The Death and Life of Great American Pities - Aliens in America, Everybody Hates Chris

Aliens in America - Smutty Books - Ep. 116
Everybody Hates Chris - Everybody Hates the Ninth-Grade Dance
- Ep. 320

Aliens in America takes on those "Parental Groups"! While I take on The CW. Again. More on that later.

Sandy Shermer (Nora Dunn) calls Franny to warn her about the smut that Justin and his class is reading for English. Smut called Madame Bovary. Luckily, Franny takes the crazy woman's heretic screaming with a grain of salt.

Until Franny finds Justin's "inspired" drawings since Justin actually READ the book (and not just the cliffnotes) after Sandy's warnings. Gary tries to talk to Justin but gives up, since Justin is "drawing" all the time, 5-6 times a day, Gary notes it's a wonder his hand still works.

So Franny joins the parental group trying to get books banned in the school.

They succeed, so Claire tries to use THAT to HER advantage, getting Franny to ban the book she's required to read for HER english class by describing Pride and Prejudice as dirtier than it is. Brilliant!

Loved that Franny was about to ban Swiss Family Robinson but Everybody Poops (or whatever that book is called) was safe.

Love Mr. Matthews (Christopher B. Duncan, Veronica Mars) cool attempt to sidetrack the ladies, and then caving to their insane demands. Poor Mr. Matthews.

Raja mentions how much he loves Pride and Prejudice which shocks Franny (who thinks Pakistan and its censored ways keep it more backwards than America), until she realizes that there's actually nothing perverted about the book. She goes on to read P&P (she thinks it's long winded, yes, dirty, no) and Madame Bovary and rushes to Sandy and the Parental Group to stop the banning, where Sandy somehow turns it all around, making her mission to ban books even MORE (since it was even able to corrupt the mind of Franny). Sandy's next missions, to ban the dictionary and the bible (for the smut in the book of Genesis).

Hysterical. (Both in the "she's crazy" sense and the funny laugh-out-loud sense, which is why this show is so great!).

That being said, apparently Aliens in America has been cancelled, according to E!Online via Tube Talk. NOOOOOOO. (More bad news? Apparently a pleasurable favorite Men in Trees is also cancelled... BOOO).

This news sucks since Aliens in America has totally molded itself into the perfect political, social and family satire that is both biting and sweet, a tough line to stay on since any imbalance can make it cynical and dislikable, yet AiA is fun and comfortable to watch that is a smarter (if not one of the smartest) family sitcom.

I pity those that are missing out on this gem of a show.

But it's on The CW. On Sunday nights. Buried within the "black comedy" block, so thus ignored by most of America that isn't black. (Hey, I don't make the stats)

Plus, it's on The CW. They cancelled the amazing Everwood. The amazing Veronica Mars, and now this. Meanwhile, they gladly air Farmer Wants A Wife.

Civilization is dead. Maybe we SHOULD just ban all the books. We'll be able to use the energy source since we're using up all the oil anyways.

Speaking of the "black show comedy block" on The CW, if any of them crossed over, Everybody Hates Chris deserves more attention from ALL America. It's not always brilliant, but it's endearing as I've mentioned before.

This week, Chris tries to get a date for the 9th grade prom, and ends up asking a white girl (who really wants to go to the prom) after all the other black girls in the neighborhood turn him down.

Of course, all I really remember is Tichina Arnold's Rochelle rocking as a rock star in a dream sequence. Seriously, Emmy NEEDS to take notice and look beyond the colour lines (or The CW barrier) because Arnold can play hysterical outrageousness and switch to heartwarming and serious all within seconds. She goes for the broad yet feels incredibly real and not a caricature which is amazing with some of the things they make Rochelle do.

So everyone else in the school is shocked that Chris and the white girl are hanging out in anticipation of the date but of course, everybody hates Chris after Chris starts overanalyzing things too much and ruins a good thing.

It's sad when society's pressures (and the neuroses it triggers) doom something that could have been beautiful (and I can foray this into so many different spins and issues).