Syndicated (Check local listings)
C
time, Ron the Younger was employed by ABC as a frivolous, often annoying correspondent on Good Morning America. But young Ron has landed on his feet with his own late-night talk show. (In some markets he's on in the morning opposite the likes of Joan Rivers, Sally Jessy Raphael and The Price Is Right. That's no break. Then-unassailable grip on their audiences makes Johnny, Ted and Arsenio look like easy pickings.)
In each hour-long show, a single topic—steroids, rap music, the marketing of pro athletes—is debated by a panel of guests and the studio audience while Ron acts as mediator or, when all else fails, devil's advocate. It's a familiar format, and although Ron has thus far avoided the pitched emotional battles staged by Oprah and Phil, he also lacks their ability to control the mood and pace of a program.
Reagan, 33, still has a smirking, sarcastic air, and when he's not holding a microphone, he can't figure out what to do with his hands. But for the most part, he's more articulate and self-possessed than his previous work would have suggested. He's also very uncharismatic and never seems to connect with his guests—who have included such people as Steve Allen, Danny Bonaduce and Quentin Crisp.
The program resembles a collegiate version of Firing Line with Ron as a callow version of William F. Buckley Jr. The liveliest moments so far came when Reagan got heckled by both a panelist and an audience member about his own sexual preference and persistent rumors that he is gay. (He categorically denied them.)
No matter what the topic, these shows seem to be devoted to chewing old fat. While Reagan has said in interviews that his program proves TV doesn't have to underestimate viewers' intelligence, the process he has overestimated their patience.
VH-1 (Sat., Aug. 31, 4 P.M. ET)
B+
If critical acclaim translated into commercial popularity, the Nevilles would be performing only in mammoth stadiums. But these incomparably soulful siblings are still regulars at Tipitinas, a small club in their native New Orleans.
Taped in March, this hour consists of a rhythm-rich diet of tasty funk. The sound quality isn't great—Cyril's microphone isn't even turned on in the beginning. But listen to "Hey Pocky Way/Walk on Gilded Splinters," "Brother Jake" and other songs and see if you don't succumb to the bayou voodoo the Nevilles do so well.
Syndicated (Check local listings)
F
They are six women who have only one thing in common: They're all ex-cons. But this isn't a sweeps episode of Donahue. It's an irretrievably trashy new series from the Australian creator of Prisoner: Cell Block H. After her parole, Valerie Wildman gets plastic surgery, a new identity, revenge on her brutal, mob-connected husband and, in short order, a rustic inn to run. One by one, her former prison mates (Lynn Hamilton, Katherine Justice, Maria Rangel, Kelli Vonlondersele and Melanie Vincz) join her to ramble on about men and other problems.
The show is so poorly acted, overlit, badly shot and dopily plotted that it resembles a soap opera dreamed up by a nasty-minded recluse who hasn't watched TV since Uncle Miltie was king.
PBS (Tues., Sept. 3, 10 P.M. ET)
B
As recent events in Kansas indicate, the divisive issue of abortion never seems any closer to getting resolved. It just moves around the country finding fresh tinder.
This documentary, the season closer for public television's P.O.V. series, focuses on the Women's Suburban Clinic in Paoli, Pa., which has been providing counseling and abortions since shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision nearly two decades ago. The clinic has often been targeted by Operation Rescue, a grass-roots "pro-life" organization that has engaged in civil disobedience since 1987, inviting wholesale arrests by blockading clinics and other facilities.
The principal players in this program are six women, three of them pro-choice, three pro-life. Individually the women on either side present their beliefs in a calm, cogent, deeply felt way. Put them together, and the screaming and accusations begin immediately.
The saddest parts of this hour, though, are brief glimpses of the clinic's clients, women trying to arrive at a painful, profoundly personal decision while an acrimonious public debate rages around them.
>AFTER YEARS OF GOUGING CUSTOMERS, the cable business is finally being threatened by Congress with rate re-regulation. So very gratifying. If ever an industry needed to be knocked down a few pegs, it's cable. I've moved a number of times during the cable era and have without exception found local companies to be completely unresponsive to questions or requests, though they're as exacting as Scrooge when it comes to billing.
They've got these high-tech detection trucks cruising the streets like SAC bombers, vigilantly making sure nobody splices into their wire to get the Weather Channel for free. But it takes them four days to get someone to your house to restore lost service you've already paid for. That's if you can actually get one of their surly customer-service representatives on the phone. Their lines are always busier than a household full of teenagers. Lately they've been calling me, but only to sell me on upcoming pay-per-view events. Phone solicitations—how very '90s.
Maybe they'll start listening now. There's nothing like the threat of federal action to prod a monopoly that's been riding roughshod over consumers into mending its fences—or in this case, its coaxial cable.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
