entertain

The setting: One nondescript Sunday night, interchangeable with any other Sunday night. Come eight o’clock, engorged with ham, potatoes, and other staples of a god-fearing family meal, you flip on your television, hoping for a bit of wholesome entertainment to wrap up your weekend. You’re shocked by the godless filth you see, but can’t look away, such is the (unholy) quality of the Sunday-night primetime lineup.

The players: FOX and ABC, two national broadcast corporations, each present a strong, highly-rated team of pokemon, ready to battle all the other trainers and catch ‘em all!

Hah hah. Hah. Hah. Seriously, though, there are some good things happening Sunday night. Fox shows four back-to-back sitcoms, anchored by The Simpsons and Family Guy. Attention deficit, crass, and stupid, they’re the perfect way to cap off a weekend. ABC, shooting for a reputation as the tasteful, intelligent station, sucks audiences in with three relatively innovative, well-produced dramas, all significantly different thematically, but incredibly addictive.

The battle begins:

You turn on FOX, finding bright yellow people running amok in an idyllic midwestern cartoon town. Over the next half-hour, there are a few good laughs, but more chuckles at sly cultural references or at the meandering plot. While The Simpsons had a few years as one of the funniest shows on TV, its golden age is gone, and it seems to just be riding its season out. However, in the same way most of us went out and saw the new Star Wars trilogy, seeing familiar characters in a lovable franchise is enough to make the show enjoyable.

In a weird way, The Simpsons is actually one of the most wholesome comedies out there. It keeps out of sex, drug, and violent humor more than most other shows, and often ends in a pretty heartwarming fashion.

Bored by a commerical, you flip over to ABC. Lost is playing, a series which treats a relatively silly premise remarkably well. A plane crashes on a remote pacific island, leaving forty-odd survivors on the beach. At first expecting to be found by rescue planes, they soon realize they are alone, and that on the island, nothing is what it seems. Cheesy? Indubitably. However, the show’s pacing and plot causes a rapid suspension of disbelief, and creates one of the most addictive series out there.

Each episode focuses on one or two people out of a fairly large ensemble cast, without losing perspective on the whole groups’ situation. For the first episodes, we get flashbacks to the situations that led up to their flight on that particular plane, which explain their reactions to the crash and their behavior afterwards. The characters are all very well-cast and -acted; while mostly written into somewhat stereotyped roles, they manage to each elicit sympathy in their own way.

If this sounds a little questionable, do a science experiment. Acquire the very first episode of the series, and watch it all the way through. Then try not to watch the next five back-to-back. Of all the shows on television Sunday night, Lost perhaps demands the most serial viewing.

"Now with less of a chance of sexual side effects." Don’t you hate those commercials? Click. Back to FOX, on which The War at Home is just beginning, a beginning which, in my estimation, has no measurable effect on anyone anywhere. A nuclear family of quirky individuals inhabits a house. Someone does something stupid and lies about it. Increasingly absurd attempts are made to correct the problem and hide the lie, all of which only magnifies the situation. Eventually everything is resolved, usually in an amusingly serendipitous manner that manages to avoid any lasting consequences.

Come 9:00, the competition heats up. Family Guy, crass and absurd, proves a formidable gladiator on this electron-gun stage. Essentially a skeleton plot linking together a series of rascist, mysonginist, or simply tasteless gags, it provides the sort of attention-deficit humor America so loves. Consider yourself warned: if you’re not comfortable with pointed stereotypes of you or people you know, avoid this show. It jumps from one group to the next, egalitarian in its ignorant, base depravity. However, if you’re okay with that, it’s hilarious.

Note that at 9:30, FOX currently shows American Dad, essentially a Family Guy spinoff series with the same basic feel and structure.

ABC has made the wise decision to try to scoop up all those viewers who reject Family Guy’s unique take on quality television (the "We’ll be more offensive than anybody" strategy, as far as I can tell). Their secret weapon is Desperate Housewives, a disguised soap opera that addicts its audience through running, simultaneously, four twisting tales of four deeply troubled women. All of the classic soap opera elements are there: forgotten characters popping up at opportune times to disrupt an idyllic resolution, characters prone to exaggerated emotional meltdowns and elaborate scheming. However, a big production budget, quality acting (with a few exceptional performances, such as that of Marcia Cross), and likeable, quirky characters all contribute to its salvation.

Whether Family Guy or Desperate Housewives, the 9:00 time slot presents some pretty fresh writing, and an almost-guaranteed good time. Chances are, you’ll fancy one show quite a bit more than the other; as far as I can tell, there’s not much common ground for viewer crossover.

10:00 is exclusively the domain of ABC, as FOX switches over to local news at that time. This leaves viewers aching for a third hour of television with only the second-season series Grey’s Anatomy, a drama about a hospital chock-full, as far as we can tell, of attractive, witty surgical interns. The series draws on a relatively unknown cast, all doing a pretty good job of avoiding stereotypes and presenting complex characters. Susan Ho deserves special recognition for managing to portray an Asian female neither fighting to be her own woman in a culture of oppression and mysogyny, nor playing the oft-seen ‘dragon lady,’ dangerous but seductive creature of the Orient. It’s a great breakthrough step for Asian-Americans in the media, who are perhaps typecast more than any other ethnicity.

The pacing in the series is good, jumping between the humor of each characters’ particular neurosis and life situation, and genuinely sad, unjust acts of fate. Meredith Grey, the show’s loose focus, voices a small lead-in and lead-out in each episode, tying together all of the storylines into one theme or (often-cliched) universal truth. It’s a little cheesy, sure, but gives the stories the appearance of being tighter than perhaps they really are. Grey’s Anatomy overall comes across as well-written, healthily funny, and a little touching.

I enjoy Sunday night television immensely. Regardless of your tastes, there’s something on to please, and FOX and ABC offer quality programming that should keep you happily sendentary for hours on end.