Will you ever live down high school? You were larger than life or painfully insignificant, popular or nerdy, acceptable or odd, embraced or rejected. If you were a winner in high school, you look back and wonder if you’ll ever feel the warm, welcoming waters of such a small pond again. If you were a loser, you’re filled with a nagging compulsion to prove your coolness to the world once and for all.
Either way, when you revisit those years as an adult, piecing together old triumphs and rejections and disasters and reexamining them in the context of what you know now, suddenly it all makes sense: You were just a kid, and those bad classmates who made you feel envious and angry and pathetic were other kids, groping their way through the dark, grasping for whatever could soothe their insecurities or give them a firmer footing in the world, whether it was a Flock of Seagulls haircut or tapered jeans or Echo & the Bunnymen playing on a steady loop in their Walkman headphones or a 6-foot-high bong with a dancing bear sticker on the side.
For all the nastiness and stupidity of high school, it’s hard not to miss the naive romanticism of those years: mooning over crushes and daydreaming through class as if the world were one big, flashy musical extravaganza and you were its plucky, incorrigible star. As you get older, there’s a relief that comes from realizing that no one is watching and you can make whatever choices you want to. But there’s also a nostalgia for the days when the world was your stage — even if the audience was filled with merciless thugs, armed with spoiled eggs and rotting tomatoes.
Fast times
If you can’t quite remember just how awkward and painful it was to be a teenager, “High School Confidential” (10 p.m. Mondays on WE) provides a chilling reminder. The eight-part documentary series follows 12 teenage girls attending a high school in Overland Park, Kan., revealing all of the triumphs and tragedies that can occur over the course of four short years.
We meet the girls before their freshman year, inevitably looking awkward and pimply and nervous at the prospect of being thrown into a big school filled with ruthless older kids. We watch the girls mature before our eyes, making and losing friends, picking up boyfriends (and in some cases, babies) along the way. The pitfalls chronicled here are not insignificant: A girl named Lauren, has a brain tumor removed. Another girl, Allyson, deals with an abortion and the death of her father. More typical, though, is Cappie, who fights with her mother, gets drunk with her friends, and ends a friendship, but makes it out of high school without any major mishaps.
Unfortunately, instead of watching the girls interact with their peers, we learn about their lives primarily through interviews, in which they tend to describe the latest developments in their lives with vagaries and exaggerations. The footage and editing are pretty primitive and the voice-overs share the leaden prose of a high school term paper. “Cappie was always adventurous, but by her junior year, her independent nature brought her to a difficult crossroads.” “Courtney’s story is about temptation and consequence in a Kansas high school.” The series’ perspective is so square that it’s clearly aimed at parents, not kids.
Although the problems these girls battle can feel oppressively heavy — peer pressure, anorexia, depression, loneliness — the terms they use to express their experiences sometimes provide unintentional comic relief along the way. Lauren describes being on the homecoming court as “the most amazing and fulfilling experience probably of my life.” Yes, walking onto the football field with a rhinestone tiara on your head is truly a life-altering event. “I’ve always been the type of person to think. I think all the time!” says Courtney. Remember when you believed you were the only one in the world with thoughts floating around in your head?
But I think my favorite part is when Courtney, who’s a good Catholic, has a dream that she gets drunk and runs over Jesus in her car. (I’m not an expert at dream analysis, but I think that dream means that she wants to get drunk and run over Jesus in her car.)
Along with the natural comedy inherent to high school, each episode has a few heartbreaking or memorable moments. In 9th grade, Cappie reports that her dad “isn’t making her a priority,” language that’s obviously been stolen straight from her mother’s mouth. But Cappie feels the absence of her father at this age to a painful degree. “You go over to your friend’s house and they have their dad, and you don’t have …” she trails off, in tears. And then there’s the end of Courtney’s episode, where her little sister, who struggled through a pregnancy when she was only 15, turns to her while the camera is rolling and says, tearily, “I never really thanked you for being there for me through the whole pregnancy thing.” Gulp! Sure, these kids are young and hormone-addled and they make stupid mistakes, but when you see how openhearted and kind they can be … Well, it makes you feel old and fat and jaded.
Old and fat and jaded as you are, though, it’s nice to spend a little time with young people, and get to the point where you can hear past the endless flow of “likes” and “whatevers” to the likable kids underneath. Clumsy and tone-deaf as it sometimes is, “High School Confidential” offers a fascinating look at the challenges and heartbreaks facing today’s teenage girl.
Clueless
In case anyone is wondering what some of these girls will be like in, say, about 20 years, there’s “High School Reunion” (10 p.m. Wednesdays on TV Land), a show that’s maybe 50 times as sad and pathetic as an actual high school reunion.
The show brings together a group of 15 old high school classmates 20 years after they graduate together, and flies them all off to a house in Maui to drink to excess with their old friends/enemies/frienemies. When they arrive, the classmates finds their senior photographs, big hair and all, framed by their beds, along with a big, pretty pool and a bar full of alcohol.
Naturally, the cast has been selected based on how much drama has ensued between them. Thus do we meet Mike (the Rebel!) and Lana (the Drama Queen!), who were married until Lana slept with Mike’s best friend. Lana claims (as cheaters so often do) that the marriage fell apart long before that, and that the real problem was that she matured, but Mike never did. Sorry, lady, we’re not buying it.
But later, Lana discovers that someone drew a mustache on her photograph. Hmm. Maybe she has a point about that maturity thing.
A few fruity cocktails later, we learn that Justin (the Pipsqueak!) has a big crush on DeAnna (the Popular Girl!). Will the Pipsqueak, who’s now big and fit, land the former blond bombshell? She reports that she’s been married four times already. Yeah, we’re guessing he has a pretty clear shot.
Then there’s Matt (the Jock!), who hasn’t dated since his wife, Gayle, died six months ago. “If she were here, she would say live, live, live!” says DeAnna (the Popular Girl!), who, as far as we know, didn’t actually know Matt’s wife. “Because life is for the living, you know?” Yeah, I bet that’s exactly what Gayle would say.
“How do you figure out when the time is right to move on?” Matt asks. Then he says, “Gayle will tell me.” Or maybe Gayle will tell DeAnna, who’ll tell you.
Eventually it becomes clear that the real action isn’t making it into the final cut. While various faux-couples go on awkward, “Bachelor”-style dates together, the rest of the house lazes about at the pool and jokes around and drinks as much as humanly possible. Why can’t we stay at the house with them, instead of going on another forced, unromantic jaunt to the beach? Kat (the Lesbian!) says she wants to try dating guys again, but we can tell about five seconds into her highly platonic date with Rob (the Stud!) that men don’t do it for her (she confirms the same thing after the date). Matt and Yvette (the Girl Next Door!) go on a date that will only confirm that Matt isn’t ready to date yet, and Jason (the Bully!) is forced to confront a former victim of his bullying. But hilariously, as Jason is leaving, we spot something in Justin’s hands. TiVo’s pause button confirms what we suspected — it’s a beer bong! So while we’re watching two guys mumble awkwardly to each other about a fight that happened 20 years ago, or seeing two people smile politely through a meal, the rest of the house is doing beer bongs? Come on, people! Show us the good shit! If we wanted to see cheesy middle-aged dorks making small talk over their salads, we’d just go to the Cheesecake Factory. Give us slobbery, nostalgia-addled drunks pouring beer down each other’s throats, damn it!
But the producers are hell-bent on their own forced story line. At the end of the second episode, Lana’s ex-lover and Mike’s ex-best friend, Steve, arrives at the house, just so everyone can stand around feeling uncomfortable and eventually trade a few poorly chosen insults. Yawn.
Remarkable, isn’t it, how unattractive petty squabbles look among the aged? Something to ponder as you become less and less pretty and sweet-smelling and worthy of love by the second.
Carrie
Let’s face it, given how much prettier and sweeter-smelling they are than us, young people would be unbearable if they didn’t say such amusingly stupid things so often. Remember how Lauren from “High School Confidential” was sure that walking around in front of the whole school with a rhinestone tiara on her head was one of the most “amazing and fulfilling” experiences of her life? Well, ABC Family has collected a whole gaggle of young ladies with the same notion for “America’s Prom Queen” (9 p.m. Mondays on ABC Family), a reality show that’s exactly as horrifying as that Stephen King movie “Carrie,” except without all of the pig’s blood splattering all over the place.
Ten prom-queen hopefuls will compete in “prom-themed challenges” (Sneaking vodka into the prom in a saline solution bottle? Vomiting in the girl’s bathroom without getting any on your dress?) to test “whether they deserve the title of America’s Prom Queen.” With the help of the “prom committee” — reality star Brooke Hogan, style expert Jai Rodriguez, comedian Theo Von, editor in chief of Cosmo Girl Susan Schulz — a handful of girls will be selected, America will vote, and “for the first time ever, America will have a prom queen to call its own.” God, won’t it be a huge relief when we finally do?
“The prom is the most perfect moment of your life,” offers aspiring prom queen Amanda from Peabody, Mass. I think if most teenagers started to believe that, teen suicide rates would skyrocket. Another contestant wants to win so she’ll have “the feeling that everyone loves me.” Wouldn’t taking some Ecstasy be a little more efficient?
After designing their own prom dresses (one girl designs a dress that makes her look just like the big princess with the huge tracts of land from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”), the girls walk down the runway, then they’re lectured by the prom committee members, and the whole thing feels just like one of the many modeling reality shows, only with younger, less attractive contestants. Cosmo Girl editor Schulz actually tells one of the girls that her magazine’s big goal is to “show a girl how to bring out her inner prom queen.”
Eventually, every time they say the words “prom queen,” I snort. With so many bubbly, positive thinkers in the group, I find myself rooting for matter-of-fact Niah, who refuses to play along with the producers’ script for her. “I don’t know if I would choose LaShell to go home, but I definitely don’t like her,” says Niah. “I’d choose her to go into the other room.”
Finally, the prom committee makes its decision. Some sluggish girl who has trouble bringing out her inner prom queen is sent home, and sadly, a bucket of pig’s blood doesn’t fall on her head right after her dismissal is announced. Everyone else cries and hugs and agrees that this has already been the most incredible experience of their entire lives.
But God bless them, it must be nice to feel that overwhelmed and excited about something so small, that doesn’t even include Ecstasy or supernatural powers or buckets of pig’s blood. Let’s leave the little bunnies to their wildly fluctuating emotions and their giggles and their big, salty tears, and thank our lucky stars that we left this rocky transition from the wonder of childhood to the world-weary exhaustion of adulthood behind us a long, long time ago.
Who tricked us into thinking that creativity was the holy grail of personal achievement?
Everyone wants to be creative and successful these days. “I want to create something lasting,” they say, as if writing another out-of-print book or throwing up another album on iTunes might beat back mortality’s inexorable creep.
Of course, most of us aren’t preoccupied with our legacy so much as disturbed by the pointlessness of most other options. Let’s see, I can create something meaningful and expressive, or I can help some company that creates a disposable product trick the world into buying it.
What no one tells you, of course, is that the former inevitably turns into the latter. No sooner have you put the finishing touches on your masterpiece than a phalanx of professionally smooth humans gathers to discuss how to peddle your brand to the appropriate demographic. “Who is your demographic, do you think?” they’ll ask you.
I don’t know, you’ll answer. Crazy people? Angry people? People who just want to create something lasting but end up pissing away their prime in extended Twitter exchanges and tedious teleconferencing calls?
Desperately seeking status
Just don’t say so out loud. Too many sullen artists and brilliant recluses have made that mistake before you, and they have a laundry room filled with glorious unsold paintings or brilliant unsold manuscripts to show for it. Face it, you’re going to have to sell something, eventually. Even surgeons and priests and teachers and executives at charitable foundations (especially them) have to sell something. Don’t stay in denial about the need to sell forever, because, short of genius grants and the kindness of strangers, the creative life isn’t possible without sales.
That said, it’s hard not to get fatigued by the swirling, bullshit-polluted waters of the promotional universe, with its gluppity glup and shloppity shlop. Think too long and hard about selling yourself into a new life, and soon you won’t be able to separate your “brand” from your actual personality, or differentiate between your friends and your professional networks. Then you’ll need to seek professional help — whether that’s with a psychotherapist or a social media marketing consultant is anybody’s guess.
HBO’s “How to Make It in America” (premieres 10 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 14) dives straight into the eternal hellfire of a self-promoting universe without apology, and, bewilderingly enough, does so with a scruffy, scattered, early-30-something dude who can’t seem to decide if he’d rather pass out business cards or pass out from drinking too many vodka shots at a loft party in Williamsburg. Our hero Ben (Bryan Greenberg) faces that timeless dilemma: follow another pipe dream, or pass the pipe?
Befitting a man who’s half stuck in the past — drinking too much and waking up in unfamiliar apartments — and half stuck in some dingy present he never anticipated, Ben wears a haunted look of ambition and dread and hope and self-hatred. Even when he tells you his next big plan, there’s a wavering in his voice that asks, “Will I ever make anything of myself or am I just a big loser?”
This makes the half-hour dramedy “How to Make It in America” a little bit like “Entourage,” except without the money, the fame or the hot girls. (“Entourage” executive producers Mark Wahlberg and Rob Weiss are also producers on this show.) Well, no, there are hot girls here, too, but they won’t sleep with these guys, because they’re obviously not friends with a big-time movie star.
Yes, as annoying as it is to watch Drama and Turtle harvest lip-glossy sea donkeys with their flaccid pickup lines, it’s even more disturbing to watch guys not get the girls because they’re not well-connected. No one is rising above anything in this picture; the underlying ego-driven, self-promoting, screw-or-be-screwed backdrop is still there, it’s just that we’re hanging out with the have-nots this time instead of the haves. When Ben’s friend Gingy (Shannyn Sossamon) tells him she’s going to give him one of their friend Tim’s photographs as a gift, he replies, “That’s great, I mean these are like a framed reminder of what losers all my friends are.”
Ben is kind of a dick, but you can hardly blame him. He’s constantly confronted with the fact that he’s stuck in limbo, that he hasn’t actually achieved anything, that his dreams might never come true. Ben’s ex, Rachel (Lake Bell), has moved on to a guy who’s opening a bar in Manhattan. When Ben tries to hit on a girl at a party, she introduces him to her other suitor at the party, saying, “Marco is a painter. He just got back from a solo show in Mexico City.”
This is the third show on HBO’s roster (along with “Bored to Death” and, to a lesser extent, “Flight of the Conchords”) that dabbles in the hipster-manchild milieu of Brooklyn, displacing Carrie Bradshaw’s Manhattan as the place where strivers dream big and sleep around and fumble for a cigarette in gloves with the fingers cut off.
Despite his comment about what losers his friends are, everyone around Ben seems to at least be pursuing some creative goal, whereas Ben works in retail, moons over his ex, and frets about being a nobody — that is, until he and his friend Cam (Victor Rasuk) dream up a scheme so crazy, it just might work!
Your own personal interest in “How to Make It in America” mostly relies on whether you can relate to Ben’s plight of drunken despair mixed with uneasy ambition (I certainly can) and whether you want to relive those years (I certainly don’t), let alone relive them against a backdrop of apparently soulless, skin-deep debauchery.
That said, Ben and Cam have their share of unsophisticated, naive charms. They’re at least a little grittier and more imaginative than the first-year corporate lawyers of ABC’s “The Deep End” or the competitive doctors-in-training of “Grey’s Anatomy” and the other cute professional-class underlings that we’re supposed to feel sorry for because — oh dear! — they’re not big swinging dicks yet. On those shows, the stakes have to be artificially pumped up by cancer and alcoholic moms and married lovers because otherwise, would we really believe that whether or not “Grey’s” Christina Yang gets to practice cardiothoracic surgery techniques before she actually starts a cardiothoracic surgery residency is going to determine her fate as a doctor?
Ben, on the other hand, is reduced to hanging out at the end of a long table at a bar, hoping to get a few minutes of face time with fashion designer John Varvatos, because he needs some connections to start his designer jean business. When he asks the guy next to him, “You a friend of John’s?” the guy responds, “No! I’m a friend of his, and he’s a friend of a friend of John’s,” you can’t help but cringe. At least we’re provided with a reminder of the sorts of things most of us would never be willing to do for money, fame or even hot girls. Even after kissing ass with reckless abandon, Ben and Cam are only granted an informational interview with one of Varvatos’ associates, who immediately tells them that they’re kidding themselves.
Meanwhile, even Ben’s egocentric blowhard friends are reduced to hustling constantly, whether they’re successful or not. “I didn’t find photography, photography found me,” Ben’s friend Tim (Is that Billy Lush?) tells some strangers at his gallery opening. “I was living in a halfway house, I stole a camera from The Wiz, and I just started shooting. I mean, true art is all in the streets, everything else is bullshit. By the way, I’m having a very special deal on my 20 by 24 prints …” See also: Johnny Drama, take deux.
But the lowest moments of the show come when Ben and Cam bicker over whether or not they should dip into criminal territory to get the ball rolling.
Cam: Shady or not, at least I’m still going for it, not working for the man like you.
Ben: What are you, 12? How long are you going to keep saying “Fuck the man” for?
Cam: Until we are the man!
Hold on a minute. Was that Turtle talking?
So that’s what it all boils down to: Ben and Cam want to be the man. They’re not designing jeans because they’re passionate about fashion — not as far as we can tell, anyway. They just want to have more money and get laid more often.
If this were a show about creative passion, then maybe Ben and Cam would be a little more interesting than the glossy professional yuppies on every other channel, straining to make that promotion and bag that babe. Unfortunately, as Ben and Cam demonstrate, more often than not the desire to “make it” is exactly as vague and empty as those two words imply.
“How to Make It in America” may have set out to create a humbler, more down-to-earth version of “Entourage,” but it mostly succeeds at reminding us that not having fame or money doesn’t necessarily make you more down to earth. From world-famous pop stars like John Mayer to that kid who made fun of your shoes in the fifth grade, douche bags are born, not made.
How many adorable, saucer-eyed children are going to have to suffer and die and get torn from Mommy’s arms before this thing is through? That’s what I ask myself every time I find myself watching “Private Practice” (10 p.m. Thursdays on ABC), the flashier, cheesier, stupider cousin of “Grey’s Anatomy” that serves up a big, fat slice of Parental Nightmare Porn every week — you know, for the masochist that lives deep inside every last one of us.
Sure, it starts out innocently enough. “Addy” (Addison, played by Kate Walsh) is dashing around the medical offices where she works, and she bumps into some snag: the practice’s budget is in the red or someone forgot to make more coffee in the break room or someone’s wife stopped by to call her a whore. Addy doesn’t take kindly to such stressors – you’ll recall that her character moved from Seattle Grace (on “Grey’s”) down to sunny L.A. for a change of scenery, and so Shonda Rhimes could build a whole new show around a manic, eye-rolling, sexually compulsive redhead who’s also – you guessed it – the best gynecological surgeon anywhere in the known universe.
Like most busy and important surgeons, Addy spends most of her time mooning over some man or blurting out long-winded tirades about how everything is all mixed up inside of her, sort of like the spunky heroine of a Beverly Cleary novel, except with shinier hair and eyebrows plucked into a skeptical, vaguely demonic arch that says, “I’m not buying it, mister!” and also, “Should I sleep with you now, or later, during the strummy indie pop ballad montage?”
Anyway, Addy and her ragtag assortment of new-age-cliché-spewing, middle-aged, oversexed colleagues get into a colorful bickering match, and then – and this is where you have to start watching your back – a doe-eyed little child is wheeled in or hobbles in on his own or is led in by an obviously screwed-up drug addict of a parent, and even though at first it just looks like a minor subplot, soon a gaping hole opens up in the sexy-single-doctors-argue-flirting universe and the entire show is swallowed up by a deep, black abyss of sniffling toddlers with terribly negligent or uncaring parents and dead moms and single dads who can’t hug their own children without giving them wretched diseases, and before you know it, you’re surrounded by snotty tissues.
You think I’m exaggerating. So let’s just review the imperiled-child subplot on the last few episodes of the show, shall we?
Subplot A: Adorable saucer-eyed blond boy answers door, insists his mom is “a really good mother” in heartbreakingly earnest tone, but then reveals that she’s a hoarder! He’s living in a puddle of his own filth! The cast on his arm is infected! Mommy, meanwhile, can’t explain any of it to the drippy therapist lady Violet (Amy Brenneman). Finally, Child Protective Services is on its way over to take the little darling honey lamb away from his Mommy! Oh nooo! At the last minute, Mommy breaks down crying and admits that three years earlier she dumped her husband for no good reason! One day her ex picked up their daughter for his weekend visit and … they both drove over a cliff and died! It was all Mommy’s fault for dumping her perfectly good man, and for not letting her daughter stay home (she wanted to stay home with her brother, who was sick, but Mommy wouldn’t let her!) and, well, that’s why she started hoarding, the poor, poor woman! But look, she’s ready to make a change! She just threw out that bag of junk! And that one! Sniff, sniff.
Subplot B: Dell, the plucky male midwife at the office, has a pretty little daughter, Betsy, with his wife, who’s a former drug addict. As he’s driving away from the house one night, it explodes into flames! His wife and child are seriously injured! It turns out his wife was cooking meth on the stove – and Dell had found a pipe earlier but still left his daughter alone with his wife, so it was all his fault the whole thing happened! Betsy wants to see her mommy to say goodbye before Mommy dies but Dell won’t let them see each other. Mommy dies! Betsy is furious and hates her daddy forever and ever!
Subplot C: Woman gives birth to baby, but won’t even hold him after he’s born, because all she wants is the cord blood, which she needs to save her twin daughters’ lives. But there’s a hitch; there’s only enough to save one daughter. Oh God, how will Mom and Dad ever choose between their two little girls? Mom flat-out refuses to choose, but Dad admits that he has a favorite, which prompts Mom to tell Dad that he’s going to hell. Mom and Dad cry, baby boy cries, twin daughters cry, Addy cries, etc. Finally one daughter gets sick and they give the cord blood to the other one, and of course the camera is there so we can watch the whole family tell her, “Sorry, honey, but we’re going to save your sister and let you die.” Naturally, instead of telling them all that she hates their guts, the girl says something crazy like “You must survive!” to her sister, and then valiantly prepares to die as we far less valiantly cry our eyes out.
Those stories are just the tip of the iceberg. I also remember an episode where two parents ditched their kid, then admitted, when questioned, that they did it because the kid was, like, a major incovenience. Then there was another couple trying to have a baby just to harvest the cord blood. There was the single dad who couldn’t be in the same room with his immunity-compromised older daughter because he would get sick and probably die if he did, but eventually he couldn’t stand to see her alone anymore, so he left his toddler son behind, even though that meant he’d die and leave the kid fatherless. (And yes, we watched as he reunited with his daughter while his heartbroken toddler cried outside the door.)
How do the writers even come up with these scenarios, anyway? Do they just sit around in the writers’ room saying, “Hmm … Would it be crazy to have a kid eaten alive by enormous rats while his parents looked on, helplessly? Could we do that? What about a flesh-eating virus, that could work, couldn’t it?”
The strange thing with “Private Practice” is that you think you’re watching this middle-aged, professional-class, not very funny, not very sexy version of “Sex and the City,” and then suddenly you’re surrounded by miserable, weeping children and bad, sick, confused, exhausted parents. Next time we’re looking for those kinds of kicks, we’ll skip the little shop of melodramatic horrors and hang out in the sick kids’ waiting room at the local children’s clinic instead.
How did a character-driven drama with metaphysical undertones and a sociopolitical allegory at its core slowly devolve into a maze of dead ends and lingering questions? And how is it that every question posed on “Lost” (9 p.m. Tuesdays on ABC) is answered with another question?
These are the questions, questions, questions that haunt us when Tuesday night’s second episode of the final season of “Lost” begins – yes – with even more questions: How did Sayid come back to life? “What happened to me?” he asks, and then “Who are these people? What do they want?”
“It’s the Others, dude,” Hurley answers. “They caught us … again.”
Oh dear. It’s the Others (again), and they caught us (again). And just in case the repetitive nature of this show is, ahem, lost on you, the entire episode seems to be made up of nothing but questions.
“Who are you? Why are you holding us here?”
“I just lied to him, didn’t I?”
“So did they tell you why they burnt me with a hot poker?”
“Who do you care about, Kate?”
“So, what happened to your handcuffs?”
“Why are they after you? What did you do?”
Of course, after the discovery of the hatch or Charles Widmore’s evil corporation or the Dharma Initiative’s disturbing experiment, things really had to get simpler. Blaming misguided scientific experiments or some corporation? Maybe in 2005, but these days that stuff is beyond played. It’s the bread and butter of “Fringe” and, Christ, “Eureka!” and probably five or six shows on Nickelodeon and ABC Family, for that matter. No, far better just to scrap all of that and go back to the one thing that everyone scoffed at in the very beginning: the smoke monster!
And by the smoke monster, of course, we mean a pure, simple force of evil, now embodied in the dead, eeeeevil Locke. So even as the questions fly about, we’re just biding time, because all of the various folds that made this show intriguing – character studies, well-scripted flashbacks, unpredictable power struggles, retro eeriness that conjured up the Milgram obedience experiment – all of these things are flattened out into Good vs. Evil. In fact, everything about the current course of events feels like a retread of a really bad Indiana Jones movie (“Indy, cover your heart!”).
So mystical guy/other Other Dogen tortures Sayid as a “test,” then admits to Jack that they were planning to poison Sayid:
Dogen: We believe he has been claimed.
Jack: Claimed? By what?
Dogen: There is a darkness growing in him, and once it reaches his heart, everything your friend once was will be gone.
Jack: How can you be sure of that?
Dogen: Because it happened to your sister.
Oh my god! Finally a truly shocking revelation: Locke is Jack’s sister!
No wonder they, like, totally never, ever got along at all, dude!
OK, sure, he’s probably talking about Jack’s half-sister, Claire. Another question answered with a question. Claire is evil now? And yes, it’s almost enough to keep you watching, if you didn’t suspect that, in the end, it will all boil down to explosions, fisticuffs and a few mediocre revelations trumped up to be shocking and weighty. But then, if there was one thing we knew when we started watching this show six years ago, it was that the ending would be a disappointment. That’s just the smoke-and-mirrors nature of the smoke monster.
Don’t tell that to the promo team at ABC, though. Immediately after the last scene of Tuesday night’s episode, we cut to a preview for the next episode with a voice-over that bellows, “This is it! The final episodes of television’s biggest phenomenon are here! The time for questions is over!“
Come on, guy. The time for questions is so not over. But you had to go and say that, didn’t you? Now we’ll tune in next week in spite of ourselves, hoping for some real answers for once, and at the end of another hour, we’ll say to ourselves, “Yep. They caught us … again.”
Most of us will take part in any function, holiday or yearly tradition that involves melted cheese and requires sitting in one place for four to eight hours, moving only to retrieve refreshments and/or scold anyone blocking the television set.
Thankfully, even small children and needy house pets seem to have an intuitive grasp of the divine nature of the Super Bowl, during which adults reserve the right to distractedly mumble and gorge themselves all afternoon while staring at the TV.
Unfortunately, the game itself frequently sucks. But don’t let that rob you of your one big chance to shut out the world and stare, slack-jawed, at a five-hour-long televisual sporting spectacle. Why, when the game gets dull, why not flip over to …
The Puppy Bowl
Maybe the men in shiny white tights no longer seem like adequate visual eye candy to match your outsize libido, or maybe you’re so old that what really makes your heartbeat race uncontrollably at this point is the sight of a 4-month old Chihuahua-pug mix, clumsily chasing a squeaky football toy across the goal line while a 3-month-old Lab-collie mix pounces on her own tail. Does this mean you’re a sad shell of your former self, or does it simply mean that you’re finally mature enough to acknowledge that nothing can make you lose sight of your own mortality quite as quickly as the sight of baby animals cavorting?
This year the festivities (3-5 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 7, on Animal Planet) include bunny cheerleaders, hamsters flying a blimp, and a kitten halftime show that’s guaranteed 100 percent clean and devoid of nipple flashing. And remember, your kids will enjoy the kittens a lot more than listening to Grandpa humming “Pinball Wizard” along with the Who, who are playing at halftime on the real Super Bowl.
The Puppy Bowl even features a human referee, who makes calls like “unnecessary ruffness.” Yes, sounds like you’d better watch with the sound off, or risk being so thoroughly polluted by Excessive Cuteness (also a personal foul) that you end up adorning your back dashboards with plush toys or take to wearing rainbow suspenders without irony for the rest of your days on earth, a style choice that’s at least as bad as singing along to “Won’t Get Fooled Again” for the 50,000,000th time in your life.
The Who?
Remember the old adage, “Those who never stop singing ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ are destined to get fooled more often than anyone else”? Still, nostalgia has a way of making fools of all of us. What else can explain why the network geniuses would turn back the clocks and break out another boomer indulgence for the halftime show this year? Let’s see, there was Springsteen, Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney … Apparently in the wake of nipplegate, TV execs suspect that if anyone under 65 is involved in the show, it’ll immediately devolve into a debauched, orgiastic spectacle of biblical, traditional-family-toppling proportions.
Why is it, though, that when marketing and development and publicity people want to cater to “the mainstream,” they’re always torn between peppy preteens, country-pop sensations, and guitar-solo-wielding retirees? When you turn on your TV set for some big concert, why is it always a prepubescent hottie you’ve never seen before or the classic rock radio that was playing when your high school boyfriend drove you to Hardee’s in his yellow Pinto for the first time?
News flash! Pete Townshend has revealed a part of the Who’s set list! It seems they plan to play — wait for it — “Baba O’Riley,” “Who Are You,” “Pinball Wizard” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again”! Man, I can’t wait to hear “Pinball Wizard” again, I haven’t heard that song in at least a week now. But speaking of being damned for all time, there’s always …
Faith Bowl III
It’s only natural that after several hours of watching various manly Christian hunks point toward the heavens and offer a big shout-out to the Man Upstairs in the wake of each particularly effective tackle or 5-yard gain, you’ll want to pay homage to the big boss-man in the sky yourself. Why not flip over to the Faith Bowl III on your local Catholic network, where “professional Catholic athletes” will “discuss how they live out their faith in the public arena of professional sports and what challenges to family life they face.” I can imagine a variety of challenges to family life that might come up for professional athletes, from locker room bare-ass bumps (or “moon landings” — thank you, “Modern Family”) to the steady parade of bunny cheerleaders and assorted roving rodents in heat wandering around after every practice, anxious to snag a man with a million-dollar salary and glutes of steel.
Panelists will discuss “a sound Christian family life, and the important role of a husband and father in being a ‘true man.’” But unless the panelists are going to demonstrate their true manliness by disrobing and then killing gigantic roaches lurking in the shower or putting on some tight short-shorts and soaping up one of the luxury vehicles parked in their driveways, we’re not sure about the visual interest of this segment. The show’s producers might consider swapping out former baseball star Mike Piazza for someone who’ll look a little hotter loading up a washing machine wearing a French maid’s uniform, like, say… pretty much anyone else.
But speaking of offensive, there’s also …
The Ball Bowl
OK, fine. Comedy Central’s Super Bowl programming block is actually called “Tailgate Party 10,” but come on, it’s a ball-themed movie marathon that includes “Meatballs,” “Spaceballs,” “Balls of Fury” and “The Nutsacker.”
OK, I made that last one up. But speaking of far-fetched tie-ins, don’t forget…
The Toilet Bowl
Yes, the DIY Network just had to find the most fragile of threads to herd audiences from the big game to its third annual potty-centric festivities. Yes, thanks to the Broke But Aspirational Housewife Channel, while your resident ball-scratchers are fully engulfed in America’s yearly, fully sanctioned plunge into semi-violent homoerotica, you can sneak off to the bedroom TV set and escape into a world of dream bathrooms, bathroom makeovers and extravagant trips to Bed, Bath and Beyond.
Fascinating, really, how one’s fixation on potties seems to correspond inversely to one’s fixation on potty humor. You’re either the sort of animal who repeats a fart joke from “Spaceballs” or you’re the kind who daydreams about having a bathroom the size of a kitchen (and a kitchen the size of a living room, and a living room the size of a basketball court).
And then there’s Matt Muenster, a darling little morsel of a home contractor who’s happy to fill the Nate Berkus role in the American housewives’ extreme makeover fantasy, bathroom remodeling edition. If Mike Piazza won’t put on a bunny costume and retile our half-bath, we’re pretty sure that this smiling sweetie will. Mmm, look how he can caulk and talk at the same time! We ladies love a truly adaptive male — particularly on a day when our own captive beasts appear incapable of doing much more than grinding potato chip crumbs into the rug every time one of their boyfriends on-screen crushes one of his boyfriends on the field.
So let’s see: Puppy lovers, nostalgic boomers, homoerotic beastmasters, Christians, the testicle-obsessed and the bathroom-fixture-fixated. That pretty much covers all of us, doesn’t it?
Congratulations, TV executives! You’ve reduced the American population down to six key demographics. Just recognize that Christians don’t buy stuff, puppy lovers get distracted easily and wander off, the bathroom-fixture-fixated are prone to start cleaning their own bathrooms during the commercial breaks, and nostalgic boomers fall asleep by 9 p.m. — presumably because they’re hoping that, with a little more sleep, they won’t get fooled again tomorrow.
Not bloody likely. Either way, enjoy the nacho-cheese-and-beer-induced paralysis and have a happy Super Bowl Sunday, America!
At a time when the gap between executive pay and the average worker’s salary is painfully wide, CBS presents “Undercover Boss” (premieres Sunday, Feb. 7, after the Super Bowl), a touching fairy tale in which the boss man does menial labor shoulder to shoulder with his anonymous underlings. Of course, the real point of CBS’s make-believe isn’t to show how much the common man suffers from the indignities and injustices of blue-collar and administrative white-collar jobs — although we do get some seriously depressing glimpses at the lifestyles of the not so rich and not so famous. No, the real point here is to demonstrate that the big man in the suit and tie is just regular folks like you and me — you know, except for the fact that he spends half his day golfing and has about a thousand times more cash at his disposal at any given moment than we do.
Oh yeah, and his back hurts like crazy when he’s on his feet all day. In other words, you’d have to have ice water flowing through your veins not to enjoy this elaborate P.R. experiment in spite of yourself. It’s pretty tough to resist the heartwarming tale of Larry O’Donnell, president of Waste Management, who gamely agrees to pretend to be a new hire named Randy Lawrence who’s training in several different low-level positions within his company. Larry is eager, he says, to get a closer look at how the business functions and what the experience of working its lower-level positions might be like.
And sure, Larry is likable enough in his role as a humbler, entry-level version of himself. He does seem to feel horribly guilty for the ways that his company’s policies have been misused or misinterpreted by supervisors, leading to humiliation, inconvenience or overall job dissatisfaction of the ranks. One low-level supervisor runs to clock in after lunch to avoid having her paycheck docked by her boss; a trash collector pees in a cup while she’s out collecting trash, because there’s no time to stop and use the bathroom; a female office worker holds down four different positions at the company at once even though she’s only paid for one job, and she’s about to foreclose on her dream house. (Imagine how the company’s publicists and the show’s producers drooled when they wandered across that very timely P.R. gold mine.)
The workers involved all seem very capable. Larry, meanwhile, can’t do much of anything right in his role as a regular working Joe. Delightfully enough, a supervisor named Walter fires Larry after watching him haplessly attempting to pick up trash on a littered hillside for just a couple of hours.
“Nice workin’ with you, but you just don’t have it,” Walter tells Larry.
“Walter is the only person who ever fired me in my whole career,” Larry says. Well, Larry, that’s because you haven’t technically been working all these years, nor have any of us who sit in front of our computers or talk on the phone or go to meetings all day long, not compared to what working-class people do all day. And when you see Larry in action, you sort of have to wonder how the man worked his way up the ladder in the first place. Meanwhile, Fred, a guy who cleans out Waste Management’s porta-potties swiftly and efficiently without ever complaining about the work, a guy who coaches Larry enthusiastically all day long, seems like natural management material.
“We’re like hunters, we see her prey, we creep up on it,” Fred tells Larry the day they work together, referring to a cluster of portable toilets.
Larry is truly impressed with Fred’s work. He really is. In fact, his experience doing these crappy jobs for his own company will forever change his management style — that’s what he tells a gathering of employees at the pep-rally-style conclusion of the show. And really, he does seem genuine when he says it. But short of seeing Fred promoted and watching as raises are awarded to every last one of the capable workers we met, should we care? Shouldn’t all CEOs be forced to do the really bad jobs at their companies, so they understand how their passing decisions and cost-cutting maneuvers affect real human beings?
It would be nice if this sort of thing might happen without the cameras running. It would be nice if businesses simply started to police themselves, to take on a commitment to fairness and justice instead of simply answering to the board and the stockholders and the bottom line.
That’s a little too much to expect — or at least that’s what the captains of industry and the Once-lers of all stripes tell us. So, instead, we’ll have to soothe ourselves with publicist-invented fairy tales.
Bryan Greenberg, Victor Rasuk, Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi and Eddie Kaye Thomas in "How to Make It in America." 
John Hawkes 
Larry O'Donnell, president of Waste Management, left, and as new hire Randy Lawrence, right. 
