What was on TV? Tues, April 19 2005

20 years ago, Pope Benedict XVI was elected. 78-years-old, hardline-conservative, a former member of Hitler Youth...easily the worst and least cool pope of my lifetime. Let's see what was on TV.

9:00 Veronica Mars on UPN

1x19 "Hot Dogs" (record The Office on NBC)

As its first season comes to a close, Veronica Mars offers a veritable buffet of characters and storylines. Weevil the secretly heartbroken charmer always on the edge of the law, Aaron Echolls the abusive and erratic egomaniac, the seething Celeste Kane, wild card Duncan, wounded and superficial Trina, and on and on and on. Veronica Mars, the show and the character, manage spin all these plates in one episode. Plus she unravels a dognapping conspiracy and gets a new boyfriend! It is truly something to behold.

The episode is filled with great scenes (dirty charades with the day laborers is a personal favorite), but best in show goes to Aaron Echolls beating up Trina's skeevy and abusive boyfriend. You wanted to see this guy get beaten up, but not by Aaron, and not like this! It's so abrupt, so violent. The "That's Amore" needle drop creates so much tonal dissonance and a sense of true chaos. You can't tell if he's going to kill this guy, make a joke, or offer to be in his shitty movie after all. Terrifying.

10:00 The Office (recorded)

1x05 "Basketball" (record The Shield on FX)

And so we take our first trip to the warehouse! We teased the location with Driwght's excursion in "The Alliance", but this feels like its true debut. The warehouse is a fertile source of blue collar/white collar tensions. Our male corporate drones feel inferior to the warehouse guys (especially Michael), but at the same time they have real power over them (again, especially Michael). That combination of perceived inferiority and hard power is noxious. The toxicity of this dynamic is really obvious in this episode, and it makes Michael truly unbearable. The show's upstairs/downstairs dynamic would be less obvious and more equal in future seasons, especially once Craig T. Robinson's Darryl emerged as a breakout character.

It's also really interesting to see the way the show plays the Jim/Pam/Roy love triangle. We see Jim literally competing for her in this episode. It's very macho and ham-fisted, and not very appealing. The show would be much subtler in the way it handled the Jim and Pam romance and the love triangle with Roy in the following seasons, thank goodness.

Later The Shield (recorded)

4x06 "Insurgents"

You know, much is made of the big guest stars on this season of The Shield. Glenn goddamn Close! Anthony Anderson proves his dramatic chops. Michael Pena, who emerged as a breakout star in Crash while this season was airing! But this episode makes it clear: the true purpose of these guest stars is to drive a wedge between Vic, who finds himself increasingly aligned with Close's Captain Rawling, and Walton Goggins' Shane, who has fallen under the influence of Anderson's Antwon Mitchell.

People forget, but Walton Goggins was not famous when The Shield started. He was cast because he was friends with showrunner Shawn Ryan. At first, he was just one of the guys on the strike team with Vic. But by season four, Walton Goggins had proven himself, and his dynamic with Chiklis' Vic was at the heart of the show. Thank goodness the show is leaning into that, guest stars and all. And this episode ends with Vic using strike team third wheel Lem as a game piece in his war with Shane, which is just oh so juicy and will absolutely not end well. I can't wait.

What Else Was On

The winner of the reality show The Starlet collected her prize: a bit part on tonight's episode of One Tree Hill.

Late Night

Al Green stopped by Letterman. Beautiful.

TiVo Status

The TV movies Sucker Free City and Everything You Want, two episodes of The Staircase, and one episode of Mystery! 6 hours.

TV news, 20 years ago

Just how much money was Idol making at its peak? Take it away, USA Today:

Idol and the singers it has made hitmakers — including first-season winner Kelly Clarkson, second-season winner Ruben Studdard and runner-up Clay Aiken, and third-season winner Fantasia Barrino — generated more than $900 million last year in sales of TV ads, albums, merchandise and concert tickets, USA TODAY estimates.

The whole article is worth a read. It breaks down the whole Idol machine in detail. Ads, product placement, huge paydays for the judges, shady contracts for the contestants, the whole enchilada.