Workman Chronicles 

By Morris Workman

"Two-Part Disappointment"

November 7, 2005

I have an important message I want to impart.

I believe it to be timely, topical, cogent, and worthwhile.

It will probably be funny, highly entertaining, socially meaningful and politically incorrect.

And I’m going to share this message with you.

Next week.

Frustrated?

This is the way I always feel after investing my valuable couch-potato time on some piece of network television tripe, only to discover just before the plane crashes or the killer is unmasked that the show is the front end of a two-parter.

I hate these “To Be Continued” offerings.

I’m particularly outraged when the networks hide the fact that the show will be a two-parter the way an Amway fanatic hides the fact that the “get together” he or she wants you to attend will actually be a recruiting pitch.

(To my Amway friends out there, I’m sorry to insult you by comparing you to a lowly network television executive.  You have my apologies, and I need two gallons of that special biodegradable toenail soap on page 482 of your monthly catalog.)

On Sunday, I got sucker-punched on two different networks.

I was actually torn between two shows that were scheduled for 9 p.m.

The first was “The Crusades” on The History Channel.

I had been looking forward to that show for nearly a week, hoping that by watching, I might finally understand why the Muslims hate me and my country so badly.

It turns out that 20 minutes into the show, (which, to be honest, was even more dull and boring than my ninth grade history class, where I should have paid attention when my teacher was going over this topic nearly 30 years ago), the History Channel made the mistake of running a promo for part two.

I immediately switched over to the other 9 p.m. offering that had caught my interest, a CBS catastrophe-of-the-week made-for-television movie called “Category 7: The End of the World.”

I waited through two hours of REALLY bad acting, terrible casting (Randy Quaid and Shannon Doherty hooking up?  I haven’t seen chemistry that bad since I dropped my Mr. Professor Chemistry Set on a concrete floor when I was 12), insipid story lines where people were more broken up about old flames and jealousy over past relationships than they were about the tornadoes that had killed thousands and threatened to wipe out D.C., and INCREDIBLY bad writing.

At the end, with the hurricane heading for our nation’s capital, where terrorists had just kidnapped the first born children of wealthy socialites fleeing the hurricane’s path while the torch from the Statue of Liberty was about to crush Randy Quaid while hugging Shannon Doherty (see what I mean about the writing?), the piece of crap ends with “To Be Continued.”

I feel so betrayed.

It’s particularly frustrating when you realize that the director could have eliminated the inane threads about old relationships, worn out pilots flying worn out airplanes, gorgeous eye-candy Gina Gershon as the head of FEMA and her bizarre relationship with her teenage “son” who looks old enough to be her uncle (right…all of those federal bureaucrats are gorgeous, like Janet Reno), and a televangelist played badly by James Brolin, and reduced the two-parter to a digestible two-hour flick.

In fact, he could have taken out most of the cheesy special effects about tornadoes hitting the great pyramids, and the devastation in the city of Buffalo (that’s right, the storms hit all of Earth’s important population centers…Cairo, Hong Kong, Detroit, Chicago, New York, Miami…and Buffalo) and whittled it down to about a half hour, which would still be too much for such a lousy movie, but at least the audience wouldn’t want to commit hari-kari because they had wasted two hours of their lives on this drivel.

I hate two-part movies.

All of them.

I’m not fond of sequels either.

But to foist this bad TV fare on a nation for two consecutive weekends is a sure sign of the Apocalypse.

And I hope there’s a special chamber of Hell for the TV executives who have lured innocent people into their lair without warning of an impending two-parter.

I have a lot more acid and hate for CBS and their ilk, but I’ll save it for the second half of this diatribe, to be continued next week.

Published online at the Workman Chronicles WebLog November 7, 2005.

For more articles or comments, visit the blog at workmanchronicles.blogspot.com.  

To e-mail the author regarding this article, send your e-mail to column@morrisworkman.com.