Confused by viewer comments

It’s very true that I don’t completely understand television programs.

I know some things about them. I know why adorable children and puppies get added to the casts of ailing shows. I know why the cleavage becomes more pronounced in November. I know a viewership in the 20-million range can spark some pretty outrageous diva behavior.

But I don’t understand viewers, either – or at least the ones who participate in viewer forums.

Just for one example, take the viewer response on “The Cape.”

Initially I could say that while I disagreed with them, I understood why some fans weren’t very enthusiastic. To start with, it was on NBC, which had treated its last superhero series “Heroes” so poorly and ended it so ridiculously. It was replacing “The Event,” a sci-fi offering which in my opinion has disappointed expectations at every turn, but oh well. And this in the wake of the “FlashForward” fiasco on ABC and the ongoing conspiracy nuthouse of “V.”

I could sympathize when they said it was too much of a kids show, although certainly less so than “No Ordinary Family.”

And even the natural fanbase is fragmented. People who are there to watch Summer Glau are annoyed by the 35 minutes or so she’s not in evidence. People who are into comic books are going to find all sorts of developmental problems we ordinary humans will overlook, and it is a rare scene on television that can survive the multiphasic scrutiny of a True Geek. There are also people who didn’t like David Lyons in the title role, and there are people who didn’t like that there was a carnival element to it.

So for weeks the discussion forums have been an endless fountain of complaints against the show, against the cast and crew, against their families. The existence of the show has been taken as some kind of personal insult.

Then we have this past week’s episode, the second in a two-parter focused on a long-lost heir and land baron with a degenerative disease who stands in the way of a corporate ne’er-do-well. This heir, known colloquially as “The Lich,” has spent his life in an asylum apparently degenerating into a homicidal maniac with an apparent fascination with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He wears other people’s skin as his own face, and oh yeah, he’s a screaming loon.

When Summer Glau comes to him with documented proof he’s the owner of the seafront, which could throw a monkeywrench in the plans of corporate ne’er-do-well Peter Fletcher, the Lich thanks her, drugs her and tries to marry her. He’s got plans to drug all of Palm City as well, with his disciples running about, stealing sprayer trucks and so forth to unleash on an unsuspecting parade.

And it’s all very bat villain and Scarecrow and I enjoyed the little twist regarding Orwell, but the reaction to this two-parter has been positive out of all proportion to the quality of the episodes in exactly the same way as the negative reaction had been.

I mean yay, now mom can’t dismiss Trip’s conversations with the Cape as childish fantasy any more, but I think she suspects who he really is. But in that he knows exactly who he really is, isn’t it a bit dangerous to involve his actual family? Not to mention the cloud of smoke is just a diverting illusion. He’s not actually magic. He’s a fully-grown guy, so when he needs to physically leave the locked interrogation room … how’d he do that, exactly?

Never mind, it’s just as good as it always is, which is to say mostly OK – a good story, all things considered, if a bit over the top and campy at times. And it’s running out of episodes so we’ll see whether it comes to any kind of conclusion on Peter Fleming’s alter ego, Chess, at all.

But “The Event” is bringing its storyline to some kind of conclusion in the next few weeks, here, so yay for … oh wait, I’d stopped caring. Oh well, I’ll probably tune in for it, just to watch it end. I don’t get the sense this is the ending the writers had in mind when they started writing it, but at think point I’m just glad to see it go.

I’m not watching the Oscars tonight, by the way. OK, I am. That is, I’m DVRing it, but my God what happened to Michael Douglas? I just saw him in that Wall Street remake! Was he in a fire?! This is what happens when you leave lefse out too long – I think he melted! He fell into the fondue, m’aidez, m’aidez! … oh, wait, that was Kirk Douglas. Never mind.

Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior

I finally got a chance to see “Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior” and I guess CBS needed another cop show. If these producers knew how easy they were to diagnose … let’s start with the crimes. The pilot episode featured a man who went crazy when his family fell apart. The second installment featured men being killed by one-night hookups.

The subtext in this second one for sure is “Don’t hire call girls.” Yes, especially married men need to keep themselves chaste and pure while on the road or they’ll get murdered – by crazy lawyers. Yes, see, criminals’ communications with their lawyers are protected by attorney-client privilege, so if the criminals are especially charismatic – I guess – they’ll influence their crazy lawyers into killing for them. Those crazies.

On top of this, that hypermasculine image of a leather-armored Forest Whitaker as Agent Cooper vrooming to work on a crotchrocket above the thrashing strains of the Rolling Stones, that points to some serious latency. How does Janeane Garofalo’s Agent Griffith get to work? On a bamboo bicycle in a big biege turtleneck with a hemp bag slung over her shoulder and Carole King wailing in the background?

I don’t object to it as strenuously as other critics because I do enjoy Whitaker and Garofalo and Kristin Vangness from the original – the rest of the cast is more than a bit irritating – but … OK, in the pilot episode, the guy had buried his victims in an abandoned lot. It was bad enough that the information went public because some blogger announced it – based on what? Who knows! But everyone ran with the update, and the unsub just happened to be watching television just then, even tho every other time we saw him he was playing happy families with his current abductees. Even worse, when they discovered the abandoned lot, every member of the team was there to look for clues. Really? This is the best use of their resources? That seems unlikely. Especially since … well, um, I don’t know precisely what Agent Prophet actually does except freshly return from a jail sentence for killing a child molester, with muted applause from every direction. He reminds me of Foreman’s dad and he’s gonna kick everyone’s ass. He seems about as stable as warm Jell-O.

What “Suspect Behavior” is – besides an appropriate description of the show – is a SWAT team version of “Criminal Minds” where the profilers like to get in the jail cell with the criminal and intimidate and bat them around some. This is the version for those armchair quarterbacks at home who want to reach through the screen and throttle those nasty naughty ne’er-do-wells and you kids get offa my lawn! Oh, sorry. Turned into Kirk Douglas for a minute there. I’m sure he’ll do a guest spot as an agent soon enough and he’ll leap through the air and tackle the purse-snatcher. CBS is for OLD PEOPLE who want those suspicious-looking hoodlums down the street rounded up in a paddywagon. I swear to God I saw a gold-rush episode on “The Mentalist,” which must’ve been a nice bit of nostalgia for its audience.

Supernatural

The play is still taking lots of my free time so I haven’t gotten to see much this week but I did see the “Supernatural” episode this past Friday. An angel sent the Brothers Winchester into another dimension where they are actually actors in some television program called “Supernatural.” They were confounded by a life full of fake plastic props and actors who look like their counterparts from their own reality but behave so strangely. They had show creator Eric Kripke shot and they berated Robert Singer for writing himself into the show in some capacity. Dean was horrified to discover he was wearing makeup.

Me, I’d almost have preferred to see the corresponding adventures of Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki pulled into the world of “Supernatural,” things popping up and possessing them, summoning spells and things actually happening when they say whatever Latin they remember from the scripts.

But ultimately it was a fun little self-referential episode, titled “The French Mistake,” which seems to be a reference to a scene at the end of “Blazing Saddles” where the characters escape the theater to discover how their movie ends and wind up in other people’s films.

Coming up

“Castle” is the second in a two-part installment, so since I haven’t even seen the first part yet from last week I for one am very much looking forward to a full two hours of “Castle,” starting at 10/9c Monday on ABC.

I see the U.S. version of “Being Human” is still carrying on on Syfy. Now that the third season of the U.K. version has opened Saturdays at 9/8c on BBC America I’m not that interested, but if you are, it’s happening, that’s Mondays at 9/8c on Syfy.

On “V” every sympathetic character is siding against Anna. Now that the final pieces are in place to harvest our DNA from the best and the brightest – that’s not really who I was seeing in that set of live-aboards but oh well – It’s a freaking palace coup up there. Did you all forget so quickly what you all crossed the galaxy to do? And Lisa seemed to have forgotten she’s got a tail. She could’ve lashed out at her mother at any time if she really wanted to, which is making her very difficult to read.

Once again the overarching storyline is that humans are good and everything else is bad and we’re all being manipulated somehow by forces even the conspiracy theorists don’t entirely understand but they know it’s bad. That’s “V” at 9/8c Tuesday on ABC.

On Wednesday night, FOX can’t show us “Glee” or “Raising Hope” but they can show us “Traffic Light”? Nice to have a night off from FOX. Over on ABC we have new episodes of “The Middle” and “Better With You.” Meanwhile, “Cougar Town” is just gone. Oh ABC? What’s going on? Something against comedy? Oh well …

NBC is showing Class B Basketball Thursday nights so I will miss all the the Thursday night programming I’ve been enjoying while FOX has been running “American Idol” Thursdays. Which is a shame because I really have been enjoying it, but these are decisions that get made elsewhere so you all should watch those, that “Community” and such, because they’re awesome, starting at 8/7c Thursdays. Let me know how they are. Are they awesome? I bet they’re awesome. Oh, at 1:05 a.m. our local affiliate is airing the “Wheel of Fortune” because a woman from our region will be playing, so set those DVRs so you can find out if she wins or not. That’s the “Wheel of Fortune” late Thursday night early Friday morning at 1:05 a.m. central time March 4 on NBC. So … there’s that, as well. Enjoy!