"Friday Night Lights": Just a Bit too Soon...

Ok so I spoke a bit too soon. According to this morning's New York Times, a show like "Friday Night Lights" which has original episodes in the can until January may have a chance to connect with viewers since its new episodes outdistance those from more popular serial shows that "do rerun well"

Well that's sort of a relief.

Dimming of 'Friday Night Lights'

On a completely selfish yet related note, it just hit me that a strike could spell the premature end of a television series with tenuous ratings like Friday Night Lights, my absolute favorite show on the dial. It's a fear confirmed by this week's episode of "The Business", in which the guests assert that the network in biggest trouble thanks to the strike is NBC, with limp ratings and a 4th place schedule. It's also FNL's home.

Well that's just cookie. Anyone had this happen before? What show?

It's 'Friday Night' Again...

Buffy-winning series (and yes, the best show on television) Friday Night Lights is back for its second season and (I would guess) continually in danger of being canceled. The premiere airs tonight at 9 on NBC.

If you haven't seen seen Friday Night Lights, you must. I know you don't care about high school football or dead-end towns in Texas. Neither do I. FNL is a show about relationships, marriages, friendship, loyalty, and betrayal. It is a human drama, a teenage Tennessee Williams play. It's largest audience is women and college graduates.

See it and see it again. I can't recommend it enough.

CSI: LA?

According to this week's espisode of The Business, CSI:NY is actually filmed in Los Angeles not New York. It's actually cheaper to shoot the program on soundstages and special effects in backdrops than to schlep the whole cast and crew to the east coast.

Who knew? Certainly had me fooled.

Did I hear that correctly?

Was Cory Doctorow quoted on Criminal Minds, my favorite show?

Indeed he was. That's a career goal I'd like to aspire to...

From Ambulance Driver to Yellow Belied Freak:

A annotated list of all 111 of Homer Simpson's jobs (via Kottke).

'Gilmore' Needs More...

Am I the only one who feels like this season of the Gilmore Girls lacks something? Like it was once a crackling fire and now it's damp newspaper? What do you think?

Bring me Amy Sherman-Palladino. Now.

Married to the Media: Fall TV Season

Does anyone else feel married to the new fall TV season? Around this time last year I had a small but managble stable of shows I watched with regularity--Veronica Mars, Grey's Anatomy, Gilmore Girls, Criminal Minds. I made time for an occasional Simpsons rerun. It left me with maybe an hour of TV viewing in the evening about every other day of the week. Kind of like a lover you have a smokin' hot time with but is moving to Estonia in a few months so you don't want to see too often.

race to this September and my casual affair has turned into a full blown committed, I'm-buying-birthday-presents-for-your-parents kind of relationship. There are easily 6 new shows (Kidnapped, Six Degrees, Ugly Betty, Brothers and Sisters, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) that I've started following. I'm also flirting with Heroes and can't help but listen to my friends natter on about Entourage which is only a Netflix click away. Plus, I've got the entire second season of House M.D. on my laptop acquired through, eh, uh, some means.

Now I could watch 2 hours of TV, seven days a week and still not be caught up. I know it a temporary condition. Some shows will stay, others fall away, we'll have different priorities, want separate things out of the relationship. But for now, it's like being chained to a very large easy chair.

Thank god the Library Book Sale is this weekend. I could use the lack of stimulation.

TV Will Whip Your Sanctimonious Ass...

I was pretty angry after suffering through this episode of Forum, our local yap show. Ostensibly a look at the new television series debuting in the fall, it ended up a gang of television critics complaining for the 5 millionth time that there's nothing good on TV and the host, the normally commendable Michael Krasney, beginning the epsiode with the "Television is a vast wasteland" rag, a sentiment about as contemporary as I Like Ike.

Here's my deal. Premising a conversation on television being a sludge bucket is like beginning a conversation about pop music with a take-down of Britney Spears. It's a cheap, easy target that lets you smug-coast right past the glaring evidence to the contrary. It plays the snob gallery by letting you ignore that you are not only mypoic but wrong.

I'm sure you can find some television programming that feels like wet mashed potatoes. With 18+ hours, 7 days a week from now until the end of time to fill, much of it will be junk. But but for the first time in recent memory, much of it is much better than that. Thanks to cable, HBO, DVD and TiVo which means you don't have to wade through chaff to get to wheat, good television programming grows thick and tall. Grey's Anatomy, Lost, Criminal Minds, The Simpsons, Family Guy, Veronica Mars, are all regular viewing for me. You may not care for one or many of them but to call them wastes of time and talent is nonsense. To use them as evidence that there is "nothing on TV" means a) you need more than a half dozen shows a week to be satisfied and are a glutton and b) you're not looking hard enough for them.

Maybe TV isn't your bag? No shame in that. But television is a platform not a state of mind. What matters is what's in the box, not the box itself. The box doesn't invade our lives like a cancer unless we let it. Worried that you watch too much or that it's easy to fall back on it like an unhealthy ex-lover? Throw a tablecloth over your set. You'll be amazed how soon you forget.

Salon's Heather Havrilesky says it well in this feature and this roundup of the new fall series. I'm excited for "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and "Six Degrees" already. The rest I'll test out without guilt.

More Grey's Anatomy...

I'm still thinking about last night's finale so I decided to put together a list of little things I like about the show.

*It has a cast deep with diversity. 3 of the 5 attending physicians are black including the chief of surgery. I haven't seen that on a workplace drama that doesn't involve law enforcement.

*Veterans act alongside rookies. Isiah Washington, Patrick Demsey and Sandra Oh get plenty of film work. James Pickens Jr. has been doing TV for nearly 2 decades. When a new show can get folks at this stage of their career to sign on, its a good sign (see West Wing, Homicide, Law & Order).

*Truly an ensemble show, no one character on Grey's hogs all the screen time. Which means you don't get sick of it as quickly.

*I don't care one wit about medicine and care deeply about the medical predicaments of the characters on this show.

*Even though the show's probably got a female audience in mind, I've never felt alienated as a man watching it.

*Its writers have a blog.

*Shonda Rhimes, the show's creator, is smart as all hell. Listen for yourself.

*Shonda Rhimes went to Dartmouth which is why there are a zillion jokes about Dartmouth on the show. I think that's adorable.