All Shows

Never did we appreciate Tyra Banks more.

O-Town said O-Revoir to us after three long seasons. Jacob, Ashley, Trevor, Erik, and Dan weren’t just hearthrobs, they were boys becoming men in our living rooms. Men who weren’t afraid to wear bad clothes and prance around to really bad music. They were men who weren’t afraid to write horrible songs and play them for us on acoustic guitars without a hint of irony. They were men hated by more people than loved, and we loved them all the more for it. We miss those boys so much. We love those boys. And if you call that love, then love should definitely be a crime.

A show so bad that we suspect that other bad shows took it aside out of compassion to gently tell it how bad it was, this “experiment in arranged marriage” stood for the unhappy fact that there is nothing too stupid for FOX to air and the happy fact that there are things too stupid for the viewing public to watch.

Undercooked.

Let’s face it: MDs was living on borrowed TWoP time from the beginning. So we did it — and ourselves — the favor of pulling the plug early and sending it to that big bedpan in the sky.

Sometimes, you just need to let sleeping bitches lie.

Half-baked Alaska.

We here at TWoP pride ourselves on our ability to watch bad TV so you don’t have to. But sometimes, a show can be so incredibly awful that even trained professionals such as ourselves are forced to flee in terror. The Mind of the Married Man is one such show. Warning: No matter how brave you may be, attempts to read these recaps will never, ever have a happy ending.

ABC might as well stand for “Always Be Cancelling” if its treatment of Miracles is any indication. The sort-of spiritual X-Files show wasn’t given much of a chance, continually bumped in favor of Michael Jackson freak show reruns and, well, a war. After only six episodes of Skeet getting beat and Alva brooding, ABC gave it the hook. In times like these, who doesn’t look to the words of Jon Bon Jovi for solace? “You’re looking for salvation/You thought that it’d be shining like an angel’s light, yeah/Well, the angels left this nation/And salvation caught the last train out tonight/He lost a hell of a fight.” You tell ‘em, Jon. You tell the world.

NBC went looking for love in all the wrong places with this comedy drama starring Alicia Silverstone as a lawyer moonlighting as a matchmaker. Why didn’t it connect with viewers the way the network hoped? Maybe right now the public doesn’t want shows that don’t have forensic investigators, people being voted, out or houses being redesigned. Or maybe it’s one of those shows that people hate to admit they watch, since it means admitting they’re home on Friday nights. In any case, if it ever comes back, we wish it luck.

Take three guys who’ve never accomplished anything on their own gas, add one retarded turnip, stir in some chemo and stem cells, shake it up with a serious bout of co-dependence, a bunch of homoeroticism that manages to be neither homo nor particularly erotic, and hand it over to a woman with her own death wish of a career. Serve chilled, lazy, slow, and whiny, with a salted rim and absolutely no accountability or motivation for success. Boring to the last drop, with a twist of schadenfreude: MAN BAND!

Sometimes More is less.

It could have been a fairly entertaining experiment in the hybridization of a cheesy dating reality show cross-pollinated with a wacky improv twist. Or it could have been just a slice of schlocky fun. Sadly, it wasn’t either of those things. Instead, it was the dead boring deathscape of Steve, the actor, and Randi, his blushing-with-humiliation bride. Conceived in hell and born in strife, this it-could-only- have-been-Fox six-episode mini- series lasted three weeks on Television Without Pity, and we axed it when we realized that we were the only people on the planet still talking about it. And we really, really, REALLY didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

Karma’s a bitch.