2008's Guilty Pleasures

OK, I ain't proud of 'em, but I likes 'em, so's I watch 'em.

HELL'S KITCHEN - It's profane and abusive but HK has one thing a lot of reality shows don't. I doesn't feel forced. If it is, it's well disguised. If you think about it, Gordon Ramsay is really the one going through the torture. I'll admit to skimming through the team rewards elements and getting right back into the kitchen for the good stuff.

PRISON BREAK - Man, oh, man. "How will they continue this show once they break out of prison?" Simple, they'll be on the run for a year. Then they'll get caught and have to escape from a Panamanian prison. Then they'll be on the run again, but this time a government agent will offer them freedom in return for stealing something from a Halliburton-esque organization. THEN they'll get double-crossed and have the item stolen from them BY THEIR MOTHER. This thing has more twists per episode than a month of DAYS OF OUR LIVES. And I love it!

BONES - BONES didn't make my Top 10 list for a very good reason. Sometimes the writing is a tad short of tortorous. It's hard to buy that someone who has written several best selling books can be as ignorant about modern American culture as Temperence Brennan. But David Boreanaz is sharp as Agent Booth. He's why I tuned in to begin with. (I REALLY miss ANGEL)

HEROES - Faded in year two, wasted too much time in year three, but it's going to have to get a lot worse for me to bail out. What started as a brilliant 'what if?' concept has quickly devolved into an over-populated comic book world. We need fewer dead end sotrylines, a narrower focus on fewer characters and a return to the magic of discovery that made up so much of that first season.

ER - Back in the beginning, I chose CHICAGO HOPE over E.R.. The two medical dramas were both set in a Chicago hospital and were scheduled head to head on NBC and CBS. By mid-season Hope had moved to Monday and I've seen every episode of E.R. since. That being said, this show is a long way away from the show that scored 40 shares with EVERY SINGLE EPISODE. Thank God the torurous storyline of Dr. Abby is finally finished. It felt like some sort of penance to force myself to sit through the darkmess and dreariness that accompanied that character. Seriously, the show would have benefitted from having another flaming helicopter falling out of the sky and squishing her like a whiny bug about two years ago. The show is better - by far - without her. It's a shame we're nto going to get to know some of the new characters very well before the entire thing wraps up in March.

[SIDEBAR: On 12/30/08, the five networks combined managed to score a measly 22 share. That means 78 percent of TVs in use at the time were watching something other than network TV. In its prime, E.R. used to score a 25 share with a RERUN.]

FAMILY GUY - OK, I admit it. I watch it. But, to be fair, it's better than it used to be. It's WAY better than it was back when it was cancelled. It still goes too far, too often, but the non-sequiters have found their own rhythm and the show has found its voice. I suppose from here on out, the decline begins.

OK - what about you? Your turn. Confess away.

Family Guy vs. Picard

This week, FAMILY GUY celebrated their 100th episode by allowing Stewie to finally kill off his mom, Lois.

Or did he?

Here's a spoilerish clip of the end of the episode:




It's ultimately a spin on the best season-ending cliffhanger in the hisotry of television:



Now that was some good watchin'.

The Winner - WHAAMY

THE WINNER debuts tonight on FOX.

OK, to be fair, I haven't seen it. But my BS-ometer is pretty reliable - and it says to stay away from this stinker.

This show screams of what I refer to as a WHAAMY Project (We'll Happily Air Anything Made by You).

These projects are usually very bad ideas, generated by folks fortunate enough to have had lightning strike once before in their life.

FOX gave Mike Scully a WHAAMY deal. Scully is a long time writer/producer of THE SIMPSONS. One would think Anything Made by Him would probably be worth airing. Maybe not. The result was THE PITTS.

Literally.

THE WINNER is from FAMILY GUY and AMERICAN DAD's Seth McFarland and stars THE DAILY SHOW'S Rob Corddry.

Six whole episodes have been produced. Four of them are available online - yep two-thirds of the entire series is already available on the internet - free of charge (FOX TV stations have got to be charged up about THAT).

FOX has displayed their deep confidence in the project by launching it immediately after the February sweeps - when it will do less damage to the ratings of your local FOX TV station (trust me - they ARE charged up about that one).

Further confidence is displayed by the net in the show's schedule. They'll be burning this bad boy of two episodes at a time, reducing the footprint of this embarrassment to a mere three weeks.

I have a suggestion for FOX. They're all about the innovation. Here's their chance to push the envelope again. How about airing THE WINNER split screen? They could put the audio for one episode on the left channel and the audio for the other in the right channel and burn the entire run off in 90 minutes.

My guess is there's a clause in McFarland's contract that requires a financial penalty to be paid by FOX if less than six episodes air. So, the net trots out and does its due diligence, a crappy show gets on the air.

And we all get the WHAAMY.