BUSH VERSUS LAUER: Future generations will barely believe it.
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For hard rock, heated debate, child-care tips, and latex puppetry, 2006 was a banner year in television. Who says the culture’s going to the dogs?1 Supergroup | VH1 | An inspired variation on VH1’s Celebreality concept in which the vulgar and paranoid condition of 21st-century celebrity is treated as a metaphor for the soul of modern man, Supergroup was a winner from start to finish. Notorious rock types (Ted Nugent, Sebastian “Skid Row” Bach, etc.) were confined in a Vegas mansion and forced to play music together. Egos boomed, hairdryers howled, in-house chefs had their feelings hurt, and a secret history of heavy metal was enacted. Glorious.
2 Keeping Score | PBS | In the crowning episode of this excellent series, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas explored the oh-so-metal pagan and folkloric roots of Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps, whose premiere — May 29, 1913, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, under Pierre Monteux — goaded its Parisian ballet audience to howl for the composer’s blood (as well as that of the choreographer, Vaslav Nijinsky). It would seem that the Entombed-style downstrokes of the “Augures printanières” section and the proto-doom-metal trudge of “Rondes printanières” were too much for even the most hardcore of top-hatted headbangers to handle.
3 Bush versus Lauer on the Today Show | NBC | Quizzed in the Oval Office by an unexpectedly robust Matt Lauer, the commander-in-chief splintered into several of his most dangerous personalities: Cornered Mammal, Sly Geezer, Sword of God, Short-Circuiting Jock. As the talk turned to his torture policy, Bush began squaring up to his interlocutor, poking and patting him, moving into Zinedine Zidane headbutt range, six inches shorter but ready to have a go. Lauer, eyes dilated with anxiety, respectfully but doggedly pursued his questions. Future generations will barely believe it.
4 Hitchens versus the World on Real Time with Bill Maher | HBO | If you want a quick brew-up of lordly rhetoric and simmering pub violence, no one does it better than Brit journalist/pundit Christopher Hitchens, last defender of the Iraq War. “Your audience is frivolous,” he told Bill Maher, after the latter had lobbed a couple of lazy Bush jokes into the crowd. “They will apparently laugh at anything.” “Boo! Hiss!” went the audience, a softcore mob. “Fuck you!” went Hitchens, looking pleased, and giving them not the ubiquitous finger but the severer and more scornful British V-sign.
5 Mr. Meaty | Nickelodeon | “All God’s creatures/Fresh off the grill!/So come on down to Mr. Meaty/Where friends meet to eat/Meat!” With some of the most spongily expressive puppets since The Muppet Show, Nickelodeon’s new corporate satire/kids’ show is a real treasure. At fast-food outlet Mr. Meaty, as lumps of charred product tumble from the Mr. Meaty Food Faucet, Jos and his co-worker Parker battle tapeworms, cannibalistic hippies, and a wedgie-giving genie called Wedgelor. A joy for young and old alike.
SUPERNANNY: Welcome to “The Naughty Corner.” |
6 U2 and Green Day at the Louisiana Superdome | ESPN | Say what you like about U2, that Bono can work a stadium. Warming up for the first post-Katrina game (Saints versus Falcons) in the newly renovated Superdome, former crucible of a nation’s disgrace, U2 and Green Day rampaged through the Skids’ “The Saints Are Coming” with true redemptive spirit energy. Bono, of course, had his own lyrics for the occasion: “We’re living like birds in the magnolia trees . . . Child on the rooftop, mother on her knees . . . her sign reads, “PLEASE I AM AN AMERICAN!”7 Supernanny | ABC | Now in its third season, this reality show is porn for the tired parent. Supernanny Jo Frost arrives by London taxi and sheds her limey light on troubled families. Weak mums are slapped about and emotionally withdrawn dads are given hell: “Unasseptable!” says Jo. Her most enduring contribution to child care will probably be “The Naughty Corner,” a punitive magic circle enthusiastically deployed in my own household.
8 Martin Short on the Colbert Report | Comedy Central | Personally, I find The Colbert Report a bit of a strain, like watching a one-man Broadway show: the conceit perspires a little. But when Colbert interviewed Martin Short, who actually has his own one-man Broadway show, it was 10 minutes of Old World ecstasy, two pros silkily swapping laugh lines. Bring back Jiminy Glick!
9 Martin Amis on Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason | PBS | Nothing daunted by the transatlantic critical pile-ons that have greeted his last few books, this master of English prose continues to give us the benefit of his Views. On jihadism: “It is a secret no longer well-kept that killing is a joyous experience.” On God: “Certainly not an anthropomorphized being, but yes, an intelligence . . . ” (Murmured with sullen respect, as if the Deity, in terms of brainpower, might actually compare rather favorably with Martin Amis.)
10 Brian Ross doing Foleygate | ABC | This whole thing was beautiful. Outrage was ignited, hypocrites were pulled down, and as a bonus there was the immortal comedy of Ross, in his crimestopper’s monotone, dourly reading out the fatal IMs: “Do I make you a little horny? . . . Cool.”
