The holidays are traditionally one of the worst periods of the TV year, landing somewhere between the “American Idol” audition rounds and Oprah’s Vajayjay Week.
Christopher Lawrence
Christopher Lawrence is the movie critic for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
clawrence@reviewjournal.com … @life_onthecouch on Twitter. 702-380-4567
You don’t expect a Fox reality show to help the needy.
We’re on the verge of witnessing history.
It’s no secret that this Christmas will be one of the toughest in years — you probably realized that the first time you wrapped a present in your Lehman Brothers stock certificates — but TV is here to help.
It’s starting to feel like losing a friend. A friend who shot a fellow cop in the face, tortured and killed suspects, put seized drugs back on the streets he patrolled and started a bloody war between a Mexican cartel and the Armenian mob just to help cover his tracks, but a friend nonetheless.
Whenever cable series come to town, they usually gloss over everything not included in the Vegas Variety Pack: a buffet, some showgirls, a wedding chapel Elvis impersonator and a bachelorette party complete with matching Ed Hardy T-shirts and lower-back tattoos.
I’ve never been much good at denying my urges — the low point being my set of commemorative plates commemorating the first set of commemorative plates — but I live like a monk compared to Dexter Morgan and Hank Moody.
Neither can lay claim to the title of the scariest thing on TV — after a couple of minutes of CNBC’s stock ticker, I spent the other day hiding under my bed — but nobody does spooky quite like “Fringe” (9 p.m. Tuesdays, KVVU-TV, Channel 5) and “Supernatural” (9 p.m. Thursdays, KVCW-TV, Channel 33).
Over the years, it’s been pretty easy to marginalize the fantasy genre. After all, aside from the occasional Hollywood blockbuster, the closest the sword-and-sorcery set usually gets to the mainstream is the songs of Ronnie James Dio and the murals on the sides of custom vans.
If there’s one thing wrong with TV — other than the fact that there’s still not a Tina Fey Channel — it’s this: My attention span has been obliterated. Seriously, sometimes I’ll just trail off in the middle of a …
You may not guess it from looking at me, but I’m not that interested in food. Especially not on TV, where the Food Network seems to be all about cuisine this and fusion that. (For the record, the only cuisine I’ve eaten had the word “lean” in front of it, and the closest I get to fusion is ordering fries with my quesadilla at Del Taco.)
Forget the housing meltdown, the crisis on Wall Street and the fact that banks are failing faster than Hugh Hefner’s relationships. The surest sign America is in trouble? Even our TV shows are being outsourced.
When it comes to “Friday Night Lights,” the only thing more remarkable than its quality is the fact that it’s still on the air.
This being premiere week, there’s a lot of information to get to. So I won’t waste any time before sharing the 10 things you should know about the new fall season.
Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe it was just something I ate. (If so, I’m placing the blame squarely on that deep-fried Hot Pocket.) But John McCain is starting to make sense.
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