Tom Shales Eat Your Heart Out

I am going to try and watch as many of these new tv shows as possible. So far I have dvr-ed Friday Night Lights(Yes it’s a tv show now!) and The Nine, and plan to see that other one what’s it called, Six Degrees or something like that? I’ve already watched Heroes and am way into it. I saw Ali Larter on GMA or Today or something and I actually thought she seemed pretty smart too. Beauty and brains, people. Hard to beat. You’d be hard pressed to describe what her super power is though. It’s like, she has a mirror person. Who is a lot more audacious and seemingly evil than her. Did I get that right? I think that’s it. How is that helpful? Well, apparently your mirror doppelganger can attack loan sharks for you and kill them when they are too pesky and seem to want to rape you in exchange for some slack on the payment plan.

Totes sidenote: Has anyone noticed how many cutesy puns are in the nightly news these days? Once the exclusive province of tabloid style shows like Entertainment Tonight and morning shows, now you’ll see some sickening puns in CBS NEWS and NBC NEWS. I’m going to be taping ABC NEWS next week and see if they have the same thing going. At first, I thought it was just CBS because Katie Couric is now the new anchor. So you’d see these ridiculous things in the broadcast where she’ll lead into a SERIOUS news story with a Lenny Kravitz song. I am not joking. It happened, people. Then there’s the idiotic Free Speech segment where someone makes an editorial. Sometimes the person making the Free Speech is someone erudite and important, and sometimes it’s a homemaker from Sioux City Iowa who is complaining about skateboarders. Not to say that that homemaker wasn’t erudite and important. Actually, no strike that. That’s exactly what I’m saying.

So then the next week after getting sick of CBS NEWS LITE, I taped NBC NEWS with Brian Williams. And I couldn’t believe it, there’s puns a plenty on the Peacock network too! What has happened? It’s annoying. And the worst are the transitions. Because they’ll go from like some serious piece on Iraq or Darfur or Hezbollah or whatever, and then go (perhaps via a Lenny Kravitz song) to your typical human interest puff piece. I miss the old days. When there was only one such story at the end of the show. And that was that. But Katie has at least 3 every show(like say, an 80 year old woman who waterskis). And NBC is better but still has more than one. ABC, are you any better? I’m going to find out.

But what I’ve further noticed? Is that the morning shows have MORE news! What’s up with this strange juxtaposition? The world is topsy turvy. Down is up. Up is down. The center cannot hold people. The center cannot hold.

Finally, 60 Minutes had Katie Couric on doing a report. It was on Condi Rice. And a huge section of the piece was Condi playing piano. Yup, hard hitting 60 Minutes still sticking the screws to the powers that be after all these years. Luckily, it was a one-time report. She’s not on every week. I know Katie started in network news shows. But somewhere along the line she forgot how to do it.