I’d Like to Ruin Television For You: Wednesday night

August 18th, 2008 by Waldorf Van Buren

Wednesday night television has a few gems in a sea of malaise-inducing crud. I have to point out the few sparkling nuggets first. I adore Pushing Daisies, and not just because of Jim Dale’s animated voice-overs (he is the guy who performed all of the Harry Potter audio-books), but also because of the quirky nature of the characters, the plotting, as well as the wonderful use of costume, color, line, and. . . sorry, I think I slipped into my Get Your Geek On: Design persona. Anyway, it’s a crisp, colorful show and I’m glad ABC brought it back for another go-round. However, there is so much other silt to sift through that it makes the entire night a maze of sooty weeds.

The rest of ABC’s Wednesday night schedule includes Private Practice and Dirty Sexy Money.  Nothing new here, just continuations of last season’s successes. However, I do not like Private Practice, and I have not cared to watch Dirty Sexy Money despite the guy from the morgue show on HBO. It also has one of the Baldwin boys, Keifer’s dad, and Jill Clayburgh. With that pedigree of actors, I’d say it should automatically be watchable. With that, and the sex. However, I haven’t seen an episode, only the teasers, so I can’t give you an honest anything about the show.  So I say TiVo the damn thing. (I’ll get to TiVo later.)

CBS is a bit confused on Wednesday nights. It thinks it can combine winning aspects of Monday and Tuesday for a hybrid night of television.  It starts off with The New Adventures of Old Christine, an okay show starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus. I’ve watched it and I’ve laughed.  That’s as much as I can say, except that my wife watches it and thinks it’s hilarious (though not as much as Big Bang Theory).

Old Christine is followed by another situation comedy about a guy named Gary who is recently divorced or unmarried, cleverly crafted titled, wait for it. . . Gary Unmarried. It features Jay Mohr and Larry Miller, so it has the potential to be another Hearts Afire.

From here, CBS Wednesday takes a weird turn from divorcee sitcoms to procedural dramas. It’s Criminal Minds, which is okay, followed by CSI:New York, which I consider the middle child of the CSI series despite the chronology of when the shows premiered. They are both good shows, but I don’t know if I can invest my time in another law enforcement drama after the final bow of The Wire. They just don’t have quite enough umph anymore.

For fuck’s sake, CW, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Sorry about the expletives, but there are no words for the CW other than a loud, pink, neon “FUCK.” Catty fashionistas get bitchy on each other and battle to become America’s Next Top Model, gearing themselves up for years of anemia, bulimia and ingesting bags of blow.

After that skeleton-fest, you can feast your eyes on the claptrap that is Stylista. Catty fashionistas get bitchy on each other and battle to become the editor of Elle magazine. I don’t know what they’re gearing themselves up for, but. . .  Forget it. I’m going to go drink some Jack Daniels, I’ll be back.

Holy shit, has it been three days?

Oh well, on to Fox. We get another season of Bones, which is a hit with the FBI-anthropology crowd. I admit, I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to anthropology, and I have a thing for David Boreanaz. No, not a House thing, but a “he’d be cool to hang out with” thing.  He’s a Steeler’s fan! He was Angel! I don’t know. I just like him, and I like the puppet avatar of him as well. So I watch Bones occasionally.

I also watch ‘Til Death, for similar reasons. I have a major crush on Joely Fisher and I’m proud of my imitation of Brad Garret. (I can actually do Ray Romano and Peter Boyle very well. Alll I need is a voice actress who can do Doris Roberts and Patricia Heaton.) The show was kind of funny, though the neighbors were kind of annoying. Fox decided to cancel half the show, which works.

The final show on Wednesday night Fox is Do Not Disturb. I know nothing about it except it has Jerry O’Connell (the fat kid from Stand by Me) and it’s directed by Jason Bateman, so it begins with two stars.  The rest is TiVo’ed for an episode or two, and then condemned.

NBC gives us a rehash of pop culture with a “re-imagining” of Knight Rider, only without the Hoff. The network can rest easily knowing that it should do as well as last year’s Bionic Woman. I liked some of the concepts of Bionic Woman, as well as some of the actors recycled from Battlestar Galactica, but it wasn’t a great show.

Deal or No Deal follows at 9 PM. This has to be the dumbest game show ever. There is NO skill involved that game. I don’t think it even qualifies as a game. It’s simply a matter of guessing and greed. Ugh. My six-year old loves it, but he still occasionally poops in his pants.

Finally, we have Lipstick Jungle. I think I watched an episode. I don’t remember. It was that fantastic. I love the idea of hot corporate women and I love the idea of sex, and the two seem to go well together. But I can’t remember a thing about Lipstick Jungle. Wait, no, I do. Brooke Shields. That’s it.

My verdict: Tivo Pushing Daisies, ‘Til Death, Do Not Disturb (until it’s canceled in November), and CSI: NY. Go out and have a bite to eat. The shows will be waiting for your viewing pleasure.

And CW? I don’t want to even talk about you anymore.

spread the panic!
[Ask] [Bloglines] [del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Fark] [Google] [Mixx] [MySpace] [Newsvine] [Reddit] [Slashdot] [Sphere] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati] [Twitter] [Windows Live] [Yahoo!] [Email] More »

Tags: , , , , , ,

This entry was posted on Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 8:39 am and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


Comments are closed.