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Monday, Jul 6, 2009
As our fallen nation struggles to its feet, CW's "Easy Money" gets the ax and Bravo's "Top Design" fails its final challenge.
By Heather Havrilesky
Read more: TV, Arts & Entertainment, Heather Havrilesky, Bravo, I Like to Watch, CW
Nov. 9, 2008 | The sun shines a little brighter on this once-great nation of ours today! With an unabashedly intellectual president set to replace the current ignorant frat boy in office, all of a sudden it's not impossible to think that we might crawl out of our slump somehow, that we might restore our global self-respect, that we might look in the mirror again one day and say, like Stuart Smiley, "We're good enough, we're smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like us!"
Suddenly strangers on the street seem a little more clever and attractive, a little less self-interested and slovenly and gluttonous. Suddenly the world isn't filled to the brim with our mortal enemies anymore. Suddenly the stock market's rise and fall seems less like an omen of a dangerous new age, and more like the harmless ebb and flow of the financial tides.
Could we be in store for a national renaissance, a golden age of culture and arts in America? [Cue the hopeful strains of "In the New Year" by the Walkmen.] Might we see the green revolution take hold in our households nationwide? Will we finally turn our backs on spray tans and granite countertops and strip malls and fried cheese once and for all, and rededicate ourselves to good books and outdoor concerts and great wine and long afternoon naps? Can we reimagine ourselves as thoughtful, considerate citizens with good senses of humor, no longer prone to cutting in line or swearing at other cars on the freeway? Let's all turn off our TV sets right now, and walk through the tree-lined streets of our newer, smarter, sweeter American towns, shouting hello to our neighbors and whistling a new tune all the way!
On second thought, let's keep our TV sets. And I want the fried cheese back, too.
Tanks for the memories
Still, it does feel damn good to be an American today, doesn't it? I didn't realize how bad it felt all of these years, until now. Finally, regular people can see the truth about the last eight miserable years, and they can work together to change the world.
Except when it comes to TV. With TV, we're subjected to the whims of suited development executives and Nielsen ratings statisticians and small, poorly selected focus groups filled with dumb people with crappy taste who have the time to sit around a screening room all day, laughing hysterically at really bad sitcoms.
Witness the untimely death of the CW's "Easy Money," which got put on hiatus (I think we know what that means now, folks, no need to use such delicate language) just as I was sitting down to write about its promise as one of the only truly odd new dramas on TV. But then, truly odd shows are about as popular as truly odd people. You watch a slow-paced, off-kilter show about a guy who grew up in a family of dumb, tacky loan sharks, and you can pretty much bet its days are numbered from the start.
Of course, there's also no clear hook to the show, beyond the vague notion that Morgan (Jeff Hephner) is an outsider in his own home. In one recent episode, having discovered from a DNA test that either he or his sister is adopted, Morgan quizzes his mother, who's a compulsive liar, about his sister Brandy's birth.
Morgan: You know, Mom, I was trying to remember. How did Brandy get her name?
Mom: Oh, I've told you, haven't I?
Morgan: Tell me again.
Mom: Well, when I was young, I was working in a bar in Galveston. There was this sailor who would come in, always ordered brandy. Well, I'd lean against the bar and listen as he'd drink that brandy and tell his sailor stories. Of course I fell in love with him! Your father knows all about this, it was just a silly girl's infatuation. But still, that sailor fell in love with me, too. But he said he could never settle down, no harbor was his home ...
Morgan: That's right, his life, his lover, his lady was the sea.
Mom: So you do remember?
Morgan: It's a song, mom. Brandy, Looking Glass, 1972.
Mom: You're in a funny mood today, Morgan Stanley.
It's sad to see any show with dialogue this absurd get kicked to the curb. And Laurie Metcalf is absolutely brilliant as Morgan's mom, Bobette, particularly when she's making up tall tales.
That said, where does this story go? The big joke is that Morgan's family is sort of slow and vulgar, in a Las Vegas McMansion, get-rich pyramid scheme, canned-beer-swilling, sports flashing on a massive-screen TV sort of way. Considering that most shows have to draw in a healthy cut of this exact dim 'n' cheesy demographic to get the ratings they need to survive, "Easy Money" seemed a little doomed from the start. Even rednecks can laugh at "My Name Is Earl," but do mildly unsophisticated middle-class people laugh at other mildly unsophisticated middle-class people? Personally, I'm not sure I would find a version of myself on TV all that amusing. I'd just want her to vacuum the dust bunnies off her floors and keep her fat mouth shut.
Next page: "Top Design's" dementedly eccentric judges bicker among themselves
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