Last Chance

America�s first World Cup game drew nearly 2.14 million television viewers, for a 2.4 cable rating for ESPN 2. To put that in perspective, the re-launch of Extreme Championship Wrestling on Tuesday night drew a 3.4 cable rating on the SciFi Network.

So don�t say that Americans are not buying into this whole soccer craze.

The big indicator will be the American�s match against Italy on Saturday. (And we are still looking for Lil� Dieter. But you know what happens when Germans and Italians get together.) There is a lot on the line here for the Americans in terms of the tournament and for soccer in general here in the states. Now, if soccer were a real sport�like the NBA�the Americans would come out with their best effort ever. All of those old, out of shape Americans would actually play a lick of defense and look like they care for the first time in a championship series. And if soccer were a real sport�like the NBA�the Italians would just not show up at all, mailing in their effort. Because that is what better teams do in real sports like the NBA.

What probably is going to happen is that the vastly superior team (Italy) will show up, give its best effort and probably win convincingly like a good team should. Which, once again shows that soccer really has a thing to learn about being a real sport. Maybe then soccer can get such lofty ratings as the NBA.

Or at least WWF numbers.

Pilot Watch: ABC leftovers

Thanks to another cold outbreak at the andreikirilenkotattoo compound, column-writing has been at a minimum this week. Matt handles the lead item of today's All TV, which is a (negative) review of NBC's "Amazing Race"-meets-"Da Vinci Code" rip-off "Treasure Hunters." I handle the back half of the column, including a short review of A&E's "Touch the Top of the World" (biopic of the first blind man to summit Everest) and Dane Cook's "Tourgasm," which I really only liked during the performance snippets.

In the home stretch on the pilots. Preliminary thoughts -- say it with me, these aren't reviews, since too many things can and will change before September -- on "Men in Trees" and "Let's Rob..." after the jump...

"Men in Trees"
Who's In It: Anne Heche, John Amos, Abraham Benrubi, James Tupper, and others
What It's About: "Northern Exposure" by way of the collective filmographies of Meg Ryan, Ashley Judd and Sandra Bullock, with Heche as a relationship guru who discovers her fiance is a cheating louse while on a trip to an Alaskan town where the male/female ratio is 10/1.
Pluses: Heche has dialed down the crazy to acceptable degrees, and judging by Marian's favorable reaction, they handle most of the rom-com tropes fairly well. "Northern Exposure" fans will be very pleased by blatant homages like a sexist macho pilot in the Maurice mold and an eager young DJ who's a cross between Ed Chigliak and Chris in the Morning...
Minuses: ... or they'll be annoyed at the blatant rip-offs. Very little male appeal, and I say that as a guy who digs "Grey's Anatomy."

Let's Rob...
Who's In It: Donal Logue, Mick Jagger, Sofia Vergara, Murmur from "The Sopranos"
What It's About: A lifelong loser decides to take hold of his destiny after watching an E! documentary about Mick Jagger's fabulous apartment, and recruits a posse of fellow losers to rob the Rolling Stone.
Pluses: Mick Jagger does a wonderful job of playing Mick Jagger (it's the part he was born to play, baby!), portraying himself as the worst kind of self-absorbed celebrity brat. Writers Rob Burnett and Jon Beckerman from "Ed" have fun depicting Logue (who played Phil Stubbs in the second version of the "Ed" pilot) as a man blissfully unaware of his own limitations. Good throwaway jokes like the gang plotting the heist in a "Jewish supply house" filled with giant replica menorahs.
Minuses: Mick, who as of now will only appear occasionally, is far and away the best part of the show, and the scenes with the regular characters suffer in comparison. A little too obviously derivative of "My Name Is Earl," notably Logue having his life-altering revelation while watching a celebrity on TV.

Model Citizen

Bengals receiver Chris Henry has never backed down from a challenge. With Ben Roethlisberger and J.J. Manning making the news for being idiots, Henry has taken it to another level. Henry was arrested for the fourth time in seven months after he was charged with providing alcohol to underage females.

Henry was compared to Michael Irvin when he first entered the league. He has lived up to that billing off the field, at least. But even the Pleamaker knew to make sure that his �self-employed models� were of age.

At this point it is a distinct inevitability that Henry will end up on Dateline�s �To Catch a Predator.�