Real or Fictional, It Was Pure Drama

New century, shmentury. The year 2000 has found television as bipolar as ever. If you disagree, leave a short message after the beep. Meanwhile, here is how the year on the small screen went:

High. The presidential election: Hardly a high for deflated supporters of Vice President Al Gore, admittedly, but a landmark if painful civics lesson for the multitudes. What a curious experience: Regardless of party stripe, you watched, you learned, you suffered. With television acting as America’s classroom, day after day viewers were shown the warty underbelly of democracy and deep, scarring ruts of a process that most had taken for granted.

Wintering in Florida was never so bizarre, and whatever the founding fathers had intended, the election’s bonus five weeks appeared notably bereft of fatherly values. Rarely inspiring, never less than grueling, all of this was beamed to the nation by media that sometimes rose to the historic occasion with crackerjack spot reporting and wise analysis that somehow worked its way to the surface through thick layers of excess. Even in the eye of the fury, for example, the commentary of CNN’s Jeff Greenfield was especially sane and measured.

Low. The presidential election: Although watching was a profound learning experience, it helped if you were a masochist. And listing the sins of the media--including those horrific TV miscalls of Florida on election night--would consume this entire column. Let’s just say others ranged from the stunning anti-Gore bias of the Fox News Channel (which claims to report and let “you decide”) to CNN asking viewers to name their favorite U.S. Supreme Court justice. No, that was not a misprint.

High. The Florida Supreme Court: Not the court itself (relax, Republicans), but the televising of its critical hearings on ballot recounting that gave viewers outside the state a fascinating, rare glimpse into the spirited give-and-take of such proceedings. What better argument for TV cameras inside courtrooms?

Low. The U.S. Supreme Court: Again, not the court itself, but the justices’ stubborn refusal to allow their own seminal hearings to be televised, a rigidly regressive decision that robbed the public of an opportunity to witness the workings of the highest legal body in the land.

The court did allow audiotapes of its two hearings to be played on TV, and highly interesting they were. Yet cameras would have provided still more dimension without adversely affecting what it did. Hello! It’s the 21st century. Why are these robed ones so fearful of joining it?

High. Commercials: They still offer some of TV’s best viewing, some of the funniest and most creative being those Priceline.com spots featuring a spoofing William Shatner.

Low. Commercials: Thirty seconds of Sit ‘n Sleep on radio and TV. Screeching. Repulsing. Gagging. Just the memory of it has you tossing and turning through the night.

High. “The West Wing”: TV’s equivalent of a book you can’t put down, the NBC series is inevitably thoughtful and magnetic, rarely more so than in its Thanksgiving episode when President Josiah Bartlet outdid his real-life counterpart by sparing two turkeys nominated to the White House for dinner consideration.

Bartlet was about to follow presidential tradition and save just one until persuaded by his press secretary, C.J. Cregg, who got to know the birds, to spare both. Very heartwarming to animal lovers, especially those of us in veggiedom.

Low. “The West Wing”: Heartwarming, shmeartwarming. This episode ended on a swell of good feeling about Bartlet’s generosity of spirit, one so huge that you could sense the nation crescendoing along with him. Yet one of its sidebars had Bartlet making a thing of a special knife designated for carving duty at dinner. Meaning, of course--spared turkeys notwithstanding--he’d be dining that evening on a turkey that hadn’t gotten sprung to some gobbler haven. In fact, so would that softy Cregg.

This double standard--which the episode noted surely without intending to, but should have done so directly--is that many blindly see no connection between animals they know and feel affection for, and those they see as abstractions and therefore suitable to eat.

High. “The Corner”: Based on actual people and directed by Charles Dutton, this was HBO’s searing, highly original miniseries about a Baltimore subculture of heroin and cocaine from which escape is a long shot. Although ignored by Emmy voters, Khandi Alexander was remarkable as a strung-out drug mother trying to liberate herself from harrowing junkiedom.

Low. Imitation: More than just flattery, it’s the very heartbeat of a television industry that saw in the astounding commercial successes of ABC’s “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and CBS’ “Survivor” Bethlehem stars offering guidance to ratings, riches and mansions in Bel-Air. That’s why a new “Survivor” arrives Jan. 28, variations on that theme abound, and ABC--before ratings for “Millionaire” softened a bit--decided that instead of copying its mega-hit the old-fashioned way, it would blow the show’s spores across its prime-time schedule and hope for proliferation.

You want diversity, get an aquarium.

High. Kathie Lee Gifford: Speaking of spores, this one is no longer seated beside Regis Philbin on the syndicated daytime show they shared for so many years. This is a loss only if you think getting rid of psoriasis is a loss. As tryouts for her job continue, meanwhile, her ex-partner is kvetching to fresher ears.

Low. The Summer Olympics: They were televised?

High. “Egg the Art Show”: Perhaps the most verdant series to debut in 2000 was this limited one from New York public station WNET that blew its kisses to creativity and pop culture in ways lyrical without being pretentious. Encore!

Low. “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?”: No, not a bad dream. Fox really did get this banal, conferring instant fame on leering Rick Rockwell and nurse Darva Conger, a couple of desperately in love kids whose TV marriage was destined to last about as long as it takes to read this sentence. It turned out that he was a bit of a phony and that she wanted to marry a multimillionaire, all right. Just not this one.

And they seemed so right for each other.

High. Home & Garden Television: Sure, smirk. Like you don’t watch it too. You can have your MTV, CNN, ESPN, HBO or whatever. For my money, HGTV was the best channel on cable in 2000, and not just because I was aching to learn how to make my own slipcovers. Its prime-time programs range from “Modern Masters”--reminding us, for example, that furniture making and glass blowing are artistry too--to my personal favorite, the exquisitely campy “Designing for the Sexes.”

Imagine the crisis of wanting to redo a room when the wife likes white and the hubby likes black. Not to worry. They can fix their problems with just one phone call. In strides the show’s ever-cheery designer, who says, “Let’s go shopping.” After a few misfires, he tells them he knows just the compromise to resolve their white-black dilemma: Gray! That’s why he gets the big bucks.

The clients light up. Roll credits.

Low. Elian Gonzalez: Not Elian himself, of course, just the indefensibly lowbrow and overwrought TV coverage of this Cuban boy’s enforced odyssey in the U.S. when he became a human taffy pull in the great pantheon of politics and media exploitation. Now he’s back in Cuba with his father, mostly forgotten even by TV people who made him a daily headline.

As for those who took advantage of him? Have I got a leaky boat for them.