Who Wants to Be a Superhero, The 4400, Two-A-Days, The Closer Also Among Summer’s Best
Something happened the other night that I hadn’t seen happen in quite a while. I was at a barbecue with about fifteen people, most of them within the 18-49 demographic, several with tweens and teens in tow. People had been chatting in groups of twos or threes since the party had begun around 6 p.m. Even when the food was served the entire group never really assembled in one spot.
Around 9 p.m., when I realized I was missing one of my new favorite television series, I slipped inside to the hosts’ family room and turned on HGTV’s Design Star. Within minutes, a number of the other guests, including all of the tweens and teens, had gathered around to watch the show. They weren’t simply assembling to see what was on. They specifically wanted to watch Design Star–and not because, on that week’s episode, a kitchen in nearby Stratford, Connecticut, was being remodeled. All of these people had either watched Design Star from the start or had caught up through repeats. I had no idea. It hadn’t come up in conversation.
I had been traveling for much of the summer and had only seen two previous episodes, but many of the kids in the room were eager to fill me in on what I had missed. It wasn’t long before most of the rest of the guests had come in to see what we were so intently watching. They all got hooked, as well, and an impromptu TV party was suddenly in full swing–centered on a reality series on HGTV! I hadn’t seen so many people of different ages in one spot watching and enjoying the same show in a very long time.
What I have since learned, in discussing Design Star with a number of friends who are not connected in any way to television or the media, is that everyone is watching this show. Based solely on my own informal research, it seems that Design Star is the hot show of the summer.
My Design Star party experience simply reinforces my bittersweet feeling about the fast-approaching end of the summer television season. Forget all that crap about summer TV being somehow inferior to the programming offered during the traditional broadcast season. I am more preoccupied with the fact that the summer run of HBO’s Entourage is coming to an end on Sunday than I am focused on the many new and returning comedy series that are about to begin on the broadcast networks. I enjoy Entourage more than any of the returning half-hour comedies on any network and I expect to like it more than any of the new sitcoms set to debut in the weeks ahead.
Similarly, after watching all the freshman pilots, I am reasonably sure that none of the new serialized dramas will entertain me more than FX’s Rescue Me, which will end its sensational third season next week.
Among other summer dramas, USA Network’s reliable regulars The 4400 and The Dead Zone have carried on as usual, consistently delivering stories that engage my imagination without overtaxing my capacity for complicated mythologies or subjecting me to brutal, boring violence, as do so many other series with supernatural or science-fiction themes. After three seasons the characters in The 4400 remain interesting, if not always appealing. As for The Dead Zone, it offers simple, straightforward, largely closed-ended episodic escapist fare, the likes of which proved overwhelmingly popular on television in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Both series reach their season finales Sunday, the same night that HBO’s Deadwood and Entourage complete their current runs.
There have been numerous other television pleasures during the last three months. Watching the title character and his new family seek out clues to his mysterious abilities and unknown origin on ABC Family’s Kyle XY has been one of the most enjoyable diversions of the summer. Is Kyle a clone? An android? An alien? I suspect next week’s season finale will keep viewers guessing until next June.
CBS’ Rock Star: Supernova and Fox’ So You Think You Can Dance, meanwhile, have featured some of the most talented young people to be seen on any reality competition programming all year. I wish Supernova were telecast live. (The tapings are far more kinetic than the edited final programs, which lose much of the raw energy in the studio.) I would like Dance to move more quickly through its unappealing audition episodes and into its very exciting competition phase. Even with these drawbacks, both shows deserve to return to their networks as summer staples.
I’m okay with NBC’s mindless but popular America’s Got Talent returning as a silly summer trifle, but I can’t see it working as well in the middle of the broadcast season, when the competition for viewers and for media attention is so ferocious. (It is scheduled to return to NBC in January.) The show simply isn’t that strong, as witnessed by its stunningly drab season finale. Geez, there was more raw emotion on last week’s edition of Sci Fi Channel’s Who Wants to Be a Superhero, another summer treat, when hunky Feedback, who lost his father at a young age, broke down and wept, explaining that the Spider-man comic books written by series host Stan Lee helped him grow up without a dad.
While Talent ended with a muffled thud, I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see if the self-assured Travis, who clearly has a long career ahead of him, would triumph over the equally talented but less secure Benji, who needed the boost that a victory on So You Think You Can Dance would provide. What a thrill it was to see Benji win that competition. And speaking of emotional engagement, watching either Tym, David or Alice lose out during each of the two remaining installments of Design Star is really gonna hurt. I think all three of them would do just fine as series hosts, but there can only be one winner.
Among the other joys of this soon-to-end summer season: TNT’s The Closer, Showtime’s Brotherhood and Weeds, Bravo’s Project Runway (another show that apparently everyone watches), and two very engaging late entries: the semi-improvised reality comedy The P.A. on fuse and Two-A-Days, the MTV documentary reality series premiering this week that follows a high school football team in Hoover, Alabama, through its 2005 season, fighting for a fourth state championship. The P.A. will appeal to anyone who has ever suffered the indignities of entry-level employment and put up with all kinds of abuse in the interest of pursuing a dream career (especially one in the media). Two-A-Days offers a slice of small town Americana that is almost never seen on television, and it celebrates the way millions of ordinary people live. Its pilot is terrific. Both shows will likely find a supportive young audience even as the school year begins.
