The fall television season has already begun, and so you must be spending an awful lot of time sitting around, staring at the wall, and waiting for me to tell you what to watch. Well, those days are over, America, because I've decided, at long last, to tell you what to watch. So prepare to be told!

If love stories are that which makes you forget the horrible pain of impotently watching all illusions of representitive democracy in America slip away, and if The Bachelor: Rome sounds like it might be a little heavy on the Italians for your taste, then I suggest you tune in to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Aaron Sorkin is the man behind The West Wing, and Studio 60 is his painstakingly crafted lovesong to himself. In it, he imagines a world in which the giant media machines engineered to pulverize any semblence of artistry or intelligence in television can be bested by a brilliant writer, canny producer, and plucky and sweet-assed network executive. In other words, it's pure fantasy. But with this little dreamscape Sorkin has managed to create for us a remarkably self-important and simultaneously middling drama and glimpses of a sketch comedy show that makes Saturday Night Live seem funny. But it's way better than thinking about the Hobson's choice that is every election we'll ever have ever again, so I give it five out of five stars!

If you prefer your superheroes to be unaffiliated with the Writers' Guild, then allow me to suggest Heroes. It's the story of a group of men and women from around the world who have somehow developed unusual powers -- things like the ability to teleport or fly or rapidly heal. For simplicity, let's call these powers their "X." How will these "x men" deal with their powers? Will the pervy, pudgy Japanese guy use his powers for good, or will he simply teleport his unagi into Meredith Viera's sashimi again and again? These questions just might be enough to make us forget about the coming ice age, and the practical end it will put to human civilization, and for that reason I give it five out of five stars!

But maybe you find the Japanese and Hollywood Jews unrelatable, and prefer your entertainment to hit a little closer to home. If that's the case, I suggest you check out Shark or Smith. In them, two pock-faced former movie actors ooze charisma and sebum in an attempt to pay the mortgages that seemed reasonable when it looked like the well of mob movies would never run dry. But that just might be enough to make you forget about the wells of oil rapidly running dry, draining with them all hope of preventing global economic collapse, and so I give them both five out of five stars!

Analogcabin @ 2:20 PM
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