By Scott Buckner

I’m not going to say one word about that car wreck known as My Boys. Badly-done references to Chicago aside, it’s just a stupid, boring fucking show – period – that I’m pretty sure even prison inmates don’t watch except when they’re being punished. If I’m going to fritter away minutes of my life I’ll never get back on a Wednesday night, I’m going with something that resembles entertainment. Yeah. Something like Spike TV’s “Most Extreme Elimination Challenge,” otherwise known as MXC.
Quite frankly, this is one of the funniest damn shows around.

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Posted on December 28, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

It’s not that I’m obsessed with how bad My Guys is, is that it’s so bad I keep watching out of amazement. I mean, the premise isn’t half-bad, though inherently sets up stereotypical gender bullshit as an integral part of the storylines. P.J. Franklin is the Cubs beat writer for the Chicago Sun-Times and hangs out with her guys, which hinders her dating life. Sportswriters have been done on TV ad infinitum – though rarely well – but it might have been more interesting to dial back the focus on P.J’s social life and write the show through the prism of her workplace. She could really have any job – the focus of the show is the poker table at her apartment, and whatever situations the writers can think up to put P.J. in. Bad choice.
The show is also incredibly strained in its efforts to namecheck Chicago in ways that both no national audience will understand and no local audience will countenance, given the incredible rate of inaccuracy, irrelevance, and ignorance these references display.

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Posted on December 27, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

I actually look forward now to watching My Boys every Tuesday night so I can continue to crusade against it. How many inane references to Chicago, sex, rock and roll, and baseball can one show make in an episode? My Boys keeps trying to top itself.

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Posted on December 20, 2006

By Kathryn Ware

How hard does My Boys suck? Pretty hard. Strained, tired, and outright weird references to the Billy Goat (“You know, the place that’s underground? ), Kingston Mines (“We had great seats!”), and Lord & Taylor (Lord & Taylor?!) aside, it’s clear the writing staff knows nothing about baseball, poker, heavy metal, or the male-female dynamic. Which pretty much leaves the show with nothing but a chick who looks cute in her softball uniform. And while that’s certainly something, it’s also certainly not enough.
To get a sense of the absolute horror that is My Boys, which airs Tuesday nights, we’ve compiled two lists of comments posted on the TBS-My Boys message board – 10 critical comments that sound like they come from genuine viewers, and 20 praiseworthy posts that sound to us like plants from the TBS-My Boys staff. You be the judge.
GENUINE COMMENTS –
1. HOLLYWOOD IS STILL MAKING WOMEN LOOK STUPID
Posted: Dec 10, 2006 12:51 PM
By: GetReal Now
Why do you continue to air shows that portray women as DUMB idiots? Every woman knows that guys hang around so they have a chance to sleep with you. Do you think that you can change mankind by airing these shows? Do you enjoy making women look stupid? Please pull this ridiculous show and replace it with something that is more real.
2. Re: Has some potential and hate the obvious product placement . . .
Posted: Nov 29, 2006 11:41 PM
By: pchaney
The blatant product placement pissed me off, literally. Here I was watching what I thought was a rather lame comedy (as compared to its counterpart SATC) and what I was actually watching was a 30-minute infomercial for Match.com. I felt violated and my “trust” in the entertainment value of the show – albeit very little as it was – was gone. They sucker punched the audience and there is no excuse for that.

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Posted on December 12, 2006

You can put your best face forward, but it’ll still leave you feeling inadequate.
What it is: A personal microdermabrasion system. Not to mention Susan Lucci’s beauty (that being a flexible term for our purposes) secret.

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Posted on December 11, 2006

By Kathryn Ware

Lucille Ball’s hair was made for Technicolor. It’s an amazing red color not found in nature and in Best Foot Forward, which I saw recently and was shown again last night on Turner Classic Movies, she wears it in a huge fortress style favored in the ’40s that easily adds another ten inches to her already impressive height. With her pale skin and bright red lipstick, she’s stunning. There’s a scene with Lucy wearing a vibrant ensemble, complete with a hat that looks like layers of bright blue-green phyllo dough balanced atop her rock solid flaming hairdo. It’s almost painful to look at.

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Posted on December 7, 2006

By Pat Bataillon

I am through with all the pompous commercials I have been seeing as of late. I wrote about “Macrimination” recently, and that was just the beginning of this new onslaught of unbearable advertising. I still don’t get those new Lexus commercials, and all those commercials with that Verizon ass really need to go. And what’s the deal with those jewelry outfits, Jared and Kay?

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Posted on December 5, 2006

By Pat Bataillon

Murder By the Book
Court TV
Court TV puts what it calls some of America’s “best” crime writers on camera to talk about real-life cases that either got them started in crime fiction or inspired them throughout their careers.
Their list includes James Ellroy, Michael Connelly, Faye Kellerman, Jonathan Kellerman, and Lisa Scottoline. As for America’s “best”, there are some noticeable gaps there, but I guess not everyone who writes murder mysteries has an interest in self-promotion.
The show itself is wildly uneven. The series opener, repeated last night, starred James Ellroy, who is riveting as he narrated his own life story and the murder of his own mother in a suburb of Los Angeles when he was ten years old. Ellroy himself comes across as troubled and enigmatic. He and a retired cop criss-cross the area, follow up every lead in the long-cold case, and ultimately realize that nearly everybody on the witness and suspect list has long since died. But Ellroy, who has hated his mother all his life, comes to realize that the point of his search for her killer isn’t the real point. He simply has to “find” his mother, and come to terms with who she was. He wrote about the story in his book My Dark Places and claims that the Court TV segment is the last time he’ll ever speak of it.

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Posted on December 1, 2006