Tue, October 5, 2004

Clubhowth

(CBS, 9:00 Tuesdays)

(It's actually Clubhouse, but I call it Clubhowth because of the ridiculously atrocious lisp of the main kid.)

I was kind of looking forward to this show as an on-again off-again baseball fan. Something interesting with some compelling characters that featured baseball footage and occasionally waxed poetic about the glory of the game would've been just fine by me. However, it appears to have gone another route: drippy and melodramatic. The pilot is about the kid (I forget his name but he reminds me a lot of the late Jonathan Brandis) getting his dream job as a bat boy for the New York Empires, and then miserably fucking it up.

I'm not sure how I feel about New York Empires, by the way. It's a little lazy, first of all, and it also comes very close to that line that I don't like to see crossed, where a sports team is named after an intangible, like the Utah Jazz or the D.C. United. (As Arksie says, it's a slippery slope leading to something like the Cleveland Angst.) I'll give them credit for not going with New York Empire, but Empires is almost as bad because it makes very little sense and an Empire (even if pluralized) is still more of a concept than a thing. I know, it's hard to imagine an astro or an expo running around on a baseball field, and even the Rockies are pushing it, because that's kind of impossible to split into individual rockies, but the idea of Empires – something's wrong with it.

There's a nice moment early on where the Ghost of Jonathan Brandis hands a baseball to a cute girl in the stands and she writes her phone number on it, but the show doesn't pay that off as well as it should. It's more of an anomaly. Most of the show is GJB screwing things up, lying to his mom, inadvertently stealing a ballplayer's Ferrari, being charged with drug possession, missing his grandmother's birthday, and lying to the police (and a nun!) about the steroids in the Ferrari. In the end, his mom (the insufferable Mare Winningham) shows up at the stadium and hauls him home. He whines to his mom and grandmother about how he thought he had to lie about his job, and he pretended the drugs were his so he wouldn't upset the players. Then Dean Cain shows up (he's what passes for a "superstar" in this cast) and begs the kid to come back. The kid wants to go, Mare Winningham doesn't want to let him, and the grandmother is horrified that her daughter would even consider crushing her kid's dreams. The two of them are locked in a brief Mexican Disowning Standoff ("Don't you dare work for that baseball team!" "Don't you dare tell him not to work for that baseball team!"), but that drama ends quickly, the kid owns up to the truth, and just like Charles van Doren at the end of Quiz Show, everyone's so proud of him for telling the truth that they overlook the fact that he lied to begin with. (After all, if you don't lie, how can you courageously unlie?) Yerg.

Center of the Universe

(CBS, 8:30 Wednesdays)

The premiere of Center of the Universe has been moved to October 20, which is not a good sign. Two John Goodman sitcom duds in one year? That beats the previous record by one. (Worse yet, this has delayed the season premiere of my beloved King of Queens, because if CBS delays both then it seems like a scheduling decision instead of a crappy sitcom decision. Bad form.)

Wife Swap

(ABC, 10:00 Wednesdays)

I didn't have any interest in this one, but "Entertainment Weekly" called it their most promising new reality show. Which, admittedly, is like saying most attractive pile of yak droppings, but I figure if I don't watch at least a few shows that I'm not interested in, this whole experiment lacks value. I probably won't watch Wife Swap again, but it wasn't terrible, either.

In general, I like reality shows where you win something. (Well, not "like" – I prefer them over other reality shows, although I'd still prefer good television over that.) This is one of those shows where you don't win anything, we just watch you be on TV. (Which, admittedly, can be said of Trading Spaces, which is a show I like a lot. Sue me.) I suppose you "win" a new appreciation of your family, but there's really no competition, just TV producers torturing regular people, then selling the footage to a network.

The game was imported from Britain and is therefore the "original" as opposed to Fox's knockoff Trading Spouses. Ah, Fox. Their reality shows aren't just the lowest of the low (Remember The Swan? Forever Eden?), they're also stolen. The way it works is that two women leave their homes and families and trade places with one another for two weeks. The first week, they must live by the "house rules," doing their best to complete the tasks that were done by the mom they're replacing. The second week, they get to make up some new rules to try to get their adopted family to act more like the family they left at home. Both weeks are referred to as "five days" at a time, so I can't tell if the show takes place in ten days, or if they go home for weekends. It doesn't matter, it's just odd.

The show had a sneak preview premiere over the weekend and then premiered in its Wednesday time slot, so TiVo ended up with two episodes. In both, the families are selected for maximum conflict: Caprice Policchio is an obsessive neat freak who cleans her house for five hours every day (when does it have time to get dirty?), while Bambi Pitts has 25 pets that run wild through the house and poop wherever they want. Jody Spolansky is a Manhattan millionaire with four nannies, while Lynn Bradley drives a school bus and chops wood in rural New Jersey. In each case, the women seem to be way too surprised that the producers haven't traded them with a family more like their own. They were expecting, as Kindler likes to call it, a fish in water story.

It's a mildly interesting concept, but there's really very little at stake. The families can undo most of what's done during the second week as soon as the show is over, and even the rules of week one and week two don't seem to be enforced. Caprice starts cleaning immediately, even though Bambi wouldn't do that, and Jody flat-out refuses to chop wood even though it's Lynn's responsibility. It's impressive that the women do seem to learn a great deal from the experience – in some cases from their adopted family, and sometimes from returning to their own family and hearing about how things might be different. I've certainly learned a lot about what not to do as a parent, but I think most parents aren't as bad as these extremes. I do have to say I was moved by the Bradleys' reunion, because no-nonsense Jody was able to show her temporary husband Brad how to appreciate Lynn more. At the end, his perspective had definitely changed, and he was really adorable about his affection for Lynn. They even started working together, which is something that I think all married couples should do.

Kevin Hill

(UPN, 9:00 Wednesdays)

Like Clubhouse and Complete Savages before it, this show is produced by Mel Gibson. He's everywhere!

In it, Kevin Hill (Taye Diggs) is a fancy, high-powered lawyer at a big firm who embodies the term "player" when it comes to the ladies. Then his cousin dies and he inherits an infant daughter. This is all set up quickly and tidily in the first few minutes, which can sometimes be hard to do with a new show. And damn, isn't Taye Diggs likable! He really makes you like Kevin.

Once he's got the kid, Kevin finds it hard to keep up with his usual workload and womanizing. He hires a flaming gay nanny (natch), but he still can't keep up with his hectic meeting schedule or make time for the new movie star he's trying to date. In one scene, some stuffy guy in a suit interrupts a legal negotiation to complain about the baby crying in the next room. He asks if someone can "shut that thing up," and Kevin gets in his face. He calls off the negotiation and tells the guy that the next time he refers to the little girl as a "thing," he'll kick his ass. It's really quite reminiscent of the boardroom scene in one of Dave Chappelle's "When 'Keeping It Real' Goes Wrong" sketches – and it has about the same outcome. The stern old white guy at the law firm takes away some of Kevin's caseload, so Kevin quits his job.

He ends up joining a smaller law firm that seems like something right out of a David E. Kelley fantasy. Actually, it's a David E. Kelley show, the short-lived Girls Club, just with a lower price tag. Instead of Gretchen Mol, you've got Christina Hendricks, who comes from MTV's ultimate guilty pleasure, Undressed. Kevin's new law firm may be chock full of hotties, but they're damn good lawyers, too. He helps them win a big settlement in a sexual assault case against a baseball player, and everyone is all smiles.

This show is actually a lot better than I thought it was going to be. It's nice to have a legal show where you actually see the lawyers working hard, instead of just breezing into meetings and delivering a few closing arguments. And there's a human story outside the courtroom, too. Kevin Hill is a lawyer we actually care about. If only they'd been able to resist the obligatory "Are you coming on to me?" scene between him and the gay nanny.

I'll watch another episode. And not just because of the hotties.

Premiering Next Week

Desperate Housewives: ABC, Sunday at 9:00
Boston Legal: ABC, Sunday at 10:00

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