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Adios, Junnifer Love Hewitt! Meet the future Mrs. Christopher Gray. So she’s a cartoon… |
And speaking of pop songs that make you want to claw your eardrums out from the inside, wasn’t Party of Five (Wednesdays, 8pm, FOX) already cloying and manipulative enough without Shania “Take the A” Twain warbling that putrescent “Still the One” song over the premiere promo? The sight of Bailey (Scott Wolf) and Sarah (Jennifer Love Hewitt) all doe-eyed over each other already makes me want to puke. Stir in that noxious song, and it makes me wistful for the time I got food poisoning and popped blood vessels in my eyeball from retching so hard. Lifetime is now showing PO5 (weekdays; 9am, 6pm, LIFE) from back in the days when Neve Campbell‘s Julia had long hair (and a miscarriage), Charlie (Matthew Fox) hadn’t got the big HIDS (horrible illness during sweeps), and prepubescent Claudia (Lacey Chabert) was still perfecting that super-ultra-extra meaningful eyebrow twitch. Stock up on insulin or suffer the consequences.
Other salient season premiere dates: Ally McBeal (9/14, 8pm, FOX), ER (9/24, 9pm, NBC), and if The X-Files has new episodes before Thanksgiving, you can color me surprised. Chris Carter is going to take as long as he can before he explains, bee or no bee, why Scully and Mulder never consummated that liplock scene in the movie. Next year he should give the Lone Gunmen their own summer series to help ease the separation anxiety.
Well, it’s finally happened.
My carefully cultivated resistance to cartoon influence – which had lasted from the Superfriends to South Park – is but a memory. The culprit is a teenage girl so angsty she makes Claudia seem as poised as Sarah McLachlan at a NOW fundraiser. Yes, I’ve fallen hard, fallen fast, and fallen far. I’m in love with Daria (weekdays, 1:30pm, MTV). I don’t know if it’s those erotic eyeglasses, that supple green sweater, or her withering wit, but something pins me to the couch every afternoon, and it’s not always a hangover. (Yeah, I know she is but a sophomore, but I remember fondly the words of the prophet Wooderson: “That’s what I love about high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.”) Sharper than Irvin’s scissors, Daria is as out of place in the otherwise insipid MTV lineup as My So-Called Life was in prime time a few years ago. Daria suffers the ignominies of being a “brain” as well as anyone with a future Tri-Delt pledge for a sister, two go-getter Sixties retreads for parents, and “Morgendorfer” as a last name could be expected to. And what she has to put up with at school � especially from first-string QB/hunky monkey Kevin, (air)head cheerleader Brittany, and the vile Upchuck – with only her arty, sardonic friend Jane as a buttress, would have turned Jan Brady to Santeria long ago.
The show pegs perfectly the slings and arrows of high school (jeez, has it really been five years since I was there?) while skewering a healthy number of Nineties alterna-icons along the way. Still, the best part by far is watching Daria work through her awakening feelings towards Jane’s slacker-supreme older brother Trent, lead singer of Mystik Spyral. Her normal reaction is to turn redder than Leon Trotsky at the mere mention of Trent’s name, and whenever he pays attention to her (like the episode where he took her to get her navel pierced under the pretense of buying Jane a birthday present), she clams up tighter than Billy Corgan’s guitar strings. I swear, the first time she tells him, “It hurts to look at you,” I think I’m going to cry. Be sure to tune in to the annual MTV Video Music Awards (9/10, 7pm) to cheer on we-knew-’em-when boys Fastball as “The Way” contends for Best Video by a New Artist. Tony Scalzo, Miles Zuniga, and Joey Shuffield are up against Chumbawamba, Mase, Natalie Imbruglia, and the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, so root extra hard – they’ll need it. You can also probably count on host Ben Stiller doing at least a dozen semen-behind-the-ear jokes. Tasty.
Parting Shots: Josie Bissett
may be back, but it looks like the great Melrose cast exodus is set to begin, with Billy (Andrew Shue) headed off to Rome, and Brooke Langton (Sam), Alyssa Milano (Jennifer), and Lisa Rinna (Taylor) following him out the door. Unfortunately, the insufferable Coop (Linden Ashby) appears to be staying, though why someone hasn’t whacked this protozoan by now is beyond me. Perhaps once Peter (Jack Wagner) completes his win-Amanda-back scheming – if ever – he’ll see to it. Also, the prison drama Oz (8/31, 10pm, HBO) calls it a season this week, which means the graphic overacting quotient on television is about to go way down (just like some of the inmates), except of course for Party of Five. The next time Bailey gets busted for DWI they should just ship him off to Emerald City. That’d teach him a thing or two.
Take a station break at TVEye@auschron.com
This article appears in August 28 • 1998 and August 28 • 1998 (Cover).