Prime Times : Writers on Their Favorite TV Shows

Rating:
Summary: Book This, Dan-O.
Review: Twenty-three writers write about their favorite TV shows or shows that stick in their minds for some reason. Nick Hornby, a British writer, writes about West Wing, a show about a fictional president, but can't imagine Americans enjoying an English show about a fictional prime minister. I guess he'd be surprised at the much-viewed collection of Yes, Prime Minister videos at our house.

Alan Lightman remembers three episodes of Twilight Zone that scared him, his brothers, and the housekeeper silly. After forty years he gets details of the shows wrong (the Chinese restaurant was really a diner, and the plastic surgery patient was a woman rather than a man, as he remembers), but it doesn't matter. The time and the memories are important, not the TV show.

Mark Leyner writes an unlikely, but funny essay about a South Korean academic he encounters who suspects that everything that has happened in the world since 1968 is a figment of Steve McGarrett's imagination.

As a former teen who loved Big Valley, I enjoyed reading Jayne Anne Phillips's memories of the strong character played by Barbara Stanwyck and that hunky Heath and the handsome, but apparently celibate older brother (played by Richard Long) who lived part time in San Francisco. "Hm," Phillips muses.

MST3K, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Davey and Goliath, Secret Agent (formerly Danger Man), The Dick Van Dyke Show, Star Trek, even Survivor all get analyzed, remembered, and misremembered.

An especially original essay has Lan Samantha Chang watching Gilligan's Island shortly after her family has immigrated to Wisconsin from China. She remembers identifying with the castaways and decades later when she sees the show again, understands the show on a completely different level.

Great for browsing and skimming, Prime Times is a lot of fun. Also recommended is Gilligan Unbound, an unexpected analysis of Gilligan's Island, the Simpsons, Star Trek, and The X-Files by a professor who watches TV without shutting down his brain.

Rating:
Summary: A fun idea, but nothing more
Review: Writers who are insightful and entertaining elsewhere, like Virginia Heffernan and Nick Hornsby, are dull and pointless here. Susan Cheever gives us yet another picture of her famous father as a stuffy suburban drunk. Nora Ephron likes Mary Tyler Moore because it made her feel better about being a single woman. So what? "Why did you like Gilligan's Island" is not an inherently interesting question- quite the opposite. It would take real talent to make something nourishing out of these bones. And, although the resumes of these writers indicated that the necessary talent had been assembled, the product demonstrated otherwise