Mandroid’s ‘Roids
7 March 2006

In this edition:
The Oscars
Flight of the Conchords

In an amazing inter-column turnaround I have managed to bring the second instalment of Mandroid's 'Roids in less than 9 months after the first. What prompted me to say "Hey wasn't I supposed to be writing an entertainment column?". Well, the always semi-exciting Oscars wasn't the real reason. Righteous anger about the non-screening of the Flight of the Conchords TV show in New Zealand was. The Oscars were just something to throw in to have two topics to talk about.

The Oscars
I watched the Oscar ceremony yesterday, and I have no desire to write a recap or complain about who won what since I’ve seen hardly any of the movies and recaps are for journalists filling word counts.

The show was about the same as always. Jon Stewart was good, as usual the host’s role becomes smaller and smaller during the show, and the show becomes more tedious. And as always, a creature I will call Rasco Tink (for reasons that will remain mysterious) runs amok. Every year, despite the protests about running time and award categories that would be worthy of addition, Rasco Tinko gets 15% of the show to run riot in.

A few years back Rasco Tinko put a bunch of surviving Oscar winning actors and actresses up on stage to sit there like waxworks. This year Rasco Tinko went montage crazy. There was no real point to the montages, they were just clips of genres of films that Hollywood makes. Westerns, film noirs, an uneasy melding of epics and musicals, and a grab bag of movies about social issues.

Someone has to teach Rasco Tinko some discipline. I would much rather see time spent on people who have done stuff this year. The best song category is often kind of sucky, but it used to be five songs. Did they trim it so they didn't have to have so many performances? Why not play excerpts like they do for the Scores, instead of elaborate interpretive dance numbers? And how about ditching the clip shows and museum displays and adding a few categories. Stunt coordination deserves an Oscar. And they could split costume design into period and modern as well, as discussed here.

The Oscars is always going to be semi-shitty TV. They’re going to bore us no matter what, so they may as well reward some achievements while they’re at it.

Flight of the Conchords
The HBO One Night Stand comedy showcase is one of the premier TV shows for comedy acts. Some of you may know that New Zealand musical comedy duo Flight of the Conchords have done an episode. You would think that this is the sort of thing our state broadcaster would be rushing onto the screens, right. What with our new Charta and what have you.

TV2 deserves to be picked on about this, as they show HBO programs (The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm) and are subject to the glorious Charta. Yet the megaminds prefer to showcase the New Zealand of troubled teens, bad drivers, and obsessed DIYers. You make us look so good.

Since TV2 is having so much trouble putting on shows about New Zealand’s non-criminal population, I’ll help them out. I have gone through their TV schedule for March 11-17 and flagged 17 hours of what would be completely unmissed prime time TV. That HBO special is only a half hour. You could play it 34 times without anyone noticing. (And how many hundreds of hours have been wasted on our worst ‘comedy’ duo Marc Ellis and the other guy who played one of the Rugby codes. I want to say Andrew Baxter, but I’m sure that’s not his name.)

Saturday 11 March
There are straightforward deletions here, since TV2 shows three hours of repeats on a Saturday night. Two of them Desperate Housewives and Invasion are “second chance” screening for people who missed them on Monday and Wednesday, respectively, and have still not learned how to set their video timers after 20 years! Oh yeah, the third hour of is a repeat of The OC which is shit and on DVD if anyone really wants to see it again anyway.
Three hours cleared, and you can keep the Lotto draw.
Total time cleared = 3 hours

Sunday 12 March
Treasure Island – Couples At War is an insult to everything I hold dear. Namely, pirates. I love Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and for this tub of ass drippings to steal his title for the purpose of marooning morons on an island with NO PIRATES is unforgivable. In this episode “Disaster strikes the women’s camp”. Ditch it.
This week’s movie is the not great, but understandable, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Lucky.
Time cleared tonight = 1 hour
Total time cleared = 4 hours

Monday 13 March
Mitre 10 Dream Home will show you the colour that slack jawed New Zealanders will be painting the room they’ll be poo in for the next ten years. I’m sure the only people watching are waiting for the following episode of Desparate Housewives, or are too crap to have their tastes catered for.
Time cleared tonight = 1 hour
Total time cleared = 5 hours

Tuesday 14 March
This is clearly TV2’s night to dump turd, understandable when they’re up against House and Boston Legal on TV3. So there’s a solid 4 hour colonic block to be laxatised.

7:30 Shock Treatment. Two ‘celebrities’ called Keri Ropati and Australia’s Vadim Dale do some Thai kickboxing. TV2’s programmers may not realise that they show people who can actually kick box on Sky Sports. Why? Why is this interesting? Who are these people? Thanks to TV2 they’ll probably better known nationally than Flight of the Conchords after this.

8:30 Criminal Minds. Hit me with a 2-by-4! A show about an FBI profiler! Wow. Wow. What a fucking great idea. A show were law enforcers catch criminals. Whoop Whoop Whoop. Ditch it.

9:30 Police Ten-7. Completely stealing the thunder of Motorway Patrol that follows, this week the police deal with drunk drivers. Can’t this show wait until 2am?

10:00 Motorway Patrol. If you are reading this from outside New Zealand, an important fact: We are really shit drivers. This is a show where drivers get pulled over.

10:30 Cold Turkey is the absolute rock bottom in brain dead TV concepts. People trying to quit smoking. For an hour. The existence of this makes me want to cry.
Time cleared tonight = 4 hours
Total time cleared = 9 hours

Wednesday 15 March
Lost and the first screening of Invasion are on tonight. I have no idea if Invasion is good or not, as the idea of aliens invading was last exciting in 1953, but it’s the sort of show someone I know might watch. However, there’s some time that can be trimmed.

Two and a Half Men is pretty lame, but could be spared for the sake of consistency of argument as a New Zealander’s in it (Melanie Lynskey). This is followed by Joey, a horrendously bad spin-off from Friends, which was a show that had already been kept alive for a decade more than necessary.

A Kiwis doing comedy in America double bill? Could work. But I surely must defer to the wise minds of TV2 for picking Joey instead. Gee whiz, thanks!!!!!

There something called Bad Lads’ Army at 10:25. Now, I would like to think that any army was made up of at least semi-bad lads, but apparently this one is so bad that they get on TV. I can’t even bring myself to watch, they must be so scary.
Time cleared tonight = 1½ hours
Total time cleared = 10½ hours

Thursday 16 March
Three hours can be cleared out, easy. First up at 7:30 is Redemption Hill. This involves the sort of self-obsessed little vandals that you avoided in high school until they dropped out and took up residence in jail. The show tries to redeem them, somehow. It sure is nice to see such a fine side of New Zealand up on screen. God forbid we show anyone successful. This episode, though, could be spared because Police Ten-7’s Graham Bell visits the teens”? Would it be worth watching to see his heart sink when none of the kids know who the hell he is. Maybe, just maybe.

9:30 is 20/20. Back in the day I wouldn’t say to ditch it. But this show has morphed into Entertainment Tonight without the benefit of John Tesh’s giant jawline. On the website they tell us that if you have any story ideas you can email them in. Here are some hard hitting stories that they are currently researching. In brackets my notes to help them achieve journalistic success:

* Are you a freegan? Do you know people who are? Let us know! (No. No. And no chance)
* Do you have trouble finding fashionable clothes that fit? Let us know, were (sic) interested in hearing from you. (If you knew me you wouldn’t ask that, I always look super hot)
* Addicted to cyber porn? Let us know how it has affected you. (It got me hard)

10:30 The Sopranos. Another repeat. Seriously, anyone who wants to watch this would have watched it when it was first on, or they’d have the DVDs.
Time cleared tonight = 3 hours
Total time cleared = 13½ hours

Friday 17 March
Wow, what a troop of walking dead we have stumbling around the Friday night schedule. They should be swiftly dispatched with a bullet to the brain.

7:30pm Twins is apparently a comedy. In this episode the twins go back to driving school. Can’t wait to see how that turns out.

8:00pm Hot Properties, another comedy, has an even better storyline than Twins. The women get tickets to go to Oprah. I’m sceptical, but the wise minds at TV2 have no doubt seen this and worked out that it’s in fact 3.6 times more funny than the Flight of the Conchords HBO special. Thank god for them and their supercomputers.

8:30pm Ghost Whisperer is a show I have actually seen. The title gives a clue as to the mental void it was created in. Jennifer Love Hewitt play Haley Joel Osment, except the ghosts want a chat and everyone talks about their feelings and she has boobs that are getting a little saggy.

9:55pm Footballer’s Wives – Extra Time. Why the Empire fell. It was future quaked by this show (explanation of future quaking coming soon).

10:25 I have no idea what Mile High is, but the comedic potential in Lucy dumping Jack and giving back the ring is apparent to all.
Time cleared tonight = 3½ hours
Total time cleared = 17 hours

There you go TV2. Seventeen and a half hours of prime time chud you can throw in the gutter. You’re welcome.

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