Entry tags:

jambar, television

television euthanasia
There’s a point in every TV show’s lifespan where it’s more than obvious that cancellation is the essential act needed to both spare the dignity of its actors and preserve the legacy of the series. For “That 70’s Show,” it was clear things were over when the boundaries of the 70s were pushed further than chronologically possible, leaving the characters that remained looking very old and very confused. One night on Fox I could have sworn that Wilmer Valderrama, disillusioned from playing a teenager for eight years, was being pulled around the set like a marionette by sympathetic stagehands.

There was no floating Fez to signify the end of “Will and Grace,” however; the writing on the wall was much more subtle. The show simply ran out of ways to portray homosexuals as mythical creatures that live exclusively in the big city, and as a result of this, it will vanish from the airwaves at the end of the season. While “Will and Grace’s” fate is sealed, many other programs will remain, despite how awful they’ve gotten or have always been. The following is a list of programs whose ongoing existence baffle me; I encourage you to write to your local television station or congressperson to get these shows removed from the air, and to have their writers deported or beaten, depending on your mood. You can always opt for both.

• Charmed – “Charmed,” or, “The Boobs Show,” has been a vehicle for Alyssa Milano’s breasts for eight years now, and, as long as its writers can find new and exiting things to happen to Alyssa Milano’s breasts, I see no end to this WB favorite. Perhaps time and gravity will eventually effect the ratings, but with bra technology increasing at an exponential level, it looks like we may be sentenced to at least another five years of the show that makes “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” look like a Seinfeldian masterpiece of modern television. While “Charmed” had a few good ideas in the beginning – namely, showing Shannen Doherty’s face regularly in an effort to add some horror to the show – the only people who watch it now are fan fiction writers desperately in need of new material. I guess there’s really nothing more terrifying than that. Thanks, “Charmed!”
  
  
• E.R. - I’ll admit, I was hooked on E.R. back in the mid-nineties when Thursdays were “must-see” and people talked about O.J. Simpson on a daily basis. Now that it’s 2006, “must-see” has transformed into “you should probably read a book instead” Thursdays, with “E.R.” standing as an eroded monument to an age when NBC was unstoppable. Crime dramas like “Law and Order” have avoided going stale by branching off into several different areas, but hospital shows face certain difficulties when trying to do this. “E.R.: Burn Ward Squad?” “E.R.: Harlequin Baby Unit?” Not even “Fear Factor” could be more disgusting.
  
  
• Saturday Night Live – Many people are against canceling SNL, their defense being, “It’s an institution!” So was slavery. To be honest, SNL has always had a 10 percent batting average, and its most overrated years - the 1970s - are held in such great esteem because everyone who watched those episodes thirty years ago was very, very high. Today, SNL continues to set a low benchmark for comedy, with 90% of the sketches using the theme of, “Hey, what if a really annoying character hosted a talk show?” SNL could be saved if it was pulled out of the clutches of the unfunniest man from Canada (Lorne Michaels), but it has done so much damage to the television landscape that it would be more productive to resurrect good sketch comedy shows like “Mr. Show” and “Upright Citizens Brigade.” Of course, this could only happen in my dream world, a place where Tim Allen never existed and life is bearable.
  
  
• Every ABC Sitcom – From “The George Lopez Show” to “Hope and Faith” and “According to Jim,” the ABC network has a strong stable of shows that no one can possibly watch. I say this because I can’t think of an occasion where a human would willingly sit down to watch Jim Belushi’s bloated, unfunny body siphon as much popularity he can out of his brother’s corpse over the course of a half-hour. The sitcoms I mentioned aren’t much better, but – with a few exceptions – ABC sitcoms were never really that good. The only redeeming quality of the ones I watched as a kid was kitsch; there were robots, magic potions, and time travel, and this was just on “Family Matters.” While the current batch of sitcoms could be improved in this way, I would prefer to never see a Belushi-bot.
  
  
• The War at Home – Yes, “The War at Home” has barely been on for a season, but on a weekly basis it commits crimes against humanity, greater even than the male ponytail or Zubaz pants. Take the stereotypical family unit, add many contrived plots and a terrible sense of self-important edginess, and you get a sitcom that should be erased from the earth with space lasers. You may also get cancer.

Just the fact that these sitcoms are still on the air and good shows like “Arrested Development” have been destroyed is scientific proof that there is no God. Okay, I may be going a little overboard; God may exist, but he cares not for matters of televised entertainment. Lord, why have your forsaken me?