Mon, August 4, 2003

For the uninitiated (and, people, please come to the site initiated... is it so much to ask?), a Season Pass is a TiVo feature whereby you specify a particular program, and TiVo records it for you whenever it's on. You can have as many Season Passes as you want. I made some fancy little star graphics and wrote some code to make them work, so I'm looking for things to rate. What better than a handful of selections from my Season Pass list?

(Season Passes are presented in the order in which they appear on the list, although some Season Passes have been skipped. The order is largely inconsequential; it only comes into play if scheduling forces TiVo to decide which program to record.)

Mystery Science Theater 3000

Where else but on top for MST3K? SciFi is kind of in a rut with the particular group of episodes they're airing these days (TiVo has never had a chance at Pumaman, but Squirm and Space Mutiny are in heavy rotation), but even the worst episode of Mistie (Hamlet, bar none) is more entertaining than just about anything else out there. Mystery Science Theater 3000 has changed the way we watch TV with our friends – it's certainly changed the way I watch Banacek.

Alias

This is one of those shows that I love too much to spoil it by watching it. In its first season, I frequently fell into the habit of skipping every other week so I could watch back-to-back episodes on alternate Sundays; then over the summer a friend and I watched the whole season in a few six-hour chunks and now I can't watch it any other way. I got about three episodes into season two before I decided to stockpile the whole lot on TiVo and watch them during the off-season. I'm still waiting for the perfect moment. The concept of Alias is nothing altogether special, and the most special part of it (the secret agent/graduate student double life) has pretty much faded away. However, the show excels in tone which is about the only way a run of the mill idea can make fantastic television. Jennifer Garner's alluring blend of sex appeal, vulnerability, and smirking charm make every episode a home run.

Ed

Where else but TV-land can we return to our hometown in pursuit of our high school crush who never knew we existed and have it work out? Where else but TV-land can Ohio be romantic? Ed achieves the ultimate will-they-won't-they tension because we believe they will, we know it's probably not best for them, we want it, but we don't. Plus, all that mushy love stuff is just the backdrop for some of the most engaging characters and witty dialogue we've seen on TV in years. Audiences haven't flocked to the show, but thank heaven NBC is remaining cautiously loyal.

Scrubs

I was dragged kicking and screaming into this show's fan base, and I like to think it won me over not because I relented but because it toned down some of its worst attributes. (The Ally McBeal-style mindscreen drove me up the wall!) It's a tightly edited show, and we all know good timing makes good comedy. Plus, John C. McGinley is a frickin' genius – and I Can. Not. Resist. Amy. Smart.

Just Shoot Me

I catch a lot of flak for continuing to watch this show, but doesn't anybody else have a hard time just abandoning these characters after watching for a few years? Guess not. The quality has declined more precipitously than The Simpsons in recent years, but I'm sorry – I still think Spade is a genius. Fortunately, NBC has come to my aid by pulling the plug on the show, so now nobody will make fun of me any more.
first three years
last three years

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Larry David's brilliant look at life as misanthropic, ultra-wealthy Hollywood nebbish Larry David. This show polarizes its viewers severely: they either love it or they hate it, and I find that more often than not the haters aren't my kind of people anyway. The level of social discomfort and absurd coincidence from Seinfeld is turned up to 11, and while at times almost unwatchable, the results are always hilarious. Cheryl Hines (as David's wife, Cheryl) plays the straight man to elegant perfection – not to mention with breathtaking beauty.

Andy Richter Controls The Universe

I think this show is gone for good, but that's the beauty of the Season Pass. It optimistically sits there, just in case. (Hey, it paid off once! Fox canceled Richter after a short midseason stint, but then it came back.) I was never 100% sold on this show, perhaps because I always felt a little uncomfortable about insulting Jonathan Slavin at the mall when he was on Union Square. (Interestingly, like Daphne's clairvoyance on Frasier and the curse on Cursed, Richter dropped the central conceit of "what might have happened, what should have happened, what did happen" early on.) But it had a few truly hilarious moments, and Andy is always good.

Everybody Loves Raymond

Oh, how I sobbed when Raymond switched to the musical clip-reel opening credits! Woe is us! Season one sported just about the best opening sequence ever, although there are two or three which tie for that top slot. Since then, the opening has been downhill but fortunately the rest of the show has stayed magnificent. It's a shame that story lines have continued expanding the Raymond universe rather than sticking closely with the family, but I guess that is inevitable. This is still the best-written sitcom currently on TV, because the writers know what they're doing and know their characters. I've said it a million times and it always bears repeating. The key to a good sitcom is long scenes. Compare an episode of Raymond to a late-model Just Shoot Me or (if you can scare up the tape) Union Square for the opposite extreme.

The Tick

This came and went in six episodes, but it's immortalized in the Season Pass list. You can't put a show on there that doesn't exist, so this is like a collector's item for me. (Especially since I deleted the Greg The Bunny Season Pass.) I only watched the pilot and I didn't particularly love it, but I respond well to a good tone, and this series managed to co-opt the tone of its animated predecessor marvelously. (Casting Patrick Warburton was not only a stroke of genius, it was practically compulsory.) Alas, sometimes the whole is significantly less than the sum of its parts.

The Late Show with David Letterman

"Hey, slut!" yells Cybill Shepherd, in character as Martha Stewart, "I'm sending your parents a letter tellin' 'em you're a whore!" Just another in the series of wacky clips that have defined the Letterman show in the last few months. The comedy is spine-tinglingly subversive at its best and eye-rollingly predictable at its worst, but Dave is still the most intelligent, insightful interviewer in late night and every show is an experience. (And, as Dave says, "We promise to work hard to make this show better, as soon as you start watching.")

Kids In The Hall

A rare gem among Comedy Central's programs in heavy rotation (I'm looking at you, Carvey-era SNL and Armed and Dangerous), Kids In The Hall is actually worth watching every time it's on. With funny recurring characters and the self-restraint not to overuse them, Kids sketches are all over the map, and always have a giddy absurdism to them. Breakout Kid Dave Foley went on to star in NewsRadio, one of TV-dom's all-time greatest off-the-wall sitcoms, but my heart belongs to googly high-pitched stringbean Kevin McDonald.

Last Comic Standing

Finally, a reality concept that seemed worth watching! Okay, admittedly it didn't seem worth it to me at first, but word of mouth got me hooked, and Comedy Central's reruns made it possible to start over from the beginning. Everything was going smoothly until the public was allowed to vote. It was great fun watching comedians strategize and scheme and just plain hang out. But then crowd-pleasers like Ralphie May and Dat Phan were turned loose against comedy geniuses like Rob Cantrell and Dave Mordal, and suddenly comedy couldn't be funny any more.

Stripperella

The idea of an animated stripper-by-night/superhero-by-later-night is catchy, even if it's a little oversleazed by virtue of its home on "the first network for men." As much as the show is filled with corny jokes and weak innuendo, it does manage to deftly lampoon plenty of superhero clichés and simultaneously attracts some pretty decent voice talent including Greg Proops, John "J. Peterman" O'Hurley, Joey Lauren Adams, and Spongebob Squarepants himself, Tom Kenny (sure, maybe he'll take any voiceover job you waggle at him, but he's from Mr. Show so I like him fine). I find it hilarious, though, that you need a hot actress (Pamela Anderson) to voice the hot title character. What? You can't hear the boobs can you? Well, it turns out it works. Yes Anderson is a blonde with fake tits who's traded on her looks too often, but at least she gets it. Her performance here, as in the unwatchable V.I.P., transcends the material in its knowing self-deprecation. It's one thing to read the ironic material someone writes for you, but it's another to deliver it as convincingly as Anderson does. (She first surprised me with her comic sensibilities in the Twilight Zone sketch on Saturday Night Live.) And I really don't have a thing for blondes with fake tits, so my opinion is impartial.

( for the inevitable unrated DVD, when we finally get to see all those blurred-out boobies!)

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