CBS comes under fire for onslaught of violent crime dramas

[weber_dubois22]

WASHINGTON — It's said all too often that you can't argue with success. But you can. The argument: CBS is doing a disservice by airing so many crime dramas. The counter-argument: Doing a disservice to whom? CBS is the most-watched network in America. Precisely the point. The more people who watch, the more people can get drawn into a worldview that we live in dangerous places in a dangerous society.

It's true that Marshal Matt Dillon gunned down some outlaw virtually every week on "Gunsmoke" — another CBS program — and that series ran 20 seasons. But by the time the show premiered in 1955, the Old West was a thing of the past. All of CBS' crime series are set in the present day.

Let's look at all of the CBS crime shows that aired the week of Jan. 16-22: "CSI: Miami," "Hawaii Five-O," "NCIS," "NCIS: Los Angeles," "Criminal Minds," "Blue Bloods," "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," "The Mentalist," "The Medium," two installments of "CSI: New York" and two reruns as part of the network's "Crimetime Saturday" package.

( Read More )

Parenthood & Family Values... They must be Jewish!

[weber_dubois22]

Saying goodbye to Medium, the surprisingly Jewish television show that perfectly captured the realities of parenting, the depths of grief, and the joys of everyday life



Medium, which ended its seven-season run last week, was a show about ghosts, the afterlife, and general spookiness. But what it was really about was the messiness of family life. It presented the challenges of parenthood—funny, irksome, intimate, quotidian—as worthy of attention. “Can you make it to make our daughter’s soccer game?” was as important as “Why has the ghost of a murder victim taken possession of our video camera?”

If you weren’t a Medium watcher, let me fill you in. The show’s heroine, Allison (Patricia Arquette) was a psychic in Arizona who worked for the Phoenix District Attorney’s office, helping to solve crimes. She had to juggle her psychic visions, her relationship with her engineer husband, Joe, and the needs of her three quirky daughters.

It’s ironic that a show about the paranormal was so, well, normal. Allison didn’t look like the cookie-cutter starlets populating the TV universe. She wasn’t a size 2. She never wore spike heels to a crime scene. Her house looked like a real home, with unfortunate blue-and-yellow kitchen tiles I’m certain she hoped to replace as soon as they could afford it. Her girls squabbled at the breakfast table, and not in an adorable smart-assed sitcom-sassy way. I loved the show’s depiction of a loving marriage in which the partners fought and made up and had the same arguments over and over. (“Allison! Maybe that was just a regular dream, not a message from beyond the grave!” Oh, Joe.)

( Read More )

135 MEDIUM Icons (Spoilers)

[weber_dubois22]

135 MEDIUM (Season VII Icons):
[1-33] 7x12 ("Labor Pains")
[34-105] 7x13 ("Me Without You")
[106-135] 7x13 (Series Montage/Farewells)



(Suddenly it changes, violently it Changes)