When a sultry Russian double agent whispers her postcoital love to hard-boiled American spy Edward Albright, he warns her: ``Don't let an act of deception turn into an act of self-deception.'' That was both good advice -- he shoots her in the head a moment later, and believe me, that's not even close to a spoiler in this roller-coaster ride of a show -- and a succinct summary of My Own Worst Enemy, NBC's riveting new spy drama. Self-deception is the foundation of this wilderness of mirrors, where nothing is real but the bullets. Read my full review of the best new drama of the fall broadcast season from Monday's Miami Herald.
« September 2008 | Main | November 2008 »
Screen Gems: TV the week of October 19
My Own Worst Enemy (10 p.m. Monday, NBC) -- Christian Slater stars in this modern Jekyll-and-Hyde 
tale about a man who discovers two people are living in his body -- a corporate drone from the suburbs, and a vicious trained assassin. Personally, I could use a trained assassin from time to time -- like the next time an editor asks when this piece will be finished -- but apparently some people are big wussies.
Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery (9 p.m. Monday, HBO) -- A documentary on the one-acre plot that's the final resting place for American soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Nuclear Option (9 p.m. Tuesday, CNBC) -- With energy prices wreaking havoc on what's left of the American economy, there's an increasing call for a second look at nuclear power. This documentary features interviews with people from all sides of the debate, including a few surprises like Patrick Moore, a Greenpeace founder who's changed his mind about nukes.
Toughest Race on Earth: Iditarod (10 p.m. Tuesday, Discovery) -- I know, I know, who cares about some dog race in Alaska? Until Sarah Palin is vice president, and then the dog-racing police will come to your house and if you don't know the right answers they'll stick a cattle prod up your . . . Oh, sorry, I was channeling Keith Olbermann there for a second. Never mind, he's gone now.
Sex Change Hospital (11 p.m. Tuesday, WE) -- In one of life's inexplicable little oddities, the sex-change capital of the world is located in the tiny Old West mining town of Trinidad, Colo., where one of the local hospitals has performed more than 5,000 gender-reassignment surgeries. This six-part documentary follows two patients through the process.
Crusoe (8 p.m. Friday, NBC) -- Castaway travelers survive on a deserted island where they have to fight off mysterious marauders, vicious animals and strange electrical storms. No, it's not Lost -- look, the world is full of sinister islands inhabited by hostile natives. Haven't you ever been to South Beach?
Hey, you guys opposing the sale of WTVJ -- come out of your time machine
I haven't thought of them in years, those bedrag-gled, starving Japanese soldiers who -- when I was growing up in the early 1960s -- were periodically discovered in jungle caves on remote Pacific islands, unaware that World War II had been over for decades.
But reading the petitions and complaints filed in the past month with the FCC by opponents of the proposed sale of WTVJ-NBC 6, that's exactly what they remind me of: feeble old souls still fighting a war that, for everybody else, ended years ago.
They don't seem to realize that the old three-channel television universe was swept away by cable and satellite. They don't seem to realize that television stations increasingly compete against not one another but the Internet. They don't seem to realize that South Florida is now populated not just by people named Smith and Jones but García and López -- or that the Garcias and Lopezes aren't refugees who just washed ashore on inner tubes, but bilingual Americans who've been living here three generations. Read my full commentary on why the opponents of the WTVJ sale probably like to churn their own butter, read by candlelight and treat cancer with leeches.
57 channels and nothin' on -- except Barack Obama
Barack Obama, who already has his own satellite TV channel, is now trying to take over the airwaves, too. Obama's campaign has already purchased a half-hour of time on both CBS and NBC on Oct. 29 at 8 p.m. And he's negotiating with Fox and ABC to do the same, though a potential World Series game may prevent making a deal with Fox.
Purchase of half-hour blocs of network time by presidential campaigns goes back to the early days of television. Richard Nixon's famous Checkers speech, which saved his place on the 1952 GOP ticket, was actually a half-hour commercial, paid for by the Republican National Committee.
Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee, also bought half-hour blocs during 1952 to televise campaign speeches -- a tactic that failed because the live speeches were often cut off in mid-sentence as Stevenson talked past the cutoff mark. The launch of Ronald Reagan's political career was a late-in-the-game paid network speech in support of Barry Goldwater's doomed 1964 campaign.
But as the media market has fragmented over the past 15 years, network television has fallen from favor as a political advertising vehicle. Before Obama's announcement, the last candidate to have purchased a half-hour bloc was Ross Perot during his independent run for the presidency in 1992. Candidates instead tend to focus their ads more narrowly, focusing on key states or communities -- though Hillary Clinton's campaign did buy time for a speech on the cable Hallmark Channel during the primaries earlier this year.
Television executives, advertising experts and political analysts said the purchase of the network time -- which they estimate cost $1 million or more per network -- was more a reflection of the Obama campaign's brimming bank accounts than a carefully thought-out strategy.
"When you've got it, like Obama does, you'd absolutely be stupid not to spend it," said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. "It's really to pump up the base: ‘We're inches from the goal line. We can feel it. Don't let up now!'''
Added Evan Tracey, president of the Arlington, Va.-based Campaign Media Analysis Group, a media research firm specializing in politics, added: "If you needed more evidence that Obama has more money than there is TV time left to buy, here it is. They're looking at the dollars in the bank, the days on the calendar, and wondering, ‘What else can we do?'''
Tracey said the network buy was a startlingly old-school tactic by a cutting-edge campaign.
"This is a different media environment, even from when Perot did it," Tracey said. "There are a lot more channels of communication open between candidates and voters now. He's really folding back into one of the older ones."
But, Tracey added, why not?
"On Madison Avenue, they like to say, ‘Half of all advertising is wasted, you just can't figure out which half.''' Tracey said. "In politics, it's more like 95 percent is wasted and they just don't care. If the 5 percent that's useful hits the 3 percent of undecided voters, it's well worth it."
Myrtle Fargate and Liz Matthews, RIP
Tough week for soap opera fans. Eileen Herlie (left), who at age 90 was still cranking out episodes of All My Children as the lovable Myrtle Fargate, a kind of surrogate mother to Susan Lucci's Erica Kane, died Wednesday of pneumonia after 38 years on the show. Meanwhile, friends of Irene Dailey (right) announced that she died of colon cancer last month. She played Liz Matthews on Another World from 1974 to 1986 and again from 1988 to 1994. She was 88.
Four good reasons not to turn on your TV tonight
The good news is that this is the last big night of an abortive fall television season that still bears the 
scars of the Hollywood writers' strike earlier this year. The bad news is that it's the worst evening yet. And the worst news of all is that there's only one show where the lead character is in a coma -- the rest of them just feel that way.
That 100-day writers' strike that began last November coincided almost exactly with the developmental season when studios are looking at scripts for the fall. The consequences of that have never been more clear than in Thursday's debuts: Of the four new shows, three are copies of British and Australian dramas, one a sitcom developed in Canada. Considered together, they make a compelling case that some immigration definitely should be illegal. Read my full reviews of ABC's Life On Mars, CBS' Eleventh Hour, NBC's Kath & Kim and FX's Testees in Thursday's Miami Herald.
As John McCain would say, 'My friends, all 63.2 million of you...'
It's amazing what the impending collapse of Western civilization's economic underpinnings will do for the TV ratings of a presidential debate. Tuesday night's McCain/Obama debate drew 63.2 million viewers, nearly 11 million more than the one last month. But Sarah Palin and Joe Biden are still the box-office champs of this election, with 69.9 million viewers for their debate.
Tony Rock's laughless new 'Project'
Launched in 2006 as an all-telenovela network, low ratings have reduced MyNetworkTV to a wasteland of beat-them-bloody extreme sports and tawdry reality shows. So give credit to The Tony Rock Project, the comic revue that debuts Wednesday -- at least it's aimed at viewers whose age and IQ total more than the price of a gallon of gas. Unhappily notable is the absence of the word ''successfully'' in that last sentence. Read my full review in Wednesday's Miami Herald.
The hockey moms are coming! The hockey moms are coming!
More evidence that the people at Nielsen have waaaaay too much time on their hands: They've issued a new report that says "hockey moms" -- women aged 25 to 54 who live in homes with children and who watched at least six minutes of the most recent Stanley Cup Finals on NBC -- were more likely than regular moms to watch the McCain/Obama and Biden/Palin debates. No word from the Nielsen on how big the audience of pit bulls was -- not yet, anyway.