Look back in horror

First, an update: the apartment complex maintenance man finally fixed my bathroom ceiling today; he's still got to come back for the finishing work (sanding and painting), but I don't really care how long that takes. It's good, because I was about to pull out the California Civil Code section that says it's illegal to have a leaky roof in an apartment (well, in legal lingo, but that's the net effect).

Anyway, I received a 2-year-old TV Guide recently to add to my collection. Since it happens to be the 2000 Fall Preview issue, let's reminisce about those days.

For years, TV Guide had a text-only cover on its Fall Preview issue, but recently, they've switched to having the biggest stars from sure hit shows on the Fall Preview covers. In 2000, those people were Geena Davis (ABC's "The Geena Davis Show"), Michael Richards (NBC's "The Michael Richards Show"), John Goodman (Fox's "Normal, Ohio"), and Bette Midler (CBS's "Bette").

Now, since the editors of TV Guide know nothing about TV anymore, they managed to pick perhaps the worst group of shows possible. None of these shows lasted to a second season, but two of them are imprinted on my brain from having to closed-caption them ("Geena Davis" and "Bette").

And on to the new 2000-01 shows that didn't get spotlighted on the cover:

Sunday: "Ed," NBC: This was the one new show from this season that I actually watched at home, at least once it moved to Wednesdays...and coincidentally, it's still on the air (after a move to Wednesdays). TV Guide called this "A Fall Preview Favorite."
"Hype," WB: Another "Fall Preview Favorite."
"Nikki," WB: Another show I had to closed-caption, made barely watchable by Nikki Cox's low-cut tops and short skirts. It lasted two seasons, which was surprising because nobody was watching it.

Monday: "Boston Public," Fox: A "Fall Preview Favorite," even before Jeri Ryan joined the cast.
"Yes, Dear," CBS: For some reason, this is still on the air.
"Tucker," NBC: A sitcom about an inventor in the late 1940s who comes up with a new kind of car...oh, wait, no, it's an ultra-generic family sitcom starring Katey Sagal that ran for about a week and a half.
"Deadline," NBC: Hard to believe people would rather watch a sitcom about a newspaper writer on CBS ("Everybody Loves Raymond") than this drama about a newspaper writer about NBC, but they did.
"Girlfriends," UPN: I think this is still on, but since it's a UPN show, it's hard to tell.

Tuesday: "Dark Angel," Fox: This was a "Fall Preview Favorite," and TV Guide's description contains the line "She's a fox who's also part cat." Someone was very proud of themselves after coming up with that one, I'm sure. Oh, this lasted two seasons.
"Dag," NBC: Everyone watched this once to see if it was a spinoff of "JAG."

Wednesday: "Titans," NBC: A prime-time soap on NBC? An Aaron Spelling prime-time soap on NBC? It just didn't fit, and "Ed" was the beneficiary, going into a less competitive time slot where it's sat quietly for three seasons now.
"Welcome to New York," WB: Jim Gaffigan as a wacky weatherman from Indiana who becomes a wacky weatherman in New York, based on David Letterman's life story, except that Letterman went from being a wacky weatherman in Indiana to being a stand-up comic/writer in Los Angeles. So, in conclusion, it had very little to do with David Letterman's life story.
"The Street," Fox: This may be the one show that TV Guide managed to correctly predict the fate of: "This show's smug, smutty frat-boy sensibility seems like a bad investment of time."
"Gideon's Crossing," ABC: This show deserved to be canceled because they didn't send scripts to their closed-captioners, thus making it hard to accurately closed-caption the medical jargon.

Thursday: "Gilmore Girls," WB: Another "Fall Preview Favorite." I'm pretty sure that, if I were female, I'd be watching this instead of (or maybe in addition to) "Ed." As it is, I closed-captioned the first episode, but I've never seen it since...except when I took the Warner Bros. studio tour with my father in the summer of 2001 and we saw some of the sets.
"Cursed," NBC: This started out as a show about a man, played by Steven Weber, who was cursed by an ex-girlfriend. Then they dropped the "cursed by an ex-girlfriend" part of the show and changed the title to "The Steven Weber Show." It didn't help. Chris Elliott played the roommate, and even his presence couldn't save it. This is yet another show I closed-captioned.

Friday: "The Fugitive," CBS: One of this night's two "Fall Preview Favorites." Unlike the original version, this one got canceled with no resolution, causing its 6 or 7 regular viewers to post angry missives on the Internet.
"Freedom," UPN: The result of an experiment to see if a combination of premise, stars, network, and time slot could result in a show that absolutely nobody saw. The experiment was a success. (TV Guide's description begins "When the military takes over a shattered U.S. government in a bloodless coup," which is exactly what the kids want to see on Friday night.)
"The Trouble with Normal," ABC: In retrospect, it's a good thing this got canceled, because it allowed Paget Brewster to go on to "Andy Richter Controls the Universe"...
"Grosse Pointe," WB: ...and same deal with Irene Molloy. What are the odds of two actresses in separate shows premiering in the same time slot going on to be the two female characters in the same show during the very next TV season? Did I word that badly? Anyway, this show was also a TV Guide "Fall Preview Favorite," and if I'd had my TiVo in the fall of 2000 instead of not having it until the end of January 2001, I'd probably have sampled it.
"CSI," CBS: TV Guide said, "If only the characters were as animated as the evidence," implying that this show would certainly never be the number 1 show on TV.
"Freakylinks," Fox: This had about as many viewers as "The Fugitive," above; most people who tuned in the first time were disappointed when it turned out that it wasn't about rejects from the Johnsonville Brat factory.
"Level 9," UPN: The continuation of the experiment that began with "Freedom."
"Madigan Men," ABC: This show couldn't even hold onto the meager audience delivered to it by "Norm," Norm McDonald's sitcom, which preceded it on the schedule.

Saturday: "That's Life," CBS: This show is a complete mystery to me. I guess it existed, since there's a color picture right here in the TV Guide Fall Preview issue, with three women and their cleavage sitting in front of Paul Sorvino, and it was even a "Fall Preview Favorite" (the show, not the cleavage).
"The District," CBS: Come to think of it, this show is a mystery, too, and the only person in the picture is Craig T. Nelson, who isn't showing any cleavage.

By the way, the biggest disaster of the 2000-01 TV season is alluded to in the "Saturday" introductory paragraph: "ABC and NBC are showing movies [on Saturday night], although in the winter NBC turns the night over to bone-crunching games from wrestling guru Vince McMahon's new Xtreme Football League."

In conclusion, this TV season was fairly typical: there were a bunch of new shows, a few of which managed to survive into the next year, and even fewer that are still around two years later. (However, it was atypical in that I only started watching one new show, and even more atypical that that show was one of the "even fewer" that's still around two years later.)