Category: Television

You are one… sick… puppy.

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association announced a new initiative yesterday. The new initiative intends to “help families manage their television viewing and protect children from inappropriate programming.” NCTA president and CEO Kyle McSlarrow offered the reasoning behind the new campaign (which can be found on the internets at controlyourtv.org:

“The cable industry shares the concerns of many parents, who want to guard against TV content they feel may be inappropriate for their children,” McSlarrow said. “While many cable customers already have the tools to block unwanted TV content, many are not aware how to use parental control features.”

Blah, blah, blah. I commend the NCTA for undertaking this task, but it really is a $250 million waste of money. Ideally it’ll keep Congress at bay because Congress seems to react favorably only when money is thrown at a problem. It reacts extra-special, super-duper favorable when it gets to define the problem. The free flow of money makes them feel like maybe some more of that might come their way for the next election, I suppose. Absurd, sure, but it beats legislation.

My issue with this is that parents who won’t read the instructions for their cable box won’t be influenced by this ad campaign. They don’t take the time now, so why will they with a few more spiffy commercials? Besides, those parents aren’t the ones who send e-mail and write letters and place telephone calls to L. Brent Bozell and the Parents Television Council every time some one says “H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks” on the TV. The parents who do will not be happy with this for one reason: it’s voluntary. Put a different way, it still allows all of the so-called offensive content to go to people who want it (or can’t/won’t stop it from reaching their children). The real opponents who’ve made this an issue want morality legislation and nothing else.

Consider this statement from Mr. Bozell:

… L. Brent Bozell, president of the Parents Television Council, blasted the program as an attempt “to spin the public with a multi-million-dollar campaign to promote channel blocking and V-chip technologies as an adequate remedy for families concerned about their children being exposed to violent, profane and sexually explicit programming.

“This $250-million sham is being foisted on American consumers by the cable industry with the sole purpose of shirking responsibility for its product,” Bozell added.

What else would Mr. Bozell promote that allows free citizens to choose what they watch and don’t watch? Does he not realize that this “$250 million sham is being foisted on American consumers” because of his blathering about indecency and the downfall of America and the inevitable coming of orgies in the streets thanks to one (not-really-) naked nipple fifteen months ago? Does he realize that that $250 million isn’t coming from the charity of the NCTA, that it’s coming from those parents who don’t bother to read the instructions that come with the indecency machine cable box hooked to their televisions? Or that it’s coming from me, an American consumer who understands that changing the channel or clicking the On/Off button on my TV remote is free? I already paid for those instructions the first time and my mother paid the taxes that supported my education which taught me how to read those instructions I’ve already paid for. But, nope, that’s not good enough, you have to be an obsessed Luddite who believes that every American child is the direct target of indecency and every American parent is too stupid to parent. Thanks for looking out for me, guy, but stop it. Now.

Mr. Bozell does offer rationalizations for his concerns. Consider:

“In order for the V-chip to work, it must rely on an accurate ratings system,” Bozell said. Pointing to the PTC’s recent report, The Ratings Sham: TV Executives Hiding Behind a System That Doesn’t Work, he called the existing system “a fraud, rendering the V-chip a useless tool and an irrelevant, meaningless gesture.

“Currently, the networks — not an independent body — determine a program’s rating, and those same networks are financially motivated to lower ratings in order not to scare away advertisers,” Bozell said.

Mr. Bozell doesn’t seek a method for a television rating system to be meaningful. He wants Congress to be the “independent body” that legislates what is acceptable. According to his “independent” standards, of course. I’m not going argue the financially motivated part because it defies logic to bother beyond a simple explanation. Advertisers are scared away only when viewers come complaining. Mr. Bozell and his devotees don’t go complaining to the advertisers, they go to Congress and the FCC.

Mr. Bozell added:

“Finally, even if the ratings system were accurate and the V-chip useful, it does nothing to solve the root problem,” he added. “Hollywood is flooding the family living room, via broadcast airwaves and cable, with offensive material, much of it deliberately designed for impressionable children.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to literally kick my feet to brush aside the offensive material. It’s everywhere and I’m afraid that my landlord is starting to get pissed danged upset about the filth. Do you know how many times I’ve had to hide a pile of breasts and the random, scattered Victoria’s Secret lingerie show lying around so that my house would look presentable again? I fear the day that must be coming soon when one of the cats licks the carpet and comes down with some horrible STD from the three seconds my TV was stopped on MTV last week. I’m sending that vet bill straight to Hollywood. But we all know nothing in Hollywood is straight, so the kitty’s STD will probably bankrupt me before I can get paid. Good thing you’ve come up with this alternative:

“Better yet, why doesn’t Hollywood just stop flooding television with sewage?” he concluded.

I don’t think they empty their sewage into the televisions, but I could be wrong. (I would think it would do bad, bad things to the wires.) Maybe you should call them instead of Congress. Better go directly to the source. Not directly to the source, I guess, but the central office maybe. Start there.

(Hat tip: SpeakSpeak.org)

Different gunman, same gun

Just in case anyone is thinking that I’ve gone soft with all the tender posts lately, know that I haven’t completely thawed my soul. Politics still matter to me and within politics, I have a few pet issues that seem to never attract common sense from our elected representatives. Today’s lunacy is brought to us by Rep. James Sensenbrenner, who stated this about indecency and obscenity on our public airwaves:

“People who are in flagrant disregard should face a criminal process rather than a regulatory process,” the Wisconsin Republican said at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association annual convention.

“That way you aim the cannon specifically at the people who are committing the offenses,” and not at everyone, he said. “The people who are trying to do the right thing end up being penalized the same way the people who are doing the wrong thing.”

Good plan, Congressman. To be fair, he doesn’t support expanding current regulation to cable and satellite broadcasts, though I suspect he’d vote for it if it came up in Congress. And he does have a brief glimmer of rational thought about the easiest, least intrusive solution, which I will point out before analyzing his new idea. Consider:

“The first thing we need is education has got to get better, he said. “You can’t expect the government to replace parental responsibility.”

He said it was “far better” for consumers to press a button on their remote control to lock out programs or channels than for the government to set the standard.

This sounds remarkably like some other comments from the convention:

Glenn Britt, chairman of Time Warner Cable, agreed that the industry needs to do more to educate customers about parental controls but added that the industry can only do so much.

“What we can’t do is … make parents take responsibility,” Britt said. “But if parents do take the responsibility to be concerned about what their children are seeing, this industry provides all the tools they need.”

Imagine that. Technology is so good that parents can actually solve the problem. Let’s see, what can they do? They can sell their television. They can pick up the phone, dial between seven and ten numbers, speak with a representative of their cable company, and cancel their subscription. They can use the little buttons on the television/cable box/remote that reads “Power”. They can use the v-chip embedded in their television, assuming it’s there, of course. They can even set the parental lock on their cable box to block certain channels. No need to be a luddite, folks. Technology kicks ass buttocks.

But what about Rep. Sensenbrenner’s plan? Could it work? After all, indecency and obscenity are already criminal offenses; the government merely enforces them with a regulatory agency. It’s certainly possible that our government has made a mistake in the past and could reverse course and prosecute indecency and obscenity with criminal penalties. I wrote about this on another blog (hat tip: Jeff Jarvis for the story), but realized, I shouldn’t leave some of my better writing elsewhere. It’s mine, all mine, so I’m going to use it here, expanding and editing where necessary. Here is my simple thought experiment that began with a simple question: “Diminishing the FCC’s power is the goal of my protests, for Constitutional reasons. Is the solution to transfer the FCC’s power to a district attorney, and by extension, a jury of citizens?”

I agree that having it decided by citizens instead of the FCC is a good idea, but probably only in theory. The United States is a republic to legislate and lead through calm, rational reasoning, not the mass hysteria that seems to pass for democracy. The FCC is made up of lawyers who refuse to follow the Constitution, seemingly unable to understand that “Congress shall make no law…” isn’t a suggestion. Should we have confidence in lay people who don’t have a legal education? And it still doesn’t resolve the issue of the definition of obscenity. I don’t see legislatures defining it any time soon. So we’d have 12 citizens deciding the traditional “community standards” for everyone. Are we confident that that’s the best place to legislate for everyone?

Of course, if indecency/obscenity enforcement becomes a criminal matter instead of a regulatory action, that puts it in the hands of prosecutors and defense attorneys. I bet the defense attorneys will be better funded than the prosecution and able to convince the juries of what the Constitution means, right?

I don’t think so. In criminal cases, the facts are the facts. If someone commits murder, there are facts. There was a living person, now there is a dead person. The suspect’s fingerprints were on the gun. Simple. (I simplify for the purpose of my point.)

Ok, now apply that logic to indecency/obscenity. Let’s consider a hypothetical situation. The producer of Fox’s latest reality show airs a segment that contains the phrase “He’s an ass.” A TV viewer in Peoria, IL decides that she doesn’t like that and complains to her local district attorney. The local DA files criminal charges. The jury of twelve peers decides for the city of Peoria that “He’s an ass,” violates their standards. The jury deliberation is closed, so we don’t know how they specifically came to this conclusion. Either way, “He’s an ass,” is no longer acceptable on television in Peoria.

At the same time, a viewer in Clearwater, FL also disapproves of the phrase “He’s an ass.” He complains to his local DA and the case goes to trial. Now the producer must stand trial in two districts. Of course, in this case, the producer is acquitted, so the phrase “He’s an ass,” is still acceptable on television in Clearwater, FL.

See any problems yet? I count at least two. So what do we do? To (hopefully) eliminate the need to defend himself in every jurisdiction and to have conflicting standards for national broadcasts in local markets, Congress passes legislation that makes indecency/obscenity a federal offense. Community standards (Federalism?) are no longer relevant. It’s national standards now, but so as not to offend anyone, we set that standard at the lowest level possible rather than the reasonable person standard supposedly in place today. Sound familiar yet?

Of course, with this idea, federal prosecutors are now the clearing house for criminal complaints. The PTC continues to catalog every possible offense occurring on television. They send lists on a daily/weekly basis to the federal prosecutor’s office. There are too many requests, so the federal prosecutor hires more attorneys to handle the case load, to review what should and shouldn’t warrant criminal charges. Eventually Congress decides that the case load is too much and creates the, oh, I don’t know, the Federal Department of Homeland Decency to handle these cases. Problem solved.

That scenario seems plausible to me. Likely? Probably not, but nothing else about the last fifteen months of indecency nonsense was probable. Congress certainly seems gung-ho to deal with everything through an expansion of federal powers and control. Is my scenario really so far-fetched?

Our criminal system deals with complexities every day, but in
those cases, the crime is determined prior to the crime. With obscenity, the crime only occurs if the wrong person is watching or listening and the material offends his individual standards. Do we really want a jury to decide if someone has harmed nothing more than a community’s sensibilities? Criminalizing indecency/obscenity doesn’t change the situation; it just moves disregard for the Constitution from one location to another. The true solution is to understand that the Constitution is the law of the land and no amount of moralizing is going to change that. Personal responsibility still matters and is the easiest, most immediate solution.

God, I wish I was on that show

I love The Amazing Race. I’ve written before about how perfect The Amazing Race is and how genius it is to dream up competitive travel. Behind the Internets and TiVo, it’s the greatest creation in the history of mankind’s unleashing of brain power on previously non-existent problems that, once solved, relegate any history without them as unimportant, and most importantly, useless and not worth remembering. Just like I can’t imagine the hollowness of my life before I started traveling to Europe, I stagger to think of the delight of competing against others on the journey. I would totally rock that adventure.

Last night’s episode showed that the potential zenith of competitive travel is so much higher than I ever imagined. I knew that The Amazing Race’s producers had “surprises” for us this season, but great googly moogly, I had no idea. Adding twists is nice, but dropping a boulder on the head of convention is brilliant, just brilliant.

In Season 6, I liked that non-elimination rounds added the challenging twist of taking away the last place team’s cash. Even though the team stayed another leg of the race, they shouldered a burden unique to them for the next leg. That’s fair. With last night’s episode being the first non-elimination leg in Season 7, we learned the first surprise. When Meredith and Gretchen finished in last, they had to give up their cash. They expected that, but we stared in stunned silence with them when Phil demanded their gear, as well, leaving them only the clothes they were wearing. The sweaty, bloody, cave dirt-covered clothes they’d worn that day. I can only imagine what’s in store for next season’s non-elimination legs. Perhaps a gunshot wound to the leg, or maybe a really itchy STD.

Who could’ve guessed that the second hour would demolish the first hour? Seriously, who?

Rather than write my own recap, I like this one from Television Without Pity because the writer explains the episode exactly the way I experienced it. Behold:

And then it gets awesome. Brian and Greg wreck their Jeep, resulting in a pretty scary injury to their camera guy (that’s not what’s awesome). Lynn and Alex, to their credit, stop to see if they can help, and then Rob and Amber, to their non-credit, don’t — they at least should have slowed down and rolled the window down or something. They don’t, however, and so Lynn spends the rest of the episode telling everyone who will listen that the boys wrecked their car, but THAT’S NOT REALLY THE IMPORTANT THING, because the important thing is that ROB AND AMBER DIDN’T STOP. Basically, everyone is an idiot about this particular thing. But that’s not the awesome part either. The awesome part is that the boys have to wait around a long time for a replacement Jeep to come, but when they get to the Detour, they find that some teams are still there, including Ray and Deana, who apparently cannot work together long enough to complete a simple task, so intense is their dislike for each other. The teams finish different Detour options at about the same time, and they take off for the pit stop within sight of each other. Jeep race! And then they’re at the pit stop, and they get out, and Brian and Greg smoke Ray and Deana in the foot race, and Brian and Greg are saved and Ray and Deana are eliminated and I think I need to lie down. That was the awesome part.

I liked Brian & Greg when I first saw them, but I figured they were the frat boy type, so their personalities would become tiresome. I was so wrong about that. Not only have they not annoyed me, I like them more every week. I like them so much that, even though I’ve been rooting for Lynn and Alex, Brian and Greg might be my new favorites. That has a lot to do with the editing of last night’s episode, but I don’t care if The Amazing Race is manipulating me. I like it. From the moment Brian and Greg’s new Jeep arrived, I was hunching forward on my couch, bouncing my legs in anticipation. When they finished the task and got in their Jeep, just after Ray and Deana, I clinched my fists and started rocking in place. When the foot race began, I smacked the table over and over, all while screaming at the television, encouraging them on. I clapped when Brian and Greg overtook Ray and Deana. Brian and Greg deserved that “win”.

Rarely has reality television delivered so much honest emotion. Sure, Reality TV editors create tension and action but it’s mostly melodrama. I don’t care about fights or gossip or any other nonsense that passes for drama. (Yes, I’m talking about you, Mr. Trump.) I want people who compete just for the sheer joy of the competition. I want people who understand that drama and viewer investment comes from the meaning behind what happens. That can’t be manufactured. It can be edited into a tight package, no doubt, but we all have sufficiently trained bullshit detectors to figure out when a show condescends to basic titillation and when a moment is honest. Last night’s foot race was honest. Every person involved in reality television (and scripted shows, for that matter) should study the second hour of last night’s The Amazing Race. That’s how it’s done.

I don’t care who you are, that’s funny

Listening to “MLB This Morning” on MLB Home Plate (XM 175) this morning, the hosts discussed American Idol because Larry Bowa, former manager of the Phillies, is a huge fan of the show. The morning after each episode of American Idol, Bowa gives a recap and judgment of the performances. He was fairly accurate this week, except for completely ignoring Bo Bice’s outstanding performance. Preferring Travis Tucker’s horrible singing just because he can dance is absurd. And Mr. Tucker is a student at UVA, so no reasonable person can support him. When compared to Bo’s amamzing performance, Bowa must be deaf. So Bowa ignoring Bo is a big omission for me. But I digress.

My point is, listening to “MLB This Morning”, Bowa gave his review. The primary reason for discussing American Idol on the baseball channel, aside from needing to fill three hours of radio before spring games have started, is Nikko Smith. For anyone unaware, Nikko Smith is Ozzie Smith’s son. Ozzie Smith is the Hall of Fame shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals. The connection matters, sort of.

In the discussion, Mark Patrick set the scenario up with Bowa to discuss Nikko Smith, asking whether or not fans eliminated Smith. Bowa said no and then talked about Nikko’s resemblance to Ozzie. (The resemblance is apparent.) Mr. Patrick finished the discussion by saying that he didn’t know much about Nikko, but on American Idol, he always performs first or eighth.

That’s a bit of a joke grenade for baseball fans, so not everyone reading this will get it, I suspect, but let me say this: that’s funny. Sitting at my desk at work, I laughed out loud. An hour later, I’m still laughing. Okay, I’m not really laughing any more, but I still smile at it. I wish I’d thought of that joke.

If you don’t like it, well, just don’t tell me.

I’ve stated many times that Alias is The Greatest Television Show Ever&#153, so it’s no surprise that I rave about it and watch it every week. I haven’t missed an episode in the show’s history. I’ve scheduled vacations and flights and holiday plans around Alias’ time slot. It required more effort when ABC aired it on Sunday nights, but even in its much more agreeable Wednesday time slot, my entire world stops for sixty joyous minutes. Alias defines “Appointment TV”.

That’s why this season, Alias’ fourth, has been so frustrating. Through the first seven episodes, I’ve waited for the Alias magic to appear, but it’s appeared only a few times. The last few episodes have been better, building into some of the pleasures of the first sixty-six episodes. They haven’t been quite right, though. I want the mystery, the chaos, the suspense, the intrigue, the confusion, the action, and the cool. I want Alias.

At its core, Alias is a giant comic book. The show doesn’t ask us to suspend disbelief as much as it grabs us by the scruff of our necks and smacks us around a few times before injecting us with some high-tech serum of cool from the lab of Marshall J. Flinkman. The show exudes a commitment to its storyline, no matter how ridiculous or improbable, and demands that the viewer hang on for the ride. Alias is proof that a television show can trust its audience to understand intricate plot turns and long-running character dynamics. That it hasn’t trusted its audience through the first seven episodes created my frustration.

Placing the blame for that lack of trust is irrelevant. Having witnessed the same respect of its audience in J.J. Abrams’ other show, Lost, I doubt that the changes in Alias are exclusively his fault, if he holds any blame. Again, that is irrelevant for me. I just wanted the real Alias back.

There is a purpose to the complexity of the Alias world. Viewers experience the anger dismay appreciation as each new twist is revealed. We understand that each twist is a piece in the larger canvas of the story. What looks like a Red Herring now will be critical in the future. Knowing that Alias contains nothing unintentional, we must remain attentive. When the episodes became self-contained mini-plots in the middle of the third season, the show lost some much of this feel. The loss became more pronounced through the first seven episodes of season four. The only connection between each episode was the actors portraying the characters. The story had no continuity. There were no moments where I knew that I’d be lost if I hadn’t seen the first 66 episodes. The “Appointment TV” factor was fading. Until last night’s episode, when Alias rediscovered itself.

For the first time this season, Alias was perfect. The characters demonstrated their personality traits and conflicts. Sydney’s brawl with Anna Espinosa in the clothing boutique was brilliant. There was no reason for them to fight; they were in a public place, making an illicit transaction. Sydney’s sister’s life was in jeopardy, but her hatred of Anna led to a mutual beating in the middle of the clothing racks. It was unprofessional, counter-productive and dangerous on Sydney’s part, but the fight embraced the history of the characters. Anna hasn’t been around for several years, but her return and her antagonistic showdown with Sydney made sense.

The re-emergence of Sark was equally as important. He’d been sitting in a prison cell since his capture at the end of last season. Sark’s a scary dude made scarier because he isn’t a psychopath. He is intelligent, amoral and greedy, which makes him the perfect villainous foil for Sydney (and Vaughn). Even confined to a penitentiary cell, his mind is intact. In last night’s episode, even when threatened and drugged, he’s aware enough to screw Vaughn’s plans, guaranteeing that his own motives are met before anything else. Vaughn and Sydney don’t know his motives, thus driving the tension. We don’t know his motives, either, so we enjoy the delicious anticipation of Sark’s next dick move. We’re committed to knowing. We can’t wait to find out what happens next. We’re hooked.

As last night’s episode careened towards 10pm, I sensed that something was different back to normal. There was no way the story was going to wrap before the episode ran out of time. There were too many loose ends, too many details in play to put the petite bow on the finished package as the show had done throughout the season. Would Nadia live or die? We know the answer, of course, but that’s not the point. It’s not if, but how. The closing credits rolled with hanging plot points and unanswered questions. It finally left me asking the right question: what’s going to happen next? When I don’t know the answer and I can’t wait until 9pm next Wednesday to find out, the show is back.

Self-contained, non-Rambaldi, non-spook paranoia episodes, you’re gone so soon, we hardly knew ye. Now keep it that way.

That sound – you know that boom? That’s my mind blowing.

Today is January 5, 2005, so everyone knows what that means, right? You have it marked on your calendar so that you remember, as if you need a reminder, of exactly where you’re going to be at 9:01 pm tonight. You have it marked, don’t you? It’s only the most special day of the year. Really, there’s no other way to describe it than to say it’s Christmas in January. Alias, The Greatest Television Show Ever&#153, returns for Season 4 after a long hiatus.

When we last left our heroine, Sydney Bristow, she was sitting in a bank vault in Wittenberg, reading a Top Secret CIA folder implicating Sydney’s father, Jack, in some horrible secret, a present from the presumably please let it be true but not really dead Lauren Reed. Jack walks into the room as Sydney begins to cry from the newly revealed secret. Moments before, we’d been fooled into believing the world might get a little sweeter. Sydney and Agent Michael Vaughn were embraced in a passionate kiss, standing next to a big hole in the ground dug by Lauren Reed, who’d been looking for a Rambaldi artifact. And the kissing was very open and determined, since they didn’t have to worry about Lauren any more because Sydney pushed her into the hole. The kiss was important, since the two lovers were separated after being taunted by circumstances for nearly three years. And when I say circumstances, I really mean deliciously bizarre chaos.

At the beginning of Season 3 (really, at the end of Season 2, but that’s semantics), Sydney returned from an unremembered journey to find her hard-earned love affair with Agent Vaughn demolished, lost in his struggle to move beyond the perceived reality that she had died two years earlier in a post-fight-to-the-death fire with her evil nemesis Allison, who had taken the appearance of Sydney’s ex-roommate Francie. In his efforts to start his life over, Vaughn quit the CIA and became a teacher. During that time, he met, fell in love with, and married NSA agent Lauren Reed. Ms. Reed turned out to be a double-agent, working with (and sleeping with) Mr. Sark, former independent assassin/terrorist turned leader of the North American cell of The Covenant. The Covenant used Ms. Reed to seduce Agent Vaughn to convince him to return to the CIA so that she could steal secrets and generally be evil.

The plan worked until Sydney mysteriously returned from the dead. Only she hadn’t been dead, she’d been a brain-washed secret agent for the Covenant, which had faked her death after the fire. Allison was Sark’s lover before Sydney killed her. Sark doesn’t like Sydney too much, but that’s okay because she’s not a really big supporter of him either. Their relationship works that way.

So Sydney came back to a life that didn’t make any sense. Her lover, Agent Vaughn was now married to Lauren Reed, so there’s obviously conflict. But Sydney faced a bigger immediate problem. While she was gone, her intelligent, intuitive father knew that she wasn’t dead. When he went looking for her, believing that a conspiracy existed, he became so determined that he skirted the rules. He’s a spy, too, so he’s good at that stuff. Anyway, the CIA didn’t like this, so they locked him up in a scary institution. Jack got all weird Zen during his imprisonment, growing a beard and speaking in double-speak. Eventually, Sydney got him released because she needed an ally. She’d done some bad things during her lost two years, things that couldn’t come to light if she wanted to stay in the CIA. And since Agent Vaughn was in the CIA again, she wanted to stay. Screw Lauren. So the conflict and back-stabbing continued throughout the season as Sydney (our heroine, remember) worked through every bad situation. Sometimes, she even had to beat people up. It was cool.

And that’s where we left our heroine (and hero, Vaughn, because he kicks ass, too) in May 2004 when Season 3 ended, sitting in a bank vault in Wittenberg with new information about her father. And now, tonight, Alias is back with the two-hour premiere of Season 4, which I will watch in High Definition, which makes me happier than it should. (That’s a lie. It’s Alias, so all other rules of logic and common sense aren’t applicable.)

Of course, I could be a little apprehensive about tonight. I’ve waited a long time for the return of Alias. What if it doesn’t live up to expectations? What if J.J. Abrams is too distracted by his newest creation of genius, Lost? (If you’re counting excellent television shows, Mr. Abrams is three-for-three with Alias, Lost, and Felicity. What can I say, I’m a 12-year-old girl…) Most worrisome, what if the hiatus was too long and not enough people return to the series? I spent less time in my mother’s womb than the eight months that Alias has been gone. But I’m confident and there’s a simple reason: after only 7&#189 months of gestation, look at how perfectly I turned out. If the new season of Alias is even close to that level, I’m sure we’ll get the best season yet of The Greatest Television Show Ever&#153.

What’s next? Canceling Alias?

Dear ABC Sports:

Yes, I know that Miami is a good team, but when the Hokies can finish NO WORSE than ACC co-champions after this game, we do NOT have to go into Miami and “STEAL” the championship. That’s Miami’s task. Acknowledging that is unbiased journalism. You might consider practicing it.

Also, learn to pronounce the players’ names. And our university’s name is NOT pronounced as “Vah Tech”. It is shortened in writing as “Va Tech”, but it’s pronounced “VIRGINIA TECH”. When you spoke with the coaches and players, did anyone say Vah Tech? No. When you pronounce Va Tech as “Vah Tech” instead of “Virginia Tech”, you think you’re being witty but you’re just being ignorant. Stop being ignorant.

You can’t even keep the broadcast live because you’re experiencing technical difficulties. When was television invented? It’s 75 degrees and sunny in Miami today, so weather isn’t the issue. You should be ashamed.

At least I’m not having to listen to the stupid announcers.

Thank you Bite me,

Tony

You stupid, stupid… silly little person

I read a column today by Bill Simmons in which he discussed his recent back injury-induced guilt-free TV weekend. He watched many, many episodes of bad television over the Thanksgiving weekend, including the most recent episode of The Apprentice. I loved The Apprentice when it started, but my interest is fading fast. The boardroom scenes are forced and painful to watch. My opinion about The Apprentice matches Bill Simmons’ comments about Desperate Housewives.

Whenever it comes on, I always end up leafing through a magazine or checking my e-mails — it just can’t keep my attention, kinda like this column for you right now.

Exactly, which confuses me when Mr. Simmons’ so absurdly imposes this opinion on me, the innocent connoisseur of fine television programming:

And like everyone else, I enjoy the boardroom challenges and wish they made them longer — maybe even a 90-minute show or something. What’s the downside of going to 90 minutes? “Joey” gets moved to another night? I think people would survive.

I could theoretically accept the idea of moving Joey to another night (may I suggest Wednesday nights, just before Alias), but I vehemently disagree with the notion that no one cares about Joey, or worse, that no one should. I laugh out loud during every episode. Some episodes, that means laughing at how funny the jokes are because they’re funny. The other episodes, that means laughing at how funny the jokes are because they’re not funny. In recent weeks, the former is happening in greater proportions than the latter. And we’re so grateful for that.

When the inevitable DVD release of Season 1 arrives, all the critics will watch and laugh and be all “Whaaaaaaaaat?” I’m telling you, this will happen.