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9/19/03 Written by: Casana Atkins Exclusive to MAYDODMA.com PART III: MAYDOGMA’s Fall
2003 Television Preview!!!! Next up, we have FOX. Frankly, I’m too pissed at them to spell out an acronym of anything other than a line of damning explicatives. You see, FOX has that annoying quality of canceling excellent shows and/or shows with plenty of potential and room for growth. They then replace these shows with shitty reality programming, repeats of shitty shows, or super shitty shows that will eventually get cancelled. The pattern is this: 1.) Announce the new show way back April. Get cool, new, and promising stars to be in said show and hire excellent writers and producers with great track records. 2.) Run irritating commercials over the summer ad naseum that have absolutely nothing to do with said show. Run the commercials in an endless loop, causing any rightfully sane person ignore the commercials/switch off FOX in frustration/vow never to watch the show due to annoying commercials. 3.) Put the show in a weird-ass time slot with an inappropriate lead-in. The worse time slot of all time is the Friday-Night-Time-Slot-Of-Death (FNTSOD), which has literally killed 10 shows in 10 years. Consecutively. 4.) Pre-empt said show with fucking Baseball or Football, move it around to a different timeslot without an announcement, show eps out of order, “retool” it and end with a cliffhanger. 5.) Put the show on “hiatus.” 6.) Deny claims of cancellation. 7.) Officially cancel show. 8.) Deny claims of cancellation. 9.) Put something else in the FNTSOD. 9.) Deny all claims of cancellation and call the fans stupid and worthless. 10.) Rinse and repeat the following year. Wonder why always fourth in Neilsens. Such examples include Action, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Earth: Above and Beyond, Family Guy, Futurama, Grounded for Life, Harsh Realm, Keen Eddie, Profit, Millennium, Sliders, Space: Above and Beyond, Strange Luck, The Tick, Undeclared, and a few hundred others I’ve forgotten. The first to incite my wrath was the disappearance of The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. in 1994 The most recent of these to piss me the fuck off is Firefly from Fall 2002. But at least that’s coming to DVD in December. Take that, assholes. On that happy note, Sundays at 7pm has Oliver
Beene. Yeah, I don’t care either. Starting 11/2 at 7:30 and 8pm
respectively, new eps of King of the Hill and The Simpsons kick
off, with the new “comedy” The Ortegas at 8:30pm. Apparently, this is
some weird, soon-to-be-cancelled amalgamation of a sitcom, sketch comedy, and
interview show. The “Family Ortega” has taken it upon themselves to build a
television studio in their backyard. “Live, from California’s beautiful San Fernando Valley,” (and by “beautiful,” I
assume they’re referring to the beautifully low prices one can get on some
nice, homegrown meth crystals. Ah, yes, The Valley; home to America’s meth
empire since 1987) the Ortegas invite
“celebrity” guests over for dinner, the better to improvise interviews
and little comedic sketches. What the fuck? At 9pm, we have the
continually downhill Malcolm in the Middle, while 9:30pm brings us the
new Arrested Development (11/2). When the newly widowed Michael Bluth
(Jason Bateman) decides to give up the family business and move back to
Arizona to be with his family, he leaves his 13-year-old son (Michael Cera)
in the care of his daughter (the son’s sister), who’s newly married to a
loser who just lost his medical license. Add to that the fact that Michael’s
father has just been arrested for sketchy accounting practices (a former
Arthur Andersen employee?), leaving the rest of the family penniless, and
you’ve got a recipe for hilarity! Apparently, FOX
wishes Sundays to have the honor of being their lowest rated night of
television. Mondays at 8pm, we have the return of Joe
Millionare (10/20). God has abandoned us. At 9pm, we have the
new Jerry Bruckheimer produced show Skin (10/20), or what happens when
Romeo a.k.a. Adam (D.J. Cotrona) falls in love with Juliet a.k.a Jewel (Olivia Wilde). The only problem? Romeo
is the son of the L.A. District Attorney
(Kevin Anderson) and his wife, a judge (Rachel Ticotin), both of whom are
attempting to indict Juliet’s father (Ron Silver), the most successful
producer of porn in L.A. (by the way,
The Valley, with that meth empire I was talking about? Also the porn
producing capital of the world. Welcome to California, y’all!). Look for
strippers, lots of yelling and people slamming their hands down on desks,
shots of the beach, general cavorting, and angsty teenagers with parents who.
Just. Don’t. Understand. American Juniors starts of Tuesday nights at 8pm. But
frankly, that’s my hour to run to the 7-11 and grab some soda and popcorn in
preparation for 9pm. The doors and windows are locked, the phone’s taken off
the hook and no one’s allowed within a 10-foot radius of myself or the
television ‘cause 9pm equals Kiefer’s Ass-kicking time on the fantastic 24
(10/28). Agent Jack Bauer, a.k.a. God’s punching bag, is at it again for a 3rd
season of mayhem, getting his ass kicked, kicking other people’s asses,
dying, being revived, dying again, protecting the president from flesh eating
viruses, setting off weapons of mass destruction in the desert, and probably
dying again. Great stuff. Wednesdays bring us more sitcoms, with the always entertaining That 70s Show at 8pm. A Minute With Stan Hooper (10/29) at 8:30pm stars Norm McDonald as Stan, a reporter whose daily, minute-long reports on the “real lives of people who make up the fabric of America” at the end of a fictitious newsmagazine causes him to suddenly to pack up his family and leave Manhattan for a small town in Wisconsin in search if “reality.” Of course he runs into quirky people with their quirky lives and quirky ways. I swear, the running theme of this Fall season must be Town Mouse/Country Mouse, because this has got to be the 11 billionth show focusing on the shenanigans between big city folk and their obviously “inferior” small-town counter parts. Spare me, network suits. 9pm and 9:30pm bring us the always entertaining The Bernie Mac Show and the “Why is this still on?!” Cedric the Entertainment Presents. (Editor’s
Note: And while you’re praising it, let me follow by saying that That 70s Show the most
entertaining, underrated, original, well-written comedy on T.V. right now. The only thing that comes close is the
Seinfeld reruns.) Thursdays look quite promising with the 8pm sci-fi thriller Tru Calling (10/30) starring another one of my personal favorites, Eliza Dushku (Faith, the bad-ass vampire slayer from Buffy). While its not the Faith spin-off I’d been hoping for, and the spelling’s all wrong, Tru Calling tells the story of Tru Davies, a recent college graduate working the midnight shift in New York’s City Morgue. Suddenly she begins having conversations with the dead bodies. Add to that the fact that she wakes up at the beginning of the same day, giving her 12 hours to save the said dead folk, you’ve got yourself a mighty interesting set-up for a potentially good show. Well that, and the fact that Dushku is pretty damn compelling. Too bad it’s opposite Friends and FOX has a horrid track record with sci-fi/action-adventure. 9pm brings us The O.C., which will be going on hiatus this week until October to make way for baseball and football. I’ve never seen an ep of this, because frankly, I had to deal with these insipid Orange County morons every damn day at university. Hopefully the next major earthquake will cause the whole of Orange County (because no one calls it “The O.C.”) to fall into the sea, never to bother us true urbanites up in L.A. ever again. (Editor’s
Note: Wait, you’ve never said, ‘Welcome to the O.C., bitch’? T.V. has lied to
me!) Wanda at Large or That Shrill Woman With Poor Diction will start off Fridays at 8pm. 8:30 brings the new Luis (9/26), or Sir Complains-A-Lot About Living in New York and Constantly Getting Screwed Over by His Tenants, Customers at His Doughnut Shop, His Daughter, And Ex-Wife. 9pm inflicts Boston Public or The Show David E. Kelley Could Give a Damn About Now that He’s Working on a New Show Over at CBS. Saturday signals the usual trailer-trash faire of COPS from 8-9pm.. Seriously, if you’re ever feeling down and think your life sucks, pull up a chair and catch an ep of COPS. Whether it’s the toothless baby’s-momma getting arrested for assault and battery against her crack hound baby’s-daddy, or the gang-banging car-jacker getting taken down by the man for carrying a concealed weapon, you’re always guaranteed that someone out there is living a worse, far more Jerry Springer-esque existence than you. 9pm brings America’s Most Wanted or Hey, Ain’t It That Mass Murderer Living Next Door?! Overall, my pure, unadulterated
hate for Fox knows no bounds. Sure, I’ll catch excellent 24 and oddly funny That
70s Show and The Bernie Mac Show, but that will be all. I would watch more,
but I’ve got a feeling the curse will hold this year, meaning every new drama
watched and enjoyed on Fox, starring actors I actually don’t hold in high
contempt, will be cancelled. By those rules, it was nice knowing you, Tru
Calling. COMING SUNDAY (or
Monday, probably Monday): NBC ***Much thanks to http://www.epguides.com, which has listings of every television show ever made, broken down by year. Literally. It’s kinda insane. And to http://www.tvpicks.net which has that awesome grid system of the Fall 2003 schedule, without which I would have found myself quite lost… Casana Atkins, MAYDOGMA’s Resident Movie and T.V. expert, and a 2003 graduate
of USC, has spent all 22 of her years eking out a meager existence in Los
Angeles. Email her at sana@maydogma.com. |
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