No One Watched It But Me: "Kitchen Confidential"

The Show:
“Kitchen Confidential,” Fox, 2005

The Premise:
Based fairly loosely on the book by Anthony Bordain, disgraced star chef Jack Bordain is given one last chance to head up a slick New York restaurant while keeping his ne’er-do-well kitchen staff in check.

What Made It Special:
This one was all about setting. For every five shows set in a precinct, hospital, or law firm, there’s one that tries to do something different. “Kitchen Confidential” had the added bonus of stranger-than-fiction source material in Bourdain’s book, a memoir of life on the fringes, because let’s face it – no one in their right mind would want to work in a restaurant.
It was also blessed with an outstandingly talented comedic cast, starting with Bradley Cooper, who’s really gifted at playing assholes you still kinda like. Also on hand were Nicholas Brendan (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), John Francis Daley (“Freaks and Geeks”), and John Cho (Harold and Kumar…).

Signs It Was Going Somewhere Good:
When the show adapted the warts-and-all parts of Bourdain’s book, it was really sharp, and had an air of authenticity to it. There were also hints that we were actually watching Jack, initially at an emotional high after a year of sobriety and newfound sense of responsibility, reaching the beginning stages of egomania that led him into the sordid booze-drugs-women combo that finished him off the first time around.

Signs of Wear and Tear:
It was a fucking Darren Starr production, so it frequently abandoned the enjoyable heightened realism of the “day in the life in the kitchen” angle for “Sex and the City but with Chefs” sex-comedy nonsense that felt nothing but contrived and worse, conventional. “The chef’s dating a vegan!” probably sounded great in the writing room, but honestly – the book had a story about a guy stitching up his own wound and returning to work. How did that not strike them as the more interesting source of humor?

Sign the Producers Knew They Didn’t Have Much Time Left:
They didn't hear the train until it was right on top of them – the show got pulled four episodes in.


Why No One Watched:
Its lead-in was, god bless ‘em, “Arrested Development.” In its third season. When any hope of getting new viewers in was totally lost. (I believe around the third episode, they might have switched the timeslots. Which is hilarious in its own way.)

Available on DVD?:
Yup, a two-disc set you can grab through Netflix.

Where You've Seen It Since:
Pretty much every single cable network now has its own reality-chef show, but ironically, none of them are going to give you the terrifying (and frequently hilarious) reality of working in a restaurant that Anthony Bordain does. (Though weirdly, neither does “No Reservations,” Bordain’s otherwise-enjoyable travelogue show on Discovery.)

Nobody Watched It But Me: "Threshold"

The Show:

"Threshold" (CBS, 2005)

The Premise:
Alien colonization via mathematical patterning and sub-audio signals is opposed by a Red Team of misfit scientists.

What Made It Special:
Aside from the nicely modern take on an invasion (echoing an issue of Warren Ellis's "Global Frequency"), the main draw was the top-to-bottom excellent cast. Carla Gugino plays intelligent and career-minded without ever going for the hard-ass-woman cliché; Brent Spiner's doctor seems to genuinely dislike his circumstances and the people around him; Peter Dinklage gives a blithe perviness to his self-destructive linguist.
But maybe the best surprise is Brian Van Holt (who, god bless him, went on to “John From Cincinnati,” potentially a future “Nobody Watched It But Me” entry) as the reserved black ops agent assigned to the group. Initially I thought he was too bland to deliver on the quiet menace I thought the character should have, but eventually it dawned on me that they were playing him like a lot of cops and criminals talk about the toughest guys they know: because he IS a badass, he has no need for grandstanding or bravado.
He gets the series’ best moment, too. After successfully defusing an armed standoff with a bunch of kids by using WORDS AND LOGIC, he puts down his rifle and, in lieu of any line of dialogue to cap off the tense scene, just sort of exhaustedly breathes out, “Pfffhhhh.”

Signs It Was Going Somewhere/Signs of Wear and Tear:
Usually this is easy to divide into two sections. But this show could be so frustratingly uneven that its good and bad blur together.
For instance, ignoring the amazing pilot (on which it appears they spent all of the budget meant for the rest of the series), week-to-week it would be a mediocre-to-just-above-average series. No visual style, dialogue mostly made up of these very smart people explaining things to each other that they already know, and great plot ideas that are pretty dully executed.
So yes, mediocre shows – that is, until the last five minutes of most every episode, which would usually end with either a pathetically minor victory, or a catastrophic revelation, both of which regularly implied that the Red Team was LOSING (example: one episode ends with Spiner realizing, "They've gotten into the food supply," which is NOT followed by, "To Be Continued").
(According to exec producer David Goyer, this wasn't accidental – their three-year plan would have seen Gugino's "Threshold" protocol escalate to "Foothold," and finally "Stranglehold," as the alien threat became overwhelming.)
This sense of losing ground on the battle escalated with every episode, but by the time it became apparent that that was part of the overall design, the show had been canned – before the last four episodes even aired.

Why No One Watched:
This was the year after "Lost" landed, and every network excitedly tried its hand at a sci-fi show. All of them crashed and burned, after which networks figured maybe people enjoyed the serialized aspect of "Lost" (a theory they watched fail the next pilot season). It didn't help that what was essentially a horror/sci-fi hybrid was sitting on CBS's normally soft-touch Friday night lineup (currently home to the reasonably successful "Ghost Whisperer," so there you are).

Where You Can Catch It:
The Sci-Fi Channel and the digital Universal Channel periodically offer reruns, but you can catch it most easily by Netflixing the DVD release.

Where You've Seen It Since:
If you check out Wikipedia, apparently it's been seen even earlier, as a reminiscent BBC series called "UFO." But since then, aliens haven't been too popular on TV or in film – the Nicole Kidman Body-Snatchers remake tanked horribly, if I recall.
Other than “Lost,” the only sci-fi TV shows with any presence – “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” (which is likely picked up for a second season), and “Battlestar: Galactica” - are about robots who want to destroy us all.
I wonder if that's a sign of something. I'm no sociologist, but what does it say when we can hack apocalyptic robots, but don't really want aliens in our pop culture anymore?

No One Watched It But Me: "Brimstone"

How can you tell I really love television? Because I keep coming back to it, no matter how many times it breaks my heart. My brain is littered with the memories of TV shows that, for one reason or another, just didn't make it.

Here at the ISTV Global Stronghold, we're preparing for a drought period. The mid-season shows are mostly wrapped up or canceled, and post-strike shows are a few weeks away (but reminder: new "Office" this week). So now feels like a good time to introduce a new semi-regular feature, a trip into a storied past of shows that were well-loved by not very many people, but remembered fondly by all of them. A segment we're calling...

"TV Shows Watched By No One But Me"

The Show:
"Brimstone," Fox, 1998

The Premise:
Dead cop Ezekiel “Zeke” Stone, damned to Hell for murdering his wife's rapist, is recruited by the Devil to capture 113 escaped souls.

What Made It Special:
- First off, it was a good-looking show, employing the washed-out color palette style years before “CSI: NY” did it;
- It featured a lot of sharp, deadpan dialogue, which is easy to do when your second male lead is the Devil (John Glover, using his gleeful malevolence to full effect before “Smallville” made a cartoon out of him);
- It made clever use of the lead character’s natural limitations, such as his lack of funds beyond the daily $33 stipend that was in his pockets when he died; or, thanks to a 15-year culture gap, his burning desire for 1983’s favorite snack treat, a Reggie Bar;
- In one segment, Zeke bounces the show’s plot off hotel manager/aspiring writer Lori Petty; to his chagrin, she immediately reconceives it as “The God Squad,” believing Zeke’s premise to be too much of a downer nobody would be interested in (and I fully believe this was an actual producer's reaction to the show).

Sample Dialogue:
Father Horn: The Devil, he appears to you as a man?
Zeke: Yeah. He looks a lot like a kid I used to beat the crap out of in sixth grade…I’m sure that’s on purpose.

Signs It Was Going Somewhere Good:
With an open-minded priest and Lori Petty's hotel manager, the series kept adding interesting personalities to its supporting cast, smartly recognizing that Zeke would need to talk to someone other than the Devil to get things moving in new directions.

Signs It Might Not Have Been Going Anywhere At All:
About eight episodes in, it was pretty much the same episode every time: Ezekiel has to track down a soul; Ezekiel runs into problems killing it; Ezekiel figures out the trick and kills the soul, and has some wittily bitter banter with the Devil. Roll Credits.

Sign the Producers Knew They Didn’t Have Much Time Left:
Teri Polo's cop/love interest character is quickly and clumsily outed as one of the escaped souls. Really? Devil didn't notice that the detective helping Zeke out might be a little familiar?

Why No One Watched:
It aired on Fridays at 9. (SPOILER: This answer will show up a lot.)

Available on DVD?
Sure, if you search Torrentz and have a DVD burner. (Which I do. I love my "Brimstone" DVDs.)

Where You've Seen It Since:
The plot has been basically recycled – with no visual style, no sense of danger, and a languid sense of humor – as "Reaper," currently not being watched by a whole new generation on the CW.