Just Us Nerds

The good folks at TV Squad put down the gauntlet and challenged us to fix NBC’s scheduling problems. I was more than happy to comply. Sadly, we have to work with NBC’s existing slate of shows, but I decided to take it a step further and suggest some future changes as well.

Sunday
8:00 pm: NFL

Not much choice here.

Monday
8:00 pm: Deal or No Deal
9:00 pm: Las Vegas
10:00 pm: Kidnapped / Dateline

To be honest, this is where I put the shows I am least likely to watch. I just don’t believe Monday is a good night to present a strong schedule. Between MNF and CSI: Miami, there isn’t much room to grow so don’t bother scheduling an ambitious night. There is also some synergy between DOND and Las Vegas because of the gambling element.

Long Term: For Monday nights at 10:00 I would be looking to schedule a light mystery in the vein of Monk or Psych on USA. All the mysteries on the networks right now are so serious. Where is the next Remington Steele?

Tuesday
8:00 pm: My Name is Earl
8:30 pm: The Office
9:00 pm: 30 Rock
9:30 pm: Scrubs
10:00 pm: Studio 60

Tuesday and Thursday have been the traditional comedy nights for NBC. I don’t see Thursday working for NBC any more so I would go for Tuesdays. This is a night when comedy can thrive and I think that the people who like Earl and Scrubs are more likely to enjoy Studio 60 then the Heroes/game show crowd.

Long Term: I would be looking to develop at least one more single-camera comedy for Tuesday night because it is unlikely that both Scrubs and 30 Rock will get a renewal unless things turn around. If Studio 60 can’t be saved I would look to schedule another hour-long workplace comedy-drama. The concept can work and I would look to the ousted Gilmore Girl team to write it.

Wednesday
8:00 pm: Deal or No Deal
9:00 pm: Biggest Loser / Last Comic / Other Reality
10:00 pm: Dateline NBC

This is an attempt to counter-program the dramas that are thriving on that night. These are all cheap to produce so even if the ratings aren’t huge, they will keep the night profitable.

Long Term: This would be a good night to introduce some more comedies if you can find better ones.

Thursday
8:00 pm: Friday Night Lights
9:00 pm: Heroes
10:00 pm: ER

In my opinion these three dramas are very compatible. FNL and Heroes should share a significant audience segment and Heroes is a solid lead-in for ER (As well as the only show on their schedule capable of competing with CSI/GA). These are three shows NBC is proud of and they should be on the most watched weeknight of television.

Long Term: FNL is the most likely to go. If that happens, I would look for something compatible with Heroes. It should be action-oriented but a little less intricate and serious. It should definitely have a multi-cultural cast. How about UN?

Friday
8:00 pm: Law & Order
9:00 pm: Law & Order: Criminal Intent
10:00 pm: Law & Order: SVU

This is a no-brainer. The Friday night crowd is mainly older adults and they enjoy L&O.x more than most. This could turn into a winning night for NBC and if it doesn’t, they will probably know which of the three to cut. They can always put another game show in the 8pm hour or a Dateline in the 10pm hour to fill any holes.

Long Term: L&O never dies. This could keep going for thirty years.

Maybe it’s time to just relax and let Studio 60 be what it is. It is a good show. The problem is that I was hoping for a great show and in that category it falls short. The first time Aaron Sorkin made a show about TV, Sports Night, I absolutely loved it and I really did feel like America just wasn’t smart enough to get the jokes. This time, I can understand the problem. The show has some very funny moments, but not enough to qualify it as a comedy. If anything, it is trying a little too hard to be funny. The bat through the window this week was a nice moment (that would have been far better if they hadn’t used it in the promos), but the overall bat/boot sub-plot was neither funny nor realistic. I want to think of these people as smart, not stupid, and only a couple of idiots could have been stupid enough to do the things they did. As for the drama, it also seems a little forced. A network president’s old drunk driving arrest would not captivate the country for two straight weeks. Heck, that didn’t even happen with Bush’s old drunk driving arrest. A network president is not a celebrity and no one is going to buy a book about her sex life. As for the plagiarism plot, it seemed a little forced as well. That said, the plot wasn’t ridiculous, it just wasn’t as sharp as it should have been. The show is entertaining, but it isn’t revolutionary or brilliant and I’ll just have to live with that.

Week two of Lost was a little better than week one. At least we had interaction among some of the Losties, something that was painfully absent last week. Unfortunately, I still haven’t found a reason to care about the Others. The Kate and Sawyer kiss was fun and the best moment in the sow. I was once again amazed at the stupidity of supposedly smart characters though. Sayid’s plan wasn’t really a plan so much as the quickest possible way for him to lose the boat. It just seemed like a plot device, and a bad one at that. As for Sun and Jin, their back story at least had some interesting moments, but not enough to get me off of my dislike of the flashbacks. Overall, I am starting to lose interest and I am only hanging on long enough to see what the rest of the Losties have been up to. If it still sucks then, I may give up.

As long as I’m handing out complaints, how long has it been since an NCIS case wasn’t about somebody trying to get even with, capture or otherwise endanger one of the agents (or in last week’s case a former agent)? It isn’t even sweeps yet. I remember a time when the people at NCIS investigated crimes that weren’t actually about them. I know they want to break free of any lingering CSI stigma, but I find it hard to believe that this many people have a grudge against Naval investigators. Also, my wife desperately wants Mark Harmon to lose the mustache.

Now I feel like it is time to hand out a few compliments, especially to The Office and How I Met Your Mother. Here are two shows, comedies no less, that actually followed through on the developments from their season cliffhangers. The Office broke apart the Jim/Pam storyline by having Jim follow through with his transfer and for four weeks now there has been no sign of his return. We all know it will come sooner or later, but each week he stays in Stamford make the plot line more realistic. My guess about how they are going to bring them all back together is simple. The Stamford branch is going to close and Jim is going to be merged back into Scranton along with new romantic interest Karen. This is not only a good solution to the current separation, but would follow along the lines of the original UK version of the show. As for HIMYM, they have continued with the pairing of Ted and Robin as well as the break-up of Marshall and Lilly. While I somewhat miss the old chemistry on both shows, I give them high praise for exploring change rather than quickly discarding it the way shows such as NCIS and Two and a Half Men did.

I haven’t caught as many of the new shows as I normally do at the beginning of a season, but those I have caught have not exactly been art so here is a quick run down.

‘Til Death – Mildly Amusing

The Class – Started bad but slowly improving

20 Good Years — I’d settle for 22 good minutes. What a waste.

30 Rock – Way blander than i would have thought

Ugly Betty – Betty good, soap opera bad

Shark – James Woods has to carry the whole show on his shoulders and he is almost succeeding.

Heroes – They managed to make a show about superpowers kind of sad and dull. Now that is an amazing accomplishment, just not a good one. Love the cliffhangers though.

The Lost premiere was a definite disappointment. The first five minutes were just as cool as the first five minutes of last year’s premiere, although a little derivative. It was cool to see the plane crash from the Other’s perspective. The real problems came shortly after that.

To begin with, we had yet another flashback into Jack’s well-trod list of Daddy issues. It told us little that we hadn’t figured out long ago and the flashbacks basically ground the episode to a halt. The flashbacks stopped working as a plot device after the first season and they get worse with each progressive episode. I have enough backstory about the characters. What I care about is what happens on the island and this episode provided only a dribble of information about that.

The separation of Kate, Sawyer and Jack was another drag on the show. There was only one scene in which any of the characters we care about got to interact (a pretty good scene in which we see Sawyer and Kate share a moment). The rest of it had the three of them dealing separately with the obvious and uninteresting mind games of The Others. Frankly, The Others grow less interesting with each passing episode and the flashback structure gives us little time to get to know them so all we are left with is their actions, which are being purposely obscured so that we can’t understand their motives.

If I don’t understand their motives then I really don’t care about them. I can’t see a reason to root for them or against them. Moreover, I don’t feel like watching them intently, trying to glean little clues about why they do what they do, when I know the real reason is probably going to be something completely different (so that the writers and producers can surprise us). What a waste. Everything about this show seems designed to prevent the viewers from knowing what is going on and I for one don’t intend to waste all of my time trying to figure it out. Yes, I understand that the island is mysterious and it should be. However, there is a difference between slowly revealing the secrets of the island and purposely obscuring the motives and actions of the characters.

A quick look at the overnight ratings confirms that there are people besides me, and the rest of the Internet crowd, who were annoyed by the whole thing. The show shed about 4 million viewers from the start to the finish. That’s a lot of people who got frustrated and turned the show off. You can ask the people over at Studio 60 how easy it will be to get them back.

Sept. 29th, 2006
1st Midway Bank Ampitheater
Chicago, Illinois

To quote my friend and future Just Us Nerds contributor Andy, who experienced it with me… we didn’t see a concert. We witnessed an event.

As we were warned by our very tickets themselves, there was no opening act. The show starts at 8 PM sharp. Be there, or be square. While we waited, we were treated to a fascinating, The Wall-inspired multi-media presentation of film on a huge screen… an unseen someone listening to an old-timey radio, smoking, and drinking whiskey. With each puff of the massive celuloid cigarette, dry ice smoke wafted over the crowd. Each time the unseen listener grew bored of the radio station & changed it, a new song played. Everything from Elvis, to Billie Holliday, to Abba’s “Dancing Queen” (which made the giant hand spin the dial rather quickly). It was an excellent way to distract the audience from the comings & goings of the roadies, and a fascinating way to start a show.

Roger took the stage to “In The Flesh?” from The Wall, and, as the song facilitates, he immediately took total control of the venue. He is merely a man… he doesn’t carry the trappings of a rockstar, doesn’t leap about, or parade himself in front of the crowd, or do any of the established front-man “tricks.” He’s just an artist. In a rather subdued suit. Playing his heart out, and playing songs that he has lovingly, menacingly, and expertly crafted over his long career. His voice, which may have lost a bit of it’s range, hasn’t lost an iota of it’s power. He sails across the stage, moving with an easy grace, commanding his bass like a weapon of war, engaged in a battle against the idea of war itself. I do not wish to re-engage the debate here in this post… but, upon seeing the man in concert, it is ridiculous that anyone else is allowed legally to perform these songs under the name “Pink Floyd.”

He moved from “In The Flesh?” to an accoustic version of “Mother.” Then he embarked on a tour of his career, treating us to such gems as “South Hampton Docks,” “Have A Cigar,” the amazing “Perfect Sense Parts 1 & 2″ (the chorus of which got the entire crowd of nearly 30,000 to chant seamlessly along), “The Fletcher Memorial Home,” and “Sheep.”

He stopped off to pay tribute to his fallen best friend Syd Barret, without actually mentioning his name. Maybe it’s still to fresh for him too discuss. Maybe he just knows that we all know and understand. Either way, he graced us with “Shine On You Crazy Diamond parts 1 through 3,” “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun,” and a rendition of “Wish You Were Here” that literally reduced me to rubble. The giant screen behind the band showed telling & piercing images of Roger & his friend from many years past, and the images will haunt me for a long time to come.

After an hour and a half, including an amazing new song called “Leaving Beirut,” an apparently true story of just how loving our “enemies” can be, accompanied by a simply gorgeous living manga comic on the big screen behind him, Roger and his band announced that would be taking a short break. And that upon their return, after having already delivered what would be a complete show by today’s concert standards, they would play the tour’s centerpiece: the entire Dark Side Of The Moon album.

There isn’t much I can say here that would do the performance of DSOTM Live justice. To call it ‘amazing”, or “awe-inspiring” tasks the definitions of those words. What I will note is that in front of us was a young woman, blonde, 20 at the oldest. She knew every word of every song, and sang along to them all, as we all did, with an incredible abandon. She especially responded to “The Great Gig In The Sky,” performed with almost unimaginable heart, depth, and soul by Katie Kissoon. It was wondrous to see someone whom I would have pegged as a Christina Aguilera fan to be so intensely in tune with Roger, and his works. As Roger said before he left the stage, it made an old man very happy.

Roger returned after DSOTM and an encore, launched into a chunk from The wall that I will remember for the rest of my life. They started with “The Happiest Days Of Our Lives,” careened into “Another Brick In The Wall Part 2,” and slid seductively into a rather unexpected “Vera.” As the crowd and I sang out the chorus, (“Vera… Vera… what has become of you?”) it suddenly occured to me that he was playing the chunk as recorded, and was about to do “Bring The Boys Back Home,” under the shadow of the current war in Iraq. The song carried a weight & power beyond measure, and updated the post-WWII trappings of the original source material to where we stand today, with heartbreaking effect. While still reeling from that, the loudspeakers continued on with the original supplimental sound effects, and we crashed headlong into the most spectacular version of “Comfortably Numb” that I have ever experienced. Maybe it was just the power of seeing it performed by it’s actual author, maybe it was the closeness of Syd’s death, maybe it was the recent passing of some of the key members of my own life’s cast… but I’d never realized just how sad a song “Comfortably numb” really is. Not to sound melodramatic, or maudlin, but as I sang along with Roger & comapny, it finally, after 20 years, hit me, and tears streamed down my face. And as I looked around, I noticed that I wasn’t alone.

I will end this post now, even though I could type all night about the show. I barely even touched upon how political trhe show was, or how right I feel Roger is, or how nice it was to be immersed in such a massive group of people who felt just as I did… or the giant floating pig that begged us all to vote, and had “Impeach Bush NOW” spray painted over it’s ass. These must be experienced personally.

I will merely end by reasserting the statement my friend Andy made in the meager hotel bar we retired to after the show:

We didn’t just see a concert. We witnessed an event.