What was on TV? Thurs, March 3, 2005

20 years ago, Jay Leno was on the witness list for the Michael Jackson trial?! Let's see what was on TV.

8:00 Survivor: Palau on CBS

10x03 "Dangerous Creatures and Horrible Setbacks"

This is my third-ever episode of Survivor. So far this show is 30% grueling physical challenges (a race through hip-deep water, yikes!), 20% grueling public peer reviews, and 40% nasty mind games and backbiting. It's entertaining, but even when it's not, it's so nice that it's not happening to me.

9:00 Without a Trace (recorded)

3x14 "Neither Rain nor Sleet"

I recorded this episode because I thought Elizabeth Peña played a video game trafficking kingpin. Instead, Elizabeth Peña plays an overworked postal worker/foster mom who gets killed by her brother. So that was a bummer, especially when Peña did die about a decade after this aired. She's still good in the episode.

But you know who's really good in this episode? Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Jean-Baptiste has reentered the public consciousness recently thanks to her performance in Hard Truths. But what was she doing between her '90s Oscar nomination and now? She definitely didn't get the opportunities she deserved, but she did spend seven years on Without a Trace, doing great work and cashing checks. This episode focuses on her character, Vivian Johnson, on a day when she gets some tough news: she has a life-threatening heart condition. Without a Trace is a missing-persons procedural, and a good chunk of each episode is dedicated to flashbacks that explain why that week's special guest star went missing. So Jean-Baptiste doesn't have a lot of time to make an impression. We don't get big scenes with her family members or with her crying and yelling at her co-workers. She has to show who her character is through small choices, as she deals with Elizabeth Peña's foster children, as she takes a small moment to herself in the middle of the case. But she makes every moment matter. It's such hard work, she makes so much of so little. And it's thankless work, she received no more recognition than actors who sleepwalk their way through similar plotlines on similar shows. But watching her in this episode, her talent and her pride in her work is clear as day, and it's a joy to behold.

10:00 Law and Order: Trial by Jury on NBC

1x01 "The Abominable Snowman"

Trial by Jury seemed doomed to fail from the start. Even before it premiered, it seemed like the franchise was overextended and overexposed. SVU was still doing well, but the flagship show had fallen in the ratings a bit now that it faced some real competition in CSI: NY. Criminal Intent was getting clobbered by Desperate Housewives and its star Vincent D'Onofrio was fainting from exhaustion, prompting producers to bring Christ Noth back to lighten his workload. Meanwhile, Trial by Jury was supposed to keep the beloved Jerry Orbach around with a lighter workload, since his cancer was getting worse. But then Orbach died after filming only two episodes. Furthermore, Law and Order was a victim of its own success. The franchise was in constant rotation on cable, so fans might forgo a new episode for an old one.

Trial by Jury tries to switch up the formula by focusing more on the "law" side of things. We have a great cast: Bebe Neuwirth and Kirk Acevedo, plus guest stars like Annabella Sciorra, Candice Bergen, and Ben Shenkman. The episode is about an evil playwright who murdered a Broadway actress, an ideal premise for a Law and Order episode.

But Trial by Jury messes with the franchise's core appeal. The episode is all about jury selectiion, coaching witnesses, and getting evidence admitted or tossed out. It's cynical, and Law and Order is cynical, but that cynicism is usually balanced out by heroic police work and big speeches from Sam Waterston. Here it's all cynicism. The fantasy of a good and noble justice system and of good and noble cops and lawyers is gone. And, for better and (maybe mostly) for worse, people wanted that fantasy. Plus, the theme song is terrible, the GarageBand version of a Law and Order theme. Trial by Jury only lasted 13 episodes.

Late Night

Conan did a man on the street segment in which he pretended he could guess people's jobs after asking them one question. Man-on-the-street segments aren't a huge part of Conan's brand the way they are with Leno or Kimmel. But his man-on-the-street segments are so good. Even the outtakes at the end of the episode, which make it apparent that this is all somewhat stage-managed, only add to the charm and magic.

What Else Was On

Repeats, nothing but repeats. February sweeps is over. The networks can slow down, and so can I. But first...

February Sweeps Report Card

Fox won sweeps in a landslide. The Super Bowl accounted for the landslide, but their victory was clear even without the big game. This was quite the comeback after they finished a distant last in November sweeps, the result of a failed experiment in year-round programming. But American Idol had the power to change everything. They milked that phenomenon for all it was worth, airing a whopping 11 episodes during the sweeps period. But the rest of their lineup was showing real strength too. A bold scheduling gambit took 24 to new heights, putting House after Idol turned it into a real hit, and The OC gave the network a pulse on Thursday nights. Their victory was legit.

Meanwhile, ABC finished in second place and won the most improved award, with ratings up 10% from last year. They benefited from good ratings for the Oscars, but their regular lineup carried the day. They had launched a whopping four solid hits that fall, and they were all still in good shape. Desperate Housewives was a bona-fide phenomenon, so big that it affected ratings for special events like the Grammys and the Golden Globes. People thought the Lost bubble would burst, but the show was only gaining buzz (and viewers). Meanwhile, Boston Legal and Wife Swap gave the network two more solid performers. Their comedy lineup was still a mess, but it had been a great season for ABC, and they hadn't even premiered Grey's Anatomy or Dancing with the Stars yet.

After winning sweeps the previous November, CBS finished in third place. They essentially conceded victory to Fox, airing repeats in the latter half of sweeps in the hopes of remaining more competitive in the season's final months. CBS had proved the steadiest among the big networks. As you can see in the chart above, Fox ratings swung high and low thanks to special events like postseason baseball, the return of American Idol, and the Super Bowl. But for most of the year, it was CBS in first place. And you know what they say about the tortoise and the hare.

Meanwhile, NBC finished in last place. They tried to spin it, claiming that the race was closer than it looked if you took out the Super Bowl, if you took out the Oscars, if you took out the Grammys. But NBC was in bad shape. The Apprentice looked less like a game-changer and more like a flash in the pan with every passing episode. The Law and Order franchise was overextended and flagging. The once-mighty ER was losing to Without a Trace. Back in the fall, it seemed like Medical Investigation could become a solid performer on Fridays at 10, then Fox turned another show about medical investigations into a bigger hit and then CBS premiered Numb3rs against Medical Investigation and showed NBC what a solid performer looked like. And the less said about the comedies, the better. At least the Patricia Arquette vehicle Medium was a hit, giving NBC a solitary win in a season that saw them tumble from first to worst.

TiVo Status

The Masterpiece Theater miniseries The Lost Prince, a Frontline documentary, the TV movies Sucker Free City, Lackawanna Blues, School of Life, and Ladies Night, and tw0 episodes of Miracle's Boys. 15 hours total.

Figure Skating, 20 years ago

Yuna Kim and Mao Asada represented a cultural reset for figure skating. Before Yuna and Mao, you were an artist or you were an athlete, a Michelle Kwan or an Irina Skutskaya, a Midori Ito or a Yuka Sato. And the figure skating establishment was especially eager to put Asian women into these boxes.

Then Yuna and Mao came along. At 14, Mao could float across the ice, pick up musical accents seasoned competitors would ignore, and charm every crowd she encountered. And she could do triple axels and triple-triple combinations like they were nothing.

Meanwhile, Yuna was coming from a country that had never even come close to winning a major medal in figure skating. Her ice time was limited and her training conditions harsh. And yet here she was, doing sophisticated choreography with ease and firing off ginormous triple lutzes.

In most figure skating rivalries, one person becomes the athlete and one person becomes the artist, even though all truly great figure skaters are both. Yuna and Mao busted that binary wide open, and continued doing so for almost a decade. It was beautiful.