September 19, 2007

By Doug Elfman
Chicago Sun-Times

It's too bad Fox's new sitcom "Back to You" starts as a miserable and insufferable flop. But at least the first episode isn't as unbearable as the soul-eating second episode.

The sitcom (debuting tonight before the season opener of " 'Til Death") is an always-laughing-audience comedy starring Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton as news anchors in Pittsburgh. A traditional American stage farce trapped in a faux-contemporary setting, it's like "Frasier" joins the newsroom from "Bruce Almighty." Sorry for the insult to "Frasier" and "Bruce Almighty."

Jokes fail fast due to routine-sitcom punch lines and off-kilter direction (by legendary James Burrows, surprisingly). You can see the setup coming for jokes, every one of the rotten little creatures, like when a guy says, "Sometimes I can be a little whiny," and a woman responds, "I believe that's pronounced 'little weenie.' " Whoa, that's a new one, geniuses.

Here's the best joke from the first two decrepit episodes, as delivered by Fred Willard in a waste of his skills: "Last week I told a perfectly harmless PMS joke, and she threw a bottle at me. Whose point did she prove there, huh?"

There's no need to belabor this compost. But I would like to add that there's an allergy story line here that ABC's awful "October Road" just aired, very similarly, last season. And Grammer is great for 10 seconds when he's supposed to seem gloomy, which makes me think he might be compelling in an uberdramatic role.

Anyway, "Back to You" stinks, shames the sitcom form, is written and directed with smelly gusto, and is not original, funny or redemptive by any universal standards known to science, creation or TV executives. Congratulations, crappy show, you may be the unfunniest sitcom on broadcast TV. I salute your achievement.

Doug Elfman

September 19, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic

On "Kitchen Nightmares," chef Gordon Ramsay visits restaurants in middle-class America, and he finds larvae, bugs, rotten meat and moldy food almost everywhere he looks.

"It's not a 'crab' cake," he says at one eatery. "It's a 'crap' cake, because I feel if I eat any more, I'll be [passing gas] for the next 105 years."

This is not something you want to watch while chowing at home. The visuals are yucky.

But it's a very entertaining public service. Merely by showing us how average eateries fail, Ramsay might egg all of us into being more suspicious of food we eat out.

In an upcoming episode, Ramsay goes to a New York seafood place that just received a 95 out of 100 from the health board. Ramsay immediately spots so much grime and putrid food, he shuts the place down so workers can wipe up the deep filth.

"You've got the nerve to tell me that you clean the walls every f----ing Tuesday?" Ramsay screams at a staffer. "Touch the wall, you dirty pig. This is disgusting!"

He's right. Obviously, Ramsay can't bust every restaurant in America. But the series can make you start questioning similar eateries in your own sphere. I was reminded of two restaurants I used to like but have avoided lately. One smells mildly of its bathrooms. At another, I've complained twice, to no avail, about mold or massive mildew piling up on the vents.

Even when the food isn't rotten, restaurants aren't necessarily doing good jobs. On "Nightmares," one family Italian restaurant buys its ravioli from Restaurant Depot. At that point, customers are essentially spending a lot of money for a frozen dinner.

Ramsay is the perfect inspector. As usual, he's demanding, brutal and fearless. He repeatedly insults egotistical managers and chefs and yells, "Just smell that for me!" And they do. And they blanch at their own nasty food.

Ramsay's people refurbish the unkempt kitchens for free, replacing broken equipment with top-notch ovens, refrigerators and dining rooms. I'm not sure these restaurants deserve this, since they have been dishing out rotten, microwaved food to customers and taking their money.

Hopefully, Ramsay will return to these places at the end of the year to see if his changes stick. And I imagine you will be more demanding about where you eat. The next time you're dining out, peek in the kitchen and look very closely. I dare you.

September 17, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic

The Emmys were so boring, the only fun part was seeing Sally Field and Katherine Heigl say dirty words and Ray Romano say a synonym of one. But Fox censored each outburst, killing the only rare moments of true personality.

Heigl, Izzie on "Grey's Anatomy," won best supporting actress in a drama. The camera flashed to her in the audience in time to catch her saying "s---," though you didn't hear the word, and the director switched to a different camera in silence.

"I've worked my ass off," she also said, feeling very empowered during a thank-you speech.

Ray Romano joked that his ex-TV wife Patricia Heaton will soon be TV-banging Kelsey Grammer on a new Fox show, but whatever word Romano used for "banging" was too much for Fox, which silently cut away from him.

Sally Field of "Brothers & Sisters" won for dramatic actress and went on what seemed to be a giddy war rant: "Lets face it. If mothers ruled the world, there would be no godd---" ... something-something. Her voice got muted, and the camera switched off of her.

"The Sopranos" creator David Chase also made a political statement, sort of. His show got three swan song Emmys -- for best drama, writing and directing -- even though the last season was hit-and-miss.

He said the show was essentially just about gangsters getting things done, and "if this world and this nation was run by gangsters -- well, maybe it is."

"30 Rock" won best comedy, thank God, since it's the best show on TV.

But everything else was pretty stupid. All of us with good taste just kept waiting to see if Britney Spears would pop up (as rumored) and apologize for being the untalented slag she was at last week's MTV awards.

Britney was a no-show. But she could have apologized for the whole Emmy show.

Britney could have apologized that a big winner of the night was the AMC miniseries called "Broken Trail." I had to watch "Broken Trail." Did anyone else subject their brains to it? Yeah, it kinda super sucked.

Britney could have apologized for the musical number where slick dudes from "Jersey Girls" Chipmunk-sang the Four Seasons' "Walk Like a Man" while scenes from "The Sopranos" flashed in tiny blurs on walls behind them.

Britney could apologize that an announcer pronounced Heigl as "Hay-gl" (like "bagel") when the "Knocked Up" star was presenting nominations. Heigl's hackles hoisted up, and she sniped, "It's 'Hi-gle.' "

Britney could apologize for host Ryan Seacrest being tedious from start to finish. He began by guessing actors' fashion choices. This made Hugh Laurie look very Britishly uncomfortable.

Seacrest told just one good joke. He congratulated Hayden Panettiere from "Heroes" on turning 18: "My gift [to her is] seating you as far away from Jeremy Piven as possible." (If you haven't heard, Piven has stuck his tongue in a mouth or three.)

Piven, the Chicagoan on "Entourage," won best supporting actor in a comedy and joked about his other reputation, that he's a buttface: "I want to thank the entire crew. I don't know any of their names."

Britney could apologize for Judy Davis, who won a supporting actress award for the horrible "Starter Wife" miniseries, but award presenter Marcia Cross said she didn't know where Davis was and walked off stage.

And Britney should apologize for E!'s boob craze during its preshow coverage. We all love boobs, but models were forced to disrobe to their waists to reveal how their magical undergarments/pasties protected them from accidents. No men dropped trou to reveal banana hammocks.

delfman@suntimes.com

September 16, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic

The best new show of the fall is also the most fun. "Reaper" is a silly little piece of hilarity about a guy who turns 21 and finds out his parents sold his soul to the devil. For eternity, he must serve Satan as a small-fry gopher on Earth.

His first mission is to use a Hellacious hand vacuum to suck up the soul of a fugitive from Hell, then deposit the vacuum at a place, like the DMV, that seems like Hell on Earth. The place will change each week.

This plot is truly unique and fresh. It was created by two writers -- Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas -- whose resumes include "The X-Files" and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit."

Their track record suggests "Reaper" won't start sucking anytime soon. Plus, it's on ratings-challenged CW, where shows can live forever, so it may not be canceled this decade.

The first episode benefits from being directed by Kevin ("Dogma") Smith. He won't be back, but his tight yet freewheeling style sets a tone for other directors to follow.

The cast is stellar. Bret Harrison (unknown despite starring in Fox's funny "The Loop") plays Sam, a good guy in weird circumstances whose devilish chores may not be so evil after all. Tyler ("Invasion") Labine portrays his scene-stealing friend Bert "Sock" Wysocki, who finds the whole situation totally super cool.

The hardest I laughed at the first episode comes in a stupid scene (I mean this as a compliment here) where the friend throws a bleach-type bottle at Sam's head to wake him up emotionally. Why's it funny? Why's anything funny? It works.

And Harrison and Labine -- portraying witty, dorky workers at a Home Depot-ish store called the Work Bench -- are immediately one of the funniest duos on TV.

I laughed at another scene where Labine wraps big wads of tape around his hands. I asked Harrison why that gag sings.

"You know why it's funny?" Harrison said. "Because it's random."

He and Labine say the scripts are strong, but they're also improvising their characters' comedy. For instance, Labine didn't like one line in an upcoming script where he was supposed to tell Sam, "You do rock the house on 'Guitar Hero.' "

"I said, 'Nah,' " Labine says. "We decided a better line was, 'You do eat steak pretty good.' Or: 'Yeah, you do roll an impossibly thin crepe.' "

"That is comedy, my friends," Harrison says. "Not 'Guitar Hero!' Everybody would say that s---."

He's completely right.

When Labine read the "Reaper" script, he was "relieved to see something ridiculous and asinine." There's a freedom in this, his sixth TV series. He's steering his character away from being just dumb or aimlessly goofy.

"There's a fine line between jackass and a guy who chooses to be a jackass," he says. "I've decided [that] to follow Sam into the depths of Hell sounds cool. F--- it. I work at the Work Bench. I'm bored. That sounds good."

Quite seriously, there is a lesson to be learned from "Reaper." It is not a show driven by committee and focus group (like "Brothers & Sisters," say). It's made by a team of expert individualists who are allowed to explore their own paths.

There are promising reference points for "Reaper." Labine says it will follow a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" template of being smart and silly but not intimidating or idiotic.

And there's plenty of room to change things up. The devil is portrayed by Ray Wise, who was smiley Leland Palmer on "Twin Peaks." Or is he?

"It has things for comic-book fans like me," Harrison says. "Nuances. Like: What if this guy isn't really the devil? Like: Why hasn't there been a scene yet where he's standing behind my mom waiting to slit her throat?"

There's only one way to find out. Watch "Reaper."


Where have all the good shows gone?
Season starts on a high note but ends on a snore

September 16, 2007

It's a mediocre year for new fall shows. My three favorite new series -- "Reaper," "Chuck" and "Pushing Daisies" -- start great. But in today's lineup of the top 10 new fall dramas and comedies, the rest is the best of the blah.

"Pushing Daisies" (7 p.m. Wednesdays starting Oct. 3, WLS-Channel 7): I keep saying this but it's true. "Pushing Daisies" looks and sounds like "Amelie" meets Tim Burton, though it's helmed by Barry ("Men in Black") Sonnenfeld. The debut is a great little romantic caper where Ned can supernaturally touch dead people once and bring them back to life, and touch them a second time to kill them forever. He and his lady love Chuck (plus their business partner Emerson) go around solving crimes by briefly resurrecting corpses and interviewing them. It's clever, lovely and at times the most sumptuous visual art on TV.

"Life is Wild" (7 p.m. Sundays starting Oct. 7, WGN-Channel 9): Katie's nutty dad moves his family to nowheresville in Africa, just when she's fallen for a boy in her American high school. Suddenly, her whole life changes in the wild. This family show is much better and less smarmier than it sounds, due mostly to pleasant direction and a charismatic star turn from Leah Pipes. It's filmed in Africa, too, not on a SoCal location, so nature lovers rejoice.

"Aliens in America" (7:30 Mondays starting Oct. 1, WGN-Channel 9): So a Wisconsin family decides to take in a foreign exchange student, and what they get is a Pakistani in the era of terrorism alerts. Of course, Pakistanis are not terrorists by definition, but the family and the high school will have to get their heads around this. The debut episode is fairly funny in spots, though it also falls into a few lesson-learning traps. Even so, there's comedy and a possibility for charmingly dorky scenes to come.

"Samantha Who" (8:30 p.m. Mondays starting Oct. 15, WLS-Channel 7): Christina Applegate returns with a strong performance as a woman who wakes up in a hospital with amnesia. This sounds like a soap-opera setup, but the script moves in a good direction. Samantha used to be a cocktail-swilling, lying jerkwad, and the amnesia gives her a chance to realize this and change her ways. The comedy lies in her finding out how awful she used to be. The premiere is just pretty good, but "Samantha" looks like it could add more fun down the line as it develops.

"Women's Murder Club" (8 p.m. Fridays starting Oct. 12, WLS-Channel 7): This is really just a good-cop, bad-guy show starring Angie Harmon, but the debut is well made for what it is. For once, all the detectiving protagonists are women -- a prosecutor, a journalist and other females with snooping skills. They also help each other personally instead of backstabbing, which is a welcome relief on TV. It's a sappy process at its worst, but solid and traditional at its core for fans of the genre.

"K-ville" (8 p.m. Mondays starting this week, WFLD-Channel 32): Here's yet another half-good, half-troubled new series. The good -- it's fairly interesting to watch cops deal with life in post-Katrina New Orleans. The bad -- the plots can be kind of ridiculous at times, adding outlandish storylines to an already crazy situation. Can "K-ville" ditch the dumb and embrace the powerful elements? That's the question.

'Bionic Woman'

September 16, 2007
8 p.m. Wednesdays starting Sept. 26, WMAQ-Channel 5:

I can't believe "Bionic Woman" is in my Top 10 new shows list. That tells you how weak the fall schedule is. It's not horrible. It just doesn't yet execute its mighty premise with super skills.

It begins with an homage to "La Femme Nikita" but poorly so. Then Michelle Ryan, as the good bionic woman, gets upstaged by the great screen presence of Katee Sackhoff, portraying an apparently evil bionic woman.

Even Ryan humbly gives props to Sackhoff for making her rise to the challenge of action scenes. "There was this one section where I have to punch [Sackhoff] and she was saying to me, 'Hit me, hit me.' And I was like, 'But I don't want to hurt you.' But she was like, 'No! Just hit me!"

When impressed TV critics asked producer David Eick this summer if Sackhoff will steal the show, he joked she can be kept in check: "It doesn't take much. Withhold her snacks, and she'll be good."

Ryan isn't a slouch. She's unknown here in the States, but she's a star in England for acting in "EastEnders," a very popular soap.

Anyhow, the show should be named "Bionic Women," since there is good nemesis chemistry between the two lead actresses. Their bond bodes well for the drama, if it survives high expectations, a moderate introduction -- and Isaiah Washington, the guy "Grey's Anatomy" broke up with. Washington joins the show later for a guest-star run before NBC sets him up with his own action series next year. Maybe he'll be "The Bionic Man"?


'Chuck'

September 16, 2007
7 p.m. Mondays starting Sept. 24, WMAQ-Channel 5:

It's the year of the dork, and Chuck is the dork of dorks. He works in a Best Buy-ish place one day. The next, he incidentally gets his brain packed full of national security secrets and turns into a super brainiac spy against his will.

This is a comedic superhero show, unlike most of the dramatic comic book stuff on NBC. The tone is like "Alias" meets "The 40 Year Old Virgin." The premiere is lightly funny.

Can it keep up the comedy? Star Zachary Levi thinks it will. And he believes viewers will be drawn to Chuck as much as he is.

"When I was in high school, I was tucked into a theater doing theater all the time," he says. "I wasn't a jock. I am Chuck in many ways. And I feel the general audience that watches television can relate to Chuck more than they can to a superhero ... He's a great guy, and he means well, and he wants to fix computers. But at the end of the day, he'll pee his pants if someone points a gun at him."

The young-skewing script will be lost on some older viewers, especially when they hear video game lines like, "The terrible troll raises his sword!" But the childlike quirkiness of "Chuck" is not lost on Levi. Dork is the new cool, he says, and he points to Tina Fey as an icon of the Generation of Dorks, with her smartypants eyeglasses and confident, witty outsiderism.

"Tina Fey on '30 Rock,' in a way, she's definitely that cute and unassuming and nice girl, trying to make her way in the world." Chuck will be trying to make his way in a world of NSA agents. People will aim pistols at him. Will he pee his pants? Keep your fingers crossed.


'Gossip Girl'

September 16, 2007
8 p.m. Wednesdays starting this week, WGN-Channel 9:

A few touchy TV critics have lambasted this melodrama soap because it follows fight-happy prep-school teens who get drunk and get raped and such. It's one of the worst new series -- but for its cardboard acting and writing, not for the morals.

I'm including it on this list only for its slight watchability as a potential conversation piece/train wreck. The catty, sex-obsessed dialogue tries to be contemporary -- "tap that ass," limoncellos, etc. -- though all it accomplishes is creating a visual state of awful terribleness.

So anyway, back to the sex and drugs among snooty, old-money teens from New York. Show creator Josh Schwartz, who also produced the rich kids of "The O.C.," claims kids' nasty actions will result in consequences:

"These are flawed characters. And they're trying to do good. And in the environment that they grow up in, they don't always have the best role models," he told critics this summer.

Oddly, "Gossip Girl" is narrated by Kristen ("Veronica Mars") Bell, who gives voice to the title's gossip-writing blogger, a la Perez Hilton. But you never see Gossip Girl. In fact, producers say the narrator is not necessarily even a character Bell will ever play, but that the narration is merely a representation of words being written under the pseudonym of Gossip Girl. That's strange.

Then there are actors who are nothing like their characters. One nasty side girl is played by Nan Zhang, whose real life career path is in science: "I studied for ophthalmology and neuroscience research, and later I focused on photoreceptor retinal damage and ear protection. So just after the [first 'Gossip Girl' episode] wrapped, I was also working on stem cell research."

But don't expect to see any shows to be based on bright young women working on stem cell research. That would really, really draw the ire of the conservative "family values" interest groups.

Doug Elfman

Sept. 14, 2007

By Doug Elfman
The Game Dork

Medal of Honor" war games always delve into realism, minus the buckets of blood that splatter over other war adventures. "Medal of Honor: Airborne" keeps the blood sort of in check once again, while somehow looking even deadlier.

You snipe a guy in the face, and his head jolts back.

You shoot an Italian fascist in the stomach, and he grabs his belly wound while buckling to the ground.

Maybe I'm making this sound more violent than it is. Either way, "Airborne" does take place on dirty, murderous battlegrounds of World War II Europe.

The "Medal of Honor" series is one of the best in gaming lore. Likewise, "Airborne" shouldn't let you down. You run through muddy towns, invade half-standing buildings and scatter over filth, such as half-blown up lanterns and overturned tables.

The artistry is stellar, finely detailing cracks in bricks and creases in uniforms. It's quite the achievement.

"Airborne" also offers online multiplayer, and as fans of the series know, multiplayer "Medals" are crazy addictive.

If you need a change of pace, you can kill people instead in "Metroid Prime 3: Corruption," where you play as a bounty hunter in space with a twist: You're a woman.

Sure, most of the time, you can't even tell you're a woman, because you're covered in a big metal spacesuit. But it's a curvy spacesuit. And sometimes you can see her blinky eyes.

I consider this a twist, since few video game heroes -- let alone soldier-types -- are heroines. But "Metroid Prime" games by definition star the unladylike Samus, who again travels on spaceships and planets to root out easy-to-kill villains.

"Corruption's" 20-hour journey is sometimes fun and sometimes boring. Samus shoots lasers and plasma cannons out of her arm-attached weapons at space pirates who have been planting computer viruses around the galaxy. That's fine.

And when Samus gets in tight spots, you turn her into a ball and roll her through vents and wall holes. What's new is you get to shoot through walls and go into a killing-spree mania called "hypermode."

But the joy of this first-person shooting game (with no multiplayer option) is limited because it's easy, familiar and somewhat repetitive. Newcomers probably would find it cool. It's not challenging to me, though, so I won't be playing it much.

If you're sick of killing this year, you can always turn to "Tiger Woods PGA Tour '08." It's fantastically deep. You mold your face, arms and other attributes. You buy better clubs as you go. And you golf on majestic links.

Wii owners may especially enjoy the interactive golfing of "Tiger," although it's very hard to do the supposed ball fades and special tricks. But you can golf as a man or as a woman. I golf with a female. She's curvy. No spacesuit. She's the real deal.



("Medal of Honor: Airborne" retails for $60 for Xbox 360 -- Plays very fun. Looks great. Challenging. Rated "T" for blood, mild language and violence. Four stars out of four.)

("Metroid Prime: Corruption" retails for $50 for Wii -- Plays fun but also repetitive and dull too often. Looks good. Easy to moderately challenging. Rated "T" for animated blood, violence. Three stars.)

("Tiger Woods PGA Tour '08" retails for $60 for PS 3 and Xbox 360; $50 for Wii; $40 for PS 2 and PSP; $30 for DS -- Plays fun. Looks great. Very challenging. Rated "E." Four stars.)

September 14, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic

The scripts for "Family Guy" are filled with the f-word and adult situations that Fox won't broadcast. For an upcoming episode, writers penned a minutes-long and hilarious abortion joke (yes, yes, it's a gag about abortion and it's funny, get over it), but it will be edited down to a bare snippet for network TV.

That same episode includes yet another joke that will likely be cut altogether, as show creator Seth MacFarlane explains: "Pleasuring a man with a socked foot probably won't make it to Fox. It'll make it to the DVD," MacFarlane says. "It'll probably make it to Adult Swim" on Cartoon Network reruns.

I was happy to hear the abortion and socked-foot jokes when MacFarlane took his cast mates to a TV critic convention this summer and vocalized a "table read" of the episode. I'm a fan, so it was like heaven, with penis and vagina jokes.

Chicagoans get a similar chance to see table reads this weekend when MacFarlane and the cast perform line-by-line readings of a classic script at the Chicago Theatre.

At the table read I saw, TV critics laughed more than I've seen them laugh at anything else at these conventions. But it was nothing compared to when "Family Guy" does reads for fans.

"We just got back from doing a show in Montreal for the comedy festival," MacFarlane said at the time. "You had, like, 2,000 drunk people in their 20s who were just, you know, laughing at the stage directions."

Visually, it looks like a throwback. Cast members talk into microphones. It's sort of like seeing one of those old-timey radio shows in progress.

That's actually a fitting analogy for MacFarlane, 33. He created the sexaholic character Quagmire as a riff on old radio guys.

"As is true of many kids of my generation, I was a big fan of radio dramas from the '30s and '40s," he half-jokes. "And I used to be amused by the commercials. Everybody was always talking so fast: 'Autoline Sparkplug is the best sparkplug you can buy!' Quagmire started as an impression of one of these 1950s radio pitchmen."

The most shocking thing about hearing MacFarlane speak is he sounds exactly like my favorite "Family Guy" character, Brian the dry-witted dog.

In fact, the first time I met MacFarlane, I listened to him speak for a few minutes and said, "It's nice to meet you, Brian." He must get that all the time, but he greeted me with a smile. He's quite approachable for being such a genius icon.

The other "Family Guy" voice actors are like that, too. Alex Borstein basically sounds like Lois and Mila Kunis basically sounds like Meg.

"When we cast 'Family Guy,' we look for people who sound real," MacFarlane says. "I like the show to sound like it could be 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' or 'The Larry Sanders Show.'"

In the table read I saw, there was a funny joke satirizing the Keanu Reeves-Sandra Bullock vehicle "The Lake House." I ask MacFarlane how those kinds of gags come about: Does he view "The Lake House," then go to work and tell writers to rip on the movie? Or does he go to writers with a specific joke?

"It can go both ways," he says. "In that instance, that was done in a gag room. The writing room is working on the body of the scripts. We usually have two gag rooms running, because we have so many cutaways and so many jokes. They're assigned to write the last line of a scene. Obviously, it's called a 'scene blow.' Or a 'cutaway gag.'"

"Spitballing" jokes like that, he says, has to come with a good angle.

"It has to have some point of view. It can't just be saying, 'This movie sucks,' although we did do that with '[Wild] Hogs.'"

delfman@suntimes.com

What not to ask Seth MacFarlane
If you go to one of the "Family Guy" performances at the Chicago Theatre, you'll see Seth MacFarlane (the voice of Peter, Stewie and Brian), Alex Borstein (Lois), Mila Kunis (Meg), Seth Green (Chris) and Mike Henry (Cleveland) re-create a classic episode and several musical numbers from the past.
MacFarlane, creator of "Family Guy," will head a Q&A afterward. Feel free to ask him a few things, but let me spare you three questions people always, always ask, just as critics did again this summer after a similar table read.
Did he see the "South Park" episode that bashed "Family Guy"?
Yes, and he doesn't attack "South Park" in retaliation.
"We dish it out so much, we gotta take it, right?
"I am a fan of 'South Park,' actually. I think that show is very funny," he says. "They busted our [chops] a lot about the cutaways. The cutaways they sort of see as a deviation from the story."
But MacFarlane sees cutaways as animated versions of "one-frame 'Far Side' cartoons."
"They're just kind of laughs for laughs' sake," he says. "It's just pure comedy, we hope."
Does "Family Guy" want to stay contemporary with its jokes, since it parodies long-ago decades?
"Absolutely," MacFarlane says. "We're not just trying to do '80s references.
"We do try and make sure that we are kept up to date, although there are still some Bob Hope references that neither of those generations are going to get."
Does "Family Guy" work better when it offends people? Or when it doesn't offend people?
"I try," he says, "to kind of have this balance between the classic and the edgy. ... We do a lot of poop jokes, but at the same time, we use a 45-piece orchestra every week."
During table reads with network execs in attendance, "no one is shy about gasping in horror if we have crossed the line, and so it's a very good barometer. ... We're never out to shock for the sake of shocking."
By the way, what shocks MacFarlane?
"I don't know," he says, sounding like refined Brian the dog, as usual. "The Bush administration, I guess?"
Doug Elfman

September 14, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic

Hi, my name is Clint, and I'm a big stupid doofus from Texas starring in a new "docu-soap" called "Nashville," where me and a bunch of other country singers try to become famous, like those girls did on "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County."

In the first episode, I tell Rachel she's reeeal pretty and I have feelings for her, so she dumps her boyfriend, then saunters over to my party. But I don't like it when girls take me all serious-like, so I ignore her and she storms out.

There's a scene where I'm shootin' pool with this guy, and I tell him I get in trouble with girls all the time, because they actually believe me. Girls are so gullible.

But I can't blame 'em. I'm fatless, and I talk real smooth lines, like, "I like kissin' people's hands," and, "You might be the most beautiful thing that I've ever seen."

Can you believe girls fall for this? They're just crazy.

Any damn way, Rachel gets all up in my grill and texts me, "Stay away from me!" So, naturally, I call her and ask her to meet me on a bridge and she does. Ha ha, sucker.

I don't want to give away too much of this first episode, but there are other girls whose hands need to be kissed, if you catch my drift.

Rachel is Terry Bradshaw's daughter. He's a lovin' father, and they get along real nice. She tells him she wants to go to Nashville for one reason. To be famous!

Rachel says, "I want to be a star and I want everybody to love my music and believe in what I'm singing and come to my concerts!"

You gotta hand it to her for sayin' she wants to be a celebrity, instead of sayin' she just wants to be a great singer. What is quality without fame?! And she's got a good throat, and all, but you don't want to waste that blond on not bein' famous!

Another person on this show is Mika. She's from Hazard, Ky., a real-life coal miner's daughter. Her mom tells her she's "naive to the world," but Mika treks on over to Nashville anyway, because all she wants to do is sing -- "all or nothing."

She's sweet. And she's got a hand that my lips wanna meet.

Some people, like this TV critic in Chicago, say that Nashville industry music is all hat and no cattle: nothin' but affectations with no truth or individuality. But what I say is Nashville is great, because it's gonna make me famous!

Well, that's about it for me for now. Tune in to this show if you want to see us musicians trying to be famous more than anything else in the whole world. You'll also hear a few tunes that go, "Well I got my first truck when I was 3 ..." and "We're movin' at the speed of love!" Ain't that romantic?

delfman@suntimes.com