TiVo Lady

Britz: Oops, I Forgot It's British!

Britz is a two-part television special/movie airing on BBC America, and although it has some logistical/time-line problems, it's quite entertaining (as well as more than a little preachy).  It's the story of a brother and sister, born to Pakistani parents but living in Britain.  Sohail, the brother, responds to tensions with the Muslim community by joining MI5 as a highly-valued, Urdu-speaking desk agent.  His sister, Nasima, is radicalized and becomes a terrorist.  (She travels to Pakistan to take a terrorism course, nearly as easily as she's been taking medical courses at college in London, but her lessons seem to take about a week.  In almost no time, seven days actually, she's assembling a rifle blindfolded and cooking up her own homemade bombs.)

I loved all the insider-y details about MI5--ever since I fell for George Smiley, I've got a soft spot for these Brit spies, about whom I know only what I have learned from fictional references.  (Could even be there's no such thing...)

Anyway, I was happily enjoying this four-plus hour series, saved by my TiVo, until the end.  I won't spoil it here, but I will say that I had forgotten it wasn't an American production.  If Americans had made this cautionary tale about a Muslim family living in the West, it would have had an upbeat ending, with everyone living Happily Ever After.

So, that's what I was expecting:  Nope.  This was made by Brits, for Brits.  So it has a realistic ending instead.

Boom.

Nobody Wants to Be Ordinary People

My new all-encompassing theory of Modern Television Programming:  Escape From Normality.  We are all special;  nobody is ordinary;  everybody has hidden talents.  To assure ourselves of this, television writers and producers are creating more and more shows that focus on characters who are uniquely gifted.

On NBC, there is Heroes, a show about attractive young people with super powers, like the ability to fly and read minds and never die and move objects by thought.  There's Chuck, a sales guy in a big box store who's really a secret agent.  And, now, there's My Own Worst Enemy, a show about an apparently average husband and dad whose other half--his split personality--is a superspy who speaks 13 languages and can hold his breath for five minutes.

ABC has Eli Stone, a guy whose brain aneurysm gives him weird visions and a kind of ESP.  On Pushing Daisies, the guy can bring back the dead with a touch, but also kill with the same touch.  And in Life on Mars, a cop seems to time travel from the present back to the 1970's.

Well, you get the idea.  Unless the show is about a crack homicide detective or crime scene investigator, a pretty young single looking for love, or suckers on a reality show, it's pretty much guaranteed that any new American television show will be about one or more normal-looking human beings with seriously cool superpowers.

Too bad we don't have any of those in Washington right now.  Or, at least, on Wall Street.

Black Comedy, Boomer Style

Breaking Bad is black comedy, though there's not a whole lot of humor in it.  But there are, surely, dark and depressing and disturbing themes everywhere. Plus, it's all about a Boomer.  A nutty, spontaneous, wildly depressed Boomer, but a Boomer nonetheless.

There were only seven episodes of this show, due to the writer's strike, but each one is a gem.  (The show just won two Emmys, and has been renewed for a second, thirteen- episode season.)  The story revolves around Walter White, played by Boomer Bryan Cranston (born in 1956).  He's a high school chemistry teacher, with a young and pregnant wife, a teenage son (of the heart-throb variety) with cerebral palsy, and a bad, newly-discovered case of lung cancer.  So, logically enough, he decides to make and sell crystal meth, so that he can leave a big bag of cash for his family after he departs the planet.

See, he's a chemistry teacher, so he's capable of making really, really GREAT meth, apparently.  Also of committing a bit of homicide, some road rage, disposal of bodily parts and fluids, and various other stuff, all of it entertaining and most of it reflecting untold depths of rage and despair.

Hey, my kind of show.

The Ex-List

The Ex-List is not even remotely "Boomer TV," though I've categorized it as such.  See, the show focuses on Boomers / 2, meaning that the cast is approximately Half Boomer Age.  Or, another way to view it, is that they're exactly our age--only in 1978 and not in 2008. 

Elizabeth Reaser, born in 1975, plays Bella Bloom, a 30-something florist (yikes!) whose fortune teller predicts that she must marry within the year, or she'll be alone forever.  But that she already knows the guy who's her "soulmate."  Reaser has an appealing plainness about her, and she's down-to-earth pretty, since none of her features are perfect---crooked smile, bent nose, eyes too close--but she's attractive anyway.  Her best friend, Vivian, played by Alexandra Breckenridge (born in 1982, for God's sake), had a starring role in the dreadful FX show, Dirt, which has thankfully been laid to rest.  She's the pretty blonde, and Rachel Boston plays the sister, Daphne, the pretty, about-to-be-married brunette.  These girls weigh about 150 pounds--which would be unusual in Television-Land, but that's their total weight.  You'd need to tie 'em together and twist to be able to lift a single bag of dog food.

Another weird fact is that the show was adapted from an Israeli sitcom, called "The Mythological Ex," according to the L.A.Times.  Unlike the grating, irritating, pompous HBO show, "In Therapy," also adapted from Israeli TV, this one is a little smart and a little funny and even a little entertaining.

Unfortunately Named Show: "The Mentalist"

The most unfortunate aspect of this new CBS show, The Mentalist, is its name, The Mentalist.  I mean, is it about a list of guys?  Or a twisted psycho?  Surprisingly, though, what this show does have is charm.  The androgynously-named hero, Patrick Jane (is he a guy?  is she a girl?), is played by the devilishly-handsome Australian actor, and non-Boomer, Simon Baker.  The man is pretty, but with smoky, bedroom eyes and a pervasive sadness that grows on you.  He suffers, of course, from Dead-Wife Syndrome, a terribly traumatic illness that afflicts many moody, troubled TV-Movie cops who feel responsible for their death of their spouse.  (In this case, Mr. Jane/Pat, is responsible not only for the death of his wife, but of their child, too.)

So far, there are no Boomers in sight in this show--although the murderer in the show's premiere, played by Zeljko Ivanek, was born in 1957.  Maybe this small, very young cast, will find it's calling every week by solving murders COMMITTED BY BOOMERS!  Hey, we still have some purpose in life, after all.

Don't bother going to the CBS Website for information about this show.  I don't know who their tech guys are, but there are terrible.  CBS should receive an award for Worst Network Website Ever.

Still, you can watch the full episode here.  Allegedly.

...and 3 Terrible Summer TiVos

The three worst, most dreadful television shows of the summer include: Swingtown, an embarrassing and painful attempt by CBS to document sexual experimentation among married couples in the 1970's. It always rings false and forced, from the clothing to the music to the lingo, despite the fact that I adore Molly Parker, the actress who played Alma Garret, in the late, great HBO show, Deadwood, and I can't resist her here, either, though I pity her for being involved in this embarrassing fiasco. There's also the CBS show, Flashpoint, a cop-drama about a SWAT team in San Francisco, that stars Boomer Enrico Colantoni (born in 1963), who played the dad on Veronica Mars, for whom I feel a lingering, but quickly-dissipating loyalty.Every week, it's the same old thing: we see almost the end of a bad hostage situation, then we zip back in time to when it began, and then forward again. So predictable, you can watch with your eyes closed. Then, there's The Cleaner, on A&E, a self-righteous show starring Boomer Benjamin Bratt (born in 1963), about a guy who helps addicts get clean, and seems to have help from a Deity, though it's not clear how or why. Again, every week it's the same, dull plot, though I adore seeing Grace Park here, who plays Boomer and Athena (uh, she's a Cylon, so there are lots of copies of her) on the great show Battlestar Galactica, which I promised not to mention ever again. Ooops.

Anyway, steer clear of these disastrous attempts at entertainment, and your summer will be vastly improved.

Top 3 Summer TiVos. . .

This summer, though the TiVo pickings have been sparse, I've been enjoying three shows the most. Okay, I adore these shows: Generation Kill, a true drama about the Iraq war on HBO; USA's In Plain Sight, a cop story about Federal Marshals who handle protected witnesses; and Weeds, a dramedy about Nancy, a pot-dealing mom on Showtime. It's funny, but dark, cheeky but a little bit perverse. The neighbor mom attacks Silas, Nancy's teenage son; Nancy has an affair with a hot Mexican drug dealer, who gets shot at while they're having lunch, and insists on finishing his meal (the bullets only graze him), but he's still bleeding afterward, when they're having sex. It even stars several Boomers, including Elizabeth Perkins (born in 1960) and Kevin Nealon (born in 1953). And the great and painfully perky Mary-Louise Parker,who plays Nancy, is a tail-end Boomer, born in 1964.

What's not to love/adore?

I'm not including AMC's Mad Men in this list, since I had to wait nearly all summer for it to begin, and I'm peeved about that. But, of course, it's as great as ever. (Which I pointed out, exactly one year ago.)

Generation Kill: HBO, Forgiven

I've been holding a grudge against HBO, ever since they trashed the great, great series, Deadwood, and replaced it with the unbearable, unwatchable, loathsome John From Cincinnati.  But, now, with the airing of Generation Kill, a terrific new Iraq war drama, all is forgiven.  Forever.

This show is a tragi-comedy about the absurdities of modern war in Iraq:  about commanding officers who can't read a map, about sargeants obsessed with facial hair, about soldiers relieving their bowels in suburban enemy neighborhoods, about the fear of gas attack, about the fear of not shooting at the enemy, about terrifying rumors of J. Lo's death, about being in a war without enough plate armor for the vehicle and without batteries for the night scopes, and about getting a Pizza Hut delivery the night before the war begins.

The script, based on a book by Evan Wright, an embedded reporter for Rolling Stone, is so good that I am riveted from first scene to last, every minute wishing I could write something half as good. The only thing vaguely Boomerish about this show is that Wright is a near-Boomer, now 43 years old.  But most of the cast is comprised of quite young men, with the exception of several officers, including Sgt. Major John Sixta, played by Neal Jones, born in 1960, who played the Captain's gay son on Rescue Me (a great show that I miss deeply).  There's also Lt. Col. Ferrando, played by Chance Kelly, who hides his age on IMDB, but looks to be in his 40's, but maybe not.

If you need a reason to forgive HBO, watch this.  You won't be sorry.

D-List Obsession

Granted, there is no TiVo, up or down or sideways;  it's a TiVo Disaster Era.  But a tiny ray of hope is shining through--either that, or I am truly, truly desperate.  For some reason, RioGringa and I watched a single episode of Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List.  And then, we watched another.  And another.  Now, we cannot stop watching!  It's like an infectious disease.  In one episode, where Kathy performs at a prison in Arizona, I cried when she finds out that a pregnant inmate is not allowed to be with the newborn baby for more than ten minutes. 

But there's a sweetness to this show--really, despite all of her "suck it Jesus" cockiness--that shines through, partly because she's so desperate for approval and success and attention.  And she never, ever hides her desperation.  She flaunts it.

Also, Griffin was born in 1960, so she is a tail-end Boomer.  She's open about having had cosmetic surgery, and sometimes she looks like a gorgeous redhead, and others, like a transvestite who's had most of the hormone treatments and nearly all of the surgery, but not quite.  In one episode, she hosts the Gay Porn Awards in San Francisco--she never says "No" to any work, ever!--and at times she seemed to morph into one of the transgendered guests on the show.

I keep thinking that we'll get tired of watching this, or fed up, or disgusted.  But, no, it just becomes more and more riveting.

She performs at trade shows, for Redkin Hair Products and for Alka-Seltzer,and at pet shows and at Carnegie Hall, and everything in between.  And the glorious paradox, conundrum?, is that now that her reality show about being on the D-List is a hit, she's actually moved up to at least the B-List.  Or even to the A-List, on the days she plays a sold-out performance at Carnegie Hall....

I'm giving this way, way too much thought.  I really need more TiVo....

Trickle of TiVo

Eureka!  A single decent TiVo'ed summer show has arrived, and I haven't even been grafted to write raves about it!

The new show is on USA, called In Plain Sight, and stars Mary McCormack as Mary Shannon, a U.S. marshall who supervises the Witness Protection Program.  It's set it the very exotic, very offbeat Albuquerque, New Mexico, and features lots of long shots of beautiful mesas (?) and desert vistas. 

Born in 1969, McCormack is no Boomer, alas, but her mom, Jinx, played by Leslie Ann Warren, most certainly is. Born in 1946, she's actually Leading-Edge Boomer, and one who's so seniorexic, she looks as if she hasn't eaten solid food since 1992.

Like the other alterna-networks Boomer Girl Cops, like Grace, in Saving Grace, and Brenda, in The Closer, Mary is grouchy but sexy, bad with relationships, and somewhat of a mysterious yet powerful presence.

In other words, she is way cool.

The supporting cast is wonderful, especially her sidekick and partner, the rail-thin straight man, Marshall Mann, played by Fred Weller, an almost Boomer, born in 1966.  But my favorite, is Mary's so-called boyfriend, the kind with no strings attached.  He's Raphael, who is, thank goodness, going to be a regular on the show, played by Cristian de la Fuente, a Chilean actor and former soap star, who played the faux-Brazilian sex symbol on Ugly Betty last season.  All I can say is:  Viva Chile!!

The script is clever, the characters are sharp and funny, and I am really desperate for any new shows worth TiVo-ing.

After all, I have a book to write, and nothing says Procrastination On Book Writing like "Now Playing List" on TiVo!

P.S.  It's not just random Boomer Bloggers who like this show, either.  Even the professionals are smitten. . .