What was on TV? Wed, Feb 9, 2005

A bad episode of Lost, a good episode of Alias, and a juicy episode of Project Runway. Plus, lesbians on Wife Swap!

What was on TV? Wed, Feb 9, 2005

20 years ago, Yogi Berra sued TBS over Sex and the City promos (yes, really). Let's see what was on TV.

8:00 Lost on ABC

1x15 "Homecoming"

Some people call this the worst episode of Lost. Including Damon Lindelof!

And I can see why. This episode makes me understand the people who complained about the lack of "answers." It feels like the entire episode is structured around hiding information: Claire has amnesia, and by the end of the episode Ethan is dead. So learning about these other people on the island will have to wait for another day.

That wouldn't be a problem if the episode had something to offer instead of all those answers. Character development! Romance! Jokes! Drama! Anything! All we get is a lot of macho posturing and self-pity from Charlie and one of the show's all-time worst flashbacks.

The next episode is a good one (the first good episode since Claire went missing, in fact). Thank god. I need it.

9:00 Alias on ABC

4x06 "Nocturne"

What a delightful episode! Some kind of biotoxin gives people hallucinations makes them go crazy. Some dude bites Sydney and she gets infected!

This episode actually reminds me of Fringe, perhaps the last great JJ Abrams show. It has a terrifying cold open (a staple of Fringe, especially early on). It has strong elements of horror (Fringe was scary!). And it gets gross (the aforementioned biting, plus lots of bug stuff).

The hallucinations also allow for some great character development. The toxin preys on Sydney's worst fears. So of course she hallucinates Vaughn kissing a Melissa George lookalike. She also hallucinates her dad telling her that he killed her mother and he'll kill her too! And so we get to address some buried trauma in typical Alias fashion.

And to top it off, we get a great speech from Carl Lumbly. He reads Ron Rifkin for filth, and it is glorious! Lumbly is in the new Captain America movie, and he is honestly the main reason I'm excited to see it.

10:00 Project Runway on Bravo

On Project Runway, reaching the final three and by extension fashion week was the real prize, even more than actually winning. Which is why it's so crazy that when it came time to pick their first-ever final three, Project Runway let drama guide them. In a controversial decision, fan favorite Austin Scarlett was eliminated, and villain Wendy Pepper went forward to fashion week. Wendy's triumph over Austin recalled their feud early on in the show. And you could rely on Wendy to keep things interesting. Fellow finalists Jay and Kara's frostiness towards her is palpable in the closing moments of the episode. It's made all the more hilarious by the presence of the relentlessly gregarious himbo Robert, eliminated last week. He hugs Wendy, while Kara and Jay stand awkwardly to the side.

This challenge (designing a Grammy red carpet dress for Access Hollywood's Nancy O'Dell) was weak across the board, you could make a case for eliminating almost anybody. And I think the judges might have eliminated Wendy, but Nancy chose Wendy's dress and forced their hands. But if the judges and producers really did pick the final three for drama, I forgive them.

This has been a superb season of reality television. The cast of characters is superb. Wendy, the most annoying mom in your kid's class brought to television as a high fashion designer. Hay, so flamboyant and funny that people underestimate his talent. Austin, always immaculate, always true to his vision. Himbo Robert with his "I Heart Soccer Moms" shirts and his "girls are like sportscars" platitudes. Kara Saun, who I would call no-nonsense but that would undersell her charm. Better yet, the designers were talented, and we saw that in their gorgeous creations (Jay's Chrysler building dress, Austin's corn dress, at least four Kara Saun creations). But it wasn't all high fashion; there were low culture pleasures too (the defacing on Wendy's photo!!!).

And it wasn't just the contestants. Tim Gunn is a marginal presence early on in the show. He mostly just pops in to give five-minute warnings. But it didn't take the producers long to realize that they had a true star in Gunn, and he's all over this finale. We also see the judging panel come into focus. Michael Kors had fully come into his own, reliably delivering pointed one-liners that look great in "coming up next on Project Runway." Nina Garcia returns to the judging panel and solidifies her "strict teacher you hated disappointing" persona. The producers were discovering the show's strengths and formula in real time. This is a great season of reality television, but you could already tell that future seasons were going to be even better.

So yeah, I don't mind that Austin goes home, even if he deserved to be in the final three. The producers have earned a pass from me. But being unjustly sent away is also the perfect ending to Austin's story. He's eliminated for sticking to his guns and refusing to compromise his vision. He gets to be a sort of reality tv folk hero. The judge's clearly have huge respect for him and his work (maybe Nancy O'Dell really did force their hand).

His closing montage, in which he tells us that he loves making beautiful clothes and that he can't and won't change for some competition, is a thing of beauty. It's truly moving. That shot of him sitting on the table in the studio, carefully taking off his shoes, putting inserts in them, and then putting on a new pair? It's reality television as art, reality television as poetry. Goodbye, Austin Scarlett. I would have loved to see your fashion week collection. But I wouldn't trade this ending for all the retro-chic dresses in the world.

Late Night

Mark Burnett, creator of Survivor and The Apprentice was such a big deal in this era that he published a book and could get booked on major talk shows. This interview is fascinating, since Trump of course comes up, and their discussion foreshadows the dueling perspectives on that man that would tear this country into pieces. Conan's contempt for the man is obvious, but Burnett describes him as a "blue-collar hero."

This also marks an interesting point in Burnett's career. After The Apprentice, people thought he has the Midas touch. His next big project was the boxing reality show The Contender. He seems to regard it as some kind of prestige play. Apparently Stallone told him he cut Rocky from Adrian's point of view, so Burnett cut the contender from the point of view of the contestants' wives and mothers. But maybe he's just trying to convince people that the boxing series can be for girls, and thus get higher ratings. The Contender did not do well, and though Mark Burnett had other successes (Shark Tank, The Voice), the zeitgeist had moved past him by this point.

What Else Was On

Lesbians were all over February sweeps this year: there was an excellent article on the phenomenon by NYT critic Virginia Heffernan, and Conan O'Brien even made a joke about it this week. There were of course sapphic storylines on scripted shows including The OC and One Tree Hill.

But lesbians were also on reality TV! Case in point: on tonight's Wife Swap, a conservative Christian Black woman and a White lesbian swapped lives. This did not lead to tolerance. Walking a mile in a queer woman's shoes did not inspire tolerance. At the end of the week, the Conservative woman declared that the lesbian and her "lifestyle" were "depraved." This episode actually got some praise at the time, in the aforementioned NYT article and in Entertainment Weekly: people were happy to see homophobia in the clear light of day. Homophobia was too often ignored. Portraying homophobia meant making people "look bad" and it also meant acknowledging the existence of queer people at all, and networks were usually content to ignore the issue altogether. This episode of Wife Swap counted as a breath of fresh air.

(In other news this week, PBS pulled an episode of the Arthur spinoff Postcards from Buster featuring lesbian moms after Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings complained. Stay tuned for more on that story).

TiVo Status

The Masterpiece Theater miniseries He Knew He Was Right and The Lost Prince, and the Frontline documentary House of Saud. 7 hours total.