Mon, September 24, 2007

If you weren't watching TV this week, you may not have realized that in post-Katrina New Orleans, hip-hop artists outnumber jazz musicians five-to-one. Also, little kids are no more nor less capable of entirely fucking up a society than their parents are. Further, in high-society private schools, a blog is a life-or-death affair. And, finally, the studio-audience sitcom is stone cold dead. This week, I'd have sided with the Kid Nation Town Council: I'd choose seven outhouses over a TV set, easy.

K-Ville

Fox, Mondays at 9:00

What a difference a couple of years makes. K-Ville opens with scenes of New Orleans, struggling to survive the first few days after Hurricane Katrina, with nary a peep from Fox warning sensitive viewers to shield their eyes – the way ABC practically pleaded with us to turn away from the debut of Invasion. (And America was apparently all too happy to oblige.) Perhaps it's true what they say: America has forgotten about post-Katrina New Orleans. It can't be "too soon" to relive an event we don't even remember happening.

K-Ville represents exactly what comes out of the Cop Show Starter Kit when you first get the box home and open it up. Mismatched partners, a gruff captain, and various faceless thugs who need to be chased, stomped, and threatened. In order to lend it a little relevance, it's been set in present-day New Orleans, a city still struggling to rebuild from near-total devastation (despite what you may recall, there was a hurricane). And there are mysterious, dark secrets in the past of the new guy, Cobb (Cole Hauser). His backstory doesn't really need dark secrets, and they don't make any sense, but Fox had more than a few dark secrets laying around after Vanished got pulled early.

Cobb is partnered with Marlin Boulet (Anthony Anderson; also, a very tasty seafood dish). Boulet has given his whole life to New Orleans, and is generally painted as an unbelievable saint. He nurses a green thumb; he entreats fleeing neighbors to stay and rebuild New Orleans; he's heartbroken when a friend spends some of her FEMA settlement money on a fancy car. (Wait, there was FEMA settlement money?) In general, he seems unwilling to face the reality of New Orleans, and the show does the same. Characters often launch into poetic public declarations of support for the foundering city, earnestly anticipating its return to greatness. Is this what life in New Orleans is like right now? I suspect its actual residents are more distracted by the day-to-day reality of life on the brink of collapse. Kudos are due to the production for its infusion of cash into the local economy, but the show doesn't offer much in the way of authentic New Orleans flavor (among other things, accents fluctuate wildly, even from John Carroll Lynch, a dependable performer as always). This alone is no reason to spurn a show – I never complain that Boston Legal isn't Bostony enough – but since it's the only thing this show has to offer, there's no other reason to tune in.

K-Ville scores one twinkle of topicality, though. With the shadowy private mercenary firm Blackwater catching heat in the news this week, the show seems aptly ripped from those headlines. The villain in the pilot episode is a thinly veiled Blackwater clone providing security at a local casino. (How thinly? It's called Blackriver.) The real Blackwater earned millions in 2005 with no-bid contracts to provide security and logistical support after Katrina. I'm hoping this is a new trend toward war profiteers as movie and TV villains, the way we switched from communists to Islamic fundamentalists in the late '90s.

Back to You

Fox, Wednesdays at 8:00

I stand corrected. Kelsey Grammer is a comedy robot. In the sense that you can stand him in front of a camera, press a button, and the booming Frasier voice will pop out, saying whatever you've programmed it to say. Except, with the current upgrade, the voice has a mean, dumb-guy edge, which removes all trace of humanity from its stentorian haughtiness. When a new co-worker corrects Grammer's mispronunciation of his name, Grammer shouts unnaturally, "How is that better than what I said?" Not with the inflection a person might actually use – a tone of "don't contradict me in front of people" mixed with "who cares anyway?" and softened with a touch of "ha, just fooling" – but instead, just loud and stiff. Like a robot. Just as Grammer was often excellent as Frasier Crane, Patricia Heaton was always flawless as Debra Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond. And just as Grammer's character has lost his heart, so has Heaton's gained new shrillness and animosity. Welcome to sitcoms, Fox style.

The two, as you surely know, have been thrust back together as co-anchors of the Pittsburgh nightly news, after ten years apart during which time Grammer's character was making his way into larger markets, only to tumble back to Pittsburgh after swearing on camera in LA. (One of the show's few laughs was a bleep-heavy YouTube clip of this meltdown. More sitcoms should use bleeps.) They don't get along, personally or professionally, but instead of rooting for them to work it out, you just hate both of them. For two top-shelf comedy veterans, their chemistry is astonishingly flat. And they're surrounded by far too many supporting characters, even though one of them is Fred Willard in the David Koechner role from Anchorman (dumb, distracted sportscaster). He gets off a couple of great lines ("I still vomit before every show," and "I never cared for the word 'sperm'... or 'voila,' just so you know," are both delivered with pitch-perfect Willard resignation). Of everyone, though, the standout is Josh Gad, as the station's underaged and under-respected news director. His character has a vitality the others lack – largely because he doesn't leave a heavy pause after another actor's lines the way the rest do. Gad is a newcomer, from Broadway. Maybe there's something to be said for a little inexperience in sitcoms these days. The old ways don't necessarily work so well.

Kid Nation

CBS, Wednesdays at 8:00

Okay, we've had some good fun, but we should give CBS a little credit. This is an interesting experimental question. However, I'm not sure our TV networks have proven themselves best suited to carry out these experiments in a controlled and safe manner. Certainly not the network that produces Big Brother.

The idea here is as simple as the hilarious South Park episode that undoubtedly spawned it: how would children survive in a town without adults? (Or, in this case, with one adult barking Probst-style challenges at them every few days, and a dozen other adults videotaping their every move.) As with everything in reality TV, it comes down to casting. They've located some highly precocious youngsters for this gambit. None of those soft, maladjusted Spellbound losers, here. (Well, Anjay is a spelling bee champ, but other than him, none.) These are motivated, outgoing, active kids. And they're hilarious to listen to. Whether it's parental influence or countless hours of TV watching, something has given them some strange perspectives. Of all the things these kids say, here are some of the darnedest:

"I miss getting to eat protein."
"Here in the kids' world, there's no President Bush – there's nothing."
(Of a typical room in their ghost town:) "It's in disarray!"
"Iraq is the number one place that needs world peace."

The last one is from Taylor (age 8), a girls' pageant participant and self described "beauty queen." She's among four participants preselected to be the Town Council, which makes major decisions and bestows a gold star on one pioneer each week (a prize worth $20,000). They have a hard time establishing authority early on – which you'd expect, since nobody voted for them – but I imagine that will change now that all the kids know they wield gold star authority.

Amazingly, the kids seem to get along fairly well, with a minimum of bickering and almost no whining whatsoever. (OSTEWHUB – but you'd think they'd put some whining footage into the show if they had any; the show is made by and for adults, who like to have their ideas confirmed about what little snots their kids can be.) Perhaps with no parents around, there's simply no need for tantrums – they're only effective at bending grown-ups to your will. They also seem genuinely excited for each other. Nobody seems jealous at all when Sophie wins the first gold star. They just want to work harder to win the next one.

Sophie (14) is easily my favorite (and no, she's not hot – I know what you're thinking). She takes charge when it's clear that nobody is going to figure out how to cook dinner. Before she came along, they were boiling about 12 cups of pasta in about a pint of water. She's a level thinker, and she's a little bossy but it's only in service of making things more efficient. She's as much as five years older than the smallest kids, and sometimes you have to take charge. She also says, in an interview, "I feel like sometimes I'm just surrounded by a whole lot of dumb people." Right on, sister. Might as well learn that lesson early.

At some point, the council has to divide up the 40 kids into four teams, and they compete in a physical challenge to decide which team will take which job. Laborers clean toilets and sweep floors for ten cents a day. Above them are cooks, who earn a quarter; merchants, who earn 50 cents; and the "upper class" who get a dollar a day and don't have any set jobs – they can just "help out where needed." So, the team that proves the worst at menial, physical labor is relegated to that job for the next 36 days. Sounds about right. It's good for kids to learn early that reaching the upper class is by no means a meritocracy, and is pretty much as arbitrary as who can carry a bucket of water the fastest.

Sophie's no longer a cook – now it's her job to clean up after them, with predictable friction resulting – and she's also not too thrilled about her ten-cent allowance. She's got her eyes on a bicycle in the general store, which sells for thirty times that amount. So she starts dancing in the streets for nickels – just like those guys on the Santa Monica Promenade – and quickly makes her three dollars. She's savvy enough to catch these kids right after they get paid. That money is burning a hole in their pocket and doesn't yet have any value. In a couple of days, once the others realize they want to save up for things too, she'll have to become a pool hustler to get rich off them. I have no doubt she has it in her.

At the town hall meeting, she grouses that the council isn't doing enough to enforce chores on the different working classes. If the cooks would clean their dishes as they work, they could save the laborers some time. No resolution to this issue is immediately forthcoming. (Taylor, who leads the cooks, says they're "trying their best." Expect to hear a lot of that phrase on this show.) However, given the choice between Sophie and Michael for the first gold star, the council overlooks Michael – who came to their aid in establishing authority and solidarity with a rousing speech on the second day – and goes with Sophie, a vocal critic of their administration. I can tell you, my heart leapt. Valuing hard work over cronyism – that's something the grown-up nation would do well to learn from these pioneers. Then Sophie had a chance to call her mom and celebrate the news. All the tough work ethic and wise-beyond-her-years insight was gone in a flash as she ran to that phone just like a kid on Christmas morning. A cameraman is waiting by the phone with her mom (ignore the nagging question about how this could possibly be unscripted), and it's a really joyous moment. Her mom says, "When you hear your kid sounding happy, there's no better feeling in the world." I was genuinely moved.

Over the closing credits, they played footage of a bandanna fight – an event seemingly invented by the two younger kids who were engaging in it, while standing on a mound of sand. (The sand may have been a coincidence; I don't know if it's part of the game.) This is an awesome testament to the power of children to self-entertain, and hilarious footage as well. I especially like they way they stalk around each other, snapping their bandannas in preparation. You can almost hear the West Side Story music playing.

Gossip Girl

CW, Wednesdays at 9:00

Well, apparently I'm officially too old to watch television. I'm due to be thirty in less than four months (must...eat...bullet...), so I guess now is as good a time as any. This show actually made me exclaim aloud, on more than one occasion, "Jesus! What is it with kids and all this text messaging?"

Gossip Girl takes place at one of those tony Manhattan private schools that must exist somewhere (New York, probably) because you always see them in movies. Kids are ultra-rich. Nobody goes to class; it's all about the social power structure. People drink, take drugs, and fuck as though they were twice their actual age. Parents are aloof, yet somehow simultaneously domineering. Apathetic, bored teenagers hate their parents and resent the pre-planned lives they're expected to live, but not so much that they'd actually do anything that might cause them to be disinherited. Amongst all these clichés, and some typical first-episode exposiblitz ("How was boarding school?" "Great, how's your estranged mom?") waltzes Serena van der Woosen, the former queen supreme of this group until she went into hiding for a year. (I thought that name was the dumbest, most trumped-up attempt to sound aristocratic I'd ever heard, until I saw in the credits that the author of the Gossip Girl book series was Cecily von Ziegesar. To her, van der Woosen must sound dull and ordinary, like Smith or Brown to the rest of us.) The show focuses on the power dynamic between Serena and her former best friend Blair, who has been running the school's power clique in her absence. Fortunately, Serena's take on all this is, "Screw that noise." She's done with the in crowd and wants no part of their scene. The show seems to take the same stance, but the credibility of that positive message is undercut by the show's fascination with the lurid soapy details of the elite.

What makes all this notable is that Gossip Girl seems to be the first TV show to base its narrative structure around a blog. (Sure, Doogie Howser, M.D. came close, but in this case it's the online element that makes all the difference.) The entire proceedings are overseen by "Gossip Girl," the pseudonymous blogger who narrates every episode, voiced by Veronica Mars herself, Kristen Bell. Maybe I'm over-sensitive, but this forced me to acknowledge the many similarities to Veronica Mars, a program the CW network couldn't be bothered to air more than one season of. In both, our hero was formerly ensconced in the innermost high school inner circle, but now she's on the outside. She retains a keen understanding of the rules of the game, and all the players, and she uses her wits and charm – with the assistance of smart and cheeky fellow outsiders – to mess with the "it" kids. But, where Veronica Mars was witty, engaging fun, Gossip Girl is catty, insipid, and obnoxious. There are some sweet and clever moments between Serena and her brother, and between siblings Dan and Jenny, her newfound outsider friends. But all the moments inside the clique are trite and awful. Even the guy who's stuck dating Blair and trying to get out of it is unsympathetic and stupid.

Which should tip the Gossip Girl balance firmly into "unwatchable" territory, but it doesn't, quite. And the main reason is the blog. Everyone reads it, and just about everyone submits tips to it by cell phone and text message. Every time anything happens, there's a flurry of text messages, and then everyone checks the blog to see if their tips are on it. (If high school were really like this, Dodgeball should have been a smash success.) The result is a sort of distributed intelligence, gathering information and surveillance and broadcasting it live. It reminded me of the unaired pilot for Global Frequency, based on the Warren Ellis comic books of the same name. (It was a fantastic pilot, and I understand it can still be found online.) I doubt very seriously if the show intends to follow such potentially fascinating threads as: Can savvy tipsters sow disinformation through this trusted channel to influence events? Do the power players read the blog, and does it affect their strategy? Does the fact that every action plays out before a public audience force the players' hands? What is it like for classmates you've never met to know all about a private conversation you just had? Does a generation that cut its teeth on round-the-clock Britney/Paris updates actually have an unconscious need to create the same sort of tabloid drama within its own social circles? Like I said, pretty unlikely fodder for future episodes, but it got me thinking nonetheless. Which I would never have expected from a CW teen soap.

And if you needed yet another sign that everything's going to hell – let's return to that fun baby-naming issue. Here are the names from this show's opening credits:

Blake Lively
Leighton Meester
Penn Badgley
Chace Crawford
Taylor Momsen

This is beyond anything Joe could fabricate as an exaggerated mockery of today's baby names. In terms of overall absurdity, this approaches "Legwork Q. Delicacies" territory. Look at those surnames! These kids weren't named by those dead-eyed Gen-Xers we normally rail against – it must have been Ewoks or something!

I'll TiVo Another Episode Of...

Back to You (not recommended) because I'd like to believe its crew of sitcom heavy-hitters can do better. And Gossip Girl, because Jenny and Dan really are adorable together (and with CW's catch-up reruns on Sunday, this conflicts with nothing – except my own sense of dignity).

Returning Shows

At press time, none of this week's returning shows had yet aired. However, I'm confident that King of the Hill will retain its understated genius, The Simpsons will continue its creative nosedive (with a brief respite in the form of a Stephen Colbert cameo – as a character other than himself!), and Family Guy will keep being funny but not as funny as it was before it was canceled. They're doing a Star Wars episode, which I'm sure will be entertaining, but sounds exactly like the sort of thing you'd do if you were spoofing how Family Guy has gone off the tracks a little.

I'm not sure what to predict from Shark. I see no reason it won't continue to be as awesome as it was at the end of its first season. (They've added Kevin Pollak – never a wrong move.) Regardless, I'll take my entirely non-sexual crush on Danielle Panabaker to the bank. (What I'll do with it at a bank I have no idea. Maybe after that, I'll take it out for ice cream.) I actually fast-forward through Sarah Carter scenes to get to her. That's how strong it is.

Premiering This Week

Chuck: NBC, Monday at 8:00
The Big Bang Theory: CBS, Monday at 8:30
Journeyman: NBC, Monday at 9:00
Reaper: CW, Tuesday at 9:00
Cane: CBS, Tuesday at 10:00
Bionic Woman: NBC, Wednesday at 9:00
Private Practice: ABC, Wednesday at 9:00
Dirty Sexy Money: ABC, Wednesday at 10:00
Life: NBC, Wednesday at 10:00
Big Shots: ABC, Thursday at 10:00
Moonlight: CBS, Friday at 9:00

Returning This Week

How I Met Your Mother: CBS, Monday at 8:00
Heroes: NBC, Monday at 9:00
Rules of Engagement: CBS, Monday at 9:30
Boston Legal: ABC, Tuesday – early! at 9:30
Criminal Minds: CBS, Wednesday at 9:00
My Name Is Earl: NBC, Thursday at 8:00 (full hour)
The Office: NBC, Thursday at 9:00 (full hour – for 4 weeks!)
CSI: CBS, Thursday at 9:00
Without a Trace: CBS, Thursday at 10:00
Las Vegas: NBC, Friday at 9:00 (two hours)
NUMB3RS: CBS, Friday at 8:00
American Dad: Fox, Sunday at 9:30

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