Thursday , March 28 2024
Here today, gone tomorrow - it's the way of television.

Laughing at Laughlin and Desperate for Housewives

I was going to spend plenty of time today talking about how I don't really "get" Viva Laughlin. I think that having the actual vocal tracks play so loudly along with people singing sounds terrible. Also, if I counted correctly, last night's episode only featured two and a half songs, one of which wasn't even sung by anyone in the cast at all, though it is never a mistake to play "Fat Bottom Girls."

But, I don't have to do that as CBS has pulled the series in order to start airing The Amazing Race. Wow. That was fast. The first scripted series of the season is down, and only days after its first episode. Take that, pundits who said that scripted shows wouldn't be canceled so quickly this year due to the possible writers' strike (mark your calendars kiddies, the contract is up in less then two weeks). Shows what we know.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the show's cancellation. I didn't think that either of the episodes I watched were terribly good, but they had some potential. There were some huge problems with the way in which the story was told, but it was still a moderately interesting tale. I was really perturbed watching the two cops last night. Did they really have to, in their first scene in the second episode, explain to the audience each of the murder suspects' motives? Unless they share a brain, both cops knew the motives, so it was completely unnatural (on screen anyway) for them to go through them. But, I promised not to complain about the show as it's a moot point anyway, didn't I?

The real problem is that the cancellation doesn't make my life any easier. I thought that once new series started to die off I'd have more free time on my hands. I was assuming that they would be replaced by stuff I wasn't interested in, but there's no way I'm not going to watch The Amazing Race, talk about good reality TV (keep your fingers crossed for a lack of bottlenecks this season).

I actually found myself really enjoying Desperate Housewives last night. I know, I don't do really do it that much, but on the whole I liked the episode. Gaby, Edie, Carlos, and Mr. Mayor getting crabs was a good time (at least for those of us watching).

I would, I'm sorry about this, like to ask one little question though. Can one of you fine readers, or more if you feel like it, explain Susan to me, because I don't get her. Week after week she comes up with these insane plans and ideas and week after week, they fail. I have to believe that at some point in her life some of her ridiculous plans succeeded, which has prompted her to continue down that track, but I've never seen nor heard any indication of this. Why does she pursue her insane little plans? Surely she's figured it all out by now.

One guy that clearly hasn't figured it all out by now though is Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm. This guy, whom I tend to like, does insane things. Like last night for instance – there he was talking to the TiVo repairman when his wife, Cheryl, called from the airplane she was on, thinking she was going to crash and die due to the turbulence. What did Larry do? He asked her to call back in ten minutes. Okay, I'll give you that him doing that is funny, but it's also sick in a slightly disturbing way. Surely the man ought to know better than that. Did he deserve for Cheryl to leave him because of his idiocy? No, he did not, but that doesn't make his actions okay either.

About Josh Lasser

Josh has deftly segued from a life of being pre-med to film school to television production to writing about the media in general. And by 'deftly' he means with agonizing second thoughts and the formation of an ulcer.

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