The Fug Girls: A New TV Diet for Spring!With Hollywood’s warring writers and producers seemingly spending more time on PR statements than negotiations, it’s going to be a long, wretched winter for television fans. To patch scheduling holes, networks are rushing out “mid-season replacements” (everything from game shows to reality hours) — essentially, shows that are handy in a pinch, but weren’t good enough to debut in the fall. It’s the idea that if there’s no water at the oasis, we’ll just drink the sand; too bad for them we’re not so easily satisfied. However, we ARE easily bored without our stories, so if our holiday wish for a speedy, fair strike resolution is impossible, then it’ll take some crafty TV-diet substitutions to get us through the drought.
Here are a few simple swaps:
American Gladiators. The show that brought us such spandex-wrapped warriors as “Turbo” and “Zap” obviously occupies its own vital place in TV history. But it also ably replaces the absent 24. Think about it: Jack Bauer runs a lot. He sweats. He does things to America, for America. And he likes to hit people with blunt objects. If he’d had the wherewithal to do it all with a Speedo and a tennis-ball cannon, you’d never even know the difference.