What I Watched Last Night

I watched Inside Polygamy--per The Beachwood Reporter's recommendation. I was mostly rewarded.

In many ways, Inside Polygamy was standard fare. Bill Kurtis--can someone explain to me why he is a Chicago legend? Or at this point is he only ironically legendary?--narrates in his trademark stilted style of a newcomer to the planet mimicking the stiffest news anchors of yore.

On its Website, A&E calls this "a story crying out to be told." Sorry, I think it's been told over and over. Still, it's almost always compelling. Watch how the "plural wives" struggle with jealousy and yet endorse polygamy as a righteous religious order. Cringe as the master husband describes going "room to room" during any given week to spend "nurturing" time with his honeys. Contemplate the way these arrangements deliver a sense of family to women who so desperately seem to need one. And wonder why no polygamist family yet features one wife with plural husbands.

Also on my cable crawl:

- Don Knotts is dead, various channels. Apparently his favorite Andy Griffith episode was "Aunt Bee's Pickles." Rest in peace, good man. You were the best small-town deputy sheriff I knew.

-True Life: I'm a Competitive Eater. The True Life series is one of the few MTV shows of value these days. I'm a Competitive Eater follows three guys "in training" for competitive eating contests such as Nathan's Famous hot dog melee. It's disgusting--and that's what made watching it so compelling. But I almost gagged several times.

- Pundits on ports, all stations all the time.

- Cheers rerun, forgotten station: Cliff's mother comes to town. This show mostly still holds up, though the character of Rebecca Howe was always the weak link.

- M*A*S*H rerun, forgotten station: An old friend of B.J.'s gets him in trouble by using his name when he gets into trouble in Tokyo, or something. Practical jokes ensue. M*A*S*H was never the same after the original cast frittered away, and episodes based on a chain of practical jokes were weak attempts to capture the original magic.

- Steve Rhodes (Feb. 26, 2006)

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