the cable guys return

when i last lived in trinidad i wrote a column, for a now defunct paper, called the cable guys. in it, my good friend and editor, mark lyndersay  and myself wrote commentary on television. fast forward to now, with more than a little encouragement, the column returns but without a master and completely digital. as i understand it, we both post our weekly reviews on our respective blogs and the provide links to the other and everyone wins. for those of you that have been playing the home game all along this blog will now contain a new category; television. for those just joining us, welcome.  

in the process of trying to get this column written, i’ve come to the realisation that i don’t watch that much television. this season i’m watching an all-time high of eight prime time series with regularity; csi– vegas, miami and ny, heroes, chuck, bones, pushing daisies and bionic woman. however, i’m not sure how much longer the bionic woman is going to last for me, the writing continues to deteriorate and i’ve done the hot chick reluctant hero thing before with alias.  

this week i’d like to talk about one of the new shows i’ve started watching this season; pushing daisies. i love it, sadly i don’t think it’s going to last. it’s well written, it’s funny, it looks fabulous, and pretty much all of those things doom it to failure in this reality tv saturated market.  pushing daisies is from the mind of bryan fuller who brought such brilliant gems as dead like me and wonderfalls, both of which feature fantastic writing, rather quirky story-lines, death and dark-haired heroines. interestingly, a pattern emerges. i loved all those shows and as sure as day follows night, they went away. dead like me lasted two seasons but i believe that’s only because it was on showtime. wonderfalls didn’t even last a full season on fox and only through the outcry of what little fans there were did the whole season become available on dvd. 

looking at imdb, there are only six episodes produced thus far and as much as i’d love to see this series continues, i have my doubts.   the state of network television is sad, it’s all about the recycling. take for example grey’s anatomy, the most watched show last season (i’m basing this on something i read about grey’s being the most expensive media buy on network television) is a slightly new take on the hospital drama. is there a rule that there must always be one on tv? er has started it’s 13th season and before that it was st. elsewhere and before that trapper john, mdand before that… you get the idea. some of the diseases and locations might have changed but they follow the same formula. i’ll admit to having watched all of the above series, maybe that’s what grey’s held no interest for me.   

i’m enjoying pushing daisies while it lasts with no hope for its future. it is honestly too well written and too beautiful for the reality tv swilling public to appreciate and me and the couple thousand people that have grown to love it don’t make up a large enough demographic for advertisers to make it viable. 

catch pushing daisies while you can on wednesdays, 8/7c on abc.  

find the other half of the cable guys here.