Continued depravity from reality TV: I’m not a snob. But if you watch reality television–any reality television at all–I won’t be your friend. While this may seem like snobbery, it is actually a reasonable concern for our nation’s wellbeing. After all, reality television grows closer and closer to destroying the fabric of western society with each passing month. I’ve warned before that we’re in danger of seeing Running Man get greenlit. Meanwhile, this week we get news that parents are upset about a contract CBS made them sign before their 8- to 15-year-old children participated in a show called Kid Nation. The idea behind the show is that 40 kids are dropped in a New Mexico ghost town and made to fashion their own society. Folks are concerned, and CBS denies, that the production violated child labor laws. Plus, some find it strange that the contract included a clause about how parents can’t sue if any of the kids catch STDs. What concerns me is that everyone is so concerned about the legal details, and no one has stopped to ponder the morality of turning Lord of the Freakin’ Flies into prime time entertainment! We all remember how things turned out for Piggy and Ralph in the novel, right? I’ve got the conch, and I want more comedy programming.

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If I ever again suggest giving Michael Bay the benefit of the doubt, stop me.

With the 4th of July awkwardly falling on a Wednesday this year, and with Bush’s hidden-from-news-cycle-by-holiday commutation of Libby squeezing any last drop of national pride from me, I opted against attending any fireworks celebration.  Instead, I thought I’d check out the new Transformers movie.  I should have gone with the fireworks.  Fireworks might not have been as loud, but undoubtedly they would have had better plot development.  You remember the cartoon from the 80s?  Any single installment is guaranteed to have better character and story than this movie, and the cartoon was  pretty much a repeated 20-minute toy commercial about robots shooting (and missing) each other with lasers.

Right about here I should probably issue a minor spoiler warning.  Although I’d rather offer a warning to instead use your money on anything else.  Go to the dollar store and pick out ten of anything.  You might not need nine back-ups for your new plastic yo-yo, but you’re more likely to be happy with your expenditure than you will at the end of Transformers.

The logic flaws were big enough to drive an alien robot disguised as a truck through.  In an early scene, a robot is attacking a military base.  He stops to hack into a computer.  All around, soldiers run from explosions… caused by the robot.  Which wasn’t, at that time, causing any explosions.  It was hacking into a computer system.  Seriously, stuff just started blowing up on its own.  And it pretty much didn’t stop blowing up until the moment it was time to ham-handedly prep us for a sequel.

About an hour into the movie, at which point Optimus Prime had still yet to speak, I tried asking myself if I would be so disappointed in the story if I had never met the characters before.  Was I just upset that Bumblebee wasn’t a VW bug and Megatron wasn’t a gun?  But I don’t think expectations were a problem.  After all, someone new to the franchise who watched only the movie wouldn’t have met the characters, either.  In the climactic battle, one of the autobots dies.  I didn’t know which one.  Nor did I care.  Optimus reminded us at the end as to the name of the fallen comrade, right before he shrugged it off because he sure was happy to have made new friends.

Seriously, I can’t understand how I encountered so much positive early buzz on this movie.  The insult to injury will be when it does $6oM this weekend.

Sometimes the title of a post speaks for itself. Here are my thoughts about some of the worst changes to Television over the last 25 years or so.

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NBC tried filling Mondays at 10 with a magnificent Aaron Sorkin project. When Studio 60 failed to achieve astronomical numbers from the awkward time slot (remember that NBC chickened out from trying that show on Thursdays…), they moved Paul Haggis’s The Black Donnellys into the slot. That crashed. (Pun intended.) Whom should you select to follow Sorkin and Haggis?

Ashton Kutcher, of course.

Starting April 23, NBC is going to air a reality show called The Real Wedding Crashers, in which a team of improv comics ruins people’s weddings. The saving grace is that the bride and groom are in on it. So I guess that means moms and dads who have spent months, and tens of thousands, wake up expecting to see their children’s special day. And instead get Punk’d.

Worst. Idea. Ever.

You know what happens when we as a society let reality television run amuck? That’s right. Running Man. Pretty soon Richard Dawson is sending us into the gauntlet to flee for our lives. Put a stop to it now, people. Mondays at 10 sounds like a perfect time to watch old Buffy episodes on TV. Maybe read a book.

Please bring back Studio 60, NBC. I promise to watch it twice every week, and to memorize all the commercials.

Last night, the CW network premiered Pussy Cat Dolls: The Search for the Next Doll to 3.9 million.Let’s take a moment to put that in perspective. In today’s ever-widening world of viewer choice, it takes only about 15 million viewers for a prime time show to be branded successful on one of the larger networks. 20 million and you’re a hit. 30 million and you’re American Idol. CW is less than a year old, and doesn’t have stations in as many markets as the older networks. CW’s average ratings are on par with, often smaller than, the numbers brought in by Univision. Highest-rated programming garners around 5 million, so scoring nearly 4 million makes the new PCD show a success.

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February was exhausting for poor little me, what with all the watching I had to do. It’s sweeps month, so every show busts out its best stories, and if you miss an episode, people WILL be talking about it around you the next day. Setting my schedule around my watchlist was a must. And somehow the Oscars managed to suck up more than 20 hours of my time last week, only to culminate in that Scorsese love-fest that should have happened 25 years ago instead. Anyway, I took a few days off from the ol’ blog to rest from the intense bombardment of quality entertainment. However, I’ve noticed quite a few very interesting goings-on this week, many of which could be signs of things to come in television. Here are a few:

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