State of TV: Mondays

In which I go into agonizing, day-by-day detail about the TV shows I am watching, and whether or not I actually like them.

So, on Mondays we have:

"How I Met Your Mother" at 8pm. I continue to watch this comedy even though the lead character is an annoying boob, and I could not care less about how he met their mother. I mainly watch because of Willow, and the "Freaks and Geeks" Guy, and Doogie Howser. I do laugh occasionally, but it's one of the shows I tend to watch while working since I don't feel the need to pay the utmost attention to what's going on, and it's dialogue-driven, so I don't have to actually "watch" it. I can treat it like a radio show. The same goes for "The Class," which follows at 8:30. "The Class" is actually not as good of a show as "HIMYM," and I wouldn't be the least bit upset if it were to get cancelled. Last week's reveal that the sad, suicidal guy who has finally met the perfect woman for him was completely sullied when they revealed that he might actually be nothing but a cheating louse. I don't care how bad his relationship with Darlene is, I just can't get behind love stories that are predicated on infidelity. It's both hackneyed and icky.

"Everybody Hates Chris" has moved to Mondays at 8pm, making it a crowded hour of television. I caught up with the last season over the summer with reruns, and can say I solidly like the show. Not love, but like. I always laugh at least once, and have a nostalgic fondness for its 1980s setting. But ultimately, I just don't think the show tries hard enough. Too often it relies on Chris Rock's narration to supply the jokes, when it would be a much stronger show if the comedy came from the actors and the plot.

"Prison Break" is also on at 8pm, although it's disappeared for the last couple of weeks due to baseball--always a bad thing for serialized dramas. This season, as last, is completely preposterous, but therein lies the fun in the show. Everything that happens is utterly ridiculous, and almost every commercial break and episode ending includes an "Oh my god, how will they ever get out of THIS one??!!" moment. Needless to say, they always get out of it. No matter, though, as Wentworth Miller remains the dreamiest tattooed freak to grace TV. (And those who watch "Nip/Tuck" can attest that Miller is not the ONLY tattooed freak to grace TV this year.)

Which brings us to 9pm and "Heroes." I'm not going to say that the show has actually gotten any better since the pilot. It's still full of cliched characters, and the normal people/superheroes idea has been done countless times by comic book writers and, apparently, Salman Rushdie, but I don't mind. As far as the "group of strangers brought together by some kind of weird event" genre that has overpopulated this season's schedule is concerned, it remains the most entertaining. Sure, Hiro still looks like he's trying to pass the world's worst dookie every time he uses his powers, and yeah, that cheerleader might have an added superpower of World's Unluckiest Girl: She broke her her neck during an accidental football tackle, and almost got raped by a football jock, only to end up impaled by a branch--straight into the skull. None of that matters, though, because the ending of last week's episode, when she wakes up on that table, completely eviscerated? Was the most awesome ending of any episode of any series all season.

At 9:30 I watch "The New Adventures of Old Christine." Putting it simply, I like Julia Louis Dreyfuss. I think she's funny. I think the show is funny. End of story.

Not let's get back to the awesome thing. Here's something that's not awesome: "Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip." Not awesome in the least. Yes, I continue to watch, but more for its "I can't believe something so bad has come from someone supposedly so great" factor. It's truly ironic that the show is centered on a writer who is again, supposedly, so great that week after week he writes an entire comedy show by himself--and the one time he actually allows something his staff of writers has written to make it on the air, the show ends up in a plagiarism scandal. See what happens when he doesn't write it all himself?? The truly sad part is, not one thing on the sketch comedy show-within-a-show has been the least bit funny, making it that much harder for us viewers to care a rat's ass about this supposedly brilliant writer, and his show, and his pining after a woman who's supposed to be an amazing comedic talent but isn't the least bit funny, and is instead just a whiny shrew. And the worst thing of all is the completely ill-placed sense of importance that hangs over it all. These people act like they're saving television week after week, and they so...aren't. And yeah, I don't know if I'm talking about the creators in "Studio 60" or the creators of "Studio 60" at this point.

Lastly, there's "What About Brian?" also known as "What About thirtysomething?" And yeah, what about it? I think anything that has even a trace of J.J. Abrams on it will get approval on ABC these days, hence the renewal of this midseason replacement that no one watched when it originally premiered. I make no apologies for loving "thirtysomething," even though when I watched it, I was a mere twentysomething (and a teensomething when it started). It's scary to think that the characters that inhabit the world of "What About Brian?" are supposed to be the same age as the characters that inhabited "thirtysomething." Yes, both shows are about self-absorbed, relatively well-off white people, but the maturity level of these thirtysomethings compared to those thirtysomethings? Is pathetic. Obviously 30 is the new 13.

But perhaps the thirtysomethings who were watching "thirtysomething" back in the day were thinking the same exact thing.