Schlocko Promo

We at the Hammer tend to chafe at the very notion of "guilty pleasures". Egregious examples abound in all forms of art, which any of us can easily point to, while still proscribed by the bounds of our individual tastes. Some people feel that John Cage's 4'33" represents some sort of æsthetic pinnacle. To us it sounds like a guy sitting at a piano and refusing to play it. It's an empty frame. This sort of pissing contest, as you see, is entirely subjective.

We prefer to draw our line on the side of craft, versus art. We like people who have the brains to be artsy, and/or the guts to be fartsy. So there's Bach, and there's Iron Maiden. Each employs a certain level of craft, so each is valid, though certainly not equally. We have Motörhead right next to Mozart in our CD collection. You get the idea. Here there is craft; somebody is doing something that takes some level of specialized skill. Whether or not you happen to enjoy the particular product as part of your consumption ritual, theory and technique were studied and applied to a measurable extent.

As opposed to, say, hanging a couple hundred orange bedsheets around Central Park. Is it just us, or does all of Christo's stuff seem like a high school prank? Hey, I got an idea -- let's go toilet-paper the Reichstag!

The notion of craft extends into television as well, of course. The multiple layers of satire of The Simpsons require the convergence of several disciplines, as do the tightly-written, well-characterized stories of The Shield and Deadwood. And even "reality" TV, as hopelessly contrived and schlocky as it is, also has a small measure of craft, most notably in the realms of editing and incessant promotion. At its heart, Survivor is obviously just another soap opera, albeit one with unlikeable, average-looking people who desperately need a bath and a job. (Not unlike Deadwood in that regard, but at least there is a wealth of writing and acting on that show.)

This is all a fancy way of dancing around our own "guilty pleasure", Desperate Housewives. Much has been made of its overhyped appeal, but to us it's pretty simple -- milfs. Men like milfs, and Desperate Housewives has them in abundance. We'll put up with a cheesy night-time soap for some hot milf action.

There. We just saved you from having to watch another stupid profile on Good Morning America or The View, or hear another ridiculous story about what a tough time Teri Hatcher is having getting laid. And that's what we're really after here. ABC is ruining whatever small enjoyment of hot milf action we were getting in the first place. This may be the first time in TV history that a constant barrage of lame hype has caused a Golden Globe-winning series to jump the shark barely halfway through its first season.

The problem is that as the series has gained popularity, especially after the infamous Monday Night Football promo, it has aired much less frequently, taking two- and three-week breaks for the past several months. When a significant part of your fan base is men -- who have notoriously itchy remote fingers to begin with -- you're killing your show that way.

The show is a trifle, and it knows it as much as we know it. That's much of its appeal. And it does function as a canny satire of suburban sexual mores. But obviously, the sexual appeal can be outsourced anywhere on the internets, with or without Teri Hatcher. We're getting bored, you network programming idjits, and we're not exactly chomping at the bit for Jake In Progress. So get it together, or we're goin' back to the milf sites.

We've got hands; we can jerk ourselves off. We don't need programming pinheads to do it for us.