What was on TV? Sun, Feb 20, 2005

10 years ago, Gwen Stefani turned a Fiddler on the Roof song into a top 10 hit. Let's see what was on TV!

7:30 Malcolm in the Middle on Fox

6x11 "Dewey's Opera"

Episodes like this are why shows should run for six seasons. This piece of insanity clearly comes from a writer's room who has burned through five seasons' worth of ideas. When that happens, you are willing to try crazy stuff!

Dewey catches "Nessun Dorma" on the TV and falls in love. Lois buys a newer bigger bed and Hal thinks it's because she doesn't want to be close to him anymore. Dewey overhears the resulting fight and voila! He composes an opera. there is a full production with Lois, Hal, and all their friends in Elizabethan collars and pantaloons. And translating the petty married people fights into opera works brilliantly. Opera is repetitive as hell and chaotic. So are married people fights! This was great.

On the other hand, I did not enjoy the B story. I'm too old, watching teenage boys try "street luging" only fills me with terror.

8:00 The Simpsons on Fox

16x10 "There's Something About Marrying" (record Miracle's Boys on the N)

This is the first episode of The Simpsons I've ever seen. I'm definitely not seeing the show in its prime, but this episode caused quite a stir and I was curious. It was written in response to the brief period when same-sex marriage was legal in San Francisco in 2004. As a native San Franciscan, I remember that story. My high school history teacher got married in that whirlwind and then received a piece of paper in the mail telling her it didn't count.

The big story with this episode was that a recurring character would be revealed as gay. This information leaked back in the Summer and gambling websites were taking bets on who it would be. The odds were on Marge's sister Patty, and the odds were right. At first I was happy about the revelation. The early parts of the episode were dedicated to broad satire about Springfield trying to make money off this influx of wannabe spouses. The revelation that Patty, an ongoing presence in lives of the Simpson family and Simpsons viewers, is gay and is getting married makes this all feel more permanent, serious, and challenging.

But two steps forward, three (or thirteen) steps back. The episode ends with the reveal that Patty's would-be spouse is a man in disguise. This is revealed when someone points out their adam's apple, and then they reveal that they pretending to be a woman to compete in the LPGA golf tour. This was a clear reference to real-life trans professional golfer Mianne Bolger, who was competing on the LPGA European tour and campaigning for trans rights in sports when this episode aired. Jesus. You would win transphobic bingo with this shit.

8:30 Miracle's Boys (recorded)

1x03 "In the Game of Life"

This was a miniseries, an adaptation of a pretty short book. But it should have continued! It had legs. In this episode, our three protagonists go off and deal with their own problems: work, school, friends, crushes. All the while, an upcoming visit from the social worker looms. Can they get it together and present a united front so the system doesn't (quite literally) tear them apart? Of course they get it together in the nick of time, but tensions remain.

That doesn't sound like an episode of a miniseries. That sounds like the first of many episodes in a long-running family drama. According to Spike Lee, the only reason there were so few episodes is that he put his foot down and insisted on shooting on location in Harlem. I wish we'd gotten more episodes of this show and shows like it. But this show remains something of an anomaly, in 2005 and today, and boy is that a bummer.

9:00 Carnivale on HBO

2x07 "Damascus, NE" (record Desperate Housewives on ABC and King of the Hill on Fox)

Reverend Clancy Brown's operation is in San Benito County, California, which is wild since my ancestors actually lived in San Benito County in the 1930s, when Carnivale is set. I like to imagine that while Clancy Brown was being scary, my grandma was surviving polio and my great uncle was working with the WPA, building a trail you can still walk through in Pinnacles National Park.

San Benito County is a gorgeous place. It grows some of the best produce in the entire world. It sits directly on the San Andreas fault. And you know the ending of Vertigo? With the Mission and the house where Kim Novak looks at the carriages? That's San Benito County! And she and Jimmy Stewart are standing on a mass grave of Native Americans. It's a rich setting and more stories should be set there. Kudos to Carnivale creator Daniel Knaupf for picking the right California county.

10:00 Desperate Housewives (recorded)

1x15 "Impossible" (record The L Word on Showtime)

Remember all those scenes where girls kiss to prove they're not gay? Somehow, I haven't encountered one of those scenes for this project. But in this episode, Marc Cherry and his writers' room filled with his gay friends turn the trope on its head. It turns out the boy blackmailing Gabrielle for sex is just a closet case. So she takes pity on him and plants a big wet one on him, just to erase any doubts that he's gay.

This of course leads to the revelation that the boy this guy has been messing around with is Bree's son Andrew. If it wasn't already clear that Bree is a stand-in for Cherry's own mother, this seals the deal. Cherry's mom was an icy redhead and his dad had a chronic heart condition, just like Rex. And now they have a gay son, a stand-in for Cherry himself, to complete the picture.

Later The L Word (recorded)

2x01 "Life, Loss, Leaving"

The L Word is remembered as something of a cult hit today, but in 2005, it was creeping into the mainstream, which is quite something given the rampant homophobia of the Bush years. But there were talk show interviews, a huge feature in Entertainment Weekly, the show was having a moment, there was real hype for its second season outside of the gay community.

I can understand why. The L Word is a silly aspirational soap at heart, and there was a real appetite for shows like that at the time in the wake of Sex and the City ending. The L Word could have pandered to straight audiences and become bigger. It doesn't do that. The L Word would inevitably appeal to horny channel surfers of all sexual persuasions, including cis straight dudes. But the stories (the good ones and the bad ones) are still firmly rooted in lesbian experiences and arcana, and thank goodness.

11:30 Robot Chicken on Adult Swim

1x01 "Junk in the Trunk"

I watch a lot of ad packages from this era on YouTube. And the ones from Adult Swim are the most interesting by far. Of course, there are the sketches and inserts that let you know this is the cool place to be (for instance, after Johnny Carson died, they put in a message letting everyone know they were pro-Dave and anti-Jay). But it's more than that. So many of the ads, from the ads for cereal and cell phones to the anti-drug PSAs, have a sarcastic and edgy tone that feels totally of a piece with the programming.

Robot Chicken is a stop-motion sketch comedy that gleefully attacks every sacred cow it can find. Sketches range from about two seconds to a minute and a half in length. On most channels, it would feel experimental and radical. But on Adult Swim, it feels like business as usual. The first big sketch is a parody of anti-drug PSAs featuring the voice of Rachel Leigh Cook. But the sketch isn't much crazier than the actual PSAs you might catch during Adult Swim. Robot Chicken just blends right in. No wonder it's still airing new episodes on Adult Swim, 20 years later.

What Else Was On

• CBS premiered Stone Cold, an adaptation of a popular series of detective novels starring Tom Selleck. They ultimately made NINE of these things.
• NBC aired a documentary special about the first five years of SNL, proving that SNL retrospectives have long been an industry unto themselves.
• Tonight's Special Sweeps Guest Stars: Rosanna Arquette and Peter Bogdanovich on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Leslie Jordan on Boston Legal.

TiVo Status

The Masterpiece Theater miniseries The Lost Prince, the Frontline documentary House of Saud, the TV movies Sucker Free City, Lackawanna Blues, School of Life, and Ladies Night, three episodes of Miracle's Boys, and one episode each of Monk, King of the Hill, and Without a Trace. 18 hours total.

Music, 20 years ago

In honor of the season 2 premiere of The L Word (I recorded it), here is a Tegan and Sara song.