Name that Show!

If you've never flipped through the TV listings on the digital cable, you've probably never noticed some of the funny descriptions for classic (and not-so-classic) television shows. Rather than just highlight some of my favorite, try yourself with one of my random quizzes. Try your hand at figuring them out and I'll post the answers in a future blog.

1) Book 'em, Danno. This is one of the longest running crime dramas in TV history.

2) Elite special agents undertook top-secret assignments in crackerjack episodes.

3) A landmark series set in an ethnically diverse urban neighborhood where every day is a sunny one.

4) A hip, Emmy-winning daily scrapbook of homers, touchdowns and slam dunks.

5) Exotic locations and unapologetically shameless adoration of celebrities.

6) Grandpa Simpson's favorite series: a courtroom drama about a cagey Atlanta defense attorney.

7) CBS reworked its successful "Hawaii Five-O" formula into a hit spun around a charismatic private investigator.

8) Ludicrously costumed contestants from the studio audience "dealt" with host Monty Hall for prizes.

9) A former cop gets a new identity and teams with a talking supercar to fight crime.

10) An adventure series about soldiers of fortune with bad attitudes and firepower to burn.

TV Commercial Roundup

For the benefit of those of you with a Tivo, here's another roundup of great commercials that you may have skipped over. One advantage of being forced to watch live TV occasionally is that you get to see some of these really great commercials that themselves are worth watching. Today we have two more you need to see:



Who doesn't miss the days when Lou Piniella was the Mariners' manager? Even when the M's couldn't win a game, there was still a reason to watch!



Great commercial, especially with all of your favorite Discovery Channel stars. I could watch this over and over... which I do, because Discovery replays it constantly. I guess that's what you do when you get a winner.

How I Met Your Mother

I just got around to watching Monday's episode of How I Met Your Mother on my DVR.

This is the funniest sitcom on television. Certifiably. End of story.

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Tomorrow morning I'm off on a plane to Birmingham, AL, via San Francisco, CA and Charlotte, NC. Expect some great blog entries coming up this week for you avid readers. :)

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

Ever since The West Wing finally wrapped up and went off the air, I've needed some other compelling show that keeps me waiting in anticipation of the next week's episode. I had high hopes for "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." With half of the cast coming straight off the set of The West Wing, and Aaron Sorkin writing the show, I was definitely expecting a great show. The pilot had me hooked... but apparently not so much for the rest of the world. The show has been in a steady ratings decline ever since the optimistic pilot episode. I was a devoted follower for the first 5 shows of the series... really getting interested in the characters and following the usually compelling story lines... but somewhat disappointed overall. Something was missing... I wasn't finding myself yelling at the TV, rewinding the episode to watch an amazing scene over again, dying to know how it's all going to work out... until last night. Seven episodes into the series they finally hit the mark. Last night's episode finally fit together. They didn't need to waste time developing characters, didn't waste time trying to convince people that the show is about writing funny sketches for a late night comedy show, and didn't have any "space-filler subplots" that nobody really cares about. It helped that they had the amazing actor John Goodman (who I think has been a guest star in every show on television these days), and to top it off, the sketch that the plot centered around was actually funny! My only complaint was that it was the first part of a two-part episode that just left me screaming for more. This is the show I was waiting for.

The show is finally good -- one problem: nobody knows this anymore, and no viewers means the show is doomed to end up in the land of lost shows. Apparently NBC has contracted it for 13 episodes and just bought 3 more for a total of 16. Usually that's a good sign, but the ratings need to increase if it's ever going to stay on the air as long as it should. The one thing going for it is that it's pulling in a very profitable demographic. It's a huge draw in the rich and well-educated audiences, which means big money from advertisers. That alone seems to be enough to keep it on the air through the season... it just can't seem to shake off CSI: Miami in the same timeslot over on CBS, which means it will probably get shifted out of Monday 10pm into some other slot (Wednesday perhaps). My guess is that if people who watched the pilot give it a second chance and watch it again now, they might have a more favorable view. Regardless, I think it's a show worth watching... especially for anyone who was a fan of The West Wing, or just likes a good dramedy. We'll see if it survives... but if you haven't watched it yet, I recommend it. At least throw it on the Tivo or DVR and keep it around when you can't find anything else good on TV.

State of Confusion Address

The pagentry, the mystery, the excitement that is the State of the Union Address. Do I really care what President Bush has to say? No, not really, but it's still fun to watch. In fact, this year I created the Modified State of the Union Applause Scoring system.

The final score of the address:
46 full applause breaks
13 half applauses (12 from only the Republicans, and 1 from only the Democrats)
7 interruptive applauses
1 joke
1 wagging finger

Of course, the wagging finger was in response to the half applause from the Democrats which was actually one of the more entertaining parts of the show (I say "show" because the whole thing is so scripted it's hard to believe it doesn't have theme music).

That's probably about all the time that's worth devoting to this.

The West Wing... dead after 7 seasons

As I was watching The West Wing last night on TV, I thought to myself, "this show will be cancelled at the end of this season". Lo and behold, it was announced that indeed The West Wing will end on May 14th with the inauguration of the new president, still to be determined.

Now I don't think I really became a dedicated watcher of the West Wing until its third season. Fortunately through the miracle of DVD, I've watched straight through the first 3 seasons to catch up on everything I never saw. Unfortunately, my DVD viewing habits are sketchy, and I still haven't completely finished the 3rd season shows... with the complete 4th and 5th seasons sitting on my shelf vastly untouched except to be removed from their Amazon.com packing box. Though I must say, they are excellent for long flights when you need to kill time with some quality DVD viewing. That's how I made it through so much of Season 3.

Why am I not surprised the show was cancelled? While I think the writing was not so good after Aaron Sorkin quit writing the show at the end of Season 4, it seems to have improved vastly this season, especially in the plots surrounding the election of the new president. Perhaps that's just because they found something to write about. But the show itself had one necessary flaw, a president can only serve 8 years... and once that's done, you're out of luck. Could the show survive with an almost completely new cast? Could ANY show survive with a completely new cast? Perhaps, but doubtful. The only way to stay true to a show that prides itself on keeping true to the reality of American politics, is for the show to end and the characters fade off into their post-White House lives where nobody even remembers their names.

Certainly it didn't help that NBC decided to move West Wing out of it's traditional 9pm Wednesday time slot for a cursed 8pm Sunday time slot. The last show I think I ever remember watching on Sunday at 8pm was Murder, She Wrote. It still baffles me why TV executives haven't figured out that moving shows out of their well-established time slots always signals the show's demise. Maybe they know this, and move them to help speed along the process.

Whatever the reasons, at least I'll have my 7-seasons of West Wing DVDs to watch whenever there are terrible new shows on TV that aren't worth watching.

In related television news, a few interesting lineup changes will be coming too:

For the past 14 seasons, Law and Order (the original, not SVU, CI, or the ill-fated Trial by Jury) has been in the Wednesday 10pm timeslot on NBC. But no more... NBC shakes things up by moving it an hour earlier to 9pm. I think this one will be able to survive the minor shift, but I'm no expert. It goes up against Mythbusters, which is the same problem I had when West Wing was on Wednesdays at 9, but fortunately I have a DVR now. Problem averted. :)

Las Vegas continues it's tour of the NBC schedule, after being moved from Sunday to Monday it makes its way down to the Friday night time slot. Might work, since there's nothing else good on Friday nights, but also who watches TV on a Friday night unless you want to see Dateline (which is moving to Saturday) or 20/20?

Las Vegas' move to Friday clears the way for that epic sensation Deal or No Deal to have a permanent spot on the Monday at 8pm timeslot followed by the Donald. I've said my thoughts on Deal or No Deal before... I give the show 10-weeks before it gets the axe and is buried in the gameshow graveyard along with the short-lived revived classic "21" with Maury Povich, and the Weakest Link (which was only entertaining to hear Anne Robinson verbally berating the contestants).

In the meantime, Food Network probably has plenty of episodes of Emeril Live, Good Eats, and Paula Deen stocked up to satisfy your TV viewing needs... with extra butter.

And the award goes to...

It's that time of year again... the time of year where we "honor" the best of the best (or the best of the worst) from the previous year. Last night was the People's Choice Awards, apparently the kickoff to the awards show season.

First a recap of last night's People's Choice Awards: ZZZzzzzzzzzzzz. What an action-empty, non entertaining show. Hosted by TV's Craig Ferguson, who I usually find quite funny, he was not at all funny on the show. I blame it on bad writing, but perhaps it's his own lack of humor. Plus, who shows an awards show on a Tuesday night? Isn't that just a blatant declaration that the show is not important enough to even bother to watch? Tuesday night is when you show made-for-TV movies that you don't expect anyone to watch, not award shows.

As far as "award season" goes though, there seems to be a lot of wasted bandwidth there. How many award shows are there that all give away awards for the same things? Obviously they're all given away by different groups of people, but does anyone really pay much attention to which organization is giving the awards away? Probably not. Most people would tell you that the Emmy's are for TV, the Oscars are for movies, the Grammys are for music, and the Tonys are for theatre. Beyond that everyone's mystified. The People's Choice awards are given to nearly all of the above (except theatre, obviously the people's opinion isn't worthy about the theatre). The Golden Globes? both movies and TV. Screen Actors Guild? Also movies and TV (but they actually only have 13 award categories which is nice.) The Emmy's are apparently so important that they break them into two pieces, one for daytime television and one for primetime television. Though I think only people who have no lives care about the daytime awards.

Actually, I think people care far less about the awards themselves, than they do about the celebrities and how they dress and who they're with and... well, it's just a big celebrity paparazzi event if you ask me. But for my own benefit to know which to avoid, or for your benefit if you need to mark your calendars, the major award shows of the year:

32nd Annual People's Choice Awards - Tuesday, January 10th
63rd Annual Golden Globes Awards - Monday, January 16th
12th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards - Sunday, January 29th
48th Annual Grammy Awards - Wednesday, February 8th
78th Annual Academy Awards - Sunday, March 5th
33rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards - Friday, April 28th
60th Annual Tony Awards - Sunday, June 11th
58th Annual Emmy Awards - Sunday, August 27th

Now I'll go back to not caring again.