Who's your little buddy?
But then I meet the free spirits of "The Real Gilligan's Island" (in its second season, Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on TBS) and I change my mind. This show is just what it sounds like, a reality reenactment of "Gilligan's Island," with contestants chosen based on their similarity to the characters on the sitcom. Thus, we have Gilligan Zac, Mary Ann Mandy, Ginger Erika, Professor Andy, and so on. There are two of each character: two Mary Anns, two Professors, etc., who compete against each other to make the final team. Then, the members of the final team compete against one another and vote each other off, "Survivor"-style.

If that sounds incredibly goofy and stupid, that's because it is. Remember how, in "Galaxy Quest," the aliens think that all television shows are real, referring to them as "the historical documents," and when someone brings up "Gilligan's Island," the aliens sigh and look at each other and say, "Those poooor people!" That's about how you feel when you watch this show.

Still, it has its moments. One of the Professors almost drowned, and one set of Millionaires expressed interest in having a threesome with the other Millionaire's wife when the other Millionaire was booted off the set. But best of all, the producers somehow located the bubbliest, happiest, sweetest girl in the universe, Mary Ann Mandy (and luckily, like the real Mary Ann, she has a butt that looks really good hanging out of the bottom of her shorts), and then found the sourest, most annoying girl in the universe, Mary Ann Randi (and she also has the requisite Mary Ann butt). If you can't get into a battle between Good Mary Ann and Evil Mary Ann, then that faux-concerned child therapist really did screw you up but good.

So far, not surprisingly, evil has won out over good more times than not. What can you do? It's a verifiable trend of the new millennium.

Liberals in love
Don't give in to the dark side just yet, though, young Skywalker. There's a sweetly idealistic movie coming to HBO that's sure to restore your faith in humankind, or at least in aging geeks and wide-eyed innocents not yet crushed and reconstituted and freeze-dried and distributed globally.

You know how the words "romantic comedy" make you think of Jennifer Lopez playing a waitress with a heart of gold and an ass of steel who spills hot coffee on some dreamy, slightly wussified British guy in a suit, and they hate each other for about 45 minutes, then they kiss, then everything falls apart, and then, after 90 minutes, they kiss again and the credits roll and, even though they don't show it, you know by the way they kiss that he'll whisk her away from her warm but slightly frayed working-class home and plant her in his penthouse, where she'll feel out of place, miss her friends, and get fat on imported cheese, at which point he'll dump her for another street urchin while our heroine loses her looks and drinks away her sorrows at the local watering hole?

Well, "The Girl in the Café" is sort of, kind of a romantic comedy, but it's made for people whose sense of romance is a little more nuanced than your average preteen's. This movie (which premieres Saturday, June 25, at 8 p.m. on HBO) proves that awkward, normal-looking people fall in love, too, and sometimes even when they're in love, they still care about things like the G8 Summit in Scotland in July, or the fact that thousands of children starve every day despite the obvious fact that we have the resources to stop it.

"The Girl in the Café" isn't perfect, and it'll seem slow to fans of modern, Nora Ephron-style quick wit and neat endings. But I found it really touching, precisely because its characters are preoccupied by more than sex and love and each other's asses of steel. Through their concern for larger issues, we begin to care for them and want to see them together. It's sweet, and difficult to describe, and frankly, I really don't want to ruin it because I started watching without reading a single word about the movie, and I want you to do the same thing.

Basically, this is a love story for the kinds of people who read this here online magazine. And although that probably makes you feel all dirty inside, the way that being a part of a definable demographic will sometimes do, please just trust me. Watch this movie this Saturday on HBO, and that small, beautiful part of you that died when your finger paintings weren't hung in galleries will rise from the dead like a zombie, I personally guarantee it. What you're going to do with your inner zombie, I have no idea. That's your problem.

Brick by brick
You can't please everyone, chickens. I can't stress that enough. You can try and try and try to get it right, to nail your double axel, to cook the best vegetable lasagna ever made, to defeat the forces of evil and then give the forces of good a really great back rub, but you still won't do it. Mom will still disparage your efforts, Dad will still expect more from you, your kids will resent you, your one hit will drop from the charts, your initiative on world hunger will fail, and Brad will still cheat on you with an Amazonian nut job.

Life isn't fair, hairdressers aren't meant to be pop stars, and depending on their parents' mistakes, most people are either neurotic or lazy. Chances are, any spark of life inside you was snuffed out over a decade ago. All we are is bricks in the wall, etc. See how many timeless truths you soak up in these parts? Now go buy yourself a corn dog with yellow mustard, and forget everything you've learned here.

Next week: Soulless drones strike gold -- yet another show about an LAPD unit specializing in high-profile murder cases, only this one is a big hit!

Recent Stories