The Scholars Pass But The Scholar Fails

It isn't often that you can say that a reality show isn't as good as the people who appear in it, but the fact is that while the ten high school students who are on The Scholar are outstanding each and every one of these kids deserves to have something very good happen to them. the show is not outstanding; it's pretty much a bog standard reality format and is a failure, both in terms of producing tension and ratings.

Consider the following facts about the students selected to appear on The Scholar - the lowest Grade Point Average of the lot is a 3.98 and at least two students have GPAs of 4.6. Now we don't use the same system in Canada but that would seem to put them in the top group of students nationwide. Despite this they are caught in the conundrum of academic life. Their families are, on the whole, not poor by most standards. If they were, and with their academic ability they would in some cases be able to get special aid automatically to pay their tuition at some of the better universities in the United States (Princeton and Yale offer programs for students whose parents earn under $40,000 which pay the full tuition). The problem is that these parents tend to be earning in the area of $40,000 to $60,000 a year which is too much for the special programs but not enough to make a significant contribution to their children's educational funds. The options for them are to go to major schools and work jobs to pay for their education, or to go to lesser schools and in some cases still have to work. For the most part the cast seems to be cast for their academic abilities and need rather than their appearance, which is a common complaint about reality TV shows.

The problem with the show is the format. Each episode consists of a series of tests. The first task is a multiple choice quiz to select two team captains. The quizzes seem to be simple enough. In the second episode the participants have to match artists to works of art. The quizzes are timed results being ranked by highest number of correct answers. Time becomes important only when two scholars are tied for the correct number of answers. The two best contestants become team captains and get to use the old schoolyard system of picking teams. They then participate in Team Events which are intended to test the students their reaction to various aspects of college life. The first week's challenge was sort of an academic scavenger hunt with the teams going to three locations on the University of Southern California campus to complete puzzles that looked as if they came from a Mensa quiz book. In the second week they were subjected to a task which tested school spirit - they had to get students to a volleyball game and distribute coloured pennants to the students they brought in, then had to perform a yell routine at the break in the game. The Captain of the winning team makes it into the next stage, the final showdown (unless, as happened in week two the winning captain has already qualified in which case they nominate someone from their team to take their place). A scholarship committee, made up of three admissions officials from Berkely and two unnamed Ivy League Universities, decide on two more candidates to take the challenge, based on their performance in the team event. The people don't have to be on the winning team to be selected, in fact it seems as though an outstanding performance on a losing team will get them to the final. The final challenge is an oral quiz based on a particular subject announced the day before the challenge to give the students time to study. The winner is one of the five students who will compete for the full ride scholarship, but the other two students still have an opportunity to compete for the remaining slots.

The single biggest problem for The Scholar is that, despite the interesting personalities and backstories that the student bring to the situation, the show doesn't bring these aspects out. There are brief vignettes of one or two of the students each weeks but we really don't get to know them in depth. The second biggest problem is that the Captain Challenges and the Final Challenges seem a bit to simple for students with this level of academic proficiency. Asking someone who wrote Gone With The Wind as question on a 19th and 20th Century American Literature quiz is only slightly less surprising than the fact that the kid who was asked the question didn't know that the answer was Margaret Mitchell (although this particular kid was especially annoying in the study period, at least based on what we saw on the show; while the other candidates studied he did push-ups because his brain was already full of American Literature and didn't think Gone With The Wind was important enough to be quizzed on - a view one of my old English profs would heartily agree with). In fact the questions on both quizzes seemed to be at the Jeopardy level, possibly to give the viewers at home a chance to take the quiz too, although in the case of the Captains Quiz the viewers don't actually get to see all of the lists from column A and column B. Instead we get a minute or two of tense music and students writing down answers. It doesn't build dramatic tension which is a big problem with the show. Another problem is the three admissions people. We see them giving brief interviews to some of the contestants, part of what was obviously a larger process, and then we see them discussing amongst themselves who were the strongest and weakest of the whole group. Again dramatic tension stops and it isn't really picked up again even after the commercial when the list of names is posted in the "Scholar House" because if we can follow the flow of the discussion amongst the academics we have a pretty good idea of who they've picked.

All of this points to the biggest problem with the show. It is boring. As much as the producers try to create dramatic tension the structure of the show just doesn't permit it to build. There are ways around this that they had wanted to try them. Instead of just showing the students writing down answers, let the audience see all of the choices and test their own intelligence. Tension for the announcement of names for the Final Challenge could have been accentuated by not showing too much of the specific deliberations of the committee and/or having the committee announce their decision before the students and giving reasons why they chose one and not another.

The Scholar takes elements from The Apprentice and attempts to approach things in a different way than the original show. This at least puts the show leagues ahead of the slavishly derivative The Cut. The problem is that in adapting the elements of the original show for the circumstances they find themselves in, they've lost a considerable amount of the conflict and drama that made The Apprentice successful and replaced it with an endless series of rather banal competitions. On the whole there seems to be little conflict between the students, which really is a good thing, but as interesting as they probably are they aren't given much opportunity to show their personalities. It makes me feel at times as though we are never going to get an opportunity to really get to know these kids. It's really a pity because each of them seems to be outstanding in some way and at the very least they deserve recognition for that. I have to give the show a grade of D; definite room for improvement.

Poll Question #1 - Which Of These Summer Series Do You Like?

Here's where you can post your comments on my first poll question.

A Little Blog Renovation

A while ago I mentioned that my mother was doing a bit of renovation - new carpet in the dining room and wood laminate flooring in the kitchen. The job was finished about a week earlier than expected because the installer for the laminate flooring had a job that had to be delayed (a "real" wood floor couldn't be put in because the weather had been too wet). Anyway the flooring is in and I have to admit it looks pretty good.

Anyway, that got me thinking of a couple of things that I wanted to change and/or add in the blog. Getting this stuff implemented did not go as smoothly as the installation of the new floor though.

First change comes under my profile. I've added a poll which I expect to change every week or ten days or so, depending on how inventive I am in coming up with questions. I'll also set up a post for comments on each poll.

Second I'm moving my list of links higher on the page. That seems to be a better place for it.

Third, I'm moving some of the advertising up below the list of links. Apparently there are good spots to place your stuff and putting them higher on the page is better. Still I don't want them above my links which I think are more important

Below that will be the list of Recent Posts and Archives listing and finally the Amazon link and the list of blogging services I use.

There are a couple things I want to add to and subtract from the Links, but I'll get to those in little while - after I get some sleep.

Dana Elcar - 1927-2005

Dana Elcar, probably best known for playing Pete Thornton for six years on MacGyver died on Monday of complications from pneumonia. His family decided to delay release of the information to keep things quiet. He was 77.

For years before MacGyver Dana Elcar was one of those dependable but anonymous character actors who you always knew but could never quite name. He was "that guy; you know the one who was in ... and he did .... and ..... Now what was his name? Well you'll know him when you see him." He did a lot that would get him recognised if never really becoming a big name before MacGyver. His IMDB lists over 100 guest appearances on TV shows from 1959 when he appeared in the Play of the Week production of John Steinbeck's Burning Bright with Colleen Dewhurst, to his last on-screen appearance in 2002 when he did an episode of ER (actually his first screen appearance was in a 1954 series called A Time to Live that ran 15 minutes an episode on NBC. In between he worked - usually in guest appearances - in a host of TV shows that TV fans are bound to remember, including The Defenders, Gunsmoke, Mannix, The F.B.I., Hawaii Five-0, Ironside, The A-Team, and quite literally a host of others. In some cases he appeared in the same show in different roles - he appeared on three different episodes of Mannix in three different roles over a three year period. Although most of his work was on TV he also appeared in movies, notably as the fake FBI agent in The Sting.

Somehow I always think of Dana Elcar before MacGyver, as yelling. It seems he was always playing some ticked off bureaucrat or commanding officer of something who was usually yelling at someone. In 1975 he was Lieutenant Shiller, and yelling at Robert Blake in Baretta. In from 1976 to 1978 he got to yell at Robert Conrad, playing the base CO in Black Sheep Squadron. However it was MacGyver that made people remember Dana Elcar's name. He appeared in the pilot episode as a minor character named Andy Colson, but when it was decided to have Mac work for the Phoenix Foundation, Elcar was added to the cast as his boss and best friend Pete Thornton. In a statement Richard Dean Anderson, who played MacGyver said "At a time when I had very little business being called an actor, he made things so easy for me. It was a learning experience that was very warm and loving for all seven years."

Dana Elcar was diagnosed with Glaucoma after the fourth season of MacGyver. It was decided that the character of Pete Thornton would also learn that he had glaucoma. By the time the series ended Elcar was nearly totally blind, which in part may explain why he did neither of the two MacGyver TV movies. His post MacGyver appearances, in a 1993 episode of Law & Order and in the 2002 episode of ER were playing blind characters.

(I hate writing obituary posts because sadly I have had to do a number of them for actors I liked a lot.)

The Cut Should Be

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. That may be true but there's a difference between slavish imitation of a concept and imitation that brings something new to the table. The "new" CBS series The Cut is a slavish imitation of NBC's The Apprentice and the result is scarcely flattering to anyone involved.

The Cut offers some lucky person a chance to design a line of clothing for Tommy Hilfiger's label, with a salary of $250,000. Sixteen players are challenged to work their way to the top. They are a diverse group, although most have some professional connection with the clothing industry or with design, either as designers, boutique owners, or manufacturing. There are some interesting people, like Chris C., the guy "from the ghetto" who is working on his Masters in Fine Arts; or Felix, the professional skateboarder who has also designed his own line of clothing. Even Julie, the requisite "stay at home mom" is at least marginally interesting - she designs handbags and was a display manager for Benetton in the 1980s.

To begin the competition, Hilfiger picks two of the competitors that he feels have the best personal style, on the grounds that "first impressions matter". They get to do the old schoolyard routine of picking people to be on their teams for the first challenge, although he does say that there are no set teams, they will be shaken up each week. There are no set project leaders - they will emerge as the project wears on. When the picking comes down to the final two he asks the leaders why these two haven't been picked. In both cases it's because the people doing the picking say that their look says that they won't work well as part of a team. The first task is to develop and paint a billboard to promote the Hilfiger line and to incorporate the Made In New York logo. The two billboards are at the corner of 50th and Broadway and the teams take the name of the street that their billboard faces. The teams each have 48 hours and $3,000. Two radically different visions emerge. One team immediately chooses Chris C, the graphic designer as leader. They decide on an abstract design with an old Hilfiger logo (a heraldic lion) and a version of Tommy's own signature. The other team decides to try a New York skyline complete with the Statue of Liberty done in stripes, with the slogan "Tommy NY" done in red white and blue to give it the appearance of "To My NY". A contestant named Tommy takes it on himself to do a version of Hilfiger's flag logo but in "tertiary colours" because he likes tertiary colours. Quite frankly the abstract design is a better work of art, although it takes them a long time to get started actually putting it in place. The skyline design almost immediately looks amateurish, but it is taking a long time to get paint on the board to the point where some of the women on the team want to take the Statue of Liberty off because they're afraid of running out of time. Felix, who created the concept, and Jeff insist on carrying it out as designed. They get it finished but even as they're finishing it is starting to rain and the rain is making the paint run.

After 48 hours, Tommy Hilfiger arrives to check out the billboards accompanied by George, the man who designed the first billboard that Hilfiger himself put up at this very corner and who was also responsible for the MTV slogan "I want my MTV." George isn't impressed with either design, but he's particularly critical of the abstract design with the logo that isn't currently in use and the Hilfiger signature is really too small to stand out and amake a statement. Hilfiger tells the team that they'll find out the winner in "Style Forum" later that night. Each team is confident but in the end it is the team with the skyline design that wins. It isn't because of the design though. In fact Hilfiger lays in to contestant Tommy because he dared to change the Hilfiger flag logo; logos work because they're recognised so you don't change them lightly. What wins it for the skyline team is the slogan they came up with. He then turns to the losing team. He immediately calls Chris C forward and recognises that he did the most work on the project so he's safe from elimination. He has to choose the two people he felt did the least work on the project. He picks Jessica, a former Miss Minnesota, and Amy, a personal shopper from Chicago. He asks them what they contributed to the project and then asked the team members who did the least work. Amy has trouble defending her contribution, while Jessica pointed out that she saved money for her team by making a deal with the company that provided the decals for their billboard which saved the team some money in return for advertising on the bucket truck they used to create the billboard. It's enough to save her from elimination as Amy is deemed "out of style" and told to "take the runway."

That The Cut is the less popular bastard child of The Apprentice is clear from the start. The interior of Hilfiger's "style court" is far less intimate than Trump's boardroom but beyond that I see little difference between the two shows. What I as a viewer need is something to differentiate between the two series and I'm definitely not seeing it here. There are differences but they are too minor to be of consequence while the similarities - from "style court" to the swank and oversized three story SoHo loft the teams are living in, are too glaring to ignore. There seems to be not a trace of originality here. It is illustrative to compare The Cut to this summer's other "faux Trump" series, Hell's Kitchen. I think that Hell's Kitchen is both the more interesting show and the better adaptation of the concept behind The Apprentice. The idea is the same in all three shows - someone has to impress a big name in their field in order to win an opportunity to work in that field. The difference is that Ramsay is omnipresent in their working lives, and the challenges they face aren't abstract, they're what they're going to have to do if they do win their own restaurant. Ransacks personality is forceful to the point of being frightening to small children and patrons expecting a bit of schmoozing, but at least he has a personality, which is more than I can really say about Hilfiger after the first hour and a half in his presence. In the end, Tommy Hilfiger - as the star of his own show - comes off as a cut-rate Trump and The Cut looks like a cheap and cheerless knock-off of The Apprentice.

It's Dark On The Inside

There are some things that are rarer than hens' teeth. One of them is a dramatic series that debuts in June for the summer season. The Inside is a dramatic series that has debuted in the summer season. And for the life of me I can't understand why since the popularity of the veritable flood of reality shows indicates that audiences want light "fluffy" material in the summer season. Believe me The Inside is anything but fluff.

In structure The Inside bears a vague resemblance to the Ally Walker series The Profiler seemingly crossed with Silence Of The Lambs. In the first episode we're introduced to the Violent Cries Unit of the Los Angeles office of the FBI, headed by Supervisory Special Agent Virgil "Web" Webster. They are currently tracking a serial killer who removes the faces and hands of his victims. The team is called to a crime scene where an apparent victim of the serial killer has been found. The only person missing is their profiler and it doesn't take long for us to learn why. She's the victim. This allows for the introduction of the team's new profiler a recent graduate from the FBI training academy at Quantico. She's Special Agent Rebecca Locke and there are a lot of mysteries about her, like why her personal history only seems to start when she arrived at Quantico. The rest of the team are Paul Ryan, who describes himself as the conscience of the team, Danny Love, a brusque ex-marine who handles back-up, and Melody Sim whose purpose I still haven't quite figured out.

It doesn't really matter. The focus, at least in the first episode is on the relationship between Webster, Locke, and Ryan. Locke, we discover, was kidnapped as a 10 year-old and kept by her abductor for 18 months until she made her own way home. The event has traumatised her enough to change her name and essentially create a new identity, but it has also allowed her a special insight into the criminal mind. Her training is as a statistical analyst despite having applied twice for training in the behavioral Sciences unit. Still Webster has brought here in as a profiler. Indeed it's Webster who is responsible for her FBI career - he signed the approval for her application despite the fact that her personal history should have disqualified her from working with the FBI, as Paul explains. It becomes very clear very quickly that Paul doesn't like his boss very much. Paul sees Web as someone who uses people, and the personal baggage they carry with them, to further his own aims. They are all chess pieces on his personal board and he'll use their strengths and weaknesses as he sees fit. In this struggle Paul is determined to at least try to protect Rebecca as much as he can from being endangered by Web. For his part Webster does see that he's using people for his own purposes although he'd probably cast himself as a spider, which makes his nickname - Web - ominously appropriate. He seems to have some as yet undiscovered connection with Locke. He says that her original kidnapping was ineptly handled by the FBI, without mentioning who the lead agent was on the case. He clearly has been monitoring her for years after the kidnapping.

The absolute best thing in The Inside is Peter Coyote as Webster. He's probably one of the most interesting actors around with a distinctive voice that is rarely raised above a conversational tone but still manages to show anger and scorn. He's perfect as the manipulative Webster. In the role of Rebecca Locke is relative newcomer Rachel Nichols, probably best known for the remake of The Amityville Horror. She's a bit more of a problem. Locke is less like Ally Reynolds's character in The Profiler and more like Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling in Silence Of The Lambs. The problem is that as an actress she's no Jodie Foster. At the worst of times she's rather unconvincing in the part. At her best she's usually in scenes with Peter Coyote. There's one scene where she and Webster are in the apartment of the most recent victim and he draws out of her how the killer chooses his victims and why he mutilates them in the way he does. The scene draws qualities out of Locke that aren't seen in other scenes. Still perhaps her best scene in the first episode is with the actual killer. He tries to terrorize her and make her feel as if she's nothing. Nichols is quite convincing in her disdain for him; she's seen real terror and he doesn't even come close. You really do feel as if her character is cut off from everyone else - emotionally as well as physically - but in absolute control even if he kills her. As for the rest of the cast, Jay Harrington is competent as Paul, while Adam Baldwin as Danny is basically channelling the sort of semi-comedic tough guy roles he's been getting since his debut in My Bodyguard. As for Kate Finnernan, who plays Agent Melody Sim, the fact is that there's simply not enough involvement of her character in the initial episode for me to make a judgement about how well she's doing.

The story behind The Inside is an interesting one. In the original concept Rachel Nichols was supposed to be playing a cop working undercover in a high school. Despite everything that the network was trying the show concept wasn't working. Executives at Fox Television called in Tim Minear and gave him a free hand with the series. The only thing that absolutely had to be retained from the original concept was Rachel Nichols. Minear took a look at the original concept and decided that it might hold up for an episode but was totally unsuited for an ongoing series. Minear, best known as a writer and producer on Angel and the ill-fated Fox series Firefly and Wonderfalls decided to entirely retool the show to make it, as Minear's comment on the show's website puts it, a show " about damaged people - the only interesting kind there is - and about how their damage sometimes makes them particularly suited to the work they do." Tim Minear gave Fox what they wanted, a series starring Rachel Nichols, but the addition of Peter Coyote and the serviceable supporting cast means that she isn't carrying the weight of the show alone, and indeed she is reduced to almost co-starrng status.

I'm rather impressed with The Inside, to the point where I wonder why Fox has decided to run it in summer which is traditionally used by networks to burn off episodes of series that don't quite make it. Certainly I think it's better than most of the new shows that have debuted this summer and indeed better than some series that have been running on Fox this past fall and winter. The only real explanation that I can see is that Fox is so confident of their Fall 2005 lineup that they don't have a place for The Inside. We'll have to see if the shows they deploy this Fall justify their confidence. Sadly, based on the ratings that the first episode got (up against the major hit of this summer Dancing With The Stars) it's unlikely that the show will be considered for revival if they were wrong.

Weddings Are Weddings

After watching the second episode of Global's new series My Fabulous Gay Wedding one thing became absolutely apparent and that is that a wedding is a wedding is a wedding, and a show about a wedding is a show about a wedding. It doesn't matter if the couple involved are a man and a woman, a man and a man or a woman and a woman.

The second episode of My Fabulous Gay Wedding featured two women, Nikki and Debbie. Both are divorced - from men - and each has two children of whom they have joint custody with their exes. When show host Scott Thompson, formerly of Kids In The Hall goes to them with the application for the wedding license, Debbie immediately states that she's the Bride. As nearly as I can tell the license applications in Ontario haven't been changed to reflect the reality of Same Sex Marriage. After this is taken care of and we learn a little about Nikki and Debbie's relationship (the met when Debbie answered Nikki's newspaper ad, and got her to pull it from the paper after just one day) Scott has to pull together their wedding in just fourteen days. Well really his team of wedding gurus have to do it. They are wedding planner Fern Cohen and her event planner assistant Gregory White, design expert Eric Aragon, fashion stylist Jim Smith, and caterer Barbara Stuart-Peterson.

Of course the essential part of any wedding is what the couple wants and doesn't want as a theme, food, music clothes and of course location location location. This is part of Scott's job; between his talks with them and blatant snooping around their home, he has to give the event team some sort of idea of what they want in a wedding - and hope that he and they get it right. In the case of Debbie and Nikki, what he doesn't find out much until he finds a CD of music by lesbian singer and comedian Lea Delaria. Fern (who is straight) doesn't know Delaria, but her male assistants are very excited about the prospect of having her for the wedding. It just so happens that she and Scott are close friends so he's able to arrange her appearance at the wedding, if they can get her from Boston to Toronto on time. There are other problems. Nikki and Debbie say they don't want a church wedding, but the facility that the team finds for their 1920's speakeasy themed wedding looks suspiciously like a church. That shouldn't be surprising; it used to be a church. Once they have the local they have to get a piano for Lea's accompanist only to discover that the doors of the place aren't big enough for the grand piano that Fern wants. Eventually the piano is reduced to a pianette which will fit into the ex-church. Meanwhile Debbie and Nikki, who describe themselves as retro women, are balking at the vintage clothes that Jim's suggesting to them. Still, with the exception of almost missing the deadline to get the wedding license before the appropriate offices closed for the weekend, things on the wedding planning front run relatively smoothly.

I mentioned that for the most part the concerns of same sex couples getting married are almost identical to the concerns of heterosexual couples. Well that's not entirely true. In some cases there's resistance from family. While Nikki's son and daughter are happy for them, and her mother and godmother both show up. Things are rockier for Debbie. After she and her husband broke up, he begged her not to come out of the closet and initially refused to let her two sons attend even though it was her weekend to have custody of them. Debbie was willing to stand up to him, saying that she wanted to be "gay with a voice." But the real problem was with her parents. They refused to attend because they felt the need to "protect the children" by which they meant her sons. Debbie reached the point where she called off the wedding and told her parents that, but they didn't believe her and were actively lobbying he ex husband to keep the boys away from the wedding. In fact on the night before the wedding Debbie's parents were calling around town trying to find Debbie and her sons. Eventually Debbie's ex-husband relented and lets the boys attend although he refused to allow them to be shown on camera, so in virtually all of the shots where they'd be seen in the wedding, their faces are "fuzzed" out.

Scott Thompson describes the show as a "heartwarming comedy" but from my perspective most of the comedy comes from the self-described (I swear) "Wedding Fairy" himself. Thompson is funny although not in the same way as he was during his Kids In The Hall days but he has his moments. On the whole he seems superfluous to the proceedings as Fern and her team seem to do most of the "heavy lifting". In the end - for me at least - the series falls flat. When it comes right down to it this is a wedding show of the sort that wouldn't be out of place on a network like TLC, Lifetime or W (the Canadian equivalent of the Oxygen network) if the couples were a man and a woman. For me, watching a wedding where I don't have any emotional connection with either of the participants isn't interesting regardless of their sexuality. It seems to me to be a little bit cynical for Global to air this show on the network since it is my impression that they wouldn't put a wedding show about heterosexual couples on their broadcast network. I'd like to suggest that the decision to air the show in the summer in "peak viewing hours" (as defined by the CRTC) is at least in part an effort to keep the network's Canadian content numbers acceptable. Certainly I'm willing to bet that having something unique to sell to the American MTV's new, gay-themed, cable network called Logo may have made the decision to produce the show a lot easier for the programmers at Global. Then again, maybe I'm the cynical one.

TV On DVD - June 7, 2005 - Part 2

This is the second part of my look at this week's TV on DVD. As I said in the first part, it was a real bumper crop this week, and next week looks almost as bad. Or good. Now you'll excuse me, I have to do penance for not remembering that Virginia Gregg was not Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke, Georgia Ellis was. Somehow I've always associated Gregg with Gunsmoke.

Maurice Sendak's: Little Bear - Little Bear's Band
Maurice Sendak's: Little Bear - Rainy Day Tales
- Although the label on these DVDs says "Nick Jr." the history on this series is a bit more complicated. It is in fact a Canadian show, made by Toronto's Nelvana Animation which is in turn owned by Corus Entertainment which owns YTV and Treehouse TV. The series originally aired in the United States on Nickelodeon, but appeared on the Canadian channels at the same time. On occasion I've managed to see parts of episodes so I'm not qualified to comment on the quality of the show except to say that the art looks quite good by most standards.

Lois and Clark: The Complete First Season
- Before there was Smallville and Desperate Housewives there was Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman a show which owed its existence to advances in visual effects that made it possible for a man to fly convincingly on TV without a big movie budget. Most fans of the show tend to regard the first season as the show's best. All of the elements are there and the relationship between Terri Hatcher's Lois and Dean Cain's Clark has the right degree of prickliness. The supporting cast is mostly excellent although a little bit of Tracy Scoggins as Cat Grant goes a very long way. Lane Smith exhibited a perfect amount of bluster as Perry White, and John Shea was suitably slimy as big business man Lex Luthor (not fully a supervillain and certainly not bald). Things went off track when series developer Deborah Joy Levine was fired from the series along with Scoggins Shea, and the original actor playing Jimmy Olsen. Still this "love triangle between two people" is definitely worth watching.

MacGyver: The Complete Second Season
- It's not often that the name of a TV series becomes a verb, albeit a rarely used and somewhat geeky one: to MacGyver - to fix, repair, rig, solve, build, invent, or otherwise save the day, as MacGyver did. Or as someone at UrbanDictionary.com puts it "Someone who can jump-start a truck with a cactus." The second season takes MacGyver from being an "ordinary" secret agent (as if there was anything ordinary about MacGyver) and turned him into an agent of the Phoenix Foundation. MacGyver was one of the great series, ever taking itself too seriously, and a favourite of every geeky kid who looked at something and wanted to make something different with it.

Newlyweds: Nick And Jessica: Complete Seasons Two and Three
- Never saw it. Never wanted to see it. I have had my fill of Jessica Simpson from that Dominos Pizza ad for the Buffalo Wings.

Power Rangers: S.P.D.: V1 Joining Forces
- I remember seeing the original version of Power Rangers on Fox during the afternoons sometimes (before I had good Internet service). It was an awful blend of cheapo Japanese live action effects from different sources and bits with American actors of exceptionally limited acting ability. It was so bad it frequently gave me a headache after just a few moments exposure. This is apparently another new version of the series but I have little hope of it being any better. Therefore kids will probably love it.

John Callahan's Quads: Freak Parade
- Another Nelvana Animation show, but one that is definitely not for the kids. The humour is sexist, bawdy, and takes nothing seriously particularly disability. The art is the sort of modern animation that makes The Simpsons look like 1940s Disney. So why is that when I come upon it on Teletoon I stop clicking and watch? The answer is that the show is funny.

Quincy M.E.: Seasons 1&2
- With all due respect to Jordan Cavanaugh, and Doc Robbins (Crossing Jordan and CSI) Quincy is my favourite TV medical examiner. This DVD has the complete first and second season, all 16 episodes. 16 episodes? Well yes. Quincy started as one of the components of NBC's Wednesday Mystery Movie block. It soon became clear that unlike most of the series that they were trying in that block, Quincy was something special. Supposedly based on L.A.'s "Coroner to the stars" Dr. Thomas Noguchi, as my blogging buddy Ivan Shreve points out, the show bears a much more obvious connection to the old CBC series Wojeck, which starred John Vernon as a crusading coroner, which in turn was based on the real life Toronto Coroner, Dr Morton Schulman.

Rescue Me: The Complete First Season
- Dennis Leary is an acquired taste that I have clearly never acquired. Still this series has had good reviews and unlike his previous series The Job this series about New York firemen has been on the proper venue for Leary's talent - cable. The series has been on the Showcase cable channel here in Canada but for some reason I have never been able to connect with it.

Sanford And Son: Sixth Season
- An Americanised version of the British series Steptoe and Son this show rapidly became much more than what the British series ever was and the reason is that it became the Redd Foxx show in all but name with Demond Wilson as his straight man. That said there was a terrific supporting cast including Whitman Mayo and Lawanda Page. Norman Lear got most of his best ideas from British series, but he was smart enough to develop them for American audiences and that is clearly what he did in this case.

Saturday Night Live The Best Of Jon Lovitz Saturday Night Live: Best Of Jon Lovitz
Saturday Night Live The Best Of Tom Hanks Saturday Night Live: Best Of Tom Hanks
- Sorry, never been a fan of the show, and while I like Tom Hanks I tend to prefer him as an actor in dramas (but I hate Forrest Gump which I find to be a mile wide and an inch deep).

The Sopranos: The Complete Fifth Season
- The thing about The Sopranos is that if you simply think of it as a show about a mobster you are missing so much. It is a compelling family drama which doesn't sugar coat things. In the way that he treats people, Tony is a pig, but somehow he can be an endearing pig. The strength of the series has always been the writing and the acting.

Spider-Man: Venom Saga
- Sorry, I haven't seen whichever version of Spiderman that this comes from. I go back to the days when Paul Soles was doing Peter Parker's voice and Paul Kligman was taking time off from working with Wayne & Shuster to do J. Jonah Jameson.

Stargate Atlantis: Rising (Pilot Episode)
- Haven't seen it. The show airs on one of the premium movie channels here in Canada and I just can't justify the cost. Eventually it will air on Space and I might catch it then.

Thorn Birds: Missing Years
- It says something that of the original cast of The Thorn Birds only Richard Chamberlain returned to do this unneeded sequel, and that something is not very good. And I didn't like the first one.

The Best of Tokyo Pig
- Okay, I'm not even going to pretend to have a clue about this. HELP!

Too Close for Comfort: The Complete Second Season
- I used to love this show. Ted Knight managed to successfully shed the "stupid" image of Ted Baxter by playing the sometimes befuddled, sometimes blustering father of two sisters who move out of their parents' house... sort of. Another series based on a British original this one actually ran longer and developed in slightly different ways. A fine send off for a good actor.

Wanted Dead Or Alive: Season One
- Amazon.ca won't ship until June 21. This series has been airing on the Lonestar Channel here in Canada but typically they bought the colorized version which features the absolute worst colorizing I've ever see - yes worse than Gilligan's Island. Fortunately the shows on this DVD aren't colorized so you can see the young Steve McQueen as he was, the post James Dean epitome of cool.

Wonder Woman: The Complete Third Season
- Prime superhero camp...and I watched every episode. The third season is the second with the modern story lines which were adopted when the show went from ABC to CBS. Apparently tensions on the set between Lynda Carter and Lyle Waggoner were so great by the third season that there were fewer and fewer scenes between the two. If the show had continued for another season, Wagoner would have been dumped. He had previously left the Carol Burnett Show under "mutual agreement with the producer."

X-Files: Mythology, Vol. 1 Abduction
- This is an interesting concept. This four disc set contains 15 episodes from the first three seasons of The X-Files follows the so-called mega-arc which flowed through the entire series, specifically the Conspiracy and proof of the existence of aliens on earth. A second set of discs in the X-Files: Mythology series will follow in August. It's an interesting way to follow a specific concept that wends its way through the entire series, and there are some outstanding episodes in the set, although I can't help but wonder whether understanding of the characters will be as great for first time viewers as it would be if they had seen the episodes that come between the ones on these discs.

Fire Him... Please

Specifically fire the guy who came up with the show Fire Me...Please. My God that was awful!

To plumb the depths of the awfulness, let's start with the concept. Two people are sent out to what are basically minimum wage jobs and told that they have to get fired from those jobs as close to 3 p.m. the same day as possible but not after 3 p.m. The big bosses at the companies that they're sent to know that these people are going to be showing up, and their stores are equipped with a number of hidden cameras, but the shift supervisors at the stores don't know, and neither do the other employees. There are only three rules that the "players" can't break: they can't ask to get fired, they can't tell anyone that they're on a hidden camera show, and they can't you know break the law. The player who gets fired closest to 3 p.m. without going over wins $25,000.

It seems clear that the producers wanted a show like the old Candid Camera or the more recent Punk'd produced by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg or even the practical jokes segments of TV's Bloopers And Practical Jokes, but those shows had a certain charm to them. This does not. This show has two half hours of people acting like obnoxious jackasses each of which is condensed from between five and six hours of people acting like obnoxious jackasses for money. Added to this in post-production is an obnoxious laugh track designed to remind us that this dreck is funny. It might possibly have worked if they hadn't run the laugh track for every scene of the episode that didn't involve the host.

This show is terrible. It is so terrible that I violated what I consider to be the most important rule for any person writing a film or television review - watch the whole damn thing then write. This show was an hour long but I barely made it to the half-hour mark before I could take no more and switched over to an episode of House that was half over and still made more sense to me. The one saving grace to this mess is that there are only four episodes after which it will be replaced by the new season of Big Brother, and never have I been so anxious to see start. No network in North America would have approved this show for broadcast in the regular season, so why was it foisted on us in the summer? In a summer that has featured some adequate and one or two quite nice reality series, Fire Me...Please has to be regarded as a total disgrace. They won't, but heads should roll at CBS and at LMNO Productions which sold them this crap.

TV on DVD - June 7, 2005 - Part 1

A real bumper crop of DVDs this week. In fact there are so many I've decided that the list is too big for one post, so I've split it in half and will run the second part tomorrow.

One thing that I've discovered is that there is on occasion a delay between a series' release on Amazon in Canada and in the United States. Be aware that in some cases, if you order from these links (although none of you have yet) delivery may be delayed because the series hasn't been released in Canada yet.

Home Movies: Season Two
- This series was seen on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim although there were six episodes aired on UPN in the United States. I'm not sure if it ever aired on Teletoon here in Canada...but I'm certain someone will tell me.

Cat House
- This is part of HBO's America Undercover documentary series which is probably best known for the Taxicab Confessions series. In this documentary we meet the ladies of Nevada's Moonlight Bunny Ranch brothel - including the incredibly over the top Air Force Amy - and Doug Hof, who owns the place. I have in fact seen this - and its sequel Cathouse 2, Back in the Saddle and can honestly say that there are some funny moments, like when the street pimp who is trying to get one of Hof's girls to work for him discovers just how much she's making at the Ranch. On the whole howerer it comes off as pretty much a peep show.

Bear In The Big Blue House: Early To Bed Early To Rise
Bear In The Big Blue House: Sense-Sational!
Bear In The Big Blue House: Storytelling With Bear
Bear In The Big Blue House: Visiting The Doctor With Bear
- Bear In The Big Blue House is, I'm duly informed, quite popular with the preschool crowd. Produced by Disney and the Jim Henson organization it's seen in Canada on Treehouse TV. On those rare occasion when I've seen the show it seemed like good clean fun for little kids, like my nephew Brian.

Davey and Goliath Volume 1
- This series is one of the great memories from my childhood. The show was gentle, occasionally humorous but not in a "gutbusting" way and there was usually a moral to every story. I have to admit that I was surprised when I got older and realised that the show was in fact created for a religious group, the Lutheran Church because it never seemed overly preachy. I can't imagine many religious broadcasters today using this sort of approach, more's the pity.

Dead Zone: Complete Third Season
- The Dead Zone is one of those series that I've never watched, mainly because the whole genre is not one of those I particularly enjoy. That said the cast, which includes Anthony Michael Hall, Nicole De Boer and David Ogden Stiers, seems quite solid. The series, which is based on a novel by Stephen King - which has led to it being called Stephen King's Dead Zone in some markets - is a co-production with Canada's Lion's Gate Films.

Degrassi Junior High: Season 2
- The three original Degrassi series - Kids of Degrassi Street, Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High - combined are one of the great stories of Canadian TV. While the series weren't "cause oriented" they did present an unblinking look at the life of a group of Canadian teens in the mid and late 1980s. The second season included such issues as Spikes Pregnancy, and a substitute art teacher who is a little too fond of his young female students.

Doctor Who: The Leisure Hive
Doctor Who: Ghost Light
- Two Doctor Who serials, Leisure Hive from the later Tom Baker period and Ghost Light from Sylvester McCoy's second season. Leisure Hive is notable as John Nathan Turner's first episode as producer, while Ghost Light was one of the major episodes of the 26th and last season of the original run. Of the two I think Ghost Light is probably better simply because the story is edgier, more serious and more mysterious. It ties in with the whole Fenric Arc that was developed for that season but for various reasons was aired out of order.

Dragnet (1967): Season One
- Jack Webb had a great sense of humour about his TV creation Dragnet but one has to wonder what he'd think of the lack of respect that the 1967-1970 version of the show has earned. There are a lot of unintentionally funny moments as well as the usual bits of deliberate humour with Joe Friday's partner - played in this series by Harry Morgan who even then was a film and TV veteran.For me, the big problem that this revival had was that it lacked the gritty, hard hitting quality that the original TV series had, which was also evident in the 2003 remake by Dick Wolf which starred Ed O'Neill. Webb had by this time assembled something of a stock company. Virginian Gregg, probably best known as the voice of Miss Kitty in the radio run of Gunsmoke appeared in a number of episodes during the run of the series, as does Bobby Troup who was married to Webb's ex-wife Julie London and would later star Emergency.

Dragon Tales: Playing Fair Makes Playing Fun
- Apparently this is the Barney for the new millennium. According to reviews in the IMDB, well lets just say that this Children's Television Workshop/PBS series may be a hit with the pre-school set, but has very low adult watchability. Of course that doesn't matter a lot to kids. (My 2 1/2 year-old nephew loves his Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs but only wants to see the one disc, which after the third or fourth time you've seen it in one afternoon is enough to drive a relatively sane person up a wall.)

Father Of The Pride: The Complete Series
- Stupid Question time: WHY?

Footballers' Wives: The Complete First Season
- Let's just label this as what it is - a night time soap from Britain. The series focuses on the players of the Earl's Court Rangers Football (Soccer) team and their wives. There's the expected amount of scheming, and double dealing mixed in with dollops of sex, violence and drugs. Of course the sex does tend to be a bit more graphic than the PTC would allow on US TV, as is the language. It has aired in Canada on Showcase.

Frasier: The Complete Fifth Season
Frasier: Six Season Pack
- I think it can safely be argued that Frasier is likely the most successful spinoff ever created, simply because it lasted 11 seasons, which was as long as the series that spawned it, Cheers. Although the focus is on the pompous Dr. Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), some of the best scenes are with show's absolutely perfect supporting cast: John Mahoney, Jane Leeves, Peri Gilpin and of course David Hyde Pierce. The six pack contains the first five seasons and the final season DVDs, all of which are available individually.

Hee Haw, Vol.4
- Hee Haw is probably one of the most maligned TV series ever created. The critics hated it and attacked it with almost shark-like glee, and it was executed along with the rest of the CBS rural lineup in 1971. Everybody hated it...except for the people who watched it in syndication for 22 years after the cancellation. It was a great combination of downright corny humour and solid country music from some of the musicians in the business. I'm not absolutely clear on how they're marketing the DVDs though. This volume features Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, but I'm not sure if it's a single episode or highlights from their appearances on the show.

Home Improvement: Season 2
- I always liked Home Improvement to the point where, towards the end of it's run, it was one of the few sitcoms I watched on a regular basis. The second season is worth seeing if only to see an unaugmented Pam Anderson who was playing Lisa, the original "Tool Time Girl". Lisa was never as integrated into the episodes as much as Debbe Dunning's character Heidi was. Dunning does make an appearance as a guest star as does Bob Vila who makes his second of three quest appearances.

I Love Lucy: The Complete First Season
- This is a rerelease of the first season of I Love Lucy. The season set the premise for the show and of course the chemistry in the cast is perfect. There are six disks with tons of extras including thirteen episodes of Lucy's radio series My Favorite Husband. (Lucy wanted her co-stars from that series, Gale Gordon and Bea Benadaret to play Fred and Ethel Mertz but Gordon was committed to the Our Miss Brooks series while Benadaret was featured on the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show so the parts were eventually given to William Frawley and Vivian Vance.) There's also the original series pilot which was lost for many years until it was found in the state of the Spanish clown Pepito, who appeared in the episode. There are so many classic bits in the set including the Vitameatavegamin episode, and the episode where Lucy goes to ballet class and gets her leg stuck in the bar (which produced the longest sustained laugh in the entire series - so long that the scene had to be cut).

Loonatics Unleashed - Won't Someone Stop The Insanity?!

The new Loonatics Unleashed! designs are in, and let's just say I don't see much improvement over the old designs. The characters are - from left to right - Lexi Bunny, Rev Runner, Tech E. Coyote, Ace Bunny, Danger Duck, and Spaz B. Wilde. The characters exist 700 years in the future and are the descendants of Lola Bunny, the Roadrunner, Wile E. Coyote, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and the Tasmanian Devil, but I guess you already figured that one out. The show is supposed to debut on the Kid's WB this year. Hopefully another 10 year-old kid will come forward to shame the suits at the WB into dropping this whole concept. Report courtesy of Cartoon Brew.

Bullying A Bully

Last week I discussed a recent Parents Television Council commentary on the Paris Hilton commercial for the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's fast food chains. I wasn't alone of course, lots of other blogs commented on it, including Tony Figueroa's Child Of Television, and SpeakSpeak News. What I want to write about now is something that happened a few weeks ago.

The PTC has made a major push against a recently formed organization created to promote responsible television viewing without governmental action. The PTC made Television Watch a major target of their ire because three of the four major US networks or their parent corporations support the organization: Fox (News Corporation), NBC (NBC Universal) and CBS (Viacom). On the whole the come across as the schoolyard bully complaining about being bullied. A cartoon on the PTC website depicts TV Watch as a puppet under the control of the monstrous hands of CBS, NBC and Fox (I won't reproduce the cartoon here - the PTC seems like the sort of group that would sue if someone who didn't like them reproduced something from their site). PTC president L. Brent Bozell has something to say about those individuals and groups (including The American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform, and the US Chamber of Commerce) that are not networks but are part of TV Watch:

"This supposed coalition needs to be taken - and dismissed - for what it is: a collection of random citizen and public policy groups that have simply been hired and paid for by the networks to do their dirty work. Some of these organizations, like the American Conservative Union and Americans for Tax Reform have never given a moments thought to the suffocating sewage coming from the entertainment industry. That in and of itself is shameful. But now, suddenly, they care? Its a laughable proposition to think that this hired gun coalition will have any impact whatsoever on the ongoing debate over decency and the public airwaves.

"The question needs to be asked, and I now ask it publicly: Given that these organizations have never before participated in the debate over television indecency - why the sudden interest now? These organizations, and this so-called coalition, have an obligation to disclose the level of funding they're receiving, directly or indirectly, from the networks and the entertainment industry to do their dirty work."

Actually, I don't think that they do any more than I think that the PTC has an obligation to disclose the level of funding that they receive from evangelical religious or conservative groups - or even why Steve Allen is still shown as a member of their "Celebrity Advisory Board" despite having been slightly dead for almost five years. Where does their funding come from? They would have us believe that they are a grassroots organization of people outraged by what's on Television - sorry the "suffocating sewage coming from the entertainment industry" - but what are their ties with groups like the American Family Association or Focus On The Family which are backed by the conservative Protestant churches?

The thing is that I can readily understand why groups like The American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform, and the US Chamber of Commerce are supporting Television Watch. On the whole economic conservatives take the point of view that "the government that governs least is governs best", by which they really mean that the government that regulates least is best, and the describe liberals as wanting more and more regulation. On the other hand the agenda of the social conservatives is that government must make regulate human behaviour to make it "correct" (at least in their view). Television regulation is an area where the two visions of conservatism conflict.

To further explain this I need to dip back into my brief and disastrous attempt to become a teacher. One of my required classes was in educational administration where we were introduced to the concept of in loco parentis. If your Latin is even more nonexistent than mine, this roughly translate as "in place of the parent". In simple terms this meant that from the time the kids arrived at school to the time they got home, the teacher had powers over them equivalent to their parents. According to the acts and regulations governing the schools in Saskatchewan this meant that the teacher was to act in the manner of an idealised "fair and responsible" parent in all areas including discipline (which at the time that I was in university included corporal punishment as a last resort). It seems relatively clear that what the PTC and groups like it want is for the television industry to program their networks as if they were in loco parentis, and for the FCC to punish the networks if they don't. But all of this seems to ignore the role of parents.

In the darkest period of World War II, when France had fallen and the United States had yet to enter the war Winston Churchill told the United States "Give us the tools and we will finish the job." Government and the broadcast industry have done a lot to provide parents with the tools that they need to be fair and responsible. They have willingly surrendered certain of their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech by accepting laws on the language and images that can be shown. They provide rating labels in front of every entertainment show indicating what age group the show is suitable for, and sometimes include warnings both in text and spoken form at the start of shows. They make their labels compatible with the V-Chip technology as mandated by the FCC. Consider the tools available on my TV and cable set-up. My TV is equipped with the V-Chip (although it doesn't work with the Canadian ratings system). My TV allows me to block channels and is password protected. My digital cable box allows me to block specific programs, and to lock out entire channels. It too is password protected. Unlike people in North Korea I'm allowed to change channels. There's an on-off switch on both the TV and cable box. It seems to me that the existing regulations - the regulations which both the liberal and conservative supporters of Television Watch find acceptable - give parents plenty of tools to do the job.

What the PTC wants is reminiscent of what the campus Communists at the University of Saskatchewan wanted. Every Friday they'd set up their information tables in the College of Arts building under a big sign that said "No Free speak For The Klan." They wanted to decide what sort of speak was acceptable, and it seems to me that what the PTC wants to accomplish is pretty much the same thing. The question I always wanted to ask the campus Communists and would like to ask the PTC is this: once you've denied free speak for one group, what is to prevent someone else from denying free speak to another?

So I'm No Bob Vila

This is just a short, off topic, post to explain why this isn't a longer, on topic, post.

I had planned to do another post on the PTC, following up on last week's post about the Paris Hilton ad, and hopefully I'll get it written tomorrow. However my mother is getting the carpet guys in on Tuesday to do the dining room, which means that the old carpet (which I helped install about ten or fifteen years ago) had to come up on Friday and the old floor had to have any of the padding that remained stuck to the original, 1950's vintage, asphalt tile floor scraped off using a chemical formulation that I refer to as "Gunk" to loosen the glue. Because of course it wouldn't do to leave all this to the last minute like Sunday and Monday.

The Gunk is, according to its label, so environmentally friendly that it can be cleaned up with soap and water. I also smells - strongly - of lemons. It took me about five minutes to get heartily sick of the smell of the Gunk, and about ten minutes for the smell of the Gunk to give me a raging headache. Of course you need to let it sit to really loosen the glue that's holding down remnants of the underpad; a half hour seems to be the ideal length of time. That's half an hour of dealing with that smell. And you have to do small areas because doing it all at once would cause a mess. It took me about two hours to finish that dining room and by the end of it all I had a raging headache and was feeling downright irritable.

Which brings me around to my feelings about DIY. Certain jobs can be done by the amateur but if you're smart you'll get a pro to do it. I don't like painting but I can do it fairly well as long as it doesn't involve heights. I'm relatively proficient with plumbing although I've reached an age where spending extended time under sinks is becoming very uncomfortable. When the carpet is in I'm considering replacing the quarter-round in the Kitchen and Dining Room and the hall leading to the bedrooms, because quite frankly the old stuff is showing it's fifty years. With my brother's miter saw and a rented nail gun, that job shouldn't take that long. I'm even willing to tackle (very) minor electrical jobs. However after several bad experiences with flooring I'm here to tell you all that hiring professional installers is the way to get a good looking job that's going to last. Of course that could just be me.

Leon Askin - 1907-2005

Leon Askin died in Vienna on Friday at age 97.

Probably best known to North Americans as General Burkhalter, Askin's professional career actually began in Austria in the 1920s. Born Leon Aschkenasy, his first stage appearance was in 1926, and he worked steadily through the 1930s both in theater and doing political and literary caberets in Vienna, Dusseldorf, and after the rise of the Nazis and later the Anschluss in Austria, in Paris. At the start of World War II he was interned in France as "an enemy alien". He emigrated to the United States in 1940 - before the German invasion of France, and did stage work as both an actor and director with Washington DC's Civic Theater. His production of Shakespeare's anti-war play Troilus & Cressida had the misfourtune to open on December 5 1941. Following the U.S. entry into the war, Askin joined the U.S. Army Air Force and rose to the rank of Technical Sergeant writing orientation material for soldier going overseas, and eventually serving in England. During this period he became an American citizen. At the end of the war he was able to travel to France in an effort to locate members of his family. He learned that his parents had been sent to the concentration camp at Teresienstadt and later learned that they had been executed. Returning to the United States, Askin returned to directing this time on Broadway, where he was also a founding member of Actors Equity.

In 1952 Askin went to Hollywood to work in the Columbia film Assignment Paris. He remained in Hollywood until 1993 and appeared in over 60 movies, usually as a foreign "villain". Among the films he was in were Road To Bali with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, The Robe with Richard Burton, Knock on Wood with Danny Kaye, Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three with James Cagney. He also worked in Germany in the period, notably in the 1962 remake of the Fritz Lang classic The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. His IMDB entry lists over 60 TV appearances, including The Adventures of Superman, My Favorite Martian, Daniel Boone, a two part episode of Switch (with Eddie Albert), Happy Days, and Three's Company. He did voices on Scooby and Scrappy Doo. His last American TV appearance was in an episode of Different Strokes, although his final TV appearance was in an Austrian miniseries, Alma - A Show biz ans Ende. In 1993 Askin returned permanently to Vienna where continued to work occassionally in film and theatre with his last film credit coming in 2001. In 2002, at the age of 95 he married media specialist Anita Wicher.

It is a General Burkhalter that Leon Askin is likely to be best remembered. Although most people writing about the series describe Burkhalter as a Nazi, it is more complex than that. Burkhalter would probably be better described as an old imperial officer who just happened to be working for the Nazis. He's sufficiently apolitical to not care who is in charge just so long as he has the best wine, the best food and the best women. Burkhalter was an opportunist, but he was also at least vaguely competent, certainly more competent Colonel Klink but it also makes him less sympathetic than Klink, and much less sypathetic than Sergeant Schultz. (Of course Howard Caine's character - Gestapo Major Hochstetter who really was a Nazi - was the least sympathetic of the lot.) Nevertheless Burkhalter was an immensely funny character to watch, alternating between the impeccable Prussian martinet who constantly threatens Klink with a one way trip to the Russian Front, and the jolly aristocrat who is enjoying the war because of the food and the wine and the beautiful women. What made it work of course was that Askin was an excellent actor, and had both the face and voice to make the character work.

If Only It Were The Ultimate Social Experiment

We came upon them upon their arrival, Geekus Americanus in a variety of subspecies. They seemed unfamiliar with their surroundings, blinking occasionally as though unfamiliar with the sun. The common types were present of course, the Fanboius and the Mensacus, but there was also examples of rarer types like the Scoutus Grosso, and the Doctorus Nervoso. Then we saw him, a magnificent specimen of a type thought only to exist as a myth and in bad movies, the Nerdus Maximus. For purposes of the study we named him Richard.

Soon the herd of Geekus Americanus were joined by a covey of Beautius Regina, lured by their mating call of Bling-Bling. They were a lovely sight. Their numbers included the diminutive Fashionista, Barbius Vivius, the rare Modelus Scantius, as well as the common Leaderus Cheeribus and the Sisterus Sororitanus. It was a rare meeting as the presence of Geekus Americanus in a location is with rare exceptions enough to drive out all signs of Beautius Regina. However it soon became clear that the circumstances here were anything but ordinary.

In advertising Beauty And The Geek The WB and producers Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg described it as the "Ultimate Social Experiment". If only it were the ultimate in one of the correct meaning of the word - that is the last. Sadly I doubt that this is the case. Although superficially similar in format to the various dating shows, or something like The WB's previous show High School Reunion, the "social experiment" here is to bring brainy but socially inept "Geeks" together with the attractive but less than intelligent "Beauties" and hope that a little of the Geeks' brains and the Beauties' social skills would rub off on each other. Oh who are we kidding, they just wanted to make fun of the Geeks being socially inept and the Beauties being too dumb to know who was President of the United States during the Civil War. At its heart it's really a six episode game show.

The format is simple the seven Geeks pair up with the seven Beauties. They share a bedroom and in some cases a bed. They have to work together to prepare for challenges which confront their perceived weak points. The not particularly intellectual Beauties are tested on things like intelligence or how to change a tire by themselves, while the socially inept Geeks have to dance with their partner or how to give a woman a massage. The Geeks have to teach the Beauties what they need to know for their challenge and vice versa. Then in Apprentice like fashion the teams that win their respective challenges get to select two teams to face elimination. If one team wins both challenges they get to pick both teams. Elimination is done by quizzing members of the teams on their weak points with the team that has the fewest correct answers when their scores are combined being ejected from the game. The last team left gets $250,000.

As always personalities are key to a show like this and, particularly among the Geeks they hit a gold mine. There's the usual suspects; a computer programmer, an English major who has never been on a date and a couple of Mensa members. There are three who really stand out however. Chuck is a medical student who has an unfortunate habit of getting a nose bleed when he's stressed out. He had two nose bleeds in the first episode. Bill is a civil engineer but he's also vice president of the Dukes of Hazard fan club, and if he wins the $250,000 would like to buy the General Lee - the actual car from The Dukes of Hazard. But beyond a doubt the star Geek was Richard. Richard, who is graduating from Brandeis University with a double major in History and Spanish, was described by his partner Mindi as "the white Urkel" and I swear that she got it exactly right. From big glasses to pants hiked halfway up to his nipples, he is a pigmentally challenged Steve Urkel. As for the women, well most of them are not particularly extreme, but of particular note is Erika who describes herself as a "lifesized Barbie model" to the point where she named her dog "Skipper". When confronted with some of the stuff they need to know for the "Beautys" first challenge (fifth grade school subjects) she says fifth graders these days must be really smart" because she doesn't know Then there's Lauren who thought that she had a really high IQ "like 500". She was the first one out of the first challenge because she thought that "tattoo" was only spelled with two "T"s not three. Krystal, a cheerleader dancer for the Philadelphia 76ers doesn't know which is further south , North Carolina or South Dakota, and doesn't care because it's not something she'll ever need to know.

In the end Richard and his partner Mindi won both challenges because self described Sorority Girl Mindi knew that the abbreviation IA stood for Iowa and the audience thought that Richard's "nerd dance" (I swear I saw Urkel do it once on Family Matters or maybe it was Jim Carey in Dumb and Dumber) was better than the guys who at least tried to be serious about it. They chose Erica & Joe and Cheryl & Eric to face elimination with Cheryl & Eric being eliminated because Cheryl didn't know the answer to any of the history & politics questions she was asked. Still the fact is that the entertainment value of a show like this isn't in the anticipation of who will get eliminated, it's in watching the two groups of people being inept in the areas that the other takes for granted. Knowing that, I have to say that it's only mildly entertaining. I may watch it again if there's nothing else of real interest on, but if it was up against Dancing With The Stars or Hell's Kitchen or even certain reruns I could ignore it without any sense of loss. It makes me mourn the loss of better programs - like the original version of The Mole - all the more when I see a show like this.

Well Apparently They Were

I thought that America wasn't ready for Dancing With The Stars and said so in my review. Apparently I was wrong, at least for the first episode. The overnight ratings are in and ABC scored an impressive (particularly for the summer) 10.6/16 rating with 13.23 million viewers. In the important 18-49 age group the show drew a rating of 4.2/12. This made it the highest rated show of the night. By contrast the show's lead-in, a Supernanny repeat, drew a 5.9/10 with 7.74 million viewers and an 18-49 rating of 2.4/6. The WB's Beauty and the Geek which was on opposite Supernanny had 3.5/6, 3.09 million viewers, and an 18-49 rating of 1.6/6 to finish 4th in the time slot.

Who knew?

Is America Ready For This?

Three new reality shows debuted tonight, two in the United States and one in Canada. Predictably I'm going to review the one which seems just slightly more innovative than the others - and also the one that I think will probably be the lowest rated, which in the summer of 2005 is saying a lot.

Every so often you come upon you come upon a train wreck. It may not have happened yet but you know it will. Dancing With The Stars is going to be a train wreck. I just don't know that the United States - or Canada for that matter - is ready for ballroom dancing on network TV, particularly when the dancing is done by people who have very little experience in ballroom dancing.

Ballroom dancing has achieved a new level of visibility recently. The 1996 Japanese movie Shall We Dansu? receive critical raves when it was eventually released in the United States, and was eventually remade last year as Shall We Dance? with Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and Jennifer Lopez. ABC has describe Dancing With The Stars as an international sensation, and it is, although not always under that name. In Britain the series is known as Strictly Come Dancing and has featured UK media "stars" like comedian Julian Clary, David Dickinson (host of Bargain Hunt), and opera singer Leslie Garrett. The Australian version, also called Dancing With The Stars had veteran actor John Wood, Olympic Gold Medallist James Tomkins, and Home And Away Star Rebecca Cartwright, and there's a New Zealand version that's currently airing.

The show's format pairs a "star" with a professional ballroom dancer. Let's just say that some are more adept than others. In the US version of the show there are six teams (the British, Australian and New Zealand series had eight to ten). They are John O'Hurley (Seinfeld) with Charlote Jorgenson; four time Heavyweight Boxing champion Evander Holyfield with Edyta Sliwinska, Joey McIntyre (Boston Public and the band New Kids on the Block) with Ashley Delgrosso; Kelly Monaco (General Hospital) with Alec Mazo; supermodel Rachel Hunter with Jonathon Roberts; and reality star Trista (Rehn) Sutter (The Bachelor and Ryan & Trista Get Married) with Louis van Amstel.

The partners have had five weeks to work together to learn the various dance moves and to develop routines for each of 10 styles of dance. Following their training period the teams dance at a Los Angeles club in a live broadcast hosted by Tom Bergeron America's Funniest Home Videos. Here I think is part of the problem with the show. Instead of playing it straight, Bergeron decides to go for the cheap joke. Thus when talking about Rachel Hunter he mentions that even though shes a supermodel she "uses her powers for good." it's an old joke and it was a bad joke when it was new. I get the distinct feeling that Bergeron would rather be anywhere else. Fortunately Tom doesn't get to talk much, which is just as well because a little of him goes a long way. Then things go to the judges. The head judge is professional Ballroom Dancing Judge Len Goodman, who was also a judge on the British series Strictly Come Dancing and has been either dancing or judging dancing for most of his adult life. He's assisted by Hollywood choreographer Carol Ann Inaba, and Bruno Tonioli who was also on the British show and has worked with people like Elton John, Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, Kate Winslet and Tina Turner. They each rate the dancers from 1 to 10 (Bergeron: "Which means that the tops score is thirty"). Finally viewers get a chance to vote American Idol style by phone or on-line.

The dancing was variable, ranging from slightly better than high school prom quality to not quite ready to enter a real competition. Teams had the choice of the Waltz or the Cha Cha Cha, and while no one truly embarrassed themselves in terms of screwing up, but a couple of these people shouldn't be allowed on a dance floor unless they're the ones getting married. Evander Hollyfield gave a particularly poor performance, mainly standing in place moving his arms and occasionally his feet while his partner Edyta moved around him. Allegedly he was doing the Cha Cha Cha. The dance that Rachel Hunter and Jonathon Roberts were doing was allegedly the Waltz, but it looked to ballet like for my definition of the Waltz. The worst judges' assessment waited for Kelly Monaco who was described as looking too stiff, "as if someone had died." The best dancers may have been the teams Joey McIntyre and Ashley Delgrosso and John O'Hurley and Charlotte Jorgenson (although I at least was impressed with Trista and Louis).

There were few if any problems with the live broadcast. There were a couple of times when Bergeron tried to talk over the crowd and the crowd won, and one incident where a camera literally lost a pair of dancers in the flare from a footlight, but those sort of things can almost be expected in a first broadcast. The judges were relatively mild in their assessments of the teams. There are no Simons in this group: the meanest comment was when Len said of some team: "A garden needs a mix of lawn and flowers. You were all lawn." It says something however that I can't remember which team he said it of.

I can see the appeal of Dancing With The Stars. Ballroom Dancing is a beautiful thing and even sensual thing when you're doing it (the dancing generations of the '50s and '60s have a lot to answer for), and if there's a market for hours of figure skating in the winter, then there should be a market for this. The trouble is that I don't know what that market is, and whether they'll be watching in sufficient numbers to give this show the ratings it would need to survive. The problem isn't that the people are "B" or even "C" list celebrities - on the whole television doesn't attract "A" list celebs at the best of times and this show isn't going to make a breakthrough in that area (well Robert Duval might be interested - he's a major fan of ballroom dancing to the point where he taught Waltz classes on the set of Lonesome Dove) - and loathe though I am to say it, the problem isn't Bergeron. The reason I don't expect the show to succeed is simply that it doesn't have the excitement and fire of an American Idol or the dramatic tension of a Survivor or even a Hell's Kitchen. Worse, despite the success of Shall We Dance? I don't believe there's as much interest in Ballroom Dancing in North America as there is in Britain and Australia. All of which saddens me slightly because unlike a show like The WB's Beauty And The Geek which also debuted Wednesday night (and which I'll review tomorrow after it re-airs) it at least has the advantage of originality.