TVSquad

Whoever creates the promos for Lost needs to start coordinating things with the show's writers, or at least start watching the show. The last few Lost previews have made so many empty promises that I am considering hitting the Mute button on my remote when the ads come on. It should not be possible to over-dramatize the events on a show about plane crash survivors on a bizarre island, but ABC has achieved that feat.

Consider the commercials for last week's episode, "Stranger in a Strange Land." Viewers were told (in all caps and bold lettering, no less) that three big mysteries would be revealed during the episode. Did the show deliver on ABC's promise? Sure, if the meaning behind Jack's tattoos is a big mystery. If kinda, sorta finding out what happened the Cindy and the kids is a big mystery. I am not even sure if there was a third mystery; that's how inaccurate the promo was.

(Writers Note: This post is not about something I hate ON the television, it's about a particular type of person I hate that is caused by the existence of television. It was hard picking a category for it, so I went with the one I did.)

I was an English major in college. If you ever get the chance to be an English major, do it! It opens so many doors to your future: with your English degree you can teach English! Or, also, starve!

Being an English major, though, brought along with it one major annoyance: wannabe intellectual types who felt that since they read Keats or whatever, they were somehow better than the civilians who enjoyed Melrose Place or The X-Files.

As a red-blooded American male who has trouble relating to his father, I watch a lot of sports. That means I also watch a lot of sports related television. PTI, Around the Horn, Inside the NFL, The Sports Reporters, NFL Live, NFL Prime Time, Sportscenter, and even Jim Rome is Burning (but only when my wife is out of earshot - for some reason the sound of Rome's voice makes my wife very angry. She doesn't follow sports; I think it's just a gut reaction to smugness.) Thanks to TiVo, I watch them all, fast-forwarding past all the topics that don't interest me.

I had trouble sleeping the other night (there were sugar plums dancing through my head – angry, murderous sugar plums), so I turned to the best TV option I had available to me: TNT HD's replay of A Perfect Day starring Rob Lowe.

Here's the plot: lower middle class guy writes a book that becomes a best seller. As he climbs the economic ladder, he becomes a workaholic and is thus estranged from his family. A mysterious stranger then appears and helps him to realize that true happiness doesn't come from work and success, but rather from spending time with his wife and his improbably named daughter, Carson.

I watched the whole thing for the same reason I play with hangnails and follow Philadelphia sports teams – I secretly hate myself.

Three mountain climbers go up on Mt. Hood. They get in trouble, socked in by a storm. They call for help. There's a search party. One's found dead; the others are still missing.

Don't get me wrong; it's a sad story. I feel for the families of the men trapped on the mountain. But this doesn't feel like news to me.

Since climbing during any time of the year, much less winter, isn't exactly a risk-free activity, I'd imagine that one or two climbers get trapped on the mountain every year. So why has this incident been the top story on all the local and network news broadcasts for the last five days?

I've never been much a joiner. I wasn't on any sports teams in high school and I don't belong to many clubs or organizations. But I would join The Nancy Grace Fan Club and proudly wear their pin on my lapel before I ever "woo-hooed." (I think I've done it a couple of times in print, but only in a comical way.)

The woo-hoo. It's everywhere. It's not enough that Al Roker is standing in front of a crowd outside of The Today Show, the crowd actually has to do that long "wooooooooo-hoooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" every time the camera is even remotely pointed in their direction. The same with the daytime and late night shows. Whether it's The Tonight Show or The View or (especially) Oprah, the crowd goes crazy when the star comes out or a guest comes on. I mean, they even do it on Emeril Live, whenever he throws in garlic or hot stuff. And they applaud on Emeril's show and he has a band, which I think is bizarre too, but that's a whole other rant.

I can't even understand how people do it physically. I can't imagine any situation where I would be puckering my mouth and making this loud "woo-hoo" noise with a bunch of other people, or alone. I would think that a real, deserved "woo-hoo" is a rare thing, and should be used in very few circumstances.

My wife made me tune into the big finale of ABC's The Bachelor last night. I tried desperately to talk her out of it (something about the resulting dip in testosterone from being exposed to the show might harm our chances at conceiving), but she persisted.

Like Jesse Palmer, and (inexplicably popular) Bob Guiney before him, last night's "Prince" Lorenzo (a man who has less claim to actually being a prince than the musician Prince does) decided to opt out of going through with proposing to his choice. He did give her a ring, but called it a "family ring" instead of an engagement ring. This takes even more guts than the other Bachelors who went with the more promising "promise" ring nomenclature.

Don't get me wrong... I think everyone is entitled to a vacation, especially the hard-working folks at the comedy factories known as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. But it sucks when I tune into Comedy Central to get my late night fix and I see reruns. This is the situation I'll find myself in this week, as both shows are on vacation.

I can tell right away that TDS is a rerun; if the intro to the show doesn't show the date, it's a repeat. From there, there's a 95% chance that Colbert is also a rerun, so the entire 11 PM - 12 AM block is now available to me.

It's a weird feeling; without TDS/Colbert, I feel kind of adrift.

I don't know if it's the same in other local markets, but here in the Twin Cities promos for the upcoming local news broadcasts always include some teaser about the weather forecast that goes something like this:

Anchor: Just how cold is it going to get? And will we see any snow over the weekend? Tune in at ten and find out.

I can understand doing such a teaser if the station has an exclusive story or just scooped some recent event that none of the other stations have, but it's not like they're the only place where you can get weather information. There's the Weather Channel, there's the newspaper, and there's the freakin' internet, for crying out loud.

I hate it when a network, a star, or a producer refers to a TV show that "looks like a movie." Is this supposed to impress me? I don't really care if a TV show "looks like a movie," because I look for the actual content of the show (writing, stars, direction, etc) before I look at how it looks. Give me a good script that looks terrible and I'll take it over a formula show that looks fantastic any day.

Take Smith. The network (and more than a few TV critics and fans) kept saying it looked like watching a movie only on our TV sets. Um, yeah, only I think what people meant by this is that the cinematography in the pilot was good and it had some good explosions. Not a terrible show, but really, that's what it came down to.

I'd imagine that, for most of you, I don't even really need to go into details on this one. Just reading the phrase 'video on the web' probably conjures plenty of your own experiences fighting with technology to get your dander up. Why? Why does it have to be so damned complicated to put a video file on the internet?

Now, part of my frustration with this comes from the fact that I'm one of 'those guys.' I loathe Windows. I could go on and on about the evils of Bill and the Gang, but that is probably a post for another site. It does bring up one of the most frustrating things we run into when we link to content from the various networks. Requirements to play. You need Windows XP, or Media Player 10, or Flash 6, or IE, or Quicktime, or to stand on your head and chant the namshub of Enki. Good grief, it doesn't need to be that hard.

The infotainment shows (The Insider, Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, etc) are all moronic. Studies have shown that you actually lose brain cells when you watch them. That's no secret. But do they have to be so outrageously moronic?

I'm watching a repeat of yesterday's The Insider this morning, and they kept teasing an upcoming story about "Doctor McDreamy." They must have said the name at least five times, before the damn story even ran, later in the show.

Bobby Abreu (right) is batting for the Yankees, less than two weeks after his July 31 trade from the Phillies. You vaguely know his stats, but are curious to see how they've changed since the trade. So you look up while watching the game and see on the TV screen that Abreu is hitting .378 with one home run and five RBIs.

Whaaa? What happened to all the homers and RBIs he had with the Phillies?

Well, they're still there. But, because Abreu went from the National League to the American League, the channel that you're watching has decided that the stats he compiled in "the other league" don't apply anymore, and just showed his stats since the switch. It's something they've been doing since baseball's been on television, when the two leagues were distinct and the players from each never played each other outside the World Series and the All-Star Game.

But it doesn't make any sense anymore.

What is the deal with news stations and food? Are the employees not fed enough? Everyone, from national cable outlets to local news affiliates, loves to run stories about eating contests or giant versions of regular food. It's disgusting to see a bunch of people shoveling hot dogs, bratwursts, and whatever else in their mouths in a race against the clock. It's also embarrassing that there are so many food eating contests in this country. It seems like we're showing off that we're fat and we have a lot of food to spare. I also hate the stories about giant foods. Giant Oreos! Giant Moon Pies! Gross, gross, gross. What a waste of time and resources.

I think I'm living some kind of weird Rip Van Winkle life lately. Suddenly, without warning, there are these bizarre promos running during the breaks on the Today Show showing Matt, Al, Ann and Meredith laughing, goofing and dancing together as if they'd been on the air for ten years with Meredith. Who are they trying to fool? Who are these people? What is going on here?!

Maybe they did an excellent video editing job and stuck Meredith's head on Katie's body, and this is an old goofy video they're using. And even then, when I say the promo's goofy, I mean GOOFY. I'm trying to imagine what the director was saying while trying to get the team to feel all chummy together, as if we're supposed to believe they're really that pally with Meredith: "OK now Al, you do a little hop and shuffle, then eat a beignet. Matt, you stick out your tongue, slap Ann on the ass and dip Meredith. No, on the ass, Matt. Meredith, you flex your biceps while Ann laughs hysterically in the background. No Ann, laugh. Like this 'hahaha.' There you go."