Some things on television are simply beyond understanding. All you have to do is look at an average night of programming to realize that.
But while some questions simply have no answers, let's raise them anyway.- "The Single Guy" is, at best, a mediocre half-hour filler in NBC's Thursday night lineup. A show that, without the protection of being sandwiched between "Friends" and "Seinfeld," would never survive.
NBC, finally acknowledging the fact that the show is creatively bankrupt, brings in a new set of producers. And their first move? Hiring Dan Cortese as a recurring character.
Let's see - their answer to fixing this crummy show is to bring on Cortese, who has clearly demonstrated that he is one of the worst actors currently working in television?
- Roger Ailes, president of Fox News and incurable bombastic blow-hard, allows one of his Fox News Channel anchors (Catherine Crier) to damage her credibility and the credibility of her employer. Crier shows up during the Super Bowl halftime show with a fake "special report" about the Blues Brothers escaping from prison.
Fox, Ailes and Crier are roundly criticized for the stunt and deservedly so.
Ailes, of course, is unable to admit a mistake. (He, of course, believes he's never made one.) He's quoted as saying that "most Americans got the joke. For those journalists who were truly confused, we admit that the Blues Brothers did not escape from Joliet prison during the Super Bowl and run onto the field at halftime."
How someone who purports to be a newsman could be so utterly oblivious to journalism is unfathomable.
- Speaking of Fox, their bold new programming strategy in prime time includes adding utterly moronic sitcoms like Pauly Shore's "Pauly" and the unbelievably stupid "Secret Service Guy."
Why, exactly, the idiot demographic is so important to Fox no one is willing to say.
- CBS, on the other hand, insists that it is rebuilding its schedule by scheduling quality programming.
Then the network goes and grabs "Family Matters" and Steve Urkel away from ABC. Why?
- Various and sundry car dealers want us to trust them enough so that we'll give them our business.
Then they go on TV and act like fools in their commercials. Why?
- There are still thousands of BYU fans watching Cougar basketball games on KSL-Ch. 5. Why?
- There aren't a whole lot of Utah fans watching Ute basketball games on KJZZ-Ch. 14. Why?
- "Touched by an Angel" is normally a fine show, but what was with a couple of things in Sunday's episode?
First, the small-town minister (Chad Everett) worried that his "small-town words" wouldn't be intelligent enough for a big-city (Pittsburgh!) reporter. What was with the insinuation that small-town folks just aren't as smart as big-city dwellers?
Second, that reporter was a horrid creature intent on finding the dark underbelly of a story where none existed. What a TV cliche. Why take such an easy way in writing the script?
- The other night KTVX-Ch. 4 led its 10 p.m. news with a report on home-invasion robberies. The report raised the question of how we can protect ourselves against such crimes - then told viewers to stick around until 10:18 p.m. to get the answers.
Now, there's really no question as to why our friends at News 4 Utah worked it that way - they wanted to keep viewers around and boost their ratings.
But the unanswerable question is how they could allow themselves to look so much like cheap tabloid shows like "Hard Copy" and "Inside Edition."
- On a recent episode of "Star Trek: Voyager," why didn't Capt. Janeway know that the entity masquerading as her father had to be a fake because he was wearing a current Starfleet com-badge? (The relatively recent design debuted long after her father died.)
- Who's at fault? TV news people for making a bigger deal out of the O.J. Simpson civil trial verdict than President Clinton's State of the Union address - or the American public, for being more interested in the verdict than in the speech?
- Why are Fox's "Millennium" and NBC's "Profiler" still on the air? What is the entertainment value in serial killers?
- How is it that age alone seems to turn bad old TV series into so-called "classics." Witness the dither that Fox is in because several crew members from "The Love Boat" showed up on "Martin" and the dither NBC was in because several former "Welcome Back, Kotter" sweathogs showed up on "Mr. Rhodes."
And didn't it occur to anyone at NBC that the remarkably weak "Mr. Rhodes" would look weaker still when its star, Tom Rhodes, couldn't even hold his own acting opposite Ron Palillo, Robert Hegyes and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs?
- Will NBC ever run out of women to put in jeopardy in their Monday-night movies?
- Fox is airing "When Animals Attack III" on Feb. 17. How do Fox network executives sleep at night?
- How could NBC be so childish and petty in refusing to let David Letterman use clips from his old "Late Night" show for his current 15th-anniversary celebration on CBS?
Didn't it occur to any of those pea-brain peacocks that Letterman would use their refusal to his comedic advantage?
- How do shows like "Homeboys in Outer Space" make it on the air? Isn't there anyone in the network programming department or at the studio brave enough to say, "This is a piece of garbage. We should all die of embarrassment if it makes it on TV."
- How can anyone watch as much TV as a TV critic and not end up with permanent brain damage?