What was on TV? Thurs, March 24, 2005

20 years ago, people in Kyrgyzstan protested the corrupt regime so hard that the president fled the country! Let's see what was on TV.

8:00 The OC on Fox

2x17 "The Brothers Grim"

Logan Marshall-Green begins his run as Ryan's brother Trey tonight. This solves the mystery of why he never returned to 24, where he played the Secretary of Defense's totally gay son (it was never confirmed, but I know it's true!). He's playing a troubled teen yet again here. But the characters are very different. On 24, he was a pampered boy rebelling in college who ended up getting brutally tortured, eventually with his father's experess permission. He was sympathetic and a little pathetic, and Marshall-Green made him compelling when he easily could have been annoying in another actor's hands.

He has another perilous assignment. Trey is transparently designed to bring some much-needed season 1-style drama and punching back to the show, and to tempt Ryan into bad choices. On the page, he's a generic and annoying bad boy. So it's a good thing they hired Marshall-Green, who makes Trey feel pathetic and scary and sympathetic all at once.

9:00 American Idol on Fox

4x24 "Top 11 Results"

There was a snafu on Tuesday's episode of American Idol, and the wrong phone numbers were displayed for various contestants at the end of the show. Back in the day, each contestant was assigned a specific phone number, and you voted by dialing or texting that specific number (sponsored by Cingular, standard text messaging rates apply). Eager to make sure everyone's vote was counted properly, and especially eager to air more episodes of American Idol, Fox scheduled a makeup show in the usual Wednesday results show slot in which all the contestants' performances were replayed and the judges gave new comments. And tonight we had the regular results show, complete with a terrible charity single performed by all 11 remaining finalists and at least three different egregious cuts to commercial.

9:30 The Office on NBC

1x01 "Pilot"

This pilot is rough. It hews very close to the original British show. And that show was a masterpiece, not to mention one of the most influential shows ever made. This show can't help but feel like a pale shadow, another imitation doomed to fail.

But shows live or die on good casting, and the cast of The Office is already excellent, and distinct from the British version. I've been writing this blog for six months and I haven't mentioned Allison Jones yet, which is really a travesty. The woman is a genius. You could make the case that she's the most influential person in TV comedy in the past 40 years. Even before The Office, her resume was formidable: The Golden Girls, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Arrested Development, and Freaks and Geeks. Greg Daniels hired her because he thought Freaks and Geeks was the best cast show he'd ever seen, and she delivered. Every cast member is talented and hilarious, but they're also easy to spend time with. The British version was bleak and stark. It's about eight hours long, and that's just right, I cannot imagine spending more time in Wernham Hogg. But in America, things were different (at least in 2005). Successful shows ran for hundreds of episodes and years and years.

The characters here stay true to the spirit of the original. But Steve Carell's Michael Scott more competent and less pathetic than David Brent. Jenna Fisher's Pam is warmer than desolate Dawn. Rainn Wilson's Dwight is more lively than ghostly Gareth. John Krasinski's Jim is more lovelorn and a whole lot cooler than tragic Tim. These are performances and characters you can spend years with.

10:00 ER on NBC

11x18 "Back in the World"

I don't care about Sharif Atkins returning from Iraq and having sex with Neela. I don't care about Sam's ex-husband returning even though he's played by the great Garett Dillahunt. I don't care about this overdramatic storyline about the kid defending himself from bullies with a gun (seriously?). I just didn't care about this episode.

And that's a problem. ER's creative decline had been going on for years, and it didn't matter that much. It was still NBC's highest-rated show, and they renewed it for two more seasons this year. But Noah Wyle, the last remaining original castmember, was leaving at the end of the season. And for the first time since it debuted, ER was no longer the buzziest medical drama on TV. House had turned into a bon-fide hit in the post-Idol slot. It was about to get worse: Grey's Anatomy was arriving in three days. ER needed to be good and exciting in 2005, and it wasn't.

Late Night

Conan did a really fun segment making fun of NBC's recent fourth-place finish in February sweeps. This just makes me want to watch 3o Rock, which spent over 100 episodes mining NBC's flop era for comedy. But the nature of this project means I have to wait a year and a half to watch it.

What Else Was On

• BET hosted the first edition of what became an annual Rip the Runway fashion show special. It was hosted by rapper Fonzworth Bently and America's Next Top Model winner Eva.
• Fox used the post-Idol slot to debut sitcom Life on a Stick, set in a mall food court. It joined the long list of shows that failed to retain even a sliver of the Idol audience.

TiVo Status

A Frontline documentary and the TV movies Sucker Free City, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Ladies Night, and one episode each of The Starlet, American Dreams, and The West Wing. 12 hours total.

Music, 20 years ago

I've been picking too many melancholy songs from The OC. So here's the peppy and aggressive "I Only Want You" from tonight's episode.