Tue, July 29, 2003

My God, TiVo is wonderful. Let me rephrase that... Wonderful TiVo is my God!

Any reader of this site or friend of mine (stop laughing! those two groups might not overlap 100% exactly!) knows how much I adore TiVo and how readily I'll shout its merits from the nearest available rooftop or elevated hilly area. But my TiVangelism (ha!) is based on more than a self-serving interest in sustaining the solvency of a company without which my adorable little box would be reduced to a very heavy bookmark (or a very light freeway barricade). Nor is my interest only in continuing the upward spiral of my TiVo stock price. ($11 and climbing, baby!) TiVo actually will change the way you watch television – completely.

Sure, the ads all say that, and no I didn't really believe it either. I just found out that with DirecTV I could record a program while still watching another program live, which is something that had been out of reach since I moved into my freshman dorm and had always really bugged me. But within a week, my life was changed. (Within two weeks, I was able to watch the World Trade Center collapse live on two channels simultaneously, so I'll admit that my TiVo conversion had a little kickstart.) You don't have to put a tape in, or keep track of what shows are on what tape. You don't have to remember to program it; once you set up a Season Pass, it's taken care of – and if you show up a few minutes after 8, you can back up and start watching Friends at 8:06 and skip commercials until you catch up to live TV (try that with a VCR!). (One tech writer reports that he was watching TV and his young daughter asked him to skip the commercials. "I can't, honey. This is live TV," he replied. Her response: "What's live TV?") And I can't overstate the beauty of that instant replay button. I find myself missing it on my car radio. And you never have to remember when anything's on, because it's on when you want to watch it, that's when. (TiVo coined the phrase "time-shifting" for this effect.) I don't necessarily watch more hours of TV, but I watch better TV during the hours I'm there. And I enjoy it more, because if I'm just not in the frame of mind for West Wing right now, I can save it and watch Trading Spaces instead.

This weekend was like that. I was in a very particular mood, and I had to find just the right shows, to balance between eye candy and mindlessness. I didn't want to watch anything I cared about like Letterman and I couldn't devote a solid two hours to Mystery Science Theater 3000. I had TiVo'd an episode of La Femme Nikita out of curiosity after enjoying Peta Wilson's work in the abysmal The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and I had an episode of Boarding House: North Shore, which I'd been following on a friend's recommendation. Ahhhh, thank you, TiVo!

La Femme Nikita was spun off by the USA network in 1997 from Luc Besson's 1990 French film of the same name. (You may remember Besson as the whiny baby who acted like a prick after breaking up with his leading lady Milla Jovovich during the production of The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.) The background is fairly familiar: Nikita is convicted of some sort of espionage/assassination and instead of serving time she's put to work for a super-secret government agency. The show is being rebroadcast on the Oxygen network, which would seem to make sense because it features a strong woman kicking ass in a man's world. (And, with USA network production values, the price is right!) I entered the series in the middle, so I don't really know a lot, but Nikita has a moody, semi-exotic boyfriend with an enormous face who is apparently also her partner. So much for independence. In the episode I saw, Nikita scampered around her apartment naked while foiling an intruder, was easily tricked into a trap by agents of an opposing secret organization, cried a lot, cracked under interrogation when tortured, and had to rely on Bigface to spring her out of the flimsy cage in which she was being held. Somehow, this doesn't seem like a strong female role model for the Oxygen audience. (Then again, Oxygen generally panders to pre-existing stereotypes of femininity with home-ec themed programs about cooking and decorating, or tripe like The Isaac Misrahi Show, which seems to be giggling with girlfriends and shopping set to music. I suppose they're just following the Lifetime model of featuring women prominently, but relegating them to roles of vulnerable servitude. To paraphrase Jim Gaffigan, "This week on Lifetime, Meredith Baxter-Birney gets beaten with a rod. In a Lifetime original movie, 'Rod.'")

I like Peta Wilson (for the same reason I like Milla Jovovich and get snippy when Luc Besson's name comes up) but she was either entirely undeveloped when she did Nikita, or she was simply unable to rise above the terrible material. She spent the entire episode mostly moaning or crying or getting shot while running away. Her captor tries to get her to reveal secret information by placing her head in a wire box filled with live rats and then inducing them to try to chew through her face by means of a blowtorch. Later (after Sulky McCheekbone springs her) she tracks down the villain and takes aim. "I've read your file," he intones. "You won't shoot unless provoked." Um, hello? She's still dripping with blood from the dozen live rats you forced to chew on her face! If that's not provocation, I'd like to hear what is! (Her response is simply, "They'll have to update the file." Highly unsatisfying.) Wilson's cute and spunky, but La Femme Nikita just serves to remind me how utterly spectacular Alias is.

Unfortunately, Boarding House: North Shore is no better at making women look like functioning members of society. From the first episode I saw, thug surfer Sunny Garcia's wife Raina has really gotten on my nerves. Despite having a face like a young Jeffrey Jones, she's hot and blonde, both to an entirely fake degree. I can't complain that she tarts around in string bikinis and cutoff jeans – I would too if I looked like that, hell it's even tempting looking like this! However, her reaction when Sunny goes off and pummels another guy for looking at her is to shrug and giggle, "I don't like violence, but that's Sunny being Sunny." Unacceptable.

See, first of all Sunny is a punk. He scored a beautiful wife and he can't just be happy with that, he has to obsess over everyone who happens to look her way. Even if she weren't doing everything in her power to call attention to it (again, it's her right!) guys would occasionally look at her. So would women. And some birds. In the course of life, our gaze falls upon other objects. If you're too psycho to be able to deal with that, then follow Jimmy Soul's advice and pair up with an uggo. But, if you're Raina, you should be outraged when Sunny goes postal on an innocent guy. (She was in no way being gawked at or harassed, which would constitute a different story.) The fact that Sunny reacts this way indicates his consideration of Raina as property. "That's mine. Don't look at it or touch it, or I'll pound you." She should be furious. Not to mention offended at the apparent lack of trust. But it's clear that she kind of enjoys the displays of aggression even if she won't admit it to the camera. On the series finale, Sunny is wronged repeatedly by another surfer, and it ends up costing him an important semifinal. He's letting it go, but Raina goes over to commiserate and subtly provokes Sunny, trying to get another show. "What was up with Jake?" she pleads over and over. Despicable.

Another one is Veronica Kay. She's the model-slash-surfer which means that she sucks at surfing but poses for pictures so she remains a celebrity. If she had a little talent at surfing, she could be the Anna Kournikova of surfing. Instead, she's more like the Anna Kournikova of ice dancing. She parties a lot, but I can't blame the booze and drugs entirely. Maybe she's also just congenitally retarded. Watching her talk, or even watching her look at anything, it's quite clear that if there are synapses still firing, they're definitely waiting to do it until she's off-camera.

All of this is even more pronounced in contrast to Holly Beck, who is smart and beautiful while also possessing talent and common sense. The show uses Holly's interviews to infuse a little rational thought into the proceedings; they'll show a bunch of weird behavior and then just cut to Holly, explaining what actually happened. She has seen some celebrity as a result of her success in the sport, a sport which has absorbed some extra interest since the release of the rollicking droolfest Blue Crush last summer. But Holly maintains a level head, and she manages to avoid making a lot of mistakes that are pretty much thrust in front of her. She's absolutely the only reason to watch the show, and it's a shame that she has to clean up after the other girls as far as image is concerned.

Also, despite the fact that he's been eliminated from the running for the focal competition of the show (the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing), the narrator continues to refer to Myles as the "defending champion." Are you still the defending champion if you're no longer actually defending the title?

***

Bob Hope died last weekend and sure enough my mom was right – we're subjected to a Bob Hope media blitz today. NPR described it as "the end of an era" which I find pretty absurd. If in fact there was a Bob Hope Era, it didn't end yesterday, and it didn't start the day he was born. His contribution was in changing the way things are done, not some special element to his comedy, That Which Only Bob Hope Can Deliver. His approach influenced others, and that's what defines the "era" – it will live on, even without its 100-year-old mascot.

The whole thing reminds me of that TV Funhouse episode where Chickie's New Year's resolution was to not kill Bob Hope, and he ends up breaking the resolution and smothering him with a pillow.

(In other entertainment news: Liza Minnelli and polymer-based fish-nosed manboy David Gest are splitsville. How can this be?!)

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