Fall Preview 1997: TV is Good?
I‘VE SEEN THE BEST minds of my generation become … uh … the less best minds of my generation, starving, hysterical, stupid, dragging themselves off crusty couches, clutching the clicker at dawn, looking for a fix of programming that doesn’t make them howl in agony.
In a sense, the late Allen Ginsberg — who had the foresight to come out way before Ellen did — is the lucky one. Sure, Ginsberg passed away this year, but at least he doesn’t have to put up with the new fall season, one that rather unpoetically traces the ongoing free fall of the networks. Ginsberg, whom I believe ABC briefly considered hiring to supervise Jamie Tarses, isn’t missing much, since most of the new shows are totally beat, with a very small b.
Remember a couple years ago when some critics were waxing poetic about a new golden age of television? Well, the bastards lied. This year’s dramas lack drama; the sitcoms have little more than the sit part covered. Expectations are now so diminished that we don’t pooh-pooh clichés, we act absurdly thankful when those clichés are executed in a recognizable manner.
But don’t shoot your TV quite yet. There are still a few good reasons to keep watching (not that anyone needs a good reason to watch TV). We’ll always have Seinfeld, at least in syndication, and you can count on the photogenic profundity of Party of Five, the superfreakiness of The X-Files and the comfort of Friends. News Radio — like Buffy the Vampire Slayer — is still among the living, as are other assorted pleasures: Law and Order, Frasier, King of the Hill, Spin City, NYPD Blue and Homicide, not to mention Nightline, when newsworthy shit hits the fan, and Rivera Live when it doesn’t.
But that giant sucking sound you hear is the new fall season. No congressional inquiry, ratings system or little fucking V-chip can save your ass now. There are shows so vacuous, so bland and incoherent that sometime in September, you will find yourself screaming out, “Mr. Rhodes, we hardly knew ye!” With a few happy exceptions, what’s being served up represents a veritable Baskin-Robbins of badness — thirtysomething flavors of crap. What follows, then, is in effect a handy, dandy taster’s guide.
Editor’s picks
TOUCHED BY A MARTIAN
THE SHOW THAT BEST defines the strange, mystical, spaced-out place we’re at as a TV culture is The Visitor (Fox, Fridays, 8 p.m.), in which the ID4 team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin takes an independence day from logic and, in the attempt, crosses The X-Files with Touched By an Angel. John Corbett of Northern Exposure fame plays a war hero/alien-probe victim/retro, hunky Christ figure from the past who returns to earth 50 years after disappearing into the Bermuda Triangle. He crashes with a hot single mom and her Hansonish son. “This is weird,” the kid tells Corbett at one point in the expensive-looking pilot. “Weird but cool.” It would be nice to see The Visitor get weirder and cooler, but, that said, it’s more watchable than anything on NBC‘s silly Thrillogy. Credit goes less to the Fugitive-meets-My Favorite Martian scenario than to Corbett’s low-key charm — what alien wouldn’t want to probe this all-American stud?
In the family sitcom Meego (CBS, Fridays, 8:30 p.m.), another single parent (Ed Begley Jr.) gets a little extraterrestrial live-in help when the much-morphing Meego (Perfect Strangers‘ Bronson Pinchot) from the planet Marmazon 4.0 crash-lands in the yard. Meego seems like a kind of toned-down Mork from Ork, but there’s a ringer in the house: Jonathan Lipnicki, the wacky little scene stealer from Jerry Maguire. The kid’s considerable cutes couldn’t save The Jeff Foxworthy Show, but maybe the combo of his tiny star power and the show’s Third Rock From the Nanny plot line will help Meego survive in this ratings atmosphere. All I say is: Somebody show me the funny!
I plan to never dream of Genie (ABC, Fridays, 9 p.m.), a post-Sabrina trifle from the creator of Boy Meets World that had this boy wishing the world would end — soon. Harley Jane Kozak is appealing as the single mom who could use some paranormal help, but her male Genie (the unfunny John Ales) takes us on a not-so-magic-carpet ride straight to tedium. ABC also has Teen Angel (Fridays, 9:30 p.m.). It’s about a dead 15-year-old who returns to earth as his best buddy’s guardian angel — now if there’s anything funnier than a 15-year-old, it’s gotta be a dead one, right?
In Good News (UPN, Mondays, 9 p.m.) we get a man of God but no aliens — yet. Young preacher David Randolph (David P. Ramsey) becomes acting pastor at a black church, and that’s about all the acting of note here. Executive-produced by Ed Weinberger (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, Cosby), the churchly laughfest comes to us from MTM — a company now owned, incidentally, by Pat Robertson. One-time Beatles backup musician Billy Preston can be spotted as the church keyboardist, but even he can’t make this whole thing fab. The gospel truth, brothers and sisters, is that the news here ain’t all that good.
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