Cancelled! Canceled! AXED!

Once in a while, the public is right about something on TV. We tried to tell you, ABC: We didn’t want to see “Daybreak.”

Taye Diggs is pretty to look at. He can even sing well and he does a nice Jamaican accent. He seems like a genuinely nice fellow and he’s one of the few men with great abs that I can actually root for. But there was nothing about this show, from the title to the concept, from the poster to the trailer –hell, even the font—that made me at all compelled to watch it.

It’s not that I was turned off per se. It’s just that every time I saw a promo, billboard, bus ad, web ad, etc. etc. (and there were a LOT of etc.’s), I thought instead about all the movies it reminded me of that I also didn’t want to see, and then my mind wandered. It wandered to the same place it often does during the trailers for these kind of time-shifting shows and movies: to what I would do if I could go back in time and wake up in my childhood bedroom and be 10 years old again (the answer: train myself not to wet the bed, save all my Adidas, keep a secret time-stamped journal).

Anyhow, when ABC finally canceled the show after just a few episodes, it made me feel bad for Taye and yet gave me a small cookie of satisfaction that once again my apathy is America’s apathy. Now, if I could just wake up 25 years ago. I wouldn’t drink milk after 8pm and I would take really good care of my shoes. And maybe I’d tell Taye Diggs to stay on Broadway a little while longer.

At least until after daybreak.

In more recent cancellation news, Megan Mullally’s talk show got pulled. Finally. Again, Megan seems like a nice lady, obviously very talented, generous to charity, kind to animals, smells like daisies, can heal lepers with her mind, etc etc.

But she’s not someone who I need to see in my home everyday, especially interviewing the 2^nd lead from a new ABC sitcom. Maybe it was the Casual Friday jeans, the awkwardly-close positioning of her interview couch, or maybe she was just doomed from the start. Mullally did such a great job creating the character of Karen Walker on “Will & Grace” that if her normal real-life persona wasn’t going to match up (and whose could?), then no one was going to buy into this. I mean, could you imagine seeing Kramer do anything other than Seinfeld? (OK, bad example.)

Mullally can and should carry her own show, just not a talk show. Get some wacky characters around her and let her have some fun again. She’s more fun when she gets to be the one making everyone else uncomfortable, something talk show hosts don’t get to do.

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Meanwhile… why is Greg Behrendt’s talk show still on the air? Greg is an exceptional comedian and I’ve been pleased to share the stage with him a few times. Greg should be doing a talk show, but one like this? I don’t know which surprises me more… that this show got on the air, or that enough people are still watching it. Actually, what constitutes “enough” people? According to the latest ratings, Behrendt and Mullally’s shows were just about even.

Greg’s first book is brilliant. On more than one occasion I’ve wanted to give it to women I’ve dated. But I like the way my face looks without a drink thrown in it. His advice is sound and like I said, he is a damn funny comedian. (Have you heard his standup about cake or Cadbury eggs? He makes Dane Cook look like, well… Dane Cook.)

But Greg is handcuffed here, seemingly playing the role of the kind of host he would normally make fun of. Spiked hair, soul patch, leather vest, and… necktie? Rock & Roll attitude and… note cards? Self-help advice ending with… “Bro?”

I guess anything that helps women get out of bad relationships and keeps people from watching Maury Povich exploit disabled people can only help, but I have to believe that the best parts of “The Greg Behrendt Show” are its outtakes and production meetings. When the show gets the axe someday, here’s hoping Howard Stern buys the footage and bring Greg into his Howard InDemand system. It ain’t strippers playing volleyball, but it would be a chance to see a brilliant man shine.

AMC stinks. (The cable channel, though the movie chain and the car company ain’t doing too well either). AMC once stood for American Movie Classics and they changed their name to just the initials, possibly upon realizing that their channel featured programming that was neither terribly Classic (”Hustle“?), Movies (”Hustle“?), nor American (”Hustle“?).

More likely, as with most niche cable stations, they wanted more young folks to tune in (like when MTV discovered that Music Television wasn’t quite its prime directive anymore). And apparently young folks were confused by the movies that American Movie Classics had been showing. (“Why is that dude from The Naked Gun acting so serious and in black and white?” “Why hasn’t that car exploded yet?” “How come that lady keeps shaking?”)

So now it’s AMC, and it’s branded as “TV for Movie People.”

Well, I happen to think of myself as a movie people. And you know what Movie People don’t want on their TV? Movies that are shown in pan-and-scan , heavily edited for time, content (Jack Nicholson saying “Forget you!”?), and shown with unlimited commercial interruptions at seemingly random intervals. And guess what? That’s what they offer on AMC!

That and the occasional documentary on why everything was better in Hollywood 65 years ago.

AMC does try to get cutesy by showing some films with pop-up video type factoids on DVD TV , but again, most people who love movies and have basic cable TV also have… DVD players!

Maybe it’s time AMC threw in the towel, � la TNN/Spike. Or find some way to join the YouTube phenomenon. (AMC: Audience-Made Content.) I bet they’d still find a way to screw it up.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that I shot a pilot for AMC –a movie talk show called “Shut Up and Vote.” I’m not at all bitter that it didn’t get picked up. And my unbiased opinion: It could’ve saved the network. And all of humankind.

Speaking of Movies on TV…

Energized with post-championship victory excitement , I was up late in a Florida hotel room with nothing to do but flip channels and wish I’d sprung for the extra $29 to get my name added to my uncle’s rental car agreement so I could go someplace that had people and/or alcohol. Apparently we were in the one part of South Florida where the bars close at 8pm.

Thankfully TV once again soothed the pain, for amidst the infomercials for supernatural blending devices and WGN’s attempt to inflate my cell phone bill via word puzzles for lobotomized monkeys, I found an hour of comfort: the last half of a movie called Love Potion No. 9.

Love Potion No. 9 is like an old friend. Not a good friend, but one easily tolerated and sometimes even welcomed. You don’t call LP#9 to complain about your new boss or discuss your surgery options , but if you find yourself in the same town, you get a drink; and if you’re drunk enough and both available, maybe you get lucky and sleep together and never speak of it again. And who knows, you keep in touch with LP#9 long enough, and you might get his kidney one day.

Perhaps the metaphor ends there.

What I’m getting at is that there are certain movies that no matter when they’re on TV I will watch. They aren’t great movies, not even good movies necessarily. And no matter how many times I’ve seen them, no matter if I like them or not, no matter how badly censored or edited they are by the channel they’re on, no matter where the story is when I flip by, I’m in for the rest of the way.

Movies like Dave, The American President, A Few Good Men, Fletch, A Christmas Story, Cast Away (which I never tire of calling Mis-cast Away, since I hate Hanks & Hunt in these roles –and since I’m a little genius), Hero (Dustin Hoffman, not Jet Li or Mariah Carey), Stuart Saves His Family… The list of embarrassments goes on.

These aren’t camp or guilty pleasures. They’re mostly mediocre. There are some great movies among these: The Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Broadcast News. But please, tell me why I have to watch Gung Ho to its inevitable, racist, and always-disappointing conclusion? What benefit could I possibly glean from the gallons of tears jerked from the ending of My Life? (And why does Michael Keaton have a hold on me, and in such dichotomous odd roles?)

I’ll still keep watching these movies. It doesn’t matter that I know every plot twist and every answer to every mystery (though many of the movies have neither). If these movies were an iPod playlist, they would be “Movies to Clean By,” or “Time-Passers” or “Lonely Florida Hotel Room.”

I read someplace that It’s a Wonderful Life and The Wizard of Oz became classics not because of their initial theatrical releases, but because of their relentless re-airings on American television. People saw them year after year and eventually just figured they were classics. Maybe it’s the same way with my new pseudo-favorites.

While I can’t imagine generations being influenced by these movies, they do provide me a degree of comfort and familiarity, which is only reinforced the more often I watch them. And yet, I don’t want to pay to see them at a revival house or own them on DVD. Part of the charm and the magic is that I don’t know when I’m going to see them. I don’t know when these old friends are coming to town.

I never know the next time I’m going to get lucky.

Categories: Movies, Pop Culture, TV
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