What was on TV? Fri, Jan 14, 2005

20 years ago, people across the world were waiting in horror for a sceond Bush term. The more things change...anyway, let's see what was on TV!

8:00 The Bernie Mac Show on Fox

4x05 "My Privacy" and 4x06 "Who Gives this Bride"

Available on Hulu and Tubi

Everyone was lamenting the death of the sitcom in this era, and man did I feel it this week. It's not that there weren't great sitcoms on the air: Everybody Loves Raymond, Girlfriends, Malcolm in the Middle, King of the Hill. But the bench was thin. So that's how you get a week like this one, when I put my viewing schedule together and discovered no sitcoms. It was all betrayal, death, and destruction. So thank goodness Bernie Mac returned this week. The scheduling of the show was really erratic this season (I assume due to due to a lack of faith in the show among the higher-ups and also perhaps Mac's own health issues). But these two episodes are both really solid. In the first one Mac's daughter accidentally catches him coming out of the bath and every renegotiates their boundaries and grows up a little. In the second one, Bernie's sister Nicey Nash comes to town for her wedding, and we get wealth of guest stars come to town for the wedding, including Glynn Turman and Vernee Watson. I laughed, and I sure needed that (both my imaginary 2005 self and my real life 2025 self).

9:00 Battlestar Galactica on The Sci-Fi Channel

1x01 "33" and 1x02 "Water"

Available on Amazon Prime

This is my first watching Battlestar, but as a prestige TV dork, I've been hearing about the series premiere "33" for ages. It lived up to the hype. The premise is brilliant, it hooks you into this complicated and grim world with the horrible reality that these people are getting attacked by a merciless enemy every 33 minutes and they have not slept for over five days. The structure is brilliant. The resetting of the clock every 33 minutes is horrible and repetitive, but then the writers shake things up and it gets worse. I was squirming on my coach and gasping in horror, totally enraptured.

This episode is a magnificent piece of entertainment and world-building. But it also establishes the themes of the series so beautifully, and those themes resonate powerfully in 2024. I watched this as Los Angeles burned and Trump's second inauguration loomed, with more and more people kowtowing to him by the day. And I related to these characters, which is a terrifying thought. How quickly we all adapt to a new normal, to circumstances we once imagined unacceptable and unimaginable. It's amazing, But it's also terrible. Thank god we had that one baby added to the count at the end of the episode. I needed that this week.

(The second episode Sci-Fi premiered tonight,"Water," is also terrific, a character study of robot sleeper agent Boomer as empathetic as it is chilling. But "33" looms large. I'm not even two weeks into 2005, but I've already seen one of the year's best episodes, no question).

Late Night

"New Characters" is my favorite recurring Conan segment (well, that and Pierre Bernard's Recliner of Rage), and tonight we get a really fun and silly new edition for 2005.

What Else Was On

• Hallmark went all-in on cozy mystery series this year. The previous Friday, the premiered the first of 10 Mystery Woman movies starring Hallmark queen Kellie Martin. Tonight, they premiered the first of the 10 McBride movies starring John Laroquette, The Chameleon Murder.
• New Disney Channel Original Movie Now You See It... also premiered tonight. Aly Michalka plays a producer who tries to make a magician played by Emily Kmetko's boyfriend from Make it Or Break It into a star. Also Frank Langella is there?!?!
• Meanwhile, Fox premiered the throwback bounty hunter drama Johnny Zero. It looks a little nutty. And it starred future Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, who had recently popped in Ray.

TiVo Status

The first part of Masterpiece Theater's He Knew He Was Right, one episode of Carnivale, one episode of Law and Order, and the three-hour Masterpiece Theater miniseries The Lost Prince. 7 hours total.