Week Ending October 29, 2004

October 23-29, 2004. The Red Sox defeated the curse of the Bambino. Spooky season was upon us, and it was indeed a spooky time since it looked like George Bush would win a second term. Shark Tale and Saw were playing in multiplexes across America. Let’s see what happened on tv that week!

Saturday, October 23

11:30 Saturday Night Live! on NBC

with host Jude Law and musical guest Ashlee Simpson

This is the moment of SNL season 30. Which says a lot. The season 30 cast included Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, Amy Poelher, Kenan Thompson, Will Forte, and other players who were used to much (Horatio Saenz) or far too little (Finesse Mitchell). This was an election year, for heavens’ sake, one filled with figures begging to be parodied.

But Ashlee Simpson stole the show, in the worst way possible. Watching this episode is downright bizarre when you know what’s coming. Her performance of “Pieces of Me” isn’t great, but I’ve heard a lot of televised musical performances that sound similar. So the second musical performance is still shocking, a live tv moment for the ages. The cascading realizations come hard and fast, like season finale plot twists: it’s the wrong song, it’s a backing track with vocals inserted, the weird dance that just keeps going, her leaving the stage, the band continuing to play apparently having a lot of fun, and finally the cut to commercial. And the show closes with a goodbye that really explains nothing.

Jessica was already the pop princess, so Ashlee had emerged as the alternative rock girl. And being the rebellious younger sister could have worked. But she was entering a space where authenticity was prized above all, and Ashlee Simpson couldn’t sell that image. The pop star sister, the manager dad, the MTV show, it was too much. People got mad when she dyed her hair black, for heavens’ sake. They thought it proved she was phony. So when this happened, everyone took it as definitive evidence that she was an untalented fake. There was reason to be mad at her (throwing her band under the bus at the end of the show? Not a good look!). And that just fueled the fire.

I don’t think the manager dad or the pop star sister should have precluded Simpson from making rebellious teen girl music or dying her hair. A pop star sister and a pushy dad and an annoying brother in law to complete the set are all reasons to make angsty music! And there are some people who see the truth of that. Like most forgotten and beaten upon 2000s celebrities, Simpson retains a cult following and her album Autobiography has plenty of defenders.

But I’m most interested in what this whole fiasco says about SNL itself. The fact that the musical guest could cause a national scandal proves the power of SNL in this era. But the fact that the Ashlee Simpson fiasco became the defining moment of the season proves that the show was off its game. It’s good that the Ashlee Simpson thing happened this episode, because I have nothing to say about the sketches. Jude Law was the host, and should have been a great one. He’s charismatic performer who’s willing to try extra-weird stuff. But none of his sketches linger. Tina Fey and Amy Poelher had co-starred in a growing cult hit that summer, but their Weekend Update segment is just okay. There’s nothing to say. So Ashlee became the story.

Tivo Status

5 episodes of Everwood, episode one of Masterpiece Theater‘s The Lost Prince, and The Office Christmas Special from across the pond. I had Dalgliesh: Death in Holy Orders on the imaginary TiVo. But my inter-library loan finally arrived, and the DVD glitched out before the end of the first episode. Also it was kind of boring. So it’s deleted! In other, better news, I’m caught up with The Wire! 9 hours, with 19 hours of space left.

Sunday, October 24

8:00 American Dreams on NBC

American Dreams is not playing around, y’all. Brittany Snow’s anti-war production of Henry V gets censored and her teacher gets fired (hooray for radical nuns!). But they do it anyway and get pushed off the stage! Then her dad yells at her at dinner and says she disrespected her brother (who is in Vietnam, totally losing it). Dad was just elected to city council on the strength of the Black vote. Now they want him to make good on his promises. And he wants to but…you know. So the Black people get serious and show up at the city council meeting and now things are tense. Meanwhile, mom’s best friend at work is fired for being gay, and no one can talk about it properly.

The core issues of the 60s are tackled head on. We see our heroes struggle, we see them being wrong and unsure. And all the while, there’s still fizzy teen drama with crushes and friends and rebellion. This show is a real gem.

9:00 Desperate Housewives on ABC

Record The Lost Prince on PBS

Let’s talk Gabrielle. Eva Longoria is probably giving the best comic performance among the core four housewives. So far she has been blackmailed into being friends with a lonely homeschooled girl, mowed the lawn in an evening gown, and forced a man to wear Birkenstocks. Longoria has handled it all with aplomb.

That’s a good thing, since Gabrielle is a pretty one-note character. Every character on Desperate Housewives besides Bree is pretty one note, but the situation is most dire with Gabrielle. She’s a bored trophy wife. Her husband is inattentive and potentially dangerous. She’s having an affair with the gardener. That’s it. There’s not much there there.

And without much there there, you have no choice but to think about the face that this adult woman is having an affair with a 17-year-old. Not only is there not much to focus on, the show never lets you forget it. We see him at school, playing soccer, in his bedroom. People watched this hit show every week and barely batted an eye at this plotline. It reminds you of how much things have changed. But it also proves that Desperate Housewives, which pretty much took over America for a year, has left almost no cultural footprint. All these years later, I still hear all about the horrors of Aria and Ezra, Pacey and that teacher, Carrie and Big. But these two? Not a peep.

10:00 Crossing Jordan on NBC

This was a pleasant surprise. We head to Mississippi so medical examiner Jill Hennessey (in the titular role) can solve a cold case, the murder of a Black man. Much of the episode concerns the man’s wife and son, and their different interpretations of justice. The son wants answers. The mother doesn’t need them. And if they found them, all she’d need from the person responsible is a real apology. Of course they do find the killer, and they respect the family’s wishes and don’t turn him over to the authorities. However, they do threaten to arrest him so he’ll give the family an apology.

It’s striking to see a crime procedural explore a different mode of justice, and one that doesn’t involve police. Since the show is about a medical examiner, so the police aren’t integral to the show and it’s easier to get away with something like this. And the show made an effort to center Black voices (the episode was directed by Dianne Houston, the first and so far only woman to receive an Oscar Nomination for best live action short). I expect that this episode is a big outlier in the series, but nevertheless. I’m glad it made it onto primetime.

Also, Kathryn Hahn is on this show. She was a series regular for six seasons. So if you favorite character actress is on one of the Law and Orders of Chicago shows or 9-1-1s, just remember: there’s always hope.

What Else Was On

The CBS Sunday Movie was the ghostly The Dead Will Tell, in which Anne Heche receives a haunted engagement ring.

Monday, October 25

Earlier

There was an article in this week’s Entertainment Weekly about the syndicated dance-off show Dance 360. So in an alternate universe of 2004 where I have lots of time and my own TiVo, I record an episode.

9:00 Girlfriends on UPN

Record Everwood on the WB

Maya is an aspiring author, and this episode dramatizes an important part of her writing journey: when your publisher gets bought out and everything is chaos. I’m sure this was very common in the 2000s, when the the big five publishers went crazy bought up all the small presses. The episode wrings a ton of comedy out of this professional mishap. Maya quits her job and must try to win it back when her book deal falls through. She is replaced by a white dude who read Maya’s book in a drawer and has really taken it to heart. Amid the chaos, Lynn gets a job at Maya’s publisher so she can photograph D-list celebrities in her new paparazzi gig. Maya is forced to be Joan’s personal assistant, which leads to some great Mommie Dearest jokes. Every development leads to more hilarity. I think Maya is my favorite girlfriend so far.

What Else Was On

• A&E premiered The Brooke Ellison Story, about the first quadreplegic student to graduate from Harvard. The film was directed by Christopher Reeve, and it premiered just two weeks after he died to largely positive reviews. It marks a rare occasion when a disabled person gets to direct a story about disability.
• Fox premiered the second season of The Swan. The Swan involved self-proclaimed ugly duckling women getting multiple surgeries and eventually competing in a pageant in which one of them would be crowned the “Swan.” They had to head to the gym just days after major surgery. There were no mirrors in the house. It was a dystopian nightmare, and it marked the beginning of the end for a certain kind of shameless reality tv. The first season of The Swan was a huge hit, and a genuine phenomenon. The YouTube comments of Vice’s making of doc are filled with women recalling how they loved the show and dreamed of going on it. But The Swan also generated reams of bad press, and no protests from producers or happy contestants could quiet it. And worst of all, ratings were significantly down in its second season. The Swan wasn’t something people needed to see twice. Reality tv was starting to change. Extreme Makeover, ABC’s own plastic surgery reality show, had begun declining. Meanwhile the feel good spin-off Extreme Makeover: Home Edition was growing and would run for over 200 episodes. Reality tv didn’t necessarily get better or more ethical, but viewers wanted it to feel better.
• NBC trotted out a truly eclectic mix of artists for the Radio Music Awards. Ryan Cabrera, Chingy, Ciara, Kelly Clarkson, Crossfade…and that’s just the C’s! This also marked Ashlee Simpson’s first televised performance since the SNL incident.

Tuesday, October 26

8:00 Gilmore Girls on the WB

Oh my god, this episode is all about the newspaper! The pandering to Gilmore Girls’ target audience is shameless, and it works. Rory and Logan flirting over IM from across the newsroom is a perfect blend of old school and millennial aesthetics, my heart went pitter patter.

In other news, Rory’s dad reenters the picture, and I love how ambiguous Rory’s warn him off of Lorelai is. And Norman Mailer guest stars as himself! This development generated quite a bit of press for the show at the time, and his cameo is quite fun. What I’m not wild about is Sookie’s out-of-nowhere revelation that she’s been being irrational so obviously she’s pregnant at the end of the episode. Melissa McCarthy is a genius, but she can’t quite sell it. But on the bright side, Paris is back! But Lane is gone. Why must the return of one come at the expense of the other?

9:00 Veronica Mars on UPN

Record Frontline on PBS

Troy had to go. He served his purpose. He got Veronica back out there, helped us learn a little more about her and especially her relationship with her dad. But he just wasn’t that interesting on his own. And Veronica shouldn’t be kissing boring boys.

The show sure has fun disposing of him, though. The phone call in the car when she owns him is so, so satisfying.

Meanwhile, I was kind of sad to see Keith and the school counselor break up. Their parting scene was so sweet! I can’t remember if she ever comes back, but I hope she does.

10:00 Dance 360 (recorded)

This show technically aired in syndication, but from what I can gather it usually aired on the local UPN affiliate.

Which makes sense, because this is the most UPN show ever, and I mean that in the best way possible. The opening titles involve descending through a manhole. The prizes are a Fuse Sunbird scooter, an XBox, a Boost Mobile phone, and $360 in cash. The hosts are Fedro Starr and Kel Mitchell.

And it is a total blast. Basically it’s a dance off show. They pick people out of the studio audience, and they dance individually and then head to head until there’s one person left. Winners are decided by a noise meter. Beats are provided by groundbreaking female Korean-American DJ K-Sly, and she keeps the place hopping.

Only one episode of Dance 360 survives online: the episode won by Caity Lotz, the future Sara Lance of the Arrowverse. Caity Lotz was just 17 when she filmed this, but she wipes the floor with the competition. That’s no surprise (Lotz later danced on tour and in videos with Lady Gaga, Avril Lavigne, and many other pop acts). The best part of the episode is when they pick people out of the audience, have them bust a move, and then make one of the contestants put their own spin on it. Lotz is forced to do the “Funky Boston Chicken,” and she kills it.

Dance 360 was tragically short lived. It was cancelled in 2005. According to its Wikipedia page, this is “due to Paramount head executives being changed and new executives [who] did not see the vision.” No evidence is provided to support this claim, but I believe it. UPN fell more and more under the control of CBS during the mid-aughts. And how could CBS possibly understand a show as fun and scrappy as this?

But seriously, this is a show that should be revived. There is only one episode of Dance 360 available, but I would watch a hundred more. Tubi needs to get on this.

10:30 Laguna Beach on MTV

It’s Laguna Beach: Spring Break in Cabo: Revenge of the Patriarchy!

Seriously, Stephen is such a dillweed in this episode. His rant about Kristen’s supposed sluttiness is so pathetic and cruel. It gets so bad that Lauren even offers a semi-reasonable defense of Kristen, pointing out that she knows she’s being slutty (or that she’ll be perceived that way) when she dances on tables. She’s doing it anyway, because it’s fun! Stephen’s the one who can’t handle it, who’s acting like an asshole. Kristen scores her own points in the closing minutes of the episode, pointing out the double standard. Stephen can unleash his inner caveman when she makes eyes at hunky Sam. But she’s just supposed to take it when he spends the night with Lauren?

What really kills me is the scene between Lauren and Kristen’s dads, gracelessly plopped in the middle of the episode. They openly discuss their sex lives and whether they can control them and judge their behavior. Who knew they were even friends? If this were a fully fictional series, I would appreciate the subtext and themes. But these are these real girls’ real dads, and the producers are gross for setting this up. They perpetuate the dynamics they’re trying to criticize.

But the producers still have their moves, they know how to make riveting and thematically potent television. The episode ends with gorgeous shirtless Stephen, bullishly charges a wave (demonstrating what I’m pretty sure is shoddy surfing technique). Absolutely perfect.

What Else Was On

• The Game Show Network’s Celebrity Blackjack lineup included Lance Bass, Chris Harrison, Kathy Najimy, and Kevin Hart.

Wednesday, October 27

8:00 Lost on ABC

Record America’s Next Top Model on UPN

Lost episodes are defined by their flashbacks. There are Sawyer episodes and Jack episodes and Locke episodes and Sayid episodes, each with their own distinct vibe.

But Sun and Jin episodes are my favorite, especially in the early seasons. Every ten episodes or so, this bombastic show with monsters and polar bears and mysterious bodies in caves becomes a kitchen sink drama about people who love each other but do not know how to talk about each other. “People who love each other but can’t talk to each other” is basically my favorite genre, and seeing it in the middle of a show like Lost is really special. Especially when the show does it so well. Javier Grillo-Marxauch’s script, Michael Giacchino’s music, and especially Yunjun Kim’s performance all create magic. I’ve seen this episode at least ten times, but Yunjin Kim’s face during that scene in the airport and the sight of that flower destroys me every time.

“House of the Rising Sun” also gave Lost a new sort of prestige sheen. Now the show wasn’t all pulpy twists and hot people on the beach. Now it was sneaking an arty foreign film onto network tv! And Lost did help pave the way for other shows like Jane the Virgin and Switched at Birth that used subtitled dialogue, and for the eventual foreign tv explosion (though the popularity of Japanese anime a bigger part). Episodes like “House of the Rising Sun” also bolstered the narrative that Lost was diversifying tv. Over 16 million people were watching a story about Korean people, in Korean!

Of course there’s another side to this. Sun and Jin’s storyline is often spectacular and moving, but it often plays into a lot of ugly stereotypes: the controlling Asian man and his poor obedient wife. Sun and Jin often exist in their own little kitchen sink drama off to the side. That’s part of what makes them great. But it also conveniently segregates their storyline from all the White people and many of the major plot developments. This episode boasted diversity behind the scenes, since it was written by the Latine Grillo-Marxauch. Javier Grillo-Marxauch did great work on Lost, work that made his career. But he also had to spend the next decade and a half going along with the narrative that Lost was an amazing place where amazing things happened, rather than a toxic workplace filled with passive aggressive harassment, abuse, and racial microaggressions.

9:00 Jack and Bobby on the WB

As a tv fan, you have to get used to watching twentysomethings play high schoolers. You don’t like it, but you accept it. You learn to suspend your disbelief.

But then there are shows like Jack and Bobby, which make that impossible. Logan Lerman was around 14 when he filmed this show. He’s a kid. He looks like the eighth graders I used to substitute teach. He is joined by a bunch of twentysomething actors pretending to be high schoolers. This one actual kid acting alongside a bunch of people who can kid of pass for kids constantly threatens to break the show. It’s especially bad in this episode since Bobby has begun dating one of those twentysomethings. To the show’s credit, the relationship is portrayed as inappropriate, and they break the pair up. But it just call attention to the clashing levels of realism in the show.

10:00 South Park on Comedy Central

I always expected that I would hate South Park. Now I’ve seen this episode, which Slate describes as the ultimate gateway to the show, the episode that will tell you if you’re a South Park person or not. I’ve seen the episode now. I’m not a South Park person.

I find everything about the show unpleasant. The smugness, the shoddy animation, the bland voice acting. I didn’t laugh once. The show reminds me, viscerally, of every smug nerd I hated in high school (My friend’s mom called them “science jocks”). The show’s contempt for anyone who hasn’t bought into its everyone sucks nothing matters worldview is palpable. There is truly nothing worse than someone who thinks they have all the answers, especially when they’re a rich white guy.

But I do think some of the satire does hit home, especially in the political landscape of 2004. This is an election episode (the sixth one I’ve watched for this project), and it is an election episode unlike any other.

Everyone was really eager to make sure that young people voted in 2004. MTV invested heavily in a get out the vote campaign. Celebrities like Bruce Springsteen, Russell Simmons, and P. Diddy made huge pushes for the youth vote. It was P. Diddy’s “vote or die” campaign that got the most attention. Today, P. Diddy is disgraced, but in 2004 he was a mega-platinum success and at least semi-respectable (he starred opposite Audra McDonald in A Raisin in the Sun on Broadway!). On TV, MTV and other youth-targeting channels were filled with “Vote or Die” adds. UPN sitcom One on One did a pretty good episode inspired by the campaign, and Tracee Ellis Ross wore a “Vote or Die” t-shirt on Girlfriends.

But “Vote or Die” and other efforts to get out the youth vote ultimately feel kind of hollow, even if they maybe kind of worked. They treat getting young people to vote as this huge hurdle. It’s just “vote.” There’s no focus on downballot races, on voting when it’s not a presidential year, on additional activism, or on any issues at all. Just vote. Just…because. Because it will make us feel better. Because me telling you to do this makes me look good.

South Park brutally skewers the shallowness of this approach. The students are voting for the school mascot. It’s a race between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich. Protagonist Stan doesn’t want to vote, and this makes everyone apoplectic. It makes his classmates annoyed. You should vote, because you’re going to vote for our guy, right? The adults feel uncomfortable. Vote because then we can tell ourselves everything is fair and OK! Diddy shows up (turns out he was serious about the whole vote or die thing) and there’s a pretty funny original song. Everyone tells him he has to vote and make them feel better. When he refuses he is banished to live with horse-fucking PETA members because he’s making them feel bad. He has a big epiphany that he doesn’t like either of the candidates but he never will like any of the candidates, so he should let his vote be counted. He votes, and finds that his vote didn’t count, his candidate was way down in the count. And nobody wants anything to change anyway. But he should be happy he voted. Just…because.

10:30 Drawn Together on Comedy Central

With reality tv saturating the television landscape, the time was right for a really great parody. And Drawn Together‘s approach. It’s an animated parody of The Real World, with each member of the house drawn in a different animation styles. The show pulls from Disney movies, superhero cartoons, whacky shows aimed at both kids and stoners, internet flash animation, anime, and more. The animation is hand-drawn and lovely, the imitation of each style is spot on.

If only the writing were as good. This just isn’t good satire. Right in its first episode, the show aims to tackle the ways in which reality television sexualizes, belittles, and is just generally racist towards black women. And in the process they have they sexualize the Black woman (Foxxy Love, drawn in the style of Hanna-Barbera cartoons and Archie comics), and have the Disney princess character treat her like a slave as a joke. When it gets to be too much, Foxxy Love decides to teach her a lesson about tolerance by…giving her a sleazy lesbian stunt kiss, in a hot tubb, in front of all the guys.

There are some good jokes, like when the Disney princess having an over the top epiphany and realizes that Foxxy isn’t a scary or bad person, she’s like a friend…ad Black best friend! But too much of this show falls into the very 2000s trap of portraying the thing and pretending that’s satirizing it.

What Else Was On

• On Fox, the Red Sox swept the Cardinals, winning the world series and breaking the curse of the Bambino. Fox no doubt would have preferred if the Red Sox had lost a game or three, giving them a couple extra nights of blockbuster ratings.
• On NBC, President Bartlett managed to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine. This episode aired right after a brutal offensive in the Gaza strip, the day after Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon agreed to withdraw settlements in the Gaza Strip and West Bank over the strenuous objections of Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and about two weeks before the death of Yassar Arafat. I couldn’t find much analysis of this West Wing storyline, but given current events, someone should write a big think piece. The West Wing shaped a whole generation of Democrats, so it’s worth looking at how it handles this issue in detail.
• November sweeps was just a week away, so it was time to get serious. You can’t afford to be nice to ailing shows when the add rates for the next quarter are about to be decided. NBC cancelled its cop show Hawaii, which had the misfortune of running opposite Lost. They replaced it with airport drama LAX. So they were basically leaving that show for dead too. NBC was having a really bad fall, the first of many.
• I still really wish I could watch LAX. Octavia Spencer had a recurring role as a flight attendant! Lois Smith was in one episode! There was a whole episode in which rabid paparazzi invaded, desperate for a shot of Prince William.
• The WB did is own shuffling, moving Jack and Bobby from Sundays at 9, where it was getting clobbered by new megahit Desperate Housewives. They sent The Mountain to die opposite Desperate Housewives instead. Neither show was lighting up the Nielsen ratings, but Jack and Bobby had at least gotten good reviews, while The Mountain was universally panned.
• AMC debuted Filmfakers, a remarkably cruel reality show in which aspiring actors were hired for their first big role only to be told it was all a ruse. Mad Men and Breaking Bad were sure a long ways away.

Thursday, October 28

Earlier America’s Next Top Model (recorded)

I am now convinced that every reality show should make its contestants walk up 14 flights of stairs. I have made the stupid decision to walk up a dozen or more flights of stairs, and it teaches you a lot about yourself. And I sure learned a lot about these poor girls while watching them climb up a downtown Manhattan high rise. Kelle is a little lazy and has no time for bullshit. Eva and Toccara give it their all and do their best, and bother pretending it was any fun. Yaya and Ann are super competitive (though Yaya is more subtle about it). By the end I liked them all better.

Of course, Top Model had to take it too far. They do a military style workout, then they climb 14 flights of stairs, then they have to do a photoshoot, then all but two of them have to walk half the length of Manhattan. At least Kelle gets to use her knowledge of NYC geography (seeing the other girls instinctively follow the Manhattanite was hilarious). Then they had to do a photoshoot on a trampoline that frankly looked dangerous. All while the producers basically ignored contestant Cassie’s very serious eating disorder and let the girls be catty towards her about it.

Still, this was a good episode. Pretty girls jumping through hoops, plus some classic roommate drama involving dirty dishes, low carb brownies, and the Portuguese word respeito. This is why I love the show, despite everything.

9:30 Peep Show on BBC America

Peep Show is now most famous for launching Succession creator Jesse Armstrong’s career. The first scene of the pilot features Oscar winner Olivia Colman.

Given that pedigree, you’d expect Peep Show to be fancy. But it looks like it was filmed on a camcorder. The gimmick of the show is that we’re seeing inside the minds of average twentysomething lads, complete with POV shots and voiceovers (hence the title). So the camcorder kind of works in that context.

In bad indie productions, gimmicks meant to make the most of your budgetary limitations feel like gimmicks. But Peep Show avoids this trap. The style works. They don’t overdo it, when a scene would be better with more standard coverage they’ll pull back on the POV shots, the gimmick will be more subtle. But every once in awhile, they’ll throw in POV shot of an extreme close-up of spaghetti. It’s basically an insert shot, a gross one that establishes the show’s acidic tone. But you without the POV gimmick, it would feel forced.

The POV gimmick also works thematically. Any Succession viewer knows that Armstrong has a pretty dim view of humanity. This is on full display in Peep Show. The first episode opens with our ostensible hero groping Olivia Colman. The episode closes with him chasing after some schoolchildren as she watches. These guys are spineless and pathetic and selfish. And their dysfunction is so specific and well-written that you fully believe it and worse, recognize yourself in these idiots. It’s the Succession effect, but with guys you might see on your morning commute and not billionaires.

10:00 Without a Trace on CBS

Every single show did a plastic surgery episode this season. Smallville did one. Law and Order did one this very same week. And here we have the plastic surgery episode for the missing persons procedural Without a Trace.

This isn’t just a plastic surgery episode. This episode is blatantly inspired by The Swan, which had returned for a second season earlier that week. The winner of the show goes missing after a promotional event. The conclusions of this episode really turned me off. The episode ends with the revelation that the winner, Lynette, decided to reverse her surgeries, since they’d solved none of her problems (her mom was still terrible, creepy guys were still creepy, work still sucked, and she still felt ugly). This pleases her nice guy best friend, who always thought she was pretty but didn’t want her post-surgery. The episode all but ends with a scold: don’t do this, girls! It’s judgmental, simplistic, and gross.

But I still enjoyed the episode. I watched it because ER was a repeat, and nothing else was on at 10. But I also watched because Lynette is played by Elizabeth Berkeley. I’m a huge Showgirls fan. I even like Berkeley’s performance in it, and she really got screwed over in the backlash to the movie. I was hoping that this would prove a good showcase for her. And I was right! Berkeley is great, in a tough role. In the first scene, when we know nothing about her, she totally conveys the misery and self-hatred that might lead someone to do something like this. It’s a world apart from her most famous role, the supernaturally confident Nomi Malone. As a classic CBS procedural team featuring tortured white man, a pretty white woman, and a an overqualified minority performer in a supporting role (Oscar nominee Marianne Jean-Baptiste!) searches for her, we see flashbacks to her old life. And Lynette really goes through it. Her crush, her best friend, her co-workers, her step-father, her mom, and more all treat her like absolute garbage. It could be too much, but Berkeley always finds the essential humanity in Lynette. She never feels like a caricature, or a figure of pity, the way that women in these very special plastic surgery episodes often are. She is lonely, confused, desperate, and searching. She feels like a full person, and there’s not really a full person on the page.

What Else Was On

Bravo premiered Long Way Round, a reality show in which Ewan MacGregor and director John Boorman’s son rode their motorcycles around the world.

TiVo Status

6 episodes of Everwood, the three hour Masterpiece Theater miniseries The Lost Prince, a two hour Frontline documentary, and The Office Christmas Special from across the pond (I’ll watch that one closer to the holidays, after I’ve rewatched the series). 13 hours, 15 hours of space left.

News, Notes, and Others Fun Stuff

• Housewives fever was very real. This week, it frequently beat megahit CSI to become the week’s most watched program. Every major newspaper and magazine was running articles about the phenomenon. Several major companies pulled ads from the program because it was too racy, which only fueled the sensation. They were on Oprah. Dr. Phil did a show about “real life desperate housewives.” But I think what best captures Housewives fever is this bonkers promo ABC released in which guys at poker night stealthily admit to their Housewives addiction.
• Ratings for postseason baseball were so good that they (along with the super bowl) helped Fox win the whole season in total ratings. The now-disgraced-but-then-revered head of CBS Les Moonves would blame Mariano Rivera for sending games into extra innings, extending the series, and stealing the number one spot away from CBS.
• The WB pulled Commando Nanny from the air so we never got to see the sitcom based on reality super-producer Marc Burnett’s life. He leaves the army and becomes a nanny. And of course his teenage charge is his love interest. You can see a little bit of the show in the Extra fall tv preview, it looks truly terrible.