Rants from a Thursday Post-Lunch Food Coma

I turned on NBC’s Phenomenon last night but got confused – where is John Travolta and Forrest Whitaker?

Brothers and Sisters is quickly becoming a fast-forward show for me. I get it, I get it – predictable drama, banter-banter, lets move on. I am one episode behind, and Calista Flockhart might be pregnant per the previews for this week – I can’t believe I was able to go to bed with all the tension mounting.

Someone mentioned to me that Curb Your Enthusiasm is beginning to feel like a Seinfeld rerun at this point. Like they know they’ve seen it before and plots are becoming oddly familiar. I’ll be honest, I don’t see – but I was intrigued by the theory. Here is another theory for you to ponder:

Seinfeld enthusiast Scott R. of Wayzata believes that Seinfeld reruns are cut up so that the primary and secondary stories are mixed to keep episodes interesting. Of course Scott R. is just kidding, but how many times have you found yourself saying, “I didn’t realize THAT happened in this episode too..”

No 30 Rock this evening. You see, Sweeps Month starts tonight and that means NBC has to fake its way through the next 30 days in order to show advertisers that their viewership is higher than it really is so they can sell ad space at a higher rate.

I don’t have a lot of inside baseball on this process, but I know some of my readers do, so any comments on this would be great. Basically, I don’t get how a network can show (for example) a Victoria’s Secret Strip show in place of the usual Ghost Whisperer and then claim that 30 million people watch CBS on Friday night therefore the rates can be higher – who is fooled by this? If I am Proctor and Gamble and I want to buy space for 30 Rock, I am just going to look at the average audience size for my demographic across the whole year and decide what its worth – call me an advertising major from UW-Madison who got an A in Don Stoffles class on advertising demographics, but it seems pretty obvious.

That being said, most of the country is pretty stupid and can relate better to Earl, so he gets an hour while Jack Donaghy and his Emmy for best comedy sit this one out.

The writers might go on strike tomorrow – this is what I am calling BLACK FRIDAY. If they shut down, we are all screwed. What are we supposed to do? Oh yeah, live sports, re-runs, and we’ll only have tons and tons of shows on DVD we’ve never seen, shows from the past we never caught now out on DVD, and non-scripted programming for the 7 remaining reality TV fans--- what will we do?

There is also a 90% chance that old scripts once discarded and TV pilots burned off might make their way into your living rooms soon. Now that will be the real disaster. But in my house, as long as DJ Lance with the cast of Yo Gabba Gabba and the Higglytown Heroes don’t go on strike, we’ll be fine.