The Friday Night Lineup
Watching television on a Friday night, I feel a sense of communion with
all of the other lonely people without dates or parties to go to. It's
been clear for years that network programmers think very little of
their Friday night viewers, stacking the schedules with shows by
losers, for losers, starring losers. Consider Family Matters,
for example.
While I must admit that the Friday night lineup has improved somewhat, the shows that CBS offers are still depressing enough to make one open a vein. This is not must-see TV. Call it Must-be-a-dweeb TV. The lineup begins with The Ghost Whisperer, in which Jennifer Love Hewitt (or "Love," as she's known to friends) sees dead people. Each week the show chronicles Love helping yet another ghost shuffle off this mortal coil into some beautiful bright light, instead of doing what she should be doing for them--helping them freak the shit out the living. Now that would be a show.
This show also wasted an opportunity by making Love's husband a dreamy, understanding hunk, who tolerates and even admires Love's cute little quirk of talking to empty chairs and running off chasing phantoms. I wish I had seen this series from the beginning to learn just how he comes to believe that his wife isn't just nuts. If he did think she was out of her mind, that would make for a much better show. They could get Andrea Yates' husband to play the part. And instead of talking to the dead, Jennifer Love Hewitt could talk to a horse or see a hairy elephant-type creature that no one else could see. Now there's an original idea.
I have a lot of nerve criticizing this show, however, because after all I did watch it from beginning to end, even timing my trips to the kitchen for yet another plate of nachos around the commercial breaks so I didn't miss a single line of dialogue. Last night's episode concerned a small child who was killed by a train. He spends his time hanging around the railroad tracks waiting for his mother to come back for him. So it's Love to the rescue, only the boy's parents think she's a kook, and to make matters worse, Love's mother-in-law arrives in town for her first visit, and Love has to pretend not to be crazy. Such tension! Of course it all ends with an emotional scene that employed every technique of manipulating the audience. And it worked. I wept. Ladies and gentlemen, I wept! Should I be admitting this?
After the emotional devastation wrought by this program, I started drinking. Tequila. Yes, I was alone at home. No I do not have a problem. The next show is a Jerry-Bruckheimer-produced (what show isn't these days?) Law and Order clone called Close to Home. I'm not sure what the title has to do with anything, though. It's your typical courtroom drama with a twist--the prosecutors are beautiful women! According the show's official website the show "tears away the facade of suburbia to reveal that sometimes quiet and tranquil streets can hide the darkest of crimes." Evidently, the suburbs are full of men who have affairs with their mothers in law and then kill them and try to blame their wives. Utterly dispensable.
Now that CBS has catered to the sentimental magic-users and lonely divorcees demographics, we come to the jewel in its Friday night crown, NUMB3RS (note the clever typography), which stars Taxi's Judd Hirsch and the guy who played Dr. Fleischman (Rob Morrow) on Northern Exposure. Morrow plays an FBI agent and Judd Hirsch his totally unnecessary father. The real hero of the show is the other guy, Dr. Fleischman's mathematical-genius brother, who last night managed to solve not only the crime at hand, but also every gang shooting in the last four years using, you guessed it, an algorithm. (It seems that the show works in words such as "algorithm" and "matrices" as often as possible to appeal to the math geek contigent, who are certainly sitting at home on Friday nights. Just like me.) Actually, the mathematical genius isn't the real star. His hair is.
I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure I don't spend next Friday night watching TV in bed with a bottle of tequila in hand. There should be some support group for people with nothing better to do on Friday nights. Perhaps I'll try to keep up on my correspondence and reply to some of those unanswered emails in my inbox. Xlchrdrql has some excellent stock advice that I'm not taking advantage of, and Sophistry P. Quotables knows where to get the best deals on prescription drugs in town. Maybe I'll see what they're up to next weekend.
While I must admit that the Friday night lineup has improved somewhat, the shows that CBS offers are still depressing enough to make one open a vein. This is not must-see TV. Call it Must-be-a-dweeb TV. The lineup begins with The Ghost Whisperer, in which Jennifer Love Hewitt (or "Love," as she's known to friends) sees dead people. Each week the show chronicles Love helping yet another ghost shuffle off this mortal coil into some beautiful bright light, instead of doing what she should be doing for them--helping them freak the shit out the living. Now that would be a show.
This show also wasted an opportunity by making Love's husband a dreamy, understanding hunk, who tolerates and even admires Love's cute little quirk of talking to empty chairs and running off chasing phantoms. I wish I had seen this series from the beginning to learn just how he comes to believe that his wife isn't just nuts. If he did think she was out of her mind, that would make for a much better show. They could get Andrea Yates' husband to play the part. And instead of talking to the dead, Jennifer Love Hewitt could talk to a horse or see a hairy elephant-type creature that no one else could see. Now there's an original idea.
I have a lot of nerve criticizing this show, however, because after all I did watch it from beginning to end, even timing my trips to the kitchen for yet another plate of nachos around the commercial breaks so I didn't miss a single line of dialogue. Last night's episode concerned a small child who was killed by a train. He spends his time hanging around the railroad tracks waiting for his mother to come back for him. So it's Love to the rescue, only the boy's parents think she's a kook, and to make matters worse, Love's mother-in-law arrives in town for her first visit, and Love has to pretend not to be crazy. Such tension! Of course it all ends with an emotional scene that employed every technique of manipulating the audience. And it worked. I wept. Ladies and gentlemen, I wept! Should I be admitting this?
After the emotional devastation wrought by this program, I started drinking. Tequila. Yes, I was alone at home. No I do not have a problem. The next show is a Jerry-Bruckheimer-produced (what show isn't these days?) Law and Order clone called Close to Home. I'm not sure what the title has to do with anything, though. It's your typical courtroom drama with a twist--the prosecutors are beautiful women! According the show's official website the show "tears away the facade of suburbia to reveal that sometimes quiet and tranquil streets can hide the darkest of crimes." Evidently, the suburbs are full of men who have affairs with their mothers in law and then kill them and try to blame their wives. Utterly dispensable.
Now that CBS has catered to the sentimental magic-users and lonely divorcees demographics, we come to the jewel in its Friday night crown, NUMB3RS (note the clever typography), which stars Taxi's Judd Hirsch and the guy who played Dr. Fleischman (Rob Morrow) on Northern Exposure. Morrow plays an FBI agent and Judd Hirsch his totally unnecessary father. The real hero of the show is the other guy, Dr. Fleischman's mathematical-genius brother, who last night managed to solve not only the crime at hand, but also every gang shooting in the last four years using, you guessed it, an algorithm. (It seems that the show works in words such as "algorithm" and "matrices" as often as possible to appeal to the math geek contigent, who are certainly sitting at home on Friday nights. Just like me.) Actually, the mathematical genius isn't the real star. His hair is.
I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure I don't spend next Friday night watching TV in bed with a bottle of tequila in hand. There should be some support group for people with nothing better to do on Friday nights. Perhaps I'll try to keep up on my correspondence and reply to some of those unanswered emails in my inbox. Xlchrdrql has some excellent stock advice that I'm not taking advantage of, and Sophistry P. Quotables knows where to get the best deals on prescription drugs in town. Maybe I'll see what they're up to next weekend.
