In the second of a five-part series – here’s part one – James Milne signs up to watch Jennifer Love Hewitt’s cancelled borderline softcore porn series The Client List in its entirety. //

Kyle has returned.

It has confounded everything I have come to accept about this show, just as I was reaching something that might be called acceptance. I was beginning to digest the show’s various logics – to pull back my mask of irony and disdain and buy into the simple ebb and flow of relationships, the cycle of fall-out and reconcile, the absurdly dragged-out sexual tension between Evan and Riley – when this happened, blindsiding me just as the producers intended. A dramatic sucker-punch for a totally sucked-in sucker.

How did this happen? When I resumed viewing in episode six, I was feeling as jaded and resentful as I’d ever felt about the process of watching this show. Whatever novelty had existed for me in watching a soap opera was fast disappearing into a fog of directionless flirting, repetitious plotting and hokey heart-warming stuff between Riley and her kids. But somewhere between episodes six and nine, my heart rate slowed, my bile subsided, and I achieved peace with myself and with the show.

During all these episodes I had begun to muse about the function of shows that are targetted at a certain gender. I don’t think it would be a rash presumption that the creators and producers of this show were imagining a majority of viewers of The Client List to be female. If that is indeed the case, then what specific elements of the show might make it more appealing to women, and conversely, less appealing to men, and why should that be so?

Clearly, lingering glances of sculpted male anatomy are unlikely to win over heterosexual males, but why should strong mother-daughter relationships or female friendships have a nameless demographic majority of men reaching for their remotes? What are the atavistic instincts that these shows aim to trigger? Was I bored by the show because it’s aimed at feminine receptors or simply because it’s really bad? Soon, unexpectedly, this question became moot.

At the beginning of episode six, there appears to be “a bust on the horizon.” (I only quote this because I was mildly amused by the double entendre and the juxtaposition with JLH’s ever present décolletage) Spa boss Georgia takes “extras” off the spa menu, and thus the masseuses are stuck with – horror of horrors – having to massage, while the men who frequent the spa leave in some genital pain, presumably to go unburden themselves manually.

It’s played comically, though I’m starting to wonder about all sorts of social implications of this plot – less the infidelity aspect than the fact that trained massage therapists are depicted as not being able to make a decent wage and willingly entering into some form of low-level prostitution in order to live in any sort of comfort. Hidden amid the sly winks and sensual strokes of the massage table is the sad reality of modern capitalist society.

One result of the police’s interest in the spa is that the show becomes far less conspicuously titillating. Oiling of men’s pectorals is at an all-time low. This is some relief. The void is filled by genuine romance: the yearning kind provided by Evan and the more active pursuit of Riley carried out by Doctor Mark Flemming. He appeared in episode three, a fellow parent in a minor sub-plot involving Riley’s daughter Katie, and he was clearly far too attractive to not become involved with Riley. And thus he does. A pheromone-heavy playdate becomes a sexually-heated water pistol fight and, inevitably, one of those “we shouldn’t do this” kisses.

His pursuit of Riley acts in contrast to Evan’s consistent failure to express his true feelings. His brooding nobility is slowly mutating into self-defeating martyrdom and, while I think I’m supposed to be rooting for him, I’m actually getting increasingly keen to see Riley hook up with the sexy doctor. (Let me pause here, for I think I have identified the precise point at which I ceased to view this show through a critical lens and began to gawp credulously at my Macbook, drooling onto my pajamas.)

Evan gets increasingly bitter and starts dating Riley’s nemesis, Selena. “They deserve each other,” I think to myself with some passion. In episode nine, Riley finally starts to date the doctor but it doesn’t work out cos he’s kind of a snob and she’s just an honest, salt-of-the-earth working mom from Texas.

Finally, at the end of episode nine, there’s some action with Evan – a kiss, lingering and passionate, strands of saliva stretching from lip to lip like melted mozzarella. This is the moment when I’m at maximum buy-in, square-eyed, deep into a metaphorical box of popcorn. And then, and then… Kyle.

Episode Ten. Story by Jennifer Love Hewitt and Barbara Nance. Directed by Jennifer Love Hewitt. Clearly a labour of love (Hewitt) this episode features the return of the long-absent Kyle, played by Brian Hallisay, whom Love Hewitt was real-life dating by this point. (Love Hewitt, by the by, is a serial co-star dater.)

Throughout the episode, Kyle turns up repeatedly, uninvited, at the Parks family home, swanning around all damaged and beautiful. I am thinking; we (the audience, the whole darn world) are all thinking “he can’t just waltz back in like this”. Because Riley’s grown so much as a character, because finally after all the teasing, we can see some serious smooch action between her and Evan. But we can’t, because if one thing’s a total cock block, it’s a recently returned ex-husband/older brother of new love interest constantly arriving unannounced.

What on earth will happen? Will Evan’s stoic self-sacrifice pay huge dividends in the bedroom with sister-in-law Riley Parks, or will Kyle’s superior cheekbones win the day? Will The Rub Of Sugar Land survive police scrutiny, or will an increased minimum wage and the introduction of Obamacare render the illicit activities at the spa redundant? Will the masseuses keep giving handjobs anyway, just because they enjoy it? I look forward greatly to finding out next week. Until then, enjoy this racy teaser for Season Two on repeat.

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Stevie TV is a monthly column for The Spinoff by Steve Braunias. Here he makes a really convincing argument that it was better to watch the Black Caps game last night on TV than being stuck at Eden Park. //

Did you watch last night’s game? Most New Zealanders who saw the Black Caps incred, sometimes ridic and ultimately LOL semi-final against South Africa on Tuesday night will always remember where they watched that very cheerful piece of history: on TV. You have to feel sorry for the 40,000 at Eden Park. Being there isn’t the same as belonging to the tribe gathered around their flat screens. We fed off each other’s hopes and fears, the whole explosive psychic charge of it all traveling through fibre optics and into each other’s homes – each of us connected, a nationhood forged in Telco.

It’s kind of quaint that television remains mass entertainment. I sometimes meet a new class of bore who doesn’t own a TV because they can get everything they want on PC. Yes, that must be fun. Such happy hours of streaming and that. But even in an age where social media means everyone is their own publisher and their own broadcaster, TV is still a common experience, the opium of choice. We like to watch. We like to watch together. The great events of the 21^st century – 9/11, X Factor NZ, sport – demand it.

Clive James made the point although TV provides mass entertainment, a mass doesn’t watch TV. People watch TV, one at a time. “You have to come and watch this!”, I said to Emily as she sauntered into the living room in the last over. “Oh,” she said, “who’s winning?” She sat down on the arm of the couch. I leaned forward. I was on the edge of my seat. Less dramatically, I had my pyjamas on – I like to change at about 7pm, you never know when you might just keel sideways and fall asleep. This wasn’t one of those times. I was wide awake, entirely alert, although my head hurt trying to do the maths for the last couple of hours of run rates and such.

I really wished we had biscuits in the house. Now and then I had a hankering for KFC on account of all the lame ads for KFC. Maths, biscuits, chicken – I was falling apart. I didn’t think New Zealand could do it, but I felt better that Emily was in the room, and I was tempted to tell her that I kind of know Daniel Vettori, who was facing the ball. But I don’t know him at all. We’ve only exchanged a few emails. He has a home in Cambridge and I’ve invited him to the Wintec Press Club free lunch extravaganzas, an event I stage in Hamilton three times a year, and he’s replied, “I would have loved to come but I will be in Bangladesh… Unfortunately I will be in India… Once again our calendars clash. I am actually having a hernia operation this week which will put me out of action for a little while.”

He had such good manners, and he looked like a nice man underneath his helmet. I said, “I kind of know that guy OH MY GOD HE JUST HIT A BOUNDARY NEW ZEALAND COULD WIN THIS OH HOW I WISH THERE WERE BISCUITS IN THE HOUSE.” Six runs were required off three balls, the maths of it was beyond me. It had been a long day. It rained that afternoon in Te Atatu, solidly, heavily, for about 40 minutes – Eden Park is 11.9 kms and 16 minutes away from my house, but it was like Mt Eden was another country, it stayed dry there the whole time of the rainstorm and the sun was bright on the grass.

Transmission failed. A message came on the screen. ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS HAVE TEMPORARILY INTERRUPTED YOUR VIEWING, IF NORMAL VIEWING DOES NOT RESUME, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR SERVICE PROVIDER. Sometimes normal viewing resumed but then it would cut out again. ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS, etc. The rain eventually traveled over a continent and reached Mt Eden, and stopped play. My daughter and I made the most of it. We watched The Waltons.

Vettori got a single. Five off two were required. One run plus a boundary, a two and a three, a three and a two, a six, a boundary plus a one – the permutations were endless, possibly. South Africa were bowling to Grant Elliot. Emily said, “Who’s he?” I’d never emailed him. I’d never heard of him. But he had a knock of 78 off 72 balls, and he looked like a nice man underneath his helmet.

The 40,000 were stuck in Eden Park. The rest of the watching nation were at home with their loved ones, on the edge of their seats, leaning forward towards their TV – sucked into the vortex of the New Zealand condition, each person connected, from Don Buck Road to St Stephens Ave, from Cape to Bluff, everyone joined together in that moment the ball was bowled at Grant Elliot and he stepped forward with his bat.

Emily said, “I’m really glad I watched that.”