Summer Season Selection

Quick hits on what I've been watching this summer:

The wife has gotten us into Wipeout, ABC's MXC ripoff. It's an hour of people falling into mud, getting coated with paint, and getting mocked by John Anderson and John Henson. The mocking isn't that funny, but watching people get decked by rotating padded arms is worth a guffaw.

We're apparently too lazy to then change the channel, as we're also watching three shows that come on after Wipeout. One is the Canadian cop drama Rookie Blue, which is more or less like every other TV show about rookie cops, except that the lead female character is apparently a former model turned cop (or so I assume, based on her appearance, we've not really watched the show closely enough to know if that's actually her backstory).

Then there's Downfall, a game show where contestants answer trivia questions to win cash and prizes. The twist is that as time goes on, the loot moves down a conveyor belt and, eventually, off the side of a building (the show takes place on its roof). The contestant can even get dropped off if all of the prizes go over. Theoretically, host Chris Jericho can also get dropped off, I assume if someone wins the $1 million top prize. As the contestants appear to be from the same excitable but somewhat dim contestant pool that most game shows use, Jericho is safe. Anyway, not a great show, either, but at least you get to see crap fall off a building.

Finally, there's Boston Med, the docu-series following doctors, nurses and patients in three Boston hospitals. I've only watched this in passing, and to my eye it seems like they spend a lot of time on the nurses, which should be to no one's surprise.

I was watching Through the Wormhole, the Science Channel's series about big universal questions hosted by Morgan Freeman. As much as I love Freeman, and as interesting as the topics are (episodes have covered time travel, whether there is a God, and what existed before the Big Bang), I never quite clicked with the show, and have given up.

We're also recording The Choir, BBC America's reality show about a choir director who puts together a singing group out of high school students with little to no musical background, which he then takes to an international competition in China. I'm sure its presence on the schedule is due in large part to the success of Glee, though outside of the superficial similarities they're very different.

And of course I've got the new seasons of Eureka and Mad Men to watch, so I'll be lucky to just get caught up before the new fall season starts.

Close the Branch

I was going to go into this whole thing about how The Office can't go on without Michael Scott, but then realized it's a widely-held enough proposition that it doesn't exactly need my analysis to prop it up. That being said, I do think there are three ways one could keep the show going without Michael Scott to kick around.

1. Bring in David Brent. As unlikely to happen as Michael Scott staying, but it's the best shot the show has to keep going on and going on well.

2. Retool the show around younger staffers. You know, like the last season of Scrubs.

3. Nudity. Moreso Pam than, say, Kevin.

There is talk that the show will carry on, and that the ensenble cast is strong enough to keep the show going. That's probably true. Maybe they can go the Murphy Brown route and have a different guest star as manager every episode. Anyway, it certainly can go on (what else does NBC have to air?), it just shouldn't go on.