Endless Bummer 2

Last week, The Only TV Column That Matters™ told you how wrong the pretentious fucks were about television, that there’s plenty on the tube (mostly cable fare) artistically equal to anything that’s happening in The Cinema. As usual, I made an airtight case.

This time around, it’s all about the stuff that’s stunk up the summer. Not that the PFs are right—they’re just a little less wrong when you factor in shows like …

… Flash Gordon on the Sci-Fi Channel, where we left off. There was no reason for this series to exist when it debuted like a limp Smallville with Kryptonite down its Speedo a few weeks ago, and certainly not now that it’s failed to live up to even that promise. At least Sci-Fi’s now-canceled Painkiller Jane launched strong, even though it’s since devolved into Scooby-case-of-the-week banality that makes CSI (pick one) look like Long Arc Theater. And Who Wants to Be a Superhero? Once the hottest (Basura) and the craziest (Mr. Mitzvah) contestants were eliminated, who wants to fucking watch?

Somebody must be watching Code Monkeys on G4 (it’s that channel with the Arrested Development reruns), and I’m guessing they’re all wearing helmets and sipping dinner through a straw: A badly/barely-written cartoon animated like an ‘80s videogame sounds like nice time-killing YouTube short; 14 half-hour episodes sounds like my brain dripping onto the floor. Same goes for ABC Family’s Greek, a college dramedy for those who can’t keep up with the Byzantine plot twists of High School Musical. Or The Two Coreys, a sad A&E “reality” show that’s more tightly scripted than any movie Haim or Feldman have done in 20 years.

TBS now stands for Terminally Bland Shit, with throwback sitcoms like The Bill Engvall Show and Tyler Perry’s House of Payne mingling seamlessly with repeats from yesteryear and yet only improving upon them in hair (Nancy Travis’ on Engvall has never looked fab-er, nor has Bill’s mustache). Even My Boys, a relative critical hit, has lost its edge over the summer—OK, that “edge” was akin to a plastic spork, but still …

Vaguely vanilla is not necessarily better than aggressively craptastic, which sums up VH1’s entire summer slate: Rock of Love With Bret Michaels, Scott Baio Is 45 & Single, The Rock Life, Mission: Man Band, The Pick-Up Artist, I Hate My 30s—collectively the worst non-Flavor-Flav-related programming the channel has ever excreted; only Rock of Love earns a partial pass for humorously including a couple of transvestites in the lineup of ladies staying in the house and rocking Michaels’ world … wha? Rodeo and Mags weren’t dudes? Get the fuck outta here!

Also, USA’s The 4400 and The Dead Zone … they’re still on, right? Yes? No? Get back to me. And didn’t we used to count on Bravo and Comedy Central for at least one watchable summer series apiece? Flipping Out and American Body Shop, respectively, fall waaay short of the bar set in previous summers by Boy Mets Boy and Dog Bites Man, the greatest send-up of local TV news ever.

Well, until Fox’s Anchorwoman. Not a cable show, but notable nonetheless for being canceled after a single airing last week because fewer people tuned into its reality-jiggling debut than an America’s Top Model rerun on The CW (!) and Telemundo’s La Noche de 1,000 Iguanas (admittedly, stiff competition). Who could have predicted that no one would tune in to watch a brainless, unqualified bimboid attempt to become a serious news anchor? You know, besides CBS and Katie Couric? Remember the wisdom of Champ Kind: “It is anchor man! Not anchor lady! And that is a scientific fact!”

Still, all of this dreck is easily negated by AMC’s awesome Mad Men, one of the summer’s coolest new series; marathon Sunday, Sept. 2. (No way I’m going out on a TV downer, you pretentious fucks).

Zero Worship

Who Wants to Be a Superhero? Thursday 7.26 (Sci-Fi) Season Premiere: Marvel Comics legend-turned-comic-flick-punch-line Stan Lee—or his animated corpse, tough call—presides over another round of adults in superhero drag competing for “immortality” (i.e. their own comic book), with a standard-issue elimination every week cloaked in allusions to “good” and “honor” (a change of reality-house pace from “Well, at least you didn’t get drunk and piss on your roommate”). Wackiest hero: Mr. Mitzvah, who “deflects attacks with his Star of David paddle.” Hottest hero: Basura, who “turns trash into treasure and reshapes rubbish into robots.” Snubbed hero: Homeless Man, who was cut in the first round. Not kidding. Excelsior!

I Hate My 30s Thursday 7.26 (VH1) Series Debut: An “irreverent,” “absurd” and “ironic” comedy about “relatable problems.” This must have been a hit at the VH1 programming meeting … in 1995. With a pitch like—this is for real—“You may not learn much from I Hate My 30s, but you're sure to laugh at the misfortune of your friends as they're devastated by the realization that the life they've imagined is but a faint and fading dream slowly escaping their reach as they sink deeper and deeper into the quicksand of real life,” all that’s missing are Zima gags and a theme song by Filter. Too bad it can’t touch the comedy of …

Megasnake Saturday 7.28 (Sci-Fi) From the director of Mansquito! Reportedly, former Stargate SG-1 star and Canadian Michael Shanks agreed to headline Megasnake solely to obtain a new U.S. work visa, not because he believed the film would be a cinematic tour de force—hello? Mike? Mansquito! This one is about a giant snake what eats people in the Deep South. If you need more reason than that to tune in, you’re as dead to me as Michael Shanks.

My Boys Monday 7.30 (TBS) Return: Now that TBS is posting ridiculously high summer ratings with half-assed sitcoms like The Bill Engvall Show and Tyler Perry’s House of Payne, My Boys looks almost edgy—but only almost. When last we left the romantic comedy about female sportswriter P.J. (Jordana Spiro), who spends more time hanging out with her guy pals than writing about sports, things were getting sexy and awkward (oh, the redundancy) between her and one of those platonic guy pals—can’t remember which one, since they all look the same except for her brother (oh, the albino-cy).

The Nine Wednesday 8.1 (ABC) Return: Remember this? The mystery serial about nine hostage-crisis survivors harboring all kinds of secrets designed to unfold over an intense 22-episode season? Yeah, you’re getting 13 and no plot resolution—which may not matter, since The Nine has been off the air since November and even the fans (numbering slightly more than nine) probably don’t recall what the hell was going on. Recap: Killer pilot episode, followed by six progressively lamer ones, then cancellation. Now there’s six more. Happy burn-off!

Footballers Wives Wednesday 8.1 (BBC America) Series Finale: Unfortunately, the most addictively insane soap opera since the days of Dynasty (Sex! Murder! Sex! Kidnapping! Sex! Serial marriage! Sex! No actual soccer!) ends here, and not gracefully—American television doesn’t have a lock on premature cancellation. Likewise, Footballers Wives may have climaxed early a few episodes back when revenge-crazed Amber dressed up as a warrior goddess and attempted to blow Bruno’s head off with a shotgun at a cocktail party (top that, Grey’s Anatomy). Now ABC’s remaking the series stateside. Let’s hope they don’t cock it up and add … soccer.