That's Entertainment

I used to work in the entertainment industry and to this day I still doing understand it. It all seems like such a waste. Gore Vidal talks about a conversation he had with Jackie Kennedy where they talked about all the money the campaign spent on opposition research to dig up dirt they knew they could never use. “All that money,” she lamented, undoubtedly knowing hundreds of better ways to spend it. I guess I feel the same way about entertainment. I like to watch TV and movies and I really appreciate it when they spent a fair amount of money on it and it turned out good. So why waste it all?

I watch a lot of cable shows that I enjoy like Eureka, the 4400, the L Word and Psych and as much as I enjoy them, the topography of British Columbia is starting to get to me. I know these kinds of shows are set in places like Santa Barbara and Washington State or weirdly enough the heart of West Hollywood (not exactly a lesbian mecca but I digress). But they end up looking exactly like what they are: shot within blocks of each other. I know it’s about cutting costs but we can tell! Paul Monette wrote about feeling instantly comfortable when he moved to Los Angeles and later on a picnic with friends where Lassie had been shot, he realized why. It was the land of his TV childhood. I suppose if I ever go to Vancouver, it will feel like returning to the womb, if that is what my 30s can be called now that 50 is the new 30.

But speaking of the 4400, it has been ignominiously cancelled. Now we will never know what the future had in store for the human race. The same goes for the secret organization that built Jaime Sommers now that the Bionic Woman has been cast onto a digital garbage heap somewhere. And they had just introduced the hot son of Beau Bridges who barely had time to take his pants off and get comfortable.

Unfortunately, changing a show isn’t enough to save it these days. Back To You fired an eleven year old girl and replaced her with an even more adorable ten year old (off to a lifetime of broken relationships and therapy for you grandma!) only to find out that FOX did not want to go Back To You after all. Moonlight on CBS transformed their vampire hero who solves crime into a mortal who solves crimes. Groundbreaking! I guess I won’t miss that one after all, even though it appears it has been replaced by foxy Simon Baker as a fake psychic who helps solve crimes (ummm.. Psych II?). I hope he at least has the courtesy to take his shirt off more often than that James Roday. But the real crime is the end of Women’s Murder Club, a not great show, but still a satisfying one. Like Sprite. You wouldn’t choose it outright but on a hot day if it is over ice, it can hit the spot.

To me, it all seems like such a waste. What is the point of getting emotionally invested in a show, only to watch it disappear before your very eyes. Why can’t my love for TV be like Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward? Why do the networks keep giving us John Doe and Journeyman and Playing It Straight and then pulling a Love Story on us and expecting us to keep coming back? No wonder ratings are continuing to fall on the networks. At least with a cable show, they give you the whole season of Rome or Deadwood before they give up on it.

And the worst part is the waste. What a waste of money and talent and time and effort. It is one thing if everyone tries their best and you end up with Jezebel James, but Back To You is a great sitcom with the top talent in the business. Yes it doesn’t have the ratings of American Idol, but guess what FOX, neither does anything else on television. So the answer is to cancel a great show and keep another Bataan death march of a season of According To Jim, living proof that the devil is still willing grant immortality in tinseltown in exchange for a human soul or two. Or maybe it is proof that this is actually Hell itself.

So now we will never know why Journeyman was a journey man or what kind of sandwich Claire was always eating on Women’s Murder Club (I suspect a sensible PB&J because it can sit in a purse for hours without going bad). Those secrets will be kept locked away upstairs along with Bonnie Hunt’s other daughter and Richie Cunningham’s older brother. There was a rumor that Showtime wanted to bring Arrested Development back but with a smaller cast. As much as I miss one of the greatest shows ever, why would you want to play Sophie’s Choice with that cast? I guess some things are just better left in the realm of the unknown.