Week Ending October 8, 2004
It was October 2004. Mount St. Helens was spouting lava. As election day approached, a future bad painter, a future secretary of state, a future philanderer, and a war criminal all debated the issues of the day.1 Ciara’s “Goodies” spent its sixth straight week at number 1. Israeli soldiers were killing civilians in the Gaza strip. Martha Stewart was preparing for prison. Let’s see what was on TV.
Saturday, October 2
11:30 Saturday Night Live! on NBC
It’s the season premiere of Saturday Night Live!
America loves Ben Affleck, America hates Ben Affleck. It’s the circle of life. In the early 2000s Affleck released many, many movies. None of them were great. Many of them were bad. Between that and the Bennifer of it all, America hated Ben Affleck. And Affleck was smart enough to know that, so he decided to host SNL and make fun of himself and then basically go into hiding and wait for the cycle to reset.
Affleck’s monologue is ok. Alec Baldwin drops by and accuses Affleck of stealing his career. Which reminds me that whatever Ben’s sins, he has never called his daughter a “filthy pig” or been charged with manslaughter, so that’s something. He makes fun of Matt on Weekend Update and tries to say he’s a money grubber for doing sequels like The Bourne Supremacy and Ocean’s 12, but it doesn’t really work, since those are good movies! Also he rags on J-Lo and that is not cool. He’s more successful in the sketches, which play on the seedier side of his image. One sketch ends with Amy Poelher proposing that she and Affleck get frisky in the back of her Honda Odyssey, to hell with her husband. His last sketch, in which he plays a tactless and childish wedding DJ, is his best one by far. It’s not in the edited version on Peacock, but the full episode is available here.
This season Jimmy Fallon left (he promoted his movie Taxi later that week on Conan) and Rob Riggle joined the cast, staying for one season. Fallon’s departure opened to door for Amy Poelher, Tina Fey’s costar in that summer’s Mean Girls, to join her at the Weekend Update desk. Fey and Poelher would become very important assets for NBC in the coming years, both separately and together. Their inaugural weekend update is just okay, though it does include a James Gandolfini cameo.
Sunday, October 3
It’s Mean Girls Day in 2004, the year of Mean Girls—an important milestone. Let’s see what was on TV.
8:00 Charmed on the WB
Promos for this week’s Charmed promised pirates and Nick Lachey. I’m curious.
I had totally forgotten this show is set in San Francisco, where I grew up. I do not believe any of these people live in San Francisco. Not even in the Marina. But I do feel like these people would live in Marin (Marin is the fancy county across the Golden Gate Bridge where Sharon Stone lives in Basic Instinct). The whole show has a strong Marin vibe.
The pirates were fun and silly, but what really took the cake was Nick Lachey. First, his character’s name is Leslie, and I would love to be a fly on the wall in the room where they decided on that name. He might be the least believable newspaper editor ever to grace the small screen. And that’s really saying something!
9:00 Desperate Housewives on ABC
(It’s time for the hottest show of the fall, Desperate Housewives on ABC. I record Jack and Bobby on the WB and The Wire on HBO.)
Most shows have origin stories. A sweet little ditty the writer can tell the press when they’re inevitably asked where their ideas come from. Marc Cherry’s origin story for Desperate Housewives might be my favorite. He was watching television with his mother when a story about Andrea Yates, who drowned her children in the bathtub, popped up. Cherry expressed his horror: who would do something like that? Without missing a beat, his mother responded: “I’ve been there.”
Desperate Housewives is a lot like that story. Funny, dark, sensational. The pilot introduces you to its four leading ladies: harried stay-at-home mom Lynette (Felicity Huffman), bored trophy wife Gabrielle (Eva Longoria), uptight Bree (Marcia Cross), and frazzled single mom Susan (Teri Hatcher). The pilot contains moments of real emotion (especially in Lynette and Bree’s more grounded storylines). But what stands out are crazy water-cooler-worthy images and moments: Gabrielle mowing a lawn in full eveningwear, Susan accidentally burning down her romantic rival’s house, and Bree almost killing her husband. And those splashy moments did the job: Desperate Housewives was an immediate smash hit.
But as far as I’m concerned, the secret sauce of Desperate Housewives’ success is its supporting cast. The opening scene of the show introduces us to Mary Alice (Brenda Strong). She does her chores and then shoots herself in the head. But what truly makes that scene is Christine Estabrook as Mrs. Huber, the nosy neighbor who discovers the body. Estabrook is responsible for establishing the darkly comic tone of the show, and she nails it. She has several killer line deliveries throughout the episode (my favorite is when she tells Lynette “Do you know what your children are doing” in a tone of wicked delight). Desperate Housewives was celebrated for giving middle-aged actresses like Hatcher and Cross opportunities after Hollywood had seemingly put them out to pasture. But the older character actresses who make life difficult for our beautiful heroines are my favorite. Estabrook (who you might recognize as Mrs. J. Jonah Jameson from Spider Man 2 or as Joan’s mom on Mad Men) is the first of many.
10:00 Boston Legal on ABC
Time to see if James Spader can bring the level of chaos displayed in his Conan interview promoting Boston Legal to Boston Legal itself.
This show isn’t quite as chaotic as that Conan interview, but it comes close. This is a spinoff of an aging show and it feels like it. But in a good way, I think? In this episode alone we discover our hero is sleeping with a top client’s wife, a top lawyer comes to the office with no pants and is sent to a psych ward, and Phillip Baker Hall tries to murder William Shatner.
Best of all is James Spader’s case of the week, in which a Black mother is suing a touring production of Annie for discrimination after her daughter was passed over for the title role. What follows is a case arguing the nuances of colorblind casting for legacy characters, complete with a courtroom sing-off and an Al Sharpton cameo. But what’s fascinating is how many of the arguments that I heard debated endlessly on Twitter and fan websites for years are covered in this episode from 2004 before this debate was mainstream at all!
What Else Was On
- On the WB, Beyonce sold L’Oreal hair dye,2 Catherine Zeta Jones sold T-Mobile (get more!), Emily Procter sold Colgate, and Leslie Nielsen sold Domino’s Pizza. There were tv spots for Friday Night Lights and I Heart Huckabees (imagine some unwitting Charmed viewer seeing that movie opening weekend). Best of all, there was an ad for Aladdin on DVD, fresh from the Disney vault and featuring a music video of Nick Lachey (also known as Leslie the newspaper editor) and Jessica Simpson singing “A Whole New World.”
- This week’s CBS Sunday movie was Suburban Madness. In this true-crime drama, Elizabeth Pena plays an orthodontist who runs over her cheating husband with her car. But somehow the movie turns into the story of a private investigator played by Sela Ward. Boo.
- While CBS was pretty much airing a Lifetime movie, Lifetime itself was airing Wild Cards, starring Joely Fisher as a woman who tracks down insurance scammers. This is an awesome idea for a TV show and someone should copy it.
TiVo Status
My imaginary TIVO contains three episodes of The Wire, three episodes of Everwood, and one episode of Joan of Arcadia. I also set the 3am repeat of tonight’s Mystery! to record. (“Dagliesh: Death in Holy Orders.” The first of a two parts. Sounds fun.) That’s nine hours.
Monday, October 4
8:00 One on One and Half and Half on UPN
I don’t have enough sitcoms in my television rotation, so I tune into UPN’s Monday night comedy block
This week’s episode of One on One (“Follow That Car”) featured a lot of voiceover that told us people’s inner thoughts. And the main plot was about a Dad tracking his teenage daughter with GPS. I bailed. Really fun credits sequence though!
I liked Half and Half better. It’s set in San Francisco. I can sort of believe that these women live in Russian Hill (my dream neighborhood) so I don’t have to mentally export them to the suburbs the way I did with the Charmed ladies. And it’s really fun to see my hometown get the unrealistic LA soundstage treatment. I love the scene transitions showing different touristy spots in the city. The cast has a nice chemistry, the furniture assembly runner is reasonably funny. The hot guy takes off his shirt for no reason. The show stars Alec Mapa, otherwise known as the host of Fashion TV on Ugly Betty! I love that guy. I’ll watch another episode.
9:00 Girlfriends on UPN
I stayed with UPN for Girlfriends and recorded Everybody Loves Raymond on CBS and Everwood on the WB.
This episode of Girlfriends, titled “A Mile in her Loubous” includes a shocking amount of shoe and foot humor, but I enjoyed it. There’s a storyline in which a gay best friend (or rather gay cousin) demands that he receive a percentage of the profits of Maya’s upcoming book since he helped her write and sell it. I’m sure this character started as a minor character and a joke, and grew to the point where he can carry his own a-plot. This is why I love sitcoms! This is why sitcoms should last 5 seasons! Every one of the girlfriends going to his salon to try and convince him to give in is great. It builds and builds, and a lot of the jokes come from the edit which I always love.
Also, the button for this episode is great, and includes a truly excellent cut to credits.
9:30 Everybody Loves Raymond (recorded)
This episode of Everybody Loves Raymond is called “Angry Sex.” I’m already intrigued. Raymond believes he’s getting lucky tonight when his mother says something passive-aggressive and pisses his wife off. He thinks all is lost. But then he has the titular angry sex. The next night, his mother and wife are ready to patch things up. But Raymond is enjoying the conflict too much. He likes to keep it going and gets one more night of angry sex. On the third night, it all comes crashing down and he pays, as he must. It’s been a while since I’ve seen any sitcom build its whole plot around sex, let alone do it as well as this episode does. It explores a different side of the beleaguered wife/hapless husband dynamic with spectacular, hilarious, and yes, sexy results.
What Else Was On
The late teen idol Aaron Carter guest starred on the WB‘s 7th Heaven.
Tuesday, October 5
8:00 Gilmore Girls on the WB
I’ve never been a Gilmore Girls girl. I’ve started and stopped the show many times. But I might as well try again. I love Bunheads, I should be able to love Gilmore Girls. This episode, which features the introduction of one Logan Huntzberger, seems like a good one to start with.3
And I enjoyed it! I especially loved the scene in which the entire town debates the potential fallout of a probable Luke and Lorelai breakup. I have a weakness for scenes that dramatize fan discourse, especially shipping discourse, and this is a great one, it even includes maps and charts!
I also enjoyed the subplot involving Emily and Richard Gilmore’s separation. Kelly Bishop is especially great at portraying the tension between Emily’s hurt, stubbornness, and loneliness.
And the introduction of Logan is very promising. He appears only briefly, but he manages to be hot and smarmy, to make our plucky heroine look stupid, and to challenge her self-image and self-righteousness. And that’s all very promising for a coming-of-age drama.
9:00 Jack and Bobby (recorded)
This is a political show, so we have to do a big religion episode. This is a pretty good one. The show carefully covers its bases: Bobby helps his friend study for his Bat Mitzvah, his mom buts heads with a Muslim student, and various stripes of Christianity are explored throughout the episode (puritanical, opportunistic, welcoming). But it speaks well of the episode that I didn’t notice how neatly the show had covered the three pillars of monotheism until after the episode ended. The inclusion of Judaism and Islam feels organic and authentic.
The subplot in which Bobby’s mother Grace is called out by a Muslim student is the most didactic. Early in the episode, she gives a speech about the evils of religion that’s straight out of a Bill Maher episode. Her hijabi student comes to her after class and gently says that she’s being judgmental and biased. Grace then gives a whole judgmental speech and calls the girl out in class. Later she reveals her true bias to Bradley Cooper: the student is just mad because she’s repressed, a victim of religious fundamentalism.
At the end of the episode, the poor woman comes to Grace to explain herself. This rings false, but her speech defending her decision is a feminist one. Finally, Grace listens. This is pretty egregious white person learns a lesson stuff. But it’s also daring and pointed. I don’t think it’s an accident that this episode has Grace’s TA (Bradley Cooper!) explain what second-wave feminism is. Grace is nothing if not a second-wave feminist. And the show’s criticism of second-wave feminism is both spot-on and ahead of the curve.
10:00 Nip/Tuck on FX
Record Laguna Beach on MTV
I watched this episode because it starred Joan Rivers as herself. That’s a hell of a hook, and Rivers delivers. She asks to have all her plastic surgeries reversed because she’s sure the before and after photo will make the cover of People and she ‘hasn’t had a magazine cover since 1994.” At one point she tells the doctors to hurry up because she has a gig at QVC starting soon. It’s perfect.
But the rest of the episode…I sure know how to pick ’em. One of the few things I did know about Nip/Tuck is that it got pretty transphobic, and this episode feels like ground zero for that criticism (so if you don’t want to read about transphobia, better skip ahead to Laguna Beach). This episode features the big “twist” that villainous Ava (Famke Janssen) is transgender. She is “found out” when one of the ostensible heroes sexually assaults her and his plastic surgery expertise allows him to see through the “hope diamond of transsexuals.” Ava is the worst sort of trans stereotype, and putting her on TV in 2004 was profoundly irresponsible. She’s not just predatory, she’s incestuous. The narrative repeatedly refers to her as a fraud, and she is misgendered throughout the episode. Her backstory might be the worst part: apparently, she wanted to become a woman so Alec Baldwin would love her. I wish I was joking.
But despite all this…I like Ava. And God help me, I enjoyed this episode. Janssen is quite good in this role that she never should have played, especially in the moment when she pushes back against her misgendering and affirms that she’s a woman. Ava is a terrible person, but I’m pretty sure everyone on this show sucks. After all, this is the age of the antihero.
This finale is directed by Ryan Murphy, and you can tell that he has a future in horror television. There is a great and terrifying dream sequence and several wonderful Jonathan Demme-style dialogue scenes with actors looking straight down the lens that work. The soundtrack and score are tango-inspired, evoking neo-tango acts like Gotan Project. It’s a surprising and daring choice, and I love it. The closing montage (set to “All I Know” by Art Garfunkel, a bold choice, and a great one) is a classic check-in with all the characters, melancholy season finale stuff. But at the very end, there’s a twist and it shifts straight into horror, with a creepy mask and everything. I want to see what happens next! But I expect the show peaked here. Of course, Ryan Murphy would manage to produce the show's best and most problematic episode all at the same time.
Later Laguna Beach (recorded)
Laguna Beach is not technically a comedy, but I laughed out loud twice during this episode.
One major set-piece of the episode for the nonprofit Active Young America that I assume the producers staged so they could film Lauren and Lo ignoring it and talking about shopping. One of the boys gets up onstage with his guitar and proclaims “This is not just an organization called AYA, this is a movement, this is like women’s liberation or civil rights, it’s going big.” At the precise moment he says the words “civil rights,” the producers fade in his name: Polster, or “Trey’s friend.” Primo shady editing, beautiful work.
The show’s other great comedy set piece is the disgusting dinner Kristen and her friend cook for Stephen and his friends. Everything about this is gold. Their fumblings at the butcher. Spencer’s friend called it “fay-ta cheese.” Claiming that the sauce is terrible but “everything else is good” (too bad the sauce is on everything!). The cake looks delicious and golden brown…until she moves the pan the whole thing jiggles and you see it’s pretty much raw. I know this is all meant to make Kristen seem like an unsuitable partner for dreamy Stephen. But it just reminds me of Cher Horowitz dropping the log of dough on the cookie sheet. Ergo it makes me like her more.
Late Night
I have discovered that topical humor is not Late Night with Conan O’Brien‘s strength. But Mount St. Helens was erupting again, and the show scored with the character of stagehand Steve, an Akiva Schaffer lookalike who had been fuming and was about the erupt. The show got a lot of mileage out of Steve, cutting to him after some of the show’s hoarier jokes and awkward interview moments throughout the episode.
What Else Was On
- Craig Kilborn’s abrupt departure from CBS‘s The Late Late Show prompted producers David Letterman and Worldwide Pants to try out several guest hosts including Drew Carey, D.L. Hughley, Michael Ian Black, and Ana Gayester. Aisha Tyler's appearance is the first one with surviving video footage. She had a good guest lineup: Eve, Ian Somerhalder, and Snow Patrol. But only the opening segments survive. For a first stint at the desk, it’s pretty good. She introduces herself as “the Black girl on Friends” and imagines other shows where she might be a token Black girl. She gets better as she goes along and the hoarier jokes better with her delivery and charisma, crucial in this job.
- This was a big night for Black women in comedy. A Wanda Sykes show premiered on Comedy Central. Sadly, it was canceled after six episodes and it is now lost to time.
- A faithful miniseries adaptation of Frankenstein premiered on Hallmark, of all places. It had a bonkers cast: Luke Goss, Julie Delpy, William Hurt, and young Dan Stevens. Just five days later, the USA network premiered its own Frankenstein TV movie starring Parker Posey and Vincent Perez.
- The Sundance Channel premiered Tanner on Tanner, Robert Altman’s sequel to his classic mockumentary miniseries about an imaginary politician, Tanner ’88. If anyone can find this show, let me know.
Wednesday, October 6
8:00 Lost on ABC
Record America's Next Top Model on UPN and Smallville on the WB.
“Tabula Rasa” introduces the flashback structure, which was crucial to Lost‘s success in season 1 (after that, it gets more complicated). Lots of other shows do flashbacks, but none do it better than Lost. Other shows often do flashbacks the way Lost does them in the pilot, flashing back and flitting around to tell us about whatever character the show wants. But, with rare exceptions for special occasions, Lost takes it one character at a time. This allows the show to build and solve small character-centric mysteries (this episode doesn’t tell us what Kate did, but it does tell us about the favor Kate wanted from the marshal). The flashbacks also allow the show to quickly develop its large ensemble. And, best of all, it allows the show to explore different genres. Depending on whose flashbacks we see that week, Lost can take on shades of a hospital drama, an Elmore Leonard-style crime thriller, a kitchen-sink melodrama, surreal comedy, and more. This is part of what makes Lost so memorable, watchable, and fun 20 years later.
The Kate story in Tabula Rasa doesn’t use the flashback structure especially well, but it establishes the template. And lucky for me, one of Lost‘s all-time best episodes is coming next week, and it uses the flashback structure for all it’s worth.
9:00 America's Next Top Model (recorded)
The opening minutes of this episode contain one of the show’s best moments of pure lunacy, in which contestant Amanda says that her son, or her “ja-wolf,” was conceived “to the hour on September 11.” Nothing in the episode can top that. And that’s saying something since this is the makeover episode! This makeover episode is interesting because two of the contestants got appointments with real medical professionals (an orthodontist and a dermatologist) which is a whole lot better than just getting a questionable haircut, dye job, and/or weave. (Though thinking about it now, I hope they gave the girl with braces a good retainer and/or some Invisalign…) The elimination is horrifying, as the girls are shown their shots and then shown the unretouched versions and judged on the side-by-side comparison.
This week, a new racial minority gets the Top Model treatment: Indian-Americans. This cycle featured the show’s first Indian American contestant, Julie. Julie’s background was brought to the forefront when Indian fashion designer Anand Jon was featured on the show. Julie imitated her mother and some Bollywood dance movies. Behind the scenes, Jon felt up another contestant, leaving Julie to defend and explain to the other contestants that not all Indian men were creeps. Jon is currently in prison for raping and assaulting multiple women. At the elimination, Julie lets slip that she’s looking to use modeling as a bridge to fashion merchandising. In doing so, she breaks the illusion that these girls all have sparkling modeling careers ahead of them. And we can’t have that! So the show slots her into an ambitious Indian stereotype and then promptly lets her go.
Later Smallville (recorded)
I missed last week’s Smallville, but promos during Charmed made a “kryp/tuck” pun and promised a lesbian kiss between blindfolded Kristin Kreuk and some blonde chick. I’m a rubbernecker.
This episode is so stupid, and so 2000s. It’s a plastic surgery episode, and approaches the subject with a cocktail of awe and repulsion typical of the era. Abby, our ugly duckling heroine is transformed by her evil plastic surgeon mom’s experimental procedure, and when she starts having shower sex with her former bully her kiss infects him with a terrible fate: thinking he is ugly. Of course he has a nervous breakdown. When she and evil mom realize Kristin Kreuk’s Lana Lang witnessed her with the bully right before things went south, they decide they must dispose of her. So Abby blindfolds Lana, pretends to be Jensen Ackles, and kisses her and infects her too. Except Clark Kent found and “A” initial necklace in the shower drain so he and Lois Lane are on the case. It all ends with an Avril Lavigne needle drop at a pep rally. Like I said, it’s very stupid. I had a great time.
Late Night
This episode of Late Night gives you the whole pop-to-indie spectrum. We go from Hilary Duff (promoting Raise Your Voice), to Red Hot Chili Peppers front man Anthony Kiedis (promoting his memoir) to cool new indie band Rilo Kiley. Hilary Duff does a back handspring. Kiedis tells a story about being hot for his baby-sitter, except the baby-sitter is Cher. And Rilo Kiley does a killer version of “Portions for Foxes.” All that, and the “Stewing Steve St. Helens” bit continues, this time with analysis from a pretend scientist and gawkers who “continue to flock to Steve despite our warnings he could blow at any time.” It’s great.
What Else Was on
A philanderer and a war criminal took the stage for the Vice Presidential Debate.
Thursday, October 7
9:00 CSI on CBS
(I’m about to spoil this 20-year-old episode of CSI, in case you care).
CSI is not a great showcase for guest stars. Cases are solved with forensic “science.” You don’t crack the case in interrogation rooms, you crack it in a lab. The appeal of the show is the slick style (perfect for its Vegas setting), and the attractive people saying smart things. It works.
But 16-year-old Jesse Plemons still makes an impression in this episode. TV snobs who knew Plemons as the affable Landry Clarke were shocked when he showed up on Breaking Bad as a total sociopath. But this episode proves that Plemons has always has the capacity to play the villain. He only gets one scene, but the way he goes from misunderstood teen to vicious matter-of-fact killer is spectacular. His delivery of “if you talk to my mother like that I’ll kill you, and I’ll kill her too” is so casual. It’s reminiscent of his terrifying performance in this year’s Civil War.
10:00
Time for ER!
Poor Maura Tierney must treat a human trafficking victim AND a hate crime victim, all in one episode. Tierney is excellent throughout, but I don’t think that trafficking victims can be saved by a nice white lady asking a nurse to translate, making a phone call, and bending a few rules. The hate crime storyline is a little better. Two boys are brought in by their friend after they were attacked kissing in the part. The boy with more severe injuries is sent to new doctor Tierney and she feels totally out of her depth, and she loses him. She feels responsible, and the more experienced staff gently explain that the more experienced doctors saved on the boy with a better chance, while and Tierney was the best care they could offer this boy without much of a chance. She did everything right, but she still feels like crap. It’s very relatable.
In other news, Noah Wyle has to treat an Iraq war veteran. I found much of the storyline overwrought, except for one moment. The veteran proclaims that despite what everyone says, he believes the war was good, that they freed people. Wyle wearily responds “It’s good you feel that way.” It’s quietly devastating.
Late Night
Tonight’s episode of Late Night featured the excellent continuation of the stagehand Steve bit, in which we meet Steve’s girlfriend. Drew Carey stopped by to promote his new show, which debuted earlier that night. Drew Carey‘s Green Screen Show a new take on Whose Line is it Anyway in which comedians performed in front of a green screen and animators created whatever situations they improvised. Carey claimed he pitched the show to the WB in seven minutes by claiming it would be the number one show to get stoned to. O’Brien couldn’t have that, protesting “number two show, number two show.” Guess no one told them about Adult Swim. The New York broadcast of the show also features an ad for another network marketing to the “stoned college boys” crowd: TBS. Prophetic, that.
This episode also featured the worst late night joke I’ve seen so far in this project. The show debuts a running bit of fake foreign remakes of American reality shows. A lot of these are offensive, but the Saudi Arabian version of Wife Swap really takes the cake. Apparently it’s boring. Because all Arab women are the same. And you can’t tell them apart when their faces are covered. What brave social commentary from a writing staff consisting of 15 men and one token woman!
What Else Was On
- On NBC, Stephen Tobolowsky played an annoying neighbor on Will and Grace.
- Tennis player, sex symbol, and lightning rod Anna Kournikova appeared on The Apprentice.
- ABC premiered Life As We Know It, a more testosterone-forward take on the teen drama from two Freaks and Geeks writers. It received good reviews, and judging by youtube comments and a very detailed Wikipedia page, it retains a cult following to this day. I sampled it, and its take on teen sex is often refreshing and realistic. But it features a lot of very annoying fourth wall breaks and one of the main storylines is a teacher-student romance. The teacher is a series regular and everything!
Friday, October 8
Tonight was the second Presidential Debate, so the schedule was even more barren than usual. Joan of Arcadia aired at 8 pm, so it didn’t conflict with the debate, so I recorded that.
One network unafraid to compete with the debate? The Disney Channel. The classic DCOM sequel Halloweentown High premiered at 8pm.
Late Night
Tonight’s Conan lineup is less than enticing. Why would I want to watch a P. Diddy late-night interview in 2024? Dave Navarro and musical guest Interpol don’t inspire much excitement either.
However, it was the end of the week, which meant that Steve the fuming stagehand finally erupted, and it was amazing.
TiVo Status
4 episodes of Everwood, 3 episodes of The Wire, 2 episodes of Joan of Arcadia, plus a two-hour Mystery! episode. That’s a total of 11 hours, with 17 hours of space left on the imaginary TiVo.
Sources, Notes, and Fun Stuff
- Jack and Bobby fans should read Nancy Franklin’s excellent review.
- As I mentioned earlier, Conan and Drew Carey argued about who was the number 1 with stoners. As I mentioned, Adult Swim was rapidly laying claim to that demographic. Dave Itzkoff wrote an excellent piece in October 2004 about the rise of Adult Swim.
- For those interested in Top Model, I highly recommend this helpful reddit summary of an interview with Julie, who was eliminated this week. Julie is clearly a lot of fun, and she drops some major revelations in this interview. She was asked to recycle a piece of paper and when she read it she found a list of all the contestants and the offensive stereotypes they were slotted into! That is just the tip of the iceberg.
