You get what you pay for

By: Jason Davis
Date: Monday, March 20, 2006

Let me tell you about my father. In 2000, he bought his first CD player. He was, by all accounts, the last living person in the modern world to purchase such a machine and he purchased it only because my mother would likely have resorted to violence had he not. I will not tell you how long it was before he bought a DVD playerit's too disturbing to contemplate. In short, my father is never the first to get onboard with anything. The only exception to this, in my recollection, is cable television. I've always had cable. I admit to having never had to twiddle antennas to force the ghostly souls of characters on screen back into their more clearly defined bodies. I've never been at the mercy of The Big Three (remember when NBC was in the top three?) and a handful of independent stations. In short, someone's always paid for me to watch TV. But. It was always the least expensive tier.

In the summer of 1999, I went to work at THE X-FILES. There was a really cool production assistant named Art who one day hoped to write for the small screen. He would scour the scripts coming into the production office and there was one series that would light up his eyes when they scanned across the title. That series was THE SOPRANOS. Now, being a poor kid from Texas with only the basic cable package, I had no idea what THE SOPRANOS was all about. I figured it was something about opera. Operatic, perhaps, but sure as f#*%ing hell not opera. By the time the third season premiered, I'd digested the first two on DVD and had written my first ungodly check to my local cable monopoly.


In short order, I fell in love with SIX FEET UNDER--hell, I'd been to two, count 'em two preview screenings of SIX FEET creator Alan Ball's movie AMERICAN BEAUTY. Now HBO was giving the guy a TV series? This was brilliant! The premium cable addiction didn't end there. The next thing I know BABYLON 5's J. Michael Straczynski is adapting a Belgian comic for Showtime. I couldn't miss thatit would be sacrilege. The next six years yielded a constant stream of premium viewing pleasure. Showtime had DEAD LIKE ME and UK import STRANGE while HBO continued to churn out hits like DEADWOOD alongside compelling, but less lauded, fare like CARNIVALE and ROME.

Now, the first thing non-subscribers point to when someone such as myself extols the virtues of these networks is that they're cesspools full of nudity, violence, and profanity. Yep. They are... full of those things, rathernot cesspools. To my way of thinking, the really dangerous kind of television is the kind that you're "getting for free." I employ the quotation marks in deference to broadcast television's subsidization by the ad agencies that care no more for entertainment than they do enlightenment. They simply care about arcane, and dubiously calculated, figures that ostensibly indicate how many couch potatoes are optically and aurally ingesting their Message in between bits of TV filler. That's right, the TV shows are the filler. The commercials are the Message.

Before you point and declare me to be some kind of anarchistic loon babbling about conspiracies and brainwashing, let me assure you that I'm no better than any other schmuck who goes forth to the grocery store and purchases Lever 2000 "for all my 2000 parts" or Coke, because "Coke is it." They finance your entertainment in exchange for slipping into your head to forward their own agendas. Personally, I find that a little bit creepy. Even more disturbing is this. A year or so ago, I interviewed TWILIGHT ZONE historian Marc Scott Zicree who mentioned that Rod Serling was asked to remove the word "American" from a script because the sponsor, a cigarette company, didn't want the viewers to think about their competitor, American Cigarettes. Let's ponder that for a moment. Sinister? I think so. Sure, it was the Fifties, but this sort of thing is still going on. Heaven forefend that an advertiser find something objectionable that might cause someone to tune out and miss their commercial. We've come a long way, but it's still all about Them getting your attention and killing anything they think you won't watch in big enough numbers to satisfy their unholy lust for profit.

Okayjust a moment to comb my hair back into position and tame my wild eyes. The point of this diatribe is this: with HBO and Showtime (and, come to think of it, PBS), the audience pays for their programming and "tyranny of acceptability" that limits the potential of the public airwaves is a moot point. The results of this arrangement are shows as outrageously quirky as BIG LOVE, as poetically vulgar as DEADWOOD, and as painfully funny as HUFF. They're not trying to sell you anything. They're not steered by the whims of half a dozen suits populating ad agencies, sponsors, networks, and studios with disparate desires and all the artistic integrity of people who would scribble an eyebrow waxing add onto the margins of the Mona Lisa to make a buck. They are simply providing television to an audience who knows that you get what you pay for.

As a bit of a sidebar, here's an account of the pay-TV delights I'm presently gorging on. THE SOPRANOS returned last week with a killer, literally I might add, sixth season premiere that they failed to follow up with a preview so as not to give away this week's story. A new series, BIG LOVE, in which Bill Paxton plays a polygamist cult member trying to make his way in suburbia premiered immediately thereafter and won me over within minutes. I'm eagerly awaiting the Showtime return of WEEDS wherein Golden Globe-winner Mary-Louise Parker plays a widowed mother supporting her family by being the ganja hook-up in an LA suburb. This week, I've discovered HUFF wherein Hank Azaria plays a psychiatrist who starts to lose it after a teenager kills himself during a therapy session. I'm also desperately hoping that the HBO/BBC (another network that gets its money straight from viewers like you) co-production ROME will return for a second season. I realize that most of the cliffhanger could be unraveled by a quick trip to the history books, but I'm dying to know what will happen to Lucius Vorenus in the wake of his wife's suicide and only the writers of the show can tell me that. So, as I ship this off to the editor, I hope you'll join me in sitting down five minutes from now to catch up with THE SOPRANOS and release the dramatic tension that's been building since last week's gunshot was fired.

MONDAY, MARCH 20

24 (8 PM PST, Fox) "Day 5: 8:00PM 9:00PM" It's over the hump for this season and into the home stretch as the clock keeps ticking for Jack Bauer.

PRISON BREAK (9 PM PST, Fox) "The Rat" After a lengthy hiatus, this series returns with more jailbird hijinks.

MEDIUM (10 PM PST, NBC) "Light Sleeper" (R) Allison does a spot of sleepwalking in this repeat from earlier in the season.

TUESDAY, MARCH 21

SCRUBS (9 PM PST, NBC) "My Extra Mile" J.D. urges his fellow doctors to go the extra mile for their patients.

THE UNIT (9 PM PST, CBS) "200th Hour" My mother's quite enjoying this series...I keep forgetting the bloody thing is on. Anyone want to donate money for me to get TiVo? Anybody?

VERONICA MARS (9 PM PST, UPN) "Versatile Toppings" (R) In case you forgot you watched this series in the decades UPN was airing repeats, here's a second chance to catch last week's new episode.

SCRUBS (9:30 PM PST, NBC) "My Lucky Night" (R) UNIT star Scott Foley guest stars on this episode which is accompanied by commentary online at NBC's SCRUBS site.

THE SHIELD (10 PM PST, FX) "Post Partum" The fifth season finale. It really doesn't seem like that long does it?

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22

LOST (9 PM PST, ABC) "The Whole Truth" If this episode does not deliver on its title, I'm suing for false advertising. Class action anyone?

VERONICA MARS (9 PM PST, UPN) "The Quick and the Wed" Two helpings of Kristen Bell in one weekUPN loves us.

SOUTH PARK (10 PM PST, Comedy Central) I'm with Entertainment Weekly, how do you top the closet episode?

LIVING IN TV LAND: WILLIAM SHATNER IN CONCERT (11PM PST, TV Land) Coincidentally, Shatner turns 75 todaywhat better way to celebrate three-quarters of a century with this entertainment icon than listening to him sing?

THURSDAY, MARCH 23

SMALLVILLE (8 PM PST, WB) "Reckoning" (R) The 100th episode returns for an encore performance.

MY NAME IS EARL (9:00 PM PST, NBC) "Y2K" Earl's weekly attempt at redemption clashes with his brother when the former attempts to return a "Take a Number" machine.

THE OFFICE (9:30 PM PST, NBC) "Health Care" (R) This first season repeat tackles a subject that's unfortunately top on your humble columnist's mind at the moment. I bet it'll be funnier for THE OFFICE cast...

FRIDAY, MARCH 24

DOCTOR WHO (8 PM PST, Sci Fi Channel) "The End of the World" (R) A repeat of the new series' second episode leads into:

DOCTOR WHO (9 PM PST, Sci Fi Channel) "The Unquiet Dead" LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN star Mark Gatiss pens this Dickensian jaunt through Nineteenth Century Cardiff as the Doctor and Rose try to solve an undertaker's unusual problem.

LITTLE BRITAIN (9:40 PM PST, BBC America) Series three of this excellent series continues and I lament the loss of BBC America from my cable package. Luckily, series two will hit DVD quite soon sating my desire for extreme English eccentricity.

STARGATE: ATALANTIS (10PM PST, Sci Fi Channel) "The Hive" (R) SG-1's spin-off settles into its new time slot after the Time Lord.

STARGATE SG-1 (11 PM PST, Sci Fi Channel) "Off the Grid" (R) A latenight repeat of this season nine episode.

SATURDAY, MARCH 25

HU$TLE (10 PM PST, AMC) "Episode 11" Another night, another con courtesy of the best in the business. Where's my region one DVD release?

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED (10:30 PM PST, Cartoon Network) "Ancient History" I just learned that SMALLVILLE's Michael Rosenbaum provides the voice of Wally West on this series...talk about your incestuous DC comics actors...

SUNDAY, MARCH 26

THE WEST WING (8 PM PST, NBC) "Welcome to Where Ever Your Are" To paraphrase Tennyson, though it's not now what it once was, what it is, it is... and I'll miss it when it goes.

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES (9 PM PST, ABC) "Could I Leave You" THE INSIDE's Jay Harrington, who I quite admired in that series, is guesting in this week's HOUSEWIVES. If I wasn't so heinously behind, I'd be tuning in.

THE SOPRANOS (9 PM PST, HBO) "Mayham" Peculiar spelling, yes? And no, I don't know if he survived either.

BIG LOVE (10 PM PST, HBO) "Home Invasion" I heartily recommend this new HBO series to anyone who enjoys something a little offbeat. Harry Dean Stanton as a cult leaderwhat more could you want from a TV show?