The Good Stuff

5. Lost: I really don't think this needs an explanation. Fantastic ensemble, great writing, interesting backstory... okay, so I gave an explanation.

4. Rescue Me: I would have never pegged Denis Leary as someone who could piece together a hit drama, but he's done it and season two was outstanding.

3. Entourage: This show gave me more one-liners to endlessly repeat from its second season than some shows give you in their entire run.

2. Nip/Tuck: If you don't watch this show then you're missing out. Seriously.

1. 24: I can't get enough of this show. I fall asleep with the DVDs on. Season 5, just a few more weeks. Deep breaths.

 

Let me start this off by saying I don't hate this show. I think most of us are finding that you have to mentally prepare yourself to sit through it based on pretty much every episode so far, which is probably why it's taken me a few days to get around to this review. This was "the Christmas episode" so you'd expect it be all gimmicky and even worse than a regular installment. Oddly enough, this one wasn't that bad. Don't kick yourself if you missed it, but it was especially important to the series because it did something that few episodes have done so far. Backstory! Love interests! JT and his cohorts might actually be real people after all.

Despite poor ratings and bad reviews from television critics here and elsewhere, NBC picked up E-Ring for a full season. The Pentagon drama was getting clobbered by Lost on Wednesday nights, but when NBC moved it to an earlier time slot in early October, its ratings ballooned enough to keep it around for a full season. Last week, E-Ring had 9.9 million viewers, its largest so far in six episodes. E-Ring is a Jerry Bruckheimer production and it does have some great actors like Benjamin Bratt and Dennis Hopper, it's just the writing that is weak.

Have you seen this week's ads for NBC's Wednesday night lineup?

"Lost is a repeat this week. So watch E-Ring and The Apprentice: Martha Stewart!"

Wow, what a weird advertising tactic. Besides, who would want to watch The Apprentice when they've missed the first 4 or 5 episodes? They'd be lost in a show like that. And isn't E-Ring on before Lost anyway? So it's not like a person has to choose between the two other weeks of the year.

Hey, I'll be watching Martha because I do every week. I like the show. I tape Lost and watch it after Martha. I'm just not sure if this sort of advertising works or not. What do you think?

Last Wednesday I performed an experiment. I watched the latest episode of E-Ring while applying a branding iron directly to my face, just to see which of these two forms of torture I could stand the longest. I have deduced that, while eventually the branding iron heat burns through your nerve endings, the pain of E-Ring lasts forever. After four episodes, I'm taking the same path the rest of the country seems to be taking and walking away from the show, which hasn't exactly been garnering huge ratings. E-Ring was clearly designed as the perfect post-9/11 series. After the Pentagon was attacked, people became more interested in how things worked in the building. That's the perfect idea for a dramatic series, but the show relies too much on dumbing down complex issues and calling in the deus ex machina. The only saving grace has been the actors, who at least try to rise above the pontification that fills most of the script each week. That, unfortunately, still isn't enough to make me stick around.

E-ring continued to make the compelling uninteresting last night by focusing on Burundi, Africa and mounting tension between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes.

Benjamin Bratt has had a baby. Well, his wife actually had the baby, not him. The hatchling, named Mateo Bravery Bratt, was born on Monday. Benjamin Bratt, in case you don't know, is currently playing Major JT Tisnewski on the NBC series E-Ring, and was also a regular on Law and Order back in the day. Personally, I would have named the kid "Brad" just because I think it'd be fun to say "Brad Bratt." You'd sound like those aliens in Mars Attacks: "Brad Bratt! Brad Bratt!" Sorry, I can't always control where my mind goes.

It's a sin for any screenwriter to bring in a deus ex machina, but to bring one in no less than thirty-eight times in a single episode is incredibly brave. Last night's episode of E-Ring placed JT (Benjamin Bratt) near the Iran/Iraq border to investigate a Special Forces team who were allegedly, and illegally, crossing the border into Iran.

The second episode of E-Ring seemed to follow a template similar to the season opener: The Pentagon faces a problem; a person tries to bend the rules to solve said problem (and to illustrate the complexity of what the Pentagon must deal with); and the problem is resolved during the final edge-of-your-seat moments. It would take a lesser producer much longer to become this formulaic, so give Jerry Bruckheimer credit for that.

I've never been interested in joining the military, but after watching the series premiere of E-Ring last night I might change my mind. Apparently you can pretty do whatever you want, and any "orders" given by superior officers should merely be taken as suggestions. At least, that's the Jerry Bruckheimer version of the military.