What was on TV? Mon, Feb 7, 2005

20 years ago...here's the thing, we started out friends...it was cool but it was all pretend...Let's see what was on TV!

8:00 Monk (recorded)

3x12 "Mr. Monk Gets Cabin Fever"

Crime procedurals were everywhere in 2005 (and in 2025, and in 1985...). But procedurals were so concerned with being dark and slick and cool, with forensics and gross bodies and hot-button issues, they all too often failed to deliver a good old-fashioned mystery. Monk does not have this problem.

This episode mixes things up by opening with a murder, but not the murder: Monk accidentally witnesses a mob hit and is rushed into witness protection in the mountains. While there, a lady electrocutes her country music loving husband. Meanwhile, his detective friend falls prey to another dastardly plot back in San Francisco. It all culminates in a "detective explains it all" moment, but two detectives are explaining two different mysteries at the same time, complete with cheezy dramatic black and white flashbacks. Delightful.

9:00 24 on Fox

4x08 "Day 4: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM" (record Everwood on the WB and Everybody Loves Raymond on CBS)

Everything is worse than you thought. Everyone is sad, everyone is desperate. You solve one crisis and five more appear. I could be describing any episode of 24. But I could also be describing America in 2025. This show really speaks to our current moment. For heavens' sake, Audrey and Jack spent part of this episode combing through security footage from a Heritage Foundation gala to find a suspected terrorist!

But while I think 24 is a great show that tells us a lot about ourselves and the world we're all stuck in, I don't love that! Because of, you know, the Islamophobia, the general racism, the condoning of torture, extrajuducial killing, brute military force, the belief that ideas like "due process" and "human rights" are mere suggestions. I don't love any of that (and the stuff I mentioned is just the start!).

So I've decided to debut a new feature: 24 alternatives to 24. I'll recommend stories that speak to the same anxieties and issues as 24 or tap into the same paranoid thrill-seeking parts of our lizard brains that this show services so effectively. But I hope that these stories will celebrate the people the show too often villainizes and discards, question the dangerous ideas this show propagates, and even in some cases offer another, more hopeful and progressive way of looking at the world. Look for the first installment at the bottom of this post!

10:00 Everwood (recorded)

3x14 "Since You Been Gone"

In 2025, Chris Pratt is a movie star with dubious politics who hasn't made a good movie in...almost a decade? He's a true disappointment to millennials across America.

But if you're going to disappoint people, you have to make them fall in love with you first. And before Star Lord, before Andy Dwyer, before he was in Moneyball and Zero Dark Thirty, before he was Che on The OC, Chris Pratt was on Everwood. And he was spectacular.

In this episode, his sister goes and yells at him until he agrees to go and tell nerdy Sarah Drew to get over him. She tells him that she doesn't really need to get over him, and she's actually into this other cute nerdy boy who asked her out. He admits his ego is bruised, but he listens to her, and sees her in a way that other people don't. He sees the bravery that lurks beneath the introverted facade (even though he needs an assist from her to find the word "introverted"). He jokes with her, but he's also sincere. It's the stuff that teenage dreams are made of. I can't wait for them to kiss.

Later Everybody Loves Raymond (recorded)

9x11 "The Faux Pas"

Ray makes a bad joke and offends his kids' friend. He doubles down and tries to convince his family it was okay. Then he does the same with the poor kids' dad. Every time it gets worse. He apologizes, the apologies are all self-serving. He knows he should let it go, but he can't quite do it. Eventually, the whole family is throwing their respective faux pas in each other's faces in an effort to prove that they aren't the worst one.

In a world of constant offensive jokes followed by cringeworthy public apologies, which are then followed by more apologies, this episode is more relevant than ever (as I type this, we are currently going through this routine with Oscar nominee Karla Sofia Gascon). No matter how offensive the comments, how sincere the apology, there is an absurdity to this routine that remains contstant. Now, every time we go through that tiresome public ritual, I will think about this episode.

This is an excellent episode of television, elevated by a great performance by Joel McKinnon Miller (Sully on Brooklyn 99) as the poor kid's dad, who desperately wants to leave and escape his child's annoying and rude relatives. But he's trapped.

What Else Was On

Tonight's special sweeps guest stars: Idris Elba on Girlfriends. Also, Leslie Odom Jr. was on CSI: Miami.

24 Alternatives to 24

#1: The Spy Who Couldn't Spell by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

Edgar is one of 24's best characters. This unassuming tech guy is underestimated by everyone around him at their own peril. In this episode, he manages to expose the mole who blackmailed him, and save his colleague from torture. The moment when he asks his co-worker Curtis to walk him to his boss' office so Aisha Tyler the mole can't mess with him is so perfect. It's such a simple action, yet it's the moment when she knows she's out of options, and this putz has outwitted her.

And it reminded me of this great book about another tech guy in the intelligence community who was underestimated by all. But Brian Regan didn't expose a mole, he successfully stole thousands of documents from the CIA. The CIA had a bitch of a time tracking him down because all his communications were in a complex code of his own design. But also, he was dyslexic, and so his writings were riddled with mistakes and even harder to decipher.

However, the real draw of this book is what's going on the background. Regan decided to steal secrets in the late 1990s, but he wasn't tried until the mid-2000's, just as America was preparing to invade Iraq. So Bhattacharjee is able to give the reader a really interesting portrait of how 9-11 changed the culture and the attitude towards classified leaks within the American intelligence community. When Regan's crimes were first discovered, it was a pretty small-potatoes affair. But by the time he was tried, people were outraged and freaked by his actions. They even appealed for the death penalty (despite the fact that Regan wasn't a very good spy, and never managed to sell any documents or endanger anyone). Seeing the rising paranoia and vindictiveness within the American intelligence community and in American culture at large through the prism of an (ultimately) pretty inconsequential matter was very sobering.

In 24, the danger is always real. We always have no other choice. Bhattacharjee shows us a different reality. A lot of the time, we're just punishing people and telling ourselves that makes us safer. There's no ticking clock, just a toxic cocktail of revenge and fear. And it wasn't always like this. We changed, we decided to do things like this. Brian Regan paid for those choices. And he actually did steal classified documents. Lots of people felt our wrath and did nothing at all.

TiVo Status

The Masterpiece Theater miniseries He Knew He Was Right and The Lost Prince. 6 hours total.