Ah, TV �" joy and curse. We know we watch too much, and yet: So. Very. Good. This season has been resplendent with good TV. So much so that we may have to join a 12-step program because we are coming dangerously close to watching TV for as many hours a day as people who don't read. (And we do, we really do.)
Our loss, however, is your gain. There's a lot of crap to wade through to find the sparkly bits. We have checked out a lot of that crap. A lot. Take the sit-coms. Please.
Much of what passes for comedy on the tube these days is only vaguely funny, even if one allows for the wide range of humor out there. It's not that wide a range, after all. Once you pass puberty.
The best sitcom is still Fox's The Simpsons, which, after 20 years, is as smart, funny and slyly innovative as ever. If you missed the Halloween episode, check it out online. The spectacular send-up of Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, replete with black-and-white, is just awesome.
ABC's Modern Family is thigh-slappingly funny. The queer couple, Mitchell and Cameron, have perfect comic timing. Some argue that these two are gay stereotypes, to which we can only say that a compulsively tidy daddy and a chubster who loves Cher and Donna Summer and dresses the new baby as such do not necessarily gay stereotypes make. Are there no gay men who fit these descriptions? Many, many gay men?
Do these guys have sex? Possibly, but not on screen. But then neither do the straight couples on the show. Mitchell and Cameron do sometimes discuss their former sex life, pre-new baby. And while the baby may neuter them sexually, it also must make the homophobes nuts. We like that. Plus, they're hilarious. Which is, after all, the whole point of a sitcom. Recent exchange: Mitchell explains how he and his sister had a figure-skating duo called "Fire and Nice." Cameron, who does a great deadpan, looks at him and notes, "You did it. You managed to make skating sound even gayer."
The only flaw with Modern Family is it's on ABC at the same time Glee is on Fox. Glee is the gayest show on TV that is not on Logo.
We like dramas, but we don't much like sci-fi. Yet ABC's two new sci-fi dramas are well worth watching, even if they make the hairs on the back of one's neck stand up with unerring frequency because they come a little too close to real life for comfort.
This week, ABC debuted its much-vaunted and immensely watchable V series. A race of super-smart reptiles with universal health care and amazing spaceships invade/visit earth, hovering above 29 major world cities, including New York and Los Angeles. The Vs, as they are known (short for "visitors"), have a mantra: "peace, always," but the Vs may not be as peaceful as they claim.
First of all, they do not show their reptilian selves, but present as super-gorgeous model types in stylishly sleek Armani-style clothing. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Who wouldn't prefer Armani to looking like a giant lizard? Their leader, Anna (Morena Baccarin, from Joss Whedon's Firefly), is especially perfect: tall, lean, sleek, beautiful. She's also mesmerizingly charismatic and, well, there's no nice way to say this: proto-fascist.
Not surprisingly, many people are attracted to the Vs, gorgeous, mysterious and all health-care-y that they are. But others, like FBI agent Erica Evans (played with aplomb Lost by star Elizabeth Mitchell) are suspicious ("Visitors are old friends who stop by for a drink.") Rightly so, it seems, since the Vs aren't new visitors after all, but have infiltrated society on many levels. Agent Evans' very own partner, it seems, is one of the reptiles.
A small coterie of resistance fighters, Evans among them, begins the fight against the Vs. But Evan's teenaged son Tyler is among the new devotees. As are those cured of illness by the Vs. It's compelling drama, even if sci-fi is not your forte.
Inside Edition, clearly at a loss with no Jon and Kate story that day, decided to both blow the premiere by revealing that the Vs were reptiles (Inside Edition airs in the afternoon) and correlate it to the Obama Administration. According to Inside Edition, V is a "thinly veiled critique of the Obama Administration." The parallels are unmistakable, according to the show's Les Trent. "The leader of the space aliens is very good-looking, telegenic. She comes, much as Obama did, out of nowhere. There is instant mania for her among Americans and the press corps. She won't deal with news media that are critical or tough on her." And there's more.
"The most obvious reference to the Obama administration," Inside Edition notes, is "the aliens offer universal health care." You can't make this stuff up. Besides which, the Obama Administration has never offered universal health care. Plus, V is a remake of an earlier TV mini-series that aired in 1983. Which would mean that the leader was really parallel to Ronald Reagan. V airs Tuesdays. Watch.
Hawks eye
We were already liking ABC's FlashForward, the very best new drama of the fall season. Then, lo and behold, last week Agent Janis Hawks (Christine Woods) turned out to be a lesbian. A real I-don't-sleep-with-men lesbian. Because, as she told the woman she slept with in last week's episode, she hadn't dated a boy since junior high.
Hawks has been cagey about her love life since the show's first episode, but no more. She and Maya (played by Navi Rawat, a regular on CBS' tedious Numb3rs) were paired in a self-defense class together. When a male student asked Hawks out, she declined in a "I have to go home and wash my hair" sort of way. Maya dismissed the sweet but nerdy guy as a "douche" after he walked away.
Cut to dinner at a soigné restaurant. Hawks asks if Maya is a food critic or something. No, she's the chef at that very restaurant. Some discourse about being out at the FBI, and then Hawks leans over and kisses Maya on the mouth right there in the restaurant, and no one even looks at them. (That's DC for you.)
Cut again to the next morning. The two are getting dressed in Hawks' apartment. Hawks has to leave, tells Maya to stay and have the breakfast she's made for her. They make plans for later. Hawks jokes, "Stay, rifle through my stuff." But she was unprepared for Maya to check out Hawks' flash-forward story.
Then Hawks gets shot. (Don't worry, she's recovering. But one never knows on ABC whether a lesbian will end up still a lesbian in the next episode.) FlashForward gets its characters and Washington political intrigue just right. Watch.
Meanwhile, ABC's other Thursday night hit, Grey's Anatomy, is still struggling with how to handle the lesbian coupling of Arizona and Callie. Arizona is a grown-up, a superb surgeon and not a game-player. She's sure of herself. Callie, on her umpteenth relationship in a few years, has always seemed more than a little flaky. But finally the two seem to have gotten their signals together. Callie dressed up all sexy for Arizona, and Arizona told her she loved her. As the show faded to black, Callie told her she loved her back.
Okay, we're glad that these two can finally say the three little words. But why does every aspect of their intimacy happen off-screen, right down to Callie telling Arizona she loves her over a black screen? Enough already. Either this is a real relationship of the sort the other docs are having, or it isn't.
Speaking of real relationships and queer characters, what is going on over at The Young & the Restless? We never believed Adam was gay. We always thought there was nothing he wouldn't do to get what he wanted/needed, including sleep with his gay male lawyer if it would save his sociopathic ass.
We were proven correct when Adam told his dark secret to Sharon, for whom he appears to be developing feelings. He was definitive: the two were sharing examples of what terrible people they have been. He told Sharon he slept with his gay male lawyer to get what he wanted, but he's totally straight. But what happened to Rafe, the gay attorney who is also the show's only Latino? MIA.
Not missing, but with no real storyline either, is Y&R 's other gay male character, Phillip Chancellor, played by out gay actor Thom Bierdz. Every few days, Phillip walks into a scene with his estranged son, they have a fight, then the scene is over. Either use your gay characters or toss them. But even the Catholic Church has gotten rid of limbo.
Over on As the World Turns, the gloves are off between Luke and Mason. After Noah's film wrapped, Mason, a little tipsy, told Luke that as soon as he was no longer Noah's advisor, he was going after Noah. It's wrong, but we'd like to see Mason and Noah together. Mason (Forbes March) is sexy/smart/hot. Just as he was when he was on One Life to Live.
Speaking of OLTL, the big queer wedding that spilled over from last week was even better than anticipated. The anti-gay zealots were impressively realistic �" they looked just like the folks up in Maine right before that state overturned the same-sex marriage law. The Phelps-style bigots, replete with signs, goaded Officer Fish into coming out, something Kyle hadn't been able to do for months. Fish couldn't control his revulsion when the bigots presumed he was like them just because he's a cop. He announced he was gay and supportive of the queer weddings. "I'd rather be over there with people who love each other than here with people who only hate," he declared. It sounds so simple put like that, doesn't it? Love versus hate?
Finally, this comment on Private Practice, possibly the most (annoyingly) heterosexual drama on TV: "Why is Cat Woman so sexy and a woman with cats so not?" Cooper queries, clarifying how little men understand about women or lesbians.
Cat Woman is sexy. So are women with cats. Some people just handle a lot of pussies better than others. Stay tuned.