June 22, 2007

What to Watch: Coming Up on Cable

Seth Arenstein on the finale of SCI FI's Stargate SG-1 — can it really be the Unending? — and other upcoming programming highlights on cable.

Tube Stake: Programming Reviews by Seth Arenstein

STARGATE SG-1: Can this really be the Unending?

• FRIDAY, JUNE 22

Stargate SG-1, series finale, 8pm, SCI FI. Here’s a series finale (followed by the season finale of Stargate Atlantis) that legitimately could have faded to black, but didn’t. Instead we get a thriller of an episode (titled, appropriately, "Unending") where SG-1 is bequeathed the entire knowledge and tech base of the Asgard, before that entire species is to die of a rapidly progressing disease. Unfortunately, the technology is also the source of problems for the Odyssey, which is being bombarded by ships of its bitter rival, the Ori. Just as the Odyssey is about to be demolished (and with it, the Asgard’s knowledge and tech) Lt. Col. Carter is able to place the ship in a time dilation bubble, suspending time. While the rest of the crew is beamed to a safe planet, the SG-1 core group remains on board as Carter attempts to figure out how to evade a fatal destructive beam from the Ori. Originally Carter said it should take her 90 days to accomplish the task. It doesn’t quite work that way. Fortunately, things ultimately are resolved, allowing the viewer to see the future, although all but one of our SG-1 mates are spared any memory of what happened. While it’s not clear whether and how SG-1 will continue—online? in movie theaters?—Carter (Amanda Tapping) will live on, appearing in Stargate Atlantis in the fall.

• SUNDAY, JUNE 24

Love Me, Love My Doll, 10pm, BBC America. This doc about men who favor expensive ($10K) lifelike female dolls is easily the strangest installment in the new BBC America Reveals Sunday night non-fiction strand. Earlier documentaries dealt with the royals, William and Harry; another discussed homosexuality. Fortunately, tonight’s installment doesn’t judge or intentionally berate its subjects. There’s even one man, a rarity in this community, we’re told, with a live girlfriend. “I’d give up the dolls for the right girl,” he says. The men, most of whom seem intelligent, are given a platform to present their arguments in favor of this alternative lifestyle, without comment from the filmmakers. Yet one gets the impression the film is allowing these men to indict themselves. The common theme among the men (besides their need for a good therapist) is that they seem like loners, but they insist they’re not lonely. As one of them says, “there are worse things in life than living with dolls, really…living alone, for example.”

Who Cares About Girls: Slave Girls of India, 10pm, Oxygen. An amazing piece of work from Lisa Ling, whose work as a serious journalist should no longer be in doubt. Unfortunately the problem that Ling tackles—the trading of young women in India into a life of slavery or worse, sexual slavery—also is in doubt no longer. Indeed, with 60 million children working on farms in factories, homes and brothels, India has the largest group of child laborers in the world. Young girls are preferred, as they are the cheapest source of labor and are most vulnerable to exploitation. While some young girls are captured, far more are sold by their naive parents, who believe they are sending their children to a boarding school. Besides the atrocities this short documentary reveals—even as parts of India are experiencing an economic boom—there is hope. Ling meets girls who’ve escaped the life and an organization that’s rescued more than 70,000 girls from slavery.

• MONDAY JUNE 25

Semper Fi: One Marine’s Journey, 8:30 pm, Showtime. This is a short but effective amalgam of interviews, user-generated video and clips from a one-man show about a gay Marine’s experiences in the Corps and in Iraq. While the film’s length is brief, its protagonist, Jeff Key, addresses difficult (and often-asked) questions about the war’s genesis, how much good America can really do in Iraq and the desirability of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ In the end, none of these and other related questions have been answered with any depth, but it’s a thought-provoking hour and an interesting look at an unconventional patriot.  

Girl, Positive, 9pm, Lifetime. When did high school become college? Aren’t kids supposed to “find themselves” (code words for experimenting with sex and drugs) when they go to out-of-town college? In Lifetime’s new cause film, Girl, Positive, the kids do all that before they’ve taken their SATs. Of course, none of Lifetime’s high school kids admits they’ve bedded their classmates or taken drugs, which is why nobody thinks they need to take an AIDS test. Heck, most of the kids in this film don’t seem to know what AIDS is, and, well, like, uh, we only “did it” once. Denial is strong stuff, ignorance is, too.

Unfortunately, this situation, however dramatized, seems to be close to reality. The uneducated statements the kids in this film make during a slew of interstitials, patched together to look like a vlog, are illustrative, and troubling. We’re told during the film that 50 people per day are infected with the HIV virus in the U.S., and most are 25 years old or less. And more than 300K people are HIV positive in the U.S., and have never been tested. Strong stuff as the country prepares for National HIV Testing Day, Wednesday, June 27.

Some critics will argue this film fails since its main character, a high school student adroitly played by Desperate Housewives’ Andrea Bowen, is the victim of a one-parent household. Bowen’s mother is too busy sleeping around to monitor her daughter’s sleeping patterns (or partners). Better to have made Bowen’s character part of a stable, two-parent household, they’ll say, illustrating that AIDS doesn’t respect class or racial divisions. And where are the fathers? We never see them in this film (well, perhaps that’s good—this is Lifetime, a place where good men are a rarity). All this is true. Still, the goal of this film is to publicize why AIDS testing is important and why parents, students and teachers need to take it seriously. On that level, it’s effective. 

Heartland, 10pm, TNT. Yes, we know, TNT could probably run Carrot Top reading the Manhattan phonebook right after The Closer and it would pull ratings. While Heartland’s premiere last week demonstrated it isn’t the most original drama, its life and death storylines bring with them a subdued, built-in tension, which is a perfect contrast to the louder conflict often seen in The Closer. Anchoring this underplayed tension is the strong, silent performance of strong, silent Treat Williams, who plays super doctor (but certainly not super husband or super father) Nathaniel Grant, the organ-transplant chief of a leading Midwest hospital. Just when you think Heartland could be a reasonable way to spend an hour, silliness creeps in. Like another television Nathaniel—Nate Fisher of HBO’s now-departed Six Feet Under—Grant has a series of dreams that occur while he’s awake. The dreams push him to re-think his choices. And you thought medical science was the decisive factor in a doctor’s decisions.

[Please check back for more reviews, including Bravo's Hey Paula, USA's Burn Notice and Gospel Music Channel’s Hometown Gospel.]

All times ET/PT unless otherwise noted.