The Gravley Life

Monday, September 19, 2005

Even Steadfast Optimists Rant Occasionally

Each of us, I hope, is born with an innate sense of duty that motivates us to protect others from evil. Evil, however, implies that some sort of malevolent intelligence exists where some things are just bad but violently lacking in any intelligence whatsoever. The latter is what I am writing to you about. Enter the new show from FOX, War at Home.


Michael Rappaport plays the lead character who I describe as a noxious cross between Dennis Leary, Bob Saggot, and Slappy the Retarded (but sadly not even lovable) Baboon. The rest of them are a mix of about half of the 12 stock sitcom characters available for use to all of the networks; the sassy wife, dorky son, apathetic daughter, but that's where my memory blanks out a little bit. To call the show formulaic is to call leprocy "a little rash".

I'm not even sure how to describe the actual content of the show as I can't seem to remember any part of it in particular, but I can say that I distinctly remember my emotional reaction during the 7 minutes I happened to watch it.
  • Minute 1 - Excitement at the prospect of finding a fresh new show on television (I'm an optimist after all).
  • Minutes 2-4 - Disbelief that someone green-lighted this show, but hope that it might get better, or that they played the wrong reel and would start over shortly.
  • Minute 5 - A deep sadness for the poor laugh-track operator who had to push that laugh button. Every time he hit that button, part of the world's joy died. I think actually I saw the actors flinch at the sound of laughter in surprise (I'm not kidding).
  • Minutes 6-7 Fear, general disorientation, and pain set in as I fumbled for the remote without the use of my now bleeding eyes.

In the end, War at Home is much like full-grown men that still kill ants with a magnifying glass: it's moronic, embarrassing for them, and a shameful waste of life.

In other words, I didn't like it. Please save yourselves.

10 Comments:

  • "Every time he hit that button, part of the world's joy died"

    I found that funny but I did not laugh. It's a sad moment when that happens.

    As someone who watches a lot of TV, I can recommend several good shows to watch... but very few of them are on the basic stations.

    By Blogger Jon Roberts, at 1:26 PM  

  • "To call the show formulaic is to call leprocy "a little rash"."

    I completely agree with you. I actually remember Michael rappaport from some movies in the 90's that weren't horrible. So I thought the show might be good in some way that Titus, the Bernie Mac Show and many, many other of the 'wacky-dysfunctional family' shows weren't. I think the "Everybody Loves Raymond- but taken up a notch" has been played out, and never was successful to begin with. So yeah, I agree. I watched it for about 5 min and switched to something I had on Tivo. Just the parts where Michael is standing in a white room giving a monologue was painful. A lot like that Titus show that sucked ass, but at least he was standing under a naked light bulb- which I always found hilarious. It seems that anything they tack on after the Simpsons is cursed. The only exception being "Arrested Development".

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 6:39 AM  

  • Smallville, Alias and Joey/Will & Grace are all in that 7pm - 8pm time slot... someone needs to be beaten. That schedule sucks. *shakes fists in anger*

    I'm going to have to rewire one of our Tivo's and make it so we can watch cable and have a spliced cable recording to the Tivo... that of course means we're stuck watching live tv at 7pm. But hey, that's after dinner on thursdays, so no biggie... still a pain in the ass though.

    By Blogger Jon Roberts, at 10:34 AM  

  • I was listening to "this week in tech" podcast, and they were talking about how Tivo is going to start deleting your shows after 10 days. I haven't looked it up anywhere else, so I don't know how true it is (but the T.W.I.T guys were from tech T.V.- they wouldn't lie). But I guess they're being forced to delete programming from the MPAA. Which sucks.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 6:18 AM  

  • Yes, it's true. I've read up on that a little bit. The networks have the option to delete shows, but it's at their discretion.

    By Blogger Steve Gravley, at 6:31 AM  

  • Bastards... I reserve the right to procrastinate if I want to!!!

    By Blogger Jon Roberts, at 7:40 AM  

  • She's right.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:55 AM  

  • Dear Kirsten,
    The error has been corrected.
    Yours truly,
    Steve

    And for the record, I don't typically condone the use of the word retarded, but in this case, I felt it was appropriate since the type of person who might name a seal after a mental handicap, would probably use the word retarded.

    By Blogger Steve Gravley, at 11:54 AM  

  • Oh, and by the way, the irony of misspelling retarded is not lost on me, but I choose ignore it for reasons of personal esteem.

    By Blogger Steve Gravley, at 11:56 AM  

  • Crap... I hate it when the spelling police get ya.

    Youill nev3r tak me aliv!

    By Blogger Jon Roberts, at 12:52 PM  

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