TV Is Totally Letting Me Down

Now that it’s the end of October, I feel it’s fair to do an assessment of the new TV season. And my assessment would be that it sucks ass. I feel like Homer Simpson, asking the TV to give him some of that sweet sweet magic and all he gets in return is Admiral Baby. This year, I tried three new shows:

1. Vanished. This show looked sort of interesting. It’s an ongoing mystery, and I loves me some mystery. And it has that hot guy from the American Queer as Folk. I watched two episodes and decided it was totally lame and that I liked the hot guy better when he was gay. Fox is moving the show around on the schedule and it’s apparently on the verge of cancellation.

2. Smith. The promos for this one looked cool, and the first episode was really good. Unfortunately, the next two episodes were lame. I was going to give it one more week to turn things around, but CBS made the decision for me by canceling it. I guess even the combined hotness of Jonny Lee Miller and Simon Baker just wasn’t enough to keep this one afloat.

3. Studio 60. The first episode was decent. I watched two more episodes, but each one got a little worse. I find the show clever in some ways, but everyone is so damn self-righteous and preachy. They are producing a sketch comedy show, not saving the world. Of course, the fact that everyone takes themselves so seriously might explain why the sketches aren’t funny. I gave up after the third episode, and it appears that much of American did as well, as the show is rumored to be on the chopping block.

I figure that this is fine, because the less TV I’m watching, the more time I have for important intellectual pursuits, like sitting around on my ass and reading Vogue. And I always have the returning shows to keep my company. Only, that isn’t working out so well either. I’m still enjoying House to some extent, because of my undying love for Hugh Laurie, but what is up with the three young doctors? They just get dumber every year. Watching gives me lupus panic too, since it seems that lupus is the answer to any odd combination of symptoms. Last year, I really liked Bones, but this year, it’s just stupid. They replaced the interesting male boss character with the really annoying female boss character, who seems to be there solely for the purpose of providing “sexual tension.” Just a hint, but manufactured “sexual tension” is, ummh, not sexy. And the plots are terrible. It’s painfully obvious by about 20 minutes into the show who the murdered will turn out to be.

And then there’s Lost. Where do I even begin with Lost? Last week, the promos promised that a huge secret would be revealed. The big secret? The Others are apparently on another island that’s about 100 yards from the original island. Big fucking deal. And the direction of this episode was painfully obvious from the beginning. Conman Sawyer is in jail. And wow, what a surprise, he’s running a con. And it turns out that the Others were conning him! Raise your hand if you didn’t see that one coming. I actually missed 15 minutes of it since I left the room when Henry Gale started torturing the rabbit. Nobody hurts a bunny on my watch.

With all this free time, I can totally work on that novel I’ve been meaning to write. Or read US Weekly. Whatever.