buhdge

Since the fall TV season follows the summer TV season, which naturally follows the spring TV season and the fall TV season before it, you would be forgiven for thinking there is too much TV seasoning in the goulash. For, in addition to the big three networks (or is it four? Or five?), just about every cable network is producing, for better or worse, original, scripted shows even as the reality genre continues to fester with twisted aplomb. It's a mess out there, people, a big, fat, hunky, screeching mess, and it's up to us discerning viewers to clean it up with a super-sized Mr. Clean® Magic Eraser®.

We're about two months or so into the fall 2007 TV season and already there have been some shows swept away by the broom of apathetic viewers (and pretty soon, if the current writers' strike isn't settled, by the broom of postponement-until-whenever). If you blinked even once, you missed Viva Laughlin, a critically-brickbatted Americanization of the British series Viva Blackpool. The show's nearly non-existent audience, despite the presence of Hugh "Wolverine" Jackman, cried "Viva Cancellation!", and after only two episodes, Viva Laughlin was tossed away like so many useless paper towels. Also wearing the cancellation banner with their boots: Fox's Nashville. Well, they ought to know better than to name a reality show after a Robert Altman movie.

Which leads me to the musical question: When do you call a show a hit, and when do you beat it senseless like a dust-infested welcome mat? It's not as simple as scoring high viewer numbers--nab enough of advertisers' target audiences and a show might hang on for years. Remember St. Elsewhere? It's all in the...oh, who knows what it's really all in? Probably in the bottom line, if the proposed Heroes spinoff that has been cancelled due to the writers' strike is any indication. No sense in producing a show that won't air until...whenever.

What's more, audiences are fickle and hard to pin down to a series commitment, given the number of leisure-time choices that contend for their time. And, while recording shows for watching at a later date is a nifty option for time-starved viewers, the ability to time-shift often results in recorded shows languishing on a DVR and never being watched. I know this is true, because I still have an episode of The Thorn Birds on a videocassette and, darn it, I swear I'm going to watch it when I have the time.

On the other hand, for people with busy schedules, or for procrastinators like me, time-shifting is a godsend. Don't have time to watch Prison Break on Monday night? Record it and watch it when you have the time. If your idea of fun is beating a dead horse the same way you'd beat your dust-infested welcome mat. Which is where the DVR comes in might handy; you can record a show you're on the bubble about, tell yourself you'll catch up with an episode before the next new one airs, and then decide you really don't want to watch it after all and delete it before you have a crisis of conscience with your own wussy self. And speaking of your wussy self, spoilers may be contained in what you are about to reed so proceed at your own wussy speed.

No such crisis of conscience anymore when it comes to the aforementioned Prison Break, however. What used to be a dumb, silly, pretentious mess--a mess that I once lauded in these pages like the fun, confused sticky compote it used to be--has lately devolved into a series that has reinvented itself more times than necessary, and without a patent, by the way. The first season, during which Michael worked to break out his wrongly-accused brother Lincoln from Fox River prison, was a fun ride. The second season, which found the brothers Burrows and their escapee compadres running from the law, was pretty fun, but really stretched credibility--T-Bag's detached arm, anyone? This third season finds the producers playing the shoe's-on-the-other-foot card: Michael is back in prison, this time a dirty, stinking, hell-hole of a joint that is a triumph of production design but sadly not as funny as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, put there by a secret organization cleverly called The Company for the sole purpose of breaking out a mysterious detainee who we now know to be working with the bad guys, or bad girl, who's played by Nash Bridge's daughter.

Yeah, I know. It hurts to know that somewhere Don Johnson is wondering where his TV daughter went wrong, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Sigh. But back to the prison: the producers have stocked the joint full of ugly, desperate lifers and disgraced Fox River guard Bellick in natty pajama bottoms, begging for food and a hairpiece. T-Bag is there too, lugging around his fake arm and ponying up to the bad guy faux-warden. Other than that, nothing ever happens on Prison Break.

Sarah Wayne Callies had a baby and decided not to come back to her beloved Mikey. The producers reportedly suggested she return for at least one episode to tie up the Michael/Sarah love story, but she declined. Then the producers offered to film some scenes at her home. Once again, no go. So the powers-that-be did the next best thing--they had her kidnappers (Nash Bridge's daughter and associates) send her head to Michael in a box. I guess that means Sarah is really el morte, and that box can't be used for bakery items. Which really is a shame, because if there were a cake in that box, at least Bellick would have something to eat.

part two