Why in God’s name would the folks over at NBC take a really funny show—in fact, funnier than anything American TV bigwigs have put out in a long time [Arrested Development notwithstanding] and then reshoot it? And then just change all of the parts of it that make it British? Y’know, take out all of the names of British towns. Replace mentions of “London” with mentions of “New York.” I was going to structure this so that I could talk about the failure that NBC made out of “Coupling” and then move over to how it appears they’re about to kill “The Office,” but I’d rather just say it. NBC ran a promo during Scrubs Tuesday night for “The Office,” which will start later on this month. It’s just a straight-on remake of the American version, as far as I can tell, just like their version of Coupling that lasted like 3 episodes. The promo I saw showed the part where Gareth’s stapler is in Jello. I’m not kidding when I said it was less funny, if only for the fact that the new Gareth says “jello” instead of the decidedly British “jelly.” I’m gonna go ahead and speculate as to why the heck NBC would do this again:

1.American people can’t tolerate the lighting and filming technique used by the BBC. They’re used to that homogenized American look, and that’s what they’ll get. That’s sad, but it could be true. There was even a thing on Scrubs a while back that highlighted how all the 3-camera sitcoms today look the same. And lord knows people don’t like things that are too new. If the show looked too much like a documentary, people might think it was either artsy or Dateline.

2.The British office show is too full of things that Americans won’t get (like moderately funny references to Ant and Dec) so, it has to be changed for their own good. Okay, I guess. Fair enough. There’s a little thing inside the Office DVDs that explains a lot of little things like that, but honestly, not knowing the little things doesn’t really affect the overall quality of the show, plus it might even inspire people to find out what “Gareth is a Benny” means.

3.The actors who are going to be in the American version are going to be better or something. The slimy American boss will totally outshine the hapless goofy British boss. Yeah. I don’t know. The thing about this is that the acting on the British version is so freaking spot-on. Everyone on the show is good, but Ricky Gervase is amazing as Brent. He’s a complete a-hole, but you still like him because he’s so funny, stupid and determined to think that everyone loves him. Tim and Gareth are also phenomenal, especially Gareth because he just sounds like a doofus who needs his stapler jellied. It’s awesome. So, even if Steven Colbert is great as the new, different boss, it’s probably still going to piss me off that Gareth isn’t as awesome.

4.Hey, man, there were only like fourteen episodes of the office counting the special. That’s only one American season for an initial run. If Americans will watch this, we gotta have seven or eight years worth of it. Ideally, it’ll go on so long that it’ll cease to be funny or original, and then folks can get so tired of it that we have to move it to Saturday night and burn two episodes a week in its last season, the way ABC did to the Drew Carey show, which was funny when it started. I got nothing on that one, except it’s the most likely (and most depressing) answer. American networks seem to like to milk anything that’s popular until it loses its audence completely. See “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” Then, even after that they keep milking it until it sucks so had that most of the TV viewing public doesn’t even notice that there are only five basic non-reality shows on the air anymore.

For evidence of this trend, see the crime shows all over that are now impossible to distinguish. 31 flavors of CSI, 57 Varieties of Law and Order. There are even shows with names too terrible and bland for me to imagine they got approved by a group of people who do that for a living. There’s Medical Investigation, which is just as bland as Boston Legal What’s worse about Boston Legal is that it even had a mildly interesting working title that got discarded when the show got picked up. It was called Fleet Street. But I understand, people who love law shows might have missed the show because they thought it was about boats, what with the word “fleet” and all. The executives at CBS must think the people who love boat-related TV must be retarded, because the show aimed at them (No, not JAG, the other one) is called Navy NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service. That’s right, boat fans. You’re so stupid that we need to put the word Navy next to the word Naval, just so you’ll know we’re all about boats! W00t!

Alright, I’m a little off-topic now. And I just saw a new promo for The Office, and looked a little better than the last one. Aw, hell. You know I’m going to watch it. I’m an angry man, but I’m not necessarily part of any grand solution. Even if NBC screws up what was good about the office, maybe they can inject something funny and American into it. But let the record show that in general, I object. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go watch County Hospital: Forensic Docs in a few minutes. Looks promising.

First thing’s first: I want to thank Nancy Rawlings in this review, because even though she’ll probably never see it, there’s a good chance she’s the reason I’m writing it. I wanted the first Josh Rouse CD real bad back in high school, and our Junior or Senior year, when the two of us exchanged Christmas presents in our German class, she gave it to me. What she didn’t know was that by then, I had almost forgotten about the guy. It was the days before heavy filesharing, and living in Rockford killed my chance to get those real hot, obscure records. It was a great, thoughtful gift*. I really dug that first one, and I’ve bought all of his records since then. So, thank you, Nancy.

*In return, I got Nancy an Ash CD. I think it was Nu-Clear sounds. In my old(er) age, I feel very sheepish about that, because I knew that she didn’t like Ash much, I just sort of hoped to win her over, because I figured she should like Ash more. So, for what it’s worth, thank you, and I wish I had had more sense t oget you a more creative present.

Now, moving on to the new Josh Rouse CD, Nashville. Everybody who reviews this thing seems to make a big deal about some things that I don’t care to say, so let me brief you with a bulleted list:

• Josh Rouse recently got a divorce
• He also moved to Spain
• He moved away from Nashville, where he had lived for 10 years.
• The album is not a country album, though it does feature some veteran studio guy from the Nashville scene playing pedal steel.
• This album, like all of his other ones, is a bunch of well-crafted pop gems whose sophistication (apparently) continues to belie his age.

So, all that said, it’s pretty good. I don’t really know if it’s a step forward for Rouse or not. It takes me a while to get acclimated to his records. I didn’t even think I liked Home very much until I had listened to it about a dozen times, which took about a year. Which brings up a sort of problem: with this album, and with Rouse in general, it’s hard to criticize the guy’s music too much. Even when I don’t particularly like it, there’s just nothing wrong it. They’re not not good, if I can get a little Yossarian on you. They’re always pleasant, and this new album is no exception.

But this album, like 2003’s 1972, has got some great things going for it. 1972 was a sort of concept album exploiting the virtues of early-70’s AM radio, and I think it did a great job of paying homage to the time with some well-crafted pop gems, like the man says. I think that this album, despite what you may hear, sounds a hell of a lot like the last one. That’s not a bad thing at all—the palate of sounds here suits Rouse’s singing and songwriting style to a T. He soft soul of “Saturday” and the sorta stompy Three Dog Night thing that ends “Sad Eyes” are good examples. Rouse’s sort-of-cutesy lyrics are back, too, which is okay by me. A guy who isn’t Kool Keith saying “let’s go back to your place and I can try on your clothes” is kind of endearing. There are differences, sure. Nashville’s not making a point of aping the seventies, it’s just retaining some of what made his last album his best so far. Which album is better is hard to tell. Ask me in a year.

What made 1972 stick in my rotation, and what I think will, in time, make Nashville stick are a couple of undeniably great tracks. The kind of songs that make you turn up the car radio when they come on. The ones that make you want to sing along or listen quietly. I mean, what more do you really want from a song? As long as there are a few on there that don’t just exist, but that actually command your attention, there’s always a reason to go back and listen to the album.

The first, and best, standout track is “Middle School Frown.” Someone writing a review that I read called this song “bowie-esque” which I really don’t see, but I’ll put it there for your own edification, in case you can hear that. What I hear is a nice, laid back song that breaks into a chorus that could make my heart explode. It really is, to both the songwriter and producer’s credit, perfect. It’s got all of those little things I love in a song: there are vocal harmonies that outshine the melody, and these little chimes echoing the guitar line, and even little faint choral vocals singing “oohs” in the background, all over Rouse singing “And you held your head high when you walked down my street.” It just kills me. Not that I like proving the other critics right, but this is what “well-crafted pop songs” are all about.