Highbrow, lowbrow

-John Cleese, oh dear. (via.) When a man is old enough not to notice his 27-year-old ladyfriend is actually 45, he is too old for that midlife crisis. Then again, a Python, like a Beatle, is eternal, and can have whomever he damn well pleases, and his girl is whomever he thinks she is. That's just how it works.

-If you liked "Designing Women," but felt there weren't enough lingering shots of actresses staring blankly, edited into scenes for no apparent reason other than to fill time, you will love "The City." Aside from the usual reality-TV conundrums (How can a show about people organically entering and exiting one another's personal and professional lives have a "cast"? How can a man's interest in dating the main character be disconnected from the fact that if he "loves" her, he gets to be on TV, and if he doesn't, he's just another wannabe actor/model/rockstar?) this show is actually kind of excellent, in its complete embrace of its own stupidity. It doesn't pretend to be a show for 'serious' people by dropping the name "Yale" around (ahem, "Gilmore Girls," "Gossip Girl") sporadically, whenever viewers who think of themselves as serious people start to suspect they're watching a teen soap. (Silly TV that's also intellectual began and ended with our friend Mr. Cleese's contributions to the medium.) It's as if "The City" announces at regular intervals, "You are watching junk." And the show does do this, flashing the name of each main character every time he or she reenters the episode, in case your attention span is that hopeless. Which, if it wasn't already, it will be after 10 minutes of this show.