BC Crawler

Monday: Super Bowl Roundup, Writers on Other Shows, and more...
February 4, 2008

By Alex Weprin

[One Super Bowl] So, there was this thing on TV last night… football… you may have heard of it. Yes, the Super Bowl was last night, and what a game it was. But what does it mean for TV? Well, while the ratings are still preliminary, it appears as though it was the second biggest Super Bowl ever in terms of audience. Holy cow. Fox is surely very happy, because not only did they get lots of free promotion for their shows, but House, which aired after the game, drew an unfathomable 68.3 million viewers. Yikes.

[Oh Yeah, The Commercials] In addition to the football, many people tuned in to see the mini-features the advertisers could put together in the form of the legendary (and expensive) Super Bowl commercials. Everyone and their mother has put together best and worst lists, so I won’t bother reiterating here. Rather, I will link to some of the better reasoned lists and let you watch and decide for yourselves.

Slate has a thorough overview, some of their favorites: the Coke balloon ad, Will Ferrell and the talking stain.

The San Francisco Chronicle also liked the Coke ad, and also noted the ridiculous accents featured in the SalesGenie.com ads.

Over at USA Today, it was Budweiser that took home the prize, with their Dalmation training a horse ad.

Meanwhile, over at Afterelton.com, there are complaints that some of the ads may have been a tad homophobic, especially media gadfly Richard Simmons’ near death experience.

Time Magazine pointed out the plethora of bad accents (see Sales Genie above) featured in this years Super Bowl crop.

[Deep Stuff… Now Who Wants to see Some Waterboarding?] Are 24’s changing plotlines a proxy for public opinion of the Bush administration? According to the Wall Street Journal, the shows producers are looking to reinvent the show in the wake of President Bush’s declining approval ratings, as well as opinions on torture.

Howard Gordon, 24’s head writer, told the Journal: "For five years, this was a wish fulfillment show," Mr. Gordon said. "At the beginning, when everybody's fear was more acute, people's tolerance for violence, their own rage, seemed to make Jack's tactics more acceptable. But in the wake of our own abuses in prosecuting this so-called War on Terror, we feel Jack is getting a bum rap. So instead of selling out the entire show and its history and its legacy and apologizing for it and ultimately invalidating it, we decided to defend it."

[The Future Is Now] New York Magazine has one of the funniest pieces on television of the year. The magazine asked writers on a number of hit shows to “write” the remaining episodes of other shows. The results included a new plague that wipes out much of The Office ( courtesy of writers on The Simpsons) and The Daily Show writers’ take on everything from Rachael Ray “Rachael wraps a pretzel in a piece of bologna and calls it a ‘healthy 30-second snack.’ TV executives reward her with another multimillion-dollar contract,” to Cavemen “In a finale directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the Geico-ad spinoff abandons broad comedy; instead, the prehistoric buddies face existential oblivion when a Christian Evangelist denies they ever existed. The final confrontation, in a disused bowling alley, has much to teach us about life in 21st-century America. Eat that, critics!”

A must read.

[Reality TV: The Origins] Lest you think that immature reality TV is somehow a recent phenomenon, the Wall Street Journal reminds us that early on, even in its infancy, the spectacularly sad was always what people tuned in for. Queen for a Day, a show that started on the radio in 1947 and was televised through 1964, could be considered the great grandmother of shows such as Extreme Makeover Home Edition and Pimp My Ride. Potential contestants would make a wish, with a winner receiving it. Originally the wishes were silly and lighthearted, but as they show progresses, so too did the sincerity of those seeking help.

“Contestants started wishing for things like dentures, hearing aids and prosthetic limbs, special bikes for their terminally ill children, or a car so they could visit their disabled husband in the veterans' hospital. Instead of a professional panel, the queen was chosen by an "applause meter" of audience response, so the trick was to tug as many heartstrings as possible without breaking down and blubbering, which Mr. Bailey strongly discouraged.”

Posted by BC Crawler on February 4, 2008 | Comments (0)