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Get with the program

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The first episode of Survivor: Panama: Exile Island aired last night. This season the gimmick is they've split the 16 contestants into four tribes to start out: older women, older men, younger women, and younger men (more on this later). After each reward challenge, the losing team has to leave one member behind to spend the night alone on Exile Island. The upside to this is that supposedly there is an immunity idol hidden on the island. Anyhoo, after five years and a dozen locations, Survivor is still your best destination for reality television. Oh I'm sure a lot of production-y stuff goes on behind the scenes, but toward the end of those 39 days, the contestants are beat-up, weathered and hungry. Some look downright emaciated. That's real. But you know what would be even more real than Survivor? Survivor in HD. Since I picked up my first HDTV last summer, I've been gratified to find more and more HD programming available. Surely Survivor would be jumping on th...
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Good Question

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'Scrubs' stays an inventive operation Among the countless perversities and mysteries of TV, the slighting of ''Scrubs" has been notable. Why hasn't this sly sitcom been an Emmy magnet during its four seasons? How come viewers haven't made it a Nielsen hit, or at least a cult sensation that gets fetish pieces in Entertainment Weekly? Why does NBC shuffle it around the schedule every year like a dung-puck , withholding season five until a gap happened to open up in the Tuesday lineup? I love this show, and I wonder why nobody else watches it (at least not enough Nielsen viewers). When I heard NBC promote it's new Thursday lineup, touting My Name is Earl and The Office as TV's most inventive comedies, I had to wonder. Both of those shows are funny, I agree, and Earl is pretty original. But The Office is a remake of a British sitcom! The pilot episode, at least, used the same script word-for-word. How does that qualify as inventive? Anyway I dig...
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Values a la Carte

So now we're saying it's not okay to torture suspected terrorists (or anyone else)? Well, I believe that's a good thing, but it makes me wonder if it is still okay to execute convicted terrorists (or serial killers or anyone else). Is this a question of policy (innocent until proven guilty) or morality (love thy neighbor, thou shalt not kill)? If it's the former, I guess that makes sense. But in deciding to end a life I don't see how questions of morality can be avoided. I'm philosophically opposed to state-sanctioned execution, if only for the utter hypocrisy of it all. "It's wrong to kill, and if you do it, we'll kill you." Now I have a new philosophical point to ponder: If we believe we have the right to decide to end someone's life, then why is torture such a big deal? Which is worse? Tags: ignorance fear
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