My Television Overkill

It's hard to be a guy in today's television landscape. Of course, it seems to me that most 'guys' don't really watch television except for sports, and the occasional episode of 'Family Guy', 'South Park', or '24' (Is there such a thing as the occasional episode of '24'?). I like to think of myself as a 'guy', but it has been made perfectly clear to me many times over that 'guys' don't have the tolerance for the soap opera style melodramatics that infest so many of the current television shows. The shows that I watch, that I obsess over. I try to point out to to my friends who feel this way that the shows I've dragged them into are just as melodramatic as the ones they refuse to watch - '24' is just a soap opera where the violence has been replaced with violence, and shows like 'Alias' and 'Veronica Mars' wear their soapy hearts on their sleeves, right next to the mysteries that propel the show. I explain to them that shows like 'The O.C.' (at least in it's first season) and 'Buffy' use the melodrama just as a means to an end, as an excuse to create and explore excellent characters who say funny funny lines. But they don't buy it. I also try explaining that there is a difference between doing these shows right and doing them wrong, making them just as bad as day time soaps (I'm looking at you, One Tree Hill. Actually, I'm not, that's kind of the point. That show is terrible). But still, they insist on calling me girly.

But I've tried to hold on to the one shred of my ever fading manliness over the last year, as 'Grey's Anatomy' has been building up steam. Between those terrible looking ads with 'Such Great Heights' in it that ABC used to first promote the show, to the terrible opening sequence it had, and the sudsy actions and unsympathetic lead character, I was fine not liking it. I felt pride in shunning the show, that I'd earned the right to go out and laugh with my fellow manly cohorts over not watching it (then promptly get my ass handed to me after I ask "How cool was Sandy Cohen last night?"). But I watched the episode right before the Superbowl episode, and for the last month, I've been watching every week, and on the nights where it's not on, I just lie awake, wondering, "Will George ever get a hiar cut?". I felt my last ounce of masculinity walking out the door, like John C McGinley slowly shaking his head while muttering "Oh Shirley" as it went. But I don't care, the show kind of got over that awkward hump that kept me away from it at the beginning, and has now picked up such a creative pace that I can't stay away. While I still can't stand Meredith, the supporting characters have built up enough presence to make me not even care what she's up to. Unless she's sleeping with George. Then I care. But I dare say that the supporting characters of this show have taken their place in the canon of great television characters. George joins the ranks of the Xanders and Marshalls of the world as another dorky and neurotic character who suffers an unrequited love for the main character on the show who is too caught up with the hunky lead to ever really notice them (Or, another way to put it would be the characters I wish I didn't relate to so much). Christina has the equal streaks of clumsiness and competitiveness to join the likes of Eliot and Cordelia. Alex also looks on track to be one of the great throw away asshole characters who ends up developing into just a slightly ass-holeish hero, like Spike or Logan (the Veronica Mars Logan. The '24' Logan is just straight up asshole, with a side of douche). And they got rid of the hokey opening credits sequence (where each medical instrument segued into something sexy, how clever!), instead opting for a classy little rack-focus number like the opening of 'Lost'. And hopefully tonight's episode was the beginning of the end of Meredith's whiny voiceovers, with the show being narrated from George's point of view ( though all of the talk of karma made it feel like a prettier version of 'My Name is Earl'. Or that episode of 'Scrubs' called 'My Karma', where a bumbling young doctor narrates how karma affects his life and those of the people around him. But other than that, totally original). It doesn't matter though, I'll still be back next week. That is if I can stand to sit down after all the wedgies I'm sure to get after this.

Oh, yes, writing about this show has reminded me that, the Olympics are finally over, so television is back. This week will herald the first new episodes of Scrubs, My Name Is Earl, and The Office since the first week of this month. And who needs a social life when the season finale of 'Battlestar Galactica starts this week? I know I don't! And Lost, after screwing us with a rerun of the pilot (I'm still pissed) is new this week, with an episode that isn't about Jack, Kate, or Sawyer ( wacky huh?). It's actually about Claire, and from the sounds of it, the flashbacks won't be completely useless this week, as we finally find out what happened to Claire during all that missing time last season. And as much as I enjoy watching network censored broadcasts of 'Final Destination 2', I'm much happier to watch a new episode of Gilmore Girls. Now if UPN would just take 'South Beach' out to the shed so it could go to that 'better place, where it can run and play all day' so Veronica Mars could come back with a suitable lead, then everything would be right in the world.

And, for serious, the last thing, does anyone watch 'The Boondocks'? The first few episodes were kind of clumsy, but I've been really impressed with the tone that it's been striking in the last few weeks. At the beginning it all just felt, sitcommy in a way, but it's now found this odd place where it makes really heartfelt social and personal statements in the midst of totally surreal situations. It's almost like a modern day 'Twilight Zone', a show using a genre as a way to get people to hear the messages it wants to tell. There wasn't a bit in their Martin Luther King Jr. episode, where they purposed that MLK Jr. hadn't died after his attack, but had just gone into a coma to awaken years later, and went on to show how he would fit into the pop culture and public discourse of today (it didn't go well), that fell flat. The jokes worked, and the message came across without feeling forced. And I realized tonight that an older episode where Huey and Riley go after a murderer with the help of two white Iraq war veterans (voiced, amazingly, by Charlie Murphy and Sam Jackson), only to be side tracked in a frivolous gunfight that occurs after the veterans accuse the store clerk of having a weapon, is a metaphor for the war in Iraq. It makes more sense if you see it. And it's like three in the morning, and the screen is starting to blur in front of me... so if any thing I just wrote makes sense, it's a miracle. Oh, one more reason you should watch 'The Boondocks', it has one of the best theme songs ever.

Oh, and before I pass out, I apologize for saying "For serious" back there... in my defense, I'm sleep deprived.