TV is the New Reading

‘Minute’ is awful, ‘Flashforward’ returns strong

I’ve got some thoughts to share on “Justified” but I’m going to let them percolate for a bit longer. For now, suffice it to say that if you missed it, you should try to catch it. New episodes air at 10/9c Tuesday on FX.

Also, this weekend marked the third season premiere of “Breaking Bad,” which I haven’t seen as of this comment but based on past performance should be well worth a watch, Sundays at 10/9c on AMC.

And a reminder that “LOST” at 9/8c Tuesday on will be running a few minutes long this week, so set those DVRs, leading in the recap of last fall’s four premiere episodes of “V” at 10:06/9:06c, also on ABC.

'Minute to Win It'

Guy Fieri gets his own network show, but it’s got nothing to do with cooking, which is generally how we came to be aware of him in the first place.

Fieri is a big guy who loves food and loves cooking. He’s got shows on the Food Network and you’ve seen him in T.G.I.Fridays commericals promoting spicy, carnivorous guy food covered in barbecue sauce and crusted with hot wings or something.

In “Minute to Win It,” Sundays on NBC, he is head cheerleader for average Americans trying to perform various skills, in between their extended and recapped slo-mo victory dances for having ... lined up objects or having thrown things through other things or bounced ping-pong balls into a fish bowl, or bobbed their head with a pedometer strapped to it or … oh, all kinds of random tasks within the one-minute time limit.

I can see the network executives coming up with this thing. We’ll dangle $1 million in front of people to get in front of a camera and make fools of themselves! We’ll have product placement, as they knock over soda cans, or toss water bottles, or eat Oreos, and the later challenges will be really hard and they’ll only be able to take a couple of runs at them at the most, and meanwhile, we’ve filled up a lot of time with ordinary people agreeing to perform goofy tasks for, well, it’s like that “Millionaire” show, most of them won’t get much past $50,000! We’ll run 30 minutes of commercials and make a mint!

These are average Americans alright. The contestants seem to be chosen more on the basis of enthusiasm than physical prowess, and the cameras love their antics because the contestants don’t have any instinct for what they look like on television so from the safety and comfort of your own home you can watch people perform ridiculous tasks and then jump around like gibbons, occasionally in slo-motion. And cutaway to the dozens of commercial breaks highlighting how people can train in their own home to do RIDICULOUS THINGS like empty a tissue paper box with one hand and then strap it to their back and dance around trying to empty it of golf balls. You can find them demonstrated on NBC’s Web site.

My instant reaction to this is that I find the time limit artificial and boring. The outcome is consequence-free either way -- either the contestant wins and goes on to do another pointless thing, or the contestant wins the money they’ve made so far and they leave. The various tasks involved are largely pointless and not even visually interesting and the ever so many commercial breaks cynically point out how much emphasis the network has placed on raking in the dosh for such a small investment of cash or interest.

Meanwhile, Guy Fieri has to cheer them on, pretending to be in any way invested in whether a guy he met eight minutes ago can get three ping-pong balls into a fish bowl by first bouncing them along a row of plates.

I suppose he’s invested to the extent that they’re paying him. And that’s the worst part of all. This show highlights the lowest common denominator. At least in Jeopardy and the Millionaire show they have to demonstrate knowledge. I’m guessing these people all have actual talents of some sort, but this is like “Let’s Make a Deal,” where people wore outrageous costumes and jumped around on camera and all they had to do was demonstrate their relative shrewdness in choosing one door over another.

As for Fieri, sure, he’s got a personality that’s larger than life itself, but NBC should be giving him money to demonstrate how to cook things. Not to celebrate people behaving like dorks for the cheap laughs and profit of others.

‘FlashForward’

“FlashForward” returned strong last Thursday with a two-hour series resume. In “FlashForward,” the world has long since awakened from an event in which everyone lost consciousness for 2-1/2 minutes and we’re coming up on the day everyone saw when they awoke with visions of the future. And a fear that the event may be repeated.

I’m never 100 percent sure what’s going on in this show, but I was amused by how a worldwide event seems first to be investigated in the basement of a burned-out fast food restaurant by interested parties who seemed to help to have caused it. And are tying it somehow to a Large Hadron Collidor mishap, which seems outrageously unlikely. And in such a global psychic disturbance, that the mere wearing of a RING could have any impact.

But I enjoyed the notion that a window washer whose life was saved by a complete fluke could become an evangelist, or that a little old crazy lady who has visions and hallucinations anyway could be so pragmatic about them.

I’m mystified by this show, but thrilled that it is back, and I’m looking forward to the balance of this first season.

“Minute to Win It” airs at 8/7c Sundays on NBC, and “FlashForward” airs Thursdays at 8/7c on ABC.

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