TV review: Kyle XY

"Have you seen [insert television show here]?"

While I watch a lot of television, and will defend that behavior, I probably think the show you're asking me about sucks, whether I've seen it or not. 90% of television sucks. The list of television that does not suck is short, and consists mainly of the following (this list is very short as most good television programs have been canceled):

ESPN College Gameday	Boston Legal	Family Guy
The Office	ER (it does NOT suck)Numb3rs
The Daily Show	The Colbert Report	NBC Nightly News
A show to be named later

You'd think that if there was a television show on a major network like ABC, I'd have heard about it. I would also tell you, having never seen it, that it sucks.

Somehow, a show named Kyle XY slipped under my radar for an entire year. It ran a full 10 episode summer season in 2006, and the 2007 season premiered a few weeks ago. I'm only on episode six so far (I found the damn thing on a site involving ninjas or Swedish pirates or something) and it's already breaking my head open and carving out pieces with a spork.

And that's a good thing.

The ABC website makes Kyle XY sound like a science-fiction program, as does the title (note to producers, we read words and phrases from the outside in, meaning at first glance, the title appears to refer to butt lubricant), but it is not science fiction, and that is why I think it does not suck.

Hello, I'm Matt Dallas, and I'm 24 years old. The actress who plays my love interest on the show is sixteen, but that's totally cool, because we film in Canada.

Kyle (six episodes in, the XY part has not been explained, but I will assume it refers to his sex chromosomes, or perhaps his amazing mathematics skills) is a fit, alleged 16-year-old who is found naked in a forest with complete amnesia and a lack of language skills. A lovely upper-middle-class family of a psychologist, computer nerd, 16-year-old ugly girl and 14-year-old pipsqueak (who later goes skinny dipping with a girl "his age" played by an actress clearly... more developed) takes him in "temporarily." He knows nothing of our strange world, yet instead of becoming an unfrozen caveman lawyer, he becomes...

TA-DAAA!!! AN ETHNOGRAPHER!

Maybe Kyle XY is supposed to be science-fiction, or a drama about teens, but at its heart it's a show about ethnography. Kyle provides voiceovers (clearly long after the fact, as his voiceovers accompany the several episodes in which he has no use of verbal language) describing the strange world he's observing. Better yet, he does it on such a minute basis that he is a veritable Edmund Husserl -- yes, it's phenomenology in action!

Wait, no, it's episode six and now he's using a Ouija board.

Did I mention "young" Kyle has no navel? It's true. His stomach is quite literally flat. He can't swim, until he takes a swim lesson and becomes Mark Spitz. He doesn't know anything, until he reads the World Book in one afternoon. His sensory perception is amazing (which makes him a badass ethno-phenomenologist). Oh, and he knows Kung Fu. As in, Keanu Reeves, "I know Kung Fu." No, really, that's pretty much how it happened. But let's meet the rest of the family.

Hello, I'm April Matson, and I'm ugly.

April Matson plays Lori, the elder Trager sibling, and she somehow manages to be a) popular and b) dating the hot, rich stud despite that she is butt-ugly. She even loses her virginity on-camera, which is way less hot than televised teen deflowerings ought to be. The disaster is further exacerbated by how often she's found in a bikini on the show. Her "boyfriend" is Declan, a dumbass jock who just ran over somebody in his car. He could do so much better than this fat, stupid ho.

I don't feel like describing the rest of the family. I do want to talk about the hot neighbor girl, whom is presented as Kyle's "love interest" of sorts (she instigates his first boner! Yes, this show takes on all sorts of teen issues! It's like an afterschool special where everyone drinks and has sex, without the awkward "ramifications" and "lessons" and "educational value"!)

Hello, I'm Kirsten Prout, and I'm hot. ERR, I mean, I'm sixteen.

Meet Amanda, the piano-playing life-saving smart girl next door. She takes a liking to Kyle even after he breaks into her house, essentially violates her, and tries valiantly to break up her relationship with a nameless loser. High school sucks. Amanda has a touching scene with Kyle in his bathtub, which is really kind of crossing lines of proper television when you consider that Kyle sleeps in the bathtub.

Oh, snap. Episode seven, Kyle is the second coming of Peter Press Maravich. And now Amanda's boyfriend is recruiting him to join the star basketball team. (The basketball team is in the "finals." The high school year just started last week. I guess time goes faster during the abbreviated summer season.)

I'll check back in with you all after I'm caught up. Sorry for the TL, hope you didn't ;DR me. Oh, and tomorrow we'll look at Flight of the Conchords.