Bad TV Viewing

Tony Little is on HSN right now pushing yet another piece of fitness equipment that he likely had nothing to actually do with during its design and development. Right not its a home gym, earlier it was a pillow to allow good sleeping. My point for the fitness equipment shilling is that geez, does anybody out there want to look like Tony Little? He's rounded and curved, not flat and chiseled. But, oh, what a ponytail.

I tried to watch some of SciFi's Wizard of Oz remake, "Tin Man." Couldn't do it. The girl that plays Dorothy, er, "DG", is wearing a mop for a hairstyle, bell bottom pants from the seventies, and doesn't move her arms when she walks (like Raquel Welch in "Seinfeld"). The scarecrow looks like a prettified Marilyn Manson and the actress playing the Wicked Witch looks like she bought a leftover nose from the shop Michael Jackson used to go to.

I used to like "Reasonable Doubts" with Mark Harmon and Marlee Matlin. Before that show, Harmon always seemed to me kind of quirky and lost, a lightweight. In that series he played a detective to Matlin's D.A. character with the strange name of Dickie Cobb. But he was a tough guy and he was serious and he was compelling. He made me a fan, which is quite something for an actor who chose to play Ted Bundy in a TV biopic. Now he's starring in NCIS, a show I actually looked for on Tuesday nights. They've shuffled female leads over the past few seasons and I just can't watch the new one. It seems like they keep hiring actresses who look like the previous one and the effect is like a copy of a copy of a copy. Kills the show for me.

What's the point of all this? I feel petty making these observations and I'm not proud. Clearly, I'm too superficial for television. Can you believe I've been a Nielsen reporter twice? This is why I stick to books.