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The Buffalo News, N.Y., Jeff Simon column: On the law, order and forensics front, a bunch of CBS' biggies are back this week.(Buffalo News, The (NY) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Mar. 30--"A vast wasteland," a former FCC chairman named Newton Mi-now once called television. That was before cable and satellite TV -- before, in other words, television became truly vast. "April is the cruelest month," wrote T.S. Eliot famously in the opening of "The Waste Land," as famous as any five-word opening in modern poetry. Well, not here. In honor of forthcoming April and spring arriving in our most powerful popular art, I'm cheerfully mixing memory and desire here and vowing to say nothing but nice things about television in honor of, yes, the season. Such nice things as. . . --One nation impersonated: If you were to drive up in a droshky and ask if commercial television has ever given the world any certifiable geniuses, I'd nod a vigorous "yes." I'm not talking here about those TV minds we call "geniuses" with a sarcastic sneer, I'm talking about real ones of the performing and/or creative variety. Ernie Kovacs wasn't exactly on the same creative level as Leonardo, Goethe, Shakespeare and Tolstoy, but he was so far ahead of everyone else that was presumed to do what he did that you have to haul the "Gword" out of mothballs gingerly and roll it in his direction. And then there's Tracey Ullman. I'm not going to flat out declare her a genius here. But I couldn't raise my hand and swear on a Bible in open court and say that she isn't either. The omni-impersonatrix just may be a sort of performing genius of the Alec Guinness multiple-personality- disorder sort. One act that we don't seem to see on TV at all anymore is what used to happen when Ullman would drop by David Letterman's late-night talk fests. Especially since he's been on CBS, Letterman has been the center of a well-oiled machine which revolves around the star's jokes. Nowhere is that more apparent than in star "interviews" which are usually regurgitations of material arranged in advance by production coordinators and writers. A Don Rickles or a Robin Williams -- or, in another direction entirely, Tom Brokaw -- is allowed to wing it, but that's about it. Ullman was utterly unique with Letterman. To his surprise and apparently real dismay, she would come on the show and -- metaphorically speaking -- slap him around for about seven minutes. She'd treat him like some ridiculously spoiled and slow-witted little brother who, once upon a time, used to sneak dirty little peeks at his big sister's girlfriends at pajama parties. It was hilarious. The unexpectedness alone would catch you and never let you go. Add the wildness and unpredictability of it and it was close to amazing. Ullman, for one thing, has won awards by the bushel since and given the world "The Simp-sons," which began on her old show ("I suckled them to my bosom" she used to yell uproariously.) And Letterman has become TV's late night establishment. Slapping him around now, however metaphorically, would be a little like enlisting Dick Cheney for audience stooge work during Rickles' Vegas act. I mention all this because all Ullman TV appearances are a little precious and you can see her at 10 p.m. tonight on Showtime after the season premiere of "The Tudors." The show is called "Tracey Ullman's State of the Union" and I stole the headline for this section from their print ad. --Present and accounted for: Nothing but nice things, remember? So nothing here about the cancellation of "Jericho" or the upcoming "who cares?" post-strike returns of "Desperate Housewives," "Gossip Girl," etc. On the law, order and forensics front, a bunch of CBS' biggies are back this week for post-strike new episodes -- "Criminal Minds" at 9 p.m. Wednesday, promising to Entertainment Weekly the beginning of a romance that won't end with a gunshot; "CSI" at 9 p.m. Thursday with an autopsy of the Grissom/ Sarah romance that failed (so that Jorja Fox could take a flying bye bye); and, right afterward, "Without a Trace," wherein Jack (Anthony LaPaglia) takes a bullet so that he can really have something to be sour and snappish about. Truth to be told, none of this stuff matches the whole Dennis Delano suspension caravan that took place last month all over local TV news outlets but, hey, I'm saying nice things here in honor of spring. You know -- like that huge woman in the James Thurber cartoon who collars her tiny henpecked husband as they walk past a sidewalk florist, yanks him over to a posy and yells "LOOK HERMAN! FLARS!!!!!" [email protected] To see more of The Buffalo News, N.Y., or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.buffalonews.com. Copyright (c) 2008, The Buffalo News, N.Y. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |