By Steve Rhodes

Recent observations from more TV viewing than should be allowed even in a democracy.
1. After an uneven season opener, Mad Men has only gotten better. I mean, it’s downright gripping. Deep and layered with loads of potential plot and character development ahead of us. Yay, Mad Men! Here’s the show’s official blog.
2. Audrina Patridge: Not a smart girl. But smart enough to know she had to patch things up with Lo or risk drifting off the show. Also, does everyone betray LC?
3. Watching old episodes of Soul Train is one of the joys of staying in on Saturdays.

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Posted on September 23, 2008

By Kathryn Ware

Our look back on the debut season of Ironside continues.
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Episode 7: An Inside Job
Airdate: 19 October 1967
Plot: Using a concealed knife, two convicts jump their jailers and spring free from a holding cell in police headquarters. Trapped in a building of wall-to-wall cops, the “birds” sneak into Ironside’s quarters looking for a way out. It’s their lucky day when they realize they’ve got the former Chief of Detectives as their hostage. When Eve joins the hostage pool, the stakes are raised and Ironside is compelled to use his master criminal mind to devise a foolproof escape plan – proof that Ironside will do anything to get out of writing a speech.

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Posted on September 19, 2008

By Scott Buckner

After years of searching, I’ve finally discovered the location of the top-secret farm that grows the world’s crop of smokin’-hot pole-dancing strippers and tavern beer-poster models. It’s Telemundo’s hour-long music video dance party Descontrol, airing Saturdays at noon on our city’s very own WSNS-TV/Channel 44.
If American farming techniques were this good, we’d have ears of corn the size of train locomotives.

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Posted on September 15, 2008

By Kathryn Ware

Our look back on the debut season of Ironside continues.
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Episode 6: The Taker
Airdate: 12 October 1967
Plot: It’s a foggy day in Frisco Town when a fedora-sporting cop named Andrew Anderson is gunned down by an acquaintance on a deserted street. After an incriminating amount of cash is found on his body and certain improper relationships come to light, it appears as if Anderson was on the take. The police commissioner is hoping to keep the crooked cop story under wraps and the best way to do that is to keep Ironside, the force’s best detective, off the case. Fat chance.

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Posted on September 10, 2008

By Scott Buckner

For years, I thought that one of this country’s major exports to Third World nations was championship T-shirts printed for losing sports teams. This is how we end up with all those photos of children from countries ravaged by war, cyclones, or abject poverty who will grow up believing the Chicago Bears won Super Bowl XLI. But thanks to last Saturday afternoon’s segment of The Woodwright’s Shop on Chicago’s WYCC-TV/Channel 20, I learned that an even more humanitarian American export is technology that hasn’t been used since George Armstrong Custer was recruited to make Montana the happiest place on earth by killing every Native American in sight.
Every weekend, Woodwright and cheerful host Roy Underhill celebrate the world of hand tools and construction methods using those tools popular among our settler ancestors when they weren’t too busy with other popular activities of the day, like dropping dead from cholera. Basically, Roy and Woodwright is what Norm Abrams and This Old House would be if nobody ever bothered to discover electricity. Sure, Roy looks Howdy Doody-ish in his tweed cabbie hat and suspenders. Sure, some of his guests can be a lot like those socially off-kilter railroad buffs able to recite the arrival and departure schedule for every train in the history of the Monon Railroad. But believe me, when the planet is a smoking cinder on Armageddon Day and the rest of us are worrying about how we’re going to survive without cell phones and Internet porn, Roy’s going to be the only guy around able to build a two-seat outhouse without even using nails.

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Posted on September 9, 2008

By Scott Buckner

As the late Bernie Mac might say: Go ahead, America. Spend a 10-day vacation with nowhere to go, nothing to do, no money to do it with, and nobody to spend it with except plain old local TV from stupid-ass rabbit ears antennae that only works when you hang it off a nail next to the window. Even then, you still never get Channel 2. Kids today don’t know TV hardship until they have to flip the channel with a pair of pliers because the selector dial disappeared.
But old-school’s luster only goes so far, so sooner or later, you start forming opinions about daytime TV that have nothing to do with Jerry Springer. This is especially true if you somehow manage to avoid a single encounter with Jerry Springer without having to rent anything from Blockbuster or bend over and grab your ankles for what Comcast charges these days for basic cable.

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Posted on September 3, 2008

On Sunday night, NBC aired the film National Treasure featuring Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel and a whole bunch of very competent actors I couldn’t point out in a crowd if my life depended upon it. And for the life of me, I wish I could remember the name of the blonde. Especially during the shopping mall dressing room scene. Hubba hubba.
On one hand, National Treasure was perhaps the most blatant product-placement fiesta ever offered in the history of Hollywood to the fraternal organizations known as The (Free)Masons and/or the Knights Templar. This is amazing because these organizations have long been rumored to be the secret force behind the aliens of Area 51 and Every Single Goddamned Reason Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex With You, Even When You Don’t Come Home Really Fucked Up. But some awfully strange shit is rumored to happen with the Masons, especially if they’re wearing matching pinkie rings. So who am I to argue?

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Posted on September 2, 2008

By Kathryn Ware

Our look back on the debut season of Ironside continues.
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Episode 5: Eat, Drink and Be Buried
Airdate: 5 October 1967
Plot: After popular advice columnist Francesca Kirby (Lee Grant) is nearly kidnapped from her estate by the Creature from the Black Lagoon, her old friend Robert T. Ironside is called in to narrow the list of suspects.
This episode opens with what may well be the most laughable opening of any Ironside installment – no, make that any crime drama of the last 50 years. Don’t take my word for it; do yourself a favor and rent the DVD. The sight of Lee Grant in a blousy black-and-white print pantsuit sprinting up the side of a hill, fleeing from her wet-suit clad abductor, is a hilarious moment of vintage ’60s television.

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Posted on September 1, 2008