I Watched (Nearly) Every Post Super Bowl Show IV: The 2000’s!

I’ve made my stance on the inaugural decade of the 21st century fairly clear, both in this space and in real life.  On the whole, the 2000’s were a fairly uninspiring and creatively bankrupt ten years: trashy, cheap reality television really got cooking , and party girl celebrity culture was in vogue, thanks to an increasingly out-of-control tabloid media that was too happy to pass cruelty off as entertainment.  Oh, and I guess there was that 9/11 thing, a devastating event that fueled the desire for cheap entertainment in the first place.  Yes, there were plenty of cultural milestones to go around; the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy and “Mad Men” seem to get better with age.  But we have all memory-holed a lot of bleak shit.

I get to say this because I was there.   The 2000’s were probably my formative decade, starting it as a preteen and ended it as an official young adult.  I should have a lot of nostalgia for everything I grew up with.  But I’m not sure that I do.  I tell you this so that you understand I am not a 00’s apologist.

That said, the eleven Super Bowl lead-out programs that aired between 2000 and 2009 are actually fairly strong, proving that maybe there’s a lot of good stuff we tend to forget about.  Okay, maybe I tend to forget about them.  I’m kind of a cynical person.  I’m…I’m working on it.

Alright, here we go!  Post-Super Bowl shows of the 2000’s!

SUPER BOWL XXXIV

Show: “The Practice”

Episode: “New Evidence (Part 1)” (Season 4, Episode 12)

Aired: January 30, 2000

Network: ABC

Special Guest Stars: Anthony Heald, Clancy Brown*

*Maybe neither of them are really big names, but they’re both special to me, dammit!

Although I had never seen an episode of “The Practice” before this project, I was familiar with the show it eventually became.  There was a period of about a year and a half when spin-off “Boston Legal” was in my regular television rotation.  I was always curious to know what its original incarnation was like, but seven extra seasons worth of a blind watch always felt a little much.  Yet the urge always remained.

Based on this episode, I can see myself maybe making good on that promise one day.  “New Evidence” isn’t the most brilliant hour of television ever made, and it’s not exactly subtle (this is a David E. Kelley joint, after all), but it’s satisfying in an old-school kind of way.  Our team of Boston lawyers, led by Bobby Donnell (Dylan McDermott), are headed to California to help defend a murder suspect who is facing the death penalty.  They are saddled with his defense mostly off of a gut feeling Lindsay (Kellie Williams) has about his innocence, much to the chagrin of everybody involved. It’s an uphill battle the entire way for our leads, as witnesses get nervous, stories change, and new evidence emerges.

I think the funniest thing about the episode is how hilariously hostile it is to the state of California.  The entire theme of “New Evidence” is how everyone in Los Angeles is a rude and unhelpful asshole, as if somehow courtrooms in Boston are magnanimous and noble tributes to teamwork.  Anthony Heald’s judge talks on and on about how “maybe this is how you do things in Massachusetts”, like California is some swamp bayou hamlet.  I’m not offended, per se, it’s just such a buck-wild point of view.  Like, David E. Kelley is telling us how he really feels on this one.  

This does actually lead to one of the hour’s bigger flaws: the judge is so over-the-top irrationally evil that he quickly goes from a character you love to hate to just an annoying cheap source of conflict.  He forces people to be on the jury that should obviously be disqualified, he forces the Practice team to defend this man even when they end up having pretty good reason at that point to drop the case.  Also, it’s vaguely subpar work from Heald, a guy I normally like!  He keeps hitting the word “Massachusetts” the same slimy way, which has a ton of impact the first time, but loses its power with each repetition.

That said, I had a good time watching this and I was sad I didn’t have time to move on to see how this story would resolve itself.  Luckily, the next episode’s plot description on Amazon took care of that for me: “Lindsay gets [her] client freed when she determines that the defendant’s wife and the victim’s husband were having an affair and conspired to kill the victim.”  Gotcha!

SUPER BOWL XXXV

Show: “Survivor: The Australian Outback”

Episode: “Stranded” (Season 2, Episode 1)

Aired: January 28, 2001

Network: CBS

I missed the boat entirely on the still-ongoing “Survivor” craze, but at its peak, it was completely unavoidable even if you weren’t watching.  As I proceeded to not watch the first season, I still managed to find myself abreast of all the dastardly naked machinations of Richard Hatch, and was aware of the intense speech given by Sue Hawk in the finale.  I even somehow found myself browsing the premier “Survivor” fan site in the world, a website called SurvivorSucks (an early harbinger of how 21st century fandom would conduct itself, perhaps).  So, yes, when the next season got slated to premiere after the Super Bowl, I knew this was a big deal.  Continued to not watch it!  But I knew it was a big deal.

Watching “Survivor” now, nearly twenty-five years later, it becomes immediately apparent why the show was such a hit, and forever altered the landscape of reality competition: it’s one of the all-time great premises in television.  I don’t know that I really need to pore over the famous set-up of “everyone is formed into tribes and play challenges; winning team gets supplies, losing team votes somebody out.  Last person standing gets a million bucks.”  The format is simultaneously tribalistic and individualistic, forcing all contestants to have genuine social skills as well as an elite poker face.  It’s instantly compelling television.

Of course, the perils inherent to the format of this project is that I have to just watch the one episode then move on.  It’s double-rough because it’s the first episode of the season.  These types of things get more fun as you have folks to root for or against; the first episode of any reality game show is usually tough because there are so many people, you don’t know who to focus on yet.  The closest I came to bonding with a contestant was the guy who threw up on the plane getting in and is physically ill the entire time (he’s just like me frfr).  Naturally, he comes very close to going home in the first week, which is real “me” type of shit.  As much as I’d like to see when he actually gets the ax, I must move on.  The tribe has spoken!

SUPER BOWL XXXVI

Show: “Malcolm in the Middle”

Episode: “Company Picnic” (Season 3, Episodes 11 & 12)

Aired: February 3, 2002

Network: FOX

Special Guest Stars: Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Stephen Root, Tom Green, Cristina Ricci, Susan Sarandon, Patrick Warburton, Heidi Klum, Magic Johnson, Bradley Whitford

Like all millennials, I definitely had a “Malcolm in the Middle” phase, although mine didn’t last as long as others.  I think I probably faithfully watched, like a season and a half?  Anyway, I hadn’t seen it in ages, and I was eager to revisit the show that first launched Bryan Cranston into the bigger pop culture conversation.

So the good news is that, even at a full hour’s length, “Company Picnic” is pretty funny all the way through.  I had forgotten how well Cranston and Jane Kaczmarek play off of each other, and I had especially forgotten how well Cranston does with physical comedy (he’s crouching down, running around and freaking out like a goddamn pro the whole time).  But the three main kids are the real revelation.  Obviously Frankie Muniz holds everything together as the titular Malcolm (the middle child), but I was stunned at how polished Justin Berfield (as oldest child Reese) and Erik Per Sullivan (youngest Dewey) are in their roles.  Per Sullivan in particular provided me my biggest laugh (his sugar-induced freakout).

The…not bad news, necessarily, but definitely the thing most out of step with how I remembered “Malcolm in the Middle”: just look at that guest star list!  How the fuck did they land Susan fucking Sarandon?  More importantly, and I don’t say this lightly….did they need to get Susan Sarandon?  Did we need Magic Johnson in the most half-assed drag I’ve seen in a while?  I completely understand that this is a post-Super Bowl ep, and that means snagging big guest stars.  But “Company Picnic” has no fewer than ten, a number I have to imagine won’t be beaten anytime soon.  At best, it’s distracting and at worst, it’s madness-inducing.  

At least it made me want to go through “Malcolm in the Middle” again some time, especially sincere…ah yes, there’s a Disney Plus revival on the way.  Better cram it in now before its value is lessened!

SUPER BOWL XXXVII

Show: “Alias”

Episode: ”Phase One” (Season 2, Episode 13)

Aired: January 26, 2003

Network: ABC

Special Guest Star: Rutger Hauer

You would think that being such a big “LOST” guy would have made me an equally big “Alias” guy.  Alas, “Alias” is a show I got burned out on relatively quickly.  At its best, its twisty, espionage-driven narrative was loopy genre fun.  After a couple of seasons, though, it became clear that the show was too willing to throw any sort of established character or plot truths in the trash can in order to pull the rug out from under you.   After the millionth reveal that X character was actually Y and working for Z, it just got exhausting.  If anybody can be anything at any time, you question what the point is in getting invested at all.

“Phase One”, though, captures “Alias” in its absolute prime, and illustrates what made it special.  It is an absolutely buck-wild choice for a Super Bowl episode, though.  I’ve always been curious how this would have played to a completely neutral, first-time audience.  After all, this is the one where, right in the middle of Season Two, “Alias” decides to just take its arm and slide every piece off of its elaborate chess board onto the cold floor.  By the end of the hour, Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner) and her father Jack (Victor Garber) are finally revealed to their enemies as double agents.  The dastardly Syndicate, run from the inside of SD-6 by the equally dastardly Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin) has been defeated, or so it seems.  It really is a finale-level of plot, the impact of which presumably only holds weight if you’ve watched the season and a half that came before.  I had a hard time imagining a half-drunk audience walking into this cold and being super into this.

Here’s the thing: I think “Phase One” actually weirdly works for a newcomer?  For all of the show’s narrative knots, the stakes are usually pretty clearly communicated: here are the good guys pretending to be bad guys, here are bad guys pretending to be good guys.  Sydney and her coworker Vaughn (Michael Vartan) are in love, but can’t show it.  Sydney has friends, and one of them is a young Bradley Cooper.  And…go!  To some degree, having no prior investment in the Bristow clan or her compatriots at either SD-6 or the CIA probably plays to your advantage on this.  Admittedly, the Syndicate suddenly being completely crushed kinda comes out of nowhere when watching this in conjunction with what came before and after.  But here?  You’re kinda just watching a successful mission playing out.

Yeah, there are some fairly obvious “this is for a wider audience” plays, none more famous than the opening “Back in Black” slow-mo shot of Garner in lingerie (funnily, it may be the most famous moment in all of “Alias”, a show that to my recollection didn’t really revel in sleaze otherwise).  You also get more “characters explaining who they are and what their relationship is to others” kind of talk than you would usually get.  We also get a big ol’ guest star in Rutger Hauer, who’s great as newcomer SD-6 head Geiger.  It’s clearly not a normal episode.

But “Phase One” ultimately succeeds through its performances, none better than the one we get from Carl Lumbly as Marcus Dixon, Sydney’s SD-6 co-worker who gets blindsided by the news that he’s been working for the very bad guy he thought he was working against.  As he silently decides whether he wants to blow his entire life up by submitting to Sydney crucial information that will bring everything crashing down, you can almost literally see every thought run through his mind.  It’s an astounding, quiet, character-focused moment that sells the whole hour, in my opinion.  For all its glitz and adrenaline, when “Alias” succeeded, it was off the back of its characters and cast.  “Phase One” is a plot-heavy episode that still manages to prove that.

Unfortunately, due to some bad luck with the broadcast (including a too-long trophy and post-game ceremony that included, for some reason, a performance by Bon Jovi), “Phase One” didn’t begin until after 11:00 pm on the East Coast.  Many viewers simply went to bed, and the ratings were the lowest the spot had ever pulled since the NBC Nightly News in 1975.  Not “Alias”’ fault, but other networks took notice all the same.

SUPER BOWL XXXVIII

Show: “Survivor: All-Stars”

Episode: “They’re Back!” (Season 8, Episode 1)

Aired: February 1, 2004

Network: CBS

My initial instinct is that potentially jumping blindly into an All-Stars season of any competition series is setting yourself up to fail; the novelty of returning favorites falters if you’ve never seen them before.  On the other hand, the second full season of “Top Chef” I ever watched was their All-Star year and I loved it, so I don’t really know what I’m talking about, I guess.

What stuck out to me immediately about this kick-off episode of “Survivor: All-Stars” is how quickly the game shifted.  With everyone having played before and (for the most part) gone pretty far in their initial seasons, there are no obvious weaklings for more savvy players to feast on.  I also thought it was smart for the show to ask back several winners, potential Survivor Hall-of-Famers who have to operate with targets on their backs.  Because all of these contestants are playing an elevated game, I found it more intriguing than the first episode of the Australia season we covered just a little bit ago.

As a “Survivor” newcomer, this also felt like a quick way to catch up on these iconic names and figures from the show’s early canon, when (again) you really truly couldn’t avoid chatter about it if you were clued into pop culture at all.  I finally got to see the villainous Richard Hatch in action, and I got to fall in love with Rupert Boneham twenty years after everyone else in America already did.  Oh, look, there’s Sue Hawk!  And that brick shithouse Rudy!  And Boston Rob (I could tell which one he was, because his name was Rob and he had a Red Sox hat on)!  Reality is not a genre I dabble in too much, so this felt like dipping into a completely different universe.  It’s fun enough that I would consider diving deeper into “Survivor” if there weren’t forty-eight fucking seasons worth of it.  Vote me out!

SUPER BOWL XXXIX

Show: “The Simpsons”

Episode: “Homer and Ned’s Hail Mary Pass” (Season 16, Episode 8)

Aired: February 6, 2005

Network: FOX

Special Guest Stars: LeBron James, Yao Ming, Tom Brady, Michelle Kwon, Warren Sapp

Where 1999’s “Sunday, Cruddy Sunday” was a snapshot of “The Simpsons” at the end of its prime, “Homer and Ned’s Hail Mary Pass” captures the show fully out of it.  It’s mostly concerned with quadrupling up on celebrity cameos, which is perhaps befitting an episode airing after the Super Bowl.  But would it be too much to ask for the cameos to at least be functional?  The whole crux of the episode is Homer developing a career in training athletes in the art of elaborate celebrations.  This sort of makes sense with football, a sport that was really having a moment with showboating in the 00’s (Randy Moss had fake-mooned the Green Bay crowd one year prior).  But basketball doesn’t make as much sense, especially not with Yao Ming, who to my knowledge wasn’t that much of an asshole on the court.  I suppose they could have gone with fight choreographers; after all, Ron Artest was available for V.O. work in 2005.  For the record, figure skating makes even less sense in this context.  What is a celebration dance in figure skating, exactly?

Still, it’s not all a wash.  I think the made-up touchdown dances are all pretty funny; I especially like the one where the ball is cooked on a barbecue griddle.  And Yao gave us one of the most hilarious half-assed voice performances I’ve ever heard on a professional broadcast (I think “shut up….kid. I gotta good thing. GOING. Here.” to myself more often than I’d care to admit).  But, this episode from twenty years ago served as a sign that the “Simpsons” heyday was firmly in the past.

Show: “American Dad!”

Episode: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Aired: February 6, 2005

Network: FOX

Special Guest Star: Carmen Electra

At the time of its release, I sort of felt like Seth MacFarlane’s follow-up project to “Family Guy” was doomed to fail.  Its hyper-specific jabs at Bush-era politics and paranoia seemed like it would get old fast, especially since it aired IN THE MIDDLE of Bush-era politics; I was sick of it in real life, why would I run to go watch it in fiction?  I also wasn’t sure the various characters in the Smithe household made a lot of sense together; I know that adding an alien and a talking fish were there to kind of replicate the template of the Griffin family, but there’s a cohesion in Quahog with the “talking baby” and “talking dog” at least being members of a typical nuclear family.  Roger and Klaus being results of CIA experiments and missions always felt like a bit of a stretch.

Naturally, “American Dad” became the superior show to “Family Guy” over time.  As always, I know nothing.

Still, the pilot is fairly rough, with very little of what would make the show special visible there.  This isn’t to say it isn’t funny, just one-note.  Stan is an alpha male!  The son is a horny teenage boy!  The daughter is a liberal!  Imagine the trouble her and her dad will get into, eh?  It even relies fairly heavily on the famous “Family Guy”-style cutaway gag, something it moves off of fairly quickly, to my recollection.  Not terrible, but also not terribly indicative of the show to come, either.

SUPER BOWL XL

Show: “Grey’s Anatomy”

Episode: “It’s the End of the World” (Season 2, Episode 16)

Aired: February 5, 2006

Network: ABC

Special Guest Stars: Christina Ricci, Kyle Chandler

I’ve always kind of had a chip on my shoulder about “Grey’s Anatomy”.  Although it was the third to arrive of the trifecta of megahits in the 2004-05 season that turned ABC from a joke to the dominant American network (the other two being “Desperate Housewives” and “LOST”), it was the only one I didn’t watch.  Naturally, it was easily the most popular amongst my high school campus.  I also think “Grey’s Anatomy” being tapped for the big post-Super Bowl time slot felt like a slap in the face to “LOST”, my then-favorite show AND one that would have absolutely crushed the occasion, had the opportunity been provided to them (although the relative failure of the “Alias” post-Super Bowl episode probably spurred this decision more than anything else).

I also always got the impression that it was a heavily soap-ified version of “ER”; the constant references to a guy called “McDreamy” just kind of made my back teeth hurt.  Couple all of this with the fact that I was a teenage/early-twenties guy in its heyday and there likely could not have been a show more specifically created to be my enemy.

So I watched “It’s the End of the World” with no real context to anything before or after with no real intention of having a good time and…um, it’s terrific?  Like, it’s one of the best episodes I’ve gotten to watch in this project?  I know, I’m devastated, too.

It’s not that this particular episode showcases the most unique and tightly drawn characters I’ve ever seen on TV.  Everyone is young, quirky and horny, and they frequently talk in what I can only describe as “quirky millennial speak”, Meredith Grey herself being the worst offender (“she’s got my McDreamy, she’s got my McDog….she’s got my McLife!”).  You often wonder why everyone has enough downtime to be sleeping with each other so much (it’s not clear from this episode what Izzie Stevens actually does around here).  The medical cases on display here are not terribly grounded to anything resembling reality.  The main thrust: a WWII reenactor has accidentally blasted himself with a bazooka, and the only thing keeping the shell from blowing him (and the entire hospital) up is the inserted hand of a very green EMT (Ricci, in her second Super Bowl episode in five years).  You know, that old story.  Also buzzing around Seattle Grace is a very-pregnant Dr. Bailey and, unbeknownst to her, her husband, who has suffered a car accident and is currently having surgery performed on his brain.  It’s all a lot, the horrible day that Meredith predicted at the top of the episode.

But.  But. BUT.  The power of this episode (and I sincerely hope for peak “Grey” in general) is its elite ability to steadily work all these different plotlines and stitch them together in the exact right way at the exact right times to make “It’s the End of the World” such a fun hour.  And it seems fairly evident that the show understands what both their main and guest cast can do so well, and tailor the material to maximize them.  Katherine Heigl’s exasperation and TJ Knight’s anxiety flies perfectly against Isaiah Washington’s stoic coolness and Patrick Dempsey’s aloof heroism.  Ricci is wildly affecting as a girl who’s in far too deep, both literally and metaphorically.  By the time Kyle Chandler shows up with ten minutes to go as the bomb squad guy, I think I literally hollered.  It all just kinda works.

I know, I know, I’m stunned.  I don’t know that it’s going to inspire me to watch the 437* episodes I’ve missed, but I’m more than willing to extend an olive branch to one of the longest-running shows in American history.  I now fully understand why all the girls I knew in high school were addicted to this fucking thing.  Sorry for being a dick.  Kinda.  “LOST” still better, tho.  I think.

*That sounds like a sarcastically huge number, but that really is the episode count minus one as of this writing.

SUPER BOWL XLI 

Show: “Criminal Minds”

Episode: “The Big Game” (Season 2, Episode 14)

Aired: February 4, 2007

Network: CBS

Special Guest Star: James Van Der Beek

At the time of “Criminal Minds”’ premiere, I remember there being quite a bit of hand-wringing in the media about its constant violence and depressing criminal situations.  And, look, I’d be a hypocrite if I were to take any swipes at the show for that; after all, I was deep in the thralls of “24” at that time, and there, Kiefer Sutherland was fucking pulling knives into people’s eye sockets.  But I do get how watching a bleak serial killer get caught in the nick of time every week could start to affect your mental health, even if it’s fictional.

“Criminal Minds” clearly won the argument, though, almost certainly due to it tapping into the same large audience that would eventually migrate over to true-crime podcasts.  Accounting for a two-year hiatus in 2021 and 2022, it’s still on the fucking air, having aired its 344th episode last summer.  It may appear to now be a Paramount Plus exclusive, and is technically a revival called “Criminal Minds: Evolution”, but Wikipedia has kept up the season count, so I am forced to consider this all one big run.  For those who are curious, Zach Gilford (Matt Saracen from “Friday Night Lights”) plays the current Big Bad.  (Sort of) broadcast television, everyone!

Needless to say, I had never seen an episode until now, and “The Big Game” seems to serve as a decent introduction.  If you’ve ever seen a criminal procedural before, you know all the beats of this thing.  A deranged killer played by a recognizable guest star (in this case, James Van Der Beek) commits a brutal murder, and it’s up to our FBI squad to find him before he strikes again.  Our team consists of a beleaguered lead agent (Mandy Patinkin), a handsome man of action (Shemar Moore), a cool woman in a suit (Paget Brewster), a brilliant young autistic guy (Matthew Gray Gubler), and a brassy tech gal who knows everything (Kirsten Vangness).  Together, they will almost save the day until you realize, oh fuck, this is a two-parter.  

The plot will also be familiar if you’ve ever seen the movie SE7EN, although there is a nice twist towards the end that I probably should have seen coming, but didn’t.  The cast is comfortable with each other, although I was surprised that Brewster had just joined the cast a mere five episodes prior (she was great; Paget Brewster is always great).  Gubler is probably best left to the tumblr contingent to fawn over, and I was shocked at how checked out Patinkin seemed to be.  But the episode’s script serves as a functional nasty mystery.  I give points to its totally arbitrary Super Bowl connection right at the beginning; the first pair of victims were watching it on TV.  Cool promotion!

“Criminal Minds” is the type of big, broad, slightly bullshitty, but undeniably slick and competent style of network television that was already starting in 2007 to look a little out of date to people my age.  Most of my contemporaries were starting to flock to the exciting stuff happening on cable; this was the same calendar year where “Mad Men” would premiere and “The Sopranos” would conclude.  “Breaking Bad” was a mere year away.  Yet, “Criminal Minds” was a massive hit anyway essentially from the jump.  It was a Top 20 show in America throughout Obama’s two terms.  I’m certain this is the beginning of the schism between CBS and anyone under Social Security age.  They’re the old-man network now, but it pulls outrageous numbers off the back of that.  Really makes you think.

SUPER BOWL XLII

Show: “House”

Episode: “Frozen” (Season 4, Episode 11)

Aired: February 3, 2008

Network: FOX

At this point in the project, it’s worth asking if FOX overall has done the best with the “post Super Bowl show” assignment.  Admittedly, they didn’t start broadcasting Super Bowls until 1997, completely sidestepping the “flashy pilot” era that is fucking up every other network’s average here.  But, every show they’ve aired up to this point have been extremely popular, generally well-made television programs: “The X-Files”, “The Simpsons”, “Family Guy”, “American Dad”, “Malcolm in the Middle”, and now, “House”.  Not bad!  They’re no “MacGruder and Loud”, but still not bad at all.

Speaking of “House”, it was a treat to revisit it!  It was always a show that was secretly just a star performance and winning formula that pretended to be a prestige medical drama, but it’s worth nothing that both the performance and formula are really fucking good.  Hugh Laurie was heavily nominated for his portrayal of Dr. Gregory House over its eight-year run, yet he still somehow seems underrated.  There’s flat-out no show without his grumpy, foul-mouthed, deeply wounded lead role here.  And the format of “House” (House and his differential diagnosis team must help solve a series of mystery symptoms from a patient, typically a major guest star) can sometimes make it a bear to binge, since every episode is the same.  But, when taken in small doses, “House” is soooo fucking satisfying.  Watching brilliant, but abrasive, characters bounce off each other to solve a mystery is what television is all about.  

In “Frozen”, our major guest star is Mira Sorvino, with the added gimmick of her not actually being treated in House’s hospital.  She’s stranded in the North Pole, and must get treated for what appears to be a mysterious auto-immune disease via telecommunication.  “House” predicts the future!  At first, you worry this saps the show of its unique advantage: letting Laurie spar with another major celebrity.  Yet, somehow, he and Sorvino manage to develop chemistry without ever even being in the same room together.  The added twist of Sorvino being a psychiatrist, aka the exact kind of person House wants nothing to do with, adds a lot of back-and-forth between them.

No worries, “House” also contains all the grody details seemingly necessary for any big network show in the 21st century.  Drills get put into people’s heads, urine is drunk, major broken bones get gruesomely reset.  However, all of this is offset with a hilariously low-stakes subplot of House doing everything he can to get cable reinstituted in the hospital.  The moment of the night for me was his decision to, in response to hearing how much money cutting the cord has saved the hospital, find a way to waste the exact same money to even it out (he begins by dumping a container of tongue depressors on the ground).

It should be said, too, that I don’t think I ever got all the way to Season Four on my initial watch, so it was fun to see the cast now include Kal Penn and baby Olivia Wilde.  The whole running arc of House trying to put together a new team is the only aspect of this that feels a little unexplained to a prospective new audience.  There’s an end-episode twist where Robert Sean Leonard is now dating a recently fired candidate, and I had no clue who it was supposed to be.  Still, I think it can all be forgiven when the stand-alone aspects of the hour were otherwise strong.

SUPER BOWL XLIII

Show: “The Office”

Episode: “Stress Relief” (Season 5, Episodes 14 & 15)

Aired: February 1, 2009

Network: NBC

Special Guest Stars: Jack Black, Jessica Alba, Cloris Leachman

I got on with the American version of “The Office” late.

I was a fairly serious devotee of the UK original, and I was one of the many who thought the US version was a cheap faxed copy of the initial paper-company-set original.  I assumed the truncated Season One would be the end of it, and I promptly stopped paying attention.  By the time I realized, “hey wait a lot of people I know really like this…did ‘The Office’ get its act together?” it was already a couple of seasons in and I just stubbornly refused to jump on board, fretting that I’d be two years behind on the story.

Then, Super Bowl XLIII happened, and I noticed the episode afterwards was “The Office”.  And, I dunno, something came over me.  “Stop being weird!” I thought.  “It’s a network sitcom, not the fucking ‘Wire’.  How much continuity do you think there’s going to be?”  So I watched “Stress Relief” and had a blast.  Then the previews for next week ran, and the episode was all about Michael reconnecting with someone named Holly, someone we had met a season or two prior.  “Blasted continuity!” I panicked to myself before continuing to not watch it week to week.  And there my “Office” story would have ended, had I not ended up dating an Office superfan that I could binge the show with.  Sometimes, things work out.

Anyway, “Stress Relief” is certainly in the running for “Best Super Bowl Lead Out Episode” in terms of pure laughs.  It alone contains three signature Office centerpieces: the fire safety cold open, the CPR training, and the Michael Scott roast (as well as his belated responses the next day).  For a sitcom episode double the length of a regular comedy, it contains something like 25 of the best Office moments, a feat no doubt helped by its relative stand-alone status.  There’s a subtle, but very real, “introduce the characters again” feel, with a heartfelt Jim-and-Pam subplot in order to show off to potential new viewers everything that fans loved about the show.  

The only downside to it is that Jim-Pam storyline, where watching an illegally downloaded film with Andy somehow serves as a metaphor for issues Pam’s parents are having.  The plot itself isn’t so bad, although it forces us to believe Jim might have said something nasty to her dad, which is a little silly.  It’s the film they’re watching, MRS. ALBERT HANNADAY, which is supposed to be a parody of a typical Oscar-bait film.  The problem is that it doesn’t really feel like one; in fact, it doesn’t seem like any movie anybody’s ever seen.

Oh yeah, this is also how they incorporate their special guest stars.  I suppose the reason for this is that they wanted to preserve the grounded reality of ‘The Office’ by not bogging it down with celebrities playing characters.  What makes that funnier is the direction the show would eventually take, with Will Ferrell, Kathy Bates and James Spader all playing characters down the line.  Alas!

Still, we’ll always have ‘Staying Alive’.  “Staying Alive.’  Ah-ah-ah-ah…

I Watched (Nearly) Every Post Super Bowl Show Part III: The 1990’s!

Hello!  This is Part 3 of my series on the chronological history of the Super Bowl lead-out program.  If you missed Part 1, covering the 60’s and 70’s, or Part 2, working through the 80’s, well, check those out first!  Or don’t!  Who am I to tell you how to spend your time?

The 1990’s were a time of change for ancillary aspects of the Super Bowl broadcast.

Take the halftime show.  The final ten years of the 20th century began with the mid-game programming still stuck in the 70’s and 80’s, content with doing Disney-related tributes and showcasing Dorothy Hammill and Brian Boitano.  By 193, the NFL finally had enough and brought out the big guns with Michael Jackson.  It took a couple of years for the new paradigm of “take the biggest music star in the world and let them do a 15-minute concert” to hold, but once it did, the halftime show never looked back, and doesn’t look likely that it ever will.

So it went with the post-Super Bowl programming.  The 90’s began with the same bevy of pilots or early episodes of fledgling sitcoms, with the hopes that something will catch the long-term attention of a massive audience.  By 1996, one network (NBC) said “fuck it” and just aired a star-studded episode of its biggest show (“Friends”).  The game changed for a long time, although it should be noted that, unlike the halftime show, it didn’t change forever!  

But that’s a different article.  For now, let’s close out the millennium with a look back at the 13 shows that closed out the Super Bowl in the 1990’s.

SUPER BOWL XXIV

Show: “Grand Slam”

Episode: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Network: CBS

Aired: January 28, 1990

We kick off the 90’s with yet another feature length pilot to a show that never even made it to a double-digit episode count!  This time, John Schneider and Paul Rodriguez star as a pair of bounty hunters who must work together to bring home a million-dollar bond.  Dennis Bakelenoff (Schneider) has a gimmick of sorts; he’s an ex-ball player who hasn’t lost his arm, hence his nickname “Hardball”.  Pedro Gomez (Rodriguez) also has a gimmick of sorts; he is Mexican, hence the constant needle drops of “Low Rider”.

(Speaking of the nickname “Hardball”...you’d think his nickname would be “Grand Slam” in order to justify the title, which otherwise only gets stated in passing at the beginning and end of the pilot.  Then again, I’m not paid to make these kinds of decisions.)

Gotta admit, I kinda had fun with this.  It’s entertaining in a boneheaded kind of way.  All the kind of “culture clash” stuff you’d imagine is here: a big centerpiece scene involves both Schenider and Rodriguez pounding on hot peppers as a way to metaphorically measure their dicks.  I also feel like the main villain is really obnoxious, and I think he at one point threatens a woman by saying “I will kill you in your body?  But I feel like “Grand Slam” would make for an okay “bad movie” night watch, maybe as a way to kick off the evening.  America didn’t appear to agree; the last episode aired on March 14, 1990, and that was that.  Uh, this grand slam turned out to be….(googles “baseball terms”...no I didn’t mean to write “baseball teams”....scrolling, scrolling)...this grand slam turned out to be a foul ball!

SUPER BOWL XXV

Show: “Davis Rules”

Episode: “A Man For All Reasons” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Network: ABC

Aired: January 27, 1991

On the surface, there’s nothing really objectionable about this early-90’s sitcom about a well-meaning science teacher who ends up as the principal of the school his kids attend (oh, the embarrassment!).  Yeah, the thing that sticks out the most about it is the fact that it’s anchored by Randy Quaid, but you have to remember we didn’t know he was insane in the 80’s and 90’s.  “Davis Rules” lands right in between his surprisingly successful one-year run on “Saturday Night Live” in 1986 and his extremely well-known role in 1996’s INDEPENDENCE DAY; he was pretty well regarded!  Pair him with Johnathan Winters as his nutty dad, Debra Jo Rupp as a fellow teacher and a bunch of kid actors, and this seems like a fairly representative, easy breezy sitcom for its time.

And it may be.  But…I dunno, the whole episode has some sort of weird, possibly evil, energy to it.  Audience reactions come just a beat or two later than you may be expecting (there’s a delayed “awww” sound within the first minute or so).  Winters’ comedic rants have a stroke victim-esque “stream of consciousness” feel.  There’s a very strange moment where Quaid starts walking around the school, talking to himself about how alone he is.  It has the same aesthetic and timing as one of those Kyle Mooney sitcom parody pretapes he and Beck Bennett used to do on SNL, only with the supposed punchlines or comedic turns snipped out.  

Oh, yeah, I guess that’s the bigger issue.  The pilot of “Davis Rules” isn’t all that funny.  Clearly, there must have been something to it to somebody, because this astoundingly lasted for two seasons, for a total of 29 episodes, making this one of the more successful post-Super Bowl pilots up to this point (clearing the combined episode counts for “The Last Precinct”, “Hard Copy” and “Grand Slam” combined).  Maybe people just really liked the jaunty Mark Mothersbaugh-penned theme.  I know I did.

SUPER BOWL XXVI

Show: “60 Minutes”

Network: CBS

Aired: January 26, 1992

Oh, goody, we get to talk about the Clintons!  Maybe later on, we can discuss a topic slightly less divisive and incendiary, like abortion.

This brief, relatively last minute, segment of “60 Minutes” is probably one of the more famous post-Super Bowl episodes of all time.  As a reminder, let’s rewind back to the original Bill Clinton sex scandal, the Gennifer Flowers affair.  See, back in the day, credible accusations of an extra-marital affair used to be enough to seriously jeopardize a presidential campaign*.  It’s difficult to remember now, but the only reason Bill and Hillary were even doing a “60 Minutes” interview is because they were fighting for their lives.  

*Obviously, I’m taking a shot at current times here, although, in 1992, the president campaigning in question still won two terms, during which he extra-maritally affaired again, so my snarky little comparison doesn’t really work.  Yeah, but still.

I’ll just be straight-up; this is a fascinating fifteen minutes of television.  It serves as a microcosm of everything there is to both love and hate about Bill Clinton.  Let the historical record show that he is phenomenally full of shit here, maybe the most full of shit anybody has ever been; six years later, Clinton would admit under oath that he had a sexual affair with Flowers.  There’s an almost sociopathic ability on display during the “60 Minutes” interview, to blatantly be spinning out every single one of Steve Kroft’s fairly valid questions, every word so obviously calculated to deflect.

And yet.  The thing about Bill is that he’s really fucking good at this sort of thing.  If you’re able to go limp a little bit and put yourself in “1992-mode” (aka ignoring the next thirty years to come), you can’t help but walk away from the segment agreeing with the Clinton camp’s seeming philosophy of “why are you bothering us with this?  Nobody cares about this.”  By the time Kroft quotes a CBS News poll stating 14% of potential voters would not support a candidate who has had an affair, and Clinton responds by stating, in essence, that meant 86% didn’t care, you can feel a star being born.  You genuinely feel like Clinton has been on the level with you, even though when you look back at the transcript, he hasn’t actually fucking said anything at all.

Oh, and then there’s Hillary, the breakout star of this whole thing.  I won’t go on too much about her, since I don’t want anybody trying to slit my throat, but it’s undeniable that the line of the night was, and remains, “I’m not sitting here [as] some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette”. It was an instant classic even before “American Crime Story: Impeachment” put the moment briefly back in the mainstream a couple of years ago.  I think it’s because Hillary says it with a Southern accent that she had never had before or since.  It’s a moment many in their circle have regretted since; Hillary was never really able to redefine herself again.  The reason as to why coming off slightly contradictory and phony lifted Bill but sunk Hillary, I’ll leave you to decide.  

The good news is, we don’t have to discuss politics in this space ever again, unless Donald Trump was on an episode of “Survivor” that I’m not remembering.

Show: “48 Hours”

Network: CBS

Aired: January 26, 1992

Oh, yeah, technically, newsmagazine “48 Hours” was the real lead-out program for Super Bowl XXVI.  But, like, nobody cares, you know?  It’s not a particularly well-documented episode; I wasn’t expecting to find a copy of it online or anything, but I couldn’t even really find a reliable synopsis as to what was covered that night.  In order to provide you something here, I’ll leave you with this: the inspiration for “48 Hours” was a 1986 CBS News documentary named “48 Hours on Crack Street”, which is the most hilariously “80’s News” title I’ve ever heard.

Moving on!

SUPER BOWL XXVII

Show: “Homicide: Life on the Street”

Episode: “Gone for Goode” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Network: NBC

Aired: January 31, 1993

After watching a lot of pilots that were mostly shitty the past couple of weeks, downing the initial “Homicide: Life on the Street” hour was an indescribable feeling.  It was like having a perfect piece of medium-rare steak after gargling only razor blades for the past five years.

First of all, I could just list the cast and my job would be done here.  Melissa Leo.  Jon Polito.  Richard Belzer.  Yaphet Kotto.  Ned Beatty. The late Andre fucking Braugher.  Everyone here is an inherently interesting presence, with a lifetime of acting experience between them.  It’s a murderer’s row of talent, one that I don’t believe is rivaled before or since by any post-Super Bowl show I’ve gotten to dip into during this project.

Marry that with one of the more propulsive and engaging scripts we’ve had after the Super Bowl up to this point, and you have a really exciting hour of television.  The actual nuts and bolts of it are things you’ve seen before in countless cop shows: a tense interrogation, fights amongst personnel, and a rookie being shown the ropes.  But it’s the dialogue, the way everybody seems to talk, that’s so compelling.  Crosetti’s low-level conspiracy thinking that leads to discussions about how much trust to put into institutions.  Pembleton’s amazing ability to speak in prose, even when he’s screaming at someone to get off his back.  Felton’s gravelly, disbelieving, ground level grumbling.  

Oh, and then there’s John Munch, maybe the most significant television characters of all time if you’re a psycho like me (he famously would go on to become the only fictional character to appear in ten different series, a lot of that facilitated by “Homicide” would go on to get folded into the gigantic “Law & Order” universe/continuity).  Belzer passed away in 2023, but Munch will live on forever.  This all served as a good reminder for me to finally go through this show, one of the most critically acclaimed shows of the past thirty years that has only recently been put on streaming after years of music rights making that look unlikely.  There are good things in this life!

SUPER BOWL XXVIII

Show: “The John Larroquette Show”

Episode: “Eggs” (Season 1, Episode 17)

Network: NBC

Aired: January 30, 1994

This was a rare back-to-back for NBC, having broadcast the Super Bowl in 1993 as well.  Thanks to some broadcasting rights wonkiness, they would eventually broadcast the Super Bowl twice more before the decade was done.  Perhaps feeling like they were playing with house money, NBC decided this time around to eschew airing yet another pilot after the game and instead programmed a double-billing of two sitcoms that were already on the air.

First up, “The John Larroquette Show!”

John Larroquette is one of those guys who I’ve always liked as just a comedic personality who hangs around, as opposed to a specific show or role (I was too young to catch “Night Court”!)  I hadn’t ever seen an episode of his self-titled sitcom, although I was eager to get to this episode in order to get an idea of it.

It’s not bad!  It has more of an edge to it than I would have expected from a 90’s NBC comedy.  First of all, it takes place in a seedy bus terminal in St. Louis.  Second of all, John Hemingway (Larroquette) is an actively recovering alcoholic; the opening theme makes that part perfectly clear.  Third, there’s quite a bit of racial comedy inherent to its nature, with John and Dexter (Daryl “Chill” Mitchell) constantly throwing around barbs about each other’s worldviews and perspectives.  It makes a lot out of John presuming things about what Dexter likes just because he’s black.  The show manages to make all of this sound like guys just talking (or at least, the sitcom version of “guys just talking”), instead of a program Trying To Have A Comedic Discussion.

Like the episode of “Davis Rules” we just reviewed, “Eggs” can be strange.  There’s a long stretch devoted to Chi McBride singing a lullaby to an abandoned baby, with no real attempt to play it for laughs.  They do revise Chi singing during the credits and that is suddenly played for laughs, as he seems to throw the baby across the room, so deep in the throes of the melody is he.  Thank god, though, the baby is thrown back to him in a flourish.  Oh yeah, and before that, a skittish and anxious cop tries to kidnap the baby.  So, I would say there’s a lot going on in this twenty or so minutes.

Show: “The Good Life”

Episode: “The Statue”

Network: NBC

Aired: January 30, 1994

First of all, the Wikipedia is once again wrong on what episode aired here.  It claims the pilot was broadcast after Super Bowl XXXII, but TV Guide listings at the time confirm it was actually the fifth episode, “The Statue”.  In your face, Wikipedia!

“The Good Life” is a fairly difficult show to Google; there’s a much more famous UK show with the same title that seemingly has the SEO on lock.  It’s also not a well-documented program in any way, possibly because it also lasted thirteen episodes.  Luckily, the star of this sitcom, John Caponera, has uploaded a pair of “Good Life” episodes onto his YouTube channel, one of which was “The Statue”.  Thank you, John!

I actually thought this was pretty solid.  Based on just this episode, “The Good Life” doesn’t appear to be a genre-shifting masterpiece or anything; it lives off of all the familiar tropes we’ve come to know.  John works at a factory with his best friend (Drew Carey) and gets into all kinds of wacky, misunderstanding-laden, situations.  This episode revolves around the done-to-death “having dinner at the boss’ house” plotline.  The central conflict surrounding a broken-off penis of the titular statue adds some shocking ribaldry, but to describe it, it’s nothing you’ve never seen before.

But…I dunno, it’s funny and well-constructed!  The conflicts escalate and intersect at the perfect times, the jokes land, the performances are all comfortable, the characters are perfectly defined.  I don’t have a lot of negative feedback to provide here.  Carey especially seemed to have found himself in a great spot.  He nails the aloof, sarcastic sidekick role, and is able to imbue Drew (love a show where everyone’s characters is just their first name) with that signature Drew voice and style.  It’s not surprising that he was able to leverage “The Good Life” into his own titular sitcom the next calendar year.

“The Good Life” was the first one of these “a few episodes, then tossed in the garbage disposal” shows I’ve come across during this project where I was genuinely surprised it didn’t last longer.  Camponera has stated an imposed hiatus to make room for Winter Olympics coverage crippled any momentum the show might have enjoyed after this week, and that sounds as good a reason as any to me.  NBC wouldn’t go on to sweat it too much; their breakout season was just around the corner.

SUPER BOWL XXIX

Show: “Extreme”

Episode: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Aired: January 29, 1995

Network: ABC

For the longest time, this entry represented my biggest heartbreak.  This show, called “Extreme” was about a Rocky Mountain search-and-rescue team, starred James Brolin, got cancelled after seven episodes, and was called “Extreme”.  It was also monumental in the history of the post-Super bowl show, as it sucked so bad that it forced everyone to stop using the slot for doomed pilots*.  Oh, and it was called “Extreme”.  How could I not get my hands on this?  But it was available essentially nowhere, and I was forced to have to lick my wound and wonder what could have been.

*At least, allegedly.  This part of the Wikipedia entry got slapped with the dreaded “[citation needed]”. 

Then, out of nowhere, someone uploaded the entire series onto YouTube as one long five-hour video.  Stuff like this is why I haven’t quite ruled out the existence of a higher power.

After watching the “Extreme” pilot, I haven’t ruled out the non-existence of a higher power, either.  I found it to be a pretty brutal watch, and I don’t think I’m bringing in any outside biases on this.  I genuinely wanted to…not like it, per se, but I came prepared to let the stupidity promised by its premise wash over me.  Frankly, my one note for the “Extreme” pilot is that it could have been stupider.  You get some gnar-rushing absurdity here and there; there’s a great moment about halfway through where two skiiers are racing each other down the slope, some mid-90’s alt-song you almost recognize scoring the entire thing, only for the song to cut out when disaster strikes.  The disaster?  One of the guys falls.  And falls.  And falls.  Cut to reaction shot from his friend.  Cut to more falling.  Extreme!

Unfortunately, I get the sense “Extreme” wants to be a real show.  The production values were higher than I could have expected; admittedly, many of the mountain rescue scenes look pretty stunning for a 1995 ABC show.  I’m guessing this meant the show was expensive, so I’m further guessing there was a desire for some prestige to this.  It’s bogged down, then, by a lot of attempts at character moments.  This is not in and of itself a bad thing; no show can survive on spectacle for very long.  But, instead of being quick and zippy, the character dynamics are leaden and dull.  Brolin doesn’t serve as good of a ringer as I had thought; he’s not in it much and he seems a little checked out.  I wanted simultaneously more and less from this show.

Alas, it didn’t matter for long; “Extreme” aired its final episode on April 6th, 1995, and into the memory hole it went, at least until “snowymatrix thru-walker” uploaded it to YouTube.  Thanks, again!

SUPER BOWL XXX

Show: “Friends”

Episode: “The One After the Super Bowl” (Season 2, Episodes 12 & 13)

Aired: January 28, 1996

Network: NBC

Special Guest Stars: Brooke Shields, Chris Isaak, Julia Roberts, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Fred Willard, Dan Castellaneta

The one that instantly changed what could be done with the post-Super Bowl real estate.  Unlike the halftime show, the lessons here were also learned immediately; from here, we enter a very long period where networks leveraged this spot to raise the profile of shows that were already quite hot, stuffing as many guest stars into the proceedings as they possibly could. 

“The One After the Super Bowl” is an hour-long episode that is effectively two half-hours stitched together.  The first half centers around a Joey Tribbiani stalker (played by Brooke Shields, who gets a palpable audience pop during her entrance that almost none of the other guest stars do) who doesn’t understand that he’s not actually a doctor in real life.  This is the kind of rock-stupid character gag that should be frustrating; if she thinks soap operas are real, one wonders how she’s able to turn the TV on in the first place.  But for some reason, “Friends” is just barely able to make this work, perhaps because this version of New York is so comically heightened already.  Shields’ commitment to the bit helps, too; this apparently was enough to convince NBC to scoop her up to launch “Suddenly Susan” later that year.

The second half finds our Friends crew on a Jean-Claude Van Damme film set, where Joey tries to suck up to the PA in order to land a role.  On this set, Chandler runs into an old friend (Julia Roberts), who he hadn’t seen since he embarrassed her in front of the entire assembly in elementary school.  It’s obvious from the jump why she’s suddenly so interested in reconnecting with him, so the punchline isn’t all that funny but, frankly, the sheer novelty of seeing prime Julia Roberts on a fucking network sitcom forgives a lot.

The whole episode is kind of like this.  We see Phoebe date a schoolteacher, who’s played by Chris Isaak.  I didn’t think he was that good, but…it’s fucking Chris Isaak, you know?  The storyline that connects the episode’s two halves concerns Ross’ pursuit to reconnect with his monkey Marcel*; this leads him to the San Diego Zoo, where he runs into a zookeeper and a groundskeeper.  They’re played by Fred Willard and Dan Castellaneta, respectively.  Just two stone cold comedy legends coming in to do maybe five lines each.

*If you haven’t picked up on it yet, I’m somewhat of a Friends skeptic.  I’ve watched a good handful of episodes, and there are probably four or five lines that roll around in my brain and make me giggle, but I’ve never fully warmed up to it.  However, shit like Marcel the monkey sort of gets to the heart of what I think can be lovingly goofy about the show.  Why does Ross have a pet monkey?  Fuck you, that’s why.

“The One After the Super Bowl” isn’t the best episode I’ve watched in this project.  It’s not even the best episode of “Friends” I’ve ever seen.  But, it doesn’t need to be.  What it’s trying to be is a flex, a warning to the rest of the television landscape.  The central message is “We can pull prime broadcast slots and innumerous guest stars like it’s fucking nothing.  Good luck.”  And in that sense, the numbers don’t lie.  Nearly 53 million viewers (about half of the Super Bowl audience) stuck around to watch this episode; no other lead-out program has ever really come close.  “Friends” wasn’t even done with its second season yet and it was already unstoppable.

SUPER BOWL XXXI

Show: “The X-Files”

Episode: “Leonard Betts” (Season 4, Episode 12)

Aired: January 26, 1997

Network: FOX

FOX has entered the chat, ladies and gentlemen!  It turns out that the former fledgling network had managed to wrap up their inaugural Super Bowl broadcast with a banger, for my money a Mount Rushmore post-Super Bowl episode.

To some degree, selecting “The X-Files” was FOX taking the gauntlet thrown down by NBC the year before and running with it.  Where “The X-Files”’ peak was during its near-decade long initial run is somewhat debatable, but mid-Season Four was as good a choice as any.  The show was regularly clearing 20 million viewers a week, huge for the new-ish FOX network.  Its cultural cache was likely even higher than that, with its fandom beginning to popularize this thing called “Internet message boards”.  A feature film was already in the works.  They even cameo’ed on “The Simpsons” two weeks prior.  Relative to its genre nature, “The X-Files” was humongous.

To another degree, though, “Leonard Betts” eschews the glitz and glamour that the post-Super Bowl spot could now afford a television show, sticking to the basics.  They wisely stick to its famous “Monster of the Week episode” format (as opposed to its infamous “Mythology episode” format), giving us one of the stickier, memorably gooier villains the show had ever had.  Yet, Betts remains wildly sympathetic, a feat largely built off the back of its main guest star, Paul McCrane.  You watch him murder people who have been nothing but friendly to him, yet you can’t help but feel for him as he undergoes his many painful, brutal transformations.  

The move to keeping the episode to the basics allows potential new viewers to get oriented to the crucial dynamic between Mulder and Scully, and if ever there were a good example of the magic between David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, it’d be “Leonard Betts”.  Mulder is in prime “what if this brutal crime was being committed by this made-up creature in this totally insane way” mode, matched only by Scully’s peak exasperation.  And, hey, you would be, too.  Imagine if you trained rigorously and studiosly, only to be paired with a coworker who was constantly like “hey what if this mugging was done by the Chupacabra” and he was right 80% of the time?

The brilliance of “Leonard Betts”, though, comes in a small moment right at the end.  It’s established that Leonard stays alive by eating the cancer out of his victims.  So, when his interests suddenly turn on Scully, meekly telling her, “you have something I need”?  We have perhaps the most perfectly crafted hook in this entire project.  As a theoretical new viewer, seeing what the show is typically like before being hit with the potential of what it could become…you bet I’d be watching the next week.

(The punchline, of course, is that the next episode, “Never Again”, was an infamous stinker.  Alas!)

SUPER BOWL XXXII

Show: “3rd Rock From the Sun”

Episode: “36!  24!  36!  Dick!” (Season 3, Episodes 14 & 15)

Aired: January 25, 1998

Network: NBC

Special Guest Stars: Cindy Crawford, Angie Everhart, Greg Gumbel

“3rd Rock From the Sun” is not a show I dabbled in much, either as a kid or now.  It just wasn’t on my radar, and the rare glimpses I did get made me slightly uncomfortable.  This “Coneheads”-esque sitcom about aliens trying to integrate into human society just had an undefinable strange energy that I just didn’t vibe with.

This episode, though, does hold a place in my heart, at least sort of.  Super Bowl XXXII (Denver vs. Green Bay) was the first Super Bowl I ever watched, and it was an uncommon family gathering to boot (we would never do it again).  I remember the ads for this episode running constantly throughout the afternoon and, again, the strange energy was not something I wanted to fuck with.  So, actually seeing the episode felt like taking on an old enemy of sorts.

Look, I don’t have a ton to say about it!  I still think “3rd Rock” is weird!  I’m not quite in love with John Lithgow the way everyone else seems to be; I don’t despise him or anything, but he’s always seemed like the bagged cereal version of a “faux British aesthetic” guy.  The episode’s plotline is almost childishly simple (girls have come into town and everyone is horny), yet maddeningly over-complicated (the girls turn out to be from Venus and are here to broadcast a beer commercial during the Super Bowl that will make everyone weak and compliant, allowing Venus to take all of the stuff from Earth).  I also think I experience cognitive dissonance from seeing Wayne Knight play such a huge role in a different NBC sitcom from the 90’s.

There are positives: I was stunned at how much I liked Kirsten Johnson, someone I hadn’t really been exposed to all that much.  I thought French Stewart does a pretty good job with the “confident dumb guy” act.  It’s always nice to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jane Curtin. Finally, I give points for utilizing the Super Bowl itself as part of the action. Still, I have to wonder if this is another example of the “event mega-episode stuffed with celebrity guests” being a poor fit for what is, at its core, a show that is happy to just be light and silly.  “36! 24! 36! Dick!” then may not be the most representative episode for “3rd Rock”.

I’ll close with this.  What’s up with NBC and “3” shows?  “3rd Rock From the Sun”!  “30 Rock!” “Third Watch!”  As a famous network sitcom star was fond of saying, “what’s the deal?”

SUPER BOWL XXXIII

Show: “Family Guy”

Episode: “Death Has a Shadow” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Aired: January 31, 1999

Network: FOX

We end the 90’s with an animation two-hander from FOX.  First up, the series premiere of “Family Guy”.

Although I had a long period in my mid-twenties or so where I found “Family Guy” a tired and creaky vehicle for shock humor, I initially got in with Seth MacFarlane’s magnum opus on the ground floor.  Let it be known I was one of the twelve people watching it in the early 00’s as it was caught in the patented FOX death spiral of being aired seemingly at random throughout the year.  I was there way before everyone else found it either on DVD or on Adult Swim, and it is genuinely flabbergasting to me that it’s still cranking out new episodes to this day.  “Family Guy” has survived a lot of opposition to weirdly become this comedy institution, even as it’s essentially refused to adapt or evolve with changing audience tastes.

It’s a trip, then, to return to its very first episode, which has the energy of a writer’s room that’s suddenly been empowered to just put every funny thought they’ve ever had onto the page.  There are a nearly infinite amount of punchlines constantly coming at you throughout its brief twenty-two minutes, almost as if they sensed the network wasn’t going to support them for very long.  The pilot episode is borderline exhausting, although I should mention it’s frequently very funny.  Jerry Seinfeld as a court jester!  The Kool-Aid Man busting through the walls!  “Just one gun”!  I laughed quite a bit!  I guess I’ve come back around to “Family Guy”.

The only thing kind of odd about “Death Has a Shadow” is that they clearly hadn’t hammered out Peter’s friend group yet, nor the full character dynamics.  We briefly see Quagmire, and we see in the background a black guy who is clearly going to become Cleveland.  But there’s no Joe Swanson, at least not yet.  Seth Green’s voice for Chris isn’t quite right, either, still too much like its Buffalo Bill inspiration.  And Lacey Chabert is voicing Meg, who the family isn’t horrifically rude to yet.  But the commitment to non-sequitur absurdism was there from the jump.  This was fun!

(As before, points to the episode for directly involving the Super Bowl, as well as caricatures of John Madden and Pat Summerall.)

Show: “The Simpsons”

Episode: “Sunday, Cruddy Sunday”

Aired: January 31, 1999

Network: FOX

Whereas “Family Guy” was still being birthed, here we catch “The Simpsons” in its slow exit from its prime.  “Sunday, Cruddy Sunday” is located right in the middle of its tenth season, maybe a year or two removed from what is generally considered the show’s golden years.  You can feel that slight loss of fastball in this episode; the punchlines aren’t as constant, and the ones that are there are maybe 5% less sharp as you typically associate with The Simpsons.  It also suffers from my least favorite trope: guest stars either getting announced, or announcing themselves (“I’m Dolly Parton!” or “Wow, it’s Dan Marino!”, that sort of thing, you know, the way people talk).

But!  It’s still a successful and funny outing, with a great sad-sack guest appearance by the late Fred Willard.  I also have to give the same points I gave “Family Guy” for also directly involving the Big Game itself, with significant extra credit for actually landing Madden and Summerall to play themselves.  That nicely offsets the glowing cameo they provide to the head of the network himself, Rupert Murdoch (also voiced by himself).  Of the two “Simpsons” Super Bowl episodes, this is clearly the superior.