What was on TV? Mon, May 9, 2005

20 years ago, the Cher Farewell Tour came to an end. Let's see what was on TV.

9:00 Everwood on the WB

3x20 "He Who Hesitates" (record Everybody Loves Raymond on CBS, 24, on Fox, and Girlfriends on UPN

After three seasons, Everwood finally pulls the cancer card, as so many family dramas have before. And why did it have to be Rose? I love Rose! But if you're going to give her cancer, it better be good TV, and so far it's good TV.

Rose's journey is clearly articulated and heartbreaking. Merrilyn Gann is great as usual. The scene where she tries to make roast chicken destroys me and anyone for whom roast chicken was a household staple growing up (it's what my sister and I both requested the first time we came home from college).

But we also see how this devastating news reverberates throughout the ensemble. First with Dr. Abbott, then with Dr. Brown. The show doesn't belabor the point, but it's clear that the news makes him more eager to act on his feelings for Nina. Then Bright and Amy learn the truth, and it changes them, and then Hannah once Amy tells her. Amy decides not to tell Ephram, but you know that's coming too. And because Rose's cancer reverberates throughout the ensemble so matter-of-factly, it never feels like a cheap tear-jerking move.

10:00 Everybody Loves Raymond (recorded)

9x15 "Pat's Secret"

Over the holidays, I listened to a Christmas episode of The Bickersons, a radio sitcom from the 1940s. It's a pretty basic story, a retelling of "The Gift of the Magi," and it's only 10 minutes long. But you can see the DNA of the genre, and I was surprised to find that the episode holds up. The Bickersons bicker, and they fail at gift-giving. But at the end they forgive each other, and it's surprisingly sweet. They argue that bickering is good, it's better than keeping it all inside.

This episode makes a more long-winded version of the same argument in defense of Frank and Marie. It's not as convincing as The Bickersons, probably because I've seen a lot more of Frank and Marie, and it's not pretty. But it's still more convincing than you expect. You can't describe Frank and Marie's marriage as good. For most of the series, they function like a scepter, the example that Ray and his own wife Debra must avoid. But this episode argues that we have at least a little something to learn from Frank and Marie, and I think that's true.

11:00 24 (recorded)

4x21 "Day 4: 3:00 AM - 4:00 AM"

24 is getting bold in its endgame! Jack attacked the Chinese consulate, and you can't expect the biggest country in the world to take that lying down. So now everyone is covering up the attack. It proves everyone's most paranoid fantasies about America right.

Sure, there's the threat of a nuke. But 24 has cried nuke too many times for the threat to feel real. It's just business as usual for this show, so the violation of the attack on China and the cover-up lingers more, at least for me. I don't think the threat of nukes was terribly immediate in the 2000s, but we imagined it was close all the time. Our government famously lied about the threat of nukes so they could invade Iraq! When you're doing something shady, it's always easier to tell yourself there's an immediate threat, that you had no choice. We did that a lot during the Bush era, we still do it today. 24 dramatized that thought process, except it was a TV show, so the threat was always real.

My favorites Lynn and Maya were absent this episode. But I didn't mind because the legendary Jenifer Lewis guest stars as Toni's mom. Lewis played so many moms that she titled her memoir 'The Mother of Black Hollywood." I can see why she got the gigs. She's hilarious. Regal and silly, the perfect sitcom mom. She literally gets her wig snatched at one point, and it is glorious.

But in true sitcom mom fashion, things eventually take a turn for the dramatic. She was all ready to meet an old fling in Los Angeles but when she arrives at his doorstep, she learns he died. She confronts her own age and mortality in a tender heart-to-heart with her daughter. It ends with her singing "swing low, sweet chariot." Lewis got her start on Broadway, so of course it's gorgeous.

Robbed of a Guest Actress nomination at the Emmys.

What Else Was On

• Extreme Makeover: Home Edition was so successful that ABC tried Extreme Makeover: Wedding Edition. They gave a cancer survivor in need of a heart transplant and his wife a dream wedding (all their wedding money had gone to medical bills, so their wedding had been a courthouse affair). I always read the stories of Extreme Makeover beneficiaries and feel bad. These people had been through so much, they deserved better than a shoddy home renovation and an increase in property taxes (and that's if they were lucky!). But Extreme Makeover: Wedding Edition honestly sounds like a good deal. The whole thing is paid for, and since the whole thing happens in one week, you don't lose years of your life to the hell that is wedding planning. And these people got Liza Minnelli and Kristi Yamaguchi to come to their wedding! Not too shabby.
• Lifetime took on the movie Confessions of an American Bride starred Shannon Elizabeth as the titular bridezilla.
• Special Sweeps Guest Stars: Jon Lovitz and Ashanti on Las Vegas, Alan Thicke on Half & Half, Erika Alexander on 7th Heaven.

TiVo Status

2 episodes of Mystery! 2 hours.

TV news, 20 years ago

Find someone who loves you as much as Ray Romano loves his own haters. From Lynette Rice in Entertainment Weekly:

NOW THAT THE TAPING OF EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND'S series finale is only days away, Ray Romano should be using this downtime to pack boxes in his Burbank office. But old habits die hard. Clad in his typical workday ensemble (flannel shirt, blue jeans, gym shoes), Romano is hunched over his laptop computer, scanning the Internet for nitpickers. It doesn't take long to find them; after years of frantic post-episode surfing, Romano knows exactly where to locate Raymond's harshest critics. (Today, they're on an entertainment Web page spouting words like mediocre and awful.) "It keeps you humble," explains the 47-year-old comedian. "People come over to me on the street and are nice, nice, nice. But people who hate you aren't coming over to say they hate you. The Web is a venue to say it."