Survivor: Guatemala - My Prediction

Back when Survivor first debuted, in the summer of 2000, it was a big hit among players of the boardgame Diplomacy. Where most people saw Richard Hatch as a conniving backstabber who hoodwinked the other people on that island, we Diplomacy players saw a kindred spirit who was playing the other people in order to accomplish his series of goals - "going for the 18 centre win" as we'd put it - by establishing an alliance and using that alliance to eliminate other players and controlling the game throughout. All the while he was also manipulating other players in such a way that they would see him as the lesser of virtually every alternative in the final jury session. Hatch's opponents took too long to fully understand what was going on. A perfect example of how he handled things was final Immunity Challenge of that first season. It featured Hatch, whitewater rafting guide Kelly Wigglesworth and former US Navy SEAL Rudy Boesch. Hatch knew that neither he nor Wigglesworth were likely to beat Boesch who was well liked by many of the members of the jury primarily because he hadn't engaged in the sort of intrigues that Hatch and Wigglesworth had been part of. Hatch also knew that he couldn't vote Boesch off lest he lose the older man's vote in the final Tribal Council. Therefore he eliminated himself from the competition leaving it a battle between Wigglesworth and Boesch, certain that he would be in the final two either way - Wigglesworth would take him believing that she could win against Hatch and couldn't win against Boesch while Boesch would remain loyal to their early pact. In the end Wigglesworth outlasted Boesch in the endurance challenge, but it was Hatch, who had created the alliance strategy after researching the Swedish show Expedition Robinson on which Survivor is based was able to convince the other players - famously including Sue Hawk - that he was the lesser of the two evils they had to choose from.

Subsequent seasons of Survivor weren't as popular with Diplomacy players, in part because the lessons of the first season were often only half learned. Survivor: Outback featured Colby Donaldson, a player who physically dominated the individual Immunity Challenges but made a major mistake by choosing the more popular (and manipulative) Tina Wesson before the jury instead of the far less popular Keith Famie. Wesson won because she was better at the non-challenge part of the game. Similarly Kim Johnson chose Ethan Zohn in Survivor: Africa because she wanted him to win the money and didn't think she could win against either Zohn or third place finisher Lex van der Berghe. Subsequent seasons saw the rise of the "under the radar" strategy pioneered by Vecepia Towery in Survivor: Marquesas a strategy which has the problem of being seen as riding on a stronger opponent's coattails as happened in Survivor: Palau Katie Gallagher. Something vaguely similar to the "under the radar strategy" occurred in the All Star version of Survivor in which Rob Mariano (who hadn't been a particularly effective player in Survivor: Marianas but obviously had been studying) played master manipulator to reach the final two along with his ally, the virtually invisible Amber Brkich (who had tried the coattails thing in Survivor: Australia - she won as the lesser of two evils. Increasingly the strategy which has been most successful is a strong two person alliance with temporary alliances with others to reach the final four or three - in fact the same essential strategy pioneered by Richard Hatch in the very first Survivor, although in many cases players haven't had the Machiavellian willingness to subtly pull the trigger on their principal ally that Richard Hatch did when he pulled out of the final immunity.

So what, in this old (and bad) Diplomacy player's mind, is going to happen in the two hour finale of Survivor: Guatemala. The final four are Stephenie La Grossa (who had been a contestant in Survivor: Palau), Rafe Judkins, Danni Boatwright, and Lydia Morales. Of the four, Rafe and Steph appear to have the closest alliance, although it seems to be under a lot of pressure. Lydia had been a partner in this alliance and ridden along on its coattails but was increasingly seen as an outsider. Danni is the only surviving member of the original Nakum Tribe. Rafe and Steph are the two most dominant players in terms of being competitive in challenges - both immunity and reward. Lydia has not one an individual challenge of either type while Danni won a crucial immunity when it seemed likely that she would be voted out as the last Nakum member. For a Diplomacy player the best situation is to go into a head to head contest with a player who is at a positional disadvantage on the board. In terms of Survivor: Guatemala, this is Lydia who has been the weakest remaining player throughout the season. Having her in the final two will insure her opponent the win, so if anyone is playing optimally she should go before the jury. Assuming that either of the two strongest players - Rafe or Steph - wins the first immunity of Sunday night's show that person should work with Danni and Lydia to eliminate the strongest remaining player. That is Steph should try to eliminate Rafe and vice versa. This means of course that whoever wins the final immunity should keep Lydia and vote out the other player.

I can practically guarantee you that this will not happen. While it is optimal play it isn't expected play. I expect Lydia to be eliminated for the exact reason that she should be kept on - she hasn't been a strong player and it may be that the stronger players will find her unworthy of having even a slight chance at the million dollar first prize. The question then becomes whether Rafe or Steph will take Danni to the jury or each other. If the final is Steph versus Danni I would expect the vote to be 4-3 for Steph. Rafe versus Danni would either be 5-2 or 4-3 for Rafe. Rafe versus Steph is a bit harder to call and will probably depend on the winner of the final immunity challenge, although I lean towards Rafe winning because he hasn't antagonized as many people as Stephanie has. Rafe beats Lydia, Danni and probably Stephenie, while Stephenie beats Lydia and probably Danni. Danni is only certain to beat Lydia, meaning that the most likely winner of Survivor: Guatemala is Rafe Judkins.

John Lennon

It was twenty-five years ago tonight that John Lennon died, shot to death by Mark David Chapman who fulfilled John's own prediction of how he'd die "I'll probably be popped off by some loony."

Like everyone else I heard about Lennon's death on television. If I'm not mistaken I was watching Carson. The first announcement of John Lennon's murder had been made by Howard Cossel on Monday Night Football because a producer for WABC-TV in New York had been in the Emergency Room of Roosevelt Hospital waiting for some X-Rays. He called his station with the news which was then confirmed and relayed to Cosell. Details were promised on Nightline but there were certainly some reminiscences from Cosell, Don Meredith and Frank Gifford. John and Yoko had been on Monday Night Football at least once - a famous incident where John had appeared with Ronald Reagan.

I however was not a Monday Night Football fan - in 1980 I was a devotee of Lou Grant among other shows - and was watching The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson when NBC News interrupted with the report that John Lennon had been shot and killed. I suspect that CBS also broke in whatever they were showing at the time with a report. No network news director wanted a repetition of what happened at CBS when Elvis Presley died. Cronkite was on vacation and Roger Mudd was the anchor which also meant that he was setting the running order for the show. When the news came in that Elvis had died, Mudd decided that Elvis had been out of the public eye too long and wasn't "important" enough to lead the news so he moved the story to the middle of the broadcast - and came off looking like an elitist when ABC and NBC ran the story as the lead item on their newscasts. Some people mark that event as the end of Mudd's pre-eminence in the "fight" to replace Cronkite. Certainly no network news director was prepared to make a similar decision about Lennon, even though he'd had been out of the spotlight longer than Elvis had at the time of his death.

Over the next few days television news gave extensive coverage to the mourning for John Lennon. Some of it was moving - the vigil at Central Park and the ten minutes of silence the Sunday following the murder - some of it was newsworthy - putting together the sequence of events that brought John Lennon and Mark David Chapman together that night - and the trivial - John and Yoko had just recently bought bullet proof vests for the NYPD. Then of course the story faded from the news coming up on the anniversary of John Lennon's death and when there were other assassinations or attempts, as when Ronald Reagan was shot less than six months later. Over time the media remembrances of the event grew fewer even as nostalgia for The Beatles grew.

I think you could call John Lennon and The Beatles creations of Television in some way. John didn't grow up with TV - although regular TV broadcasting in Britain began in 1936 it was mostly restricted to London into the early 1950s and for a long time was a toy for the rich, and Lennon's family were scarcely affluent. Their influences were different - movies and radio - than a later generation's. Still, television would have an important influence on how their careers developed. They had paid their dues in the cellar clubs of Liverpool and then in Germany where they got their first recording contract ... as a back up band to Tony Sheridan and then as featured performers, but it wasn't until they signed with EMI that that they rose to prominence. Their first EMI recordings in September 1962 were followed within a month with their first TV appearance on Granada TV (one of the stations that made up the ITV network). Within a year they were appearing on ITV's national show Sunday Night At The Paladium as well as a number of other British programs. They still hadn't caught on in the USA despite the efforts of Dick Clark to promote the band on American Bandstand by playing "She Loves You" on the show. According to the Wikipedia entry on the Beatles "A testing of the song ... resulted in laughter and scorn from American teenagers when they saw the group's unusual haircuts." Their first appearance on American TV came on the CBS News in December 1963 which ironically described their act as "the latest non-music from Britain". This report however led a Washington radio station to begin extensive play of an imported copy of some Beatles music which in turn led to Capitol Records' early release of "I Want To Hold Your Hand".

It was the band's appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show that really made them an international phenomenon. The Sullivan appearances on three consecutive shows (February 9, 16, and 23) were the first time that I saw the band. And I do mean saw - if you've ever watched the tapes of those appearances you'll notice that the band could barely be heard over the screams of the teenaged audience (in fact the four Ed Sullivan Show appearances are available on DVD). It was one of the great television moments and it occurred in part because Brian Epstein was trying to promote the group in America and in part because Sullivan was receptive. Say whatever you want about Ed Sullivan, he had an incredible eye for talent and if he didn't think that the Beatles were good no amount of cajoling from a manager/promoter would get them on his show.

In the post Beatles period, John Lennon's TV appearances were fewer. He spent a week as "co-host" on the Mike Douglas Show (something that I find incredibly difficult to picture to be honest) and did a three Dick Cavett Shows which are available on DVD. His last TV appearance was on Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show in April 1975. Increasingly Lennon was withdrawing from the spotlight, becoming something of a recluse and raising his son with Yoko Ono. At the time of his murder he was re-entering the music industry and would probably have made more TV appearances had his life not been cut short. He was inextricably tied to television as a promotional tool; besides, he was good at it.

New Poll: What TV related gift would you like to find under the Christmas Tree?

Based on my Christmas gift suggestions from Saturday, this poll deals with the sort of TV and tech related gifts that you'd like to find wrapped up shining under the Christmas Tree (which is to say that I'm not touching on Books or DVDs this time around). Feel free to comment. In fact feel free to use this blog as a surrogate Santa Claus and "suggest" that your loved ones take a look at the comments here to see what "someone" might like.

HO! HO! HO!

Holiday Gift Suggestions - Gadgets

Here's the first installment of my holiday gift list for the TV lover. First up I thought I'd start with gadgets and accessories. Please not that I'm generally not recommending specific models or manufacturers but rather items you might want to look at.

TV Sets: I'm not going to suggest a new TV. There are a couple of reasons for this. Everyone has their own preferences of course and a discussion of the relative merits of CRT, Plasma, LCD, Rear Projection and Projectors wouldn't be that useful. More to the point however is the fact that if you're anything like my brother - who is in the market - you should be doing diligent research about what to buy. After all, while the prices for 4:3 CRT TVs has gone down considerably since I bought my 27" TV a few years ago (and that was down a lot from prices before that), most of what you want to buy is going to represent a major financial expenditure and you want to go into that knowing what you want and what you can afford. I do recommend a 16:9 TV for anyone who is buying a new television, but be aware that most of these are "HD Ready" which usually means that they need a tuner of some sort to be fully functional.

Game Consoles: Another area where I'm going to recommend holding off if you're after the latest and greatest. Although Microsoft has recently shipped their "next generation" system, the X-Box 360 a major problem remains in that the unit is is short supply in the stores. It seems like they made a supreme effort to have something out for the Christmas shopping season even if the supplies are low. Also be aware that although Microsoft is quoting a low price, this is for a very stripped down unit - the "core system" - and to get a lot of what you really need you'll have to pay more. (Of course even the core system probably has more computing power than most home computers.) Beyond that there appear to be some problems with the initial release units which are likely to be worked out with time. Once Sony's Playstation 3 and Nintendo's Revolution are released, probably by the third quarter of 2006, you should see some price competition. You might look for good prices on some of the earlier systems now.

DVD: DVD players are today at the stage that VCRs were a few years ago. It is literally possible to get a bottom of the line DVD player for $40 or $50 and that's in Canadian money. I don't recommend the very low end players as some of them have problems with overheating and problems reading discs. You're probably better to pay a little more (and based on prices at Future Shop here in Canada it's a very little more) and get a better quality name brand unit. I'd probably stay away from High Definition DVDs for the moment to see which of the two formats - Blu-Ray and HD-DVD - gains becomes the standard.

Recording Devices: With the VCR going the way of the dinosaur (Future Shop currently offers one model, and no longer sells blank tape - combination DVD players and VCRs are only slightly more common) people who want to time shift programs need to look at the two major alternatives - Hard Drive units and DVD Recorders. The most famous name in stand alone Hard Drive devices is TiVo and although TiVo isn't available for sale in Canada the company has recently made it possible for Canadians who buy the units to program them for Canadian cable and satellite companies. Programmable PVRs - where a user can program the unit using an online guide - are are only available through the cable companies and satellite service providers, usually integrated into their HD tuner boxes. There are some DVD recorders that combine a Hard Disc Drive with the DVD Recorder so that you can record a show on the Hard Drive and then transfer it to a recordable DVD if you want to save it. Units with HD Drives often have built in software to allow you to edit programs before you commit them to recordable DVD. In Canada these sell for $450 and up. Somewhat more affordable are DVD Recorders with built in VCRs which also allow some editing between VCR and DVD. Most name brand standalone DVD Recorders sell between $200 and $350 in Canada which is about what I paid for my first VCR about fifteen years ago.

Home Theatre System: My brother built his home theatre system piece by piece, but he was an audiophile before he became interested in home theatre and had most of the components ahead of time. If you aren't an audiophile you might want to consider a Home Theater System which has all of the components you need, and in a lot of cases one you might not - a DVD player. Prices for name brand systems range from about $200 and up. As usual in such cases the difference in price is often driven by power use and manufacturer names. CNet.com offers reviews of systems in various price ranges. One thing I'm not sure of is just where a system reaches a point where the average person can't detect the difference between systems. In most cases that probably depends on the end user.

Remote Controls: If you're like my brother you have too damn many remotes. In my brother's case, to watch a DVD he has to use the remote for the TV, the remote for the DVD player and the remote for his home theatre system, and that's only about half of the active remotes that he has. The obvious answer is to get a universal remote. There are a lot of them out there, and most of them have some drawbacks. CNet.com offers reviews of most of the major lines, splitting them into Budget, LCD, PC Programmable and High End Remotes. The line that most people are used to seeing is the One-For-All remotes. The company dominates the market and generally offers a good product. A major drawback for their top of the line Kameleon series is depressingly short battery life and lack of customizability. A better choice might be a PC programmable remote like the Logitech Harmony series. These can be programmed for your equipment by connecting the remote to your computer using a USB cable and entering the model number of the components in your system. While online the Remote Control Programming Wizard helps you to set up macros that literally allows one touch operation of your equipment. Instead of using three remotes to do several actions to watch a DVD, my brother would literally have to press one button, labelled Watch DVD to do all the procedures required to play a DVD. Some of the higher end models in the Harmony series even include recharging stations.

Home Theater Seating: So you've got your TV, high end remote, DVD player/recorder, game console, and perfect audio setup and you still have money that you need to spend on your TV watching needs? SeatsandChairs.com offers a large variety of home theater seating available, both refurbished seats salvaged from theaters and new seating from a number of manufacturers. And if money isn't an object, you might consider something like this.

Poll Results: What Reality Show Would You Do Best On?

Well isn't that interesting.

This poll had either the highest or second highest voter turnout in the time that I've been doing polls, twenty voters. Part of this is due to my not getting the question changed as fast as I should have - I still wonder if people were voting on shows you watch most before I changed the question - meaning more time to vote. Another part is that this is an issue that polarizes people, and adding the final response has to have had an effect on voting. If I had made Big Brother or The Apprentice a choice and dropped Reality TV is a pox on society I'm convinced that I wouldn't get the turn-out that I did.

So let's take a look at the results. There were 20 votes and amazingly (in my opinion anyway) every show got at least one vote. In sixth place - with one vote (5%) - was Biggest Loser. In fifth place with two votes (10%) was Survivor. In a tie for third place with three votes each (15%) were American Idol and Fear Factor. In second place - and really the winner of the actual shows - with four votes (20%) was The Amazing Race. Finally the biggest vote getter was Reality TV is a pox on society. That option earned seven votes a whopping 35% of the people who voted.

The two low vote getters are interesting. Biggest Loser certainly requires a specialized group of contestants. Most people probably wouldn't be suitable for the show. Survivor on the other hand may well be the hardest of the reality programs if the current series is to be believed. It is a tough competition and Lydia (from this season's show) has the bug bites to prove it. Now Fear Factor and American Idol are a study in contrasts. Fear Factor seems like it's something anyone with a certain amount of athletic abilities and a strong stomach can do - in fact there are a couple of bloggers named Tanya and Jim Ryno who are lobbying to get on Fear Factor as part of a Burger King contest (Hey guys!). On the other hand I didn't expect as high a vote for American Idol. I mean sure, almost everybody thinks they can sing, but to do really well you really have to be able to sing.

The Amazing Race is my favourite of course. I regard it as the Cadillac of Reality-Competition programs and it's a show that I think I could do really well on even though, because I'm a Canadian, I'll never get a chance (I did vote for it here once). The show has it's share of physical challenges of course but in most seasons the physical aspect is combined with a mental and intellectual side which I think I'd do well at. Moreover the travel side is most appealing, to the point where I think that most of the teams who appeared in this year's Family Edition (an experiment I hope they never ever repeat) were disappointed that with the exception of a couple of excursions to Panama and Costa Rica they haven't been out of the United States. The opportunity to experience what to many of us is the exotic is what makes The Amazing Race attractive both to the viewer and the competitor.

I confess I'm sort of depressed - but not at all surprised - by the result for Reality TV is a pox on society. I don't watch every Reality-Competition show - in fact of the shows listed I only watch Survivor and The Amazing Race - but at their core they can be a fun alternative. That there may be too many on the air is something that is hard to deny, particularly when so many show few if any originality, but the fact that all five of the shows I have named not only are still on the air but have drawn strong enough ratings to be renewed has to say something abut the genre. And to be sure, if I had asked whether people would rather watch Joey or Survivor I think the response would have been overwhelming in favour of the reality show (Survivor vs. Lost may be a different story). I'm convinced that for as long as the networks put on expensive dreck like Joey, Reality-Competition shows will not just survive but thrive.

Lost Is a Family Show ?

This is going to take a little explanation, so let me start with an Awards Show. Oh it isn't one that that's been on TV yet (but it will be - on the WB on December 11) but an award is an award after all. In this case it was the Seventh Annual Family Television Awards. Here, in a very specific order are the winners:

• Best Actor - Jim Belushi


• Best Actress - Reba McIntire


• Best Reality host - Ty Pennington


• Lifetime Achievement Award, 7th Heaven


• Best Movie - The Wool Cap


• Best New series - Everybody Hates Chris


• Best Reality program - The Amazing Race


• Best Comedy - King of Queens


• Best Drama - Lost

Now you'll excuse me for saying so, but one of these things doesn't seem to be like the others and you don't have to be a Sesame Street regular to figure out which one it is. I mean, I love Lost - it is probably one of the best shows on TV right now - but I have a problem is in describing it as a "Family Show". There are - dare I say it - dramas that are more family friendly and life affirming than Lost, including the show that received a Lifetime Achievement Award at this very awards show, 7th Heaven. After all, since it debuted Lost has included murders, torture, drug use and the abduction of a child, not to mention what could best be described as "almost incest" between two adults. Admittedly Shannon and Boone were step-siblings, but can you imagine the reaction if Greg and Marcia Brady - also step-siblings though that wasn't emphasizes through most of the series - had even kissed romantically? This is a family show? More to the point, is this the best family drama on television? Maybe we need to look at these awards a little more deeply.

Despite the name, the Family Television Awards are not given out by some socially conservative organization like the Parents Television Council, but rather by the Association of National Advertisers Inc. through their Family Friendly Programming Forum. The Forum was founded in 1999 and has as its stated objective "to support and promote the development and scheduling of 'family friendly' movies, dramas, situation comedies and informational programs that are aired during key prime-time hours when adults and children in a household are most likely to watch television together (8 – 10 p.m [Eastern].)" The mission statement goes on to say (emphasis mine) "The definition of family friendly programming is purposefully broad: it is relevant to today’s audience, has cross-generational appeal, depicts real life and is appropriate in theme, content and language for a broad family audience. These programs also embody a responsible resolution of issues. The goal of the Family Friendly Programming Forum (FFPF) is to ensure that there is always at least one family friendly programming alternative that adults and children can enjoy watching together each hour between 8 and 10 p.m. every night of the week." In this they seem to be offering a far more lenient definition than a group like the PTC, but also a far more responsible, realistic and achievable one. The first Family Television Awards took place in 1999 with winners that year including 7th Heaven, ABC's TGIF Line-up, Touched by an Angel and The Discovery Channel as well as a lifetime achievement award to The Cosby Show. Among the dramas to win in subsequent years were: The West Wing in 2000 and 2001, 7th Heaven in 2002, American Dreams in 2003 and Joan of Arcadia in 2004. Of interest is that the Family Friendly Programming Forum Committee includes advertising executives from over forty major advertisers including Sears, Federal Express, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Kellogs, General Mills, Kraft, Ford and General Motors. As a group these seem to be heavy hitters.

Unlike the PTC the Family Friendly Programming Forum doesn't just criticize, protest imagined obscenity to the FCC, and give commendations, they are literally putting their money where their mouths are. A group of 18 companies also sponsors a script development fund which all six US networks participate in. According to the Script Development Fund section at the Forum's website the program works like this: The fund provides seed money to the networks for family friendly scripts, a process administered by the networks and if a script becomes a pilot, the network reimburses the Fund and the money is redeployed to seed more scripts. Among the projects supported by the Forum in 2005 which became series were Commander in Chief, Everybody Hates Chris, Old Christine, and Related. Among previous projects were Gilmore Girls, 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, American Dreams, and Steve Harvey’s Big Time. When was the last time that the PTC funded a script let alone got one into production for one of the six networks? When was the last time that the PTC did anything positive besides giving someone a ?

When I started writing this I confess it was an effort to have a little fun with a group that thought that Lost was a family show. On the face of it an organization that would give this show this reward would seem easy to make fun of. The interesting thing is that what I've found is a group which is acting far more positively with less public exposure than a group which gets a lot more publicity while being negative. Is Lost a family show? Well by the standards set by the Family Friendly Programming Forum it is. It is "relevant and interesting to a broad family audience" and it "contains no elements that the average viewer would find offensive." It accomplishes all this and is an excellent show besides. So yeah, maybe Lost really is a family drama.

TV On DVD - November 29, 2005

There's going to be an election in Canada on January 23, 2006. Barring any particularly good commercials, something that really interests me about debate format (which have in the past been radically different from anything that American politicians have been willing to try outside of The West Wing) or particularly good or egregious bits of broadcast policy, this is the last you'll hear of the election from me until the day after election day, if then.

Since it is December, and Christmas is coming (along with holidays in other religions into which a gift giving component has been shoehorned) I have a nascent idea about basic gift suggestions for the TV lover in your house. It'll probably be running over the next three Saturdays.

A very light week for DVDs, with more than a few exclusive offers that won't show up on Amazon.

C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation - The Complete Fifth Season
- Season 5 of CSI was one of my favourites. It started with Greg becoming a real boy - sorry a CSI field guy - and the search for his replacement which initially seemed to be Reiko Aylesworth but turned out to be Aisha Tyler. (Interesting: both Aylesworth and Tyler as well as Xander Berkeley who played Sheriff Atwater - in two episodes including the seventh episode of this season - and Glenn Morshower who played Sheriff Brian Mobley were in 24. Well I thought it was interesting.) The season ended with the Quentin Tarantino directed episode which also just happened to be the last performance of Frank Gorshin. Definitely a season that you should get if you're a fan of the show.

Crank Yankers V2 Season 2
- Okay, now I get it. This set was released in Canada and is only available on DVD from Best Buy in the United States. Crank phone calls reenacted by puppets. Conceptually at least it's interesting.

Criss Angel: Mindfreak - The Complete Season One
- The show sounds like a sort of cross between magic show and reality TV. I've never seen it, although I have seen Criss Angel on Las Vegas and he does seem amazing. Certainly he's one of the top young illusionists of his generation. Still there's always something suspicious about magic on TV despite all of the assertions that no camera tricks are used.

Empire
- ABC ran this last summer and boy was it a stinker. There were a couple of good performances (notably Colm Feore as Caesar) but if you're really smart you'll wait for HBO's far superior Rome or get I, Claudius.

Family Guy: Volume Three
- The little series that could. Volume 3 actually the first thirteen episodes of the fourth season revival of the show, which is currently running. These are the episodes that ran from May 2005 ("North By North Quahog") to the end of September 2005 ("Jungle Love"). Lord I love the way Fox runs series!

Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi: Rock Forever
- Okay I have absolutely no idea about this. Puffy AmiYumi is a Japanese pop group which amazingly for such groups has been in existence since 1996. This is an animated version of the two young women who make up the group (and occasionally appear in live action bits on the show) but although the style is Japanese Anime, the show is actually produced in the US using flash animation. Never seen it (it's on YTV here and early on a Saturday morning at that) so no opinion.

Lotsa Luck
- Now this is a real curiosity. A remake of the legendary British series On The Buses it lacked a lot of the charm of the original in part because British buses don't run in the same way that American buses do. There wasn't the partnership that Reg Varney and Bob Grant had in the original and much more of the focus in the American show was on the home life of the lead character. On the other hand it does star a younger Dom Deluise and the always enjoyable Kathleen Freeman. Still I don't recommend it.

Mission Hill: The Complete Series
- This animated series had an incredibly brief run on The WB of two episodes in September and October 1999 before it was cancelled. Then it was burned off in June and July of 2000. Worth it? Well it does have something of a cult following but there just doesn't seem to be that much there for what you're paying.

Project Runway: Season One
- Another one I've never seen. It was nominated this past season for Outstanding Reality-Competition Series (it lost to The Amazing Race - I'll resist the temptation to say "of course"). It helps that it was on Bravo since from what I've read the format - a competition between a dozen designers and a dozen models - seems like a combination of American Idol and The Apprentice. And we all know how network audiences reacted to what they saw as imitations of existing formats last summer. I don't know.

'Til Death Do Us Part: Carmen and Dave (Target Exclusive)
- Only available at Target stores, which we don't have here in Canada. This is the Carmen Electra and Dave Navarro series for MTV so I don't feel as bad about not being able to get it as I would if it were the British forerunner to All In The Family. On the other hand, on those rare occasions when I've seen him (and I don't listen to his music) he's been quite entertaining.

Timeslip: The Complete Series
- Why is it that the British do TV for children and teens that is so much more advanced than anything that anyone else seems willing to do, particularly the Americans. The series consisted of 26 episodes in black & white (for a variety of reasons). The two main characters are capable of slipping backwards and forwards in time. The 1970s series dealt with some incredibly up to date concepts like cloning and global warming in episodes which are linked up into what amounts to four serials. Can you imagine an American network producing anything like this let alone producing it for kids?

Tomorrow People: Set 2
- Seasons 3, 4 and 5 of the British Science Fiction series from the 1970s, although like most British Science Fiction series it suffered from terminally low budgets. Like Timeslip it's another example of the British doing shows for a teen audience that no American network would try. The concept of teens with "psi" powers wasn't exactly new at the time (see The X-Men comic books) but there's a certain charm here.

Canadian TV and the New Technology

There was an interesting article in the Friday November 25 issue of TV Times, the listing book that comes with many Canadian newspapers on Friday mornings (because of course most Canadian newspapers don't do Sunday editions and putting it in on Saturday would be just too much for people to read on one day).

The article, which unfortunately doesn't seem to be available online, is by Eric Kohanik the TV Times editor. In it he writes: "Canadian TV broadcasters are in big trouble" and goes on to explain why.

"First, ABC revealed that it will now be 'podcasting' episodes of Lost on its website....

The next logical step in this iPod craze is video. Once it really catches on, everyone will have tiny portable TVs that let you import shows and watch them whenever - and wherever - you want.

Shortly after ABC's announcement, CBS and NBC unveiled deals with American cable and satellite services to make CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and the Law & Order spin-offs available via video on demand for 99 cents US per episode. VOD basically turns your cable or satellite box into a video player, letting you watch stuff at your convenience.

There's also the news that TV programming will now be available on cellphones. And at the other end of the TV spectrum, American networks are moving aggressively towards digital and high-definition television.

Add all of this to the fact that many shows are available on DVD or can be downloaded from the Internet, and you suddenly realize that TV is in the midst of a huge transition."

So far, Mr. Kohanik has basically reported material that is reasonably well known to anyone following recent technological developments. (Well except for the fact that he doesn't seem to grasp the real importance of the ABC announcement. They aren't podcasts; what ABC is offering in cooperation with Apple and the iTunes Music Store is the ability to download the complete one hour TV show to be seen on the Video iPod. In other words, what he calls the next logical step has already been taken.) He also missed - or it wasn't announced at the time that he wrote the article - that it will be possible to download shows recorded on a TiVo to the Video iPod. What he hasn't explained yet is why Canadian networks are in trouble although perceptive readers may have already figured that out.

Mr. Kohanik continues:

So why are the Canadian [broadcasters] in trouble? They've been lazy. Many have lagged behind technologically, not even embracing stereo television, let alone HDTV.

The far bigger problem, though, is content. Rather than creating a healthy appetite and market place for homegrown shows, government regulation and television welfare funds have led to shows that - with a few notable exceptions - are mostly just filler.

This isn't about Canadian culture; it's about economics. Canadian networks have become addicted to American shows because they're cheaper to air and they can simply rake in the advertising bucks.

But Canadian channels don't own the American shows they air. And so, the emerging revenue streams will flow elsewhere.

In short Canadian broadcasters will suffer because they don't have quality content of their own to offer for sale and they, rightly, won't participate in any revenue generated by the recent technological developments.

Of course by this he means the Canadian private broadcasters, and he's also speaking about English language television. For the way that people - and in particular the private broadcasters - bitch about it, the CBC has been essentially free of American programming content for a number of years. Certainly they show American movies but virtually all of the CBC's prime time programming is Canadian or British. No other Canadian English language network - broadcast or cable - can make that claim. In a world where content is finally coming to be seen as king, the CBC is better placed than networks which have treated their Canadian content requirements as a cross to be borne rather than an opportunity to be embraced.

The private broadcasters have always worked under a philosophy stated by the then Roy Thomson, later Lord Thomson of Fleet who described owning a television station as "a license to print money." For them the easiest way to make money was to show as much American programming as possible and then state that they had to because otherwise most people would watch American stations (since the largest proportion of Canada's population lives within range of American TV stations - mostly in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia) and Canadian advertisers wouldn't spend their money on TV. When cable became widespread they demanded and got the ability to overlay their signals on top of the same show running on the United States station (if it was being shown at the same time and the Canadian stations arranged their schedules so it would happen that way) to protect their revenue stream. That is as much an example of television welfare as government funding for programming but it's not something that gets mentioned for what it is.

I am less concerned about the fate of private broadcasters than Eric Kohanik is. I am sure that the Canadian cable and satellite industry will not introduce American programming "on demand" - or they won't be allowed to. If nothing else the private broadcasters will use the regulator - the CRTC - to block or delay it. Even if I had the Video iPod I can't buy Lost or Desperate Housewives at the iTunes Music Store. They don't have the rights to sell it in Canada. It may be that when we're finally able to purchase content either for the iPod or through Video on Demand, government regulation will see some funds going to the company that owns broadcast rights to the content in Canada. I'm sure that eventually the technology will come to Canada but it will come with the broadcasters kicking and screaming and figuring out a way so that they could make money on the deal even if they have nothing to do with the creation of the content.

It would be desirable if the development of new technology, which threatens the existing advertiser driven model of television, would result in Canadian private broadcasters spending money to to produce quality Canadian programming rather than make "filler" to put on the air because they have to. I don't think that's going to happen for a long time, not before the pressure to bring in the new technology become too much to resist and if they can get the right deal maybe not even then.

Oops!

I just noticed the mistaken question on the Blog Poll. For that reason I've decided to extend the dealing to December 2. Sorry if you voted an answer to the wrong question.

TV On DVD - November 22, 2005 - Delayed For Your Thanksgiving Shopping Convenience

Well sort of. I got caught up in some other stuff I was writing an then I realised that if you are an American you tend to work off fifteen pounds of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce, candied yams and pumpkin pie with real whipped cream by pushing and shoving your way through malls and department stores the day after Thanksgiving (and does anyone besides me hate the phrase "Turkey Day" - just curious). Weird sort of exercise regimen but I'm just a dumb Canadian so what do I know. Anyway, while I frankly doubt that there's anything on this particular list which is a must have for the TV Lover in your life here is some not bad stuff this time around.

Before I start with the list though, I want to vent about one thing. People at BlogExplosion - you, the ones in authority - what you have done with the Battle of The Blogs sucks, bites, blows and and an assortment of other verbs and adjectives that are synonyms for stinks. While you may think that what you have done is made it fairer for blogs with minority subject matter to get noticed by competing against other blogs with similar subject matter if they so wish, what you've actually done is create a huge bottleneck of blogs that can't find opponents. I watched entranced (well actually bore to tears) for four hours last night (not continuously of course) while a blog about gardening sat waiting for an opponent, slotted into the "Hobby" category. It was still there when I woke up in the morning.Change things back to the way they were so that blogs like that can find opponents (preferably me so I can inflate my win/loss record).

Okay, rant over. Back to the list.

Aeon Flux: The Complete Animated Collection
- Aeon Flux was an MTV series that apparently aired on YTV in Canada. The current release of the short-lived cult animation series is of course related to the release of the new live action movie featuring Charlize Theron. From what little I've seen of the graphics, the animated films, some as short as two or three minutes have an incredibly beautiful (and presumably incredibly expensive) style that is really a mix on the very best of Anime with the European graphic novel tradition. Interesting for that quality if for nothing else.

The Best & Worst of American Idol (Limited Edition)
Best of American Idol
Worst of American Idol
- Question: How do you market American Idol on DVD. I suppose you could release each season and see how they sell, and as a matter of fact they did exactly that for the first season with Kelly and Justin. I don't think it was a great seller. The other option, since what people really like are the really great performances - because they're good singers singing good songs - and the really bad performances - because they're funny - is to release a "Best of" and a "Worst of" DVD set. The real genius though is to put the two together, slap together a third "bonus" DVD and label it a limited edition so that you can stop making it when you choose.

The Andy Griffith Show: The Complete Fourth Season
- One of the great series, and the fourth season is one of the most memorable. The season's first episode is the famous one where Opie accidentally kills a mother bird and tries to raise her chicks, while the final episode has Gomer Pyle joining the marines and meeting a certain Sergeant Carter. In between plenty of the Darling Family and Ernest T. Bass, as well as Barney and Gomer in conflict.

Astro Boy: The Collection
- Okay I think I've figured this one out. This is the 1980 series, and consists of eight discs and 51episodes plus a few special features including comparisons between the Japanese version and the censored version that was seen on American TV. Well worth it for the fan.

Batman vs. Dracula [With Toy]
- The Batman Vs. Dracula was in fact released earlier this year. This release is a "Gift Box", the "gift" being a Batman toy and a Dracula toy. The question is are the two toys worth the extra 12 bucks (Canadian) which is the difference between the ordinary set and the "Gift Box". For the fanboys the answer is YES!!

C.S.I. Miami: The Complete Third Season
- Of the three CSI series this is considered by a lot of people to be the weakest, largely because of the dominating presence of David Caruso. The third season had to cope with the departure of Rory Cochrane, who played the increasingly sullen Tim Speedle, and replaced him with Jonathon Togo as Ryan Wolfe. It was also the season that saw the final resolution of the Raymond Caine story line and the departure of Sofia Milos. There are good episodes but on the whole I've always found the original series more involving and the lead character on CSI: New York more likable.

Captain and Tennille: Ultimate Collection
- Didn't I preview this earlier? Oh well, I just can't imagine that there's a huge market for this series even if it was nominated for an Emmy. It was the '70s - we didn't know better.

Dark Shadows: DVD Collection 21
- More episodes from maybe the only soap opera yet (and possibly ever) to be released on DVD.

Extreme Makeover Home Edition: Season One
- Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is one of the great "feel good" series currently on. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is a show that gives us feel good stories and then leaves the people the "help" with houses they can't afford to maintain or even pay the taxes on, not to mention making sure that the people they intend to help aren't tossed out into the streets by the people who own the house that was fixed up. I started watching this series but increasingly find it uncomfortable, the more I find out about the aftermath of many of these stories.

French Chef, Vol. 2
- It has always surprised me that there aren't more cooking shows out on DVD. It would seem to me that cooking something that a TV chef has done would be so much easier if you could pause, rewind, and watch technique in detail as you are cooking, not to mention recipes and tips on DVD-ROM files on the disk. Julia Child was one of the great television cooking instructors as well as one of the great personalities (both as a TV presenter and if you knew even a little of her personal history) but her shows could be difficult to follow. If you like to cook this is probably a must.

The Golden Girls: The Complete Third Season
- The longer this show ran the less of a fan I became. By Season 3 it just wasn't watching.

Home Improvement: The Complete Third Season
- On the other hand, by the Third Season of Home Improvement I was a devoted viewer. The third season included the addition of Debbie Dunning as Tool Girl Heidi, and she was really given a lot more to do than her predecessor Pamela Anderson. It always felt as if she fit in more. Beyond that the chemistry between the characters was becoming increasingly strong. It's hard to explain the attraction, but Tim Allen was maturing from being "just" as stand-up comedian into a reasonably competent actor (largely due to be surrounded by competent actors), something which a lot of people who do stand-up and then get shows never manage.

Kenny Vs. Spenny: Season One
- Okay I'm totally clueless I don't know who these people are or what this show is about except what I read in the IMDB and Wikipedia. Apparently it's about two guys who are always competing against each other. It's supposed to be funny but I really don't know.

King of the Hill: Complete Season 5
- If you look at the PTC list of the ten worst TV shows for families, you will observe that only two shows from the Fox Sunday night lineup are not on that list. One is King Of The Hill. Even with that endorsement the few episodes I've watched haven't been that bad. The humour has been adult in a way that is different from the approach used by The Family Guy which may be one reason why the PTC likes it. I'll even suggest that while Hank is no Ward Cleaver, he's a lot better than some of the live action parents on TV and that's without even putting the War At Home parents into competition.

Leave It to Beaver: The Complete First Season
Leave It to Beaver: The Complete First Season (Limited Edition)
- When it comes down to it, Leave It To Beaver was the epitome of the vision of the 1950s which so many Social Conservatives yearn for. It never existed out side of the TV set of course, and certainly anyone who was an adult or a teen in the 1950s and had their eyes open would tell you that. Still, it was a great series. Reality, no, but you wanted to know people like the Cleavers. The "Limited Edition" has a "Cleaver Family Album" and is packaged in a '50s lunch box style container. Given the slight difference in price, probably worth it.

Life in the Freezer
- Given the fascination with the recent documentary March Of The Penguins, it isn't surprising that the BBC has released this 1993 series about the natural history of Antarctica on DVD. Presented (as the British would say instead of hosted) by not produced or directed by the legendary nature documentary producer Sir David Attenborough, it gives a wider picture of the Antarctic ecosystem than the more recent documentary, but of course it has more time.

Naked City: Box Set 2
- "There are eight million stories in the Naked City." These are some of them. When I reviewed the first boxed set of these I commented that Image had collected some of the individual DVDs they had released previously to be on that set. I was corrected by Ivan Shreve, and that makes there efforts at getting this legendary series out even more praiseworthy. The price - $24.49 from Amazon.ca - for a three DVD set is amazing as well. If you have any interest, this set is worth having.

Seinfeld: Season 5
Seinfeld: Season 6
Seinfeld: Seasons 5 & 6 Gift Set
- I have literally never watched an episode of this show which I suppose sets me apart. The gift set contains a "hand written" script and a puffy shirt. Oh Joy!

The Tom Green Show: The Complete Series - Inside and Outside the Box
- This was Green's early Canadian show. I find Tom Green about as amusing as dropping both of my five pin bowling balls onto my hand from a height of 6 feet, but I suppose there must have been people who liked him. Somewhere.

The X-Files Mythology: Vol. 4 - Super Soldiers
- The last of the X-Files "mytharc" series of boxed sets. This one covers the last episodes of Season 8 and the arc related episodes of season 9 including the birth of Scully's son, and the series finale. This set is the final installment of a fascinating way of repackaging elements of a series that has been available for a long time. If only other series which have been rereleasing old material in new packages were this inventive.

I Knew It!

You Are Japanese Food

Strange yet delicious. Contrary to popular belief, you're not always eaten raw.

What Kind of Food Are You?

Personally I prefer Turkey (dark meat hot or at least warm, white meat for sandwiches) but Sushi is high on my list. On the other hand some of the things the Japanese do with ice cream would be considered torture if fed to POWs.

To my American friends a Happy Thanksgiving from a country which has yet to perfect the four day weekend.

The Holmes-House Connection - New Revelations

Now I will freely admit that I can be fairly dense at times. By the time I figured out that a particular girl in high school had been hitting on me fairly consistently for several months she was already two boyfriends beyond me by which time I figured it was too late to do anything about it. Like I said, dense. So it's really no surprise that I didn't pick up on something about House MD and its relationship to the stories of Sherlock Holmes.

Oh sure, I got the link between Gregory House and Sherlock Holmes. That was so obvious even a blind man could see it so it only took someone who is as dense as I am a few minutes longer to pick up on it. It wasn't until an incident last night that I picked up on something else. It was a scene at the very beginning of the episode where House and his friend James Wilson are emerging from a building which I assume is House's townhouse or apartment building (sorry, I missed the first 30 seconds of the episode - sue me) where they encounter the man House refers to as his stalker, but that's not important. The number on the building, that's important. 221B. I mean seriously, all that it needed is for the street to have been named after a Mr. Baker for it to be absolutely perfect and for all we know it is. Ah, but I'm dense you know, so it took until this morning for the pieces to really fall into place for me.

Wilson is Watson! James Wilson=John Watson

Yes I know that traditionally Watson has been the old fuddy duddy to Holmes's brilliant young man but in fact the books made it clear that Watson was Holmes's contemporary, a military doctor who had been shot at least once in an unfortunate encounter with Afghan tribesmen. Watson's weaknesses are that he sees rather than observes and he tends to think down rather conventional lines. Wilson is an oncologist and (with all due respect to my friend Orac) like many doctors he tends to think down conventional lines - that is to say not crossing boundaries to look for answers outside his specialty. That of course was what sets Holmes apart from other detectives and House apart from other doctors - they're universalists who consider all possibilities rather than specialists. Even Wilson's several marriages link him with Watson. Although we know that Watson married Mary Marston at the end of Sign Of The Four, Watson's periods of residence at Baker Street have suggested to many enthusiasts (including William S. Baring-Gould who wrote the Annotated Sherlock Holmes - a massive two volume work which I happen to own) that Watson was married more than once.

Ah, so now I'm on a roll. It seemed obvious to me that Cuddy was Mrs. Hudson, Holmes's devoted housekeeper and the actual owner of 221B. No, on reflection, that's not right. Cuddy is Lestrade and all of the other cops that Holmes confounded, dumbfounded and infuriated over the years. As for Stacy, House's lost love, well she is so clearly Irene Adler the only female adversary Holmes had and the only person who got the better of him who according to Watson was always referred to by Holmes as "The Woman".

Which leaves us with House's little acolytes; Foreman, Chase and Cameron. Foreman and Chase are easy - they're the Baker Street Irregulars, the little street urchins who were always out gathering bits of information for the great man in return for sixpence and a kind word - but Cameron is a problem. More than Foreman and Chase she has injected herself into House's life even though he doesn't want it and she's reluctant about it. Is she Mrs. Hudson? Well the assumption is that Hudson was a widow (Cameron is), and given that the relationship between Holmes and Mrs. Hudson lasted from 1871 when he took the rooms at her home to perhaps as late as 1914 (the elderly housekeeper in His Final Bow is only known by her first name so it could have been Hudson), Hudson can't have been that old when they first met. It is also not impossible that there was some sort of romantic attraction on her part at least. On the other hand Hudson never got high and had wild animal sex with a Baker Street Irregular the way Cameron did last night, so for now let's make her a sort of hybrid of Hudson and an Irregular.

As for Professor Moriarity, I give you Chi McBride's character Edward Vogler.

It really is elementary... if you aren't dense.

New Poll - What Reality Show Would You Do Best On?

Something a little lighter this time, a little palette cleanser if you will. With November Sweeps coming to the end we are also approaching the end of the fall contingent of reality competition shows, so I thought I'd ask which one you thought you'd do well in. Not the ones you like to be on or the one you enjoy watching the most, just the one where you'd most likely to be successful. A couple weren't on in this fall's rotation but they are among the biggies so I'll includie them. Oh and by the way, I will be voting in this one.

Feel free to comment.

Poll Results - What Show Rated Badly By The PTC Do You Watch Most?

And the results are in. There are a couple of minor surprises but on the whole the results were exactly what I was expecting. There were 13 votes cast this time around. The War At Home and The O.C. each tied for fifth place with no votes. In fourth place with one vote - 7% of the total - was American Dad. In third place with two votes (15%) was None of them. You may recall that in the poll about shows recommended by the PTC, None of them was the highest rated category. In second place with three votes or 23% was the original C.S.I. but on top with a majority of the votes - seven out of thirteen - was Family Guy. If this poll and the previous one show nothing else it is just how irrelevant the views of the PTC are to people, or at least to the people who read this I Am A Child Of Television and responded to the poll.

I have to confess that if I had voted, the only one I could have voted for was C.S.I. because except for the episode of The War At Home which I reviewed I haven't watched any of them. That The War At Home was so poorly regarded by readers of this blog is unsurprising. It is one of the worst excuses for a TV show that it has ever been my misfortune to view. The fact that The O.C. was as poorly regarded is a much bigger surprise for me. Either my blog's demographics skew older than the audience for the show or it really isn't as well regarded as the people at Fox think it is (or a combination of the two). Of course this argument about demogrphics becomes a bit moot when C.S.I. is considered. That show is after all one of if not the highest rated series on TV and the other two series in the franchise are also well regarded in terms of viewer numbers. So it's not surprising that it placed in the top two, but a little surprising that it wasn't the top show.

I've left the two animated offerings on this list for last for a specific reason. While the poll found that American Dad was one of the less well liked show of the five surveyed, and indeed fell behind None of them, it and Family Guy which is the most highly watched of the five by my readers share one thing in common - they're animated and the PTC has a particular hatred for them because of this. Apparently the Council buys into the old myth that cartoons are for kids and kids alone. Certainly none of the people who made them - going back at least to Friz Freleng at Warner Brothers in the 1930s thought that way. However the PTC sees Family Guy and American Dad as being particularly harmful to children because they're "cartoons" but contain adult themes. That's one of the reasons why the matricidal Stewie and his clan are regarded as the second worst TV show by the PTC. The fact that enough people realise that these shows aren't for kids but are enjoyable nonetheless - so much so that fan support was able to bring it back after it was cancelled in 2002 - shows that in this case as in many others the PTC and its views are irrelevant.

I think I'll try something a little more fun for the next poll.

The Poseidon Adventure Redux

I paid good money to see the original Poseidon Adventure back in 1972 and if you want to know the whole truth, I enjoyed it. Then. Over the years the movie seemed to become increasingly unbelievable, as many of Irwin Allen's projects did. Therefore it was with less than high expectations that I approached the television remake of the movie, particularly after having been subjected to such projects as Vampire Bats, Category 6 and it's sequel Category 7 and of course 10.5. All are of course the sort of subjects that Irwin Allen would have enjoyed, and might even have made in his day. I have to admit that I braced for something of less than high quality. Fortunately the television version wasn't as bad as it very well could have been. It wasn't great, it wasn't really even above average, but it was still an enjoyable bit of entertainment.

I think that everyone is sufficiently familiar with the story of the original Poseidon Adventure that I don't need to go into detail about most of the plot of the remake except in so far as it differs from from the original. There are really two major points here. First there is a whole terrorism plot, which is what causes the ship to "turn turtle" in the first place (I'll go into that shortly). The terror plot is briefly touched at the start of the movie, with a raid by American special ops forces on a terrorist organization which is arranging a series of attacks against "soft targets" on land and in the air for New Years Eve. The pattern is such that the investigators "know" that there should be a sea component but that part of the information has been destroyed and there are no living terrorists left at their headquarters who can explain what is going on. It is however enough to cause the Department of Homeland Security to put an "sea marshal" aboard the cruise ship Poseidon. He's Mike Rogo (played by Adam "no I'm not related to Alec or the rest of that bunch" Baldwin). By the way, here's a trick question - why is a Homeland Security "sea marshal" abord the ship when there are virtually no US flagged cruise ships in existance (lrgely thanks to union rules and tax structures). The notion of a bomb on a ship actually borrows from a movie that is one of my favourite thrillers, Juggernaut. The other major plot aspect is the tensions within the Clarke Family - dad Richard, mom Rachel, daughter Shelby and young son Dylan. The Clarkes are a "family in crisis" - dad is a failed writer who is living off of mom's fortune (she turned a small boutique into a multi-million dollar clothing chain) - and their marriage is going through such a rough patch that when they get a suite aboard the Poseidon Rachel and Shelby sleep in one bed while Richard and Dylan sleep in the other. So naturally when the comely masseuse aboard the ship comes on to Richard he succumbs as often as is physically possible for a man of Steve Guttenberg's age. I found the terrorism plot interesting, and it did provide a couple of the best scenes in the movie. In one a terrorist kills the bridge crew, turns off all of the equipment that might save the ship before blowing his own brains out lest he be tempted to turn them back on. The other has Captain Paul Gallico (played by the criminally underused Peter Weller - the name is a nice tribute to the author of the original book by the way) striding up the main staircase from the ballroom, the only man left who can save the ship, and being shot by the remaining terrorist. On the other hand I found the concentration on the travails of the Clarke marriage to be tedious. It took time away from us learning more about other characters.

This remake of The Poseidon Adventure is scarcely perfect, or even quite as good as it might have been had it been presented in the manner it was intended when it was produced as a four hour miniseries. The overwhelming sense I got when watching it was that there was significant information that was missing which would must have been in the hour or so that was cut. There were questions which needed to be answered which might well have been if that hour had been included - how did young Dylan Clarke know that Mrs. Rosen could make the swim and what were all those "challenges" he was referring to. For that matter why was Dylan given virtually free run of all areas of the ship simply on the authority of the Restaurant Manager (or whatever he was). In another area, I may have missed something but it's only in the last few minutes - where Bishop Schmidt is arguing that he should set off the second bomb - that I found out that Rogo was married, although his wife wasn't on the trip. There are other structural problems. I wasn't particularly happy that we were almost immediately "told" who we were supposed to care about and be interested in through the device of the characters having their ship ID pictures shot and the ID card - with name - shown on screen. I'm just enough of a stickler for dramatic tension that I'd like to be kept guessing about who is going to live and who is going to die. For me it would have been far more interesting to let us get to know a larger number of people so that when the ship capsizes and the ballroom scene occurs we're shocked when some characters that we've invested some interest in die by crashing to the floor or ceiling. There's no dramatic tension in knowing from the beginning which characters are going to be the prime focus of our interest. Dramatic tension is further undermined by intercutting scenes of the rescue effort focused mainly at 5th Fleet Headquarters and with the Navy SEALs. For me the problem with this is that the movie should be almost entirely confined within the ship - will they make it out and if they do,will there be someone out there to help them. The way that this was written, we know that there will be rescuers waiting for them and able to help them with more than just getting off the hull of the ship and into boats. The original benefits from the sort of claustrophobic nature of the audience being as trapped as the people on the ship.

There's been a lot of talk elsewhere about the implausability of the single terrorist bomb causing the ship to turn over. Actually I think it is far more realistic than the whole "giant rogue wave" scenario which was used in the original movie. I am far more willing to suspend my disbelief over this method of inverting the ship than I was with the rogue wave theory. The ship being inverted did lead to one of the biggest technical goofs in the whole movie though. It is a key plot element that Rachel Clarke be able to email a message telling about the emergency to her "Christmas List" using the ship's Internet cafe. The only trouble is that a passenger ship at sea connects to the Internet using a satellite link, and all of the ship's satellite gear was pointing to the bottom of the ocean so sending the email was impossible. One thing that really bothered me even more than this was the fact that the only survivors were from the main ballroom. Now I get that this is TV and there isn't the budget to show even a tenth of the ship's 3,500 passengers but why was there no one alive outside of the ballroom? Even in the original movie there is a sequence where the survivors from the ballroom encounter another, larger, group led by one of the ship's officers heading in a different direction - as it turns out to their deaths. Yet we are left thinking that anyone who wasn't originally in the ballroom and thus under the influence of the ship's hotel services manager - a man suddenly given the sort of petty dictatorial powers that such a fool dreams of without really knowing what he's supposed to do or being able to make the right sort of decisions - just laid in their bunks and died. It's just impossible to believe that only the fifteen or so people who left the ballroom were the only ones to survive the initial accident and tried to escape the ship. Another problem I had was with the ease with which Rogo was able to find Richard and the second party of survivors and reunite them with the main group with seemingly greater ease than the other group had faced. On some level it makes Mrs. Rosen's sacrifice less significant if there's another route to the opening in the hull that doesn't require the survivors to go through the same trials that the original group did.

The cast of this version is nowhere near as strong as the original which included five once or future Oscar winners (Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Jack Albertson and Shelley Winters who also earned a nomination for the role of Belle Rosen in the movie). I wasn't terribly impressed with Rutger Hauer as Bishop Schmidt. He didn't seem to have the same sort of passion that Gene Hackman brought to the part of Father Scott. In the original so that I didn't believe him as someone who was having a crisis of faith. As for Steve Guttenburg in the role of Richard Clarke, well the less said the better about him - I've never been a fan. On the other hand Adam Baldwin is always enjoyable even though in this movie he doesn't get the chance to reveal his funny side. I rather liked Sylvia Syms version of Mrs. Rosen and her death scene was a rather tender moment.

On the whole, The Poseidon Adventure wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been and significantly better than some of what we've seen recently. Comparisons with the original movie are misleading, to the point where, if this weren't called The Poseidon Adventure reaction from some people might be different. The cruise ship business is booming right now, and mega-ships resembling the TV movie's Poseidon do exist and represent a potential target for terrorists. However calling this The Poseidon Adventure does lead to comparisons with the original, most of which aren't going to be favourable. Setting those sorts of comparisons aside, if I were grading it I'd give it passing marks, although not with high honours.

A Slight Delay

I had planned to post a review of Poseidon Adventure tonight but a couple of things got in the way. First I had to crunch some numbers for my bowling league. Second, I taped it because I watch Desperate Housewives and Gray's Anatomy with my mom - except tonight we missed the start because Little Brother was cooking at his place and there was a Bruins game on. Don't interfere with Little Brother and his Bruins. Finally - and most importantly - the movie is three frigging hours long and I'm feeling like crap right now.

I should post something tomorrow.

Maybe.

One thing though - why oh why did NBC have to put it on opposite TCM's Harold Lloyd Festival?

A Time Switch That Works

You know, I thought I had already reviewed Close To Home but I suppose all the writing I've done about The Amazing Race for that show's newsgroup has kept me from it. You would not believe how much time writing recaps of that series can be. Still the fact that I haven't written about Close To Home doesn't mean that I don't like it; far from it since I've watched every episode. It isn't often that changing timeslots helps a show, but it appears that moving Close To Home from Tuesday night to Friday may be its salvation.

Jennifer Finnigan (a veteran soap opera actress who played a young coroner on Crossing Jordan) plays Annabeth Chase, a prosecutor for the Indianapolis District Attorney's office. She's an extremely hot prosecutor - in both ways but I'm talking about her abilities as a lawyer - but she's hasn't been advanced in her job because she's just come back from maternity leave. Yes, after one maternity leave she's been "mommy tracked". The promotion that she should have had has instead gone to Maureen Scofield (Kimberly Elise) who is an equally hot prosecutor - again in both ways but I'm talking about her abilities as a lawyer again - but one who seems dedicated to advancing her career at the expense of a personal life which includes inconveniences like a husband and children. They can come later, after she's established herself, or so she says now. Their boss is Assistant District Attorney Steve Sharpe (John Carroll Lynch in a fairly good rug; Lynch has done a lot of stuff but I'd say he's probably best remembered as Marge Gunderson's painter husband in Fargo - the fact that I didn't recognise him until I checked the IMDB shows how good the toupee is) and you just know that he's never had any trouble blending family and career. In fact in his position having a wife and kids is probably a significant asset. Rounding out the cast is Christian Kane (best remembered as Lindsay on Angel) as Annabeth's contractor husband Jack Chase.

The concept behind Close To Home is that it focuses on crimes that occur in suburbia. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer's idea is that the closed doors of suburbia hide crimes that are every bit as horrendous - possibly even more horrendous - than the sort of crime that occurs on the mean streets of the city, which some of his other shows focus on. The crimes themselves are not the typical. On the episode which aired on November 18 for example what seemed to be a simple hit and run was revealed to be a murder, and the murderer was herself influenced by her husband... who was also the husband of the victim, in a case of bigamy for profit. The twists and turns of the case come out gradually. In that particular situation what seemed to be a promising lead, concerning the death of the bigamous husband's first wife, turned out not to be a crime but in turn provided a valuable insight into the motives of the man. In the "B-plot" of the episode a murder case which Maureen had previously prosecuted was facing appeal because the witness who had been crucial in the original case recanted his statement, four years after the original trial. It was left up to Sharpe to learn why the witness changed his story.

For the most part I like the show. Bruckheimer and series creator Jim Leonard have taken an idea that Alfred Hitchcock was rather fond of; the idea that behind the closed doors of small towns otherwise ordinary people are capable of the most horrendous crimes. Hitchcock used this idea in most effectively in his 1943 film Shadow Of A Doubt. What this series does is transplant the idea of the small town to suburbia. It's a good concept, although I think it could work better if instead of making the locale of the show Indianapolis itself, it were to take place in a smaller town - perhaps a bedroom community for a larger city - simply because it is hard to believe that Annabeth's cases are all crimes that occur in the suburbs. Why isn't she prosecuting cases which take place in the inner city of Indianapolis? Obviously of course we're only seeing the cases she deals with which fit the premise of the show but if the series were set in a town in Connecticut or Long Island where the people commute into New York (just as an example) the focus would be entirely on crimes that occur in that mostly middle class community. It fits the premise but also adds the complication that the police in the community may not have all the resources that a bigger city - even if it is a place like Indianapolis - would have. Of course that's a minor point, albeit one that interests me.

The fact that the show focuses on the prosecution side of the equation is probably an inevitable result of the popularity of Dick Wolfe's Law And Order franchise, where the prosecutor is the hero and the defense attorneys are just barely better than the criminals they defend. This series isn't nearly as bad in its portrayal of defense council (it's hard to imagine that they could be as bad as in a typical Wolfe series) although inevitably they tend to be seen as somehow less capable and honorable than the prosecution. This is a huge change from the days of L.A. Law and Perry Mason, where the defender was the hero because they were on the side of right. One thing that they have done which I appreciate is that on occasion the series looks at a crime that is something other than murder. In previous episodes they've had cases involving child abuse, kidnapping, and housewife prostitution. While it's not a common event on the show it is at least more than most shows dealing with either police work or the criminal justice system have done.

The cast is for the most part quite good. To me Finnigan seems a little weak as Annabeth. She does quite well in the courtroom scenes but doesn't seem entirely comfortable in the domestic scenes. Kimberly Elise seems comfortable in her part, perhaps because it's a little less complex. Her character doesn't have much life outside of work (from our perspective of course) and the dilemma of the modern woman - whether to focus on career and delay having a family perhaps until it is almost too late - is integral to the character. Similarly John Carroll Lynch is excellent as ADA Sharpe who mixes competence as an administrator - only in the most recent episode have we seen him in a situation outside of the office - mixed with a significant portion of publicity seeker (he's always worried about how the public will perceive his office's actions). There is also just the slightest hint of pomposity. Of the regular cast, perhaps the one with the most difficult situation may be Christian Kane. The problem is that the character is given precious little to do and we see precious little of him. We need to have Jack Chase and Annabeth's new daughter to be real presences to us, to give the character some grounding within the community that she serves but at the same time Jack is entirely peripheral to virtually every episode of the series. It has to be a difficult situation for any actor to be in.

Close To Home is a good show although not one which rises too far above the crowd either in terms of performances or situations. The problem it had in its normal timeslot - Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. (CST) - is that it was facing two popular series in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Boston Legal and wasn't building on audience from The Amazing Race: Family Edition. The move to Friday nights, which was originally meant to be temporary, has been beneficial to Close To Home. Close To Home and Ghost Whisperer have compatible audience demographics, something that didn't exist with Threshold. While there hasn't been an official announcement yet, even the people at NBC seem to expect the move to become permanent - they've reduced the previously announced extension of the episode order for Three Wishes. The only loser in this situation is probably Threshold, the series which has held down the Friday slot that Close To Home now occupies. Since the show has yet to air on Tuesday nights, it is difficult to know if Threshold (a show that I like) will be able to survive opposite where Close To Home did not.