What was on TV? Sun, May 1, 2005

20 years ago, the California fire season an actual season and not a year-round affair. Let's see what was on TV.

7:00 King of the Hill on Fox

9x13 "Gone with the Windstorm"

A wildfire is more serious than anticipated, and coverage of said wildfire is more dangerous and shameless than anticipated. I don't like this prophecy.

Also, this episode was written by Wyatt Cenac! Turns out writing for King of the Hill was his first Hollywood job, well before his time on The Daily Show.

7:30 Malcolm in the Middle on Fox

2x20 "Stilts"

This is a bad episode of a sitcom in its sixth season. The parents are still great, Cranston and Kaczmarek are still as sharp as ever, and Hal and Lois stories always hit. But the writers are struggling to write for the boys. They're just too old. It strains credulity that they keep getting involved in such absurd shenanigans. And these boys were cast when they were young and cute, now that they're no longer young and cute their performances have to change, and that transition isn't always smooth.

You know what helps with that? An adorable toddler. Little Jamie is so, so cute. Looking at his little face made this whole episode go down a lot more smoothly. Now I understand why family sitcoms always seem to acquire new babies late into their runs.

9:00 Deadwood on HBO

2x09 "Amalgamation and Capital" (record Desperate Housewives on ABC and Mystery! on PBS)

It never bodes well when a prestige drama starts focusing on the kids. So it is on Deadwood. The scenes in this episode with Sophia and William are so lovely! Learning math in all sorts of creative ways, playing in the streets, discovering new things, bonding with your new parents. It's all so sweet! And we learn so much about adult characters when they interact with children. And for a show like Deadwood, that always has an eye toward the future, so concerned with community and nation-building, it's always a good idea to check in with the next generation. These kids are Deadwood's future, and thus America's future, and Deadwood the show's connection to the present and the audience.

So it hits like such a gut punch when poor young William gets trampled by a horse in a terrible accident at the end of the episode. Thank goodness there's a doctor in town, I need not despair quite yet.

10:00 Grey's Anatomy on ABC

1x06 "If Tomorrow Never Comes"

Grey's Anatomy is remembered for all the soapiness and sexiness. But it could also pull off a pulse-pounding emergency surgery in the mold of ER. Grey's Anatomy would lean into this more in its later years, yet when Izzie finds herself with no choice but to perform an emergency procedure on the fly right here in season one, it's thrilling. The visual language of the show changes. The camera flies around, the pace is faster, and the indie rock is discarded in favor of a pulsing score. Grey's Anatomy would hone and refine this style over many epic disasters and tense surgeries, but the pieces are already right here.

Also, the poor woman whose giant tumor kept all the attendings in surgery so Izzie was left stranded and flying solo? She dies, but she earns herself a place in Grey's Anatomy history. She's the first person to say "seriously?" in that specific Grey's cadence; this would be an unescapable catchphrase midway through the show's second season.

Later Desperate Housewives (recorded)

1x20 "Fear No More"

It wasn't just Lost getting grief over a lack of answers in 2005. At least Lost gives you clues and answers to smaller mysteries (who's the French chick on the radio? Are there other people on the island?). Desperate Housewives often treats the question of who killed Mary Alice Young with outright indifference. Most episodes seem completely unconcerned with it! And what clues we do get are confusing and unsatisfying; they actually make me less interested in why Mary Alice killed herself. Mike's angst about his dead wife, that random private investigator, Zach and his glasses, that damn toy chest, it's all so slapdash, and they haven't given us much reason to care. Compare it to how Veronica Mars has handled the Lilly Kane mystery, and it's just embarrassing.

What Else Was On

• Family Guy returned from the dead, revived thanks to huge DVD sales and eye-popping ratings on Adult Swim, completing one of the more remarkable comeback stories in TV history. I can't help but wish it had happened to literally any other show.
• The CBS Sunday Movie was Riding the Bus with My Sister directed by Angelica Huston and starring Rosie O'Donnell as an intellectually disabled woman and Andie McDowell as her sister who needs to stop being such a fancy career woman and focus on her family. Choices were made!
• USA premiered the movie Murder at the Presidio set at the military base in my hometown, San Francisco. It starred Lou Diamond Phillips, Jason Priestly, and a whole bunch of Canadians.
• On this week's episode of Cold Case, someone gets murdered at a Rowdy 1977 screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
• Tonight's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition sob story: Dad blinded in a RadioShack robbery.
• Special Sweeps Guest Stars: Darrell Hammond on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Gina Gershon and Sandra Bernhard on Crossing Jordan.

TiVo Status

Three episodes of Mystery! Three hours.

TV news, 20 years ago

It's hard to find records of TV fandom from 20 years ago. One enticing tidbit: there was a fan who kept a comprehensive record of the "fucks" used on Deadwood every week, complete with statistical analysis. One week he went camping and thus could not compile the tally on schedule. Broadcasting and Cable did a story about it.

Deadwood fans and admirers of the flamboyant use of the f-word were breeft last week: Jeff Kay went camping. That meant that Kay's episode-by-episode tally of the number of f-words used in Hbo's old-west cuss-a-thon was suspended, pending Kay's return from a trip....In its rookie year, Deadwood achieved a 69.3 f's-per-episode rate, this season it has improved to a 96.4 FPE.

I don't know what's better. The absurd acronyms and euphemisms, tension between this trade magazine's standards of decency and the writer's clear delight in the profanity, or the fact that the numbers crunched to 69 fucks per episode (nice) and then increased to...96 fucks per episode (nicer).