The TV Zone

Yeah, I know "The Real Housewives of New York City" has gotten a ton of pre-launch buzz and (if not mistaken) even received above-the-fold treatment in the New York Times. But watching this (11 p.m., Bravo, seven episodes) series should be an option only for the masochist at heart. "Real Housewives" - oh, right, sure, these well-stocked supercareerists are "housewives," nyuk, nyuk - is the anti-zeitgeist show, soaked in a let-them-eat-cake and aren't-I-FABULOUS tone that will force all but the deeply envious or deeply insecure to the exits. WE are in a recession. THEY are in a perfectly formed, shiny bubble. The juxtaposition isn't just jarring, but obnoxious.

Here we have Alex, Bethenny, Jill, LuAnn, and Ramona, and - if I'm not mistaken - the only thing missing from their absolutely fab and gorgeous ME-ness is a starring role in a TV show.

Now, thanks to Bravo, they've got that too.

Anyone familiar with "The Real Wives" format knows what we're talking about here. But - if memory serves - the "Orange County" babes were a little more randy, or at least a little more reflective of their primetime "Desperate" counterparts. This fivesome of the Upper East East and the East End seem fairly chaste and happily married by comparison, though this impression could change. They lead perfect lives, uncluttered by the frazzle of OUR daily grind. The Hamptons or St. Barts, they muse? (God, it's so hard to make a choice.) They have fabulous husbands, fabulous careers, fabulous children who - nonetheless - assume the role of the Greek Chorus in this fable.

That is: They tell us what's really going on. Says Avery of her mom and friends, "they'll do things that are so unladylike. They're SO embarrassing."

From the mouth of babes.

(Above, our heroines, from left: Ramona, Jill, LuAnn, Bethenny, and Alex.)

CNBC's just-concluded 7 p.m. worldwide market wrap.

I'm sitting in front of the TV set, and I am in a panic. There is no Xanax left - I shake the bottle. Empty! CNBC is on. I need a refill. No Lexapro, Cymbalta, Zoloft, Effexor, Prozac, Paxil, Celexa, Valium, Ativan, Klonopin, BuSpar, Remeron either! This is gonna be long day.

This is also gonna be one of those days when you can pretty well determine exactly what the news on TV will be - what people will be talking about, what TV will be talking about, what the lead story of the nightly news shows will be. Anyone tuned, for example, to "Rachael Ray" this morning will be both wise and dumb - wise because they're missing all this, and dumb because they're missing all this. It's gonna bad, people. BAD! The sky isn't falling. It's fallen. Jim Cramer tells me so.

Yes, there's Jim Cramer on the phone to the CNBC studios. What would a panicky day be without Jim? He's talking about the Fed cut ...too little too late..."they shoulda done this three months ago..." Some Wall Street Journal Reporter's on the screen: Cramer's beating up on him because he miscalled something the Fed did a while ago. Jim is always right. But everyone on CNBC is always right. Also: I've never heard anyone on CNBC say, "I don't know." To utter that phrase on CNBC air must be a fireable offense.

I like Cramer. He's a really smart guy and pretty entertaining. But I also worry about the financial advice of a guy who helps Donald Trump fire people on "Celebrity Apprentice." That's just me, though. Some guy named Bob Doll, vice chairman of investment company called Blackrock, tells viewers "to stop listening to us jabber." Is he talking about Jim?

There are important color schemes at CNBC - you know them almost intuitively. Green is good - the color of money, the color of up arrows. Red is bad - the color of less money, the color of down arrows. There's a lot of red on screen today. This is one of those times when I really wish I still had my old black-and-white TV.

Bottom line: Today is the day, no doubt about it, to watch CNBC. It'll be one of the biggest days in the network's history - no doubt about that either - so forget about that yummy sandwich segment on Rachael. This is the place to be. One wonders, though, just about twenty minutes to the opening bell, how much light will be shed versus how much panic sewn. CNBC, as a general rule, is magnificent at reaction and has almost perfect 20/20 hindsight. Its predictive powers, however, are uneven, to put it mildly. But on days like this, it moves markets and changes history. Meanwhile, some sound investment advice: Buy, buy, buy stocks of pharmaceuticals that make anxiety meds.

(And a quickie P.S.: CNBC just announced that it'll air a two-hour special at 7, just in time for the opening of other markets around the world.)

Courtesy: Sportsillustrated.cnn.com

You don't need to be a baseball fan to know that something remarkable took place at 2 p.m. today.

I mean, in all my years of watching TV - including hundreds of press conferences, breaking news events, speechs, debates and on and on and on - I do believe the Mitchell report presser deserves a special place in the pantheon of News Events. It was packed - beyond imagining - with news: Massive, stadium-shattering news, that sent a perceptible chill through an industry and hundreds of players and millions of fans. Sentence after sentence from George Mitchell was a headline. And not just any old headline, but a hundred-and-ten-point-bold-face-for-crying-out-loud-this-is-astounding-stuff headline.

And the names? Oh my God: Clemens, Pettitte, Mo Vaughn and on and on and on. The faces that MSNBC threw up on screen are more familiar than some of our own relatives. There they stood, accused of the third-most serious crime a ballplayer can be accused of (the first, throwing a game, and second, betting.)

What to say of George Mitchell: Get over the fact that he kind of looks and sounds like Bob Newhart and your realize that his performance was stunning. He's a masterful speaker who talks in iambic pentameter - without rhyming, that is. This senatorial sing-song conveys a sense that he is saying something monumental; in fact, he is, but his style adds even greater gravity.

And in all of this, a final bizarre irony: As Mitchell is laying out one of the biggest sports stories of the young century, the Iowa Democratic debate is on-going. Imagine that! Fox News - foolishly, in my opinion - stuck with the drab debate. MSNBC and many others - wisely - carried Mitchell. Meanwhile, a whole bunch of local stations - with the exception of WNYW/5 - stuck with the soaps. Oh brother. Their viewers missed some history.

Seems churlish to describe tomorrow night's History Channel special, "Baghdad Diary" (at 10) as a bait-and-switch, but a bait-and-switch it is: There's nothing about ABC News’ former anchor Bob Woodruff here, although he hosts and has been the public face on this broadcast for weeks, leading to at least ill-(in)formed impressions (like my own) that he'd have a greater role. He has virtually none at all.

Get past that and there are other problems: Though tracking events that happened a mere four and a half years ago, it feels like ancient history. Hardly irrelevant history - history never is - and hardly uninteresting, given the subject matter, but so much has happened and continues to happen in that tragic country and city that watching these video diaries following the war's outbreak sometimes gives one the impression of looking through a straw at some distant point: You know that a great deal is taking place, or has taken place, beyond your limited scope, and you feel a little slighted that your straw doesn't offer a wider angle view.

"Diaries" never does, never attempts to, and - in fairness – couldn’t possibly, as these "diaries" are based on you-are-there accounts by different people with different perspectives, including NBC cameraman Craig White - who accompanied David Bloom across the desert and, after Bloom's death, went straight into the heart of Baghdad himself - and Fadil Kadom, a 36-year-old Iraqi taxi driver who was given a hand-held videocam by a Norwegian journalist so he would track the movements of ordinary Iraqis at the war's outset.

"BD," as such, has an immediacy that seems ill-placed: This isn't quite history and it isn't quite journalism, but something in between. The footage is occasionally riveting, but it also feels terribly familiar. There are scenes of great carnage and great tragedy - but we've actually seen worse in the intervening years, if that's possible. Maybe we've - maybe I'VE - become spoiled, or maybe I've just become numb, but when you see fields strewn with Iraqi remains or bullets whizzing through a Baghdad underpass, you want to look away, or close your eyes. After all, some of these men you see fighting in "real time" four years ago, may no longer even be alive. The same with the Iraqis. It's all the first act of a terrible tragedy, and we haven't even reached the final act.

If you do decide to sit through this, maybe you'll come away with a couple of other impressions, as I did: Admiration for the courage and professionalism of people like White and Kadom, but (especially) admiration for the average Iraqi citizens and the U.S. soldiers thrown into their midst.

Alison in; Caroline out.

I've always had kind of a soft spot for "The Biggest Loser" and maybe that's because I'm such a fathead. "TBL" offers no recourse for that problem, since it's the other kind of lard that has made this show such a keeper for the Fourth Place Network. And that's a good thing, indeed. Yes, FPN needs "TBL" badly and in fact, after Sunday football and (maybe" "Deal or No Deal") this could become its most reliable performer this season. Tonight's virtually an all-"TBL" night, with the two-hour season opener, and I've gotten a quick look at the premiere.

Fans will love it: Casting's excellent, and there's an everyman/woman quality to these people; they are large but not fantastically obese (the off-season rumor was that this would be the fattest group ever; not so.) They all seem nice - Bryan, David, Neil, Hollie, and so on - and their lifelong struggles with weight seem (and doubtless are) sincere. There's a third team this year, too - the "black team," headed up Jillian Michaels (last season's uber-intense uber-scary uber-noisy "Red Team" trainer). Alison Sweeney's the new host and Caroline Rhea replacement; she’s a former, ummmm, large person and soap queen (“Days of Our Lives”) who rallies our zaftig newcomers out in the Mojave Desert (tonight). Hard to say why she’s better than Rhea but certainly adds a little more sex appeal and a lot more puns (“…the wait is over!!”) Don’t get too fond of anyone: A bunch of people will be sacked even before the two hours are up.

Meanwhile, we've got a pair of LI contestants on tonight's show too - 40-year-old twin brothers Bill and Jim Germanakos. My colleague/editor, Andy Edelstein, blogged about them recently, and here's his description: "Bill, of Lynbrook, is married with three kids and works in medical sales. Jim, of Massapequa, also married with three kids, is a police officer. In his free time, he’s a volunteer firefighter and can be caught singing Sinatra songs at the local Italian bistro. Their goal, according to NBC, is not to become the 'fat twins.'”

But like I said, don't get too fond of anyone just yet...

Yeah, it's a lousy day to premiere a reality show, and pretty much a lousy day to premiere anything, given that most people's thoughts - consciously or subconsciously - are tending to other matters that happened six years ago. But if you've gotta premiere something, "TBL" should do: 6,500 pounds have been shed over the last four seasons and another couple thousand will melt away (painfully) this season. Alone among major reality shows on the Big Four, "TBL" actually has a message most of us need to hear and heed.

Good old WLIW/21 has a hidden little treasure under a rock tonight, so a good thing I've turned over said rock: "Lights! Action! Music!" tonight at 9:30 is a particularly well executed doc about a particularly interesting craft - motion picture composers and their glorious art. "L!A!M!" is less a showcase for the music and more one for the art of composition itself. How do composers actually create the music for a movie? Watch on: There are a lot of interviews with major directors (Francis Ford Coppola) and major composers (John Barry, David Shire, Terence Blanchard) with each explaining why a movie wouldn't be a movie without the stuff you hear. (In a word, music conveys emotion, which is what most people are shopping for when they sit down in front of the screen, according to Coppola.) Here's Elliott Goldenthal ("Interview with a Vampire") on one youthful lesson: "My first [composition] was a porno movie - I was in my teens and, to say the least, it required a lot of music. My first lesson was stay out of the way of the movie. Write stuff that doesn't interfere with what's on screen." Viewers will wonder why their favorite score wasn't included, or at least given greater weight - John Williams' many great scores (for "Star Wars" alone), or the incredibly rich, lush, overripe oeuvre of Erich Korngold, or "On the Waterfront," or "Citizen Kane," or even "Psycho." But you may do well do remember that "L!A!M!" isn't striving for completeness as much as for understanding. And by that standard, it, ummm, scores.
Must watch or must avoid: MW. Definitely.

"Lion" queen Julie Taymor talks about the art of movie music.

Much, much, much has been written and filmed about Hiroshima and Nagasaki though it's tough to think of any of this as comprehensive or - for that matter - as grueling as "White Light/Black Rain." This is as fine a documentary on one specific aspect of the bombings - the survivors - as one could conceivably imagine, until you are told that there are 200,000 still alive today. Fourteen survivors are profiled here, which means "WL/BR" is only scratching the surface. What's best about "White Light/Black Rain" is that it's not an exercise in political finger wagging. That would have led filmmaker Steven Okazaki down a different trail than the one he intended to explore - what actually happened on those two days 62 years ago, and what has happened since. The narratives are clean and direct, and notable for almost an entire absence of emotion or even anguish. This is who we are, and who we were. This is what we saw. "I've come to realize the only reason I'm alive is to tell people what happened," said one woman who was the only student in a school with 620 pupils to survive. And another: "I realized there are two kinds of courage: The courage to die and the courage to live. Me, I chose the courage to live...I still want to live." "White Light" is filled with details so horrific that one struggles with how best to render them in simple prose: The particularly cruel disposition of the bomb, for example, to suck eyeballs out of skulls, or to liquefy human skin. Okazaki's intent is not to horrify but to remind, and you suspect that even he knows that his battle is a losing one. The hibakusha - those who survived the bomb - were discriminated against and still are (they were initially called the "pika dons," or "untouchables”). They are grim and aged reminders of one of the most horrific moments in human history, yet when young kids at a mall in Hiroshima are asked what happened on August 6, 1945, they affect blank stares before finally blurting out, “I don't know... “
Must watch or must avoid: "White Light/Black Rain" is a fascinating and often engrossing film but it is also filled with graphic images and one wonders why on earth HBO would schedule this at 7:30. It's a hard way to spend a night, which is the whole idea, I suppose.

Oscar-winner Steven Okazaki

"Greek" is pretty much what "Mean Girls," "Old School" and (of course) "Animal House" have spawned, and for that alone they can all be condemned. Broad, shallow, and surprisingly caustic, "Greek" – WABC/7 at 9 - has a huge target that it manages to miss almost entirely. No one can dispute - least of all those who belong - that frats and sororities comprise (and pretty much always have been) the primal social order on many campuses: Lubricated by booze, for the most part, and logical extensions of the hierarchies of high school, that most tangled of jungles, they’re places where kids on the verge of adulthood don’t always make the smartest of decisions (yet still learn behaviors that they’ll manage to apply later in life anyway.) But "Greek" just feels dumb and dumbed down. It's so content to wallow in the clichés and excesses that there's little room for subtly here, though God knows, subtleties can be lost when tequila is consumed by the barrel. But even in its sober moments - one or two of them - "Greek" is forced and flabby. The series premieres on ABC tonight, but it's had its ABC Family Channel outing, so there may be fans out there already; heaven help ‘em. The overview: Rusty (Jacob Zachar) heads to Cyprus-Rhodes U where his sister, Casey - Spencer Grammer, daughter of Kelsey, and who affects a surprisingly good imitation of Missi Pyle - is the big woman on campus (and at Zeta Beta.) He's a nerd. She's cool. He wants to have fun. She wants to ignore him. He decides to pledge. She grudgingly accepts his presence. He sees her boyfriend cheat on her. She has a spiritual crisis (sort of.) Will she head back into the oily embrace of former boyfriend Cappie? (Scott Michael Foster) Will slick willy Evan (Jake McDorman) and BMOC/ Casey boyfriend turn out to be a complete cad? And so on. No one (by the way) goes to class. No one talks about homework or studies or life beyond the frat/sorority. Zzzzz

Must watch or must avoid: Avoid.

Spencer: Daughter of Kelsey, but does a good Missi Pyle in "Greek"

So you wake up this morning to belatedly find out that Michael Moore had it again at CNN's chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta last night, and feel a sense of remorse - because in this, our summer of discontent, the only things that pass for entertainment are Paris Hilton and Moore's rip of CNN on Monday?

Well, not to worry: Last night's "Larry King Live" face-off was a tea party, with the only things absent being teacups and extended pinkies. It was polite, gentle, and so knotted with facts and pointed discussions on France's health care system that I nearly fell asleep, and am fairly certain that Larry did too.

But last night has got me to thinking: Michael Moore is a lot more like Roger Ailes than anyone – including Roger Ailes and Michael Moore – realizes. Both are bomb-throwers. Both are from the Midwest. Both are shrewd manipulators of the media beast. Both were born in spring months. Both hate CNN. But here’s additional evidence: As media adviser to George H.W.Bush back in '88, Ailes coached the candidate to get off this indelible shot to Dan Rather during that live interview: "I want to talk about why I want to be president…And I don't think it's fair to judge my whole career by a rehash on Iran [Contra]. How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set…” Dan got mad, Bush got even, and from there, Bush’s polls soared and Rather's ratings sank. A little later, one guy's son becomes president. The other guy gets replaced by Katie Couric.

Now this from Mike to Wolf Blitzer on Monday’s “Situation Room:” “You're the ones who are fudging the facts. You've fudged the facts to the American people now for I don't know how long about this issue, about the war, and I'm just curious, when are you going to just stand there and apologize to the American people for not bringing the truth to them that isn't sponsored by some major corporation?"

LIKE IT WAS CNN"S FAULT WE GOT INTO THIS MESS. Brilliant diversionary tactic, and it actually took attention away from all the points - certainly some of them reasonable ones - that Gupta raised in set-up piece Monday which ignited Mad Mike in the first place (points, incidentally, also raised in other forums, like The New Yorker, which carries pharmaceutical ads, too, so what does it know?)

Anyway, this should definitely help “Sicko’s” box office.

Separated at birth?

"Nova ScienceNOW" - that terrific PBS science series with the less-than-terrific name - returned last week, but if you happened to miss the premiere, then tonight's a fine place to start. This episode has what may be the single best overview of the CERN project in Switzerland - you know, that Large Hadron Collider thingie that starts up next spring - that I've ever seen. Which really doesn't say much, does it? The what? The who? The where? The why? It's important stuff - lemme tell you - but don't ask me to explain. Let "Nova" correspondent Dave Wark do the honors and he does them so very well. Wark - like this show and like superlative viewer-friendly astrophysicist/host extraordinaire Neil deGrasse Tyson - never talks down to viewers, but OVER to them. The approach to subjects is often humorous, always warm, never over-bearing, and always informative. It's a journey, and "ScienceNOW" is so skillfully produced that we actually want to reach the end of it. Show is great for kids, adults alike. Other stuff explored on tonight's edition: sleep; something called "emergence," and a profile of archaeologist Julie Schablitsky.
Must watch or must avoid: A definite winner. Can't go wrong here. WNET/13 at 8.

Always wondered what Joey Fatone would do after *NSYNC, and then "Dancing with the Stars" near-triumph, but I wonder no longer: He's MC of a new game show called "The Singing Bee" which features "dancing bees" (“The Honeybees”) and some fatally bad singing. Normally a comedown, big time, except that "Bee" has its charms and should be a real draw for anyone who lives/breathes/sleeps karaoke. "Bee's" a standard-format gamer: Fatone roams the audience, picks out contestants (presumably at random) then pulls them on stage. "You don't have to have great voices," he says redundantly. But reasonably good memories, and an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music, circa 1970-2000. They're then pared down through a handful of rounds. Example: The house band runs through a song, then stops and said contestant has to finish the lyric. Etc. Etc. Final round is a three-strike-you're-out one, where contestant’s got to complete lyrics for a bunch of very very well known songs. But get just one word wrong and you're history. Get words exactly right, and the winner leaves with $50,000.
Must watch or must-avoid: A crowd-pleaser for a very specific crowd, namely one comprised of a few million people who have been stuck in traffic lines the last few decades and know every word to ever song on every radio station that's ever played a contemporary, Jack, or AOR format. But that's fine. You know who you are, and what you'll be doing tonight. (WNBC/4 at 9:30). Problem with the show is indeed the voices - painfully off-key, or flat, and (per rules of the game), unless contestant gets EACH AND EVERY SYLLABLE EXACTLY RIGHT then he or she doesn’t make it to the next round. That's a lot of bad repeat singing. Bring earplugs.

Buzz, buzz. (Courtesy MSNBC.)

Never been a member of a boy band. Never will be. The world - and I - can be thankful for that. But that doesn’t mean I can (and do) have an opinion on Sean “Diddy” Comb's newest edition of “Making the Band.” (MTV at 8.) It's boring. It’s tired. It’s listless. Two editions in (second one tonight), and what are the major concerns of our would-be Dids? Weight. Cheese sandwiches (grilled variety.) Posture. Sometimes it all feels like a workout video. At other times like a confessional. But the fact remains - this "Band" is bland, and even Diddy - on his very rare appearances - seems blasé. He’s pure been-there-done-that.

And of course, he has been there and done that, which may be the problem. Four editions old, this "Band" features the first all-male one, and the guys do seem like good guys - in awe of Diddy and the fact they are HERE and so is HE (sometimes). There's some celeb judges on hand too (New Edition's Michael Bivens, for one) but they don't seem overly-exercised about the whole spectacle either. So if they aren’t, should viewers be?
(USA Today)

Watch or avoid: Granted, "Band" fans - this show takes time to build, while "MTB 3" did well for MTV and its progeny all-girl "Danity Kane." But tough to carve out the time for "MTB 4;" this edition is for true-blue believers only.

"EXPOSÉ: America's Investigative Reports" is one of those rare - shall we say unprecedented - efforts by TV to chronicle the work done by newspapers, or at least by newspapers' dwindling corps of investigative journalists. It's back tonight (Ch. 13, at 10) - though it really already bowed a couple days ago online, as part of a PBS experiment ("initiative's" too strong a word) to get the program "on the air" even before it's on the air. Ah, the new world of television.

Tonight's show features Carl Prine, a Clark-Kentish figure with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review who spent the years in the wake of 9/11 probing chemical plant vulnerability. Prine's a remarkable figure because he not only established how porous chemical plants were but helped initiate legislation to get the plants sealed, so to speak. He later joined the Pennsylvania National Guard and was shipped to Iraq.

Watch or avoid: Most definitely watch. The guy's amazing, and so is his mission, though you may end up wondering - as I did repeatedly - that if the plants are so vulnerable, then why haven't terrorists exploited the weaknesses yet? Also, apparently little has actually been done to prevent attacks on plants, trains, and the like, which forces these unanswered questions, too – is something else wrong, or is Prine’s mission a quixotic one?

Today, I'm starting this little thing - and I do mean little - called New York Minute reviews, that'll basically take a very quick look at some new series that'd otherwise fly under the radar, including your's. Idea here is to throw a spotlight on something worthwhile, or to flag a beast, so that your precious time (or TiVO capacity) isn't wasted. There are about a million new/returning summer series out there, so without further babble, let's float straight over to...

"Live from Abbey Road" (Sundance, 10). This guy's gotten a little bit of advance attention thanks to the clever name; anything with the words "Abbey Road" attached merits a look, I suppose, and this certainly does too. But don't expect some sort of Beatles tie-in, even if AR Studios are hitting their 75th anniversary (the reason for the series in the first place.) Airing over twelve episodes, "LFAR" is a pure music show,
highlighting three first-rate acts per edition (so be sure to check listings to see if your favorite act is on.) Tonight - John Mayer, Richard Ashcroft, Norah Jones - with Snow Patrol, Shawn Colvin, Iron Maiden (!), Dave Matthews, and Muse showing up in the future.
To watch or not watch: Sure! By all means. Nice production, great acts (and again, pick and choose your faves) but the only Beatles tie-in here is the occasional clip interstitials (and umm, it's taped, not "live." Truth in advertising!) Still, this is Abbey Road, after all, the most holy shrine in rock 'n roll history...

"American Greed: Scams, Scoundrels and Scandals." (CNBC, 10.) Ah, now there's a title to get the blood racing - plus it's alliterative, whatever that means. You're probably sick (and tired) of all big league network investigation-type stories that promise the moon and deliver Paris Hilton. This CNBC series "examines the dark side of the American dream" (Paris Hilton?!) and starts off with a look at a real-life scam artiste named Barry Hunt who rolls innocent (and greedy) by-standers with promises of instant wealth. Instead, he's a master check kiter and Ponzi scheme crook - and a garden variety one at that. What's amazing is his marks' gullibility along with the fact that he's a dead ringer for Ned Beatty (but thankfully is not.) He also looks a lot like John Locke's crooked father in "Lost"... Tonight also has a fascinating story on a Maxwell Parrish art heist in L.A. – how the crooks tripped an alarm over and over until even the cops ignored it.
To watch or not watch: I say yes - give it a try. It tells its stories well, and offers a moral to boot (that which glitters is not necessarily gold, and greed is not, repeat not, good, even if this is CNBC).

In this not entirely flattering shot, Stace looks a little like the bad guy in the first story on tonight's "American Greed;" do not be fooled - Keach only narrates and, as usual, does a fine job as well.