April Winchell

Thanks, Gina

I’m watching a lot of television lately.

I’d like to say it’s because of all the exciting new programming coming up. All those new voices, all those original premises, all that creative energy being harnessed by young and hungry networks, eager to shape a new kind of entertainment.

I’d like to say that.

I’d also like to say that I‘m in my mid thirties with 7% body fat.

But the truth is I threw my back out on Sunday and I can’t do jack shit. I’ve been hobbling around the house like Sally Field looking for the Bonniva, and TV is about the only thing I can do without cursing.

Fortunately, there’s Law & Order; the best salve for extended periods of ennui or disability. Nothing is quite as soothing as dozing off through the back-to-back-to-back anesthesia of Law & Order, in all its various permutations.

There’s the smoldering sexual tension of L & O SVU. There’s L & O CI, featuring the constantly morphing body shape of Vincent D’Onofrio (who, I’m convinced, gets more appealing as he gets fatter and crazier). And there’s just plain L & O, which serves mainly as a showcase for Sam Waterson’s eyebrows. It’s also an opportunity to marvel at how much Angie Harmon sounds like Charlie Sheen.

Well, I think she does, anyway. I guess it would be easier to hear the similarities if she were spewing batshittery about “controlled demolitions” (or at least threatening Denise Richards).

Sadly, all good things come to an end. The calming sameness of Dick Wolf’s long gray afternoons are suddenly being pierced with loud, white, promos for a new fall show called Raising the Bar. And every time these promos come on, I feel my gorge starting to rise.

Everything about this show upsets me, so it’s taken me a while to sit down and organize my thoughts. I realize I can’t communicate clearly if I’m at the mercy of my disgust, so I’ve broken down my revulsion in easy to read bullet points.

Let’s start at the beginning.

1. THE TITLE

I have a lot of trouble with shows that use puns as titles. It signals a lack of judgment that doesn’t bode well. If they thought the shitty title was clever, I can only imagine what the scripts are like.

This title in particular is so witless and awful, that I think Raising the Bar deserves to join Emily’s Reasons Why Not in the pantheon of shows that evaporated after the pilot.

When is this kind of self conscious, labored cleverness ever a good idea?

Ok, maybe if you’re Animal Planet, and your biggest name is Jai Rodriguez, you can get away with Groomer Has It. But when you prop up Bochco for another stab at primetime glory, and you run promos every 12 seconds with the dumbest title since Lucky Number Slevin , you need to take a look at the focus group cards and see where this thing is going.

Which brings me to . . .

2. STEVEN BOCHCO

In a world where media is getting more progressive and our appetites are getting more sophisticated, I find it mind boggling that Steven Bochco has parking space in this town, much less a development deal.

Now, I’m not saying that the guy did not have a tremendous run. He did . . . in the seventies. But he hasn’t won an Emmy in 13 years, and his last show was Commander in Chief, which even he called “horrible”.

True, this is the man who brought us Hill Street Blues . . . in the eighties. But he also brought us Cop Rock, which has pretty much become the gold standard of television failures.

We have gone from 3 networks to hundreds, with more opportunity than ever for new ideas and more innovative, niche programming. There are thousands of hours to be filled, and this would seem to be the time to bring in unconventional thinkers and new voices. But instead, programmers are out in the TV Land graveyard, digging up the juiceless corpses of people like Steven Bochco.

I had a manager many years ago, a lovely man named Ray Katz. Ray had discovered Whoppi Goldberg and worked with some of the comedy greats. By the time I signed with him, Ray was about 450 years old.

I was in his office one day, and we were talking about reunion shows, comeback tours and the habit the Academy has of rolling out one of the last living fossils from the old days to pick up some bullshit award.

Ray leaned over the desk and attempted to focus on me. “Let me tell you something,” he said, mustard dripping from his chin. “Comebacks, reunions, retrospectives, it’s all very nice. But at some point, no matter how good you’ve been or how much you’ve done, all the public really wants is for you to go away.”

A-fucking-men.

3. THE CAST

Where would you find actors young enough to play lawyers fresh from school? Maybe from screening Indies? Maybe rising stars at Julliard? Maybe even scouting legitimate theatre?

Well, you could, but don’t you want to be home in time for dinner? Why not hand pick your talent from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, CSI Miami, Touched by an Angel, V.I.P. and The Bold and the Beautiful? That’s where all the really good actors are.

And speaking of people who don’t work too much, look no further than Malcolm in the Middle’s Jane Kaczmarek for your irascible, yet still inexplicably sexy judge! If only they’d made a deal with George Foreman. They could have called the show Boxers and Briefs.

But Bochco saved the best for last.

Yes, it’s Mark-Paul Gosselaar, the world’s youngest 35 year old starry-eyed fresh scrubbed public defender! He may be using words like “torts” and “Habeaus Corpus”, but he’ll always be Zach to me! And I live for the day that Tiffani Amber Thiessen turns up as the bad girl he’s too late to save. Sweeps can’t come soon enough for me.

And just to make it all feel right, Gosselaar worked on NYPD Blue with Bochco. And we all know that good work comes when no one leaves their comfort zone.

But that doesn’t mean Gosselaar isn’t taking risks. He’s made a choice so controversial and so brave, that people are already buzzing. And the show doesn’t air for another week!

Oh sure, he could have played a gay character, a disabled character, he could be transgendered, a racist, he could have a secret, an addiction, he could be human in so many ways. But he went further. A lot further.

And everyone is talking about it.