HollywoodIdiocy.com

Okay, I know the show wasn’t that great. Fox’s JUSTICE was a somewhat standard trial drama with the twist that at the end of each episode, they showed you what really happened in the murder case of the night.

I liked the cast, especially seeing Victor Garber, best known as Sydney Bristow’s dad on Alias, in a new role. Kerr Smith of Dawson’s Creek fame did well, and folks like Rebecca Mader and Eamonn Walker were welcome new faces.

I think where the show went south was a case of Perry Mason-itis. The appeal of the big reveal at the end of each episode, potentially, is that for whatever outcome the lawyers in the show thought they won or lost, the truth that was revealed might prove them wrong.

Trouble is, they never were. The lawyers on Justice were always right, no matter what. No matter who they defended or how thin their winning argument seemed, they not only won their cases but the “big reveals” showed them to always be on the money as well. It’s like Perry Mason, squared!

It’s a problem that afflicts nearly every legal drama on TV. Alan Shore on Boston Legal’s never wrong, even when he loses. The same used to apply for The Practice and Ally McBeal. Lawyers are written to be just too perfect, on TV. It hurts a show’s credibility.

By episode six, I knew the series was gonna be put on the van rack by Fox, driven out to a remote location, shot and buried in a shallow grave. I’m just glad all 12 episodes aired, unlike what has happened with so many other Fox shows I’ve liked over the years, including Firefly, Wonderfalls and many others. Heck, I didn’t even watch House the first season, because I was afraid it would be sacked, too.

Another one bites the dust…

The Fox Network used to be the butt of jokes like this: “If someone offered the major networks a chance to broadcast live executions, the only one who’d turn down the opportunity is Fox. They would insist on live, nude executions.”

Yet the same ‘Net bigwigs making those jokes aren’t laughing anymore … and probably haven’t been for a long time. But the power of Fox was made crystal clear this week when it posted its first big win with a powerhouse lineup.

Sunday and Monday’s four-hour, two-night premiere of 24 blew away everything but The Golden Globes, and the Tuesday-Wednesday four-hour, two-night debut of American Idol will prove to be the top two shows of the week, posting an increasingly rare 20.2 rating and a 30 share, according to ratings reports released by Nielsen Media Research.

The 24-American Idol 1-2 punch has never been more potent and is a real metabolism booster for Fox, which did OK last fall with House and Prison Break leading the way; but there’s nothing that quite measures up to Bauer power and Simon making bad singers cry by telling them the truth.

Yet even as audiences grow smaller and smaller for the other big networks … whose ratings varied from a 7.1 (CBS) down to a 2.1 (The CW) … Hollywood grows more and more hostile to something that works.

Sure, Simon’s rudely honest with people. But the show is definitely family viewing. Even 24 can’t lay claim to that, and AI’s ratings are significantly bigger than even 24’s. Yet the networks continue not to get the message and idiotically despise AI while continuing to dish out shows that are anything but family viewing.

And they wonder why they can’t pull in the 30.0 rating that MASH did in the 70s and 80s anymore. It’s not just that cable and satellite bring people more choices, folks… it’s that people no longer like most of the choices the networks dish up anymore, so naturally they’re gonna splinter off and watch Bill O’Reilly, Mythbusters and whatever’s on the History Channel or Animal Planet instead.