What was on TV? Sun, Nov 28, 2004

20 years ago today, hockey was on strike. Let's see what was on TV.

4:00 Kristi Yamaguchi's Salute to American Music on NBC

Watch the full special on YouTube.

I love figure skating, and it was kind of all I wanted to watch during the pandemic. But watching current figure skating in 2020 often meant watching actual child endangerment and abuse. Figure skating fans put up with a lot of squicky stuff, but I found my limit. And that was okay, because I could just watch old figure skating events and tv specials on YouTube.

I have spent days, nay weeks watching cheesy figure skating specials from days gone by. So when I say that this is one of the best skating specials I've seen, that really means something.

I honestly might rank all the numbers. I didn't skip one, and that never happens. But here are my five favorites.

No one does it like Kristi. No one! And she reminds us of that in the exquisite opening number.

When I saw that Rene and Gorsha were part of the cast, I was hoping that they would do their "Everything Changes" program. It's one of my all-time favorites, and they could pay tribute to Nina Simone. They didn't do "Everything Changes" (but click on this link and watch it!) but their program to "I'll Be Seeing You" is a new all-time favorite. Fluid, romantic, spellbinding. The best figure skating programs feel inevitable, like that's the only movements they possibly could have made one that music started playing. This program is like that. (Skip to 15:28 in the video above).

A figure skating program set to an adult contemporary version of "Amazing Grace" sounds like my personal version of hell. But Caryn Kadavy's skating has a simplicity and serenity that suits it beautifully. Great dress, too. (Skip to 52:00 in the above video).

I usually skip group numbers. They can be awesome in person, but often don't translate to television. But the final group number in this show, to Simon and Garfunkel's "America," is perfection, even on TV. Lea Ann Miller and Rene Roca did a superb job with the choreography of the whole show. Everything felt of a piece. And it all culminates here.

Except it doesn't. As soon as I saw the title of this show I figured that Kristi would do "Bridge Over Troubled Water." When I saw that Art Garfunkel was a guest singer I was sure. This is one of Kristi's most iconic numbers, it's the centerpiece of probably my favorite Stars on Ice tour. And it's so wonderful to see her do it again. Art Garfunkel is struggling a little bit as he sings live, but it works with this song. And Kristi? She looks great.

9:00 The Wire on HBO

3x10 "Reformation" (record Desperate Housewives on ABC and A Christmas Carol: The Musical on NBC)

This episode looks like the last great gasp of Hamsterdam. We see the program starting to yield results. Citizens like it, politicians and policement see the advantages, and people even begin using Hamsterdam as a bridge to comminity connections. This can only mean that Hamsterdam is going away real soon. But I wonder if Hamsterdam will really go away. Maybe it will just become a worse version of itself.

I used to live in a sort of Hamsterdam. I lived in the San Francisco's Tenderloin, a neighborhood with a food name where law enforcement let the drug trade operate out in the open. Anyone who has lived in or even walked through the neighborhood understands this.

Of course, the Tenderloin isn't really like Hamsterdam at all. Colvin makes sure to put Hamsterdam in deserted areas, far away from schools and community centers. Meanwhile, the Tenderloin is filled with schools, families, and parks that need to be renovated every year of two. But the people who live in the Tenderloin are poor, so they're expected to deal with the drug trade and everything that comes with it. God forbid someone in the Mission or Pacific Heights see all this every morning. This is how San Francisco has dealt with the drug trade and the homelessness crisis for years: don't solve it, don't address the underlying issues, but make sure it all happens where the poor people live.

The Wire presents Hamsterdam as this crazy experimental idea, but I'm not sure it's so crazy. Ideas like this are just usually deployed a lot more cynically, and in ways that reinforce existing power structures.

This episode was written by Ed Burns. Burns worked as a police detective and a public school teacher in Baltimore. His police work inspired David Simon's book Homicide: Life on the Street and its tv adaptation. He has collaborated with David Simon on all his tv ventures.

This episode was directed by Christine Moore. This episode is her first directing credit. She later directed episodes of Scorpion, Elementary, and NCIS: Hawaii.

10:00 Desperate Housewives (recorded)

1x08 "Guilty" (record Boston Legal on ABC)

I'm still watching Desperate Housewives. But that's mostly because it's an essential part of the 2004 zeitgeist, and I love writing about it. But watching it? Not so much.

But this episode? This episode is good. Promos hyped it up to the sun, promising that one of the housewives would die! It worked, this episode had record ratings and won the whole week. In the end it's not a main character but Mrs. Huber who dies, definitely a cop-out. But why would anyone care? This episode might be the series' best. There's Lynette's dream sequence, when she sees Mary Alice through her kitchen window. She represents an unattainable ideal, but also an escape, and even a suicidal impulse. It's the first time that I've felt that Mary Alice meant something to these people. And the scene when Lynette, Susan, and Bree confess all their parental failings on the soccer field? Truly cathartic! I'm not a mom, but hearing my mom and other moms talk about their mistakes is still liberating. Gabrielle doesn't get to be in that scene, but the scene between her and the priest in the hospital is beautifully written and Longoria is great in it.

It ends with a sex scene and a murder, intercut. The sex scene is hot and the murder is brutal. Finally, this scandalous soap is delivering some real scandal and sex! In this episode, at least, it deserved the hype.

This episode was written by Kevin Murphy. Murphy developed the SyFy series Defiance and has written for several tv shows including Ed and Reaper. However, he is best known for writing the stage musicals Reefer Madness and Heathers.

This episode was directed by Fred Gerber. He has directed episodes of China Beach, House, Reign, and more, as well as several TV movies.

What Else Was On

• Thanksgiving was over, so it was time for Christmas TV movies. CBS aired the final movie in its Peter Falk-as-Max-the-Angel series, When Angels Come to Town. This one co-starred Katey Sagal and featured Falk in drag! CBS triumphed in the ratings battle with NBC's A Christmas Carol: The Musical. Just one of many times that CBS trounced NBC this season.
• Tonight's special sweeps guest star: Charisma Carpenter on Charmed.

In the News

2004 was when BitTorrent and the illegal downloading of tv shows entered the mainstream. This week saw the publication of an editorial in the Duke University student newspaper about the legal gray area of pirated video. That very same day, man went on NPR and confessed that he torrented The Daily Show. He begged networks to let him pay to download the episodes. And soon they would begin doing just that. Just one more step on the road to the streaming era.

TiVo Status

The three-hour Masterpiece Theater miniseries The Lost Prince and The Office Christmas Special from across the pond (2 hours), A Christmas Carol: The Musical, the TNT movie The Wool Cap, and one episode of Boston Legal. 10 hours with 18 hours of space left.