Tom Goes to the Chair: Sorry Folks, ‘Girls’ Is Still Terrible

With February coming to a close, we’re almost done with the second Sweeps Month of the TV season (and the cheapskates who run TV these days don’t even give us a full month of TV in May, so these are the good old days).
A few things about this season so far:

• Vegas should be better than it is. I’ve been watching it from the first episode, but I don’t know if I’ll sign on for a second season. With Dennis Quaid as the frontier-type sheriff and Michael Chiklis as the mob boss/casino operator, the sparks should be flying off the screen. They’re not.

The plots are intricate enough, but there’s just no fire.

• They brought back Body of Proof, but it’s totally changed around into more of a detective procedural. It still has Dana Delany. Most guys have a warm spot for Delany ever since she appeared as Josie Marcus in “Tombstone.” However, it’s going to take more than that.

• I tried to watch a few minutes of American Idol, but I couldn’t even make it to the first commercial break. I love Mariah Carey’s singing. Period. I like absolutely nothing about Nicki Minaj. The show is hideous and grotesque.

• One of my all-time favorite sitcoms, “The Big Bang Theory,” is now the top-rated show on TV. That’s amazing to me. It’s not the funniest show on TV (Modern Family is), but any show that talks about the Higgs Boson, has characters dress up as the Doppler Effect for Halloween, and celebrates the geekdom of comic books, sci-fi, and physics is special.

• I’m torn as to whether to read the Walking Dead graphic novels so I’ll have an idea as to what’s coming up or to just go along for the ride. I know it can’t just be about finding new and clever ways to kill zombies, but the Governor vs. the Prison Group plotline is wearing thin. More Michonne. More Maggie. More walkers.

I know I promised to watch Girls and provide the lowlights, but it’s getting harder and harder to do so each week. It’s really starting to weigh on my soul. The other day, one of my basketball players told me that she watches it and finds it “interesting.” She mentioned the part where the main character, Hannah, gets a job as a writer and, for her first assignment, she tries cocaine. First of all, cocaine hasn’t been interesting since the late 1970s and, even then, it was only because of Andy Gibb. But, while it hasn’t been interesting in decades, it’s still illegal, so an editor is going to assign a first-time reporter to break the law? Yeah, that happens.

I got an e-mail from somebody who told me that I’m too old to get the humor of the show. Well, I’m not Jewish, but Mel Brooks has always made me laugh. I’ve never been black, but I love Richard Pryor. I’m not an atheist, but I find Bill Maher hilarious. If I have to be a twenty-something amoral slacker to “get” the humor in the show, then it wins the all-time TV award for micro-targeting.

Anyway, this week Hannah, who wants to write her autobiography at the ripe old age of 24, gets a deal to write an e-book. Then she immediately gets writer’s block. Meanwhile, her friend, who works as a hostess, sleeps with some artist who is going to throw a party that night. His assistant abruptly quits, so he asks the hostess with whom he has just slept if she will hostess the party that night. She thinks that it means that her sex partner for the previous evening now sees her as part of a couple, while he just sees her as a hostess who just happens to be there.

The entire rest of the episode involves some guy who ends up walking somebody else’s dog in Staten Island.

As always, I wish I were making this up, but I’m not.

This article appears in Feb 21-27, 2013.