What was on TV? Tues, Nov 30, 2004

20 years ago today, Ken Jennings finally lost. Let's see what else was on TV.

8:00 Gilmore Girls on the WB

5x10 "But Not as Cute as Pushkin"

Stream on Netflix

Rory really gets to have it both ways. In this episode she's responsible and square, much to the disappointment of the rebellion hungry high-schooler she's showing around at Yale. But also two cute boys get into a fight over her in the middle of class! She gets the bad girl experience, she gets the popular girl experience, but without the risk or effort.

I am an anti-social bookworm who once yearned for drama and romance. So this could have eaten this up. But now it just seems ridiculous. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Maybe I started watching this show too late.

And thank god Paris got a proper storyline, it's been forever.

This episode was written by showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino.

This episode was directed by Michael Zinberg. His hundreds of TV directing credits include episodes of The Bob Newhart Show, Quantum Leap, NCIS, and The Good Fight.

9:00 Veronica Mars on UPN

1x09 "Drinking the Kool Aid" (record House on Fox)

Stream on Hulu

In yesterday's review of Boston Legal, I discussed how TV's addiction to surprise and subversion sometimes makes it an enemy of progress.

TV loves to say that the husband actually didn't do it, that the do-gooder activist is actually dangerous or selfish, that people of color can be racist too. That's the kind of subversion that TV loves. The kind that supports the people in power, the power. So it's not really subversive at all.

This episode of Veronica Mars shows us what truly subversive storytelling can look like on a crime procedural. Keith and Veronica are hired by a wealthy family to tear their 18-year-old son Casey Gant away from a cult. But when Veronica investigates, she discovers nothing but a bunch of touchy-feely people growing poinsettias. Meanwhile, the people who hired them mostly seem interested in securing a dying woman's fortune and also maybe in sending their son to conversion therapy (a truly chilling touch, especially when Casey is played by queer performer Jonathan Bennett).

The show acknowledges that cults can be dangerous, that they do take advantage of vulnerable people. But their power to do that comes from places like Neptune, places that already prey on vulnerable people. And our obsession with cults makes it easy to dismiss places that challenge the status quo and really do offer people a refuge from the regular broken world.

This episode was written by Russell Smith. He also wrote for Party Down.

This episode was directed by Marcos Siega. He directed several music videos for Blink 182, Papa Roach, The Crystal Method, Lifehouse, and more. His tv credits include episodes of Dexter, Bad Monkey, and You.

10:00 House (recorded)

1x03 "Occam's Razor" (record Laguna Beach on MTV)

Stream on Hulu and Amazon Prime

House became a mainstream hit once Fox put it after American Idol . But House was also huge with the Tumblr crowd. It had a fandom. And if a show is going to pick up a fandom, it needs ships.

In the previous two episodes, House introduced its characters and established its medical mystery formula. Now it's time to introduce the 'ships. I've never seen this episode, but I'd already seen the big House and Cuddy moment ("you're already miserable") in about at least a dozen different YouTube compilations. This episode also gives us Cameron lecturing Chase about sex. Horny torrenting teens had lots of places to channel their energy.

This episode was written by series creator David Shore. Before House, Shore wrote for The Practice, Law and Order, and Due South. Shore is also the creator and showrunner of Sneaky Pete and The Good Doctor.

This episode was directed by Bryan Singer. Singer directed The Usual Suspects and several X-Men movies, all while sexually abusing and harassing god knows how many young men and boys.

Later Laguna Beach (recorded)

1x09 "Graduation Day"

They say that graduation is for the parents and prom is for the teens. Laguna Beach supports this maxim. The prom episode felt like the true rite of passage, full of melancholy and desperation. This episode is about parents taking pictures and giving expensive presents, everyone making grand statements about their generation and their future. I honestly wish I'd just watched the prom episode again. (Read my review somewhere in the middle of this very long post).

Late Night

This week, CBS announced the four finalists in contention to host the Late Late Show. Craig Kilborn's departure from the program was quite abrupt, but Worldwide Pants, who produced the show, made the most of the opportunity, inviting plenty of people to guest host. Four finalists were given week-long tryouts: Craig Ferguson, Michael Ian Black, D.L. Hughuley, and Damian Fahey. Most press at the time seemed to give Black the edge (here he is introducing Aimee Mann while guest hosting tonight).

Worldwide pants cast a pretty wide net when searching for a replacement. Multiple women were invited to guest host (Ana Gayester, Lisa Joyner, and Rosie Perez). Black men were invited to guest host (Hughuley, David Alan Grier). A Black woman was even invited (Aisha Tyler, who did a pretty good monologue). It was a more diverse field of guest hosts than we saw after Ferguson stepped down (when CBS and not Worldwide Pants controlled the search).

But in the end, the list of finalists was woman-free. Entertainment Weekly published a piece on the lack of women in late night in response, and insiders confess that they wanted to make Tyler a finalist but she refused because she was too busy. They point to Tina Fey and Amy Poelher's work as weekend update co-anchors as proof that women can do the job. They more than proved that was true this very night as guests on Jay Leno. Leno is a terrible interviewer, as usual, so they have to generate all the jokes and flow and momentum on their own, and they are more than up to the task.

Entertainment Weekly theorizes that women would rather make it big in daytime. But daytime was generally more conservative, less political, and less prestigious than late night. Not having a women in late night was a loss for everybody. EW points to the few women in writing and producing roles on late night. But most late-night shows had a token female writer. And women often succeed as producers because mercurial hosts want to be coddled by a woman. In the end, they suggest that women just have to be so amazing and so funny that they're undeniable. Then they'll get their show, then things will change.

Except not really. Women barely made it into late night in the last decade, and by then the market was so fractured it hardly mattered. I think that the real reason they couldn't break in comes at the beginning of the article. Men watched late night, and advertisers were willing to fork over tons of money to hawk cars and video games and the like. Late night was a big business, and it was big because it was male, and because in America, men are more important and valuable consumers. And so late night stayed male.

But why even care about late-night television or who gets to host it? Because late-night TV can be fun! Look no further than tonight's delightful episode of Conan for proof. I think that Val Kilmer talked about gluing his eye shut and starring in The Ten Commandments at a regional LA theater. Conan O'Brien confessed that he aced a quiz in the official OC magazine and Peter Gallagher recalled with delight the moment he realized he was a lesbian sex symbol. The Killers performed "Mr. Brightside." It was kind of rough, but I sang along anyway. Conan and his bandleader discussed America's Next Top Model. For some reason the episode they discussed was about a month old, but it was still fun. Even the outro is great.

Watch the full episode on archive.org.

What Else Was On

• On NBC, it was time to light the tree at Rockefeller Center! Performers included Hilary Duff, Jessica Simpson, Nick Lackey, Clay Aiken, and Tony Bennett.
• TBS premiered the reality show The Real Gilligan's Island, which was basically a Survivor knockoff. I can't find it now, but there was an article in (I think) Broadcasting and Cable in which they interviewed some people who confessed that they would be downplaying the presence of a gay character in promotional materials after the 2004 election.
• On Sunday, Al Sharpton appeared on Boston Legal. On Monday, he appeared on Girlfriends. And on Tuesday, he appeared on his own SpikeTV reality show I Hate My Job. Goodness gracious me.
• After a record-breaking Jeopardy run, Ken Jennings finally lost. On a question about H&R Block, of all things.
• Special sweeps guest star: Amanda Plummer on Law and Order: SVU in an Emmy-winning role.

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, and the TNT movie The Wool Cap. 9 hours with 19 hours of space left.