Bryan Loves Television Part Seis: Drama Day Cable

See? It's a pun on that Cuba Gooding, Jr movie. Clearly.

Well, moving on, for any of you who are still with me, the following rambling, incoherent diatribe involves little to no original research and was written while under the influence of a weird...warm lubricant that I'm not familiar with. People who I tagged...be honoured. Let's go down together, baby.

I did not bother to include the showtimes. Turn on one of these channels and your show will be on. Furthermore, again, these are my personal one-sentence explanations of all of TV.

F/X

Damages - Law & Order if everyone did crack ALL the time, mostly the lawyers.

Nip / Tuck - Dr. Doom, some other dude, and some hot chick are plastic surgeons, to my knowledge...cool?

Rescue Me - I enjoy this show when I catch it, wicked intense with a dark sense of humour, awesome.

Sons of Anarchy - Hellboy leads some dudes in a chain gang...cool?

TNT-ugghh TNT shows. What a crock. I really actually had a hard time coming up with even my first one-sentence thoughts on this shitshow.

It's good that we got such a recognizable name-based star to anchor our faltering programming schedule! Yeah!

Leverage - Advertised as starring Academy Award winner, Timothy Hutton. Real quick - name the role and movie he won it for and then named a single other movie starring Timothy Hutton! Oh shit!

The Closer - I have no idea if this is pronounced "Clozer" or "Close-er." Frankly...I don't wanna know.

Saving Grace - This is different from the Clozer somehow.

Raising the Bar - This is actually a show and not just a phrase, apparently.

Trust Me - The show whose title sounds like "Lie to Me" but in reality is actually like Mad Men without ANY of the finesse.

USA

rrrraaaappee

Burn Notice - This is one of those shows that sounds pretty cool but I never watch it.

In Plain Sight - Another police procedural. Yep. The world needs this.

MONK - What's his face, I only know him as Jeebs from Men in Black, brings up a stupid character from shitty...to OK.

PSYCH - This would be the most typical show ever if not for the two leads which actually make it interesting and funny at times. If only the writing wasn't the cliched plots it'd be awesome.

AMC

Breaking Bad - Malcolm's dad is a meth addict or something. Groovy.

Mad Men - Apparently amazing. I wouldn't know.

HBO

True Blood - Vampires are involved somehow, but not in any way that's cool.

Entourage - Ari Gold is awesome, that's all I know about this show.

In Treatment - I had never heard of this show before I looked up HBO's programming on Wikipedia.

Big Love - I remember hearing about this like 3 years ago, it's still on? What is this, HBO's According to Jim? I'm sure it's exactly as funny!

Showtime

I actually have no idea if this is from an episode of Californication or just Duchovny's daily routine. I'm pretty good either way.

Dexter - Pretty legendary, apparently, but I don't get showtime. Or the internet.

Californication - Mulder has a lot of sex. That's all I know.

The Tudors - I don't know what this is about, I presume it's like NBC's "Kings," but set during a time when it's actually relevant.

Weeds - If this show is as good as its namesake it should make me hungry, a little spacey, and highly able to tolerate Dave Matthews Band.


Channel Summations, because I was too lazy to get into them:

ABC Family - Youths have problems, but in a safe and cautioned environment.

Disney Channel - Youths have no real problems but think they do, in a safe and cautioned environment.

TBS - Crappy movies and worse TV shows.

History - UFOs or Hitler.

Discovery Channel - Dirty Jobs, Deadliest Catch, or something else that pretends to be educational.

E! - Presenting, the brainless masturbation network!

BET - Black people serving to put black people back 20 years. I watch the Boondocks instead.

SciFi - Absolutely terrible F-Level movies sandwiched between Star Trek and BSG repeats.

Bravo - Presenting, the brainless masturbation network! For gays!

So hopefully that's most of the shit on TV. Not a great time to turn on the box, really, but here's three shows that I watch regularly and enjoyed a lot:

Hey! The good one was British!
Who'da thunk it.

1) Life on Mars: This is a gimmicky police procedural that only has a few shows left (actually I think it ended a few weeks ago) that I really overlooked but occasionally caught because it followed LOST. I started reading about it, though, including its British inspiration, which was ranked among other things, the greatest ending of any television series EVER in a recent TV show. Anyway, it peaked my interest and I tried to follow this shitstorm a little closelier, to little reward, really, but the things is definately watchable. I have not seen the American finale yet, whether or not it lives up to the made-up British hype or not I'll have to find out.

And for a split-second...we all want to be Asian.

2) HEROES: Here's a show that was innovative and revolutionary its first season, then stagnated, got screwed by the writer's strike, and has just been spinning its wheels ever since. The first season's tight storyline, conclusive and rewarding finale, and interesting interpretation of a world where super-powered individuals exist easily made it must-see NBC TV in 2006. The second season had the exact same plot...and then the third season had...the exact same plot. A handful of characters have had...the same character and also the same powers since the first season, but the rest pretty much play musical chairs to fit the plot. HEROES ends up playing out like a poorly written LOST, if it can rekindle its first season magic it will become very decent, until then, it's a fucking fishy twatfest.

Yeah, they're cute now, but pretty soon they're
going to escape their Dharma cages and try to
bite Charlie's face off.

3) LOST: The single drama that I consistently watch and actually enjoy these days. LOST is like a serious Moral Orel that has lasted five seasons of hour-long episodes instead of three seasons of 15-minute long episodes. After the first two or three mind-fuck seasons, it started answering half the questions it raised and still poses relevant ones. The characters and production values are incredible, as is the editing and overall story structure. Its recent (actually since it began) handling of time travel is brilliant and also evident of how well it is written and how well it has been written for the past five years.

Now, LOST is a major part of my reasoning for loving modern television. Despite declining ratings after the first mind-fuck season, LOST remains a perfect example of how incredible TV can really be. Film-like quality of both writing and production values, a well-thought out story that is meant to take place during the course of a few years, impossible for the arch of a simple two-hour film. It does owe a lot to the 1990 series, "Twin Peaks" both in terms of film-like camera work and production values, long over-arching stories, and in general, a whole shittruck full of confusing fuckin shit that went on all the time. That the Twin Peaks legacy did not really find a foothold until LOST premiered in 2004 is disappointing, as is the fact that a reality show like "Dancing with the Stars" is vastly cheaper to produce and gets much better ratings. Coupled with the fact that another show like Heroes has essentially failed miserably and the chances of another program the quality of LOST coming around any time soon is slim. But I dig a lot that a show like this can be still on, even if next season will be its last.

So that's drama, baby. As soon as I think of a good punny title for Comedy (read: bad punny title for Comedy), we'll continue this shitfest of a Blog Entry.