Things that make life woth living

The beautiful Tina Fey on Sesame Street.

Apparently this episode ("The Bookaneers")is from 2007; but it is still, as they say on LiveJournal, made of win.

(Image co/ ew.com)

When TV is stupid

I caught a few minutes of Unhitched last night on Fox. I wish I hadn't.

The Tantra subplot was actually kind of funny...although I can neither confirm nor deny how accurate it might be. What really bothered me was the subplot where Rashida Jones's character Kate keeps encountering a female co-worker naked in the gym locker room

I think that many people would find that awkward in and of itself; however, Kate had to go into detail later with her friends about how disgusting the older woman's body is.

Now, I love pop culture, obviously. All too often, though, it's used to try to make women self-conscious about being anything other than the ideal. All too often, it tries to enlist women to judge each other. It is not impossible to imagine the same subplot with a naked man, but it seems less likely. More to the point, that is not how the story was written

As if that weren't enough, once Kate finally confronts her colleague with her discomfort, the other woman breaks down crying. She confides that she feels repulsive, that her body is why she's divorced, and that she's starved for physical contact of any kind. It ends, of course, with an uncomfortable, arms-only hug.

All of this is supposed to be funny.

Guess what? It isn't.

There's really nothing all that unusual about the woman in question. She looks like--if not "better than"--any number of middle-aged ladies you might pass on the street. So I can comfort myself with the knowledge that the writers of Unhitched are out of touch with mainstream America. Most people don't see each other this way...except when they do; except when they've drunk too deeply of this kind of poison, which is as endemic in advertising and popular music as it is in Story.

What's more, to the extent that anyone does go without the physical affection that they need, for any reason, it hardly strikes me as comical. Watching the woman's pain was disturbing to me. I wonder what it says that the audience was expected to find it funny. This is the kind of mean-spiritedness that passes for honesty on many sitcomes these days.

Jones was better off on The Office , even if Jim is better of with Pam.

Thanks for letting me unhitch my high horse for a moment.

Catching up with TV

These days, I seem to watch most of my television on the Internet. I doubt that that makes me unusual. Sarah Connor Chronicles ended its first season on a high note—well, specifically a low note sung by Johnny Cash—and Medium recovered from a few weak episodes with a cliffhanger that landed Alison in a moral dilemma.

This weekend, however, I decided to end my post-Oscar hiatus by responding to two new shows for you.

Canterbury's Law, the new Juliana Margulies vehicle, debuted on Fox last week. There's very little here that we haven't seen before—aside from the fact that in our post 9-11 America, making your protagonist a public defender represents at least a small risk. Other than that, we have a driven career woman who's personal life is falling apart, a wan, hapless, young male defendant, a unisex bathroom scene (without the laughs of Ally McBeal), and dramatic confrontations culminating in courtroom pandemonium. In the end, I had to agree with Canterbury's associate, who warns her that her less ethical tactics may backfire on her clients. I also found it a cheap gimmick not to reveal until the finish that she has lost a child. The best I can say about it is that Margulies and Aidan Quinn are always very watchable, and it is still probably a better way to spend an evening than any given “reality” show.

The next new thing I checked out was Quarterlife. This is a web series created my Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Swick, the creators of Thirtysomething and producers of My So-Called Life. The first online “season”--thirty-six episodes of eight minutes each—were recently combined into six hour-long episodes for NBC. The pilot got such poor ratings against a Democratic presidential debate that it was moved over to NBC's partner channel, Bravo, to finish it's run. (All episodes are now available on hulu.com.)

To be honest, I wondered at first if I would make it through the first episode; but I didn't want to be like a recently infamous Rolling Stones critic. The characters were just introduced very abruptly, and the dialog felt painfully contrived. We've seen much of this before, too—a cast of pretty young friends, both indie and yuppie, complete with one of their youthful-looking, immature mothers. As the episode progressed, however, some strong performances emerged, and I started to care about the characters. The story also dealt realistically with some very important themes—specifically, fear of success, and the often complicated connections between young adults and their parents.

The one thing that still gets me about Quarterlife is the fact that we didn't actually see the band make music until their concert. I'm around enough musical people to know that music—and not necessarily their own--oozes out of them steadily, especially when they're around each other, just for the pure joy if it. This past December, I saw a group of Nashville musicians on an independent movie set do a much better depiction of a band partying on their off hours. (Yes, you'll read more about that film eventually—MUCH more.)

In summary, neither of these shows is likely to become regular viewing for me, but I enjoyed Quarterlife better. It probably comes down to whether you prefer—or are in the mood for--Thirtysomething” or The Practice.