Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Thursday, Jun. 09, 2005 - 5:34 p.m.

First off, big hugs to all you guys who said nice things yesterday. That was really cool and made me feel great. You guys *rock*. After a day or so of comtemplation on the matter, I am fully in touch with my irritation and would not be so nice to the same man again...and hopefully not in a similar situation. My whole thing, aside from confusion as to why in hell he was spouting all this crap at me, was that he was so smiling and "friendly" that it was hard to grasp in the moment that he was really quite the asshole. Nice people with no agendas do not walk up to you unsolicited in the grocery store and start criticizing you. So I think/hope that if something like that happens again, I will be far less polite and tolerant of it. And thank you again to all of you who pointed that kind of thing out, as well as those of you who quickly stated I am not just "medium pretty". :)

Of course, I'm also thinking of wearing a ring whenever I go out in public from now on, because even TB commented that men like this approach me far more than is normal for people to get accosted by whackjobs. Which is especially incomprehensible to me because most people I work with tend to think I'm the kind of person with whom no one would not mess. I get told a lot that I'm intimidating by my coworkers, which is clearly a joke, as people like that guy obviously do not think so.

Anyway, moving on...

The good, the Bad, the Television
First, the Good. I saw Lisa Kudrow's new series for HBO, The Comeback. It's a blend of "reality" and comedy co-created and produced by Kudrow and Michael Patrick King, who was an EP on Sex & the City. Kudrow & King also write for the show, which HBO has billed as "The first funny sad fictional reality show comedy hybrid."

I have to say, it's really well-done. Besides the whole thing being well-written and executed, the "raw footage" of the "reality" stuff is dead fricking on. Like, seriously, I was amazed and impressed with how nearly exactly it matches most of the stuff I have had to log...only, it's actually a lot more interesting. But it gives you a pretty good idea of the stuff that goes on that doesn't make it to air. And the really freakish thing is that the reality producer character, Jane (played eerily well by Laura Silverman) says all the same things that reality producers actually say in the field. Like at least twice in the pilot episode, she said word-for-word things I have heard one of the Bachelor field producers, Haleigh, say to people, same tone and everything. It was some serious deja vu. So if any of you are curious as to what it's like to work behind the scenes on a reality show (or probably a sitcom, I guess), I have to say The Comeback is a really good example. I liked it a lot, and Lisa Kudrow is really surprising. She fully sheds Phoebe Bouffee and makes the new character of Valerie Cherish just as unforgettable and very human. I had no idea she was that good an actor...and apparently, she's quite the writer, as well. The Comeback is hip, sharp, and funny, but it also has some great personal moments. Katie says check it out, Sundays at 9:30pm, Eastern & Pacific. (8:30 for the resta y'all)

And now, the Bad. And a veritable schmorgasbord of bad, it is. Seriously, I hardly know where to start, from the totally air-quoted gritty, fast-moving schticky opening which out-Bruckheimers even Bruckheimer, to the incredibly awful and astonishingly clicheed dialogue, Fox's new series The Inside is quite possibly the worst, most hackneyed pieces of crap I have ever had the misfortune to sit thru, and that includes the WB's teen soap travesty, One Tree Hill and NBC's stink bomb "forensic drama," Medical Investigation. Brought to you by Brian Grazer, who really should know better, The Inside is touted by Executive Producer/Co-Creator/Writer/Director Tim Minear as "a show about damaged people - the only interesting kind there is" - "exploring the intricacies and complications of investigative work." According to Minear, who seems to have never met a cliche he doesn't like, it does all this exploration using "gallows humor and troubled souls".

Riiiight.

It stars Rachel Nichols as Rebecca Locke, a neophyte FBI profiler with no actual training or experience in profiling, whose one claim to fame is having survived kidnap and torture when she was 10, and who wears so much lip gloss it's a wonder she can get her lips apart far enough to utter a single sentence, let alone star in "her own [ensemble] drama", even if it is really poorly lit. Obviously, she is finally able to put her L'Oreal modelling experience to good use, as any normal human being would have given up and begged for an industrial rag of the variety mechanics use to wipe axle grease from their hands. Nichols is a former model and the kind of bad actress people with talent want to beat the crap out of, but she pouts really well and according to TB is doable (not actually the word used; that one employed an f), so despite the presence of Peter Coyote and Adam Baldwin, both of whom have lengthy resumes and have been around since the 80s, she is billed as the series "star".

The Inside is doubly disappointing, as Tim Minear was a producer/writer on Angel, and Jane Espenson, late of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where she wore many hats, not the least of which was writer (as well as having written two episodes of Angel), is a co-executive producer. I love Jane and had high hopes for The Inside, so this hurts me, but unfortunately, the only way this blatant Without-a-Trace/Crossing-Jordan ripoff even approaches Angel is in its gratuitous use of "mood" lighting (read: lack of most any decent light whatsoever) and in the skitzy, gritty jumpcut montages of the city between scenes, a la transitions to Wolfram & Hart. Those did remind me of and were definitely based on those of Angel, but The Inside's editing team doesn't make the grade (neither does its lighting team), and they came off as a poor-man's ripoff of Bruckheimer filler, which is already so overdone and overproduced as to be painful. The thing I hate about shows like this are that they are hideously long on "cool" effects and "slick" transitions and woefully short on actual plot. Or writing. They tend to be comprised of about 30 minutes (or less) of actual story, making up the other 13 - 16 minutes in glossy montages and "time lapse". Yawn. If you're going to produce a 30 minute drama, then how 'bout sticking to a 30 minute time slot? Seriously.

Just as an example of how crappy Tim Minear's writing is, the one hour pilot yielded such original and thought-provoking gems as:

In a total Crossing Jordan ripoff scene between Rebecca and her boss, Virgil "Web" Webster:
"He may have seen them as nothing, but that's not how they saw themselves."
"They were lying."

Web on new team member Rebecca: "This girl has a gift, forged in pain."

Web on how death is not necessarily the goal of the serial killer Rebecca is supposedly profiling: "The body's fragile; death just happens."

Web to Rebecca, right after he set her up as unknowing bait for the bad guy (like we didn't see *that* coming):
"We got the bad guy."
"You weren't alone."
"That's my girl."

Web to Agent Paul Ryan, who is nursing a crush on poor little lost Rebecca, right after she is almost killed by the bad guy: "Look after her, will you?"
Paul: "Count on it."

And from Minear's own words on The Inside's official website (some of which I have already quoted above):

"If this is a souffle, it's a souffle of pain."

It certainly is, Tim. In more ways than one.

Peace out,
Katie

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