What was on TV? Mon, May 2, 2005

20 years ago, a judge threw out Lynndie England's guilty plea. Apparently, the Abu Gharaib photos were just a training aid, and England didn't know that she was doing anything wrong. Mother of Christ. Let's see what was on TV.

9:00 Everwood on the WB

3x19 "Acceptance" (record Girlfriends on UPN, Everybody Loves Raymond on CBS, and 24 on Fox)

Amy and Ephram break up in this episode, which sucks. But if you're going to break up your OTP, you'd better make it good, and Everwood made it good.

Technically, Amy and Ephram broke up in the last episode, but it never sat right with me. Ephram was mad at Amy for telling him not to go to California to meet his son. But once he arrived at his son's adopted home, he realized he didn't need to meet him anyway. And Ephram was mad at Amy for waiting until after his Julliard audition to tell him about his secret baby. But he never told her that he secretly applied to Princeton on her behalf, and is that so different?

Their reasons for breaking up were stupid, and the show realizes that, becuase they almost get back together in this episode. But when Amy realizes the truth about the Princeton application, she changes her mind. She remembers the infinity necklace that Ephram gave her in one of the show's very best scenes, and realizes he gave it to her right after he sent her application to Princeton (another one of the show's very best scenes). She realizes that she was dreaming of forever with Ephram, while he never could. It's almost like he's still pining for her from afar, he still sees her as otherworldly and too good for him, treasuring every moment they have together before it all ends. Amy puts it best: "This whole time, you've been thinking about me, always making sure that I'm okay...I was always thinking about us." Cue the tears.

10:00 Girlfriends (recorded)

5x19 "Finn-ished"

In this episode, we get to see the Girlfriends be kinda racist and mean! Toni's housekeeper ends up with Reggie's childhood cradle in a baby shower mishap. So they all go to this woman's house (after Toni fired her!) and yell at her in in a language se doesn't speak and do charades. The poor woman thinks they want to steal her baby! Finally, Joan calls one of the employees at her restaurant to translate. It's a bad, bad look. I appreciate that the show is willing to let these girls be rich bitches, but this was too far.

But shamelessly roasting Reggie for his insistence that "men don't do baby showers" this entire episode? Now that's how it's done.

Later 24 (recorded)

4x20 "Day 4: 2:00 AM - 3:00 AM"

Jack Bauer is a male power fantasy. But as the defining action hero of the Bush era, he embodies a peculiar power fantasy. This was an era when people craved righteous vengeance. 9-11 was genuinely traumatic, and we needed someone to pay, we needed to feel safe. Jack Bauer fed those desires. But this era was also plagued by guilt, as the nation grappled with the horrors of our war on terror. We were ashamed, and on some level we craved punishment. And as the war on terror drudged on, as we reckoned with the disastrous War in Iraq and horrors like the Abu Gharaib photos, 24 was only too happy to satisfy this craving, to kill Jack Bauer's friends, visit more misery upon him hour after hour, and make him sit in the horror of his own terrible actions. America used Jack Bauer to process its fear and anxiety, but we also used him to process our guilt.

Which brings us to the big moment in this episode, when Jack Bauer holds an entire surgial team at gunpoint and forces them to stop operating on his girlfriend Audrey's estranged husband Paul so they can save a man with Crucial Information instead. And by the way, Audrey is there the whole time, screaming and crying at Jack, and Paul is in only in surgery because he took a bullet for Jack! It's the kind of convoluted scenario only 24 would come up with.

And it serves both sides of the Jack Bauer fantasy. On one hand, he is eliminating his romantic rival! He's taking control, very caveman. But on the other hand, we know this will only bring him misery. Audrey screaming at him makes that pretty clear, as does Sutherland's performance.

Jack Bauer was badass, he was the hero America he wanted. But he was also miserable and guilty and flawed: the hero we needed, a hero for a crumbling empire.

After Everybody Loves Raymond (recorded)

9x14 "The Power of No"

Have you heard? All the sex has been leeched out of culture. This is a frequent complaint among critics of all kinds. Usually, people point to the popularity of erotic thrillers in the '80s and '90s as evidence of how things used to be. But that talking point is old hat by now. Want to talk about how pop culture used to be so much sexier? Talk about Everybody Loves Raymond.

This show was the number one comedy on television for years. It was mainstream, it was normcore. And it was so, so obsessed with sex. And not the kind of sex you see on HBO shows, which is too often kind of sterile. Raymond is concerned with the specifics of sex, the strange power dynamics and weird turn-ons that you develop with a long-term partner. You can tell that the situations depicted come from the writers' real experiences. Thank goodness it's so hilarious; the intimacy and cringiness would be unbearable otherwise.

In this episode, Raymond discovers "the power of no." When he says no to sex for a change, the entire dynamic in his relationship shifts, and it is intoxicating. When his wife Debra discovers what he's up to, they enter a cold war, including a bedroom scene that's about as explicit as you can get on a multicamera sitcom with a live studio audience. It all ends with a reversion to the mean as they admit they both want each other. And then the kids interrupt them and Ray has to literally cool down by the fridge. All those cool fake comedies on streaming wish they could go this hard.

What Else Was On

Special Sweeps Guest Stars: Swoosie Kurtz and Sally Struthers on Still Standing, Dave Foley on Las Vegas.

Late Night

Skip to one hour 53 minutes in to hear about the time Martin Short made his Tonight Show debut and had to share a couch with Bette Davis.

TiVo Status

Three episodes of Mystery! 3 hours.

TV news, 20 years ago

Trust me when I say that the end of Everybody Loves Raymond was a huge deal. Take it away, TV Week magazine:

TV Land will pre-empt its regular programming for the "Raymond" finale. At 9 p.m. TV Land will show its viewers a room filled with 210 men named Raymond, each wearing a T-shirt with the title and number of his favorite episode. They will stand and introduce themselves for the entire half-hour. During the program, the network will remind viewers they should watch the finale on CBS.