MSNBC: WTF?

I admit it.  I put on MSNBC in the afternoon if there's nothing better, like a medley of Charles Butterworth films on TCM.  Chris Matthews is a giant pain in the ass and Al Sharpton needs to develop an inside voice, but I'm often directed to something diverting or informative.  Sadly, the last, shaky bastion of liberalism only makes headlines when it screws up.  I mean, really.  Martin Bashir, of all people.  We've all thought about taking a dump on Sarah Palin's head, but you're not supposed to say so out loud, even on low-rated cable.  That being the case, I can't believe the Real Housewife of Wasilla was so distressed that she had to cancel an appearance on The Today Show to hawk her latest McBook.  This is a woman who likes to shoot animals from a helicopter so she can admire the red blood on the white snow.  She's not joining Lindsey Graham on the fainting couch any time soon, and I'll bet he's relieved.

Oh, sorry, was that Hate Speech?  It's hard to tell these days.  Alec "Oops, I did it again" Baldwin was abruptly yanked off MSNBC when he called some reporter a "queen" last week.  Like Bashir, he apologized.  Unlike Bashir, he was only responsible for one hour a week and it was hardly a must-see.  Like most actors, Baldwin is too self-involved to be a good interviewer.  I enjoyed his talk with the too-little-seen Debra Winger, but the hour he spent with Bill DeBlasio felt like three.  When it finally ended I was convinced that the new mayor of New York is Bloomberg without the charisma.

If Baldwin is gone for good, no doubt the Rightzis will crow that it's all right to insult Palin but not teh gays.  I don't believe he's a bigot, just someone with imperfect impulse control.  And who of us is without sin when it comes to life's daily irritants?  A female driver cuts you off in traffic, a black person grabs the last cart in the supermarket, and all the years of good will and conscientious striving fall away, and out from the reptilian part of your brain comes that unforgivable word, or several.  It's shameful enough when you're alone in the car.  Celebrities are never alone.  Baldwin will be doing benefits for GLAAD until he retires, because Oscar Hammerstein was right -- we're carefully taught all that garbage in early life and we never throw it all away.  (I actually hate that song, it's so damn preachy, and Richard Rodgers didn't knock himself out coming up with an attractive melody.  But damn it, he was right.)

But what of MSNBC?  Are there so few articulate lefties that they need to repeat everything twice and fill up the weekend with those unspeakable prison documentaries?  Why Joe Scarborough when the Stephanie Miller radio show is looking for a TV outlet?  Can we limit guest commentators to one appearance per day, to cut down on the queasy feeling of deja vu?  (Did I see her an hour ago?  Does she have her own show?  Is her name really Crystal Ball?  Should I get out of the house for a while?)  Does every freaking member of Congress have to be interviewed in the same spot in the Capitol?  Just for the comedy, could they pick up the cable show Rob and Doug Ford are doing?  I can't get enough of those loveable hosers. 

 

 

Vast wasteland 2.0

I have been taking a break from television thanks to Comcast, The World's Shittiest Cable Company. ("We didn't get rich enough to buy NBC by providing quality cable service!") Tomorrow someone will install yet another reconditioned cable box, in time for me to catch up with the endless iterations of 9/11 -- the pageantry, the speeches, the bagpipes. The Second Amendment guarantees that every American has a significantly better chance of being shot by a robber, or in a drive-by, or by accident, or just for the hell of it, than ever being within a hundred miles of a "terrorist," but all those billions of dollars spent to make us "safe" can't be wrong, can they?

After the solemnities comes the new television season, and the signs are not good. MAD MEN has evidently spawned two imitations, set in the Sixties when women wore uncomfortable uniforms and did as they were told; I predict early cancellation for both PAN AM and PLAYBOY CLUB. TV has long tried to cover both ends of the crime-fighting spectrum, state-of-the-art science as well as shows where some woman talks to dead people; this year there's a lawyer who chats with his dead wife. (No, it's not called THE DEAD WIFE. They didn't think of it in time.) I think it's meant to be taken seriously. And of course, "reality" rolls on and on.

It's been a brutal year, though, by any standards -- earthquake, drought, excessive snow, floods, hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, numberless challenges to what we laughingly call the infrastructure, and the intractable economic mess. The public is in a mean mood, restive, pacing, looking around anxiously for something else to go wrong. They're just a little jaded, hungry for fresh thrills such as these shows used to provide. Americans want distraction, and they want it bad. "Reality TV" may just have to turn up the voltage. After all, it's a truism that people go to auto races (and air shows, and boxing matches, and let's be honest, high school football) hoping that death, as Tom Lehrer put it, will brighten an otherwise dull afternoon. What if it were a certainty?

"Survivor." Really? Watching somebody get voted off an island is a little too much like our pointless electoral process -- idiots in, idiots out. What if they were hurled over a cliff into a shark-filled cove? Would you watch? Just to be sure they don't turn up a week later on The Tonight Show?

"Toddlers, Tiaras and Traffickers." Just following a line of thought. Did I cross a line? Sure, moms dress four-year-olds like tiny hookers, but I'm the pervert.

For our more mettlesome friends in the UK, "The Real Housewives of Whitechapel." Every week a spoiled, useless, facelifted, drink-hurling bimbo is eviscerated in an alley. Relax, you get to vote on which one. Best thing on BBC America, which isn't saying much.

There have been complaints about "Dancing With the Stars," no dancing and this season no stars. What if they revive apache dancing, a performance style popular in low-end French cabarets in the 1920s? The man hurls his partner sadistically about the stage in a display of machismo calculated to cause bruises and broken bones. (Clueless about most things American, the French apparently thought this was how Apaches, i.e. savages, treated women.) Hard to picture? Wait till some NFL veteran grabs Nancy Grace by her ankle, pinwheels her around and tosses her away, her head splitting open like a pumpkin! If you don't have hi-def, this is the time to get it.

Ice may love Coco, but market research says a hefty share of the public wants to see him go Ike Turner on her ass. Vox populi, vox dei, nome sane?

And finally, we're tired of waiting for the Jersey Shore crew to develop skin cancer. How far is it from the shore to the Pine Barrens? If you know what I mean.

November 22

I don't understand how John Keats wrote all that poetry while dying of tuberculosis. I've spent the last two weeks with a wracking cough that left me unable to concentrate on so much as a crossword puzzle. So I have nothing profound (or otherwise) to say about this anniversary, the 9/11 of my generation. I see nothing of a commemorative nature on the cable channels that will program absolutely anything and call it history -- not even "JFK and Nostradamus: The Hidden Secret Facts and Theories!" Although the abomination known as The Biography Channel has a two-hour study called "Mad Mel: The Rise and Fall of a Hollywood Icon." Pass.

I see "The Daily Show" is reruns this week, which must be confusing for the people who rely on it as their primary news source. I don't do that, of course; I get all my information from "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me" on NPR weekends. It has limericks.

I watch television. I know there must be a support group somewhere, but you have to want to recover. I put it on late at night and just let it burble on, and it messes up my head but no worse than alcohol or drugs would. I refuse to be ashamed of it any more.

I try to find the quality stuff. Yesterday, C-SPAN (whose motto is "One camera was good enough for Charlie Chaplin, and it's good enough for us") had the Miami Book Fair. In normal circumstances BookTV doesn't deign to cover novels, but these festivals sneak it in: Jonathan Franzen and George W. Bush promoted their newest works of fiction. Then PBS had a play about John Lennon starring Christopher Eccleston. The writing was tedious -- apparently all Lennon did around 1970 was yell at people and whine for his daddy -- and the usually impeccable Eccleston had a surprisingly hard time sustaining a Liverpool accent. Tonight it was "Moguls and Movie Stars" Part 4, which added little to my store of knowledge but was very enjoyable, as was the chance to see Cagney in two classics, Footlight Parade and The Public Enemy. "By a Waterfall" is still the greatest, wettest wet dream in all of movie musicals, and I can't get enough of "Shanghai Lil." When they're dancing on the bar, Cagney evidently decides that if Ruby Keeler is going to stare at her feet, he will, too. Priceless. And now we're up to the scene where Tom Powers is measured for a suit by a stereotypically gay salesman -- who needs Craig Ferguson?

So much for quality. Mainly I'm content with syndicated police shows. Basically they're all the same show. A crime is committed, then solved. There are more surprises in opera seria. The newest layer of cliche is provided by The Nemesis. The star always has a nemesis, or an unhealed wound from the past, or both. On Crossing Jordan, Jordan Kavanagh's mother was murdered when she was ten, which explains why she can never commit to anything or follow orders from a superior, and can only be employed by the world's most indulgent medical examiner. On CSI:NY, Mac Taylor's wife died in the World Trade Center, which is why he looks perpetually constipated. On Law & Order: SVU, Olivia Benson's mother -- do I have to go on? It's what Orson Welles called "dollar-book Freud," the one detail that unlocks a whole life ("Rosebud!"), at least in fiction. I don't remember this kind of thing in the more distant past. If Theo Kojak had an aunt who was in the country illegally, or Frank Furillo had a cousin in the Mafia, or Joe Friday was molested as a child, we never had to hear about it.

The Nemesis is an even bigger pain in the ass, usually a serial killer who was put away by our hero. Like all serial killers in fiction, he has an unmeasurably high IQ, a love of classical music, and a Houdini-like ability to escape from anyplace. In reality, of course, the serial killer thrives because he is Mr. Cellophane. He works at a dead-end job, lives alone, and gets caught by accident because the police are looking for Hannibal Lector. They watch TV, too.

Borrowers of the night

After a week when sanity lost and the San Francisco Giants won, I look forward to the debut of Conan O'Brien's show on TBS in a few hours. I actually enjoyed the promos during the baseball playoffs, especially the Cool Hand Luke parody, and the blimp was a nicely excessive touch. I hope the shows are equally inspired. Late night TV is not so much a Vast Wasteland as a Superfund site. It's not a good time to be a registered insomniac.

The Big Four on the traditional networks are, to put it kindly, inadequate. They all follow the formula created by Jack Paar: opening monologue with topical "jokes," backchat with bandleader, scripted attempts at comedy, interview with one or two celebrities who have a movie or a CD to flog, and -- the one variant -- a usually lousy musical act. Letterman is so bored you can actually see his eyes glaze over as he announces the Top Ten. Leno is still going out in the street ("Jay Walking," get it?) to find several Angelenos to mock because they can't name the Canadian prime minister; risky stuff. Every time I turn Fallon on he's got audience members on stage doing stupid things, so I turn it off. (I don't bother with Kimmel because he doesn't bother with me, or anyone else over thirty.)

By far the most depressing experience -- and really, who needs to be more depressed in the middle of the night? -- is The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson. I keep watching in hope of learning why Nancy Franklin in The New Yorker called him "brilliant." She may have been referring to his memoir, An American On Purpose, and I concur. It's the work of an engaging, intriguing mind in a body which has had some extraordinary experiences with alcohol and drugs. Almost none of this makes it onto the air.

Watching Ferguson for a week is like being the Bill Murray character in Groundhog Day -- the same six jokes, the same tired innuendo, prop comedy, weak impersonations, stock phrases and antediluvian Bill Clinton jokes every night. Is it "brilliant" to do a tedious show in order to make fun of tedious shows? Is this what they mean by "post-modern"? Who cares? It's painful because Ferguson can do so much more, and occasionally does. The seven or eight minutes he allotted to Cornel West last Friday outclassed the rest of the week. He's a superior interviewer when a guest engages him. Instead of positioning himself to replace Letterman one day, he has a chance to become Charlie Rose without the vanity. He did a wonderful show with Stephen Fry without a studio audience, and he won a Peabody Award for interviewing Desmond Tutu. He needs to do more of both.

Studio audiences are the bane of all these shows. There must be a PET scanner in the lobby which identifies potential audience members who have higher brain function, so they can be weeded out. The lucky ones who are seated scream and bellow for every weak-ass gag the host utters and greet every guest like a returning hostage. At least Ferguson acknowledges that a "warm-up comedian" (which must be the TV equivalent of the guy who sweeps up elephant shit in the circus) has brought them to this lunatic pitch. The others just bask. Some of Johnny Carson's funniest moments occurred when a joke fell flat, nobody laughed, and he had to work his way out of the silence. Every time Letterman says "Oh Paul," his audience soil the seats.

When Craig Ferguson's father died, he presented a memorial show that honored him and delved into the nature of grief, and ended with Scottish music. It was unexpected, moving, and completely his own, an event that lifted TV above itself for an hour. Not every show can or should be like that, but they don't have to paint-by-numbers. I hope Ferguson, who claims CBS is barely aware of him anyway, will unplug the robot, give the puppets to a preschool, take it as read that America is aware of his prodigious junk, stop making fun of gays and old people, and re-invent late-night television. It needs re-inventing. And if I see that goddam pantomime horse again, I swear I'm selling the TV.

Conan review on, oh, Thursday. I'll give him a few days to get into it.

What'd I miss?

Did you know that "Emmy" derives from the term "immy"? I don't know what that means, or why I remember it.

Jimmy Fallon is not talented enough for this to be remade as "The Jimmy Fallon Show," but at least we haven't heard his irritating laugh. Yet. NBC fired the wrong late night guy.

Jim Parsons won Best Actor in a Comedy. That means people finally realized that "Monk" is not a comedy.

Edie Falco: "I'm not funny!" Here we go again.

Where would awards shows be without Ricky Gervais? In the crapper, is where. "Let's face it, we're all Bucky Guntz here." Can I get that on a T-shirt?

George Clooney won the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award for not making Ocean's 14. The caper would have involved stealing Andy Garcia and delivering him to Al Pacino.

Did I just see a "tease" for the In Memoriam segment?

And Hugh Laurie gets skunked again, even though he gives a consistently rich performance in what amounts to a foreign language. Try playing a misanthropic bastard so that people will want to watch you every week. It's harder than it looks.

Next year: No guitars. Also, the word "amazing" will be banned. That should give nominees a full year to think of another way to describe their agents.

Maury Chaykin died? I didn't know. He was a terrific Nero Wolfe.

Applauding yourself when your name is announced irritates me. It suggests you aren't paying attention, but are mindlessly clapping when prompted, like the Letterman audience.

Clearly Temple Grandin is having the time of her life. It would be nice if somebody invited her onstage.

It seems that all the nominated writers are about 24. Be sure to read Ken Levine's blog tomorrow, he's something of an expert in these matters. I'm just somebody who owns a television. I muted the sound when that girl was singing, so I'm not sure why Tom Hanks just led a busload of people onstage.

And finally Ms. Grandin gets her moment. She may be the only woman onstage who isn't in danger of erupting from her dress. Whoops! Tuck them in. Oh, that must be uncomfortable. This is why the Emmys are not shown in Iran, where they would otherwise be a huge draw. Most Iranian men model their look after Tom Selleck.

Now for the evening's big question: Will Google (spits) let me publish this?

Behind the curve

When it comes to television, I'm always inexcusably lagging behind the other kids, staring at clouds and wondering how cheese is made. If I think about it at all, I think about why so many British and Australian actors are needed to portray Americans these days. Deep stuff.

To this day, I have never seen a minute of Gray's Anatomy. If not for The Soup, I would have to pretend I know who Jon and Kate are. I could not pick Ryan Secrest (sp?) out of a crowd. Lost is lost on me. Until a couple of months ago, I had never watched Boston Legal. When it first appeared I glanced over and said "Lawyers? Shatner? Ergh." I understand it has since been cancelled.

Why? This show is awesome. And by that I mean awesomely prescient. I watch it every day on some little cable channel or other, the kind that carries commercials for the Latter-Day Saints and companies that will get your IRS debt knocked down. Who ever thought Captain Kirk could bring the funny? Or that practicing law was so sexually stimulating for the practitioners? But mostly it's the stories -- talk about torn-from-the-headlines. So far, Crane Poole & Schmidt ( great name) has represented:

A black man arrested by a Boston cop for looking at a house. Standing on the sidewalk, looking at a house. He found it beautiful.

A man whose wife died after her HMO insisted on sending her to India for a heart transplant.

A man with terminal cancer who attempted to buy a lung on the black market. Ironically, his body parts ended up on the black market. Did I mention he had cancer?

There it is. The Gates-Crowley case, health care reform, and the most recent round of New Jersey Political Follies. Unlike Law & Order, these writers didn't read about reality and then alter it a little. They created it.

Awesome.