Apparently, this is the week I love Bravo reality shows (or former Bravo, sorry Project Runway). I just last night got around to watching the season finale of Top Chef Masters, which aired last week, and I would like to announce my huge chef crush on Rick Bayless. Of course, it’s impossible to know with reality shows what got cut and what was edited to appear differently than it actually happened, but from everything shown on Top Chef Masters, Rick Bayless comes off as the classiest, most professional, passionate, meticulous, talented guy. And come on, look at him! (This is after judge Jay Rayner announced that Rick took Jay’s molé virginity.)

Rick Bayless; Oaxacan black mole

Aside from my newfound love of Rick Bayless, I think it’s worth mentioning that Top Chef Masters

It's okay, Art Smith. You can stop crying now.

was a pretty classy show in a lot of ways. The dynamic between the chef-contestants was totally different than on any other reality show. Rather than the desperately fame-seeking former celebrities who show up on places like The Surreal Life or the painfully ambitious young designers trying to claw their way into Fashion Week on Project Runway, the men and women who participated on Top Chef Masters are all extremely successful chefs who are doing it entirely for charity, fun and bragging rights. Sure, they want to win, but their lives are not on the line, and they all seemed comfortable enough with themselves to not be too threatened by the competition.

That kind of participant led to an entirely different type of reality show than the standard worst-behavior-makes-the-best-television programming. These people were nice to each other. They genuinely liked and respected each other. Whenever they were able, they helped and praised each other. For the most part, they seemed like decent human beings. I’m telling you, it was like watching some alternate reality show universe! One of the better examples of this bizarre, Twilight Zone television experience was the mystery box challenge, where each chef had to fill a box with ingredients that another chef would have to cook with. On the regular Top Chef, or on really any other show, this is an opportunity to screw someone over. Put pig’s ear in there, or Cool Ranch Doritos, or frozen fish fillets. Fill it with stuff you know they hate. And instead, all of the chefs ran around Whole Foods trying to fill their baskets with stuff they knew their fellow chefs would love to cook with. Roy Yamaguchi gave Art Smith a box he was thrilled with, and Roy told the cameras, “I really believe you have to give people opportunities and set them up for success rather than failure.” I think it was a first in the history of reality television.

By the end, it was clear the producers had conned onto the make love, not war atmosphere, and started giving them challenges best suited to making great meals. The final challenge was for each chef to re-create their lives as chefs in a four course meal, beginning with their first food memories and working through the dish that made them want to be chefs, a dish associated with opening their first restaurants, and a dish that represented their futures. As Kelly Choi explained it to the chefs, their faces lit up with pleasure. (Kelly Choi, by the way, was the one dark spot on the whole feel-good experience. Kelly Choi had the charisma and sparkle of a Barbie doll. Kelly Choi made Padma Lakshmi look like a rocket scientist with the food skills of Jacques Pepin.)

Final three challengers: Rick Bayless, Hubert Keller, Michael Chiarello

It’s not as though they weren’t competitive, and Art Smith didn’t cry every episode, and some of the chefs didn’t swear incessantly. It was still good, dramatic, entertaining television. But unlike Rock of Love or The Bachelor, it didn’t leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth (or a visually-transmitted venereal disease). So here’s to you, Top Chef Masters. I’m glad the regular Top Chef has returned to fill the void you’re leaving behind, but you’ve left my expectations a bit higher than they were before, and I think anything else is going to feel a little disappointing.

A brief post on yesterday’s Mad Men while waiting at the Newark Airport:

Certainly, the most memorable and alarming moments from the episode last night were courtesy of the Ann-Margret clips from Bye Bye, Birdie, which was released in 1963. Seen as part of that whole wacky movie, the scenes with the buxom young lady singing “Bye Bye, Birdie” and lunging seductively at the camera aren’t all that shocking. I mean, it’s a movie with Dick van Dyke and a scene in a secret Shriner’s meeting, so everything feels equally aggressive and shrill. Within the context of Matthew Weiner’s restrained, subtly crafted visual aesthetic, though, those clips from Bye Bye, Birdie are jarring beyond belief. The disconnect becomes even more apparent as Peggy sings “Bye Bye, Birdie” to herself in the mirror, and that intense juxtaposition highlights the real tension of the episode. The first episode of this season was about masculinities, featuring images of Don as Don Draper and Dick Whitman, thrilling male love between Sal and the bellboy, the sparring between Pete and Ken. This second episode, “Love Among the Ruins,” was about femininities, and the distinct gap between Peggy’s reality and the fantasy she sells in advertising. As a part of that scheme, we also saw the conflicts in Roger’s daughter’s wedding planning, hints of Joan’s expectations for impending motherhood, and Betty’s struggle with her role as an adult daughter. It might be telling that the episode’s title, “Love Among the Ruins,” is also the title of a poem from Robert Browning’s 1855 collection, Men and Women.

After laying out the contemporary boundaries of these gendered roles, Don also gives us the key to how this season will proceed, by selling the Madison Square Garden on a message of change and progress. Peggy may be looking in the mirror and pretending to be Ann-Margret, but her own behavior and the power she wields in walking out of that nice young man’s apartment, suggests her own readiness for changed paradigms.

BBC is currently airing a miniseries called Desperate Romantics. It’s about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of British painters in the nineteenth-century who pioneered a new visual aesthetic, worked with classical and medieval themes, resisted the cloying sentimentalism of the prevailing culture, and were totally obsessed with long wavy red hair. The main characters in the show are Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais (the brotherhood), Effie Gray, Lizzie Siddal, and Annie Miller (their famous and infamous muses), and several other amusing historical figures that stalk in and out of the script. In plots that are generally rather than specifically accurate, everyone sleeps with everyone else, vows true loyalty and then betrays each other, has terrible public scandals, and teeters precariously between artistic integrity, human decency, and financial solvency. It’s really quite entertaining, is what I’m saying.

The Brotherhood: Fred Walters, John Millais, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, William Holman Hunt

John Ruskin

The great thing about Desperate Romantics is that it treats its subjects and its period with almost no respect or reverence. Far from genius painters eternally considering the wisdom of the ages, the Brotherhood sweeps through the lower-class London social scene with verve and enthusiasm. And the gossip flows freely: one of the most influential men of his age, John Ruskin, actually has never gotten up the urge to sleep with his wife of five years (possibly because he’s into much younger female bodies), and hires Millais to seduce her. Poor Ms. Ruskin has to undergo a physical exam to certify her virginity at the divorce hearings! Of course, the eminent Charles Dickens is much more likely to be spotted down in the brothels with William Holman Hunt than isolated in his study like Ruskin.  It’s like an episode of The Real Housewives of New York City, but with more sex scenes!

And, to be fair, also more painting. What little respect does maintain a foothold in the series is reserved almost entirely for the infrequent masterpieces the Brotherhood manages to produce. Millais may have almost killed Lizzie Siddal by forcing her to model half-submerged in cold water, and Rossetti may have nearly murdered Millais for endangering the love of his life, but the camera scans Millais’ Ophelia with a loving eye. The reminder of why these self-indulgent, immature men deserve our retrospective attention comes as a palpable relief. The series’ creators and producers have described it as “Entourage with easels,” but those brief moments of historical clarity are a significant departure from Entourage. Yes, Desperate Romantics is about a group of young men struggling for artistic success, and but the fact of their historical relevancy adds a predetermined sense of conclusion to the series. Unlike the boys on Entourage, perpetually fearing they may quickly slip into oblivion, the long historical eye ensures artistic success from the moment the first episode begins.

Lizzie Siddal modeling for John Millais; detail from Millais' Ophelia

The series’ one major misstep is the inclusion of a completely fictional character, Fred Walters, who joins the Brotherhood as a sort of honorary, non-painter friend. As a composite of several other historical hangers-on, I suppose Fred is meant to give us an outside eye on the Brotherhood and to provide us some contemporary moral compass against which to measure their quirks and faults. But in reality, Fred’s dopey, well-meant impulses toward reason and conventionality feel burdensome and saccharine, exactly the kind of sentimentality the Brotherhood claim to abhor. You’re left wondering why they would ever bear to have him around, and yet he keeps showing up, claiming to love revolution and nature.

Overall, though, Desperate Romantics is good for a lot of giggling at Victorian sex, a lot of snickering at artistic temperaments, and a palatable dose of art history.

I got a B minus?!

I’ve been trying to figure out how to update my initial post about ABC Family’s 10 Things I Hate About You adaptation, and then yesterday Jezebel came along and helped me out. In this post about the show (which is full of episode clips, if you’re interested), Jezebel’s Dodai Stewart writes about the way Kat’s feminism has influenced the plot and dialogue, to the extent that recent episodes have revolved almost entirely around Kat’s feminist consciousness. Dodai suggests that the episode, which features Kat turning in a paper about discovering Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, effectively deals with issues of feminism and teenagerhood. Kat learns that her highbrow, liberal values don’t necessarily translate into quality work if she doesn’t put in the effort of emotional investment, and that just because she’s right doesn’t mean she’s not also “preachy.” I’m happy to agree with Dodai on this – being socially conscious does not preclude being self-obsessed. Compared to the average episode of The Secret Life of the American Teenager, 10 Things I Hate About You is positively philosophical.

One reason that’s been possible is the near complete excision of the actual plot of Taming of the Shrew. The character meant to be Kat’s love interest, Patrick Verona, lurks in the background, but without the financial incentive from the original plot, he’s lost his entire motivation for pursuing her. There are a few scenes where Kat finds him mysterious and possibly attractive, but he actively avoids her, thus freeing Kat to figure out how to convert her car to biodiesel. Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew inevitably ends with a Tamed Shrew, finally recalled to her feminine duties by a powerful male protagonist. On this new adaptation, Kat’s left to tame or not tame herself as she sees fit.

So that’s all well and good, right? It’s a show about strong female characters! It’s feminism that promotes confidence and self-reliance but not the nasty man-hating, anti-leg-shaving bits! Except that Dodai’s post on Jezebel doesn’t address the episode’s other main plotline, the shenanigans of Kat’s sister Bianca. While Kat’s off learning about compassion and emotional honesty, Bianca and her friend decide to star in a sexy internet show in order to earn money to buy purses. I know, you’d think I was playing that up for effect to make it seem even worse than it is, but I’m truly not. They start a subscription internet show to make money, and quickly realize they’ll get more viewers if they make out with each other. So they do. And they only get shut down when Bianca’s dad finds out.

Bianca and Dawn's web show and their avidly viewing audience

Okay, okay, I get it, that’s the whole point of the show. Kat’s the feminist/shrew/intelligent one, and Bianca’s the popular/attractive/shallow one, and they both need to learn how to find fulfilling relationships. But isn’t there a difference between shallow popularity grabs and selling oneself on the internet for designer accessories? Shouldn’t Bianca’s dad have gotten way more angry about her willingness to prostitute herself than the chance a college admissions officer might one day see her doing it?

This is why I took so long to update my impressions of the show as it’s developed, because even after six episodes I still can’t decide whether it’s a worthwhile endeavor gone awry or something too complicated and poorly conceived to ever succeed.

Last night I watched a show that is a strong contender for the single stupidest thing currently on television. Forget the religious debates of Secret Life of the American Teenager, forget the absurd mishmash of genres on Defying Gravity, forget the ethically ambiguous voyeurism of Jon and Kate Plus 8. Let’s just set all of that aside and boil a show down to its most crudely entertaining element. Let’s find a form of humor that is universal, impossible to mess up, and cheap to produce. Let’s make an entire show about watching people hurt themselves, and then make fun of them while they do it. That’s right, the premise of this show is to watch “ordinary Americans” run through an impossible, absurd-looking obstacle course, and then mock them as they crash and burn. Join me as I narrate this gallery of screenshots from last night’s episode of Wipeout.

“The epic competition begins right now, to see who will emerge victorious, and who will…Wipeout.” Spoiler alert: they will all wipeout.

The most reliably cringe-inducing segment of the course is without a doubt this one, the “Big Balls.” No one ever makes it across, so the goal is to fall without hurting yourself. Few people succeed.

THREE POUNDS OF LOVE!!

Although the course produces most of the humor, the participants are also sources of entertainment. The wackiest one last night was this guy, who was trying to win the money for his bunny rabbit Yams. When he was interviewed before running the course, he shouted “LOOK AT HIM! THREE POUNDS! THREE POUNDS OF LOVE!” While on the spinner, he talked into the camera about the proper care and feeding of rabbits. (“Rabbits are lagomorphs, you know what lagomorphs means?”) Jumping across the Big Balls, he yelled, “All right Yams, I love ya!” It was…weird. And he didn’t win.

This guy came in a close second for wackiness. He did an Irish jig every time he finished a challenge.

This guy won. But after all that, did he really win? Or do we all, viewers and participants alike, end this experience a little worse off than we started? Perhaps I’m missing the point. Maybe what’s going on here is actually a form of brilliance, a focused, concentrated work of hilarious humiliation, meant to make us question our own solipsistic understanding of the universe and the essential nihilism of human existence. If that were the case, then Wipeout would have to enter the canon of great works of human achievement, a post-modern globalized vision (it was adapted from Japanese game shows) of mankind as united by the ultimate fragility of our bodies and the central cruelty of our basest selves. Maybe it reminds us that we are all equal in the face of the unmerciful, undiscriminating Big Balls.

But I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure it’s just awful.

I was going to write about Better Off Ted today, but I can’t. I can’t write about what I haven’t watched, and I haven’t watched it because I can’t stop barreling through this season of True Blood. For the uninitiated, True Blood is another entry in the current cultural obsession with creepy supernatural monsters, particularly vampires. The show’s premise is that vampires have lived secretly for centuries, but the recent Japanese creation of a synthetic blood product (True Blood) has allowed them to “come out of the coffin” and exist openly. One especially genteel and tortured vampire, Bill Compton, falls in love with a mindreading waitress named Sookie Stackhouse, and things go from there.

On True Blood, everything is literally and metaphorically fluid – death and life, male and female, human and monster, youth and age, all of these rigid binaries break down and death slips into life as easily as the drag queen/short order chef Lafayette straddles the gender line. The slippery, liquid flexibility that defines True Blood’s thematic content permeates the landscape as well, and Sookie’s Louisiana hometown perpetually oozes moisture. True Blood is wet, from the lakes, creeks and swamps in the surrounding forest, to the sweat glistening on every un-air-conditioned body, to the blood streaming from puncture wounds, smeared on bed sheets, and dripping from vampire fangs.

The show’s full embrace of this sodden aesthetic allows it to also slip across seemingly impenetrable binary lines: True Blood is as high-concept and politically conscious as it is completely, utterly, and shamelessly trashy. The opening credits carefully cut together images of religious zealotry and toothy monstrosities to establish vampire-hatred as a form of bigotry, most concisely expressed in a road sign that reads, “God hates fangs.” Particularly in the second season, as Sookie’s brother Jason joins the anti-vampire Light of Day Institute, the dangerous, corrupt forms of Christian extremism come under intense scrutiny. It’s a reasonably sophisticated examination of the changing American debate on homosexuality.

God hates fangs, an anti-vampire board game, and Steve Newlin of the Light of Day Institute appearing on cable news

At the same time, it’s no wonder the most recent episodes have had record-breaking audiences, because True Blood is about as explicitly, gleefully sexual as you can get without actually requiring a

Um, this was the safest orgy screenshot I could find

government ID to buy it. Every character spends an implausible amount of time without clothes on, and the whole premise of vampire feeding has been essentially a mask for sexual activity going all the way back to Dracula. The second season manages to push the limits of reason even further by building an entire plotline around a character who entrances everyone into a nightly, county-wide orgy. To accuse True Blood of sexual obscenity is like accusing the earth of being a little roundish looking. And it’s not just sexy – it’s really, unremittingly trashy. Blood and gore spray the set like a classic drive in horror movie and Sookie, with her Barbie body and curly blonde hair, cheerfully bounces through the worst of it, naïve and smitten with Bill the Vampire.

The whole project is also pretty damn fun. The second season has done a great job of expanding the supernatural world beyond just vampirism, and now the whole American South seems to be teeming with shapeshifters, demigods and mindreaders. It is ridiculous, and campy, and sometimes as sharply pointed as a well-made wooden stake.

EDITED TO ADD:

Okay, so I wrote this before I had finished the most recent episode, and I’d like to throw out a few public service announcements, just in case they would be useful for anyone. If someone serves you something called “Hunter’s Souffle,” and it looks like this, a few notes:

First, clearly what you have here is some form of shepherd’s pie. Rather than a fluffy custard all the way through, the crust on this dish is lying on top of a stew-like substance – definitely not a souffle. So that’s your first red flag. Second, THAT IS BLOOD YOU IDIOTS, STOP EATING IT.

Mr. Monk

This weekend saw the return of two major USA crime procedural shows, Monk and Psych. In a New York Times piece from last week, Mike Hale writes about Monk and its role in establishing the humorous hour-long crime genre, and he also mentions the similarities between these cable programs and shows like CBS’s The Mentalist, which was wildly successful last year. Hale points out that the season premiere episode of Psych mocks The Mentalist for ripping off its premise, but suggests that The Mentalist owes much more to Monk (and further, detective fiction all the way back to Sherlock Holmes).

Hale is right, of course, to point out the incredibly tight-knit chain of influence in crime drama television and the mystery genre more broadly. In wanting to reach farther back into television and literary history, though Hale ignores a crucial shared quality of Psych and The Mentalist that speaks volumes about the evolving figure of the detective.

Shawn Spencer on Psych

The premise of Psych is that a goofy guy named Shawn Spencer and his sidekick Gus help solve crimes for the Santa Barbara Police Department, except Shawn pretends to use psychic power to glean information about the investigation. Shawn’s impressive intellect allows him to scan the room for clues and then guess information accurately enough to persuade his clients that he can actually read their minds. In order to better sell the ruse, Shawn and Gus close their eyes and try to access magic spirits, speak in tongues while translating for ghosts, and use any available form of psychic-y nonsense to distract their clients while figuring out the crime. CBS’s show The Mentalist is essentially the same, except Patrick Jane doesn’t pretend to use ESP and instead relies on tools like hypnotism, behavioral science, and psychology to provide uncanny hints about the murderer’s identity. While Jane claims not to use psychic powers, his hunches and suggestions are as accurate as they are frequently inexplicable.

Patrick Jane on The Mentalist

The connection here is much more than just “quirky detective notices things you don’t,” which is essentially the legacy left by Sherlock Holmes and Monk. Fictional detectives like Shawn Spencer and Patrick Jane play with the idea that intelligence is a form of magic, accessible only to those with otherworldly gifts. While Sherlock Holmes perpetually scolded Watson for failing to see what was right in front of him, Psych and The Mentalist reward incuriosity by building a wall between our faulty observational abilities and the detective’s supernatural skill. The pretend psychic power is a classic misdirection – while we laugh at the poor saps who think the detective has actual magic power, we actually fall into that very same belief, substituting intelligence for mystical muscle.

Detectives have always been figures of impressive mental strength, and Sherlock Holmes enjoyed flaunting his towering intellect, but the best of them have always been relentlessly human. When Colonel Hastings clucked in amazement at a stroke of particular genius, Poirot always reminded him that it was merely “the little grey cells,” the same brain as anyone else. Peter Wimsey was certainly intelligent, and would often come to a conclusion after dramatic moments of pacing the floor, but he was always plagued by doubt regarding the morality of his actions. Adam Dalgliesh does a good job, and nearly always gets his man, but success comes more from careful interviewing and forensic footwork than an uncanny acumen. The problem with a detective whose intelligence morphs into magic is that he is in danger of no longer being human, not a psychic-detective but instead a computer-detective. As fun and entertaining as a computer-detective might be to watch, a sharp spectacle of diagnostic and investigative skill is nowhere near as absorbing as a portrait of a human detective.

Warehouse 13 has not grown on me. It’s not entirely Warehouse 13’s fault – I’ve been watching Slings & Arrows this weekend, a completely great, super-literary drama about a troupe of Shakespearean actors from Canada. Each season is about a Shakespearean tragedy (Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear), and about the surrounding culture of theater, the arts, actors and directors, stage production, madness, mortality, comedy, sex, etc. etc. etc. As you’d expect, whatever happens onstage influences the tone and themes of the other plotlines, and there’s a nice collection of compelling minor characters to round out the less subtle main character arcs.

It’s not just that a show like Warehouse 13 looks petty and fluffy in comparison. They’re completely different shows, and it’s unfair to force them into an apples/oranges situation. The bigger problem is that Slings & Arrows has made it clear for me why exactly Warehouse 13 doesn’t work.

Let’s look at season two of Slings & Arrows briefly. Don’t worry if you haven’t seen it; the point is going to be reasonably superficial. Okay, so we’ve got a Canadian theater troupe putting on a Shakespeare festival, and this year they’re doing Macbeth. It’s a big show, everyone’s freaked out about it and whether or not it’s cursed, there are major conflicts between the probably crazy director and the actor playing the lead role, and everything’s hanging by a thread. On the small stage, a different director is putting on Romeo and Juliet. He’s doing all sorts of torturous things to the production and yelling stuff like “they’re not characters, they’re signifiers!” and in the middle of it all, the actor and actress who play Romeo and Juliet fall in love. (Romeo started the season thinking he was gay, but whatever).

Joanne Kelly on Slings & Arrows

Look at that cute young ingénue playing Juliet. Isn’t she adorable, ridiculously nervous and happy? Okay, she looks a little weird in that last shot, but in the context of the episode, she’s feeling moved by her co-star’s sexual awakening. Anyhow, she was great in Sling & Arrows.  Haven’t I seen her somewhere else?

Joanne Kelly on Warehouse 13

Oh right! Here she is, Joanne Kelly, playing the lead actress in Warehouse 13! Except now she’s all dressed in official jewel-tone lady-FBI-agent-wear, and she looks much less happy. Sure, her character’s not really supposed to be happy, but there’s so much less sparkle and effervescence. This is really my problem with most of Warehouse 13: I get that it’s a fun show about wacky historical artifacts causing trouble in the modern world, and I love the steampunk aesthetic, but I don’t get nearly enough sense of the capability and teamwork from the two main characters that makes these buddy-cop genres work. She’s straight edge and he’s all instinct, and together the idea is that they make a great team. In reality, though, any conflict between them falls flat, so that when they do manage get on the same page, it doesn’t feel special.

Honestly, my favorite thing about Warehouse 13 at this point is still the opening credits, which almost single-handedly rescue the show by including this gem:

Wouldn’t that just make an excellent blog banner?

In all that I’ve written about the programming on ABC Family, I haven’t actually mentioned the one show I’ve actually been watching every week. Along with 10 Things I Hate About You and Ruby and the Rockits, ABC Family also premiered a new show this summer called Make It or Break It, about the world of competitive gymnastics.

Not until after her gold medal

On the one hand, it is basically what you’d expect. Girls form cliques and alliances, parents are overprotective or abusive or inattentive, one girl is too poor for new workout clothes, one girl is super focused but risking injury. It’s a watered down, poorly-written, much less aesthetically pleasing version of Friday Night Lights. Except, of course, that it’s on ABC Family, which means that the gym rules require no dating so the cute couple has to sneak around late at night. The most egregious moment of ABC Family-ness is when the super focused girl, more competitive and driven than anyone else, finds out one of her teammates lost her virginity. “Aren’t you afraid having sex will stimulate your hormones or something? You get big boobs and big hips. It could kill your gymastics. How can you take a risk on something like that? Our bodies are everything we have, everything we work for. I’m not having sex until I have a gold medal, and maybe not even after that.” Marriage or gold medal, either way, it’s always better to wait.

Candace Cameron returns!

On the other hand… it’s not… gahh, all right, I’ll say it. It’s not awful. While the nostalgia of the Cassidy brothers on Ruby and the Rockits completely fails to capture my attention, I do get a kick out of watching Candace Cameron (DJ from Full House) play a sickly earnest Christian secretary who falls in love with the dad of one of the gymnasts. And it’s hard to go wrong with the full-on absurdity of this scene, wherein the girls go on a road trip, are menaced by some hooligans at a gas station, and scare them off by doing gymnastics at them. I know, hilarious! And I think the difference between the ridiculousness of this show and the painful sincerity of The Secret Life of the American Teenager is that at least Make It or Break It has a sense of humor. So, I guess what I’m saying is, if you were stuck on a desert island and the only channel you managed to get with your scrap-metal antenna was ABC Family and Greek wasn’t on… you could probably watch this without gouging your eyes out.

The standard critical line on last night’s premiere of the new show Defying Gravity seems to be that it’s a ridiculously canned retelling of Grey’s Anatomy, but with astronauts. Hot young new girl has drunken sex with mentor figure the night before becoming a candidate, a group of attractive people in a high pressure job struggle with interpersonal relationships, cheesy cliché-laden voice-overs. Yep, Grey’s Anatomy. Hey look, your clothes allow you to experience gravity on the spaceship, so when you take them off…

My only problem with pigeonholing Defying Gravity quite that simplistically is that there does seem to be a bit more going on here. In fact, there’s a lot more going on here: while the soap opera takes

Do Astronauts Dream of Naked Women? (Yes.)

place at one end of the spaceship, there appears to be an unknown extraterrestrial life form locked in Pod 4, and it’s actually running this six-year mission. Only the crew’s commander and select personnel back on earth know about it, but when the Antares gets to Venus, crazy stuff is going to happen. Right now, the unknown whatever it is in Pod 4 is just giving Hot Young Woman Astronaut and Damaged Mentor Male Astronaut bizarre dreams. Which leads us to yet another thing this show seems to be trying to do. The one-night stand between Hot Young Woman Astronaut and Damaged Mentor Male Astronaut back on earth made Hot Young Woman Astronaut into a hot young pregnant astronaut, but in the year 2048, abortion has been made illegal. Hot Young Woman Astronaut aborts the baby anyway, but now she and Damaged Mentor Male Astronaut are having the crazy dreams where she’s drifting, pregnant, into the vacuum of space. With some nice back light effect.

Okay, so far we’ve got Sex in Space, a mysterious alien puppeteer, and a healthy dose of bioethics. Next, let’s add some spirituality. ABC aired the first two episodes last night, and in the first one, Damaged Mentor Male Astronaut keeps asking everyone what their religion is and whether they believe in fate. (He asks a Hindu and a Buddhist, but so far we haven’t seen anyone answer, “I’m a Baptist. Deal with it!”) When mysterious alien puppeteer rigs the mission so that the Hindu Astronaut has a heart murmur and has to return back to earth, Hindu Astronaut freaks out and takes a space walk with a statue of Ganesha, the lord of obstacles. (This is another problem with unintelligent space shows: the ultimate terror is getting sucked into the vacuum, so every other episode features someone drifting off into space in a leaky suit.)

Gripping Ganesha while sitting comfortably on the space station, stuck on a tether with a leaky spacesuit

So, there’s Sex in Space, mysterious alien puppeteer, a Roe v. Wade debate, and some Eastern mysticism. This is starting to feel a little serious, so let’s make sure to include a few Astronaut jokes. For example, let’s have an astronaut describe her experiment on fertilizing rabbit eggs in space and talk about the determination of sperm, and then let’s do a cut to astronauts in swimsuits. Heh. Swimmers.

"Look at that determination!" "Today we'll be testing your basic swim skills."

My problem isn’t that Defying Gravity is what Dan Fienberg dubbed “Grey’s Astronomy” – if it were just that show, that would be one thing. It would probably be bad and boring, but at least it would be coherent. Instead, Defying Gravity seems to be attempting to build its own science fiction mythology while also doing political and religious commentary, while also doing Funny Sex in Space. Battlestar Galactica could rub its tummy and pat its head at the same time, but Defying Gravity is nowhere near smart enough for that. The show comes off as a confusing tonal mishmash, where the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. If it wants to succeed, Defying Gravity needs to hold off figuring out how to defy gravity and focus on defying my bullshit meter.