The Morning After: Shipwrecks

NBC Photo: Kelly Walsh

Friday night saw the debuts of Starz's Crash and NBC's Crusoe, which I didn't get around to reviewing, and to any of you who thus spent time on them over the weekend, I apologize. Crash, Starz's entry into the original-drama sweepstakes, managed to re-create the strained, self-consciously shocking and implausible culture clashes of the original movie with an entirely different cast, including Dennis Hopper, encourages to indulge his worst overacting tendencies as an out-of-control music producer.

Crusoe, meanwhile, was not so much a failure as a kind of inexplicable curiosity, reminiscent of one of the Robert Halmi fantasy miniseries NBC might have aired a decade or so ago. At this point, I simply have no idea what Ben Silverman is trying to do with NBC. Not really intended for adults and yet (I suspect) a little too dull for kids with many other entertainment options, it—like Knight Rider—was mainly an exercise in re-creating a kind of entertainment that I'm not sure there's much of an opening for. It's like homebrewing your own Tab; kind of impressive if you can pull it off, I guess, but why would you bother?

Anyway, if you have any sense, you spent last night watching Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs on Comedy Central. Comments on that, baseball or anything else welcome here.