"Everybody Hates Minimum Wage (Everybody Hates Chris)", 11-19-2007

You know that comedies are struggling when they begin to stretch the borders of disbelief. Last week's episode of "Everybody Hates Chris" called "Everybody Hates Houseguests" stretched disbelief beyond the breaking point, and whereas the boundaries are returning to their previous shape, they are not quite fixed again.

Chris works at a convenience store called "Doc's". However, he reads in the paper that the minimum wage is $3.35/hour. Chris is only being paid $3/hour and he convinces himself that he should stand up for his rights and ask Doc for a raise. He seems himself as a good worker and believes taht he deserves the money. However, Doc won't budge -- $3 it is. Of course, Chris always has the option of going on strike (and in some bad sitcoms, he would), but he imagines white policemen beating him up and decides to give Doc one more chance by presenting him with an ultimatum -- either Chris earns his raise or walks out the door. Doc simply says, "nice working with you".

This leaves Chris unemployed, and he figures he dare not tell his father that he walked away from a job -- his father works two, three jobs, and sometimes more. Chris, desperate to find another job that will pay minimum wage, goes to work for a Chinese restaurant. Unfortunately for Chris, the owner is a harsh taskmaster, and Chris doesn't have time to rest on his broom. Furthermore, Doc let Chris do his homework during down times, but there are no down times at the restaurant. To add insult, since Chris is not only the only non-Asian employee at the restaurant, but the only black employee, Chris is called "Lionel Richie" by his new boss and Chris suspects that he's referred to in less complementary terms behind his back.

Meanwhile, Rochelle has her sights set on being a hair model in the local hair show presented by the beauty shop, and finally begs a place for herself. We learn that the hair styles at the hair show would make a Japanese topiary specialist suffer a stroke -- Rochelle will be modeling "the Tsunami", which is a rarely used style as the last model who tried it suffered from hairspray poisoning. Rochelle's hair is soon coiffed into a living wave, and all is well -- until Rochelle learns that the show is more than a day away and Rochelle cannot lie down or she'll destroy her do.

Chris tries to see how his old job is coming along. As it turns out, Chris's job is now taken by James, a young boy who likes Chris's sister, Tonya. Chris despairs that he could ever get his old job back without giving up his principles.

Chris's new boss, meanwhile, decides to extend the restaurant to delivery. (Why not? He figures that since Chris is black, he should get along fine.) However, restaurants in Bed-Stuy didn't have delivery service, for good reason. (One of Doc's customers says that he has kids in Bed-Stuy -- but he never visits them because it's too dangerous.) Chris is forced to deliver Chinese food to crack houses and tenement apartments. When he bumps into a domestic dispute with a wife who punctuates her arguments with her husband with a large firearm, Chris flees the scene.

Drew turns out to be failing history, and Rochelle and Julius figure its their job to investigate -- however, Rochelle can't risk her new do, so Julius goes out Drew's school to figure out what's up. It turns out that Drew's teacher is a great-looking woman, and no male in the class can think straight. Transferring Drew to another history class turns out to be the solution, but the effort for Rochelle to remain awake is too much and her do is destroyed.

Chris gets his paycheck -- with taxes, FICA, etc. removed. He's actually earning less at the restaurant! Chris finally quits, and tells his father, who simply informs him that it's never a good idea to trade great working conditions for more money. Humbled, Chris returns to Doc's, who told Chris that the reason he was not paid minimum wage is that Chris would get less than minimum wage after taxes and Doc could not afford the paperwork. Chris is given back his job -- as James has moved on to work for the Chinese restaurant. (And Chris learns, to his dismay, that James is being paid in cash!)

(* * *)

The more "Everybody Hates Chris" deals with real situations and the less it deals in general sitcom wackiness, the stronger it becomes. Chris at the Chinese restaurant introduced much-needed realism to the episode, and I felt sympathy for Chris's plight -- he never expected his new job to be so bad.

However, Rochelle's hair mania dragged the episode down. The sample do's shown (one was shaped like a helicopter, complete with spinning blades) were so ludicrous that they could barely be suffered. Is Rochelle really that desperate to look like a fool? She has to keep a family of three kids and a husband together; would she be able to do that and maintain a stiffly lacquered hairstyle at the same time? Not likely.

Furthermore, the "cute teacher causes failing grades" trope is way overdone. (Julius was able to magically restore Drew's memory of historical events by covering Drew's teacher's face with a flag -- but when the flag was removed, Drew returned in milliseconds to idiot.) And of course, there was a "Greg Wuliger can't talk to the pretty girl" D-plot that was tacked on, simply so Chris could lament his lost conversations with Doc.

My wife not only figured out the twist in the plot right away ("he'll be paid by check and he'll earn less than he did at Doc's") but she said, "do you really want to invest any more time watching this show?" If future episodes are as weak as this one, "Everyone Hates Chris" will live up to its name.

"Husbands and Knives (The Simpsons)", 11-18-2007

I have absolutely no idea where the writers of "The Simpsons" were going with this episode, but parts of it were quite funny. It might be an episode I'll care to watch in reruns, which is a high honor for any episode of "The Simpsons" after the 15th season.

The "A" plot deals with Marge realizing that she has gained a few pounds, after noticing that her outline bulges beyond the outline of the stand-up Wonder Woman poster outside of The Android's Dungeon. (After Marge is made fun of by the bullies -- Dolph, Jimbo and Kearney, Dolph and Kearney get into a fight about whether or not Kearney's mom is fat or if it's just a side affect of her depression medication -- a very funny moment for anyone who has had to deal with the side effects of depression medication.)

Marge decides to go to the hip, cool Springfield gym, but Marge is embarrassed as she is unable to even use the walking treadmill without looking like a fool. She decides to create a brand new gym for women called "Shapes". This gym for ordinary-looking women is extremely successful, and soon Marge is on the fast track to fame and riches.

Homer enjoys accompanying Marge on her business trips -- after all, it's free lodging and food on Marge's money -- until he comes across a group of husbands of high-powered, successful women in Marge's new social circle. These buff Adonises reveal that they are second husbands, telling Homer that the first thing their wives did after they became successful was dump the old lardasses they had married. However, one of the Adonises has pity on Homer -- he secretly reveals that he is a first husband, who through strength of will, eating right, and exercising daily, managed to transform himself into the figure he is today.

Homer writes this down, taking it all in -- and then has stomach stapling surgery with the plastic surgeon from "Pygmoelian" and "Large Marge". The stomach surgery causes Homer to lose a lot of weight, even though as Homer put it "food tastes like barf". However, the surgery causes the excess skin to sag from Homer's body, forcing Homer to resort to chip clips and large rubber bands to hide it. Homer returns to the plastic surgeon and tells the surgeon to give Homer all of the other surgeries he's got.

When Marge gets an award from Mayor Quimby, Homer shows up at the ceremony -- the plastic surgery has made him into a dark-haired bodybuilder who looks as monstrous as most bodybuilders look. This freakish Homer is chased by a pitchfork-wielding mob and chased (along with Marge) to the top of Notre Dame de Springfield. At the top of the tower, Marge reveals she wants a trophy husband and pushes Homer from the belltower to his death.

Homer wakes up in the hospital. It seems that when the doctor called Marge to get permission after Homer went under, Marge cancelled the surgeries and had Homer's stomach band removed. Homer is back to his old, flabby self, but Marge still loves him.

In the "B" plot, when Milhouse is charged $25 by the Comic Book Guy for accidentally tearing a comic book guy, Comic Book Guy reminds his many customers that they can either go to his comic store or to one of the nonexistent comic book stores across the street. Unfortunately, a new comic store has just moved in, run by a cool customer named Milo (Jack Black). The store has video games, and the store owner has Japanese hard candy to give out to the kids. When Lisa tears the page of a Tintin book by accident, the cool store owner tells her that books are to be read, not stored.

The Comic Book Guy loses all his business to the new store. (Where do you think Marge got the space to start her new gym? From the Comic Book Guy's old store, soon to be closed.) During a signing by independent comic writers and artists Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman and Dan Clowes (all playing themselves), the Comic Book Guy tries to win his customers back by pointing that Cool Guy couldn't be a true comic geek -- he has a girlfriend! (Comic Book Guy is also selling ninja swords to win back the geeks.) When this ploy fails, Comic Book Guy attacks the store's displays with a kitana, but Moore, Spielgelman and Clowes form a muscled superteam and defeat the Comic Book Guy's rampage.

(* * *)

Immediately, I can hear the voice of the Comic Guy in my head. "Continuity, Mr. Bowman! Where, oh where, is the continuity?"

There was no use of the reset button in this episode. As far as we know, Marge still has her successful chain of gymnasiums. As far as we know, the Comic Book Guy has lost his store, to remain out of business forever. What will happen to him? He'll be poor! And penniless! And unloved! And...no different from before, really. However, at the end the three comic book writers/artists/heroes are about to stop a meteor from hitting Springfield -- until they fly off to a benefit for old comic book artists, as the meteor gets closer....

Therefore, I suspect that the reset button will be punched next episode. Like Homer's singing career with the Be Sharps, Marge would probably remind the viewers that there's a perfectly good explanation as to where Marge's money went and how the Comic Book Guy got his store back -- there's just no space for it in this episode.

This episode was written by Matt Selman, who knows a bit about continuity-setting precedent. He wrote the episodes "Eight Misbehavin'", as well as "Behind the Laughter" and one of the better episodes "Trilogy of Error" (where Homer temporarily loses his thumb). There were many great moments in this episode:

* Milhouse's whining that he was going to celebrate Greek Orthodox Easter with the $25 he owes the comic book guy.
* The Korean version of "What's New Pussycat" playing in the new comic store.
* The animated version of the Tintin book Lisa is reading.
* Of course, the fight with the bullies.
* The fan service with Moore, Spiegelman and Clowes! (If you're a comic book geek like me, this was heaven!)
* Clowes's complaining that he doesn't want to work in independent comics and has dreamed of drawing "Batman" instead. (He shows Lisa his sketches of Batman's utility belt.)
* "The Watchmen Babies in V for Vacation".
* Spiegelman puts on a mask that looks like the face of his protagonist in "Maus" before getting ready to kick Comic Book Guy's ass.
* Marge's humiliating public shower.
* Milo's girlfriend (Strawberry) has a purse which is a lunchbox!
* The sign closing the Android's Dungeon, which looks like an old Spider-Man cover.
* Homer's bizarre new appearance.

A good episode, and for once, actually better than the "Family Guy" episode that followed it.

NEXT AMAZING ISSUE: After bashing continuity's head in, the Simpsons return to worship at the great porcelain god of continuity, as Kelsey Grammer returns for his final appearance as Sideshow Bob in "Funeral for a Fiend"!

"Sew Me What You've Got (Project Runway)", 11-14-2007

In most reality shows, being an ass can keep you from getting to the top, particularly in the "social-networking" shows like "Survivor" or "The Amazing Race". You never know when your douchebaggery will end up with you getting stepped on by everyone who finally gets sick and tired of you.

However, "Project Runway" is not a competition that requires on social skills. It would better be described as a reality talent competition -- like it or not, whatever you sew together and put on the models is what gets you the contract and now hot nice you are to everyone. Santino Rice was a jerk in Season 2, but he's probably better known than ostensible winner Chloe Dao. Jeffery Sebelia, an ever bigger douchebag than Rice, actually won Season 3.

Furthermore, like any group of people with an obsession (in this case, fashion), the personalities involved are a little...twisted. You don't have to make an effort to add emotionally challenged people to the show in the hope that sparks will fly; sparks will fly nonetheless.

The show begins in the reassuring way that every version of "Project Runway" starts -- all of the designers show up and we get a handle on them for about thirty seconds. Carmen is the Ex-Model Turned Designer. Kevin is the Heterosexual Designer Around Homosexuals. Elisa is the Flighty Earth-Mother Type -- she comes to design through designing marionettes. Sweet P is the Ex-Biker Chick. All of the viewers choose favorites, and all of the players are on their best behavior.

The group of fifteen models shows up at Bryant Park in New York City to meet host Heidi Klum and host/advisor Tim Gunn. Gunn is now a creative consultant with Liz Claibourne, having left his post at the New School but his function at the show remains unchanged. Heidi informs the models that the challenge will be for the designers to create a design that shows who they are as a designer. At the other end of Bryant Park are three tents filled with expensive materials. As soon as the models are given the signal, they may race to the tents and pick whichever materials they fancy -- whatever they can carry.

As Fey Christian outraces everyone for a particular plaid bolt of cloth, Fat Guy Chris is bringing up the rear, finally slowing down to a walk. Chris is so overweight that his jawline disappears in adipose, and he resigns himself initially to making do with whatever is left over. However, none of the other designers take the bolt of cloth Chris fancies, and Chris lucks out.

Elisa uses her knees to grind a bolt of cloth into the turf at Bryant Park. Elisa wants to make use of the natural color of grass stains. Everyone realizes that they have a weirdo on their hands -- and if these people think that Elisa might be a little odd, then that's a spectacular distinction.

Everyone returns to the studio for the most boring part of the show, the part where my attention lags -- the part of the show where the ideas in the designers' heads become reality. This requires a lot of snipping, measuring, and fussing, and has the effect of watching all 11 hours of design in just five minutes, so dull it is. Tim Gunn shows up to cluck at a few designers regarding measuring and construction and color and other choices, but he can't make too many suggestions (lest he become the designer). He simply tells the gathered to "make it work", while Tim Gunn fans wait for "Tim Gunn's Guide to Style" -- we are informed many times that a new episode will be following "Project Runway".

Finally, the models get up on the catwalk. Elisa has some interesting ideas with a cascading effect of cloth as the trail of a gown, but the cloth only serves as an anchor and the model almost trips on it. We see design after design after design, and at home, we're left to be our own judges. I liked the colors Simone chose, but my wife rightly recognized the shoddy construction of the final product. I thought Christian's work was well-finished; my wife noted that it looked off the rack. If you're not a professional designer -- or if you don't buy these kind of clothes to wear -- it's very hard to tell what works and what doesn't.

Afterwards, the panel of judges gabs about what they liked and what they didn't, but we're only given tantalizing glimpses -- do the judges simply talk for only 15 seconds about particular designs, or is there a six-hour conversation that has been edited to death? The group is split into halvsies. The one half that is neither spectacular nor abysmal is told they've survived, leaving six contestants trying to figure out where they stand -- are they hot, or are they not?

Even though Christian's final work got commendations from the judges, Rami won the coveted immunity -- he doesn't have to worry about being eliminated next week. Oddly enough, my wife and I both agreed that his final work looked like something that could have been worn at the toga party in "Animal House", but then again, we haven't designed clothes for Jessica Alba, like Rami has. (I suspect Rami is a ringer, given his bio.)

This leaves One-Gay-Among-Many-Ricky, Simone, and Elise to battle it out for bottom feeder. Ricky and his gay conductor's hat are sent away. Who is the biggest loser, Simone's badly built gown or Elise's over-the-top anchored disaster? In the end, the judges decide they're most disappointed with Simone, who gets sent packing before she could even earn a thumbnail description.

And so, goodbyes are said, thimbles are packed and we head into the next week of "Project Runway" -- the group design part of the competition. As in all three seasons before, the scissors will come out and everyone will be at their bitchy best, as having four designers design a gown is like having four cooks stirring a pot. Simone was cast out of paradise this week, but the "Era of Good Feeling" will come to an end, sometime before Thanksgiving.

"The Deposition (The Office)", 11-15-2007

"The Deposition", last night's episode of "The Office", ties off a plot thread that has existed since the end of Season Three -- namely, the consequences of Jan's firing from Dunder-Mifflin.

Jan, who was the clueless Michael Scott's former superior, moved in with Michael afterwards. Michael was left to deal with the emotionally comatose Jan. However, Jan decided to sue Dunder-Mifflin for several million dollars in a wrongful termination suit.

Jan preps Michael as to what to say in the deposition. Michael's role hinges as to whether or not Michael's relationship with Jan was an inappropriate one. (Michael, however, made sure to announce the relationship to HR, carefully storing the document as if it were a family heirloom.) However, when the picture of a topless Jan from Michael and Jan's vacation in Jamaica is made evidence, Michael finds himself tripped up as to his claims regarding when the relationship began -- the picture predates his official announcement of the relationship.

However, Jan is not unprepared. She introduces Michael's diary as evidence. The diary entry states that Jan didn't really consider himself in a relationship with Jan, to Michael's chagrin. (It also states that Michael thinks Ryan is "hot", in a purely heterosexual way.) The lawyers decide that the diary needs to be photocopied as evidence, and Michael enters the lunchroom to the sight of lawyers reading his private thoughts.

The prosecution, hoping to turn Michael as a witness, introduces Jan's performance review of Michael. Jan wrote that Michael was simply impossible to motivate (duh) and should have been demoted back to sales. The question is then posed to Michael -- "does he believe that his girlfriend is capable of making accurate judgments?"

The defense counters with a deposition of David Wallace, the Chief Financial Officer of the company. Wallace, in his written deposition, is asked if there was truly any serious consideration of having Michael replace Jan after her firiing. Wallace is forced to admit that Michael was never a serious candidate, but Wallace thought Michael was a nice guy.

So Michael's dilemma is: does he claim that Jan has proper judgment and admit he's a horrible boss? Or does he agree with Dunder-Mifflin, who never thought seriously of giving him a job, and just led him on?

In the end, Michael sides with Dunder-Mifflin. Jan's bringing the diary was the clincher. Michael says that he expects his employer to treat him badly -- but not his girlfriend. It is implied that Jan loses her case, and Michael and Jan drive back home very quietly. It is also implied that the Michael/Jan relationship is not yet at an end....

(* * *)

What's odd is that this is the second straight episode where Michael says something profound. In "Survivor Man", Michael and Jim commiserate on the perils of being a boss -- Jim tried to plan a communal birthday parties for some of the employees rather than having separate birthday parties for each employee. Michael tells Jim that he made that "rookie mistake", and it implies at least at some level that Michael is aware of his employee's needs -- if this were the British version of "The Office", David Brent would have indeed tried to plan a communal birthday party (undoubtedly to riotous results).

Now, he recognizes -- at least to the mockumentarians -- that Dunder-Mifflin might not be as great as Michael sometimes lets on. However, when Michael shakes hands with one of the execs at Dunder-Mifflin after the deposition, you can see that it's a humbling moment for Michael -- learning what Jan and the company really thought of him could not have been pleasant. (I expect Michael to shake it off quickly.)

As for the Michael/Jan relationship, it looks like they're a couple that is stuck with each other -- at least in the same way that Ryan and Kelly were stuck with each other in earlier seasons. Jan has nowhere else to go, it seems, nor does she seem to want to go anywhere else. As for Michael, he can't just get rid of Jan because he doesn't have the backbone to tell her to get lost. For now, they're left with each other's company, but I predict that this relationship has about as much chance of surviving as Ryan and Kelly's did -- seeing Michael playing the field gives more chances to see Steve Carrell be clueless and inapropriate.

The dilemma was an inspired bit of writing by new staff writer Lester Lewis -- would Michael Scott actually admit that he was a bad employee, even though Jan's multi-million dollar settlement hinged on it? Thank goodness Michael was able to leave with his sense of self-delusion apparently (mostly) intact.

However, the B-plot was dull. Jim and Darryl play ping-pong in the warehouse, and when Darryl beats Jim, Kelly Kapoor (Darryl's current girlfriend) begins to trash-talk Pam. (Kelly patiently explains to the mockumentarians the distinction between trash talking and "smack", which is what she claims she's doing.) In addition to making Kelly that much less likeable -- when did Pam every go out of her way to belittle someone? -- it illustrates a problem that "The Office" writers are having with Kelly Kapoor -- without Kelly's love of dreamboat Ryan, the character seems strangely undefined. Kelly's at her best when she's making some guy's life miserable, and Darryl is no Ryan, at least when it comes to humor. How many characters does this show have? Perhaps, they might need one less character if they can't find a role for Kelly. Let's hope they can.

(Incidentally, this is the final new episode of "The Office" for some time, due to the writer's strike.)

"Ugly (House, M. D.)", 11-13-2007

In this week's episode of "House M. D.", we are introduced to a young man who looks a bit like the Elephant Man, at least from the neck up -- he has a massive lump over his left eye and a deformed nose. The young man and his father are their way to Princeton-Gitmo to have cosmetic surgery to have the mass removed. A further complication is that the operation is being paid for by a documentary film crew, who will follow the progress of the young man -- and the doctors in diagnosing his condition.

However, this being the world of "House, M. D." a complication arises -- the young man has a heart attack on the operating table. Whatever has caused this young man's heart trouble must be diagnosed, or surgery will be an unsafe option. Both the young man and his father want the surgery done, which leaves House and his diagnostic team to have to decipher the problem.

House's group of candidates still remain and they are joined by Dr. Samira Terzi, the doctor House met at the CIA in the episode before, "Whatever it Takes". However, Dr. Terzi might be intelligent, but she doesn't possess the sheer amount of brilliance it takes to be a member of House's team -- that is made clear from the beginning. House quickly comes to rue his decision, and Wilson suggests that House might have been more impressed by her cup size than her intelligence. However, Terzi has left her career at the CIA and picked up to move to Princeton. So what is House to do?

A further complication arises when Dr. Taub, one of the candidates, is convinced that the young man is suffering from liver disease and not rheumatoid arthritis (as House believes). Taub has the trust of the family, and with the cameras rolling, Taub makes a bold power-play move. Determined not to be made a fool of by House in the documentary, Taub undercuts House -- he goes to the father and tells him that House's diagnosis is wrong and that he can get House thrown off the case.

Taub attempts to have House fired. House attempts to have Taub fired. Both firings are reversed, and the two will have to work together.

(* * *)

The Taub subplot is probably the most interesting part of "Ugly". Most of the time, House is never matched against someone who might be his equal, if not in intelligence than in confidence. Taub is a very confident man and doesn't seem to have much fear of going behind House's back. This battle of semi-equals was very interesting to watch, and I really wondered how House was going to get out of it and what House was going to do.

Of course, House's solution was to try to figure out why Dr. Taub left his successful plastic surgery practice and use the information to embarrass Taub. House finds out -- perhaps too easily -- but supposedly, "House cares about results" according to Foreman, so Taub surprisingly remains int the running to be in House's team.

However, this was a flawed episode. "Ugly" is the first episode written by Sean Whitesell, and indeed "Ugly" it was.

We get to see House's sexism on full display during this episode. House's comments towards Cuddy are particularly belittling -- will there ever be a day when Cuddy isn't wearing a low-cut blouse or a tight skirt and when House won't comment on her tits or her ass or her nipples? It seems that some ludicrous remark is the first thing out of House's mouth every time he sees Cuddy.

Undoubtedly, the premise is that House is an "anti-hero" -- he says these things to Cuddy to get a rise out of her, and Cuddy patiently ignores them. However, this "women are sort of inferior to men" meme is repeated many times. Dr. Terzi's intelligence level somehow plummets, and the only thing House and Wilson can talk about is whether or not her blouse is see-through. Cameron, who we would think would be well disabused of House as a romantic partner, turns into a stuttering schoolgirl from anime, letting it slip that she "loves" House. (If she's right, then House's behavior is justified; if she's wrong, then Cameron has no sense.)

Furthermore, Wilson comments on the mysterious candidate Number 13, a candidate so in the mold of Cameron that I often have trouble telling the actresses apart when they're on screen. (Remember: Cameron is now sort of blonde; Number 13 is firmly brunette.) Number 13 remains silent for most of the episode, leading once again to speculation that House has kept her on the committee because she is cute. (Dr. Volakis, the "cutthroat bitch" is clearly not for play.) She suddenly pulls the correct diagnosis out of her fundament at the end of the episode -- however, it doesn't redeem any of the suspicions about why Number 13 is on the team, and House's rampant sexism in this episode is little diminished.

Here's a question: what's the difference between making sexist comments and actually being a sexist? The premise is that House will say just about anything to get a rise out of people, but really -- what's the difference in the effect it has on the individual? We never get an "I was just kidding" from House, not even as a lame excuse.

Racism is seen to be a more serious crime than sexism in America, and House treads his comments with both Dr. Foreman and Dr. Cole very carefully. (It was religion that Cole thought over the line, earning House a punch.) But House's implication that Cuddy is a fine piece of ass is clearly meant to evoke chuckles. I wonder what the reaction would have been if he thought Foreman belonged back in the cotton patch.

There are two kinds of cutting comments one can make about someone. One set of comments are about what a person does -- House seems to limit his crude comments about Wilson to his touchy-feely approach to cancer and his bad luck with women. (Then again, Wilson is a white male who is handsome and rich, so what else can he make fun of?) The other set of nasty remarks one can make about a person regard the things that a person can't change -- about race, sex, religion. Those of the kind of remarks that take you out of the realm of being the next Dorothy Parker and put in you in a group with David Duke and all the other Klansmen.

Once again: what's the difference between making a racist comment to get a rise out of someone and making one because you're actually a racist? (Maybe you should ask Michael Richards about that one.)

I don't think House was any uglier in this episode that he's been in past episodes. Yet this continual theme of putting down Cuddy for her attractiveness has probably worn on my nerves. It's a good thing that House is a crippled genius, because if he weren't the second, he'd be out of Princeton-Gitmo in two seconds -- and if he weren't the first, someone might take his remarks in the wrong spirit and make him so.

"Everybody Hates Houseguests (Everybody Hates Chris)", 11-12-2007

In fiction, there's a concept called "suspension of disbelief". In order to enjoy the final product, an unwritten covenant exists between the creator and the consumer. The creator will be allowed to suspend the rules of reality within a restricted scope.

Take science fiction. Viewers watching "Spider-Man" will temporarily ignore the fact that a one-hundred fifty pound man can't swing through Manhattan on a thread, and viewers of "Star Wars" will ignore the absence of interstellar travel options at Delta Airlines. Every genre of fiction has these conventions. Soap operas expect betrayal and drama to happen at a rate thousands of times more frequently than expected in real life. Harlequin Romances expect smart, clever women to meet guys with pecs like Fabio.

Trangressions of this covenant, however, are punished severely. No, George Lucas, a bunch of walking teddy bears should not be able to defeat the massive intergalactic war machine. Aliens should not be speaking with Rastafarian accents. Seventy-year old men cannot mack on twenty-year old models -- I'm talking to you, Mr. W. Allen. The consumer says, "I'll accept this much of a violation of reality for you to tell a good story, but I expect restraint -- no more violations beyond what is absolutely necessary."

Even comedies have their various covenants. There are wacky comedies like the Austin Powers series, less wacky comedies like
Wedding Crashers and even less wackier comedy-dramas like Little Miss Sunshine. Since these covenants are never explicitly stated, the deal is usually sealed by watching the first few episodes of a serial comedy (or the trailer of a movie) -- "if you agree with these premises, we have a deal".

The premises of "Everybody Hates Chris" are fairly straightforward -- we thought. "Everybody Hates Chris" is sort of a coming-of-age comedy. The main character, Chris, suffers both through school (as the lone black kid in an all-white school) and at home, with his sometimes annoying family. There's a certain level of wackiness that is accepted -- the fact that Chris's teacher casually makes the most racist of statements, that Chris's mother Rochelle seems to be able to get jobs easily despite the fact that she must have quit hundreds of them by now, and that there is a suspicious lack of danger despite the fact that this is mid-80s Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Any real wackiness was limited to dream sequences which the narrator (Chris Rock) made clear were part of Chris's imagination. However..."Everybody Hates Houseguests" is a real rule-breaker of an episode.

The premise is that Chris's white friend Greg has his parents out of town for a week, and is not looking forward to staying at his grandparents. Chris makes the offer that Greg can stay at the family's Bed-Stuy apartment. Rochelle, Chris's mother, is initially against Greg staying, but gives in. When Greg arrives the first night, there is a banner welcoming him and Rochelle temporarily transforms into June Cleaver.

As Rochelle believes that guests must be given priority, the family's menu is (temporarily) changed to vegetarian and Greg has priority over television watching, with "Nova" substituted for "MacGuyver". However, Chris must bear the brunt of the annoyances as Greg shares a room with him.

Not only does Greg snore -- not only does Greg have a tendency to flail about in bed as he reimagines "Flashdance" in his sleep, but he has a further problem. It seems that as a habit carried over from childhood of fighting off monsters, Greg dresses like superheroes before going to bed to frighten the monsters away. Chris has to wake up Greg one morning -- with Greg dressed in the full regalia of Darth Vader, the mighty Sith Lord.

Yes, I was rolling my eyes. Eccentricity I can take; lunacy is another thing altogether. The "B" plot isn't much better. Chris's father, always on the lookout for another job, takes a part-time job as a taxi driver. While on the prowl for customers, a customer asks Julius to drive him to Las Vegas. Julius says no, of course, until he is offered $1000 to make the trip. Rochelle is fine with this, because hey, it's $1000!

However, the customer is actually a robber, holding up stores along the route with Julius completely unaware that his customer is the "taxi cab bandit" (we get to see this master criminal mentioned on a news cast, with authorities across the country on the alert). Julius obliviously makes it all the way to Las Vegas, where the police finally confront the two. There's some sort of subplot involving the customer's girlfriend, but by that time my attention had wondered completely away. You ever pick up a book and absent-mindedly flip through it when there's a show you've committed to watch? Well, guess what I was doing during this "B" plot.

We have to assume -- for comedic purposes -- that Julius has an IQ of 70. In sitcoms, a few brain-farts can be expected, where intelligent characters make commitments or say something clueless under a temporary mental haze. But the fact that Julius couldn't figure out what was going on beggars belief. Julius is the "strong-man" of the family; for Julius to be reduced to witless dupe is a major comedown.

Furthermore, Greg's massive weirdness would have had Chris's family calling social services. Yes, I know that everyone wants to rewrite "The Man Who Came to Dinner", and yes, we knew that Greg was weird -- but we not only didn't know that he was that weird, we also didn't know that anybody was permitted to be that weird in the "Everybody Loves Chris" universe. The creators of the show have suddenly changed the rules, and these sudden changes of the rules are usually the result of a writer's ineptitude -- "I'm going to change the rules of the universe to shoehorn in this awkwardly-written story."

Your first response might be, "hey, this is just a situation comedy, so have fun". Well, I never expected Fonzie in "Happy Days" to be able to spout wings. I never expected Mary Richards in "Mary Tyler Moore" to transform into a werewolf on moonlit nights. I'm sure you could have gotten a lot of funny episodes that way, but you would have changed the essence of what those comedies were about. There's a reason that "Jumping the Shark" because a catchphrase for the point that a series declines -- "Happy Days" at one time was a sitcom about a kid growing up in the 1950s; after a while it became a star vehicle for the "cool guy" to the point where more and more outrageous things had to be found for him to prove his cool. The shark-jump was the transgression; the show would no longer be what it once was, ever again.

My wife said, "They've finally run out of ideas," when she saw this episode. Yes, sweetheart, they did, at least for this week. I hope that Greg in a Darth Vader mask isn't the shark-jumping moment of "Everybody Hates Chris".

"I've Become the Archie Bunker of the Home! (The Amazing Race)", 11-11-2007

"The Amazing Race", for those who haven't seen it, is the American version of world travel, which I call "if this is Tuesday, this must be Belgium". Eleven couples in every sort of relationship you can imagine (friends, divorced, married, gay, straight, black, Asian, students, models, models, models, and models) compete in an around-the-world race split up into trials called "legs". The goal is to avoid showing up last in the leg -- the couple that shows up last for a particular leg is eliminated, and the couples are whittled down one by one until only two or three couples are left to race for the final leg (which usually finishes close to the initial starting point) and the couple finishing first in the final leg will win $1 million.

Of course, it can never be as straightforward as that. On each leg, couples might face:

* a detour, where the couples are given a choice of two tasks to complete before they can proceed,
* a roadblock, where only one member of a couple may complete a given task before proceeding,
* a fast forward, where the first couple performing a task may proceed directly to the end of the leg, or
* a yield, where the first couple arriving at the yield point might make a designated couple wait after arriving at the same yield point.

Of course, all of the tasks are "kooky" in that they are broadly indicative of what goes on in the given country. The detour for this episode involved two activities supposedly local to Amsterdam, furniture hoisting and bicycle riding. The roadblock was something called "ditch vaulting", which is just what it sounds like. Now, I'm sure that furniture hoisting -- using a tackle and pulley to carry furniture to the window of a building -- and bicycle riding aren't activities local to only Amsterdam. But you can expect such vaguely stereotypical activities to take place on "The Amazing Race" and viewers to get the same smattering of culture one might get when driving by the Grand Canyon really, really fast. "Too much in a hurry to take it in! Have to go forward!"

(I mean, what did the viewers expect? Wooden-shoe building? Dike-finger-stopping? Smoking hashish? A prostitution competition?)

When last we left the Racers, their numbers had been whittled down to ten. The couple Ari and Staella, the designated psychos of the mix this year -- every reality show has to have one contestant/couple that needs mental health counseling -- had already been eliminated, and viewers relaxed to a hopefully peaceful experience. We could finally relax and begin to choose "favorite couples", couples for whom one roots because they share one's problem-solving style or demographic representation. I've put my money on the Goths, Kynt and Vyxsin, due to the woeful underrepresentation of the Goth demographic in the modern media. (We can be further glad that they aren't depicted as trenchcoat-wearing sociopaths.)

And we could also settle down to watching every leg play out the same way that every other leg of "The Amazing Race" has played out, with the following scenes:

* The "I'm completely lost" scene, where a couple argues over the proper reading of a map. Usually a dissonant chord is played, and we fade to commerical.
* The "we're all waiting at the airport" scene, where everyone gets to the airport a little too early and stresses out over the limited availablity of tickets.
* The "we're wearing goofy costumes" scene. I'm surprised they didn't put everyone in Dutch Boy Paint outfits.
* The "I'm having a mental breakdown and making a fool of myself on national television" scene. Unfortunately, this scene takes place rather frequently.

Today's mental breakdown was brought to us by Ronald and Christina, who get to represent both the Asian demographic and the father-daughter demographic. From what I've been able to glean about Ronald and Christina (more on that later), Christina's goal was to form a closer relationship with her father, but it seems that daddy has some problems of his own. Her father prides himself on his "honesty", even when his "honesty" is frankly counterproductive. To paraphrase what someone once said about John Lennon, Ronald has cast himself in the role of "truth-teller", and as truth-teller, he is able to justify whatever pig-ignorant thing he chooses to do in the name of honesty.

Some illustrations: at one point, Nicholas and Donald, the son/grandfather duo, were pressing a ticket agent at an airport for tickets and were rather rude, causing the ticket agent to walk off camera. Ronald, of course, had to walk over and point how rude Nick was. Nick answered, ruefully, that he recognized that he was rude, but wanted to say a few things. Ronald, his ability to make a point muted by Nick's recognition of his own bad behavior, went off, saying quite loudly that he didn't need to hear any more information. Indeed, Ronald made more of a scene with his bad behavior than Nick had made.

And that was just his behavior towards complete strangers. Ronald would end up berating his daughter during slipups in the name of honesty, until a tearful Christine pointed out that Ronald's behavior would be counterproductive to them winning the race. Ronald was forced to concede the point, but even at the end, couldn't stop giving what he considered helpful advice in the ditch vault to Christine until Christine told him that his advice wasn't helping. (Ronald later said to the camera that he thought he could have done a better job.)

When thinking about Ronald and Christina, I'm reminded of one of the complaints about reality television, usually from Omarosas-in-training: "My behavior was a lot better than the behavior you saw on TV...'selective editing' made me look bad!" With the removal of Ari and Staella, a couple actually looking forward to their reign of terror, I figured that there would be peace in the valley, but the producers were able to whip up a big dose of Ronald and Christina. However, I suspect that in most instances, the camera never lies. There are some acts that are "beyond the threshhold" of good behavior, some acts that most normal people won't be tempted to commit no matter how much adverse pressure they face -- and really, how much pressure can you be facing in a game show? Ronald's actions don't necessary label him a Boston Rod type of personality, or make him the Puck of "The Amazing Race", but they portray that Ronald can be a jerk, at least sometimes.

As for the end, the last team to cross the finish line was Kate and Pat, the married lesbian ministers, which sends up a hallelujah chorus across Middle America, which is terrified that their kids might catch TEH GAY with only an exposure in the milligrams. But cheer up, as there's always the Goths. Your kids might be trying out eyeliner before you know it.

"Guitar Queer-o (South Park)", 11-8-2007

When "Guitar Queer-o" started, I was distracted on the computer. My wife asked me something, and I said, "Shh! South Park is starting!"

It started with a set of knights having some sort of conversation about some murderous traitor. Instead of the little round computer figure characters we've come to know in "South Park", these figures were much more detailed. We have already seen such figures on "Make Love, Not Warcraft", where the avatars of Kyle et. al. were the near-perfectly detailed characters from those sword-and-sorcery PC games. I sat and waited for the punchline.

There was no punchline. I missed the opening tag. This wasn't "South Park" at all but a two-minute commercial for "Assassin's Creed", a new video game which will be "released" in November, not unlike a movie.

It just goes to show you that the writers of "South Park" have the ability to go after anything. We've seen live action, manga, computer avatars, and the classic South Park animation so nothing is safe on "South Park". Oddly enough, this episode goes right after the very demographic "Assassin's Creed" is trying to reach -- young male video gamers with a lot of time on their hands.

The episode stars with the South Park kids sitting on a couch watching Stan and Kyle play a popular video game called "Guitar Hero", which really exists. The idea behind "Guitar Hero" is that if you press the keys on your controller correctly, the guitar parts from (formerly) popular songs will be duplicated in the video game. If you punch buttons correctly, you will produce note-perfect riffs and if you miss a button or two, you get awful clanks and missed chords. Stan and Kyle are playing this game on controllers which are shaped like ukelele-sized guitars and manage to rack up an impressive 100,000 points.

Randy Marsh, Stan's father, wanders in. Getting what the game is about, he decides to impress the kids by hooking up his old electric guitar and playing "Carry On Wayward Son" by Kansas, which is the "game" that Stan and Kyle have just mastered. To Mr. Marsh's chagrin, the kids aren't interested. They call the playing of an actual guitar "gay" and suggest that actual guitar playing is a hobby of old people.

Marsh counters that what Stan and Kyle are doing is not real music in any way, shape, or form but at the door arrives Mr. Kincaid (a throwback to "The Partridge Family") a music manager who is impressed with Stan and Kyle's high score and offers to sign them to a big-money contract -- playing "Guitar Hero". He takes the two to a producer who listens to "Carry On Wayward Son". Unfamiliar with it, he asks if the boys played it, and Kincaid answers that no, that was a song by Kansas -- but that Stan and Kyle racked up awesome points on "Guitar Hero".

The producer agrees to put up the money and invites Kyle and Stan to a party, where they meet the cream of celebrities -- from Denver.

For the rest of the show, the show's writers play some riffs of their own, as they humorously drag out every trope in "the rise and fall of the young rock star". The band makes it big. The manager tells the star (Stan) that the rest of the band (Kyle) is expendable. The shocking scene where Kyle discovers Stan has left him behind. The formation of the new band. The star's disputes over the choice of music. The rest of the band playing the music they love at the local bar (bowling alley). Etc. etc. All that's missing is the girlfriend who gets dumped for a richer, more urban girl and you've got your classic rock movie.

And of course, where would a movie about rock and roll tragedy be without drug use. Stan, the pressure getting to him, calms his nerves by playing a video game called "Heroin Hero" -- you chase a dragon that you can never catch. And of course, Stan falls apart at the big gig. But can he and Kyle put their differences aside and make it?

The show is an extended comment about people making it bigtime playing virtual versions of real-life activities. As the Marshes note, if Stan spent as much time studying a real guitar as he did in playing a virtual one, he'd probably have a skill he could take somwhere -- if it weren't "gay" and for "old people" in Stan's social set. Today, you can find people who spend hours on games like "World of Warcraft", and I mean hours as in "80 plus hours a week". There are people who spend every waking moment they are not at work or in school playing these games, the parts of which have virtual characters mimic mundane professions like blacksmithing or metalworking. If the players dumped that time into actually getting out and working at these skills -- ! But that never happens. A person who spent 80 hours a week using an actual sword might be marked as one of those Ren Faire geeks; someone who has a fighter character with master swordplay on "World of Warcraft" would be seen as more impressive in some quarters.

Furthermore, like the episode of "The Simpsons" called "Homer's Enemy" which put to death the idea that American really, really loves a working man, "Guitar Queer-O" puts to the torch the idea that wisdom is more important than fame in American society. For many kids, the difference between being Keith Richards or Slash versus just having the money and fame of a guitar god would be no difference at all. My wife, when she was a school teacher, found that many brain-dead kids had dreams of being doctors and lawyers yet didn't do as much as lift a finger to bring those dreams to reality. Those kids must have supposed that loving the fame would be enough.

As Stan and Kyle move up levels in "Guitar Hero", the game releases messages like "you are a ROCK GOD!" When the two finally reach their goal -- when they finally unlock the last message -- the writers jab the knife home with a skill that would have made the highest-level fighter in "World of Warcraft" hang his head in shame, if he had a mind to listen.

I wonder what the message was to all those people contemplating spending hours on "Assassin's Creed".

"Whatever it Takes (House, M. D.)", 11-06-2007

I would be scared to death to end up at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital and fall under the care of Gregory House. More than likely, I would get some weird disease, House's team of doctors would spend several days (approximately one hour of screen time) torturing me, and eventually they would come to the conclusion that I made an error of omission -- or worse, commission, deliberately omitting some embarrassing incident -- and I would be face to face with Gregory House, M. D. who would lift his cane, point it at my face, and scream, "J'accuse!"

In "Whatever it Takes", House gets pulled away from the group of candidates for his diagnostic team by a mysterious suit-wearing man who has a badge that has "CIA" on it. (My first thought: why does House even trust the veracity of the man's claims? The CIA could stand for "Culinary Institute of America".) As it turns out, the Central Intelligence Agency needs to borrow House's mind. One of their agents is dying from an undiagnosable illness, and they provide the standard issue black helicopter to take House down to CIA headquarters at Virginia to make his diagnosis.

There, he meets Dr. Terzi, who is the physician working for the CIA. Also chosen by the CIA is Dr. Curtis of the Mayo Clinic. As Terzi is a real looker and Curtis is your standard, button-down doctor, House tries to get into Terzi's panties and puts down Curtis every chance he gets.

Normally, House puts down the concept of a patient history -- "everybody lies" -- but this time, the CIA won't give either House or Curtis any patient history, merely a couple of scraps of information. It seems that the CIA wants to keep this agent's identity completely under wraps. Therefore, House and Curtis must start from Ground Zero. And, oh, there will be conflict, I tells ya!

Meanwhile, House's candidates have been left under the care of Dr. Foreman. Of course, they get an interesting case of their own where a drag racer passed out after a race and quickly declines under the care of the candidates (and Foreman, in particular). Foreman then finds himself in a battle of wills with the candidates -- Foreman feels that his knowledge and experience give him authority, but the candidates feel their key to success is solving the case with their own ideas and by necessity, undermining Foreman's authority. Will Foreman survive with his ego integrity intact?

The first of my comments involves the parallel between the two stories -- as it turns out in both cases, the key to the case is recognizing that someone is lying about something. Isn't that the motto of "House, M. D." -- "everybody lies?" Unfortunately, when so many episodes revolve around this premise, the plots become formulaic like the worst sort of mysteries. In the future, we should just be able to program "House, M. D." episodes by concluding "one of the facts given about this patient is in error", and by a process of elimination solve the case. Hell, in one episode the staff made the "error" that they assumed that the female model was genetically female.

Furthermore, Curtis took a lot of grief in this episode. Granted, House gives everyone grief but the set-up was far too obvious. It reminded me of Animal House. The slovenly rules-breakers vs. the straight-laced dean, and Dr. Curtis's suit threw him into the straight-laced dean category. The premise is that we're supposed to love the rulesbreaker and hate the straight-laced dean. However, Dr. Curtis didn't seem stuffy or particularly full of himself -- maybe the director failed to give him the instruction that he was supposed to be Dean Wormer and instead Holmes Osborne played it like Marcus Welby, M. D. Maybe they should bring Mr. Osborne back in a future episode, so they can get it right. He could become an assistant administrator and put House on double-secret probation.

The case with the "numbers", as my wife calls them, was much more interesting. Foreman makes an obvious diagnosis -- heatstroke -- but the driver has a seizure and everyone falls all over themselves to find some rare, mystery diagnosis while Foreman suggests more mundane solutions like heatstroke, or botulism, or even multiple sclerosis.

As it turns out -- and I must give the plot away to make my point about the episode -- the candidate from Doctors Without Borders suggests polio. As polio has been eradicated almost everywhere in the United States, and as nothing in the racers labs even suggested polio, it becomes a battle of wills between Foreman and our candidate who has experience treating third-world polio. Foreman gets fed up and tosses the guy off the team, but the man does labs behind Foreman's back.

Guess what? Positive for polio. Foreman is humiliated and the other doctors make sure he feels the sting of his defeat. The young doctor suggests an experimental treatment for polio involving high doses of Vitamin C -- this treatment was initially researched in the 1950s but abandoned after the success of the vaccine. Sure enough, after an IV bolus of orange juice or something the racer's paralysis goes away.

It all seems to turn out fine and dancy, until House comes back and immediately diagnosis -- in five minutes -- that the racer's symptoms are indicative of thallium poisoning. He concludes that our young doctor poisoned the patient with thallium, came up with a positive lab test for polio somehow, and then discontinued the thallium after the vitamin C.

Why? The doctor wanted to promote research into third-world diseases, and "mystery polio" seemed to be the way to do it. Foreman's pedestrian diagnosis was the correct one. (Now, the question is who tells the patient that the hospital poisoned her, lest she walk out believing she has polio?)

Dr. Poisoner was clearly at fault, but in a way, aren't all of House's patients victims of malpractice? If malpractice is the failure to follow medical standards in a way that causes the patient harm, shouldn't the entire show be retitled "Malpractice Clinic in Princeton"? (Tonight's episode: "I Lose My Licence".)

The title "Whatever it Takes" is telling. The entire premise of the show is that this patient, and all of House's patients will be abused (the bad thing) in order to save their lives (the good thing). Our young doctor takes this premise a bit further. After all, what is the torture of one patient -- even a healthy patient -- compared to the goal of saving a million third world lives? If "the ends justify the means", then the doctor undoubtedly felt he was doing something good and noble. I suspect the doctor was embarrassed at having been caught, but that if asked, he regretted nothing except the future jail term he is sure to receive.

The other doctors -- even House, a firm believer in "the ends justify the means" -- suffer various degrees of repulsion, and justly so. Which is odd, as you can find millions of Americans that firmly believe the ends justify the means. After all, what's wrong with the torture of Iraqis and other Muslims, if the end results in the safety of millions of Americans? But sooner or later, one can rationalize the most ignoble of acts -- pre-emptive torture, the support of corrupt and reprehensive governments, spreading false intelligence -- if you can claim that the ends are pure enough. Read a newspaper if you don't believe me.

The other comment regards Chase and Cameron, whom the producers feel must be crammed into every episode. Chase's part truly is a bit part, and Cameron could have easily been cut out of the episode. Look, Fox, I know you hired these guys, but in baseball, they call it a "release". If they have no grand role in the drama of "House, M. D.", then pay them half of their remaining salary, bid them a fond farewell and tell them that they should seek other work. Don't just string their careers along in bit parts, and let them go.

Just a Day or Two or Three...or Seven or....

Okay. Big event tomorrow AM, which has kept me from updating all this time. Hopefully, we'll have something by tonight.