Vengeance... diminished: K-ville Cancellation Watch

I was all set to dive into the new TV season with a bunch of new posts on everything and anything happening between the hours of 8pm and 11pm EST. Then I watched the K-ville premiere last Tuesday, fell asleep, and subsequently could not think of anything interesting to say about it. It's about cops and robbers, I think. I honestly don't remember anything about the bad guys. A woman got shot, and the shooting was politically motivated maybe? Oh, who cares.

It's about race because it takes place in New Orleans post-Katrina and the two leads are a black guy and a white guy. And it's scored with heavy rap music. Except the show has nothing interesting to say about race, or poverty, or crime, or New Orleans... Basically, everything The Wire does well, K-ville does with merely mediocre competence. The highlight of the premiere was some ridiculous and climactic helicopter sequence. And that's only because at this point I realized this show had no point, and I could safely pass out.

Cancellation Watch: I'm going to give it until mid-season, even though it doesn't deserve it. But it's on Monday, and FOX won't have anything to replace it with. It's up against Heroes, but I actually think that might help it. Heroes is confusing for people who don't watch it regularly (see my upcoming post on watching Heroes for the first time). For those people, a conventional cop show masquerading as an cop show with a twist will be sufficiently distracting. This is why Law & Order lives on (albeit in a limping, sad little way) and NCIS is a top rated show.

The Turn On Returns... With a Vengance

Yeah, yeah, yeah.... I'm a bad blogger. I haven't written a post in so long it's not even worth discussing. But I'm back, and this time I mean it. To prove it, tonight's going to be a posting bonanza. We have the Emmys to cover (even though I didn't watch -- sorry, but that's just not very good TV), the first notable premiere of the season (K-ville, which starts in five minutes -- you'll be getting the rawest of first impressions), and finally, my general impressions of the season to come -- what I'll be turning on, what I'll be turning off. So stay tuned in.

The Late Show: Showing a Little Skin

Regis Philbin appeared on The Late Show tonight, and it reminded me why David Letterman is a national treasure. Regis was going on and on about Dave's socks, and Dave pulled his pants up over his knees in order to demonstrate. Why is that hilarious? I don't know, but it killed me, the sight of this 60-year-old man wearing a $3000 suit pulling his cuffs up over his old man knees. It has me smiling my way to sleep. I think it's because Dave's just a big kid, but in a generous way. Some adults are like children, but in a totally selfish way that makes you want to smack them upside the head. Dave's the kind of kid who just wants to make the grownups giggle by being a giant goofball. Can we order up some more people like that for the world?

Survivor: Kill the Lawyer!

It would be really awesome if, for once, a lawyer in the public eye didn't prove to people why they hate lawyers. Nice because, one of these days, I'm going to be a lawyer and I can only self-loathe so much before I can't get out of bed in the morning.

Nevertheless, Survivor's resident attorney ass, Alex, was wished a welcome goodbye this evening (that's right, I'm an alliterator -- deal with it). In his parting words, he went the classy route and insulted the remaining contestants for being naive. Yes, just keep telling yourself that they voted you off because they lack critical thinking skills. Fucking lawyer. I bet my LSAT score was higher than his.

Of course, Alex also told the viewing public to hold onto their dreams because you never know when they might come true. Provided, of course, your dream is to place seventh on a reality program that forced you to competitively tear meat from a swinging animal carcass with your hands tied behind your back. Maybe he meant to say "hold onto you Dreamz."

Zucker Up

Interesting article in Forbes about Jeff Zucker, CEO of NBC Universal. Like all stories about super high achieving people, it reminds me how I'm not one of those people (Zucker was producing the Today Show at 26; I'm 27 and... not producing the Today show). It's an entertaining portrait of a very competitive, ambitious guy who doesn't sound like a total douche. That role apparently belongs to Les Moonves (head of of CBS), who has some kind of childish vendetta against Zucker. There is something very annoying about wealthy, powerful old men acting like 4-year-olds. This annoyance can probably be traced to my experience with college frat boys.

The story focuses on the criticism Zucker endured as head of NBC television, the post he held for three and a half years prior to ascending to CEO in February. The main complaint was that Zucker failed to develop sitcoms during his three and a half year tenure. While the list of failures is wince-inducing (Emeril? Joey? Did he watch the pilots before giving these shows the thumbs up?), I think the allegation is a little trumped up. Sitcoms have been dwindling since the late 90s on every network. This was unfortunate for NBC long before Zucker nabbed the top job, since NBC's success during the 90s was built around sitcoms like Seinfeld and Friends. CBS overtook NBC by being the first to jump on two big trends: reality television (with Survivor) and the a flashier, high-tech version of the crime drama (with CSI, which has spawned not only two more versions, but influenced shows as varied as Without a Trace and House). Of course, that shift in preferences took place before Zucker even left the Today show, much less took over the entire television unit, so it's hard to pin NBC's recent problems on him.

The article also contains a few clues to NBC's 2007-2008 schedule, including canceling Law & Order (finally and thankfully) and maybe stretching The Office to one hour, which is both exciting and terrifying. No word yet on Friday Night Lights, but I have a feeling we'll know before May 14, when the networks unveil their schedules at the upfronts.