Even
for TV, 'LAX' is light as a Heather
It's my favorite kind of television: SBIG-TV. Programming that
is so bad it's good.
The all-time SBIG champion was CBS's "Wolf Lake,"
set in a remote town in the Cascade Mountains where the teens
were answering the call of the wild a bit too literally, by
shape-shifting into wolves. The runner-up would have to be the
equally brief-lived "L.A. Doctors," which one critic
called "a medical series in which everyone -- even the
tubercular patients -- looked remarkably healthy, as if they
had just toweled off after a dip at Malibu Beach."
Comes now NBC's irresistibly awful "LAX," an ensemble
show set at Los Angeles International Airport. (It's "L-A-X,"
by the way, never "lax.") It's a curious choice, since
a major metropolitan airport, with its bad air, high prices,
and random schnooks seeking to blow you up is the one place
in the world you want to escape as quickly as possible. This
hourlong "drama" on Monday nights is no exception.
"It seemed like a great venue to put a show in,"
explains "LAX" executive producer Mark Gordon, whose
credits include "Saving Private Ryan," "The Day
After Tomorrow," and "The Patriot." "We
think of LAX as its own little city. People presumed it would
be about all these terrible things that happen at the airport,
but it's really about these people who are alive and human."
Well, yes. The cast members are astonishingly lifelike, as
the Spy magazine writers used to say. The plot lines are somewhat
limited, because after all, what happens in an airport? Drug
smuggling -- episode two. Super-perilous in-flight "emergency"
-- episode three. Terror alert -- episode four. If the ratings
start to lose altitude, will the show's writers have to crash
a plane? "We haven't written that episode yet," Gordon
says. "We have to keep a balance between reality and not
trying to freak the audience out."
Surprisingly, the ratings have been OK. The show has serious
competition: ABC's soul-deadeningly slow "Monday Night
Football" and CBS's popular "CSI: More Gory Graphics."
(I think I have that title right.) Cognoscenti attribute the
modest success of "LAX" to the sleek narrowbody that
Gordon and his crew pilot into America's living rooms once a
week: the woman The Los Angeles Times called the flocculent
Heather Locklear.
Improbably cast as the airport's runway chief, Locklear storms
around (airport groupies need to know that many of the exterior
scenes are shot at the Ontario, Calif., airport) barking out
orders like, "OK, we're re-staging on Auxiliary Seven!
Go! Go! Go!" Faced with potentially hazardous flocking
birds near the airport, Locklear blasts: "We wouldn't have
this problem if we hadn't been forced to restore the [darned]
wetlands." Word up, eco-meddlers!
In the most recent episode, Locklear kissed off a nerdy suitor
with the line, "Fly from Burbank from now on -- I don't
want you in my airport." The nonplussed nerd can only answer,
"Man, is she hot."
Who can disagree? In the first episode, after an opening scene,
the camera firmly declares its intentions by focusing on Locklear's
tightly swathed derriere, before you see her face. The nominally
43-year-old actress comes with solid Bad Girl cred: She starred
in the twin peaks of trash TV, "Dynasty" and "Melrose
Place," and was once married to rocker/Internet porn star/walking
tattoo parlor Tommy Lee. Locklear has since found domestic bliss
with Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, one of Cher's many exes.
(Cher's exes; now that would be an ensemble drama worth watching.)
For the viewer, the dramatic tension in "LAX" consists
of twiddling your thumbs through mindless subplots involving
an alcoholic policeman or a phobic ramp worker until Locklear
comes back on screen. Fox's shameless ratings-grabber "Man
vs. Beast" featured an army of dwarfs pulling a DC-10 jetliner
across the tarmac. NBC has gone them one better -- Heather Locklear
is carrying a whole airport on her back!
NBC capo Jeff Zucker recently told "E! True Hollywood
Story" about television's "Heather Locklear effect"
-- "every time she shows up, there's success." Who
knows? Maybe she could have saved "Wolf Lake."
"LAX" -- Monday night at 10 on NBC. Catch it before
it crashes.
