Dickens had it right: 2005 was definitely the best and worst of times on the tube, and the top TV event of the year, still playing out after four months, proves it. Katrina.
Not since 9/11 has there been such a catastrophe in America, and not since 9/11 have the TV networks from the big three to Univision been able to marshal their forces and produce such stirring, gripping and unbelievable stories and images to move a nation — if not a government.
When one looks at the current unraveling of the Bush Administration, it is the televised images of sheer horror and devastation from Katrina, and the Bush Administration's failures to alleviate the suffering of thousands of Americans, or even seem to care, that began that unraveling.
ABC News anchor Peter Jennings died of lung cancer in 2005. We remember writing about 9/11 and how Jennings presented some of the best round-the-clock reporting of that terrible event of anyone on TV. So it was with Katrina: Jennings' legacy was carried forward with the incredible efforts of the ABC news team. It was Nightline's Ted Koppel who brought down execrable FEMA director Michael Brown with the damning statement, "Man, don't you people watch television?!"
John Donvan and Chris Bury, veteran Nightline reporters, their pale, red-headed visages sunburned to blistering, gave the truest picture of the unfolding horror. It was Bury who "found" the Convention Center, with its staggering thousands who had gone without water or food (and of course, sanitation) for more than three days. Bury took his cameraman through, a man who wept at seeing a dead infant on the tour, and said quite simply, "If this isn't Hell, I don't know what is."
Koppel raised this response from Brown about the CC: "No one told them to go there."
Except "they," the suffering poor of New Orleans, had indeed been told to go there, by the Mayor, the Governor and others.
ABC's Bob Woodruff, made co-anchor with Elizabeth Vargas just weeks ago, owes that position in no small way to his reportage during Katrina. Woodruff has always been a reporter on the front lines. We've watched him report from various war zones over the years, and he was ABC's first man-on-the-ground after the December 26 tsunami in the Indonesian Basin, which certainly prepared him for what he found on the Gulf Coast. He was definitely up to the job.
ABC gets a second "best" for their gal Oprah, who led her own team of celebrities with cash to salvage lives. Oprah grew up in rural Mississippi and visited her hometown devastated by Katrina. She enlisted sacks full of celebrity cash and did what FEMA and the Bush team seemed incapable of: helped people on the ground. Her friend, actor Matthew McConnaghy, single-handedly airlifted a bunch of doctors and some 30-odd dogs out of harm's way.
As is so often the case, Oprah with her celebrity power was able to do more than those in real power. Maybe that's because she just wants to help? Oprah also donated $10 million of her own money to the victims whom she later went to visit in shelters. She shot several shows from the Astrodome.
Fox trot
If ABC (with an honorable mention to NBC and the team led by anchor Brian Williams, whose outrage matched Koppel's) got best TV news reporting of 2005, it should be no surprise that FOX got worst.
Set aside their second "worst" of the year, the ridiculous "war on Christmas" news-story-that-wasn't that their star "fair-and-balanced" go-to-guy Bill O'Reilly has been flogging in recent weeks. Their reportage of Katrina was fraught with an undercurrent of classism and racism that was unmistakable, you could smell it through the small screen. They just don't like poor people. Especially if they aren't white. They get our "worst" rating for so many reasons.
NBC gets our "best" for ongoing coverage of Katrina. Williams has gone back repeatedly, including just last week, to report on what has (little) and what has not (lots) been done to put the Gulf Coast back together.
But the single "worst" TV moment in the Katrina tragedy was George Bush's creepy live report from in front of St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square in the French Quarter. Commandeering all the electricity in the blacked-out city, the President, with rolled-up sleeves, gave a speech of unparalleled bizarreness about how New Orleans would be rebuilt, blah, blah, blah. As Williams later noted on his blog, the flood of lights went out after Bush left and the city returned to darkness. A metaphor if ever there was one.
ABC also gets our "best" for Terry Moran's unparalleled grilling of the Bush team on the issue of torture. Just last week Moran, one of the three reporters to take over for Koppel at Nightline, nearly caused the heartless Dick Cheney to have another attack as he queried him. Moran, longtime senior White House correspondent for ABC, was on assignment with Cheney during the VP's surprise trip to Iraq. Moran put the case for torture in terms every American could understand: "Mr. Vice President, you have daughters, I have daughters. Is this the world we want for our kids, where the Vice President of the United States can't say torture is wrong?"
Moran gets our "best of the year" for real reporting of political events. He gives us hope that reporters can remember that their job isn't to take what this or any Administration says at face value. Judith Miller, are you listening? Their job is to ask hard questions.
We'd also like to land a second-echelon best on CNN's Anderson Cooper for his expert reporting during Katrina and of Iraq.
Speaking of Iraq, which so few do, that gets our "worst of the year" award. How the slaughter of 2,200 American soldiers and, according to the President two weeks ago in Philadelphia, 30,000 Iraqis could be the non-news story of the year escapes us, but it was. We're all for democracy and purple fingers, but the voting wasn't the story. The dying and mutilating was. Perhaps in 2006, with elections in the wings, these stellar news teams can get back to that story in-depth. After all, it is a war.
Scot beat
Of course, TV is only part news. The rest is (supposed to be) entertainment. We have a lot of bests this year in that category.
Our favorite, must-see show on TV: Craig Ferguson's Late Late Show following Letterman on CBS. Ferguson is smart, edgy, cute as hell, has the great Scottish accent and is a one-man show. His opening monologues have made him a cult favorite among smart, left-leaning insomniacs. His little Pythonesque skits are hilarious, and his guest round-up is superb: celebrities and writers, the best comedians we've ever seen and edgy new music, as well as big names. He's like Bill Maher without the cynicism. You can also catch him next week hosting the People's Choice Awards on CBS.
Our favorite new bit of Ferguson's is "Is the President drinking again?" For several weeks now, Ferguson has been taking clips of Bush's news conferences and slowing the speed infinitesimally. Bush sounds like a drunk boy at the frat house trying to impress a girl with his knowledge of politics, and failing miserably. These spots are hilarious — oh, except he really is President.
Other late-night bests include Jimmy Kimmel's monologues, his Friday-night skewering of the FCC and his wonderful excising of clips from televangelist TV, which never fail to stun.
In the comedy line-up, we also give a "best" to Tina Fey for a much-improved Saturday Night Live, and to her and Amy Poehler for their fantastic version of SNL's news update.
You don't have to stay up late to catch the best new drama series on TV. ABC's Invasion might have had a bad-timing entrance, given its oddly prescient storyline of a devastating hurricane and the aftermath, in which government abandons the needy and there's no water or electricity for months. But the show is wonderfully cast, superbly written and acted, has all the government-conspiracy angles down pat, and is incredibly entertaining with its X-Files-ish story. It follows last season's best, Lost, still a super show, on Wednesdays on ABC. Don't miss it.
Our best couple of the year should have been Bianca and Lena on ABC's All My Children, but both left the show. Bianca has recently returned, sans girlfriend, but with baby in tow. It remains to be seen what will happen with her. She's currently one of those solo lesbians that we have seen all-too-often on the tube.
Since the Bianca-and-Lena coupling didn't pan out, we've had to look elsewhere for a "best," and there's no question: "Best couple" is James Spader and William Shatner on ABC's Boston Legal, as Alan Shore and Denny Crane. ABC also gets our vote for most improved network: we remember when the only good show they had was NYPD Blue.
Spader and Shatner play acerbic lawyers and are mesmerizingly good in their roles as two friends with infinite problems relating to others. The past few weeks they have been sleeping together in an innuendo-filled storyline that has more to do with Shore's night terrors than anything gay, but it has given David Kelley, the show's creator, ample room to address gay issues. Nicely done. If you haven't caught the show or the coupling, do. Spader and Shatner are the best actors on prime time.
There were many "worsts," as there always are on TV, among them: ABC's Commander in Chief, a terrible program setting the stage to keep a woman from becoming President by showing just how silly girls in power can be. The episode of ER shown on World AIDS Day in which a mother with AIDS refused to have her HIV+ child treated because AIDS, she said, is just a government conspiracy. Her theories on AIDS were so unworthy of a show consistently dedicated over the past decade to AIDS awareness. Everything on FOX News. Everything on televangelist TV (although it's worth watching occasionally to see what they think of us).
TV in 2005 was best exemplified by Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel. Jennings died in August and Koppel retired in November, but both brought a standard to TV that it rarely achieves. On their own, they made 2005 a best in reporting. And their legacy, training reporters like Terry Moran, bodes well for the future of TV news.
It was a hellish year, but TV brought it to us in living color so we couldn't look away. Stay tuned.