Roush Dispatch: Tuesday TV, From Real to Surreal
Katie Holmes and Jonny Lee Miller
My two recommendations for this Tuesday couldn't be more different: an engrossing biographical portrait of the two presidential candidates on PBS's peerless Frontline newsmagazine; and for those seeking a bit more whimsy in their diet — and these days, who could blame them? — the return of one of TV's most charming sleepers, ABC's fabulously fanciful Eli Stone.
Frontline has been producing the pre-election special titled The Choice since the 1988 campaign that pitted the first President Bush against Michael Dukakis. Free of the rancor and spin that colors so much of the coverage and advertising in these final weeks, The Choice 2008 is another splendid and illuminating exercise in dual (and eventually dueling) political biography, examining the choices and paths both John McCain and Barack Obama took in shaping their worldviews and public personas.
The Choice depicts both men as (pardon the overused expression) mavericks of sorts, who have repeatedly bucked conventional political wisdom to forge ahead on their race to the White House despite the odds being stacked against them, often within their own party. It neither ignores nor dwells on the scandals and setbacks that have dogged the candidates, instead focusing on the character and vision each offer a radically divided nation at a turbulent moment in history.
It's an essential and timely (if at two hours, too short) piece of journalism, and Frontline is making it available to viewers on as many platforms as possible. The Choice will be rebroadcast on PBS on Sunday, Oct. 26, and again on Election Eve of Monday, Nov. 3. Starting Wednesday, it will be available for free download on iTunes, for viewing on YouTube, and will be streamed online on pbs.org/frontline and on many individual PBS member stations' websites. In many digital-TV markets, it will also be available On Demand including on the voter-education Election '08 On Demand service. However you end up watching it, I can't think of two hours that would be better spent.
And now for something completely and wonderfully different: Eli Stone! Last midseason's terrific little surprise (and something of a blessed surprise of a renewal) is back on a new night, and once again ABC is asking us to take a leap of faith with a show that leads with its heart and soul. Given the underwhelming reception so far for ABC's even more fantastical Pushing Daisies, which is struggling to get noticed on Wednesdays after a long strike-induced absence, I fear audiences won't know what to make of Eli, either. It's getting a terrific lead-in with the Dancing with the Stars results show, but Eli's competition includes two established crime dramas, and given that genre's continued popularity, Eli may need its own brand of divine intervention to save the day.
Smartly, the producers have front-loaded Eli's second season with top-drawer guest stars, including Sigourney Weaver in the season opener as a calm, wise therapist evaluating Eli (the thoroughly winning Jonny Lee Miller) to recertify his law license in the wake of his life-changing cliffhanger surgery. "You're missing something, but it's nothing a law license can give you," she tells him. "I think you're missing having a sense of the divine in your everyday life." She's on to something, and when's the last time you heard 'the divine' referenced in a major prime-time drama?
Back story: Last season, Eli was diagnosed with a brain aneurism that may have been causing his elaborate premonitory visions, which often took the form of wild production numbers, sometimes starring George Michael. (His late father suffered the same condition, but no one realized it and wrote him off as an undependable drunk.) Another school of thought suggests that Eli is actually a modern prophet in corporate-lawyer disguise. In the season finale, he submitted to life-threatening surgery to remove the brain abnormality, and the season picks up six months into his recovery, when several inexplicable twists of fate force Eli to reconsider his spiritual mission.
"I think that grace fulfilled you," says the good doctor Sigourney. And it's no coincidence that next week's episode features Katie Holmes as an idealistic "Lawyers Without Limits" attorney named Grace, whose purpose (besides performing a sizzling fantasy cabaret routine to Duke Ellington) appears to be to remind Eli that he's not alone in his crusade to do good.
There is magic and mystery in Eli Stone, a sense of wonder and hope that prime-time TV frankly could use a little more of. The first episodes seem to have dialed back a bit on the preciousness and stridency that some found off-putting last spring — although there is a pointed and prescient reference in tonight's episode to lenders of predatory mortgages as the week's Big Bad. With a terrific supporting cast including Victor Garber and Loretta Devine as co-workers whose lives have changed for the better by having Eli in their presence, this is a character and a show more people should get to know.
