culture
Televisualist: Mercy Mercer Me
Each week, Torontoist examines the upcoming TV listings and makes note of programs that are entertaining, informative, and of quality. Or, alternately, none of those. The result: Televisualist.
This image guaranteed to be three hundred percent more smug than the real-life Rick Mercer.
Monday
Hey, it’s the 2011 Miss Universe Pageant! If you have no real interest in the Trump-powered pageant, we totally understand, because we didn’t really glom onto the appeal of beauty pageants when we were young and we still don’t today. They are boring, with nothing to recommend them other than gawking at the wacky outfits, and if you want to look at the outfits, you can just do that here. We particularly appreciate that Miss Guam has brought with her a sign saying “Guam” on it, reminding us all that Guam exists and that she is from Guam. (NBC, 9 p.m.)
In “other things we don’t understand the appeal of but we know other people will watch it” news, there is the CNN Tea Party Republican Debate, wherein presumably candidates will pander to American conservatives so desperately that they will begin to question the existence of fire and condemn the wheel as “untested.” Is Rick Perry the next Republican presidential candidate already yet? Can we get this over with? (8 p.m.)
Tuesday
The Rick Mercer Report returns, to remind us all that… Rick Mercer is still around? Seriously, the seasonal nature of this show baffles me—it averages 15 episodes or so a year and then just goes away, but the news doesn’t stop. This is one of the many reasons why The Daily Show is a superior news comedy show to anything the CBC puts out: sure, Jon Stewart will go on vacation for a couple of weeks every now and again, but the Daily Show is generally always more or less current. The last new Mercer aired on March 29; since then we’ve had a federal election, the U.S. debt downgrade crisis, the Libya revolt, and Jack Layton’s death. Is Mercer going to do jokes about any of that, then? The Report can’t stay current with its schedule, so it tries to make up the difference with Rick Mercer doing what are basically paid advertisements for Things That Are Awesome About Canada—which is just another reason televised satire is dead in this country. (CBC, 8 p.m.)
Camelot debuts on the CBC. Don’t bother getting invested in it, though, because it’s an international co-production which aired earlier in the year in other countries, it has already been cancelled. You know why Televisualist keeps complaining about how Canadian networks air new shows months or even years after they air elsewhere? This is why: something that was supposed to be one of the CBC’s big new fall shows now debuts pre-doomed. (9 p.m.)
Wednesday
Survivor is back for its 23rd (whaaaaat) season. This time around, there are two returning contestants each taking their third stab at the island: Ozzy from Cook Islands and Micronesia, and Coach from Tocantins and Heroes v. Villains. We don’t quite know why they would bring back Coach, who is a grade-A moron, but maybe he has a fan base of people who think that calling oneself “the Dragonslayer” is awesome. Also returning is the Redemption Island gimmick, which seems like a mistake given that last season the two people who managed to get back in the game via Redemption Island were immediately voted out, but maybe they have a better idea for it this time around. (Global, 8 p.m.)
This new “cycle” of America’s Next Top Model is an “all-star” season. Does ANTM even have all-stars? Huh. (CTV-Two, 9 p.m.)
The Simpsons rerun of the week: “King of the Hill,” wherein Homer, after becoming much more fit thanks to a diet of PowerSauce bars, agrees to climb the Murderhorn, the deadliest mountain in Springfield. “Sorry, Marge, I only eat food in bar form. When you concentrate food, you unleash its awesome power, I’m told. That’s why I’m compressing five pounds of spaghetti into one handy mouth-sized bar.” (Comedy Network, 9 p.m.)
Up All Night is a new sitcom featuring Will Arnett and Christina Applegate, about a couple who become new parents in their late 30s and have to get used to the concept of being parents. The show was apparently retooled quite significantly after network execs demanded… changes. One would think that with the calibre of talent involved here (in addition to Arnett and Applegate, they’ve also got Maya Rudolph) they would be content to just sit back, but that’s why they’re network executives, we guess. (CTV, 10 p.m.)
Thursday
The Secret Circle is a show about teen witches that apparently spent all of its small budget on not-terribly-amazing special effects and none of it on finding good actors who can, like, deliver a line without sounding ponderously self-serious. Even when they’re trying to be flippant, they’re ponderously self-serious. Although there are no vampires present, in tone and feel this is in many ways Twilight: The Series. (CHCH, 8 p.m.)
Not at all Twilight-ish: the third season debut of The Vampire Diaries, which manages to be entertaining schlock on a weekly basis. Vampire drama isn’t really Televisualist’s thing, but we will take Diaries any day of the week over boring old True Blood, which has way more sex to disguise its lack of a plot. (CTV-Two, 8 p.m.)
Friday
Ringer is Sarah Michelle Gellar’s bold return to network television: a drama about a girl, wanted by police, who takes over her twin sister’s life when said sister disappears dramatically… and then discovers that her twin sister has had a deeply conspiratorial life. It looks like this one could go either way: the trailer makes it appear deeply convoluted, but there’s some serious acting talent at work here: besides Gellar, there’s Nestor Carbonell and Ioan Gruffudd. Worth giving a try, especially if you are a Sarah Michelle Gellar fan. (Global, 10 p.m.)
The Weekend
Battle of the Blades returns for its third season of hockey players skating with figure skaters; this season’s surprise is that one of the hockey players is Tessa Bonhomme of the 2010 Canadian Olympic women’s hockey team (and gold medalist). She is not being paired with a female figure skater, of course, because Battle of the Blades doesn’t want to be that surprising.
It’s the 63rd Annual Primetime Emmy Awards! Shows that received a notable number of nominations this year include Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Friday Night Lights, The Good Wife, Mildred Pierce, Modern Family, and 30 Rock. Also, for some reason, The Kennedys, which sucked. The Emmys are like that: on the one hand they’ll give Jeff Probst an Emmy for hosting Survivor despite his obvious need to get kicked in the balls really hard, but on the other hand they’ll nominate Idris Elba for Luther or give Futurama the Outstanding Animated Program Emmy for “The Late Philip J. Fry.” Ah, Emmys, you are a sweet mystery. (CTV, 8 p.m.)