It was a year unlike any other in the television world.Both in Canada and the United States, television not only reported the news and created hit shows, it also became the news. On TV and in all the talk about TV, it was the year of sex and stupidity.
The sex was more implied than dramatized. The stupidity was to be found in the fuss about it. Sometimes, mind you, the stupidity spread to the TV news divisions and to the pundits and politicians yakking about television's faults.
In January of 2004 the buzz in American TV was about The Apprentice. Donald Trump had just swaggered onto NBC's prime-time schedule and, it seemed, revitalized the reality TV genre with his booming voice and blatant egotism. The phrase "You're fired!" was everywhere.
For 15 weeks, The Apprentice was hot. NBC moved it to Thursdays, committed to more series with Trump and essentially put the network's future in his hands.
By year's end, The Apprentice was being relentlessly mocked in the Fox series My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss and the second edition of The Apprentice was a disappointment in viewer numbers and media buzz.
Around the time that Trump was swaggering to the top on NBC, in Canada we were treated to a teensy little TV flap. Well, it was the cause of chatter in Toronto, anyway, which makes it national as far as some people are concerned. The long-time news anchor at CITY-TV, one Gord Martineau, was revealed to have made outrageous and offensive remarks in outtakes from promos being done for the channel. The outtakes circulated and, yep, what Martineau was doing was incredibly stupid.
But by early February, that and Donald Trump's barking looked like playground posturing compared with the fuss being caused, on both sides of the border, by antics on live TV. The SuperBowl was proceeding as normal, all flash and sports-natter, when the half-time show happened. Janet Jackson performed a song with Justin Timberlake and, suddenly, Janet Jackson's knocker was visible. It was only for a few seconds, but the Jackson knocker-flash is still having an impact 10 months later.
At the same time, Don Cherry was in trouble for remarks about hockey helmets, of all things. Anyone who heard his rant would have absorbed it as a typical Cherry chin wag with Ron MacLean. He offended some people, but that was nothing new. However, it sure became news when the CBC threatened a tape-delay on Cherry's Coaches Corner and the issue of Don Cherry's often-eccentric views became a public debate. Bobby Orr wrote to this newspaper to defend Cherry.
To some people it looked like the CBC was suffering from a dose of the self-censorship mania that struck American broadcasters after the Janet Jackson incident.
Then, just as the Don Cherry and Janet Jackson stories were at their height, American network TV itself came to Canada. After being coaxed and subsidized by the city and the province, Conan O'Brien landed in Toronto and his talk show originated from the city for a week. Toronto went insane. The opening-night audience was so loudly sycophantic that O'Brien was obliged to remind them to be cool about his visit. The audience made us all look like real rubes.
Of course, it ended badly, and remarks made on TV again became a matter for pundits to ponder and everybody else to chatter about. Triumph the Insult Dog, a character in the Conan O'Brien circus, went to Quebec and duly insulted a plethora of people.
While O'Brien was in town, Mike Bullard was trying manfully to keep the only late-night Canadian chat show going. Launched after a heavily hyped move from CTV to Global, Bullard's show didn't even get past its growing pains. Global made a decision and Bullard simply disappeared.
If Bullard was about to represent the failure of yet another genre in Canadian TV, CBC was trying to prove that must-watch drama was still a possibility in Canada. This is Wonderland, George F. Walker's wacky but scathing legal drama, arrived to mixed reviews and took a while to find its feet. But Cara Pifko as the Alice-in-Wonderland heroine thrown into the bedlam of the Toronto courts, was outstanding. In Michael Riley and Michael Healey, she had excellent, albeit scenery-eating co-stars.
Rick Mercer's Monday Report arrived too, and also had a slightly shaky start but soon settled in to become that rare thing for CBC TV -- a huge hit with younger viewers. Ken Finkleman's new edition of The Newsroom wasn't a hit with younger viewers. Darker but considerably more substantial than previous outings, it lacked viewers but got respect, and was eventually nominated for an International Emmy Award. The other Canadian nominee in the category was Corner Gas, which emerged early in 2004 as the first gangbusters Canadian-made hit in years. Deftly low key, cleverly marketed and very funny in a distinctly Canadian, but not outrageous manner, it wasn't stupid at all.
In the U.S., the fallout from Janet Jackson's knocker flash brought an overreaction that verged on the very, very stupid. The Academy Awards had a delay mechanism to ensure that offensive remarks could be excised as everybody in the television industry became antsy about public complaints to the Federal Communications Commission. It turned out, mind you, that the FCC was mainly getting complaints from one lobby group. Hardly anybody else could be bothered to be outraged.
Friends finally ended in May and NBC stupidly promoted the finale as a goodbye to "the best comedy ever." This ignited umbrage in some quarters, including the justifiably miffed cast and crew of NBC's Frasier, which also bowed out but with considerably less self-aggrandizing bluster. Fans of Friends had a ray of hope -- one of the characters was getting a spin-off show, but it was the really stupid one.
Summer brought a taste of the so-called 12-month TV season as Fox launched a bunch of new shows and, later, NBC used the Summer Olympics to launch new shows before the fall TV season officially began. Fox gave viewers The Simple Life 2, which meant the further idiotic adventures of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. Its lustre, such as it was, became overshadowed by Hilton's presence in a widely distributed tape of her having sex with a former boyfriend. Fox also introduced the instantly redundant shows Method & Red and Quintuplets, shows so dull they may have killed off the 12-month TV-season concept.
When the Summer Olympics started, Canada's hopes were high for medal victories in several categories. Within days, viewers were so sick of The Little Blue Cow and the guy with the Tim Hortons mug, that hardly anybody cared. Brian Williams gave intricate directions to various Olympic sites and told us the time in many different time zones. Meanwhile, in the United States, nine viewers of NBC's coverage of the opening ceremonies were outraged by the sexy costumes and started writing letters to the FCC. At the games, there were mishaps and much muttering about the popularity of the women's beach volleyball contests. It seems it was the only event to consistently play to full houses. To some, the beach volleyball tournament was far too sexy for the Olympics. NBC showed beach volleyball over and over. The drama at the Olympics was, in fact, vastly less entertaining than the complaints and the courtroom shenanigans unleashed when NBC claimed that Fox was stealing its ideas for new reality series, copying the concepts and airing them first. For a while, it looked like there would be several shows about wife-swapping, three about wacky billionaires hiring new staff and two boxing series. Things got less heated when Fox's copycat boxing show (NBC's won't air until February) aired to dismal ratings.
As the Olympics ended, NBC gave the world its early TV-season showstopper, Father of the Pride. An appalling animated-sitcom series about Siegfried and Roy's animals, it cost $2-million an episode and was reviewed with derision. Given the fact that Roy Horn had been badly mauled by one of the team's tigers a few months prior, it was a really stupid move even to air the series.
And then, as sometimes happens, TV critics across North America were proven right. When the new TV season officially began in September, the shows touted by critics were Desperate Housewives and Lost. Both, indeed, proved to be the best new offerings and were almost instant hits. Lost turned out to be an extremely clever hybrid of Survivor-style reality antics and fictional drama. About the survivors of a plane crash on a remote island, it had alliances and secrets but better actors than you get on Survivor.
But it was Desperate Housewives that got everybody talking and watching. A sort of Peyton Place meets Twin Peaks, it started with the suicide of a mom who had a seemingly perfect life. She then guided viewers through the layers of deception and betrayal that seethe in the neighbourhoods. An almost all-female drama, Desperate Housewives was a hit because it was aimed at women, had a wicked sense of humour and it finally showed that reality TV is no match for well-written, original, well-acted fictional drama.
Of course, while Desperate Housewives was becoming established as a hit, the reality of the American presidential election campaign was proving intensely dramatic too. The debates were watched by a surprising number of viewers, and American television -- both network and all-news cable channels -- became the centre of key controversies. Jon Stewart went on CNN's Crossfire to scold the bickering pundits and sneer at notorious co-host Tucker Carlson. Dan Rather became a tragic figure at CBS as he clung to the belief that a 60 Minutes II item about George W. Bush's National Guard Service was accurate and legitimate. Even as amateurs pointed to the discrepancies, Rather dug in his heels, His eventual apology was one of the year's saddest moments. He had been stupid, and he sure paid for it.
The American TV coverage on election night was cautious and subdued. Nobody wanted to make the stupid, inaccurate and too-early predictions of 2000. However, that caution came to represent the overall attitude of American broadcasters as the FCC began to scold and fine broadcasters for alleged "indecency." Any suggestion of sex was, apparently, going to result in multimillion-dollar fines. Even the rough language of the military was off-limits in the current climate. When dozens of ABC stations refused to air Stephen Spielberg's movie Saving Private Ryan, everybody knew that a new cold reality had taken hold.
As 2004 drew to a close and Desperate Housewives sailed to the top of the ratings, the attacks on the show, and in particular the attacks on suggestions of sex, were surfacing. (Middle-class moms and housewives lusting after men set off some sort of Amber Alert for the right in America.) In the context of the wide audience for the show, the complainants might seem like a fringe minority. But they are the people to whom the FCC pays attention.
The year's best show, HBO's The Wire (seen in Canada on TMN and Movie Central) ended its third season in December with an extraordinary act of defiance. The show -- which is unfortunately almost impenetrable to those who haven't seen it from the beginning -- concluded with scenes of a white woman prosecutor making passionate love with a black police detective and a young black female cop making love with another black woman. It was both lovely and stark -- a statement that American television can reflect life as it is, not as some people want it to be. This sort of depiction is all the more startling because it can only happen on cable channels. American network TV is going to spend a long time recovering from its year of sex and stupidity.
Ten TV shows that mattered
This Is Wonderland(CBC), a joy and a jumble of comic madness. A broad satire of our legal system, it captures the entire chaotic canvas of life at Toronto's busiest courthouse. It's full of verve, smarts and has great comic moments. It doesn't always click but it sure has sass.
Friends (NBC, Global) ended with a whimsical whimper. But American TV's most successful and popular sitcom in years should have ended a year earlier. The cast could only manage lacklustre interest and the series' single spin-off, Joey, failed to have much impact.
The first Presidential Debate in the U.S. election drew an astonishing 63 million viewers. It was an example of how television coverage can sweep away propaganda and posturing. The TV cameras at that first debate reduced the election to its essence and, for a debate between two politicians, it was extraordinarily gripping television, superbly moderated by Jim Lehrer of PBS.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, CTV) became the most talked-about TV show in the U.S., offering political coverage that suited the tastes and attitudes of about half the American population. After the election, it looked a bit lame.
State of Play (BBC), the best miniseries of the year. A complex, utterly absorbing political thriller, it signalled a return to greatness for the short-form British drama genre.
Trailer Park Boys (Showcase) managed to keep its whimsical conceit going with aplomb. The Gemini Award was long overdue.
Desperate Housewives (ABC, CTV) proved that hour-long network dramas could be both fun and fascinating. Writers, actors and producers everywhere, previously spooked by the reality-TV phenomenon, cheered.
Da Vinci's Inquest (CBC) returned for the 2004/05 season with an astonishingly good storyline and a superb, thriller-style take on urban politics.
The Eleventh Hour (CTV) mattered for its occasional but not consistent quality. Mainly, however, it mattered because, unfortunately, it failed to find a big audience, and that probably means a rethink of Canadian series in general.
the fifth estate (CBC), revitalized, doing superb, hour-long stories on evangelist Benny Hinn and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Europe.
Lest we forget
Killed characters/ cancelled shows/ series that died of natural causes and/or were put on hiatus:
Adrianna (Drea de Mateo) on The Sopranos was terminated when her long dance with the Feds became known. She resurfaced as Joey's buxom, ditzy sister on NBC's Joey and the first reaction of many viewers was that she should be terminated with extreme haste.
The Mike Bullard Show was a lesson in the harsh reality of Canadian TV. Apart from the rough treatment of Bullard, a deeply complex figure, the cancellation's real resonance is the reluctance of any Canadian broadcaster to attempt another late-night chat show. Bullard re-emerged for a few seconds at the Gemini Awards to announce that he wasn't dead. For that, he deserved his own Gemini.
Hockey Night in Canada Only when it's gone is the nation reminded that its favourite sons are Ron MacLean and Don Cherry.
Frasier Now that it's over, it's astonishing to realize that a network sitcom sometimes used Kierkegaard as the basis for very good jokes. It'll never happen again.
Lyon's Den Rob Lowe played a smart, handsome, sensitive lawyer. It didn't work.
Dr. Vegas Rob Lowe played a smart handsome doctor in Vegas. It didn't work. Bet his supporting role on The West Wing doesn't look so bad now.
Who Wants to Marry My Dad? Nobody did. One of reality TV's total failures. The answer to the show's title was as obvious as the answer to the question, Who wants to star in a show with Rob Lowe?
Sex and the City It was somehow appropriate that Desperate Housewives replaced it as the buzz show, since desperate housewives is what one always thought Carrie and her gal-pals would end up as.
Grounded for Life It was.
Wonderfalls One of the best new dramas in years, it was almost instantly cancelled and ended up having its full run on Vision TV, of all places. Good things happen, eventually, to good people.
Dan Rather There were two kinda weird guys doing the "I'm from Texas" thing in the American culture. One had to go, but it was the one who actually is from Texas.