MLB Playoffs '09, Day Two Roundup

I'd intended to keep a liveblog going of the three games today, but I also intended not to have a giant goddamn headache. Instead of watching the Rockies at the Phillies, I wound up lying down and listening to most of it it, then napped through a bit of the Cardinals at the Dodgers, then had the big screen commandeered to watch TiVo'd episodes of Community and The Office during part of the Sox/Angels game. I felt way too funky to put up a fight anyway.

Now of course I feel better and can't sleep, so at the risk of seeming ignorant — after all, I missed quite a bit — here are some stray observations from Day Two of the 2009 MLB playoffs:


Pregame:
• For some reason, the human mattress that is David Wells is in the TBS booth this year, and someone's already cleaned him up from Day One. That was incredible. He wore this strange brown shirt that looked like some earthy tunic a civilian guest star would get on Star Trek and, over it, a brown jacket that I swear was a Members Only™. So you had this guy who made millions as a pitcher and is probably getting paid tens of thousands to be a commentator sitting amidst three other guys dressed in suits, only he looked like he'd stolen his outfit off a pensioner passed out at the local VFW. Amazing.

Lowering the Bar

This is a terrible pun, but the show doesn't deserve any better. Steven Bochco started it anyway. Raising the Bar is his new TV series about lawyers, and you'll be pleased to note that his 27-year streak of not creating a good TV show remains safely intact. I remember when Cop Rock came out, and people rushed to say, "Hey, don't write off this guy. He's made a lot of classic television." The argument was fair at the time, but now that the cops on Hill Street Blues should be taking their pensions, it's harder to swallow.

Doogie Howser now eats shrooms and cannonballs whiskey while driving Harold and Kumar around, and the only person left on TV sitting at the computer and writing vacuous morals-of-the-story at the end of the episode is a rerun Carrie Bradshaw, who was on Square Pegs at the same time Bochco was last competent. In short, it's been a long damn while. At this point, the guy's in danger of being remembered more for pop-culture jokes at his expense than anything else.*