| A few things I meant to tell you but forgot | |||
| By JOHN DOYLE Monday, April 12, 2004 - Page R2 |
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Silly me. I forgot. My attention was elsewhere. It goes along with the TV-viewing thing. I think so, anyway. I mean, I'm not under the age of 3, but you'd never know. Sometimes people say that I'm childish. These studies should be a warning to us all. Now, where was I? I know there was this study thing, but there was something else, I think. Fox cancelled Wonderfalls. They bad. Fox never really got behind the wonderful Wonderfalls. Instead, the Fox people are hot for The Swan. They so bad. There was something else I had to tell you. It had to do with George W. Bush. I'm pretty sure about that. Heavens, what was it? Oh yes - The New York Times says that there are a lot of anti-Dubya jokes on TV. The Times tells us it's not just the late-night talk-show hosts any more. No sirree. On Whoopi, an actor who looks like Bush appeared at Whoopi's hotel and used the bathroom. There was toilet humour at Dubya's expense, apparently. That Whoopi, she so bad. On Law & Order recently one of the detectives referred to Bush as "the dude that lied to us." Those New York Times reporters, they not so dumb. They figured out that most Hollywood types hate Bush. Do ya think? And while I think of it - which is a brief moment in time, what with the disorder thing - what on earth were reporters from The New York Times doing watching Whoopi? They so silly. There was another thing I had to say. It was about a study of some sort. Did I tell you about the attention-disorder study? I did? (Sorry, I keep losing track here.) Right, it was something else - TV dinners. In Britain, the magazine Mother & Baby commissioned a study of 2,000 parents of tykes and found that kids who are placed in front of the TV to eat alone while they watch the box, are bad mannered. They have few social skills or table manners. They so bad, those babies. God, I'm hungry. I skipped lunch. I can't stand eating with other people. Wait a minute, now, wait a minute. I did actually have lunch. I just remembered that. It was a muffin and an apple. But there was something else I forgot to tell you about. It had to do with Friends. It's coming back to me now - a whole bunch of people voted The One with the Prom Video as the best episode of Friends ever. It aired in 1996. Monica and Rachel show a video of their prom, which reveals that Monica was once "fat" and Rachel's nose was bigger when she was younger. Me, I don't think I've ever seen that episode. Or maybe I have, and simply forgotten about it. I dunno. I bad. I forget stuff. Did I tell you about the study? The one about attention disorder being linked to TV-watching? Airing Tonight: Two and a Half Men (CBS, CH, 8 p.m.) is on for hours tonight. Literally. CBS is airing a marathon of four consecutive episodes. To remind TV critics about tonight's big event, a letter came recently from co-creator and executive producer Chuck Lorre. He points put that the show has averaged 15.42 million viewers a week in the United States. That's pretty good. Among all programs, it currently ranks No. 15, but it is the No. 1 scripted series of this TV season (comedy or drama) and among comedies it is ranked No. 3, behind only Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond. It is, in truth, an occasionally cute comedy. Charlie Sheen plays a shallow but lovable bachelor who finds himself living with his uptight brother (Jon Cryer) and his brother's young son. High jinks and witty repartee often ensue. Family Secrets (W, 10:30 p.m.) is a fine series that hasn't received enough attention. Creator Maureen Judge has an excellent track record in documentaries (In My Parents' Basement and Unveiled: The Mother/Daughter Relationship) that manage to reveal ordinary people in intimate and emotional detail without giving the viewer the creeps. This series is about observing people who hold secrets. Some of these secrets are appalling and some are conventional problems. Judge's great gift is in giving us portraits of these people that are utterly uncontrived. Also, these are not people who wallow in their problems. There's an odd sort of zip and optimism to the programs. Even tonight, in an episode that features a family that endured terrible sexual abuse from their father, there is a fierce focus on transcending the past. The victims speak eloquently and passionately about what they endured. They are still angry - they lived in a deeply religious community and later realized that many people knew they had been abused, but chose to do nothing. One victim has written a book about the experience. Others just want to tell the camera what happened. The program captures their raw emotions and lets you feel their fervent wish to embrace the future. Dates and times may vary across the country. Please check listings or visit http://www.globeandmail.com/tv FAMILY SECRETS, W NETWORK 10:30 PM ACROSS CANADA |