tv 101

Last week on vacation, I read the book 'Soccernomics' by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski. It's a kind of 'Freakonomics' for soccer, but they mention the NFL enough that none of the bullies at the beach beat me up too badly for reading it.

One of the many points that the authors make is that sports teams that actually try to turn a profit inevitably begin to death-spiral. The best teams are those that operate like a non-profit charitable trust, where every penny is put back into improving the team. This is why teams are owned by crazy rich people (George Steinbrenner) tend to do better than teams that owned by just regular rich people.

At the same time I was reading 'Soccernomics', I was living vicariously through my nerd brothers who were blogging about attending Comic-Con (because that's what you do at the beach). So, of course, it didn't take long for me to reach the obvious conclusion: TV needs a Steinbrenner.

LeBron James went on TV last week and made everybody in America hate him.

The reason for all that hatred couldn't have been just what his decision actually was. I mean, the guy moved from Cleveland to Miami -- the only justification you need for that is to remind people that you moved from Cleveland to Miami. The only two people who think that's a bad move are Ian Hunter and Dan Gilbert and it's not clear that either of them are sane.

No, LeBron's downfall had nothing to do with sports. What hurt LeBron was that he made the one mistake that is unforgivable in America: he screwed up on TV.

Last week Hulu announced plans for its new Hulu Plus service. Immediately following the announcement, internet commenters from around the world did something they rarely do: complained long and loud about the details of the announcement.

"The price is right, but they're still going to have ads? No thanks!" "So let me get this straight, they're giving us access to all the seasons of 'Arrested Development' -- which we already have now, for free! -- except now they want us to pay for them? Choke on your own genitalia and die, Hulu Plus!" said the usually very reasonable denizens of the interwebs.

While I'm never one to doubt the insightfulness of snap decisions, I think in this case the complaints are wrongheaded. Sure, the announced set of features for Hulu Plus leaves a little something to be desired, but get beyond that. What we're seeing right now is a game changer. Hulu Plus is about to take over the way we consume television.

Blogging about television is a lot like going to marriage counseling: you have the best of intentions, but for the most part, you just wind up doing a lot of bitching.

I'd like to say that I've never engaged in the easy sport of blog-bitching, but in order to make that claim, I'd have to delete everything I've ever written here on TV Squad, then make a midnight ninja-run at the Googleplex in order to remove all those blogs from the cache. I don't have the time for that -- I mean, the ninja training alone would take me two decades (or three minutes depending on whether I can find a ninja training academy that allows montages).

No, it's far easier for me just to own up to it. TV, I've bitched a lot about you over the three and a half years I've been writing for this site. And I owe you an apology.

Rejoice, America! 'Futurama' returns this week with brand new episodes. Between that and the world cup, all I need now for my summer to be complete is for Spike to greenlight my pitch, 'Christina Hendricks and Jenna Fischer put on Leia-Style Metal Bikinis and Wrestle for the Right to Make Me a Bacon Sandwich' (working title).

However excited I am about the return of 'Futurama', part of me can't get over the fact that it should never have been canceled in the first place. What's worse, if the quantum physics I learned by watching 'Sliders' is correct, there exists at least one universe where 'Futurama' wasn't canceled. Not only have the people of that alternate universe gotten 10 uninterrupted years of Fry and Leela, I have it on good authority that their version British Petroleum didn't spill oil into the gulf, but rather delicious caramel. Clearly, 'Futurama' makes the world a better place.

So, in honor of 'Futurama', let's take a look through our own "What If" machine and see what some other alternate universes look like.

Like most of you, I spent the first 30 minutes of last week's USA-England World Cup match convinced that I was having a stroke. As it turned out, the buzzing I was hearing wasn't the result of my neurons being shut down by a burst blood vessel in my brain, but rather from a traditional South African horn called the vuvuzela.

The vuvuzela is the most horrifically annoying torture device ever devised by man. The only problem is that since I've been watching so much of the World Cup, the sound of it fades into the background and I occasionally forget to be annoyed by it.

There's nothing worse than when something annoying becomes omnipresent, like the buzz of the vuvuzela. Because once an annoyance becomes commonplace, it's all too easy for it to become the new status quo.

The vuvuzela is just the latest in a string of annoyances that TV watchers have had to put up with ...

I know a few things about apologzing.

I've been married almost six years, so I've spent pretty much every day between July 25, 2004 and yesterday apologizing for something. I used to think it was my actions that caused my wife such grief, but I've learned in recent years that the main problem she has with me is my continued existence on this plane of reality. We're gonna work though it -- we've called in a philosopher, a metaphysician, and a voodoo priestess -- but in the meantime, the state of our marriage has given me some insight into the art of a good apology.

Here's what I've discovered: celebrities who go on TV to apologize don't know what the hell they're doing.

During the 'Lost' finale, I tweeted the following:

"So the key to the whole thing was putting a cylindrical object into a hole? #enjoyingthesubtext #lost"

Okay, so not the funniest update in the world, but pretty good considering I was not only distracted by the finale itself, but I was also karate-fighting a future version of me who had traveled back in time to stop me from watching the last fifteen minutes of it. So, you know, a lot was going on.

My tweet was met with some anger from my West Coast followers because they felt it had provided an unwelcome spoiler three hours in advance of them being able to watch the show. That anger, combined with recent comment threads on TV Squad got me thinking about spoilers and people's reactions to them.

Here's what I've figured out: You people need to calm down.

Spoiler Alert! The 'Lost' finale engages in mumbo-jumbo. Also: hocus-pocus, rigmarole, chicanery and (perhaps worst of all) gobbledygook.

Last Sunday's 'Lost' contained the most shocking revelation in the show's history: that after we die, we meet our loved ones and then walk into a big, bright light. Yes! Shocking! Did you just have your mind blown?! Er...

Fact is, Sunday saw the moment when one of America's greatest science fiction shows decided to end its run with fifteen minutes of uncomplicated non-denominational spiritualism that wouldn't be out of place on a mid-season episode of 'The Ghost Whisperer.'

As a science fiction fan, I'm offended by this ending, the same way I was offended by the last episode of 'Battlestar Galactica.' It's not because I'm opposed to gobbledygook (I am, after all, a Catholic), it's because both shows used their finale episodes to pretend that they weren't really science fiction, but something more.

And I call BS.

The Internet very rarely rallies around a single cause (and even when it does, that cause is usually "famous woman in sex tape that I want to see but not pay for"). The last time that I can remember a time when the Internet was truly unified about something that didn't involve nudity was in October of 2006. That was the month that every single person on planet earth decided that they absolutely hated Nikki and Paulo on 'Lost.'

The Internet didn't just spew vitriol about Nikki and Paulo, it fire hosed it like Lardass Hogan at the pie-eating contest. 'Lost' writers couldn't help but notice and in short order something that was supposed to be a multi-episode arc for two new major supporting characters very quickly morphed into one rushed episode and two very gruesome deaths.

As 'Lost' speeds along to the finish line, Nikki and Paulo have been showing up in a lot of retrospectives as one of the show's few mistakes. I agree that Nikki and Paolo incident was a mistake: The writers of 'Lost' should have never listened to the fans on the Internet.

Recently, fans of NBC's 'Chuck' decided to stage flash mobs as a way to raise awareness about a show that seems to spend 99% of its time on the cusp of cancellation.

There are two things wrong with doing this. The first is that the solution to the ratings issues 'Chuck' has is obvious (and one that I've written to NBC about several times). California State Law prohibits me from outlining here exactly what my idea is, but just know that it involves Yvonne Strahovski, a string bikini, and several gallons of apple butter.

My second problem with the flash mobs is far more complex and nuanced, but if I had to sum it up into a sentence, it would be this: anyone who participates in a stunt to try to get a show to remain on the air is dumb.

Our congress has a cute way of handling problems. Instead of actually doing anything about them, what they do is pass a Something Something Bill of Rights.

For instance, when Spirit Airlines recently announced that they were going to charge for the use of overhead storage space on their airplanes (a prelude, of course, to their ultimate plan of stabbing each customer in the throat, then charging for tourniquets), Congress handled the problem by dredging up the old "Passenger's Bill of Rights" idea once again.

Now, some might criticize Congress by saying, "Passenger's Bill of Rights!? We don't even have the actual Bill of Rights on our side when we fly", but those people are missing the point: Bills of Rights only exist to take up space.

As it happens, taking up space is exactly what a columnist needs to do each week as well! So, today marks the beginning of a new series: the TV Watchers Bill of Rights!

Every culture has a coming-of-age ritual. The boys of the Amazon's Satere Mawe tribe aren't considered men until they've worn a glove filled with stinging ants. Among the American Nouveau-Riche tribe, you can't enter adulthood until a minor rap star comes to your sweet sixteen and performs for you in front of MTV cameras. Among my people, the Irish Americans, you can only achieve the full rights of adulthood after you've ruined a Thanksgiving dinner by getting drunk and fighting your father.

The internet is a teenager right now - you can tell because it's always angry and is totally obsessed with seeing Megan Fox naked. The internet needs to grow up with a coming-of-age ritual all its own. And, as much as I'd like to put a glove of stinging ants onto the hands of the people who call me a douche every week in the comments, there's only one real way for the internet to finally achieve adult status ...

'Treme' premiered this week, but I was traveling and couldn't watch it. My plan had been to use HBO Go, but apparently "high speed internet" in Nacogdoches, TX really is just a system of tubes in the ground. The only site I could reliably connect to was a wholesale belt-buckle emporium.

Not seeing the show isn't a worry; 2010 might not have flying cars, but damned if we don't have a plethora of options for watching a show we missed. I'll eventually find it online, on demand, or on one of the approximately 419 identical HBOs that all have different names for some reason.

The only real worry I have is that if I wait too long to watch 'Treme', it'll be 'Friday Night Lights', 'The Wire' or 'Arrested Development' all over again. I'm scared that the word-of-mouthers will find out I'm not watching and they'll start annoying the living hell out of me.

Do you know why stand-up comics have so many lame jokes about flying? It's because we spend so much (expletive deleted) time on (expletive deleted) planes. (My own lame joke about flying involves overweight people next to you: "So much of her was on me that we hit turbulence and I technically cheated on my wife.")

That much time in coach turns your brain into pudding - you need a crutch to get you through it. I've turned into a podcast junkie. At any given time of the day or night, I'm probably flying over you, listening to some guy in his basement rant about the whether the "Blackest Night" event is good or bad for the DC universe.

I'm like an awkward, misshapen George Clooney from 'Up in the Air.' Except instead of hot sex with Vera Farmiga, I'm snuggling with Leo Laporte.

After all this podcast listening (not to mention the success of the 'Ricky Gervais Show'), it occurred to me that a few of my favorites would make excellent TV shows.