This Fall's TV Lineup

[Ace]

Notice the restraint, and taste, of the headline... No unnecessary yelling, void of exclamation marks; cultured.  Civilized.  Urbane.

Ok, on with the shows, this is it:  My suggested new show offerings for this fall -

* Law And Order, SUV.  I mean, there's already about 5 or 12 Law and Order shows on... Special Crimes, Special Victims, Creepy Cop Who leans in and sneers a lot and weirds you out in the interrogation room so that you confess even though any idiot would know having a lawyer would be a good thing.  And I think he got taken over by aliens earlier, but that's another show.  At least he's still in black, usually.  Creepy crimes, usually of some sexually deviant nature.  So; why not an SUV version?  Crimes Committed In, or By, SUV's.  There's sure a lot of them out there, at least until they sap the last remaining vestiges of dinosaur goo and petroleum by products by their obscene gas appetites.  And shoot, it's a great formula show; every single week somebody stumbles upon body, within first two minutes.  Cops take over investigation, either by socially conscious old/young/black/white combo or creep/more longhaired lady combo or stressed out by specialness of crimes and victims boy/girl combo. Then lawyer team take over, also in lovely pairings.  Then trial.  Then surprise ending every single week.  Which, I guess, if it happens every single week ceases to be surprising.... huh.

* Fear Factor Extreme; the show has regressed from pretty scary stunts and eating/sitting in pretty goshawful stuff to just being completely void of reason and skill.  I mean, c'mon, sucking down leeches AND choking down 10 Cow's Tongues WHILE upside down in a toilet is just getting to be a bit much...  Couldn't you just go with a tongue, or two?  Do they taste you while you're eating them?  Some of the quantities of gory gunk are beyond human capabilities, when you'd have to ingest 10 pounds of some putrified stink for the entertainment of millions, or at least me during dinner.  And there's typically no skill in the final quest, and winner.  It's up to your stupid ATV to fly straight and go farther after you let go than your competitor's...  Heck, let's just cut to the chase.  First stunt; stopping a speeding semi with your body.  Secondly; devouring a live cow, completely, in 5 minutes using your hands.  Thirdly; give each finalist a knife and let them have at each other.

Oh, and you'd have to eat your adversary, after.  In five minutes.  I mean, time's a wastin'.

* Survivor New York; drop them off in the city without clothes or money or ID and let them live in a box or homeless shelter...  Or the park.  Wherever.  And have to drink city water.  And no fishing.  Maybe they could get immunized, for immunity, after a couple weeks of city life.

* Queer Eye for the Bachelor Guy   oh never mind...

* Arranged Marriages; The Real Deal:  I mean, they take place I'm sure in different cultures, let alone network TV so why not just set up a couple and film the honeymoon...  

* Temptation Survivor Island:  make out with your islandmates or kill/eat them, whichever.  Have a big cooking pot on the beach, like they used in those old jungle movies.

* Rush Limbaugh's Post NFL Expose; people who are overrated and only get jobs because they're a name or known commodity, and really don't perform well anyway and all credit or blame should go to their writers or team and...  Well, he could criticize or interview himself.  

* Will and Grace and Ray and Debra and Damon and Jim Belushi; unusual couplings every week, now that Friends finally died a miserable death as they got too old to act like that and everyone had paired up with everyone else, except for Ross and the monkey.

* Anything with never-too-old-to-die stereotypes like a cranky black ex-singer smoker and stereotypical white black guy black white girl crazed mid-easterner or middle earth or wherever he's from.  And why do they think she or Becker need to be chain smokers?  That they're obstinant, or not too bright, or just have addictive personalities?  

* Becker II; ex-tennis star chain smokes and plays a cranky doctor

* American Idol/Stand Up Comic; you can win by either singing well or cracking up the audience by not or just having Simon fall for your act until he wises up and figures out you're just a ditzy blond with no voice or personality, like last year.  Either way, Paula Abdul won't get it.


Ace; They could have a show about this invisible chatroom poaster with a fictitous name and persona who works tirelessly and without pay as a Jester...  Nah.  That's not entertainment.

Oh; here's one for the moderators:

PC Do Or Die; every week a computer tech is brought a PC with a problem which he or she must fix within 15 minutes or it explodes.  And their only instructions or guides are:

help me i my comtputer dosnt work why dosnt' it aneymore help me please help help!!!!!!!!

[Neon]

Ace, I liked the first and last ideas the most. For Land and Order, SUV here are a few additional series concepts. In addition to covering the crimes committed by SUVs (and their owners and operators), also explore the lives of the public defender attorneys who can't actually afford to live in a NYC apartment, so they live in a SUV. There's got to be a few dozen of those, you could just follow them around, running into courtrooms for multiple 10 minute bond hearings for their clients, etc.

As for the computer show, great idea! There's already something like that on Tech TV's "Call For Help", but the exploding computer is a new twist. It ensures the hosts will always be fresh and lively, since you're bound to rotate through a few of them during the course of the season. The only problem is, where are you going to find the problematic PCs? Or will you be artificially creating the problems? Or is this just a vehicle for you to get your own computers fixed?

[JimS]

Two corrections, Ace.
1)  New York City actually haS very good water.  About 140 years ago, NYC made a deal, where they condemmed a few towns about 80 miles north in the Hudson Valley.  They created a reservoir system, which, being far enough away from the pollution of the city, provides water of quite high quality.
2)  In the instructions for PC Do or Die, you forgot "HELP ME I AM AN IDIOT".

[Gracie]

 crumbs, I will never moan about the BBC again, even if they do show  the same series  over and over.

Compared to the awfulness you lot over there have to 'enjoy' for an evenings 'entertainment', we are quite well looked after it seems.

[Ace]

Well, first off, I don't have any computer problems.  Now, if I did have computer problems I would personally use the "HELP ME I AM AN IDIOT" calling card, and so I didn't want to suggest there'd be anything wrong with that...

I didn't mean to imply NY water isn't the finest obtainable.  Personally, I don't know.  I use city water, as I can't see drilling a hole in the ground and pulling water out of dirt being preferable.  Especially as typically one would also have a septic system.  Parked over the waterway.  Filtering its way down... you see where I'm going with this.

Leave it to the British to have an edge in entertainment.  I always like British humour, as it is as dry as I.  Am.  Me.  Plus, my heritage is (partly) English, as well as Irish.  Plus, I have an affinity with the British fear of public embarrassment.

Lastly, I didn't mention the 2nd Top 20 Best New Shows This Fall...

CSI.

CSI Las Vegas; his hearing's back, and so's a beard.  CSI Miami: David Caruso exhibits a range of emotions from ticked off, to pretty darn ticked off, to somewhat bemusedly ticked off.  Let's bring in Mickey Rourke for "Redheads whom Met With Acting Obsolescence Soon After They Got Kinda Famous" to pair up with Dave.  Oh; Horatio.  What the heck is up with that...

Then:  CSI Denver.  CSI Frisco.  CSI Special Victims.  CSI Roadkill.  CSI Michiana.  CSI Unrecognizable Features or Distinguishing Characteristics.  CSI SUV (see above).  CSI Texas (it's big).  CSI Ukraine (why not).  CSI Weapons of Mass Destruction Special Victims.  (see "unrecognizable..")  CSI; weird kitchen accidents.  CSI: Science Experiments Gone Awry.  CSI: Da Bears.  CSI: Sesame Street (muppet victims..).  CSI Canada (eh).  CSI; PC Upgrades Gone Wrong (see "wear an anti-static wrist strap").  CSI: Angel (after the bodies are recovered...).  CSI: Friends (I mean, stick a fork in them they're done).  CSI: ER (not sure which would come first..).  CSI: Queer Eye for the Dead Guy oh forget it.

Oh, and also spin offs from West Wing:  East Wing.  South Wing.  North Wing.  That'd give most everyone a lead in a series.

Ace; what would be really cool is if they'd do a show with Kramer from Seinfeld playing Kramer from Seinfeld but he's really not Kramer but actually a detective yeah that'd go over great...  Or heck, just do a show based on the Soup Nazi.

[pat]

Nice review Ace,
I like the idea of exploding computers; I think the first show that should get one is Will and Grace.

Speaking of TV land though, I see Oprah is pulling out of Michiana. Why not take this opportunity to get out into the country. The place can be had for a paltry 8.5.
http://www.wndu.com/news/092003/news_21834.php

[Ace]

Ok; okay.  Good job Pat, stepping up to the plate.  Either home, or dinner, good job.  Let's go with that one:

The Bachelor and Bachelorette starring Oprah and Steadman as a couple who see which will get hitched first....  That could take awhile.  

If Friends was to go another year, I guess it'd be Joey and Chandler's turn.  No, not the Chandler that used to live here.  At least I don't think so.

How about "The Bad News Bears" starring... well, the Bears.  They move into this cool bachelor pad that's a giant bowl in an Ampitheatre.  See who survives.  I was in a training today with a Packer's fan; big cheesehead.  

How About "The Time Machine" where the Cubs and Bosox meet up in a World Series...  

Hey; and isn't it kinda bothersome to have Woody on Will and Grace?  I mean, after seeing him as a natural born killer I sorta lost the whole notion of him as Woody Harrelson anymore.  Maybe he could re-enact that Tarantino part and we'd have:

CSI: Will and Grace.  Ooh; what if all that was left was a chest, and you couldn't even tell them apart...?   Hey, and this just in: CSI tonight has a story about a guy who dies in hot water in his tub, and sorta becomes "fat guy soup."  That one was ripped right from the front pages...  of Rotten.com.

Otherwise, nah.  I don't want to live in Rolling Prairie or LaPorte.  It's a lot of nothing out there.. It's what you'd envision as "Indiana."  Well, no Indians as such, that I've ever noticed.  No casino or anything, until you hit the big boat in Michigan City.  Which, as noted previously, is not in Michigan.  

I hope my computer isn't reading these, and thinking about the "exploding" part.  That wouldn't be very nice after all the work I put into it.  Just dusting alone...

Ace; maybe this will become one of those eternal immortal poasts.  Maybe.

[pat]

Ok how about this for a reality show?
This one would be based around using the English err American language.
A popular grammar specialist, even an unknown from Michiana, could host this show.
The show could vary by episode with the contestants faced with unknown consequences for not being able to spell correctly, or being able to speak or write a complete sentence.

I can see our host now asking a question.
Please from a complex sentence with a past perfect progressive using a double negative with a dependent adverb clause.

I?m thinking this would blow the Nielson ratings threw the roof.

[Ace]

Oh; you're too kind.  Kind of what I'm not sure.

Ok; okay.  Here's the way that one works: you can't "from" a complex sentence, although I suppose you could to one.  Or double it, whichever.  A complex sentence is actually any one the reader doesn't easily understand.  I feel I've mastered those here over these last years.  It's really complex if the reader also struggles.  

You also posed an oxymoron, that of the "popular grammar specialist."  Sorta like "favorite English Teacher."  See, grammarians, even your great grammarian, are hugely unpopular.  They're amongst the most irritating of micromanaging nitpicking twits around. I mean, they pick the nits off other nits...  I used to poast up a saying that said something like "English teachers not only can't see the forest for the trees, they can't even see the trees... they are absorbed with the tiny bugs on the bark of the trees."

Tell me about it.  I mean, get a life already.  Or at least rent one.  

I like the idea of Neilson ratings throwing off roofs..  Rooves.  This is a little known fact, but my family actually had a Neilson rating box when I was a kid.  The techie was a Peter Hydu out of Indy; he'd come up and maintain the box after he'd installed it.  Weird trivial fact; 2 quarters would pop out of the box when you changed the tape to mail the used one in.

And to think that my family helped mandate TV offerings during that time...  I gotta figure we were the ones who kept afloat "Swamp Fox", "The Baileys of Balboa,"  "The Monkees" and "The Addams Family."   Well, and "The Dick VanDyke Show" of course.  I wished I could've helped keep "Whose Line Is It" on.  

I've found most Progressives are way past perfect...  But if your adverb is a dependent at least you can claim him.   I'm all for pronouns reclaiming their amateur status, too, at least for the Olympics unless their antecedents are dead or unclear.  

Hey; for Great Roof Throwing Neilson Boosting Grammatically Outstanding TV Fare, how's 'bout:

"Grammar Kick Off" - the Grammatica brothers kick footballs through hidden letter blocks, revealing them for contestants to guess the part of speech each word suggests.

"Ace Is Wrong, But When"; unknown Michindianan suggests writing corrections, of which only a fraction even make sense.  Contestants try to spot the ones that don't but must be careful not to mispell words in their criticism of his criticism and thus lose points while trying to make theirs.  Common errors would include "threw" when one meant "through."  Or "from" instead of "form."  Also, contestants are barred from GOING BACK AND EDITING THEIR DANG POAST if the error is pointed out, making the corrector look wrong or psychotic.  See "last edited" for tell-tale signs.

"Queer Eye for the Homonym"  oh never mind


Ace; maybe have to eat a whole pig's ear drenched in ostric egg goo if you split an infinitive.

[pat]

Superb poast. Truly outstanding, somewhere out there.
I read that thing at least 20 times; it was fun, heck I might even read it again.

But I don?t get it.

Could it be that at sometime someone poasted a poast. Then the poaster corrected the poast after a poastee pointed out past imperfect poasting. At which time the poaster made the poastee look as if he/she was pointing out imperfect poasting that wasn?t poasted in the poast.

Shame on that poaster.

[Ace]

It may have been pluperfect instead of imperfect; it's hard to remember.  That last line through me.

I know what you mean, though.  I re-read them too, and it always seems like I find something different each time that I missed before.  

Ace; Compared to the poasts that are out there, some of these are really out there.  Go ahead and end in a preposition if you want to.

[trav]

PC Do Or Die; every week a computer tech is brought a PC with a problem which he or she must fix within 15 minutes or it explodes.  And their only instructions or guides are:

help me i my comtputer dosnt work why dosnt' it aneymore help me please help help!!!!!!!!

how true ::)

[Ace]

I figure if I pointed out anything true it was probably a mistake, so my apologies.  I try to keep my writings in the fictional vein.  

You know, after just a couple week's, the new fall season is already stale.  Trite.  Redundant.  Buncha "Been There, Seen That."  

Fear Factor?  Crawling outta a suspended car to jump to another suspended car removing the stupid flags while water sprays...  Geez Louise, we've seen that, people.  Maybe light the cars on fire, suspended above the audience... that'd be a twist.  And the "Hissing Giant Madagascar Cockraches"...  I mean, what'd they get, a deal on a truckload of those things..?!  That's why I'm waiting for "Survivor - NY" to see real New York flea-bag hotel cockroaches.   Let's go with "we're going to pour 150 live Black Mambas over you while you try to pick the lock for your handcuff's"...  Yeah, let's see what's worse than a cockroach on your cheek...  Or "you need to swim underwater and pull up the flags we've suspended underwater, in this pond full of hungry hungry hippoes."  That'd be a kick.

CSI Miami?  Dead person's found who's not dead.  Well, that was a twist.  And David Caruso actually exhibited facial expressions beyond being bemusedly ticked off.  
Not.

At least the blonde had her hair down and not in a pony tail, for a while.  

The Colts were on CSI; Tampa Bay last night.  Sort of the same story; they were dead but suddenly found to be alive.  Like the Cubs, for the last 75 years.  

I remember as a kid when we'd sneak transistor radios into class to listen to the series...  since the games were played in the daytime.  Now they're all at night, usually when it's 40 degrees out or so...  Geez.

Ace; happy Birthday Neon, too.  I didn't forget. :-*

[trav]

Fear Factor?  Crawling outta a suspended car to jump to another suspended car removing the stupid flags while water sprays...  Geez Louise, we've seen that, people.

Thats EXACTLY WAT I SAID!!! Its crazy....its almost like a modded re-run....

[Ace]

And, lo: I found that I had said what dude had said...

Yet another Sign of the Apocalypse.  

Shoot.

Hey; and here's a new show that should catch on:

"Stupid Pet Tricks played on Stupid People Whom Play With The Wrong Pets"

You'd have Roy, with his white tiger.  The tiger likes to think of Roy as "Chew Toy."  And that guy and his girlfriend who'd go to Alaska annually to live among bears.  Seems this year they went to the Maul.  And the guy in NY with the tiger and crocodile in his apartment.  

Food for thought.  Or the critters; whichever.

You could have the Aussie crocodile hunter as the host.  Maybe have the Bears actually play the Bears.  I know in the early days of the Coliseum the home team was distressed to see they'd be playing the Lions in the third week of the season.  

There are a lot of scary animals out there, besides Scuzzy's cat Alex, and it's been a pretty bad week for them.  Of course, there's only one species that's most terrifying and dangerous in all situations, and loathsome to all mankind, with no redeeming qualities at all and no reason to exist except to haunt us in our every waking and sleeping moment and disgust us, all the same.

Stinking pandas.

I tell ya, the first time Fear Factor has a big jar of some Panda parts on the buffet, that'll be the end of the food fight on that show.  There is no way anyone could possibly ingest anything from those lardbuckets.  Shoot, people would probably start to retch from the smell coming out of their TV's.

Ace; stinking pandas stink.  I'd like to see an Apocalypse for Pandas day.

[Neon]

A few thoughts about that...

Perhaps the impending Chinese manned space missions are a prelude to achievement of the goal we are all hoping to reach - expatriation of pandas to outer space. We can hope.

Regrettably, there is also an infinitely more sinister possible motivation - that the Chinese may attempt to weaponize the pandas, using them as the payloads on their newest rockets. If North Korea then receives that technology, the world could be facing the threat of the apocalypse.  

At least none of our baseball teams are named pandas, or have a stinking panda mascot. Brrrrrrr. That thought gives me shivers.