Weblog Sin Pies

By Charley Daniels

Ah man, I have to work extra tomorrow because of the Emmys. And unlike many of my esteemed colleagues, I don’t get to be the man on the red carpet or schmoozing at parties; no, I get to be among the contingent of fresh-air starved, pasty editors back at homebase fielding articles and sidebars and blog posts written on BlackBerrys. At least they buy us dinner.

The primetime Emmys are important in the TV world, which got me thinking about TV, because I’m a master at analogizing. My TV habits are going through a metamorphosis right now. I’m a big TV proponent, but I’ve given up on two shows this fall, and the others are on notice: Shape up, series, because nothing on my DVR is safe anymore.

It started with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a show that I suffered one season through in the hope it would improve. I figured that the source material was solid enough that if the show found some momentum it could be really great. I reviewed the pilot. And what did I get for giving that bastard the benefit of the doubt? Jump-kicked in the crotch, that’s what (see review for full crotch-kick reference insight). What I got, more specifically, was a Season 2 premiere in which we discover that the company that eventually creates the computer network that spawns the Terminators is being run by a Terminator in disguise. You follow? If that seems to make no sense, then congratulations, you are a reasonable person. It really is that stupid. The fact that said Terminator disguised itself as a urinal for the big reveal is just the bitter pus icing on the moldy shit cake. Series recording: deleted.

And it felt good. I blame inertia for watching shitty shows, but it’s not inertia’s fault. Inertia doesn’t even work that way, I looked it up. These days we can choose our own viewing destiny, and we totally should.

Isabelle and I have been kicking around the idea of dropping cable altogether. Not because we don’t like TV anymore but because we’re far enough behind on our watching that we could easily go DVD-only and never run out of quality TV entertainment. Mix in movies, and we’re definitely set. I’m not 100% convinced that I want to do that yet, owing in part to what I do for a living, which is helped along by being current on at least a few series, and also because there are some TV things that don’t work as well on DVD. Timely things, such as The Daily Show and shows like that.

So we haven’t given up on TV, but deleting a year-old series recording inspired me, and I started looking around for more fat to trim. The new broadcast season is barely creeping along at this point, so the options are limited, but my next victim was an easy choice: Prison Break. When the second season of Prison Break started the prisoners had already escaped, so it was not uncommon to hear the joke “What will they call it now?” coming from less humorous corners of entertainment “journalism” and probably your dad, too, because it’s just the type of joke a dad would make.

“Prison BROKE, or what?”

So that’s not funny, but at the core it’s a good question, because when those inmates jumped the wall, Fox River Penitentiary was the least important thing they left behind. Yet I stuck with it. I let it go when they spent Season 2 on the run, loping about and advancing the plot to exactly nowhere, and I went along when they somehow ended up in jail again for Season 3 — in a Panamanian prison along with an FBI agent and a former prison guard who were both independently chasing them. I thought, “That’s pretty stupid, but at least the writers are trying to regain some of that awesomeness back.” Didn’t work. That show is bad, and it’s getting worse by the week. Yesterday when I deleted my Prison Break series recording, the Fox River inmates, the FBI agent, and the former prison guard were all working for the Department of Homeland Security, trying to find some magic computer chips or some crap. As others have noted, it defies logic at every turn. But it doesn’t matter, because I won’t be watching it anymore.

I realized earlier today what must be prompting this newfound freedom, leaving behind those shows (and the others that I’ll inevitably leave behind). It’s The Wire. That show has consumed my life for several weeks now (one of the contributing factors to my lack of posts). I’m almost finished with Season 4. I can’t say enough about it. It’s so well done it makes most other shows seem worthless. But don’t take my word for it! Watch it; you won’t be disappointed unless you’re an alien from outer space who should be locked up and poked with a sharp poker thing. This is the series that really should have raised the TV bar. I mean, it did, for those who paid attention. But they’re still churning out so much crap that it’s tough to tell if there was any real effect.

I’ll be judicious about adding shows, too. So far this season I’ve taken Fringe for a whirl. I gave up halfway through the pilot when they started talking about some mind-meld bullshit. “I don’t have time for this,” I said aloud, even though I was alone. Spent the next 45 minutes organizing my crisper.

I’m going to try Worst Week, and of course I’m looking forward to Pushing Daisies coming back. I think Chuck is a bubble series for me, however, so they better step it up. Also curious about Life on Mars and My Own Worst Enemy.

But all that is going to have to wait, because I have a busy Emmy day tomorrow and then something like 13 more episodes of The Wire to watch before my life can resume normally. And the best part of those two things consuming my time right now? The Wire barely received any Emmy love. Tragic, that is.