The Death of Network Television as We Know It

I swear, pretty soon this will be about corporate America, but...

An item in the Life Section of the Wednesday USA Today really caught my eye. It said that ABC has "yanked low-rated family sitcom Complete Savages...From its Friday lineup and will substitute repeats of 8 Simple Rules." Roll that around on your tongue for awhile and then ask yourself, "Is This The Sign I've Been Looking For?"

If that happens to be a sign that the world is about to end, then the answer is, I think, "no." But as for the future of network television, well that's another matter. Who knew, for example, that there was even such a show as Complete Savages? But more to the point, if the only thing ABC has lying in the bank is repeats of 8 Simple Rules, it ought to get out of the entertainment business--yesterday. Frankly, I thought that 8 Simple Rules was cancelled after John Ritter died, not that it was much to watch even with the deceased Mr. Ritter. Whatever talent he once had (and you can make your own judgments by checking out his career-defining work each night on Nick at nit reruns of Three's Company), by the time this painfully unfunny and achingly unrealistic look at parenting hit the airwaves it was not exactly making me forget McLean Stevenson's masterful work in Hello Larry. And now it's the fall back for another failed sitcom? How bad does that make Complete Savages?" and how come the programming director who let this dreck on the air still has a job? Anyone? Buehler?

The truth of the matter is that network television is barely relevant anymore. Who among us doesn't think that Desperate Housewives on HBO would be far superior? But while the networks barely stay above the ever rising quicksand when it comes to the one-hour drama (what's next, CSI: Akron?), they've pretty much stopped trying in the sitcom department. From what I can tell, NBC, for example, has exactly 3 sitcoms on its regular schedule: Scrubs, Committed, and Joey. God help us if Committed gets cancelled and replaced with back-to-back episodes of Joey. And the network heads continue to scratch their head and wonder why they lose market share to televised poker.

As the kids would say, "that's so random..."

I really wanted this to be about corporate America. And it will be, I promise. But there are other things on my mind.

Scrolling through the weekend...

I had a chance to see "In Good Company." I was forwarned by my teenage daughter that it really wasn't very good. On the other hand, a host of very positive reviews elsewhere and I found myself at the local multi-plex.

It turns out, both were right and that's not necessarily a good thing. From a performance standpoint, it was just fine. But now I do understand where my daughter was coming from. First, the marketing simply doesn't match the movie. Despite what you might believe from the ads you've seen, this is not a simple boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, contrived circumstances pull them apart, and love wins in the end. That's the kind of movies teenage girls, and their mothers, like most. But that wasn't this movie. There were breezy comic moments, to be sure. But the movie was much less boy-meets-girl than I suspect anyone in the audience could have imagined based on the TV ads.

Second, in the end I'm just not sure what the heck the movie was about which ultimately left me frustrated. When you pitch a movie idea to a studio, the rule of thumb is to keep it to one sentence. If it takes much more than that, there's little chance it will get made, unless you plan on distributing your "vision" yourself. This is something to keep in mind as you watch. When a movie's over, try to figure out that one-sentence pitch. If you can do that, chances are the movie was successful. I've struggled for the last two days to figure out the one-sentence pitch of this movie. "Early 50s corporate manager, too young to retire and too old to start over, struggles to find his place in today's corporate environment"? "Mid-20s, upwardly mobile corporate hot shot stuggles to find his place in today's corporate environment"? If either were the case, then how does the Topher Grace/Scarlett Johanson "relationship" figure into this matrix? Simply put, it doesn't and, I suspect, that's why the relationship itself lost its steam in the movie and, ultimately, is the reason why I think my daughter and her friends were unimpressed.

The sense I get is that the director, or perhaps the writer, didn't want to make another "romantic comedy" as if that's a bad thing. I don't accept that premise. Irrespective of the subject matter, a movie that knows what it wants to achieve and goes out and does just that will always be a successful movie. In the romantic comedy genre, think "My Best Friend's Wedding", "Love, Actually" or "Notting Hill." Nothing necessarily weighty in the subject matter, but in each case the movie was a success. The writers, directors, and actors all understood what they were trying to accomplish and then set about doing so. And in each case the experience was fulfilling.

But here, if anything was clear, the writer, director and the studio were not on the same page. Too many compromises were made in the editing. The sense I got was that the writer wanted to say something about corporate America. The studio wanted a romantic comedy. The poor director tried to balance the two and didn't end up delivering on either.

To me, the scene that perhaps served as the best metaphor for this movie occurred when Topher Grace's character is talked into buying the Porsche and crashes it as he drives off the lot. The crash didn't render the car inoperable, but it certainly took the steam out of the experience. So much promise, so little payoff.

Which brings me to...

The Pittsburgh/New England AFC Championship game. If you were a Pittsburgh fan, you had to like your chances. It had all the elements. History--never has a team with such a lofty record been denied a Super Bowl birth. Fate--the stellar record of their pact-with-the-devil quarter, Ben Roethlisberger. But in the end, they crashed and burned. Not only to a better team but a better coach. Bill Cowher comes from the Marty Schottenheimer coaching tree, having got his coaching start under Marty as the special teams coach with the Cleveland Browns. Marty has proven to be the ultimate tease as a coach, which is why he remains employed, albeit with his fifth team. He can get a team on the precipice, but like an undersized groom with an oversized bride, he can't lift the goods over the threshold. So too it appears with Bill. He's now lost 3 AFC Championships and one Super Bowl. And while I'm usually a team kind of guy, yesterday's loss is laid at his feet. With the game in the balance and the opportunity to do something great, he laid up, eschewing a chance to get within 7 points with nearly the entire fourth quarter to play in favor of a rather meaningless field goal. If ever there was a large sucking sound, that was it. You could visibly hear the air come out of the team, the fans and the entire city. I suspect the www.firebillcowher.com web site was up and running within seconds. I remember the last time I saw that kind of lay-up. It was at the 15th hole of the 1993 Masters when Chip Beck, three strokes down with four holes to play, refused to try and reach the reachable par 5 15th. Instead, he laid up, tried to get it close with the third and putt in for a birdie, none of which happened. Since that time, Beck has all but disappeared from the PGA Tour (where he once was an elite player and former Ryder Cup member). While I haven't yet checked the local papers, I'm suspecting there's a healthy dose of Pittsburghers just praying that Bill Schottencowher will do the same.

Another Cold Day in Hell

Not necessarily wanting to make this solely or even about politics, I nonetheless ate some bad pizza the other day, fell asleep and had the weirdest dream that this story appeared in the New York Times:

Bush Promises to Divide the Country

In a stunning rebuke to nearly half of the voting public and Democrats across the country, President George W. Bush pledged during his inaugural to divide the country even further during the next four years.

Speaking to the highly partisan Republican crowd attending last Thursday's inauguration Bush promised an aggressive agenda to eliminate those civil rights that get in the way of our war on terror while pushing through "value-based" initiatives that will steer this country more closely to God.

"I want a country that is one, big, united, big country," Bush said, "But we can't get there, we really can't, if we continue to allow the liberals in this country to keep criminals on the street and God out of the classroom."

Outlining the planks of his self-styled "War on Liberals", Bush promised to:

1. Sponsor the "No Bible Left Behind" initiative that would mandate the teaching of creationism as the only explanation for the origin of man.

2. Propose a package of Constitutional amendments that would: mandate teaching Christianity in public schools; specifically authorize the private possession of assault weapons; and, specifically deny a woman's right to choose.

3. Eviscerate nearly all environmental laws and regulations, or at least those that get in the way of progress.

4. Extend current tax breaks for those making in excess of $100,000 and eliminate all taxes on capital gains.

"These are just the beginning," Bush said. "In year 2 I'm thinking that maybe we need evern tougherer, mandatory jail sentences for welfare cheats and narrowing, as much as possible, liability for medical malpractice and job discrimination. Those things are really a big drag on business."

Bush shurgged off criticism that an aggressive agenda premised on the suspension or elimination of most civil liberties could alienate the U.S. in the world community, saying "Who gives a damn about pissing off the French--again. I know this will be hard work. It's hard. It really is. But I prayed about this last night and I know this will be best for the country in the long run. A nation that is more friendly to business, where everyone prays to the same God and, dammit, where everyone gets along is a good idea, it really is." Asked whether he recognized that his views were eerily similar to Hitler's vision for Germany in the 1940s, Bush said "I don't know much about that. That was a long time ago. But as I said on election night and I'll say again, 'this election has given me political capital and I intend to spend it.'"