Couple of things before I get started with frankly very thin week of new DVDs. First I've decided to hold the review of Robson Arms that I had promised until later this week - specifically when the show is on The Comedy Network up here on Thursday. Second, please check out the new addition to the Blogroll The iBall, On Media from rec.arts.tv mainstay Ian J. Ball.
So anyway here's the list:Bewitched: The Complete First Season
Bewitched: The Complete First Season [B&W]
- I think we all realise that it isn't just a coincidence that the first season of Bewitched is being released the Tuesday before the new Bewitched movie with Nicole Kidman is being released, but really, who cares. Even though the first season doesn't include the delightful Pandora Spocks (who was once seen heading into a motel room with Elizabeth Montgomery's husband William Asher) it does have the Alice Pearce, the original Gladys Kravitz, Marion Lorne as Aunt Clara (the only one of Sam's relatives that Darrin could even remotely tolerate), and Irene Vernon who was the original Louise Tate. As a word of advice, I would of course urge you to buy the Black & White version but it is both interesting and gratifying that Sony Pictures is issuing both versions (and even more gratifying that the B&W version is 5th in the Amazon.ca sales rank, the Colorized version is ranked 28th).Degrassi - The Next Generation: Season 2
- Never seen it. I never was a Degrassi fan and I'm unlikely to become one at this late date. Still the series and its predecessors has always been well regarded by critics and of course the teenaged target audience.Farscape: Season 2, Collection 1 (Starburst Edition)- Okay, I'm not all that bright, but I'm not sure I get the marketing strategy at play here. There are complete season sets for the four season of the show, there are collection sets of discs for the four seasons where four or five collections give you everything that's in the full season sets, there are packages with two episodes on them, and now there are "Starburst Editions" which somehow give fans something else. It sounds to me as though someone is trying to milk the fans for every dime they can get.
The Outer Limits, Aliens Among Us Collection
The Outer Limits, Death & Beyond Collection
The Outer Limits, Fantastic Androids & Robots Collection
The Outer Limits, Mutation & Transformation Collection
The Outer Limits, DVD Collection- Okay here's another case of Amazon.ca not having any listing for a set - or rather several sets - that Amazon.com shows as being released today. In fact about the only Canadian source that I can find that has it listed (admittedly I haven't looked all that hard) is Videoflicks.ca - puzzling that. Anyway, these are from the "modern" series of The Outer Limits also known as The New Outer Limits. Produced by Alliance-Atlantis it was a mainstay of both the Showtime cable network in the U.S. and Canwest-Global here in Canada from 1995-2002. As far as I can tell these collections include episodes with a linking theme, while the "DVD Collection" is a box containing the other four.
Oz: The Complete Fifth Season
-Season 5 of HBO's critically acclaimed prison series, which I have to admit that I've never seen despite it being on Showcase here in Canada. I'm afraid it always seemed to grim for my tastes. Queer Eye for the Red Sox
- Well this at least sounds interesting. Ted, Carson and the rest of the "Fab Five" make-over - or rather try to make-over five members of the World Series Champion Boston Red Sox - Johnny Damon, Kevin Millar, Doug Mirabelli, Jason Varitek and Tim Wakefield. I wonder if my brother - who is a huge Red Sox Fan would be interested in this? I'm guessing not.Tabitha: The Entire Series
- Another element of the hype machine for the new Bewitched movie. About the only good thing to come out of this was Lisa Hartman who very quickly went on to bigger and better things. Fortunately so did Robert Urich who had first appeared in SWAT. Worth it only for the Bewitched completist and even then I'm not sure.
Here's our second poll, this time looking at the sort of TV shows you tend to buy on DVD. Feel free to add comments to this post.
As you can see the results are in on the first I Am A Child Of Television Poll and there's a tie between The Inside and Dancing With The Stars as the summer show you like the best - sort of, but I'll explain that in a moment. Hell's Kitchen and TV? In the Summer!? were tied for third, with Fire Me Please and a misspelled Beauty and the Geek coming in last. If my brother voted I know which one he voted for.
In the interest of full disclosure I have to tell you that one of the votes for Dancing With The Stars was cast by me. I had been having some trouble with the system and cast a test vote once I thought I had all of the bugs worked out. I don't think that it makes the result less valid since I do indeed prefer Dancing With The Stars to the other choices. Don't get me wrong I think The Inside is an excellent show an think that it's criminal of Fox to be broadcasting it during the summer, but I have a lot of fun watching Dancing with the Stars and whatever else you can say about The Inside, fun it ain't.
I'll have a new poll later today. (And hopefully a new show review that I was forced by circumstances to hold over for the weekend.)
Spent yesterday mowing the lawn and cleaning out the rain gutters, just in time given how clogged they were. You know you're in trouble when small trees start growing in your gutters - and yes I have seen that. Mine weren't quite that bad but there were one or two things that looked like they had germinated, but they won't get a chance to grow to maturity. Anyway, I was really too tired and unmotivated to write anything last night even though I haven't reviewed - or even seen - Hit Me Baby One More Time. Maybe next week ... or maybe not at all.
Something that did come to my attention was an article on MSN about 10 TV Cliches which MTV reporter Larry Carroll wishes to see banished forever. Some of his conclusions I agree with and some I don't but as usual I have an opinion on just about all of them.
- Wonder Twin Powers, Activate! Let's face it, this is a classic. In TV it goes back to at least The Patty Duke Show, but even Shakespeare used it a couple of times. When carried out well it's great. Some of my favourite episodes of Bewitched were the ones where Pandora Spocks portrayed Samantha's cousin Serena, and while the episodes of I Dream Of Jeannie with Jeannie's sister Jeannie weren't as well crafted, I liked her too. In his article Carroll mentions Phoebe and Ursula Buffay but of course Ursula had originally been created for Mad About You and the idea of twins was used to explain how Lisa Kudrow could be on both series. It just sort of carried on from there.
- Thinking a Sentence is Two Words Long Well yes it may be overdone, but the partially heard conversation is another classic which again probably goes back to Old Bill. Misunderstandings like this are the bedrock of comedy and they probably go back to Bedrock.
- Sir, Would You Like a Tongue-Lashing With Your Beverage? The old "abusive servant" bit (and it's subset the abusive waitress). It can get old but let's admit that it is less often used than the "My Mother-in-Law is a wicked witch" cliche which just about every sitcom has run with. When it was done in Soap Benson was the sanest character on the show, plus he did have, or at least was allowed to develop, a genuine affection and loyalty to Jessica and Billy. Mostly though the characters these people work for tend to develop a dependence on them if only as a sparring partner.
- Double Date, Double Trouble Now this one has been overdone.
- You're Not My Kid! This one is more a question of logistics than an actual cliche. I mean once you get over the initial cuteness and dealing with a baby phase what do you do with a toddler. Most two year-olds aren't good about learning their lines so you either contrive to keep the kid out of sight or you age the kid to a point where you can use them. I Love Lucy did both - Little Ricky was out of sight for most of the fourth (Lucy in Hollywood) and fifth (Lucy in Europe) seasons before introducing a new Little Ricky (Keith Thibodeaux) aged 5 or 6. In other cases the actor wants to go to college or do other projects. You can either write them out, like Jonathon Taylor Thomas in Home Improvement or keep the character and change the actor as they did with Becky in Roseanne. And it's not like adult actors don't change occasionally either - see Lionel in The Jeffersons.
- An Unexpected Delivery Well let's face it, if you can't have fun with birthin' a baby what can you have fun with. Even Gone With The Wind did a little humour with that although it was mostly a serious moment. And as usual Lucy led the way. The birth of Little Ricky, even if it wasn't in an elevator, was a funny show.
- We're Trapped - Let's Reminisce! Agreed. The usual springboard to a clips show and who really likes them.
- I'm (Cough, Cough) Not Feeling Well Yeah that's a bad one. On the other hand it's not one that we see all that often anymore, maybe because it's hard to get the superstars on TV.
- Now You Don't See Me, Now You ... Still Don't See Me It's another standard but what would Waiting For Godot be without it? The real explanation is that the show is creating an character that no actor could live up to. Who could play Niles Crane's wife Maris as described in all of those episodes and would we have been better off if she'd been more than an off-screen presence. The same goes for dead characters. Could we really believe that Martin Crane was married to Nancy Marchand (who played Fraser's mother on an episode of Cheers). And it's not just comedies either - see (or rather don't see) J. Beresford Tipton in The Millionaire (voice by Paul Frees) and Charlie in Charlie's Angels (voice by John Forsythe).
- Look, I'm in a Dress! Isn't This Funny? Hey some men look funny in dresses - Dave Foley did some of his best work in Kids in the Hall in fashionable frocks. Even Fred Flintstone wore dresses from time to time. Again, I'm sure there's an example from Shakespeare, and if not, just remember that Bonnie Prince Charlie was smuggled from Scotland to the Isle of Skye dressed as a woman.
You don't have to be psychic to know why Psychic Detectives is on NBC this summer: it's cheap - because the show is paid for by Court TV - and Medium has been a major success during the spring season. As Les Moonves said recently "I think talking to ghosts will skew younger than talking to God." And if Psychic Detectives isn't entirely about talking to ghosts it does seem to tap into that whole vibe.
Not of course that this makes the show good. In fact the thought that people watch and like this thing is thoroughly depressing - it is terrible. Each episode of the series looks at two real cases where real psychics have helped to solve real mysteries. The show wants to make it clear that they're dealing with real events. It's good that they emphasize this because there are so many re-creations in this show that it would probably as a drama if we weren't told that this was "real". If this were a documentary or a news show it would be roundly condemned for this but presumably this show qualifies as entertainment. Moreover while the psychics themselves seem relatively sincere, the cops come off as being uncritically admiring after expressing their initial skepticism in a sentence or two. What wasn't found in either of the two cases in the episode that I saw on Wednesday evening was any sort of dissenting voice. Worse, the only details that we get come from the psychic and the one or two cops involved in the case. The only thing that we know is what they tell us, and they have an interest in telling us a story in which the psychic solves the case.
I seem to be having a very difficult time explaining just how bad this show is. Production looks cheap, a mixture of video stock shots, and scenes of the psychic and detective in various locations are mixed with reconstructions which usually amount to people sitting around offices. As I mentioned the show is totally uncritical about their subjects - psychics are real and these are real psychics; there is no other explanation - which at least in my mind considerably lowers credibility. There is of course no investigation of the claims either in this case or of the previous successes that the psychic has claimed. To this you can add the cheesy narration from a voice that is probably better suited to doing voice-overs for commercials. Worst of all, the show isn't that interesting or entertaining. There's no dramatic tension, no twists and turns. In all but the worst fiction, while we usually know that our heroes will triumph we don't know what hoops they'll have to jump through to accomplish this. In Psychic Detectives the greatest tension is ... well I can't think of any tension at all. The psychic almost immediately proves herself to the cop and he is continually amazed at what she discovers and is soon a true believer. Yawn. I really can't think of a good reason to waste your time watching this. Just about anything that NBC cancelled this past season would have been better than this. Trust me, this show is best avoided.
Here's the second half of this week's DVD List
Reno 911! The Complete Second Season
- I've never seen this series even though it airs on the Comedy Channel up here in Canada. I really should try it since it sounds like something I might enjoy, if only because it satirizes one of the dumbest shows on TV: Cops.
Rosemary And Thyme: Series One
- Another show that I missed because it didn't sound like my cup of Earl Grey (hot). Still it has Felicity Kendall (and her bottom, although admittedly at nearly 60 it isn't as nice as it was 30 years ago in The Good Life) and it combines those two great British obsessions, quirky mysteries and gardening. I'll probably look for it next time I get the chance.
Saved By the Bell: The New Class - Season 3
- Never saw it... and never wanted to see it even though I probably could have found it. I was a little too old and not at all interested by the time this or the original series were on Saturday mornings.
Thomas The Tank Engine: And Friends: Best Of James
Thomas The Tank Engine: James Learns A Lesson
- My 2 1/2 year old nephew's favourite words currently seem to be "Watch Thomas again." He has a DVD set of three episodes but tends to like just the one where Cranky the Crane falls down. The Thomas the Tank Engine series is outstanding entertainment for kids (and some of us adults who love trains like them too). Based on the stories by the Reverend W. Awdry, these are gentle stories about teamwork and friendship. Children's television, particularly in the US tends to be frenetic and noisy and the gentle approach in this series reminds me of the Canadian childrens shows when I was growing up. The three DVD set is highly recommended (and it comes with a toy).
Tilt: The Complete First Season
- Haven't seen this series, which started earlier this year on ESPN. Michael Madsen stars as poker player Don Everest, "the Matador", and the series looks at the dark underside of professional poker, although it seems clear that at least some of the stuff that supposedly happens in the show is extremely far fetched.
Two's Company: The Complete Series 3
- Releases on Amazon.ca next week. That this is a completely enjoyable series is due entirely to the casting of Donald Sinden as Robert the butler opposite Elaine Stritch as Dorothy. Their personalities mesh like they'd been working together for years, alternately warm and squabbling. A delight
Walker Texas Ranger: Final Season
- I don't know what's more amazing: that this series lasted as long as it did (1993-2001, on Saturday nights), or that I watched close to every episode. Of course I was heaping large amounts of ridicule on it - the acting frequently made "wooden" seem like a compliment and as Chuck got older his signature moves seemed to slow down to the point where you couldn't tell if you were seeing them in slow motion or not. Don't even get me started on the theme song or the way that the opening credits sometimes extended to about 15 or 20 minutes into the show. And yet the stupid thing was usually fun to watch.
What's New Scooby-Doo?: Volume 5 Sports Spooktacula
- Okay I never watched Scooby-Doo. They didn't show it locally (they tended to be fixated on the Flintstones at the local station) and I didn't go out of my way to see it. Based on the main content of the disc - Scooby-Doo All-Stars Meet the Home Run King, Hank Aaron - I'd say that the episode on this one came from 1979 or so.
These DVDs were delayed by Amazon.ca:
World Poker Tour: Bad Boys Of Poker
- Another individual World Poker Tour DVD, this time featuring the "Bad Boys of Poker" - Paul "The Truth" Darden, Phil "The Unabomber" Lahk, Dave "Devilfish" Ulliot, Antonio "The Magician" Esfandiari, and Gus "The Great Dane" Hansen, along with a poor dumb schlub named Mark Richards, a bank teller from Illinois who made the final table off of a satellite tournament. Except for the small number of extras I think you'd probably be better off with the Complete Season 2 set.
The Best of Dudley Do-Right, Volume 1
The Best of Mr. Peabody And Sherman Volume 1
- I'm pretty sure that Dudley Do-Right started on The Bullwinkle Show - or whatever title it was going under at the time since there were several - was banished from TV here abouts. I did see most of them years later though. Do I really need to mention that both it and Mr. Peabody And Sherman were brilliant. The voice actors alone - Bill Scott, June Foray, Paul Frees, Hans Conreid, Walter Tetley, and of course William Conrad - were enough to assure that. But there was more. While the principal audience may have been children (or so the network executives thought) the humour was sharp and sophisticated for adults to enjoy it too.
Once again I've decided to split the list into two parts, with the second part to come later tonight or early tomorrow.
Arthur: Arthur's Computer Adventure
Arthur: D.W. Rides Again
- I don't think it'll come as a surprise to anyone that I'm not familiar with the Arthur series, so can we just leave it at that?
Cracker: The Complete Series- Okay, here's the thing. This was released in the US today, but Amazon.ca won't have the complete series set until the end of August. Now you could order it, but I want to tell you why you shouldn't. It's an adaptation of a British series and we all know how that usually goes, and in this case you'd be right. It's a really bad adaptation or a really good British show. And finally it stars the rather disreputable Robert Pastorelli who had more real-life problems than the character he played n the show. Do yourselves a favour and buy a disc from the original series with the far superior Robbie Coltrane if you haven't already.
Fairly OddParents: School's Out! The Musical
- I've seen bits and pieces of the Nickelodeon series Fairly Oddparents, and on the whole find it amusing although I haven't seen a complete episode so it might get wearing after a while. This is a musical special that the series did, and in general those tend to be fun.
Good Neighbors: The Complete Series 1-3
- This is a series that I have such a tremendous amount of good feeling for that it's just not possible to put into words. The cast is superb, not a person out of place. Paul Eddington and Penelope Keith are perfect as the snobbish Leadbetters - but then they always were weren't they, two of Britain's top comedic talents. In the lead role of Tom Good is Richard Biers, with the tasty Felicity Kendall (and her bottom) as his wife Barbara. (That bit about Felicity Kendall's bottom refers to a joke from an episode of Spitting Image where someone describes something being as soft as Felicity Kendall's bottom. I'm pretty sure it was meant as a compliment.) A wonderful series.
Gun:the Complete Series
- A series of six short films that aired on ABC in 1997. The only trouble is that I don't remember them at all. Too bad because the talent is certainly present in the show, both in front (James Gandolfini, Rosanna Arquette, Randy Quaid, Jennifer Tilly, Kirsten Dunst, Martin Sheen, and Edward James Olmos among others) and behind the cameras (Robert Altman, James Foley and Ted Demme were among the directors). Apparently a bit uneven, but I suppose that's to be expected.
Highlander: The Raven
- I will confess right here that I liked this series, which seems to make me a bit of an anomaly. I always liked the Amanda episodes of the Adrian Paul Highlander series from which this was an offshoot. Not to mince words, Elizabeth Gracen was gorgeous and funny. There were problems with the series in the form of her mortal partner/love interest Nick Wolfe. Just on principal the immortal thief should have been a solo character, but for some reason the producers thought we needed the beefcake in the form of Paul Johannson. They were wrong!
King of Queens: The Complete Fourth Season
- I can't remember when I stopped watching King of Queens but it was before this season. It always seemed as if there was never enough time for me to catch up with shows on Mondays, and I eventually just gave up. Too bad, it was never a bad series, although it always tended to be overshadowed by Everybody Loves Raymond. Season 4 saw the addition of Nicole Sullivan to the cast, primarily to work with Jerry Stiller.
The League Of Gentlemen: Christmas Special
The League Of Gentlemen: The Complete Series 2
The League Of Gentlemen: The Complete Series 3
- Will it come as a total shock or even a surprise if I tell you that I just don't get The League Of Gentlemen series. I guess their sort of humour is an acquired taste that I never acquired.
Little House On The Prairie: Season 8
- I never was a huge fan of Little House On The Prairie and by this eighth season I suspect that even the most loyal fans were realising that it was beginning to show its age. The departures of Melissa Sue Anderson and Allison Arngrim the previous season hadn't helped matters, by putting a lot more pressure onto Melissa Gilbert.
Northern Exposure: The Complete Third Season
- Some of the best stories came out of the third season of Northern Exposure like the marvelous season ender "Cicelly". It's hard for me to write about Northern Exposure because it was one of the best TV programs ever and I am in awe of the mere concept.
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: Carson's Style
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: Kyan and Jai - Looking Good
- I've seen Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and the best I can say about it is that I sort of like it, even though I don't go out of my way to see it. There are no details on the contents of these DVDs but I'll make a guess that they're excerpts from various episodes focussing on tips from the experts involved.
Rambo, Vol. 1: A World of Trouble
Rambo, Vol. 2: Enter the Dragon
- Until now I was blissfully unaware that someone actually made a Rambo animated cartoon and I am torn between wondering how, wondering why, and wondering if it is possible to have this knowledge purged from my memory.
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.
Here's where you can post your comments on my first poll question.
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, 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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
