Living With Ed
I'd like to tell you about one of my new favorite shows. It's called "Living With Ed" on the Home & Garden Network. Ed is Ed Begley Jr., former star of "St. Elsewhere" and "Arrested Development." On "St. Elsewhere" during the 1980s, he was one-half of one of the tremendous and underrecognized comedy duos in the history of television-- playing the occasionally clumsy but competent medical internist Victor Ehrlich under the mentor of the hospital's pompous chief of surgery Mark Craig (William Daniels)."Living With Ed" is a reality show highlighting Begley's home life with his wife, actress Rachelle Carson Begley, and daughter, Hayden, but featuring mostly the home itself. Begley is a ardent environmentalist, and his Studio City, California home is a wonder of "green living." Solar panels on the roof provide all of the energy for the home. The white picket fence surrounding the relatively modest property was built entirely of recycled plastic milk jugs. Ed drives his wife up the wall by timing her showers and by taking up space in the yard for a garish solar oven (and later, a second). The Begleys have both an electric car and a hybrid, but those are fourth and fifth traveling options for Ed-- following foot, bicycle, and public transportation. Ed rides an exercise bike each morning to power his toaster, yet so far, contrary to information he provided in a "Simpsons" episode in 1999, it seems he does not really own a nonpolluting go-cart powered by his "own sense of self-satisfaction."
"Living With Ed" has some great tips for enviro-friendly living and reducing CO2 emissions, but the appeal of the show with its stars. Unlike other reality shows centered around has-been rock stars and societal burnouts, the Begleys have intelligence, conscience, and a sense of perspective. There's warmth in their interaction and a familiarity for viewers that comes with the Begleys actually living a rather middle-class lifestyle. The family's got plenty of dough, mind you, but the Begleys' efforts to save, conserve, and take careful stock in their consumerism is something the rest of us can relate to; their social consciences, something to aspire to.
Also, their 8-year-old daughter couldn't be cuter. She's not a smart-lipped little snot, like most of your MTV-reality, circus freak adolescents, and she likely isn't headed towards teenage alcoholism. She seems to like and respect her parents actually, even doting on them. This is likely because Mom and Dad aren't as clueless and self-absorbed as the other celebrity-stained reality show nutjobs in your cable box.
"Living With Ed-- Season 1" was released on DVD Tuesday, or catch any of the (only) nine episodes on HGTV.
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In this modern era of exploding cable television stations, internet, and home digital recording, it's rather hilarious to think that there might still be significant political pressure to provide specific television programming for the outdated and paternalistic so-called "family hour" in prime-time network television. It's been over a decade ago now since NBC moved its wildly popular, adult-oriented sitcom "Friends" to seven o'clock central time (and that was far from the beginning), and still we have to read pieces like this one in today's New York Times.
What's strange is that no critics of NBC's programming schedule are actually cited in the story. Who is it that really cares if fictional network executives portrayed on "30 Rock" invent a show called "MILF Island"? The whole plot is satirical anyway. It's gone above and beyond the level of absurdity when the most important newspaper in America calls a television network to task for "vulgar" programming when the episode writer's point was that network television is vulgar or tasteless.
That being said, I'm not sure if I buy NBC Entertainment's justification that "30 Rock" is family-friendly" because star Tina Fey is "about to become a cultural icon," especially if Jason Lee ("My Name is Earl") is a legitimate comparable. By that logic, "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" would be appropriate programming.
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Speaking of MILF's, what about that Rachelle Carson Begley? Yum.
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CM Blog loves Dmitri Young, backup firstbaseman for the Washington Nationals. Not only has "Da Meat Hook" heroically been playing (and making the 2007 National League All-Star team) as a diabetic and a recovering alcoholic, but he's sporting some cool new fingernail polish and told the interviewer in the linked article that, in the winter, he "sleeps like a bear."
posted by CM @ 3:48 PM
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