Love the Ones You Hate
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

It’s impossible to evaluate television’s 2004 offerings without taking into account one of the best television episodes of the year: the Christmas edition of “All My Children,” in which the residents of Pine Valley annually gather to pretend to celebrate the joyful tidings of the holidays while continuing to despise one another. Acts of deception and violence were, as always, put on hold for one brief afternoon, as Erica and Jack and Bianca and Stuart and J.R. exchanged presents and dirty looks. It was a hoot, and belongs more squarely in the comic tradition than anything on TV’s most overrated show, “Desperate Housewives” – which has taken to representing itself as a comedy to cover up the astonishing lack of drama in ABC’s Sunday night smash hit.
It can’t be long before Americans get wise to the weaknesses of “Desperate Housewives” and realize that its presence on critics’ 10-best lists more accurately reflects their own desperation than anything else. It’s not an easy job to find 10 shows on television worth writing about twice in one year, and increasingly, critics have become participants in the marketing of hits, looking for meaning (where there is none) in shows that somehow manage to maneuver themselves into the top-10-rated programs of the week. Last week, a piece appeared in the LA Times deconstructing the show’s opening credits; it actually allowed creator Marc Cherry to say that he was using the credits to make a statement about women throughout history (hence the Eve visual reference). If only his show had half the depth of his interviews, maybe viewers wouldn’t be complaining so much about the skimpy plots and increasingly tedious storylines.
It’s the shows that drift off the radar screen that seem most worth watching these days, where the writers and producers aren’t distracted by entertainment reporters and magazine-cover shoots. Great episodes of “Rescue Me,” “Nip/Tuck,” and “The Shield” all come to mind as memorable moments in 2004; by what I assume is no coincidence at all, all three air on FX, the cable channel that deserves far more attention – at least this year – than HBO, its richer, lazier counterpart. True, HBO had the finale of “Sex and the City,” new episodes of “The Sopranos,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and “Six Feet Under” to keep viewers satisfied, but even the best of its new series (like “Entourage”) never quite delivered. The rest of cable failed to distinguish itself at all; Showtime offered the lame, overheated “Huff” (with a nearly unwatchable performance by Hank Azaria), while channels like Bravo, A&E, TNT, and TBS continued to produce substandard original material, at least by the high standards of their competition. It’s truly sad to see these channels waste their access to the airwaves with junk like “The Real Gilligan’s Island” and second-rate reality knockoffs like Bravo’s forthcoming “Queer Eye for the Straight Gal.”
The networks continue to diminish the television medium by their lack of courage. Fox has mostly abandoned itself to a smorgasbord of bad reality shows, having formulated its entire business strategy around the success of “American Idol.” That show’s third season arrives next month, and if it fails, that will bring a certain end to Gail Berman’s term as chief programmer for Fox – and not a minute too soon. She has been singularly responsible for television’s wrongheaded belief in reality programming – remember 2003’s exploitative and vile “American Juniors?” – and deserves to be sent to a desert island to contemplate her many mistakes. Over at NBC, Jeff Zucker has kept up his losing ways with a diversified platter of lame new shows; “Hawaii,” “LAX,” and “Father of the Pride” are only the most egregious examples of his many miscalculations. It will never cease to amaze anyone in Hollywood how Mr. Zucker hangs onto his lofty title at NBC despite a decade-long track record of failure.
It’s a measure of Mr. Zucker’s incompetence that men like CBS’s Leslie Moonves looks like geniuses for a show as reprehensibly predictable as “Two and a Half Men.” This timeslot hit will probably turn out to earn another billion dollars or so for the various producing entities that own it, thus rewarding yet again a ratings system that doesn’t know whether its viewers are even awake. Is it fair for shows like that to succeed, when the underrated (in all respects) “60 Minutes Wednesday” faces cancellation for its failure to make a dent in the numbers for “Lost” on ABC? It seems unlikely that this prime-time newsmagazine will make it till next season – nor, probably, will the noble “Nightline,” whose paltry 3 million viewers make it one of the costliest failures on network television.
It’s particularly saddening because “Lost” has evolved into the best new show on network television, and deserves every viewer it gets. While “Desperate Housewives” struggles to fill each week’s episode with plot, “Lost” has stories to spare. You can feel the writers’ energy each week as new elements surface to complicate the lives of the men and women stranded on that desert island – the back stories, the twists, and the performances combine to make “Lost” hum in the way no network series has in years. It’s a big-budget extravaganza that’s worth every penny, and a rare example of a quality show that draws in enough viewers to justify its expense to the increasingly cash-starved networks. Let’s hope “Lost” inspires everyone – from network executives to cable programmers to myopic critics – to remember that there’s nothing more prized on television than good storytelling. It’s a writer’s medium, and that is something to be grateful for, after all.