Television: April 2008 Archives

Growing up, The Waltons was always a television favorite around my house. I'm not really sure why; After all we were kids living in the disco crazed, polyester draped seventies. Yet, every week, we would turn off the music to see what the gang on Walton's Mountain was up to. As simplistic as the show could be at times, there was something fun about the prospect of having an entire mountain to yourself. At a time when America was still reeling from the effects of Vietnam, there were long lines at the gas pumps and the country was moving faster than ever before, there was something soothing about going back to a simpler place and time for one hour each week.

The fourth season of a series can sometimes be the danger zone. Even great shows have a tendency to, as the phrase goes "jump the shark" as they begin to approach that one hundred episode milestone. Actors get restless, jokes get stale and the same scenarios get repackaged as fresh, new episodes.

However, some shows have good enough talent to throw in a few so-so episodes and still remain a consistently funny experience. Though the fourth season of Laverne and Shirley had a couple of weak episodes, the show still remained one of television's best comedies. Laverne & Shirley entered its fourth season number one show in the Nielsen ratings.

Before Tell Me You Love Me debuted on HBO in September of 2008, the show got a lot of press for the amount of explicit sex the series contained. While that is indeed true, Tell Me You Love Me is geared at an adult audience, to call it simply a show about sex, misses the entire point. Arriving on the heels of mega-hits like The Sopranos and Sex and the City, Tell Me You Love Me definitely represents a departure for the network. The series lacks the tough machismo of Tony Soprano and doesn't allow for the humorous look at sex relationships and Manolo Blahniks Carrie Bradshaw and her girlfriends gave viewers each week.

Doris Duke was the only child of tobacco and electric energy tycoon James Buchannan Duke and his second wife, Nanaline Holt Inman. When Doris' father died in 1925, he left roughly $100 million (about $1 billion in 2005 dollars), to Doris. This lead to her being referred to as the "richest girl in the world," a name she deeply resented.

HBO decided to take on the task of telling the story of the last six years of the tobacco heiress' life and her unconventional relationship with her butler, Bernard Lafferty. Part of the story is based on fact, the audience is told at the beginning, "some of it is not." This caveat gives the network leeway to take a story that attracted loads of headlines in real life and embellish it for art's sake. The teleplay has impressive star power with Oscar winner Susan Sarandon as Duke and Oscar nominee Ralph Fiennes as Lafferty. Bernard and Doris introduces us to an aging but still feisty woman, who manages her staff and her finances with an iron hand. In the opening scene, Duke fires her current butler for serving her cantaloupe to cold.

Pauly Shore was born into a comedy family. The son of Mitzi Shore who founded the legendary Los Angeles club The Comedy Store and comedian Stan Shore, Pauly spent his formative years around a lot of different comics. After graduating from Beverly Hills High School in 1986, Shore landed a series of bit parts in films such as 18 Again! and guest spots on television shows including Married With Children, 21 Jump Street and St. Elsewhere. Pauly became an MTV phenomenon when he landed his own show on the network in 1989. Totally Pauly, hosted by Shore with sidekick Jeff Leiber ran on the network until 1994. Pauly was sort of like the networks eternal fifteen-year-old. Clad in colorful bandanas, looking like a poster boy for stoner culture, Pauly was famous for hosting MTV's annual spring break parties. Having coined the phrase "weeeeee..zell!," Shore road his wave of to a couple of successful comedy albums and a series of hit movies during the nineties.