Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted Thursday, August 07, 2008 )

What’s On TV Tonight, Aug. 7, 2008

2 CBS
“Flashpoint,” Episode 18. Canadians don’t have to use tasers and submachine guns to get the job done. They use their wits and feelings. In this episode, C-4 plastic explosives sit unused.

3 ABC
Fictional characters from “Grey’s Anatomy” invade the medical documentary “Hopkins,” both claiming and declaiming that “We will not let this child die!” to rapturous applause.

4 NBC
America’s Got Offshore Oil

5 PBS
Frontline: But you can only get it if you’re willing to pay the higher prices to develop the expensive technology to smash the rocks and drill 10 miles down into the ocean floor, which pretty much defeats the purpose of keeping it cheap

5 PBS
Oh yeah, and “Antiques Roadshow” is on, too. Featuring the antique buggies we’re going to be riding in when all the oil runs out.

10 CW
Demographic shifts and a graying populace suggest that these supernatural ghost shows will not themselves die out anytime soon.

11 Univision
A telenovella whose translated name means something like “Papa Is Whacked Out Of His Brains on Cervezas!”

13 Animal Planet
Dying polar bears party like it’s 1999.

14 Bio
I’m sorry, what the hell is “Biography” really going to tell you about free-love hippies that you wouldn’t get out of a book? Oh yeah! Footage of naked chicks.

15 A&E
I Survived … the George Bush administration

16 Headline News
Lots of preliminary coverage of Barack Obama’s upcoming vacation. Several pundits are interviewed, and Obama’s willingness to go on vacation is greatly heralded by George W. Bush supporters, who are relieved to see a leader spend so much time not applying himself to the businsess of governing, a man who has the confidence to go on long, idle respites and thus instill confidence in his nation that nothing is wrong and nothing needs to be taken too seriously like terror, environmental cataclysm, economic Malthusian deprivation or anthrax.

17 Fox News
Fox and Friends ventriloquize salacious French boors out of their navels

18 Bravo
A guy with a pork pie hat, a guitar and gonorrhea would take this show to the next level.

19 CNN
Larry King’s being awake would take this Larry King show to the next level

19 CNN
Anderson Cooper is ordered by his bosses do a segment on the Paris Hilton presidential spoof video, and he somehow deftly ties it into a second-day lead on concerns about John McCain’s advancing age. That ability to twist entertainment into news and vice versa is why Anderson makes the big bucks.

20 E! Entertainment Television
Pamela Anderson uses scientific philosopher Karl Popper’s method of empirical falsification to prove that she exists

21 Vh-1
Tila Tequila also proves she exists, but with her, it’s all about the feces.

22 MTV
“I Hate All Women Because I Can’t Marry My Mom,” a reality show with way too much information

23 Sci Fi
Pythons

24 Cinemax
Trouser Snakes

25 TV Land
The ghost of George Clooney past walks these halls with coiffure that is a nightmare to behold.

27 TBS
Somewhere in hell, “Major League II” is on all the time. Well, hell turns out to be right here on TBS.

200-250 HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, The Movie Channel
About 49 channels of straight to video garbage with lots of things like slashers and softcore porn and Shia LaBeouf. And then there’s that one channel showing “The Graduate.” Thanks, Time Warner Cable. You’ve really made that $140 a month worth it.