TV is the New Reading

‘Men of a Certain Age’ off to a great start

TNT Monday premiered a clever enough basic-cable answer to ABC’s “Desperate Housewives.”

In a world that has largely resisted shows centered on clever alpha-schlubs (I’m thinking here specifically of ABC’s “Big Shots” and “Surviving Suburbia”), TNT’s new vaguely comic drama “Men of a Certain Age,” which premiered on the heels of the fifth-season resume of “The Closer,” seems to keep its goals attainable.

Ray Romano, Scott Bakula and Andre Braugher are old friends who are becoming older friends, dealing with the increasing indignities of age, ill and failing health, midlife crises, alienation from their families and just trying to figure out what’s supposed to be going on at this stage in their lives.

Romano plays Joe, manager at a party supply store. His gambling has gotten him in trouble with his wife, and they’re separated, further distancing him from his teenage daughter and tweener son. This week he’s lost to the tune of $2,200. He scrapes it together but in an attempt to take control of his situation, he tries stiffing his bookie. When he sees his bookie isn’t doing any better than he is, however, he makes the payment.

Braugher plays Owen, a family man who seems to have it made – heir apparent to his father’s auto dealership. His father holds his every mistake over him which, together with the soft market, is making life tough for him in terms of sales. Not helping is the fact that younger, more personable sales staff overtake his numbers, and his father comes right out and tells him he’s an embarrassment, he’s not worthy to take over the company and he’s no longer sales manager. Owen would quit except he’s awash in debt and prospects aren’t good for a man in imperfect health and in his very late 40s.

Terry, Bakula’s character, is the playboy of the three. A no-less aging playboy. He’s a middle manager at a fairly anonymous accounting firm that pays the bills between acting gigs. He’s not thrilled with the roles that are open to him these days, but he’s still drawn to it – much more than he is to his noon-to-5 job, where he’s not too committed at all.

Fans may recall the defining title image behind Marc Cherry’s “Desperate Housewives” was Susan’s ex, Karl, quoting to her Thoreau’s classic remark, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Susan’s response: “Really, and what do women lead? Lives of noisy fulfillment?”

So in “Men of a Certain Age,” Terry leads the lunchtime conversation between himself, Joe and Owen noting that he would hate a job in sales. “It’s Sisyphean,” he said, referencing the cursed king Sisyphus from Greek mythology, forced to spend his days rolling a stone up a hill, only to have it roll down again. Terry pointed out in sales, whatever you accomplish by the end of the month, the slate gets wiped clean and you have to start over from scratch.

Generally, I’m pleased with the show and will probably keep tuning in. It seems to have a different, more character-driven take on things. It doesn’t seem preoccupied with male-bonding cliches of sports, sex or Levitra references – relationships crop up, yes, and the interactions seem human. It spends more time than most shows inside the heads of its characters.

It’s billed as a comedy but it takes itself seriously, and it treats its characters with enough dignity that it carries us along. You find yourself rooting for these flawed, hapless scraps of humanity and sharing their situations – well, OK, I’m having trouble with Joe’s preoccupation with the possum he hit with his car – but let’s just say the show explores a wide range of largely relatable experiences.

'Alice'

This weekend provides an excellent opportunity for compare and contrast.

First, Minot State University’s Campus Players stage a traditional mash-up among Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass,” which you can experience as an excellent theatrical interpretation of these fanciful and whimsical characters.

Then on Sunday you can switch over to Syfy for a much different take on the tale.
In the four-hour miniseries, Caterina Scorsone (”Missing”) appears as Alice, a young martial arts instructor who is falling in love with Jack Heart, who she believes may be “The One.” When she follows him through the Looking Glass and experiences his strange psychadelic world, her attentions are drawn to other mysteries that touch much more closely to home.

Viewers can expect some imaginative set design and intriguing twists on the beloved classic. We quickly discover Alice is more than capable of holding her own in this strange new world. Assisted by Andrew Lee Potts as Hatter, “Eureka’s” Matt Frewer as the White Knight and a charmingly bespectacled Harry Dean Stanton as the Caterpillar, Alice pits her lot against the Drs. Dee and Dum, the assassin Mad March, a mercurial collector of “oysters” the White Rabbit and Cathy Bates as the Queen of Hearts herself.

The full four-hour production encores on Syfy Sunday beginning at 4 p.m.

Blog, podcast

This week I received a voicemail from a reader complaining that I ignored the “Monk” finale last Friday.

It’s true that I don’t write about absolutely everything on television (although some weeks it feels like it), but this is as good an opportunity as any to mention that apart from this column, I write a weekly blog that appears weekends on our Web site at (www.minotdailynews.com). In the past two weeks I did in fact write extensively about that show’s series finale and then, in a second entry over this past weekend, shared my reactions to it.

Also, along with this column and my blog, I record a podcast available at (http://tjaman.libsyn.com) which is also downloadable through a free subscription at iTunes.

So ... enjoy!

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