Edition: U.S. / Global

Mullets at Night and Pain in the Morning

Published: December 28, 2003

There is bad television and television so bad it's good; in a recent conversation, Alessandra Stanley and Virginia Heffernan recalled the worst in both categories.

STANLEY It seemed so clear ahead of time that "Coupling" was going to be terrible, simply because it was a rip-off of a British show, that it was gratifying to realize it really was just as bad as predicted.

HEFFERNAN With remakes of British shows you're bringing to it all the hopes that the network has for it and all the focus groups that you imagine went into figuring out how this thing is going to work here. So you watch a few episodes longer than you might otherwise, just to see how it's going to play out.

STANLEY If you took away NBC's expectations, and NBC's reputation for quality television, if you stripped all that away and you just put "Coupling" side by side with "The Mullets," would "The Mullets" be worse?

HEFFERNAN "The Mullets" embarrassed me because I really thought that it was a go. I liked the idea of it and those guys from "The Simpsons" who produced it. I thought, I want to see Loni Anderson. So I was rooting for it a little bit. But, now, what exactly was wrong with it?

STANLEY Besides everything? You know, it's always the writing. It wasn't clever. And the show had the sin of pride, because there was a tiny little mullet trend. You had mullet shampoos. You could just visualize that meeting with UPN, with someone saying, let's do a mullet show, and, I know, let's get Loni Anderson.

HEFFERNAN You get one visual gag with the hair and then one line — "business in the front, party in the back" — and the gag of saying "Loni Anderson back on TV," which carries you the first few minutes. Or actually just carries you through the press release.

STANLEY But that wasn't the worst show. That may have been one of the worst sitcoms, although there was "My Big Fat Greek Life," which, again, you knew was going to be bad. What makes a delightful movie doesn't always work on TV.

HEFFERNAN Also, the bloom was off Nia Vardalos by then. She had been like an undiscovered Cinderella, and when that person decides she's going to franchise her cute idea, then you start to turn on her a bit.

STANLEY What I remember is that because both of them, she and Steven Eckholdt, seemed quite old, their parents' pressuring them to have children seemed perfectly reasonable.

HEFFERNAN Right, they could hardly roll their eyes at that request.

STANLEY Yet they did. O.K., I think it's fair to say that the worst daytime talk show in history——

HEFFERNAN Oh, this was your favorite.

STANLEY Well, you know, I've held back because I'm a charitable person, so I've never written about "Living It Up! With Ali & Jack," because very few watch it and it's just too painful and sad.

HEFFERNAN Ali Wentworth is the wife of George Stephanopoulos. Why didn't that make her good at it? Come on, what else do you need?

STANLEY As an actress she used to be cast as the unsympathetic blonde girlfriend that nobody likes. And the idea that somehow this would make her an attractive daytime host . . . it does make Jack Ford seem like a statesman. Compared to her he just seems wise and warm.

HEFFERNAN It's one more thing that makes it clear how much we owe to Kelly Ripa, because it's not easy to be adorable. Kelly Ripa's putting in the hours and working hard.

STANLEY O.K., what do you hate?

HEFFERNAN Well, "The Sharon Osbourne Show" took a turn for the tragic, as we know. The conceit of "The Osbournes" was that they had turned out to be a pretty normal family with all their normal problems. But "The Osbournes" caused them so many more problems that now they end up in real trouble. We were supposed to see a dysfunctional family, and instead we saw a functional family rendered dysfunctional by the fact of the show. And Sharon's been living that out every day on her talk show.

STANLEY So: Poor HBO. After all this glory, we have "K Street." Unwatchable. But if you have a mean streak, there was something very satisfying about seeing Hollywood — pretentious, self-important Hollywood — crushed under its own delusions of political knowledge and access.

Originally the idea was lobbyists, all the deals that are made behind the scenes. And if you could actually show that, that would be amazing. But they were so enamored of James Carville and Mary Matalin, they kept the whole show about them. And Carville and Matalin are political consultants, but they're not Washington power brokers. So already the premise was wrong. And then when they just stayed with them and didn't develop a stronger fictional line, it got incredibly boring. It was admirable to try to do it, but I wished they'd tried harder.

HEFFERNAN It's a slightly higher-brow answer to reality shows, which no one fails to mention don't represent reality. And so the producers try to make something look more ragged, more vérité. But then they end up having to use actors because everybody's bored by straight documentary. As much as people claim to want Wiseman or Warhol versions of reality, it's pretty unwatchable.

Whereas reality shows provided so many great TV moments — "For Love or Money" managed to turn up a few. And this year's "Bachelor" and "Bachelorette" had some weird and intriguing moments.

STANLEY The wedding, wedding, wedding. I was thinking that ABC could persuade one of them to bolt.

HEFFERNAN I thought it was going to be him.

STANLEY I was hoping that at the very last minute he would say, I can't do this. And then they could have either the reconciliation or the running away with the bridesmaid. But they failed us.

HEFFERNAN There's comedy in the ambivalence that goes over the faces of reality characters. It's like little operettas, that sometimes can be amazingly well done. Some of the shows got ironic about their own rose ceremonies and so forth this year, and that was both good and bad.

STANLEY Reality TV changes, it evolves. It's like anything else, there are gradations. You have every possible variety.

HEFFERNAN I'm amazed at how they were once seen as the end of civilization. Are they more air-heady than sitcoms? How is that possible?

STANLEY Now people will say, "I only watch `Survivor' " the way they used to say, "I only watch `60 Minutes.' "

HEFFERNAN There was "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here."

STANLEY That didn't work out as well as one had hoped. What was most satisfying about that show was Robin Leach. If anyone had a reality show before the invention of reality shows, it was he, yet he was enraged by the ruthless editing of "I'm a Celebrity" that portrayed him as a fat English slacker. And you realize that even he could get sucked into thinking he could be the hero of the show.

Getting back to HBO: apparently I'm the only person who liked "Carnivale." And now even I've given up on it.

HEFFERNAN There are shows — "Carnivale" may be like this — that you really admire in the beginning. And you can only find out later if they have the addictive enzyme. Sometimes you find that three episodes in, you're not really going to watch again.

STANLEY I loved the first three episodes of "West Wing" this season when they had John Goodman. And that was actually the leftovers from Aaron Sorkin, a plot line that he had created. And then they got rid of John Goodman and now it's O.K. It's just not great.

There were other sorts of TV moments — like Martin Bashir's Michael Jackson interview. It's hard to say. That was good bad TV.

HEFFERNAN I was riveted. But sometimes even I get moral qualms. And that was one time where I thought — I mean, Bashir did come off as the villain. But knowing that he had absolute control and that he was trying to make Jackson look cretinous made me squeamish.

STANLEY But the fact that with absolute control he still revealed himself was interesting. He was like a Dickens character, wheedling and sympathizing and oozing and doing everything that you normally aren't privy to that journalists will do to get an interview.

Unfortunately or fortunately, a lot of times really bad TV is great TV. Because great TV doesn't have to be good, it just has to be something you can't stop watching. That covers a lot of ground.

One of my favorite low moments was Katie Couric going to Saudi Arabia just before the war and interviewing a member of the Saudi royal family. In order to be respectful of his culture she wore a gray chiffon chador. Almost down to the ankles. But then she had her legs crossed and she had high open-toed shoes and what looked like painted nails. And the way she was seated she was kind of waggling her foot in front of his face. And this is a serious interview about what the Saudis will do if we have to go to war. That's good bad TV.