I Like to Watch

July 23, 2006 | Everyone's a critic
This week, the Television Critics Association holds its summer press tour. Even though the whole thing happens about 10 minutes away from my house, even though most TV critics and entertainment journalists fly across the country and stay in a hotel for three weeks just to attend this event each year, which affords a glimpse of the new shows of the fall TV season, I've always actively avoided it.

The problem is, every time I register for the tour and plan to go, I start picturing terrible little hotel conference rooms with flocked, mauve and purple carpeting, filled with rows of uncomfortable chairs, staffed by overly enthusiastic publicists armed with stacks of xeroxed press releases about their crappy new shows for the fall season. I imagine that, after an uncomfortably bad clip of a TV pilot is projected onto a creaky roll-down screen, a gaggle of actors will swagger in, sit at the front of the room, and hold forth at length about how great these really terrible shows actually are. Inevitably we'll hear comments like "I always wanted to work with [fellow actor's name]" or "It's all about the script" or "I'm just honored to be here."

But the worst part will be the TV critics themselves, the sorts of people prone to asking TV actors asinine questions, then carefully jotting down all of their sleep-inducing anecdotes about getting that fateful call from their agent about aforementioned terrible TV show. (Obviously there's a big dollop of self-loathing in this picture.) It's not that TV critics are necessarily any more vile than other subsets of society -- it's easy to imagine that a conference inhabited by podiatrists, bank tellers or marketing executives would be just as tedious and scary. No, the bad part will be that I will be one of them! Nothing seemed more likely to incite a career identity crisis than finding myself seated in an uncomfortable chair between two human beings anxious to argue the relative assets of shows like "Desperate Housewives" and "Two and a Half Men" with the heated, self-important tones of foreign dignitaries discussing the crisis in the Middle East.

Nevertheless, this year, I decided I would grit my teeth and go, not because I expected any of it to be remotely worthwhile or rewarding, but because, after so many years of avoidance and dodging, the TCA tour, like a suspicious-looking mole or a pile of unwritten thank-you notes, had taken on mythical, beastly proportions in my mind. It was time to face the beast head-on.

Tour of booty
Yes, as you're surely expecting by now, the whole event has turned out to be far more pleasant and interesting and posh than I expected. Along with comfortable chairs and air conditioning and a wireless connection and bottles of soda and water on ice, people like Chris Rock and Ted Danson were regularly rolling out funny answers to interview questions, making the entire experience more like a trip to a comfy, climate-controlled comedy club where the drinks are on the house. After one day, I started to wish the TCA tour would last throughout the entire summer.

But most important, there's the food. Why didn't anyone tell me about the food? Apparently, after years of manipulating TV critics, publicists have figured out that we're a comfort-oriented species, likely to do anything in pursuit of a soft chair and a salty snack. Accordingly, food is the absolute highlight of the tour, used to lure pale cave dwellers out of their dim abodes in search of chocolate brownies and strawberry-basil smoothies.

Take the promotional mailing I got in the mail yesterday, which looks just like one of those breakfast menus that hang on the doors of nice hotels, where you can check off the foods you want delivered to your room the next morning. This mailing, for an event promoting something called "The Greg Behrendt Show," briefly details the location and time of the event at the top, then lists more than 30 different breakfast foods that will be available there (I'm not exaggerating), including bagels with smoked salmon and cream cheese, chocolate beignets, potato pancakes topped with homemade applesauce, hickory-smoked bacon, espresso, pomegranate juice, homemade blueberry muffins and fresh fruit kabobs. Personally, I hate most talk shows and don't know who the hell Greg Behrendt is, but for chocolate beignets and pomegranate juice, I'm willing to endure just about anything.

Even my fellow TV critics aren't all that bad, since instead of debating the charms of various fall pilots, they spend most of their time discussing the food. "These cold-cut sandwiches are bullshit," a complete stranger will confide over lunch. "Last year they had Philly cheesesteaks and fries." "Fox always gives out tons of chocolate," another critic will gush. "I brought home four huge chocolate bars for my kids last year." While it's tough to take people who care deeply about the returning cast of "One Tree Hill" all that seriously, it's pretty difficult to find fault with human beings who'll earnestly discuss the relative merits of the fried chicken vs. the Caesar salad.

Unfortunately, all of this food talk whipped me into such a frenzied state that I was halfway through a hamburger that Jimmy Kimmel had personally cooked just for me over a hot grill in the 100-degree Pasadena heat when I noticed that it was practically raw. All that teriyaki and garlic salt in Kimmel's homemade recipe, paired with cheerful food-related banter among the hungry natives, colluded to distract me, and I didn't notice until the burger was half-eaten that it was red and mushy. No matter! That just leaves more room for desert -- strawberry shortcake, apple tart or berry cobbler à la mode? Ah, why not taste all three?

A heaping dose of sugar was all those aspiring armies of E. coli needed to wage their battle, and Jimmy Kimmel's Revenge hit at around midnight. For once, I'll spare you the gruesome details, but suffice it to say it wasn't the most auspicious branding moment for Kimmel's late-night empire.

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