Chatter

TV

I like TV. Even though 95% of the time there's nothing on but the most inane shows you can imagine, that last 5% is compelling enough to make me keep watching new shows in search of the next thing I can get into. Inevitably, even my favorite shows get boring and fall out of my favor until some time when I don't remember the formulas - Alias, Scrubs, Friends, etc. Here's what I'm watching now. I'll probably make this a permanent section on the site at some point.

Nip/Tuck (FX) - Wow. I was afriad it was going to be stupid like Breast Men (a bad HBO movie starring David Schwimmer about plastic surgeons in the early days of breast implants), but it's not - it's sooo good. Graphic scenes of surgery and sex (for basic cable, at least) and great material. Taboo* subject material brought to the fore (transgender, teen sex, three ways, child molestation victims) and given serious treatment. The graphic content works well the make the material real. Sure, the graphic nature is appealing on its own (especially to guys like me), but it's the mix of the content and it's presentation that kept me watching all the episodes that my Replay recorded during the recent marathon.

Speaking of which, monkey (my Replay's name is monkey), I know you can't hear me, but you piss me off when you get the schedule wrong and start recording late or cut off the end of shows (that's really bad). Cutting off the last bit of the season finale of Nip/Tuck so that I couldn't see what happened to Escobar almost made me very angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. Good thing Al Gore invented the internet. Though even that almost didn't help. Billions and billions of pages, and only 3 said what happened in the finale.

*taboo meaning it'd never show in network programming unless as a vapid joke or an overly dramatic made-for-tv movie

7 Days (SpikeTV) - Surprise hit, in my book. I ignore most of what shows up in the Spike bar of monkey's channel guide - a philisophical decision*. In a desperate moment after days of searching for something good on in the middle of the day, I turned to Seven Days and now I'm hooked. It's about an NSA group that uses Roswell alien technology to go back in time to undo catastrophic events. It's got a little bit of sci-fi, a good bit of military action, and also a good measure of comedy via diamond-in-the-rough main character Frank Parker. There's a lot of things to work with and different episodes focus on different aspects. Some focus on sci-fi themes like parallel universes, and some focus on military themes like going back to give a spec-ops team updated intel to keep from screwing up.

*"The first network for men." How preposterous. I'm no TV historian, but my guess is something like The Playboy Channel or Spice owns that title. Even assuming that the subtext is "that you don't have to pretend you didn't order when your mom comes over and turns on the tv and it's tuned to us", TBS has a better claim. I remeber as a little kid thinking that TBS was always showing some Clint Eastwood or Death Wish or Rambo or Rocky flick. Always. But it doesn't show much in the way of skin. Ever, I think. FX could be considered a network for men. It's got shows with action, sci-fi, and loads of skin (at least in Nip/Tuck).

Good Eats (FoodTV) - Greatest show ever. It's going to get a special section or at least a permanent link on this site somewhere. Sure, I think shows like West Wing, X-Files, Alias, Scrubs, and Friends were really good shows, but they were all about being competent in producing shows around proven themes. It's like being told to make a meal out of some pasta, cheese, cream, and some spices. The creators of those shows made some really tasty mac and cheese and pasta alfredo. Alton Brown saw the same materials and built a space ship.

Imagine you're given the task of making a cooking show. How do you make a cooking show? How can you make the show appealing? On what aspect of meal preparation would you focus? If you're the Cajun Chef (thanks for the link, Toni!), you walk through a recipe for a dish or two (we'll call this format a "regular cooking show"), have the catch phrases "ah garontee" and "oooh, wee" (used when tasting), have a cajun accent, drink a lot of wine, and focus on cajun food. If you're Emeril Lagasse, you copy the cajun chef's show almost exactly, but you change the catch phrases to "kick it up a notch" and "bam" and move its usage from tasting to seasoning. And yell a lot. Wolfgang Puck came up with a regular cooking show with an Austrian accent. Rachael Ray came up with a regular cooking show, reality style. Everything done in real time, 30 minutes start to finish. Watching a regular cooking show means watching a lot of water boil, things fry, and stuff chopped. The only thing they offer over a recipe card is a visual presentation of the methods for those who aren't familiar with cooking lingo. Once you get familiar with that, you'd save a lot of time by sticking to recipe cards.

Alton Brown came up with the idea of making a cooking Show. That's show with a big "s"... and bold. What an amazing way of breaking down the question "How do you make a cooking show?" Instead of immediately jumping to "What can this cooking show focus on? (i.e. italian, quick preparation, elegant)", he asked "What is a show?". A show is a package of entertainment. For Good Eats, it's a package that's funny, lively, and educational. And it just happens to be about food. It's like the Simpsons (parodies of other shows, cultural icons are everywhere) mashed in with Bill Nye**. It's all sciency. It tells you why things happen and why certain processes/techniques are used and when they're important or just tradition and can be tossed out. Recipe cards would be hard pressed to serve as a substitute for this show.

**I liked his show and all, but it really is just Mr. Wizard's World with an MTV-idolizing production team. Mad props to Mr. Wizard. That link is a random one I found off a search. It seems like an official Mr. Wizard site, but an nslookup on the ip doesn't reveal anything so it's hard to tell if it's real or not. Can't seem to find Don Herbert's email (Mr. Wizard's secret identity, shh). I think he's still alive. If you know how I can send him a message lemme know. I'd really like to thank him for being an inspiration.

Martha Stewart Living (CBS), From Martha's Kitchen (FoodTV) - Martha's scary. Most of the recipes and craft ideas are ones I'm not interested in (but I'm not her target audience so that's ok), but there's the occassional gem. I'm big into doing/making things myself and segments on practical crafts go a long way with me*. Like the stuff the Shakers made. Yeah, the Shakers really ruled. I think they deserve more attention than they get. Their ingenuity makes me think of them as a community version of Thomas Edison.

*How come there isn't a good show dedicated to that? Another thing to add to my todo list...