What was on TV? Wed, May 4, 2005

20 years ago, someone from Al-Qaeda got captured, and also there was a huge suicide bombing, and accusations of defense contractor fraud, and more terror attacks...as ever, the war on terror was one step forward, six steps back. Let's see what was on TV.

8:00 Lost on ABC

1x21 "The Greater Good" (record ANTM on UPN and I'm Still Here on MTV)

I love Sayid episodes because they always pull heavily from the tropes of espionage fiction. And not the boom-boom -bang-bang kind, the angsty and romantic kind. In his flashbacks this episode, the CIA forces Sayid to investigate his old friend Essam, who's fallen in with some terrorists. All so he can find his beloved Nadia again. Essam is reeling from the death of his wife thanks to a stray colonialist bomb, and he's supposed to be a big martyr in the attack, but he's clearly not sure about it. Sayid of course wants to save him from this terrible decision. Except the CIA of course wants them convince his friend to go through with the attack, all so they can locate and arrest some big fish. When Sayid objects to this plan they threaten to arrest Nadia. I love the scene where Sayid convinces Essam to go through it. As he argues that people like Nadia and Essam's wife deserve justice, and you can see that he's convincing himself, convincing us even! Romantic yearing, divided loyalties, murky ethics, and using the truth to tell a lie, this is the stuff that great spy fiction is made of.

Of course, Sayid pulls out at the last minute, though Essam feels betrayed and shoots himself. I love that Sayid ends up on Oceanic Flight 815 because he stays in Australia an extra day to give Essam a proper Muslim burial.

Meanwhile, on the Island, Shannon wants revenge for Boone's death and Locke is the only available target. She appeals to all of Sayid's most romantic instincts. And Sayid has ample reason to distrust Locke. He knows he's lying, and in this episode, he discovers that he's the one who knocked him out before he could set up the transmitter about 10 episodes ago. But he doesn't want Shannon to be a murderer, and he knows Locke has useful skills and information. So he saves Locke and forces him to show him the hatch. It's classic Sayid: romantic but also shrewd and pragmatic.

Also, the B-story where baby Aaaron can only stop crying when Sawyer is insulting people or reading car magazines like they're bedtime stories? Delightful.

9:00 Alias on ABC

1x18 "Mirage"

This episode contains one of my very favorite Alias scenes. Jack Bristow is losing his mind from nuclear radiation sickness, and Sydney has to impersonate her own mother and play house with him so he will tell her where he relocated the scientist who can save him. They're in her old house, Sydney is in full housewife cosplay, pretending to be her mom who was herself pretending to be a housewife and not a Russian spy. And little Sydney is playing piano in the next room. It's a little Freudian and a lot trippy. But most of all, it's sappy as hell. Jack telling his wife that he can't bear to miss Sydney's birthday, except he's actually telling Sydney! And when he tells her that he plans to quit, and Sydney saysit's okay. But you know that her real mom probably told him to keep spying so she sould keep spying on him. But now Sydney gets to go back in time and change that except not really. Oh my god! The feels! Jennifer Garner and Victor Garber have such terrific chemistry, and both are at the top of their game here. Sydney and Jack are the best relationship on the show. And this is one of their very best scenes.

10:00 America's Next Top Model (recorded)

4x10 "The Girl Who Flops in the Mud"

This season obviously peaked with Tiffany's exit and Tyra's meltdown. Because now the show is kind of floundering. They struck gold with their cycle 3 cast, and this group of girls just isn't very interesting, separately or together.

So what are we doing now? Making poor Keenyah feel like crap again? Taking weird photos? Making the girls critique and badmouth each other to juice drama. None of it works; the episode is a dud. And when the go-see episode is a dud...that's a problem.

What Else Was On

• Ten minutes from tonight's NBC Nightly News survives on YouTube. We open with the capture of senior Al-Qaeda member Abu Faraj al-Libi. (He was transferred to Guantanamo in 2006, after enduring God knows what at various Black sites. He remains in Guantanamo today.) Then General David Barno, the outgoing commander in Afghanistan, assures Tom Brokaw that we are totally winning this war. The next story is about the worst terror attack in two months in Iraq...and that was just the first attack of the day! Then we get the absurd news that Lynndie England's guitly plea was thrown out when an officer testified that the Abu Gharaib photos were for "legitimate training purposes," then news of "a disturbing incident in Fallujah," then it turns out that defense contractors are probably scamming American taxpayers, and finally we get a reminder that football player turned disillusioned Iraq war soldier Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire and the army covered it up. Yeah. The war on terror is going great!
• ABC's Primetime Live interviewed Corey Clark, a season two finalist who had been asked to leave after The Smoking Gun uncovered a domestic violence incident involving him and his sister. Now he was claiming that Paula Abdul had an inappropriate relationship with him while he was on the show. Since Idol is live, America got to watch contestants and Abdul's fellow judges defend her in real time. They even made fun of the whole affair with a skit in the finale; Abdul herself would make light of it in a Saturday's SNL episode. An investigation eventually cleared Abdul. But we probably should have taken these accusations more seriously, even if Clark was not the most sympathetic victim (there have been more incidents of domestic violence in the years since).
• Nevertheless, dishing dirt on American Idol paid off big-time for ABC. The special did significantly better than your average Primetime Live episode, beating both CBS's CSI: NY and NBC's Law and Order.
• On American Idol itself, Scott Savol was sent home. As they did with Corey Clark and many others, The Smoking Gun uncovered a domestic violence incident involving Savol. Despite this, and despite his complete lack of charisma, Savol reached the final five. America was puzzled, and some speculated that the website "votefortheworst.com" played a factor.
• ABC wasn't the only network with a grody tabloid special tonight. The Insider host Pat O'Brien was in the news since lurid voicemails in which he sexually harassed a co-worker leaked online. Fresh from rehab, he sat down for a conversation with Dr. Phil. Conveniently, this aired on CBS, which was owned by Paramount, which also owned The Insider. And O'Brien was returning to the program that same night. Of course.
• Filming only six episodes of The Office left John Krasinski with plenty of time to film a guest spot on Without a Trace.
• Before they were famous: Octavia Spencer on CSI: NY, Felicia Day in this Clearasil commercial.
• Special Sweeps Guest Stars: Toni Braxton on Kevin Hill, Joe Morton on CSI: NY, Lois Smith on Law and Order (she's special to me).

Late Night

Crash's vast ensemble was doing the talk-show circuit in 2005; tonight, Don Cheadle promoted it on Late Night. It is so weird to hear people talk about this movie. Back then, it was widely praised! And even if you didn't like it, it was just another well-intentioned but heavy-handed and cliché movie about race. Not a best picture winner, not the most infamous movie of the 2000s, and not a symbol of everything wrong with America.

TiVo Status

3 episodes of Mystery! and the MTV Holocaust documentary I'm Still Here. 4 hours.

Books, 20 years ago

Persepolis gets all the hype, but I've always loved Marjane Satrapi's Embroideries, in which a bunch of Iranian aunties meet for tea and dish all their secrets about sex, romance, and marriage.