By Darren Johnson
Campus News
I feel like a dead head. A real dolt. Someone whose brain is decomposing.
Of all the shows on TV last night — including the big 9 p.m. Comey interview everyone seems to be talking about today — I flatlined.
I mean, I did watch “60 Minutes” at 7 p.m., which started with an interesting expose of scary Allegiant Air, but ended up with a PR puff piece about some guy who feels all good about himself for promoting gender equality in his workplace. I believe wholly in gender equality, but the piece was too much about this one person. You can tell a PR person placed the story, and Leslie Stahl was too lazy to interview too many other experts.
Yawn. So I left “60 Minutes” a few minutes shy of it’s 60-minute mark (it’s 52 minutes, if you don’t count commercials) and caught the tail end of “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” A kid who tasted magic markers, and, when confronted by his mother, revealed he had a green tongue, won best video and ten grand. Good on him!
(Normally at 7:55 p.m., I try to be headier and catch the final “Jeopardy!” answer, but “Jeopardy!” isn’t on on Sundays, so instead I watched a kid who apparently didn’t mind the taste of ink.)
That show turned into “American Idol,” and, I have to admit, I like the new judges — especially Katy Perry, who seems to convey real insights and emotion in a personable way — and the show is good again. I watched that for a bit, and one young woman, Maddie Poppe, sang an old country song about being a roller-skate key or something (how many kids know what a roller-skate key is?), and it was quite catchy.
But then 9 p.m. came, so I set the DVR to record the rest of “AI,” and turned to the season finale of “The Walking Dead.” The series has been going downhill, along with the ratings, with bad writing and too many characters, but the finale wasn’t too bad. It ends up as I had predicted, though I won’t post spoilers.
The show neatly transitioned into “Fear the Walking Dead’s” premiere and had Morgan from the first show leave, walk across the country, and show up with this cast. He meets an interesting cowboy along the way.
I had given up on “FTWD” a while ago. I didn’t like the main family who were its stars. But I did like last night’s show. The film work was better than “TWD,” which had mostly been shot in the dark in the past season, and the writing was better. It starts with the plain old cowboy delivering a believable soliloquy. With Morgan, they meet a journalist with a SWAT armored personnel vehicle, kill a bunch of zombies, get into a cowboy-style shootout, and then finally meet up with this show’s main cast.
It was actually enjoyable, which this franchise hasn’t been in a long time. I’m glad I stuck with it.
Oh, yeah, sure, where do they get all their bullets, and all the gasoline to drive everywhere? And is it magic gasoline? If I leave untreated gas in my lawn mower for a year, it won’t start. This apocalypse has been going on for a while longer, though.
(Though there seem to be mowed lawns in many of the towns “TWD” and “FTWD” characters pass through — how?)
But revivals like “American Idol,” “Will & Grace” and the new “Roseanne” teach us that shows had at one time faded and died can rise up again.
Like the zombies.
And I guess I missed the real cowboy shootout after the Comey interview. Trump’s Twitter fingers must feel undead today.
Darren Johnson has written “It’s New to You!” since 2010. It’s all about TV and movies, but he does read books, too, and encourages you to do the same!
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