Whether its animated nonsense or reality bite, broadcast bits this cheesy and fun demand indulgence — and we gladly say ‘Yes’ to such small screen excess.
Network: Any Music Television Channel
Cast: Carly Rae Jepsen
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“Call Me Maybe” (Music Video)
Any Music Channel
Carly Rae Jepsen’s song became the rare viral sensation whose success translates into mainstream adoration. The song became the epitome of ubiquitous with celebrity sponsorship that ranged from Justin Bieber to Zooey Deschanel and Katy Perry; however, few video tributes were as refreshing and all-over adorable as the official video itself. Rewatch after rewatch, Carly’s own brand of cute made us smile and swoon as we blushed with her when she realized the object of her affection (tattooed hunk Holden Nowell) wasn’t into her. The video certainly doesn’t reinvent the wheel, and once we start actually wondering why is the almost-30 Carly essentially singing about severe social awkwardness we might wanna go “hmmm”. That is until we hit the replay button. Jose Solis
Network: HGTV
Cast: Mike Holmes, Mike Holmes, Jr., Sherry Holmes, Damon Bennett, Bill Bell, Adam Belanger
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Holmes Inspection
HGTV
For many, Mike Holmes is the gold standard in careful construction. As a contractor, his crusade to make renovations and remodeling live up to proper professional standards is beyond reproach. Taking on another shifty situation — the lack of legitimate home inspectors in his native Canada — Holmes has begun a new campaign for training and accountability. Yes, we still get the wood and plaster nightmares that make his shows so special, but the new focus on discovery and disclosure makes for even more maddening caveat emptor. If ever there was a national hero for home owners, it’s Mr. Holmes. Bill Gibron
Network: E!
Cast: Joel McHale
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The Soup
E!
While similarly styled shows like Tosh.0 and… well, name another that’s still on the air, continue to be more miss than hit, Joel McHale and the gang create hilarious pop culture chaos with expert consistency. Utilizing the always ripe arena of televisual tripe — from reality shows to scripted series — the crazy clip show often surpasses its subjects to create memorable memes all their own. This season, we’ve seen Brian Williams get his own catty callback, while something called Small Town Security out Lynched a certain auteur named David. All the while, McHale maintains the kind of smug sincerity that makes even his most biting jabs seem studied. Bill Gibron
Network: Bravo
Cast: Rosie Pope
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Pregnant in Heels
Bravo
Pregnant in Heels is perhaps the clearest document of the madness of the American elites on television. Worse yet, it shows with disquiet that they’re breeding. The focus of the show is Rosie Pope, a “maternity concierge” who consults wealthy neurotics on overcoming their self-absorption just enough to raise their forthcoming child. Pope’s famously bizarre accent (think Mid-Atlantic Valley Girl who has bitten her tongue) is endlessly lampoonable, true. Still, she is an anchor of sanity relative to her clients, who suspect their future nursery is haunted, want total video surveillance of their potential nannies, and consider hiring black market wet nurses. Pope is allowed moments of borderline snark about these kooks, encouraging the viewers’ own impulses in this area. This profile of New York’s sheltered rich is valuable and entertaining while remaining disposable. Ross Langager
Network: FOX
Cast: Seth MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Seth Green, Mila Kunis, Mike Henry
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Family Guy
FOX
As The Simpsons continue their surreal skid into near irrelevance and South Park struggles with its post-Book of Mormon identity, Seth Macfarlane and his fart-based sense of humor homage just keeps chug-a-lugging along. Sure, there is still a stifling reliance on asides and oddball references, and just when you think the show can achieve a certain level of smarts (the recent Monty Python’s Flying Circus opening), it returns to the poop and pratfall pandering that’s kept it alive for near two decades. While Homer and the crew are destined for TV immortality once they leave the air, the Griffins will be plumbing the lower depths –and delighting in same. Bill Gibron
10 – 6
Network: CBS
Cast: Mandy Patinkin, Thomas Gibson, Lola Glaudini, Shemar Moore, Matthew Gray Gubler, A. J. Cook, Kirsten Vangsness, Paget Brewster, Joe Mantegna, Rachel Nichols, Jeanne Tripplehorn
Image: http://images.popmatters.com/blog_art/b/bestguiltytv201210.jpg
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Display Width: 250Criminal Minds
CBS
After every episode of Criminal Minds, I wonder aloud why I watch such a televised abomination. The acting is soulless, the plots rely on ridiculous logical leaps, the criminals are sensationalist exaggerations, the victims and their families based on archaic 1950s family-values codes of square traditionalism. But the show’s transcendent badness keeps me coming back for more punishment. This year, Emily Prentiss (Paget “Punky” Brewster) departed the BAU (seemingly) for good, Dr. Spencer Reid (Matthew Gube Grayler) got a phone booth girlfriend, and Derek Morgan (Shemoore) exited a shower wearing nothing but a towel (I shudder just typing that). And this slickly ludicrous formulaic drama rolled on, blissfully unaware of irony and thus richly susceptible to it. It’s an easy target, but a familiar one. Ross Langager
Network: Spike
Cast: Tommy Helm, Big Gus, Jasmine Rodriguez.
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Tattoo Nightmares
Spike
Who would have thought… a show where people who regret their questionable body art can seek the help of professional tattoo artists for an ink and needle makeover. While the trio of talents here are rather interchangeable — save for the sole female member, whose equally blank, personality wise — the work they do is wondrous. Perhaps, even miraculous. Most times, you can’t even tell where the original corporeal catastrophe begins and the shiny new branding begins. In fact, the series suffers from a bit of familiarity. While they claim concern, the artists always end up wowing us with their ideas, and execution. Bill Gibron
Network: FOX
Cast: Gordon Ramsay
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Hell’s Kitchen
Fox
Perhaps it’s his upbringing, raised in the Glasgow slums and council flats, then becoming one of the world’s best fine dining chefs, that most informs every entertainment project that Gordon Ramsay touches. Rising from humble beginnings through sheer will, brilliant talent, and massively hard work to the highest levels of British celebrity and society is a compelling narrative. Food is his raison d’être and it’s driven Ramsay to create a global restaurant empire based on excellence; he has some 14 Michelin stars at present. His rise has not made him a snob, quite the opposite. Ramsay believes that there are more out there like him and they need a chance — hence, shows like Hell’s Kitchen and MasterChef. Ramsay brings those famous high standards and an exaggerated hothead persona to his own little bootcamp of fine dining training, Hell’s Kitchen. The show is known for shouting matches, tears, schadenfreude, outrageous fights, bad food, great food, flameouts, losers and winners. But everyone gets a chance and must meet the same set of his expectations. It makes for flashy reality TV and some have questioned how “real” some of the scenes actually are. But the drive of so many of the contestants is inspiring and it’s exciting to see them grow from episode to episode. Notably, among the avalanche of food shows, Hell’s Kitchen has elevated just as many women as men to winners, something that Top Chef needs to start being embarassed about.
Sarah Zupko
Network: ABC
Cast: Bruce Greenwood, Joe Anderson, Leslie Hope, Eloise Mumford, Paul Blackthorne, Thomas Kretschmann, Daniel Zacapa, Shaun Parkes, Paulina Gaitan
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The River
ABC
In the 21st century, the American broadcast television networks rarely set trends. They mostly follow either their own established patterns or try to adapt what works on cable television for a mass audience. The River was likely greenlit due to the success of AMC’s The Walking Dead, but the show took much of its inspiration from another source, the flash-in-the-pan success of “found footage” horror movies. With the guys behind the Paranormal Activity films establishing the show’s look and premise, they turned The River over to a group of genre tv veterans and let them go. The result was a surprisingly successful mashup of The X-Files, a boat in the jungle, and a faux-reality tv conceit.
An estranged wife (Leslie Hope) and her adult son (Joe Anderson) searched the Amazon rainforest for their missing husband/father, nature show host Emmet Cole (Bruce Greenwood). To get funding for their expedition, they agreed to let a camera crew track their every move. Each week, the group would discover another jungle-based supernatural threat and have to deal with it while tracking the clues that would lead them to Cole. The show started off pretty intense, but got wackier and harder to swallow as the group got closer to finding Cole. Still, the found footage style worked very well on a weekly series and there was a lot of fun to be had with The River. But predictably, almost nobody watched and the show never had a chance of making it past its initial eight episodes. Chris Conaton
Network: Logo
Cast: RuPaul Charles, Michelle Visage, Santino Rice, Merle Ginsberg
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RuPaul’s Drag Race
Logo
Competitive reality series RuPaul’s Drag Race is an education in the venerable art of drag and its subculture for those of us who yearn for sequins, high camp, and elaborately choreographed lip synching routines. The next generation of drag superstars vie for RuPaul’s seal of approval, accepting weekly challenges designed to test their creativity and ability to perform. The show’s most recent season served up arguably the finest and most diverse baker’s dozen of competitors yet, counting Vegas showgirl Chad Michaels, charismatic Miss Congeniality winner Latrice Royale, and gothic comedy queen Sharon Needles among its ranks, delighting viewers with their “charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent” — and forming a deliciously subversive acronym in the process. Lana Cooper
5 – 1
Network: ABC
Cast: Madeleine Stowe, Emily VanCamp, Gabriel Mann, Henry Czerny, Ashley Madekwe, Nick Wechsler, Josh Bowman, Connor Paolo, Christa B. Allen, Barry Sloane
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Display Width: 250Revenge
ABC
On the surface of it, I thought I would hate this show. Yet another show about ridicululously privileged white people that we’re supposed to care about called something as “hokey” as Revenge and set in the Hamptons. I thought, “wow, Hollywood is kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel here.” And yeah, it is all of that to be sure, but then I gave it a chance and discovered that it’s as deliciously guilty of a soap opera as the good old ’80s indulgence that was Dallas. You won’t get a Mensa invitation for watching the trevails of Emily Thorne and the Grayson family, but you’ll be glued to the twists and turns and delightful pure soapiness of this Sunday drama. “Revenge” is indeed the theme and it suffuses every aspect of the show, not just Thorne’s vendetta against the Graysons, but in all the family interactions and even the activities of townies like the Porter brothers and tech billionaire, Nolan Ross. You know you might be killing off a few brain cells here, but it’s too irresistable to care as you vicariously play out your own revenge fantasies through these characters.
Sarah Zupko
Network: ABC Family
Cast: Sutton Foster, Kaitlyn Jenkins, Julia Goldani Telles, Bailey Buntain, Emma Dumont, Kelly Bishop
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Bunheads
ABC Family Fans of Gilmore Girls had waited a long time for creator Amy Sherman-Palladino’s next tv show (the short-lived Return of Jezebel James apparently did not count). They finally got it in the form of ABC Family’s Bunheads, a show about a dance studio in tiny Paradise, California. ABC Family tried hard to convince its target demographic that the series focused on four teen dancers at the studio, but the show was really about Michelle (Sutton Foster), the Vegas showgirl who moved to Paradise in the pilot and immediately started clashing with dance studio owner Fanny (Kelly Bishop). The show’s premise and network home are probably enough to qualify Bunheads as a guilty pleasure, but the truly maddening thing about the series was its inconsistency.
On the one hand, Sherman-Palladino found the perfect delivery system for her sharp, sarcastic dialogue in Foster, a Broadway vet making her television debut. On the other hand, the writers often tried to use that dialogue as a smokescreen to mask truly ludicrous plot developments and a lack of attention to detail. In one episode, we were supposed to buy that Michelle, a professional dancer used to performing multiple shows a day, would be completely exhausted from having to walk a mile. In another, the show wanted us to be happy that the town elders managed to shut down a Wal*Mart-style store days before it opened. Small town beats big corporation, yay! Except, presumably dozens of people lost jobs and now Paradise has an empty, concrete big box monstrosity just sitting in town. This sort of plotting laziness was a regular occurrence on Bunheads and held the show back from reaching its potential. Chris Conaton
Network: Comedy Central
Cast: Jeffrey Ross
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The Burn with Jeffrey Ross
Comedy CentralAs a format, the roast seems to have gone the way of the men’s athletic club and the smoker. But thanks to Ross, the current toastmaster of the famed Friar’s Club, the abusive sendoff has found a new home. Skewing those who make the most ludicrous and loud headlines (read: Kardashians and others on the A minus through D list), the comedian and his invited compatriots offer the kind of insult bliss that would make Don Rickles writhe with glee. They even do the unheard of – taking on the audience. No matter one’s race, color, creed, condition, or consciousness, Ross rules the day. This is the real politically incorrect. Bill Gibron
Network: The Hub
Cast: Tara Strong, Ashleigh Ball, Andrea Libman, Tabitha St. Germain, Cathy Weseluck, Nicole Oliver
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
The Hub While shows like South Park and Adult Swim have proven that cartoons aren’t just for kids, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is a show meant for children that can be enjoyed just as much by adults. Updated for the new millennium, the current incarnation of the ‘80s cartoon / merchandising shill-staple brims with beautiful animation and dialogue that winks at viewers over the age of 18. (Name another kid’s show that lampoons fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld in pony form.) Legions of 20-something male fans of the show who call themselves “bronies” are just one faction of adults enamored with the kicky musical numbers sung by Technicolor talking ponies. While sugary sweet, there’s something reassuring about the life lessons imparted by the residents of Ponyville, reminding us of the little things we may have forgotten along the way as “adults.” Lana Cooper
Network: FOX
Cast: Gordon Ramsay, Graham Elliot, Joe Bastianich
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MasterChef
FOX
The concept behind this entry in the Gordon Ramsay TV empire is another riff on his overall TV theme of looking for diamonds in the rough to elevate to chef status. The twist here is that none of the contestants are currently working in a professional kitchen in any capacity. These are the home cooks, the foodies moved by sheer passion to learn and explore their creativity on their own. And some of them are scary good, giving the bonafide professionals a run for their money. Take season three’s winner Christine, a blind academic from Houston, with a palette so refined that she made a perfect apple pie completely from scratch that not only tasted amazing, but looked stunning. Ramsay was flabbergasted with the results of that competition and so were viewers. The show has always been a fun one with Graham Elliot’s upbeat encouragement of the home cooks, Ramsay’s perfect critiques and even Joe Bastianich’s grumpy digs. But this season rose to the top of the pile as we were glued to our screens all season to see if a genius blind chef — yes, she deserves the title — could rise past every challenge to claim the crown. And in the perfect ending that we so desired, she did.
Sarah Zupko
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