show that may succeed despite its lead actor is Dollhouse. Like most good Buffy fans I tuned in for the pilot, but promptly changed the channel when the show tried to sell me Eliza Dushku as a hostage negotiator. It seemed to buy into the TV myth that a tight bun (the hair kind, thank you) and glasses will magically transform any woman into a competent smarty pants. Not so. Before the pilot I listened to an interview with Josh Whedon where he rhapsodized about his leading lady’s limitless range, and maybe he knows something the rest of us don’t, but I’ve never seen it. Unlike a lot of good Buffy fans I loved her as Faith, but everything I’ve seen her in since has had that faux-bad-girl, cocky, jut-the-head-side-to-side business that she used so well to mask Faith’s heartbreaking neediness. On the advice of a friend, though (I’m highly suggestible), I gave it another shot, and I have to admit it’s improved. Again, the rest of the cast, notably Reed Diamond, Tahmoh Penikett, and Fran Kranz, lend Dushku a much-needed hand in the beginning, but she’s beginning to emerge as someone with at least the promise of being the force that Whedon insists she is now. Whedon, on the other hand, needs to learn some new tricks. He needs to transcend the Dawson’s Creek precocious high school banter (he’s kind of like Aaron Sorkin, Jr., or, as I just discovered I like to say, AaSoJu) and branch out from his familiar characters. Dollhouse has a Giles, a Willowish Andrew, and the whole thing takes place in the Sunnydale High School library, for crying out loud.

On another note, if Dollhouse keeps getting better, I just may forgive Penikett for the craptastic Helo-centric episode of Battlestar Galactica, “The Woman King.” Makes me mad just thinking about it.

We're all of us a little stupid.

I think that at this point in the history of television, it has been pretty much proven that within the rigid, time-tested formula of reality programs (challenges, cohabitation, non-American English-speaking judge, artificially-induced conflict, elimination catchphrase), there can be presented a subject that someone out there will be into. For me, it’s dogs. I couldn’t care less about chefs, bachelors, bachelorettes, or bikini-clad crazies trying to contract venereal diseases, but I will watch dogs do just about anything for any period of time. So it was just a matter of time before some brilliant TV executive figured that out and unleashed (delightful pun!) “The Greatest American Dog” on me and the world.

I find the malleability of the reality formula truly fascinating. It’s like a recipe that works with chicken, beef, tofu, green tripe, red grapes, fennel… whatever’s on hand. Sure, some versions of the recipe taste like crap and you wouldn’t feed them to Supermax prisoners, but nonetheless, the recipe “works,” and someone out there is fool enough to eat it. In the case of GAD, color me foolish.

It’s not all that important to explain in too much detail the what and why of GAD. It’s exactly what you’d expect it would be, only with dogs. But what really struck me about GAD, however, is the inherent hypocritical nature that even the love that people have for their dogs can’t cleanse. Maybe my Pollyannaish nature has kept me from coming to terms with that piece of the formula before now – I don’t know. But remember when, on every season of every dating show on either MTV, VH1, and E!, some contestant accuses another – or all of them – of only being there because they want to be on TV? And, you know, not for the pursuit of true love with a has-been baldy rocker, creepy has-been rapper, or tiny whore who’s famous for no reason whatsoever? GAD’s formulaic hypocrite moment came when the judges dressed down one of the contestants for dressing her dog in a dress.

I agree that clothes on dogs are to be avoided – unless, you know, the clothes make a statement I happen to agree with – but these judges had summoned the contestants and their dogs to a sit-down, formal dinner where the dogs would be seated at the table and served by waiters. And the lady who puts Schmoopsie in a dress is the one who’s guilty of anthropomorphizing? Foul. Foul, I call! And this, when one of the judges wears her Maltese like a furry bangle and one of the other judges is the badass, British dominatrix trainer from “It’s Me or the Dog.” (Side note: what is that woman wearing now? She’s traded in her unitard, riding boots, bright red belt and severe bangs for Rosie O’Donnell’s castoffs. Sad.) I suppose it’s not surprising, given that my whole point is that the subject of the reality program is subservient to the formula, but still. I think the key to enjoying GAD is to employ the mute button.

And anyway, the picture above? Those are America's Greatest Dogs.

Preparing for the Future

As a parent-to-be I’m faced with the dilemma of what to let my kid watch once she’s old enough to watch anything. I’m a firm believer that kids shouldn’t watch TV until they’re at least two, since before that their minds are too undeveloped to really process what they watch. That is, apart from recognizing Elmo or Dora on cereal boxes in the supermarket and then throwing the mother of all hissy fits until said cereal box is in their possession. It’s an insidious yet remarkably effective marketing strategy that I will do my damndest to protect my kid (and myself and my husband) from for as long as I possibly can.

Speaking of Dora, she’s high on the list of programs I plan to never, ever let my kid watch. My niece is a huge fan so I’ve been exposed to Dora’s tyranny many times when I’ve visited my sister-in-law’s house, and let me just say right now: No. I will not have that little moppet and her monkey barking orders at my daughter and then watching her silently until she complies. “POINT TO THE MAP!” Dora will order, and then she and that damn chimp will just stare out into space like idiots until they’re convinced my kid has done as she’s told. How can I in good conscience expose my child to such blatant disregard for the fourth wall? I understand that with children’s programming you have to expect characters encouraging the little viewers to spell, dance, whatever, but the bellowed demands followed by creepy silence will not stand in my house. And that half-assed attempt to incorporate Spanish into each show? Please.

If I want my kid to learn to speak Spanish, which I do, she can do so by watching old school “Sesame Street” on DVD. That show didn’t try to fudge the “edu” in edutainment by tossing an ¡Hola! in here or there – they’d show a segment and then show it again in its entirety in Spanish, and the English-speaking kids could either try to keep up or go get a snack. (I’ll encourage my kid to do the former.) As for new “Sesame Street,” as much as it pains me to say this, it will also not be allowed. Why? Simple: Elmo. They may as well call it “The Elmo Show” these days, and I’d rather my daughter watch nothing but “The MacNeill Lehrer News Hour” until she goes to college. Hell, I used to think Telly was a whiny little, um, intellectually and developmentally disabled fellow, but Elmo makes Telly look like an emotionally-balanced quantum physicist. Screechy little bastard.

I’ve been keeping an eye out for new-ish shows that may pass muster, but I’ve been coming up woefully short. “Oobi,” a show where human hands with eyeballs glued to them and who speak in toddler English, is quite possibly the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen. “Hip Hop Harry” centers around a bear with supposed street cred trying to teach slow six-year-olds how to do things they should have been doing for years, like brushing their teeth and eating solid food. “The Wiggles’” will not be allowed because their songs get stuck in mommy’s head for days and days and days until she wants to hurt someone.

I had heard good things about “Yo Gabba Gabba,” so I tuned in recently to see if it’s all that it’s cracked up to be, and I was alarmed to realize that my kid may not be hip enough to watch it. And know this: my kid will be hip. But YGG seems like less a kids’ program than a means by which hipster parents can assure themselves that they’re still super cool, even though they’re moms and dads now. The name of the show itself comes from a Ramones song, and a parade of 80s indie superstars, whom the child viewers couldn’t possibly recognize or care about, drop by to sing, dance, and stage whisper to parents, “You still got it, yo.” The episode I watched featured Mark Mothersbaugh teaching kids how to draw a monkey… badly, and someone named Nikki Flores teaching the puppets to do a far too sexy dance called the “Twirly Whirly.” Biz Markie shows up a lot, and Elijah Wood and the Shins – the Shins?!? – have appeared as well. The host of the show is like the black version of Vince Noir from “The Mighty Boosh,” and one of the main character puppets looks like a giant nubby dildo with fangs. In short, I think YGG is intended for Park Slope babies who wear tiny CBGB t-shirts and Converse All-Stars. I live in Rhode Island and my daughter will wear what we’re given for free before she’s born. Enough said.

Of course, this isn’t to say that my kid will not watch TV. She will – within reason. I would rather have her watch nothing but Dora from now until the end of time than grow up to be one of those people who says, “Oh, I don’t even own a television.” She’ll read books and play outside and participate in sports and play an instrument and all that, but at the end of a hard day of being a perfect child (and she will be!) she’ll be able to cuddle on the couch with mommy and daddy to watch Spongebob. That is, until she’s old enough to ask questions like, “Mommy, what’s a seven-mile spanking machine?” Then we’ll need a Plan B.

Branching Out

I'm happy – and not just a little smug – to report that I have successfully kicked the reality TV addiction that seems to have so many of my countrymen in its oily grasp. I am now two cycles free of "America's Next Top Model," and I'm only aware of the rest of the drivel because of "The Soup," bless it. I have no desire whatsoever to see which bimbo some British guy I've never heard of chooses as his, um, bride, and watching Gordon Ramsey scream obscenities at a group of hapless wannabe chefs who should really know better holds no appeal for me.

Actually, before I get too full of myself on the topic, I should clarify – it's not that I watch no reality television whatsoever, because so many of today's programs fall into that ill-defined category. It's just that I have walked away from the kind that sets out to do nothing but humiliate contestants so starved for fame that they're willing to subject themselves to almost unspeakable ridicule just to be the topic of conversation for ten minutes on some message board somewhere. So no "Survivor," no "A Shot at Love," no "Bad Girls' Club." And I've also turned my back on the so-called "talent" genre of reality TV, which relies not so much on the talent of the participants but on product placement, bitchy judges, and, of course, the talentless masses who don't make it to the final rounds. So no "So You Think You Can Dance," no "America's Got Talent," and, finally, no "American Idol." No more.

So what's an unpaid hobby TV blogger to watch when the rest of the world is watching the excruciatingly drawn-out, Coke- and Ford-riddled, somebody-please-get-Paula-Abdul-back-to-rehab season finale of AI? Well, she is forced to explore some of the other umpty-thousand cable channels she pays to have piped into her home. And I finally settled on what is essentially a reality program, but one that couldn't be more different from AI if Randy Jackson himself appeared and started calling everyone "dawg." I refer, of course, to the “Food Network Challenge.”

The FNC pits half a dozen or so professional chefs against each other as they try to make the best foodstuff, from wedding cakes (hooray!) to sandwiches (who cares?). The cake categories (wedding, sweet sixteen, birthday) are the real showstoppers, as the challenges require three-feet-tall works of art to be exquisitely crafted out of all manner of sugar. Sure, the end results probably taste like crap (if they’re really edible at all), but so what? They look amazing, and each one is the cumulative result of a lifetime of training and passion for the medium. The episode they ran opposite AI was a fruit-carving competition, which was really a rematch for the participants of an earlier fruit-carving competition, some of whom believed they were robbed. Robbed! And so they set to building enormous sculptures from every kind of fruit (and vegetable) imaginable, using drills, picks, scalpels, and other pieces of fruit to create unbelievably realistic birds, landscape representations, and for heaven’s sake, tiki torches.

It’s incredible, though, how even a one-time show about a bunch of fruit sculptors trying to make the most impressive showpiece is shaped by what has become the archetype of the American reality television program. There are the talking head interviews with the contestants and judges to let us know just what they were thinking at any given moment, there’s the occasional trash-talking and accusations of cheating, and dammit, there’s even the catty, non-American English-speaking judge. (Is it the law that one of those has to be involved?) But then, FNC borrows from what is good (and there are some good things) about reality TV, like the building of suspense and the development of character, and by the end the viewer (read: me) is completely absorbed in what’s going on – cheering for the good guys, damning the villains, and hoping no one’s work collapses during the required move from the kitchen area to the show table.

Plus, all it took was an hour and there were no painful duets to watch, no Seacrest creating artificial suspense and then dragging it out forever, no program purporting to be a serious statement about our very culture and its future. Just some guys carving fountains out of acorn squash. Lovely. And my soul? Clean as a whistle.

...and we're back!

It’s certainly been a long hiatus, but there are good reasons behind it. First of all, after the joy of the end of the writers’ strike subsided – it took about ten seconds – I realized that it would be weeks, months, years, forever? before decent television returned. It’s not like there were new episodes of “Pushing Daisies” chomping at the bit to be aired. In fact, that’s one show that won’t even be back until fall, because once the strike happened, they were like, “screw it.” What was there after the strike was about what was there during the strike, which is to say mediocre midseason replacements and the kind of horrible reality programming that makes me weep for mankind. Also, around that time I learned that I was incubating a small human, a process that tends to change a lady’s perceptions somewhat. Ice cream ceases to be delicious, wet dogs no longer smell good, and programs I could tolerate before leave me retching. How could I in good conscience pursue the sacred art of hobby television criticism when my reality was so skewed?

And then “30 Rock” came back, just as I began to emerge from my fog of nausea, and it was good. So, so good. I made myself a sundae and basked in the light of Tina Fey and company and laughed my ever-growing ass off when Tracey Morgan said, “Please ax my permission before you quote me, Kenneth!” There was hope once more.

But not all is as it was. As I reacquainted myself with my TV schedule, I found that “The Office” has yet again stopped portraying Michael as a well-intentioned buffoon in favor of making him an insufferable borderline sociopath. “Ugly Betty” bores me now. “Lost…” well, “Lost” still kicks ass, but only when the flash-forwards don’t concern Kate and Jack, bleah. “Reaper” is on thin ice: you have to be a pretty damn funny show to pull off a joke about shutting a woman up by abducting her, tying her up and tossing her in the trunk of a car, even if you do have her fight like hell once she’s there, and “Reaper,” you are just not that funny. Work on it, jackasses.

Of course, through it all I admit that I tried to check out some of the new stuff, and not all of it was terrible. “Miss Guided” was passably cute and funny, Ashton Kutcher’s involvement notwithstanding. (It’s been cancelled.) “New Amsterdam” (also cancelled) had promise, I guess, but was mostly schticky and predictable. And just in general, people, can we please declare a moratorium on show titles that are plays on words? Please? Criminy.

British TV offered the usual respite, for the most part. I started getting into “Wire in the Blood,” but lately I find that the super-dark storylines dealing with horrible violence against women and children are hard to take. (Pregnancy is making me such a crybaby, right?) “Dr. Who” still rocks my world, and “Life on Mars” was a cool discovery (for me – no disrespect to the millions of Britons who’ve known about it for years). Warning, however – David E. Kelley is producing an American version of that show to air on ABC this fall, so check out the real deal on BBC America before Mr. Ally McBeal craps all over it.

And so. We’re back. (I use the royal “we.”) Let’s take television for another spin around the dance floor and hope we don’t catch anything. That can’t be treated with a moderate course of antibiotics.

No, *you* have anger issues!

Well, thank heavens and the stars and Jebus and everything else, the writers’ strike is over. I meant to write about it when it actually happened, but I wanted to bask in the light that the end of the strike would inevitably shine on the TV landscape. So I spent a week waiting for that light, and guess what? Nothing’s changed. The strike flushed the entire season down the toity, and at this point I’m not sure if it’ll ever recover. Not that I begrudge the writers at all – never, never, never would I do that, because they did what they had to, and who knows if television would have been any better if they hadn’t? It would probably be the same shitpile it is right now, and we wouldn’t know if any of the passable shows from last fall would be coming back, and we might still be sitting in front of our sets, agape, as the networks try to pass of crap like “My Dad Can Kick Your Dad’s Ass” and the re-imagined “Knight Rider” “movie” as watchable entertainment. NBC would still be trying to hoist itself out of last place with the ace up the sleeve that is “American Gladiators,” and “Big Brother” would defy all logic and goodness in the universe by continuing to exist. Oh, and that lie detector show? Don’t even get me started. It’s all gone to hell, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

But you know what really pisses me off about the whole thing? It’s that what finally ended the strike was the possibility of a year without the Oscars, and well, perish the thought! The powers that be could not accept the prospect of not being able to stroke themselves in such an embarrassingly ostentatious way. After all, the Oscars have persevered through a world war, and the assassination of a president only delayed them for a day. No one in charge was going to let a bunch of whiny writers turn this year’s Academy Awards into an audience-less Golden Globes debacle.

Sorry. I’m in a bad mood. I really shouldn’t try to write while watching “American Idol.” Before I realize what I’m doing, I keep typing stuff like “don’t argue with the judges, Chekezie!*” and “wear a do-rag all you want, Robbie, you still have bleached teeth” and “Jason, I can shave your head or kill you. Your choice.” Damn it all! It’s enough to make a part-time unpaid hobby TV critic blogger throw in the towel. Can I just tell you what the highlight of my television watching experience was this past week? The “Fairly Oddparents” movie. Where they have a fairy baby. On Nickelfreakingodeon. It’s just not fair.

What could the future possibly hold for television at this point? If the major networks keep – pardon the vulgar expression – drinking their own urine and churning out shows like “Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann,” network programming will devolve until that’s all that’s left. Good shows will cease to be free, and only be seen on pay channels like HBO. And then they’ll all have “Oz”-style violence and Dane Cook. Is that a world we want to live in? I think we viewers will envy the dead.

Okay. I need to take a breather. Which means I need some ice cream and pants with a forgiving waistline and the company of my excellent husband and pets. And then I’ll… excuse me, are those dreadlocks on that “American Idol” contestant? Somebody get my gun.

*Chekezie?