Central Arkansas Confidential

Central Arkansas Confidential: Entry 09-06-002

MONDAY

It’s a fight!  Seriously, Monday nights have become a fight here folks, I’m getting pretty torn over what to watch.

ESPN:  Monday Night Football – Are you ready for some football?  I was until the lack luster Jaguars/ Steelers game last night.  Rothlisberger is my back up FF QB, and I’m praying and hoping McNabb can stay healthy.  I think the appendix and the wreck have Big Ben a little banged up, he looked awful last night.  Matt Jones hauled in 73 receiving yards, but I was bored by the second quarter and never went back.  Again, its football, I’m gonna at least flip back and forth to it, put in my picture in picture, but I rarely watch an entire game only.

NBC:  Deal or No Deal – No Deal.  I like Howie Mandel, and I don’t think a show about eliminating briefcases of money held by models is all bad, but do I need two hours of it?  No Deal.  Do I need them to put it on every night this week?  No Deal.  Did we not all get enough of the primetime game show during the Who Wants to Be A Millionaire days?  I guess not.  Well, its out there if you want to watch it, my time is more valuable.
     Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip – However, this show is going to be great. (I hope.)  The cast is great, they went out and spent the money and got some talent.  Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet (who I have been in love with and rooting for since the Jack & Jill days when I said 'she’s gonna be a big star'), Bradley Whitford (West Wing, ya’ll know who he is), D.L. Hughley (good to see him back on T.V.), Steven Weber (From Wings fame), Timothy Busfield (30 Something, if you don’t remember that show, its called DVD, rent it, know your history), Sarah Paulson (who has been around doing great work on stage, screen and television for ten years, and was a regular on Jack N Jill with Peet, I love her and this may be a vehicle for her to reach that next level even before Peet does).
 This show also had Ed Asner! Who is just re-curring, but I know, Ed Asner!  Where has he been?  Thank you Aaron Sorkin for helming this project and putting some quality production out there.  Oh, the show is about two guys coming in to take over a sketch comedy show, (ala SNL) they once ran and we’re fired from, yadad yadada yada.  In the first episode, cameos and features from Judd Hirsch and Felicity Huffman shows NBC is banking on this to be a big draw for them and I for one think they’ve picked a good horse.  We’ll have to see how the story develops, but the premier was good and they have tons of talent to work with. 

ABC – Wife Swap & Supernanny – [sigh] whatever, apparently ABC has given up on the scripted television format on Mondays (they’ve decided to fight it out on every other night, taking Mondays off, like in the theater I guess) as they presented the world with two, yes two, one-hour episodes of Wife Swap.  One half-hour of Wife Swap is plenty; two hours was just gratuitous and in the second episode one of the families lived as pirates in their everyday lives.  I kid you not, pirates - eye patches, the mom said “treshjarrrrr” about thirty times in two minutes, yep, pirates.  I watched about five minutes and decided my cerebral cortex was melting under the absurdity an entire family walking around in swash buckling attire with dull swords saying a lot of heavy “r” sounds. 

     And just incase you didn’t get enough “reality”, they threw in Supernanny at 9 pm.  This show helps American parents, who apparently think they’re kids are going to be as easy as adopting a Cabbage Patch Kid, by sending in an English Nanny to show them how rich people pay other people to rear their young’ins.  I actually watched some Supernanny over the summer doldrums and it can be entertaining and hopefully is helping those families, but in the heat of the new fall schedule, I have not time for it, off you go then, that’s good show, cheers.

CBS – The Class, How I Met Your Mother, Two & A Half Men, and The New Adventures of Old Christine – CBS has really stepped up to the plate on Mondays and gone after the traditional television fan.  The new sitcom The Class is an ensemble led by John Ritter’s son, Jason Ritter, from Joan of Arcadia fame and Andrea Anders, who was most notably part of the Joey cast this spring.  The show revolves around the members of a kindergarten class getting back together 20 years later.  I watched it, it had its moments, but they’re going to have to step it up in the writing department if they want to be around for a Christmas episode.  I expect a mid-season replacement here.
     How I Met Your Mother – in its second season I think, lots has happened and they’ve broken the “when are those two going to get together” barrier.  I like this show, I like the cast, but I just don’t see its wide appeal.  Even being in the age bracket of the characters, there’s just not enough reality or too much reality in it.  I don’t know which.  They’ve built in a lot of conflict this year, we’ll see if it heightens the show or cuts it off at the knees.  Watch this cast though, with Neil Patrick Harris (who may have found a sit-com that lasts more than a season for once) as the most famous of the bunch, they all have some impressive credits and should be around for a long time. 
    Two and a half men – Charlie Sheen, Jon Cryer, its good sitcom material, nothing fancy.  They know what they’ve got and they don’t try to force it.  That’s why its #1.
    The New Adventures of Old Christine – Julia Louis-Dreyfus may have a hit on her hands, and the show is funny.  She’s the big name and the pressure is all on her, but the writing is there and she’s a comedic heavyweight, I mean seriously, she was on Seinfeld, she can deal with pressure.   This show won an Emmy this year and she has officially broken the Seinfeld curse, this should be around at least another season if not longer, pending some kind of romantic interest.  Interesting fact, she’s a billionaire-ess, yeah, not only does she make millions, she has billions waiting on her incase the acting doesn’t work out, and she was on SNL and Seinfeld, she did something right in a previous life. 

     And I realize there is CSI: Miami at 9PM, but I’m just over the whole crime drama genre, I as I stated.  I work with people who love all three of them and there’s nothing wrong with that.  There are going to be some new takes on the crime drama coming out this season, we’ll see if I can settle on any and if all these CSI’s can survive. There seems to be a trend to look at things from the bad guy’s side more, I look forward to Smith, starring Ray Liotta, and I think premiering tonight, as one of those.

FOX - Prison Break & Vanished.  I wonder sometimes why Fox doesn’t try to do the full three hour thing, especially with the wide variety of alternative shows they have to offer and the lack of quality in the local affiliate news casts.  Here is one night when I could use Prison Break, which I got into during re-runs this summer, at a different time.  The show just isn’t mean for 7PM, you don’t want to watch it when the Sun’s still out, it doesn’t feel as raw and you don’t want to watch during dinner either.  I like the premise, very 24 meets OZ, but I must confess I’m probably going to wait for DVD or re-runs.  Incidentally, if you haven’t seen Prison Break, it’s about breaking out of prison, I know, great work on the name.
 Vanished, another great title out of the creative factory at Fox Studios, is apparently about a Senator’s wife “vanishing” and the fall out, secrets, government politics, etc. that come unraveled.   This is Fox’s specialty, the story unfolds before the audience sort of thing with lots of twists and turns and cliffhangers.  Most of these shows are loosely built on a 24 framework and I think that’s why Fox likes them so much.  They found something that worked and now they’re going to ride it into the ground.  Speaking of 24, Kiefer Sutherland is getting 40 million for 2 seasons of 24?  Wow, that’s crazy large monies, good for him. 

Around the Dial – Well the CW has those daily “tella-novelas” Desire and Fashion House on every week night I think.  These "guilty pleasure shows" are based on their Latin American cousins and have been a staple of Spanish speaking television for decades.  The format, which executives like because of the relative low overhead, is being tested out by several networks to see how a larger American audience will take to them.  Fashion House features the return of Bo Derek and Morgan Fairchild as on-going feuding fashion house owners, its very The Bold and The Beautiful.  And both these ladies still look very good tune in for their cat fighting if you get bored. 

     Desire is: “two brothers on the run from the mob, fleeing from their New Jersey home (because one of them slept with a mob boss’s daughter, same thing happened to me) to the perceived safety of Los Angeles (where they work in a restaurant full of models with accents.) Their trek is made all the more tumultuous by one very unfortunate circumstance: both brothers are passionately in love with the same woman (after being there for two days.)” – from TV.com (with additional information from yours truly.)  The great thing about these shows, you can watch three nights and be totally caught up.  The bad thing, the acting, the production value and the talent are just above a mediocre daytime soap.  They will find a limited audience, like most CW shows. 

     Seventh Heaven was on for what is its ninety-seventh season or something.  You all know the show and all the struggles the Camdens have been through.  I briefly flipped through it on my way from CBS to Monday Night Football and Simon was getting married or something.  Jessica Biehl was back for a cameo I guess.  We can only hope Barry Watson and his What About Brian will make a mid-season come back and keep him from a similar fate.  I don’t have anything against Seventh Heaven, but it has to come to an end sometime, or they have to stop having kids, adopting runaways and generally doing things there’s no way a pastor with 7 kids could really afford to do without embezzling from the donation box.  That being said, I’m sure someone will come out in the show’s defense, someone always does, bring it.

Well, that’s my spewings on two nights of TV, wow; I need some help that was really involved.  I guess this would be easier if I did it daily, I’ll try that, then maybe just bi-weekly as I settle into a routine.

TUESDAY NIGHT LINE UP - I will definitely be watching:

7PM – House (Fox) if I’m home.  It’s a pretty good show.  NCIS (CBS) has never been my cup of tea, but they have a talented cast and mix the whole JAG thing with CSI.

8PM – Either The Unit (CBS) or Standoff (Fox), I watched Standoff last week and liked it.  The Unit is a great show that I never seemed to catch last season, I may try to this go around, and I like the covert ops stuff.

9PM – Smith (CBS) – Ray Liotta comes to television as a high stakes criminal leading a double life, I’ll bite. 

10PM – Nip/Tuck (FX), that’s the great thing about FX on Tuesdays, they run the episode back to back so you don’t have to miss it.  It’s a bonus hour of television.

And I didn’t mention Dancing with the Stars because it’s a waste of airtime, a reality series about celebrities dancing is almost ridiculous as Fox’s show about them singing.  Don’t encourage this behavior.

Let me know if I missed anything… I don’t think I did.

PS:  SciFi has brought back re-runs of Jessica Alba in Dark Angel from like 5 – 8 PM or something on Mondays.  I caught a couple of episodes last week, what a great guilty pleasure show that was, apocalyptic future (just in the North West though), Jessica Alba in a lot of tight, black leather riding a motorcycle and kicking butt.  Good Times.  Check it, if you like sci-fi you’ll love it, but if you love sci-fi, you’ve probably already scene it.

Well that’s that, Mr. Ricky has to put fresh batteries in the remote, get the popcorn ready and set the timers, until next time, keep it confidential.