Tube Notes: Well, I continue to hold faith with David Milch -- for the time being. I'm still twirling John from Cincinnati in my mind. Some things have become more clear. We now know that there is something religious -- even quasi-Christian -- going on. The upshot now seems to be that God has decided to speak to this exceedingly dysfunctional family of surfers and their circle. The title character (John from Cincinnati), presumably God's messenger, is a bizarre creature: cannot be harmed or feel pain; manifests to the other characters sometimes in reality, sometimes in hallucination; and speaks either in inscrutably cryptic comments or mocking parroting of what is said to him, or both. Slowly the other characters realize something freaky is going on. Now what? I don't know, but if Milch pulls it off -- the story of a modern day visitation by a prophet -- it will be amazing.

I will continue to watch John just because I so love the way Milch and his writers use the English language. To me it is refreshing to hear people speak in a florid colorful manner -- as opposed to naturalistic utilitarian dialog. I think it takes a lot of guts to do that on a TV show. A couple of the actors involved are taking quality turns, prime among them is Ed O'Neill who is perfect as a retired cop and a bit of a head case who is psychically connected to his pet bird. His comic timing is even better than when he was Al Bundy.

But, overall, I can't recommend John to the general public just yet. It is mesmerizing, but it still needs to find a clearer purpose. And it is not something that can be watched casually. I am pretty much committed to the season, so I'll be sure to let you know if it's worth your time once all is said and done. Then you can rent the DVD.

The other show that caught my eye is Mad Men on AMC. Essentially a period piece set in 1960 about the corporate and personal lives of execs at a high-powered ad agency. There are two keys to Mad Men. The lesser key is the reproduction of the style and substance of life in 1960: everyone smokes, women are mere supplicants, and so forth. Having been a sentient child at the tail end of this era (mid-'60s), I can verify that they hit the nail on the head with a lot of this stuff. The salarymen don't think twice about pouring each other a scotch on the rocks at work. Kids leap about in a moving car without seatbelts. Divorce, psychiatry, and birth control are taboo.

Some of this stuff is delightfully dramatized: parents don't mind if their kids play with plastic dry-cleaning bags over their heads; a black busboy garners suspicious looks when a white business man engages him in conversation at a nice restaurant; a fellow proclaiming "It's not like there is a magic machine that can make exact duplicates of documents"; a phone and intercom are scary high technology; children are given a swat for spilling their milk.

While this is fun, it must be tempered. It would be too easy to take the contrast in mores and taboos and use them to make fun of the poor savages of a bygone era while extolling our brave, new, progressive world. That would be lazy. And not entirely accurate. While I certainly wouldn't trade the contemporary world for 1960 I found myself looking at some of the lifestyle with a little twinge of nostalgia, specifically with respect to certain freedoms of behavior regarding children. Certainly it was a time before the safety Nazis sucked a lot of the fun out of childhood. But short of that, I can see very little that was preferable back then. Although there are plenty of times I would like to have liquor on hand at work, that's for sure.

Still, it's a work of drama and it needs to be about people. That's the greater of the two keys and on that front they are doing well. The lead character is utterly fascinating -- a seemingly perfect family man (for the '60s), but at his core cynical and negative, given to emotionally checking out. By extension his marriage is unfulfilling, his wife is clearly unhappy possibly due to her inability to keep connected to her husband. Of course, this being 1960, it is never discussed openly. In 2007 they would all be prattling on like Woody Allen in therapy and mainlining Xanax.

I think Mad Men is going to do fine. My guess is that they will use the retro environment wisely, as a highlight for the humanity of their characters instead of making it the point of the show. This show I can recommend you catch up on. (AMC seems to be running it about 8 times a day so it should be easy to catch.)

Lastly, under the heading of Man Does Not Live By Great Drama Alone, we have the USA Network that has been cranking our enjoyable, wispy police procedurals. These are based on wholly contrived situations and plots built around shallow, but eminently likeable, characters. The writers often have their tongues wedged firmly in their cheeks; they know how silly what they are doing is, and they don't pretend otherwise. This started with Monk and continued with Psych. The latest is Burn Notice which strikes me as potentially the new Magnum P.I. in the same way Monk is the new Columbo.

I wouldn't go out of my way to watch these, but if they are on and I'm vegging, I'll happily tune in for the distraction. That is not a backhanded compliment; these shows are excellent examples of their genre. I suspect they will all have a long and happy life in syndication for decades to come.