Having made all of those statements yesterday about getting stuff out on time I still managed to get this out two days late. The more things change...
I really shouldn't be writing much this time around. This week's list consists of a lot of shows which I haven't seen, either by choice, by scheduling conflicts, or because - to the best of my knowledge - they haven't been shown here. If I only discussed what I'd seen this would be a very slim list.
Inspector Alleyn Mysteries: Set 2
- I've been a huge fan of Dame Ngaio Marsh's character Inspector Roderick Alleyn in no small part because the character took the genteel tradition of the English drawing room mystery and combined it with a variant of the police procedural of the sort developed in the the John Creasey's "Gideon" mysteries. This series produced by the BBC was actually the second attempt to do a series of Roderick Alleyn mysteries (the first was a series of films done in New Zealand which I saw in 1982 and which got me interested in the character; this series seems exceptionally obscure) and starred Patrick Malahide as Alleyn. A weakness of this series (in my opinion of course) is that the series is tied to Britain, while some of Marsh's best stories were set in her native New Zealand. Nevertheless the packaging of this series - one 90 minute episode per disc with a biography of Mash and filmographies of most of the actors as extras - is first class.
The Batman: The Complete First Season
- The Batman is the current anime inspired version of Batman. It is highly different from the acclaimed 1990s Batman: The Animated Series, both in look and interpretation of the characters, with Bruce Wayne as a younger starting his career as a vigilante. I haven't seen much of the series so I'm not in a position to comment but the look is definitely interesting.
Blue Collar TV: Season 1, Vol. 2
- I have to confess, Blue Collar TV never sounded appealing to me. I was slightly familiar with Jeff Foxworthy's comedy act "You might be a redneck..." and I saw the first episode of his disastrous sitcom. I was not familiar with either Bill Engvall or "Larry The Cable Guy". The show was inspired by the "Blue Collar Comedy Tour" which in turn inspired Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie. It is interesting that this was an attempt by The WB to create a prime time sketch comedy series. Apparently you either got the joke and liked the show or you didn't and hated it.
The Best of the Electric Company
- Another show I never saw even after we got PBS on cable. CBC spent a huge amount of its Children's Programming budget on Sesame Street which scarcely left any money for domestic production let alone buying another series from the same producers, and by the time PBS became available here, the show was already gone. The show had a spectacular cast which included Oscar winners Rita Moreno and Morgan Freeman as well as Bill Cosby. This set includes twenty episodes of the show from each of the six seasons, which sounds like a lot until you realise that the show produced 780 episodes.
Emergency!: Season Two
- A very barebones presentation of the second season of the 1970s classic. By the second season the viewers were getting familiar not only with the primary characters - Paramedics Gage and DeSoto, Nurse Dixie McCall and Doctors Brackett and Early - but were also getting to know the crew at the Fire Station, many of whom had worked for Jack Webb (who created the series) for a number of years. The format didn't change much over time but it was an enjoyable format.
Grounded for Life: Season One
- Another one I didn't watch (I know, I missed a lot of TV). The first two seasons of the show were on Fox before it moved to The WB. I didn't watch it on Fox and I was even less likely to see it on The WB. The show was a mid-season replacement and ran fifteen episodes in the first season. The DVD set actually includes those fifteen episodes but also nine episodes from what was nominally the second season
Growing Pains: The Complete First Season
- One of those family comedies that took off from the success of Family Ties and a host of others. Again, I never watched this show but this was because of a dislike of one of the stars of the show. I didn't like Alan Thicke as a performer or as a talk show host. Turns out that the one who was the real problem with the show was Kirk Cameron, although that didn't really surface until later seasons when his religious conversion cause conflicts among cast and producers - at one point he called the producers "pornographers" when they were inserting themes that he regarded as too "adult, and he had the actress playing his fiancee fired because she had once been a Playboy Playmate.
Hearts Afire: The Complete Third Season
- Now this series I saw and enjoyed. Apparently I was the only one, and apparently I was the only one who preferred the first season - when the show was set in Washington - to the second and third seasons when it was set in a small town newspaper office. A very appealing cast included John Ritter, Markie Post, Ed Asner (in the last two seasons he played Markie Post's father) and a rather heavier Billy Bob Thornton. There was a tremendous chemistry between Ritter Post and Thornton and it really amazes me that this show never really found an audience. There are only fourteen episodes in the third season.
Moonlighting: Season 3
- Ah Moonlighting, the series that created the myth that having the characters actually sleep together ruins a series in which a man and a woman have a romantic/sexual bond. I say myth because anything can work well if the writers are willing to work with it. Witness what happened after Joel and Maggie did the deed on Northern Exposure - it didn't destroy the chemistry between the two it just got the sex out of the way so that the relationship could be developed further. The writers and producers of Moonlighting weren't willing or able of something to get beyond. There were lots of reasons why Moonlighting had troubles - the fact that Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd hated each other, the fact that the show never seemed able to produce more than 18 episodes in a season (and only did that many once), and the clumsy way they dealt with Cybil Shepherd's real life pregnancy in Season 4 (which was the reason why Dave and Maddie had sex in the first place). When it was on this show was on, and the third season has some prime examples of this including Atomic Shakespeare, It's A Wonderful Job (a take off on It's A Wonderful Life of course) and The Straight Poop which featured then hot gossip columnist Rona Barrett and a guest appearance by Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele. And yes this is the season in which Dave and Maddie do it.
The One Step Beyond Collection
- A contemporary of the far more famous Twilight Zone this series was a paranormal anthology hosted by actor and director John Newland. There are a lot of DVDs of One Step Beyond on the market because the show has something of a cult following and the series has fallen onto the public domain. Thus I can't really speak to the quality of the prints that were used for this set except to say that it comes from Passport Video, so you'll have to base any decisions on how good you feel the company's other sets are.
Pet Alien: Spaced Out
- Four episodes from the Cartoon Network series. Can't comment except to say that these animated series all seem to dribble out in an apparently cheap but actually expensive manner. Can you imagine putting a sitcom out like this instead of on a season by season basis?
Poltergeist: The Legacy - The Complete First Season
- I've seen moments of this and it does feature Helen Shaver who I've always found incredibly hot (even when she played a transsexual in The Education of Max Bickford) and that has nothing to do with seeing her in Desert Hearts or In Praise Of Older Women - she was fully clothed and hot in Who Has Seen The Wind playing a 1930s school teacher. Still I've never watched a complete episode, probably because I'm not a big fan of horror/paranormal series and the title seemed to promise just that.
Sex and the City Essentials: Breakups
Sex and the City Essentials: Lust
Sex and the City Essentials: Mr. Big
Sex and the City Essentials: Romance
- Having released the complete series in a number of combinations, the show is now offering what might best be described as "samplers", labelled as "Essentials". I don't know the show well enough to speculate on contents, but I'm willing to bet that the Lust volume features a lot of Samantha while Romance has a lot of Charlotte. Each disc has three episodes of a half hour each (approximately) and no extras. For the price of these four you can buy a full season set and get change along with continuity. I can't imagine this as being anything but a disjointed sampling of the show intended to get people to buy season sets. I don't think so.
Simpsons: Kiss and Tell
- A single disc with four episodes focussing on the relationship between Homer and Marge. Another sampler but at least these episodes aren't out on DVD yet.
Survivor Pearl Islands Panama - The Complete Season
- The debut of Rupert, America's Favourite Survivor - so proven by a vote in the Survivor: All Stars series (for the record I voted for Rudy Boesch) - as well as the only guy who seems to have set out to be hated, "Johnny Fairplay" aka Jon Dalton. Featured the first person to quit the series (Osten Taylor, who so disgusted the producers that his final words weren't shown) and a couple of the greatest gimmicks the show has ever used - the purchase of supplies (which lead to Rupert "pirating" the other team's shoes) and the return of the outcasts. Probably one of the best casts ever and as I've said before casting is key in a reality series.
Teen Titans: The Complete First Season
- The thing about the Teen Titans TV series is that someone made the unwise decision to make the characters very obviously children, and anime children with big eyes at that. If you were a fan of the old comic books from the 1980s (a high point for the Titans) this would be totally foreign to you. They really weren't Teens (there was a copyright dispute with Neal Adams which forced them to use the descriptive "Teen") but were college age or so. Robin and Starfire were having sex - every time they could - and Wonder Girl (a character not seen on the series) even got married and pregnant (in that order smut brains) and either divorced or widowed or both. Still, for what the animated series is it's alright.
Touched By An Angel Season 3 Volume1
- I never liked this series - which presumably makes me a bad person - but it always seemed very "preachy" to me and Della Reese's repeated interviews about it being a "God thing" irritated. People loved it though.
Wildfire: Season 1
- I don't believe that this ABC Family series has been shown on Canadian TV, at least not yet. The show features some good adult actors as seems to have the prerequisite teen relationship aspects covered. Plus: Horses! so it's bound to be a hit with teenaged girls.
Wire in the Blood: The Complete Third Season
- I haven't seen this BBC series, but I will recommend it sight unseen for one reason - the presence of Robson Green in it. He is one of the best actors working on British TV today. There have only been fourteen episodes of this show in three seasons. The one reservation I have is with presentation. This four disc set has one 69 minute episode per DVD (which covers the whole season) and there are extras on each disc (biography and filmograhy of the actors, weblinks and something about the author and the production company) but they're the same thing on each one! Maddening! Surely there's a better way to present the show than this.
Another poll from October.
The question is phrased in this way because many Canadians and others see American shows on their own local networks. What I'm talking about in this case is the originating network in the United States.
Comments gratefully received - votes also humbly requested.
Smaller turn out for this poll question than when I ran it in October. There were only four respondents. Still there does seem to be an interesting shift in responses, although the size of the sampling might have something to do with it.
Tied for third spot are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday with 0 votes. For comparison, in October Monday and Friday received no votes while Thursday was the winner with 5 (55.56%) and Tuesday was in second place with 3 (33.33%), while Monday and Friday had no votes. Tied for first were Wednesday and Sunday with 2 votes each. In the October survey, Wednesday had no votes, while Sunday had 1 vote (11.11%).
Explanation: As I mentioned part of this can be explained by the low voter turn out. Still I don think that there has been an ever so slight shift in viewing habits. Wednesday is full of shows that I watch consistently and has added more since Bones has moved to the night, and I watch an amazing six shows on Sunday night (West Wing, Cold Case, Desperate Housewives, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Grey's Anatomy and Crossing Jordan). On no other night is the VCR so busy, although Thursday is still number two with me - Dancing With The Stars is like peanuts for me - once I start I can't stop, which means I tape Smallville and CSI and catch Survivor on my late feed.
One other explanation. A person commented that I didn't include Saturday night in the list. This wasn't an oversight but more a reflection of my focus on network TV. With the exception of Fox the US broadcast networks don't program new series on Saturdays. In Canada CBC has Hockey Night In Canada but the other two networks seem to dump much of their Canadian Content here. The night - which used to be the cornerstone of television - is today a mix of reruns, reality, news shows and old movies. Although the initial CBS plan last year was to show the sixth season of The Amazing Race on Saturdays the plan was switched when they saw the ratings for the fifth season. CBS may have been the last network to abandon Saturdays as a venue for non-reality entertainment series, but barring unexpected changes, it is truly a wasteland for the networks.
New poll up in a couple of minutes.
One year ago I made the first two posts in this new blog. The first post expressed my raison d'etre for starting the blog: "What this Old Fart brings to the table is summed up in the description I gave to this blog - "I know what I like" and I like television. I don't like all of the shows and will say so which makes me a critic in the same way that it makes all of us critics. And in the end why shouldn't I have a blog that lets me be a critic. For that matter why shouldn't you?" The first post was fittingly enough about my current favourite show, The Amazing Race, which was about to have the final episode of the sixth season that night. I was hoping that Kris and Jon would win. They finished second behind the team I least wanted to win, Freddy and Kendra. Other topics covered in the first week included The West Wing, The Apprentice and Star Trek: Enterprise.
If I were to rate the first year of this blog, I'd have to give it a B-. The problem is my own and it primarily concerns getting things written in a timely manner. I had hoped to write material about shows in a clear and timely manner, but that just hasn't worked out. For example I still haven't written a review of The Office (although I did manage to review the first and only episode of Emily's Reasons Why Not - it vaguely amazes me that it got cancelled before Jake In Progress when it actually got better ratings than the latter show) although I'll tell you right now it's one of the best shows on TV. There is a long list of shows that I haven't reviewed, and that vexes me.
On the other hand there are things that I've done well. I'm reasonably happy with my writing - something that would shock an old professor of mine (known around the University of Saskatchewan campus as Red Ed Mahood because of his involvement with the campus Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)) who said I wasn't a very good writer. Then again I tended to find the books that he recommended to be leaden, virtually unreadable tomes. Admittedly I tend to like run on sentences and my paragraph structure is sometimes poor, but it's a personal quirk. Another thing that I'm happy with is that I've followed in the lead of Tom Sutpen and Stephen Cook's blog by making better use of pictures. Blogger has been helpful in this by making adding images easier - you don't know how many times I fought to use the Picassa and Hello! combo - but I still had to learn not to fear my door being battered down by copyright holders and their lawyers. I'm also happy with the way that I've tried to handle breaking news stories, most recently the decision to merge UPN and The WB into a new network called The CW (and what an awful name and logo it is). The TV on DVD thing is another logical idea although I must admit I'd be happier with getting it out on time.
Things I'd like to accomplish in the next twelve months. Well the obvious thing is adhering more closely to a deadline when it comes to getting reviews published. Even though outside interests restrict the work sometimes I have to say that it's my responsibility to "git r done" as Larry The Cable Guy would put it. I want to improve on that in the coming year. The other thing is that I'd like to develop a better template. This is more complicated and something that I'm about 50-50 in terms of actually accomplishing it. I like the "basic black" Blogger template, but I'd really like to go to a three column layout which would allow me to have links to the left side and other material on the right, hopefully all of it readable when you launch the page. Of course from my experience in publishing a Diplomacy zine I know that I have to balance my desire to have things visible with the reader's need for ease in actually reading the content. The eye needs white (or in the case of the current template black) space to make the content easy to read and too many designers - both of publications and web content - forget this. Besides that I'd like to jazz up the look of the page a bit, but not too radically. In a lot of cases style overwhelms substance - just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Of course to get this done - since I can't afford to hire a pro to do the design and it seems rather silly to do so anyway - I'll need to learn HTML which is why I'm probably 50-50 with regards to accomplishing anything.
Finally there are some people I'd like to thank. There are a lot of people on my blog roll, most of whom have been helpful. Special mentions go out to Tom and Stephen, Tim Gueguen, and Ronniecat for inspiration; to Ivan Shreve, Sam Johnson and Linda for steadfast friendship and support; to Bryce Zabel for not dismissing an amateur critic out of hand; to Tele-Tart and Tele-Toby for being there too; and to Tony Figueroa for not giving me as much grief as he probably could have for using a similar title to his. And finally there's you gentle readers who actually bother to read the blasted thing. I literally couldn't do it without the knowledge that there were people who actually spent a few seconds actually reading the blasted thing.
Man, that was almost as bad as an Emmy speech. At least I don't have an agent to thank!
It seems that there's considerable controversy about exactly how much of the biography of Al Lewis is true. Virtually everyone believed that Al Lewis, who played Grandpa on The Munsters (and no it wasn't Grandpa Munster - he was Lily's father not Herman's - but Grandpa Sam Dracula) was born in 1910, was active in the efforts to free Sacco & Vanzetti, was a circus clown, got a PhD in Child Psychology in 1941, ran for Governor of New York at age 88. Now it appears as if it may all have been a house of cards.
Media outlets are updating their obituaries of Lewis when Lewis's son Ted stated that his father was born in 1923, not 1910. This throws a considerable amount of the "Al Lewis Legend" into disarray. Did he get a degree in Child Psychology? If so then he was highly precocious since he would only have been 18 at the time. Of course that's to be expected from a youth who had been an activist for Sacco and Vanzetti at age 4. He would have been a youth of 75 when he ran for governor and forget working in the circus or as a medicine show performer - if he was going to get that PhD at 18 he'd have to be glued to the books 24/7.
I'm not calling Ted Lewis a liar however this whole thing stinks like one of Al's cigars. I tend to distrust memoirs from family members. All too often a family member has an axe to grind - if you don't believe I cite Gary Crosby (son of Bing and author of Going My Own Way), Christina Crawford (daughter of Joan and author of Mommy Dearest), B.D. Hyman (daughter of Bette Davis and author of My Mother's Keeper), and Maria Riva (daughter of Marlene Dietrcih and author of Marlene Dietrich). I'm not asking for a lot but taking either Al Lewis or Ted Lewis entirely at their words has now at the very least become difficult. I need documentation.
Of course none of this takes away from the fact that Al Lewis was a very funny and fascinating man or that Sam Dracula was a great comic creation. In fact sifting the truth and the fiction to reveal the real Al Lewis might make him more interesting. Or it might be a case where, when given the choice between the truth and the legend it is better to - as the newspaper man in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance said "Print the legend."
One of the most amazing figures in TV history was Al "Grandpa" Lewis. Very few other actors parlayed a character on a show that lasted only two years into both a career and a persona, but once Al Lewis found Grandpa Munster in The Munsters he was set for life.
Al Lewis was born in Woolcott New York, but his family moved to Brooklyn as a child and he was a New Yorker from that point on. He worked as a hot dog vendor at Ebbetts Field and, in the 1920s, as a cricus performer before returning to college. He graduated from Columbia in 1941 with a PhD in Child Psychology. He returned to acting in 1949, working in Burlesque and the last days of vaudeville. His first TV role was in an episode of a series called Decoy, and he appeared in a number of dramas over the years. However it was his work in comedies that really caught people's attention. He appeared in a couple of episodes of The Phil Silvers Show (aka Sergeant Bilko).
Still it was Car 54 Where Are You? that brought him to general notice. Although the role of Officer Leo Schnauser was a supporting part to the main characters of Gunther Toody (Joe E. Ross) and Francis Muldoon (Fred Gwynne). He would later portray Leo Schnauser in the 1994 film remake of Car 54 Where Are You? The relationship with Gwynne continued when the two were cast in The Munsters. Gwynne played the Frankenstein-like Herman Munster while Lewis played the cigar smoking mad scientist vampire known as Grandpa. Grandpa was - allegedly - the smart one in the relationship. Of the character of Grandpa, Lewis once said "The role of Grandpa is not complicated because you're wearing odd makeup or bizarre costumes. That's not what complicates a role. What makes Grandpa a little odd is the fact that he had no prototype. When I approached this role, I knew that whatever I was doing was original. So no director could say to me, 'Listen, remember how he did it, this is how I want it done.' I worked very hard creating that character. I made those lines work. The walk and the posture all fit the character. As to the character itself, you might say that Grandpa was a kind of Dracula-type Major Hoople."
Car 54 Where Are You? and The Munsters were Al Lewis's only regular TV roles. The two series lasted a total of four years. He would continue to act for many years - his last credit was in 2002 as Father Hanlon in a movie called Night Terror - but all of his later TV appearances were guest appearances. Yet over the years he remained a familiar figure who came to look like Grandpa, with his bushy sideburns and receding hairline. He actively promoted this image. At one point he owned a Greenwich Village restaurant called "Grandpa's" and he'd make personal appearances at the drop of a cigar. This attachment to the "Grandpa" character caused something of a rift between him and Fred Gwynne for a number of years because the Harvard educated Gwynne desperately want to put The Munsters behind him and be regarded as a serious actor.
In later years Al Lewis's political activities caught public attention when in 1998, at age 88, he ran for Governor of New York on the Green Party ticket against George Pataki - he won 52,000 votes which was enough to earn the Greens a line on the state ballot for the next four years. It really shouldn't have come as a surprise - Lewis's involvement in political causes went back to at least 1927 when he was involved in the unsuccessful efforts to gain clemency for Sacco and Vanzetti. For a number of years he hosted a politically oriented radio show in WBAI-FM, a non-commerical listener supported radio station in New York. He once said about his politics that "if anything I consider myself an anarchist." During the 1990s he was a frequent guest on Howard Stern's radio show and Stern once had to censor Lewis when Al led on an obscene chant directed at the FCC.
Besides politics Lewis - who was 6'1" but looked shorter (probably because he was usually seen alongside Fred Gwynne who was 6'5" and wore special boots as Herman which made him taller) - was passionate about basketball and for many years was a basketball scout for Red Auerbach of the Boston Celtics.
In June 2003, Al Lewis underwent his third angioplasty. Complications occurred and his right leg below the knee and the toes on his left foot were amputated, and he spent the next month in a coma. Al Lewis passed away on Friday but his death was announced by WBAI-FM program director Bernard White during the time slot which had been home to Lewis's radio show. White said of Lewis, "To say that we will miss his generous, cantankerous, engaging spirit is a profound understatement." Indeed.
This is totally off topic but I just had to mention it.
I don't normally mention where I play Poker online but one place where I play a lot is Full Tilt Poker. One thing about Full Tilt is that they have a large number of pros who play on the site, including Phil Gordon, Howard Lederer, Eric Lindgren, Clonie Gowan, and Andy Bloch. Occasionally pros will even play in the freeroll tournaments, which is where you'll find a character named Sleddog aka Me. Tonight I was playing in the Razz Freeroll and who should sign up but one of my favourite professional players, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. Unfortunately I didn't make it to his table, but he finished the tournament in 127th place (out of 800) while I finished in 67th so you might say that I'm a better poker player than "Jesus".
You might also say that pigs fly when you load them onto an airplane.
Vote in the poll!
Okay now that I've got that out of the way, let's get down to cases. You may remember the
character Mister Six. He was the elderly gent who danced in those Six Flags Amusement Park ads to that song by the Venga Boys. (Okay I admit, I wouldn't know the Venga Boys from a rock - the music I usually listen to tends to be more along the lines of Mozart and Sibelius - but people tell me it's the Venga Boys so I believe them.) The commercial campaign debuted in March 2004 and ended on November 30, 2005 when the new owner of Six Flags, Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder decided that the campaign "skewed too young" and stated that the character was "pointless". From the beginning Mr. Six was annoying to many but you had to admit the character was incredible noticeable and people talked about him ... a lot.
The mystery of course was "Who is Mr. Six?" Eliminating Patrick McGoohan - he was Number Six and never addressed by the title "Mister" - we are left with resemblances.
There are those who say that Mr. Six resembles actor and singer Dominic Chianese, aka Uncle Corrado "Junior" Soprano. Of course Uncle June has more hair and fewer liver spots.
Personally I've always thought that he bore a stunning resemblance to legendary Hollywood super-agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar, whose post Oscar parties were legendary events - one went straight from the Oscars to Swifty's parties. Well at least you did before he died. Ruined a great party that did.
However it appears that the secret is now out. On February 1, in his blog , Los Angeles based writer and blogger Paul Davidson revealed that Mr. Six was British choreographer and dancer Danny Teeson, probably best known to many as one of the "gal-pals" on Queer Eye For The Straight Girl. Paul Davidson offered no proof, but today (February 3) Mark Evanier provided what may be the smoking gun in his blog News From Me. It is a 2003 credit list from a firm called Professional Vision Care Associates. On the current version on their website they list a credit for "Mr. Six" for Six Flags but Mark found a Google cached version of the page which clearly has Danny Teeson's name in place of "Mr. Six".
Well that's one mystery apparently solved. Now for the big one. How on Earth can a campaign for an amusement park chain skew too young? You're supposed to want young people in your amusement parks, the same way you want young people watching your TV shows and for the same bloody reason - they spend money. Even the pointless comment is ridiculous; the idea behind "Mr. Six" was that going to Six Flags made you feel young even if you weren't, that the parks were places for everyone to have fun. Of course given so many of Mr. Snyder's decisions regarding the Redskins over the years that he's owned them, this boneheaded move should come as no real surprise.
It probably should be hard to be the producer of Survivor. Every season it seems as though you have to come up with a new gimmick or two to keep viewers interested. You've done men versus women. You've done pick teams. You've done switch teams halfway through. You've brought back people who were eliminated already in a season. You've brought back people who were eliminated the previous season. You've done an All Star Season and split the players up into four teams for that. You've even done a season where one team was voted to near extinction. You've played with all sorts of gimmicks. Then you look over at the people at The Amazing Race - you know the show that's cleaned your clock three times at the Emmys - and you see that the one and only time they tried a gimmick, in the form of The Amazing Race: Family Edition not only did their ratings go down rather than up but they were roundly criticized by fans and professional TV critics who wanted the show to go back to the way it was. Sometimes an ordinary mortal producer would question whether he needed gimmicks to keep his show fresh, or whether just focussing on the players would be enough. But of course the producer of Survivor is Mark Burnett a man with a gargantuan ego (despite having only Survivor, The Apprentice and arguably Rock Star: INXS as legitimate hits) who just happens to be sleeping with Roma Downey (that's not really relevant but I just thought I'd mention it): if he thinks that the series needs a new gimmick every season then by heavens it gets a new gimmick every season.
There are what initially appears to be two gimmicks this season. One is that there will be four teams this season "old versus young, men versus women", while the other is something called "Exile Island". The four teams gimmick is something of a fraud however since host Jeff Probst has let that particular cat out of the bag by telling the various entertainment "news" shows that it will only last one episode. And really I have difficulty in seeing how that particular idea could be sustainable over any real length of time given sixteen player. That would mean four players per team and a team that lost two players would be at a serious disadvantage. I initially suspected that they might go to three teams of five after the first elimination, but apparently what will actually happen is that once the first episode is completed they'll go back to the "schoolyard pick" method to come up with two teams. According to Jeff Probst, in an interview with the Cincinnati Post, maintaining four separate production crews for any length of time would just be too expensive.
I have to confess that the other gimmick for the season intrigues me a bit more. This season's edition has the full title Survivor Panama: Exile Island and the gimmick attached to that is that in each episode one player will be sent off for three days alone on a mysterious and vaguely creepy "Exile Island" without shelter, food or fire. Obviously this keeps them away from their home camp and out of the alliance building, backstabbing loop. Plus, the deeper into the game you get the harder the potential impact - physically and mentally - will be for the player who is going into what amounts to solitary confinement. On the other hand there is a potential benefit for the player going to Exile Island in the form of a hidden Immunity Idol. The player who finds the Idol can use it at any time, and most importantly doesn't have to reveal that he or she has it until after an elimination vote. Thus there's the potential for someone to be voted out unanimously only to reveal the Idol and have their own vote be the only one to decide who will be eliminated. According to the Post interview, Probst said that "At one point in tribal someone said, 'You know, we think this has changed the game too much.' I cracked up. That's definitely a sign that's working."
Probst also described this as one of the top five Survivor casts ever. Although to my mind how good a Survivor cast is can only really be known after the season has ended, this group has a great deal of potential. Most of the pre-season attention has gone to former astronaut Dan Barry, but there's also Misty Giles, a rocket scientist (amazingly the second one to appear on the series) who is also a former beauty queen, and former F-14 pilot Terry Dietz. There an LA based entertainment promoter named Shane Powers about whom Probst says "Shane's the guy that if he walked in every season and looked different, we'd put him on every season," Probst said. "He opens his mouth and you go, 'Oh, what's he going to say next?'" My own personal favourites are Bruce Kanegai, an art teacher and Karate instructor who also used to train California police officers "arrest and control techniques, weapon retention and the side-handle baton", and Ruth Marie Milliman whose varied career includes being a college cheerleader, a page at the South Carolina legislature, flight attendant, the first female narcotics agent for the South Carolina Law Enforcement Agency and (I swear) the 1978 South Carolina Watermelon Queen. Also of note was Tina Scheer, a "logging sports promoter" who was selected to participate in Survivor Guatemala but was forced to withdraw following the death of her only child in a car accident a week before she was due to leave. The producers offered to keep a spot open for her in the next series, if she felt it was ready to do it.
Full biographies for all 16 members of this season's group can be found at the Survivor website.
In all honesty I have to say that I don't know how well this season of Survivor will do in the ratings. According to the Cincinnati Post article Survivor Guatemala experienced a slippage in viewership last fall, despite what I thought was one of the most challenging environments they've ever operated in (Probst likes this season's cast better though - according to him they are more enthusiastic about the game than the Survivor Guatemala group). Moreover, this season the show is going up against a program where the audience has to watch the show live in order to participate. Dancing With The Stars has been maintaining strong ratings - third place on the night although weaker in the 18-49 demographic - since it debuted. Are viewers going to abandon a show which they already have four weeks invested in emotionally to watch the early weeks of Survivor? And how will Survivor do against Dancing With The Stars and two Thursdays of NBC's Winter Olympics coverage. While I don't think this combination will be fatal to Survivor, I would not be at all surprised to see a major ratings dip for the episodes on February 16 and 23 in particular.
A nice long list this week with one legitimate classic making its debut and several good series continuing to be released. Of course there's some stuff that as far as I'm concerned is a waste of plastic. There always is something that someone considers a waste of plastic but still, is there really a desperate need for Gastineau Girls to be available on DVD.
All-American Girl: The Complete Series
- I'm not a big fan of comedian Margaret Cho and I didn't like this series. In that at least I am in good company, since Cho herself was quite vocal at the time and ever since about just how crappy (well not exactly her word) she thought the show was. She was first described as "not Asian enough" when the cast consisted of several Asian American actors (including Clyde Kusatsu and B.D. Wong as her father and brother) and then "too Asian" when the format was switched to a group of "multi-cultural friends". The pressures of the show included getting her to lose weight which led to severe kidney failure. It also led to drug and alcohol addiction problems. If she didn't like it it has to have been bad.
Archie Bunker's Place: The Complete First Season
- The biggest problem with Archie Bunker's Place is that it wasn't All In The Family. The series switched focus away from the family home to a mix of the home and the bar that Archie had somehow managed to buy. This shift in focus gave the show a wider range of guest stars and semi-regulars to work with In addition to Archie, Edith, and their niece Stephanie. Initially they seem to have wanted to recreate the old dynamic of All In The Family by adding the great Martin Balsam as Archie's liberal Jewish partner Murray Klein. The first season featured limited participation by Jean Stapleton as Edith, but also had the great Anne Meara as the cook in the bar and sparring partner for Archie.
The A-Team: Season Three
- The A-Team was of course a phenomenon of the 1980s. Not necessarily a good phenomenon in the view of the anti-violence types - violence was the solution to all problems but the violence was never "deadly" - not to mention feminists, given the way the two attempts at creating female regulars ended up. As a matter of fact George Peppard, apparently speaking for the rest of the cast, stated that the show had no place for women as regular characters. Personally I liked Melinda Cullea as Amy Allen, was less happy with Marla Heasley as Tawnia Baker who was briefly added in this season. The plots didn't change much in the first four seasons - person being menaced gets in touch with the Team, Team goes to help and makes progress against bad guys, bad guys get upper hand but Team beats them, usually with some gadget developed by B.A., Team escapes seconds ahead of MPs.
Benny Hill: Set 4 - The Hill's Angels Years - Complete & Unadulterated
- Benny Hill was one of the great comedy phenomenons ever on TV. His programs weren't particularly sophisticated and the British intelligentsia rarely thought highly of him, but you can't argue with success and if it was nothing else, The Benny Hill Show was eminently successful and was seen in over 100 countries. The "Hill's Angels" period is defined by this set as running from 1978-81, and featured a rather buxom group of dancers. The mainstay of this group was Louise English who met Hill through her mother and became a close personal friend of his. The shows seen in the United States tended to be censored for content. In Canada I think we saw the British version which included more risque material including (if I remember correctly) some occasional nudity.
Dark Shadows: DVD Collection 22
- I'm pretty sure that Dark Shadows is the only daily soap opera available on DVD. The run of the series was short enough and the fan base of the show is large enough that this can work. They must be getting near the end of this ... mustn't they?
Diff'rent Strokes: The Complete Second Season
- "It takes Diff'rent Strokes to move the world yes it does." Who knew just how "diff'rent" the fates of the young people on this show would be. The second season was Charlotte Rae's last before her character of Edna Garrett was spun off to Facts of Life, the show for which she is better known. The second season also featured crossover episodes with MacLean Stevenson's series Hello Larry in a desperate (but ultimately futile) attempt to boost the ratings of the latter show (which I vaguely remember liking). If I don't sound terribly enthusiastic about this release, I guess it's because there's so many better shows than this (or All-American Girl) that aren't out on DVD.
Gastineau Girls: Season One
- Another waste of DVD production time. An E! cable reality show featuring the ex-wife and daughter of former NY Jet football player (and concensus All-American jackass) Mark Gastineau. Produced by Endemol productions, the cast also appears to include former Ukrainian figure skater Oksana Baiul. For the love of all that is holy, spend your money on something else - even porn - and don't encourage these people to make any more of these.
Here Comes the Grump
- I've never heard of this one. According to the IMDB it was produced by Friz Freleng's DePatie-Freleng Studios it features a number of well known voice actors including Rip Taylor, June Foray, Mel Blanc and Jay North. Reportedly very surrealistic the final episode is supposedly the rarest animation show ever - it was only aired once.
Hetty Wainthropp Investigates: The Complete Third Series
- I've never seen this British mystery series but it does feature Patricia Routledge in a totally different role from her most famous part, Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances, and Dominc Monaghan (now seen on Lost of course) in his first acting role. The DVD set is rather thin on extras.
Hill Street Blues: Season 1
- Probably the greatest series of the 1980s and arguably one of the greatest TV series of all times. The mix of characters and their qualities is incredible. Every one of them has something that draws you in. I can vividly remember some aspects of the first episode from Sergeant Esterhaus's first roll call (and his engagement to a high school senior) to the revelation - as Joyce Davenport prepares for bed ranting about the "fascist occupation force" that is the police presence at Hill Street Station - of the affair between the public defender and the station commander Captain Frank Furillo. Even the gang members - one of whom was a very young David Caruso - were memorable. Absolutely seminal TV. Skip the crap and buy this.
Inked: The Best of Season 1
- I remember when A&E made quality programs, original dramas and an assortment of British shows with a mix of classic movies. Now it seems to be a refuge for recent series in syndication and reality shows, of which the best is Airline. I've never seen Inked for two reasons: I hate what A&E has become and I neither understand nor particularly like the current fashion for tattoos. Call me an old fart but that's how it is.
Knight Rider: Season Three
- It is a fact of life of course that for every Hill Street Blues there has to be a Knight Rider. Let's just accept that the concept for the show was brilliantly dumb: hire a good looking actor to star in the show but have most of the important lines be delivered by the car who could be voiced by a better - and not so attractive - actor. While this concept was never carried to it's fullest (David Hasselhoff has at least a slight bit of ability as an actor - he covers a range from A to C, which is better than A to B) it is a fact that William Daniels was the better actor and that the car usually got the best lines.
Magnum P.I.: The Complete Third Season
- While it doesn't quite reach the levels for me that Hill Street Blues did, this is another series that I urge you to buy instead of crap like Gastineau Girls. The series was absolutely perfect in terms of casting, with Larry Manetti as Orville "Rick" Wright playing off Roger E. Mosley as "T.C." Magnum's confrontation with Higgins are classics as well. Even the recurring characters are special - a favourite of mine was always Gillian Dobb as Higgin's friend Agatha. There was a sweetness to her relationship with "Mr. Magnum". (To go off topic for a moment, one of the worst things about the recent revision of the Internet Movie Database is that it has made it extremely difficult to find the names of actors who had frequent recurring roles on series. There's no list of recurring guest stars available and if you don't know if a person was in an episode it is nearly impossible to find a name that way.) Season 3 features one of the visits from a mostly unseen but heard Orson Welles as Robin Masters.
MI-5: Volume 3
- MI-5 is of course the American name for the British series Spooks - reportedly the name change occurred because of the racial connotation of the word "Spook" in the United States - which has been seen on A&E. In this case it is entirely right and proper for American viewers to wait for the DVD release since A&E edits approximately 15 minutes of content from the show in order to insert commercials, this apparently being more appealing to them than running the show at 90 minutes and supplementing the number of ads they can sell with other material. Season 3 of the series is noteworthy in that during the course of the season all of three main members of the original cast leaves the show and there were a lot of complaints that the replacements were far inferior to the originals. Definitely worth the price.
The Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection
- For a character who started exclusively as part of the trailer for a movie, Friz Freleng's Pink Panther did pretty well for himself. Included on this set are the 124 Pink Panther cartoons produced by DePatie-Freleng Studios between 1964 and 1980, in which the Panther displays the comedic timing of a Chaplin or a Keaton - silently, acompanied by music and a narrator as opposed to the 1993 TV cartoons where the Panther talked (and worse sounded like Matt Frewer). The set also includes the animated title sequences for The Pink Panther, A Shot in the Dark, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Revenge of the Pink Panther, and Trail of the Pink Panther. What I don't know is whether the set includes anything from the companion series featuring The Inspector. Probably not.
Rat Patrol: The Complete First Season
- The Rat Patrol was based on the exploits of the various British "private armies" serving in North Africa during the campaign against Rommel, including the original Special Air Service and the Long Range Desert Group, which used the fluidity of desert warfare to operate far behind the German lines primarily for reconnaissance and attacks against German supply lines. By the time the Americans landed in North Africa the Germans were in retreat after the battle of El Alamein and the need for the private armies was waning. That didn't stop ABC from taking the story of the LRDG, making it about a four man American unit (well three Americans and a token Brit) racing around the desert in two machine gun armed jeeps and causing tremendous problems for the Germans in the person of Hauptmann Dietrich, played to perfection by Hans Gudegast (aka Eric Braden). The acting is generally adequate for what it is - a half hour show with a greater emphasis on action than character development (although Dietrich is one of the most sympathetic regular antagonists you're likely to find in a war series). There's plenty of action and the decision to shoot the series in colour was a definite asset. Just don't buy this expecting the strength and depth of a series like Combat!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Series 3, Vol. 6 - Turtles Against H.A.T.E.
- The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles really started as a joke, but it was a joke that sold ... and sold and sold. The first animated series - which the creators of the original comic books dislike because it was such a departure from their original concept - was the one of longest running animated TV series ever. The episodes on this DVD are from the 2003 Fox Kids series which is considered by many fans to be far closer to the comic book roots of the characters. I can't judge since I've spent a long time and a lot of energy avoiding any version of the Turtles.
Two's Company: Complete Series 4
- The final season of the classic British comedy featuring the clash of cultures and personalities between a spirited American writer, played by Elaine Stritch and a stuffy uppercrust English butler, played by Donald Sinden. These two actors alone makes this series worth watching As I recall, by the fourth season the two characters had achieved a sort of affectionate mutual entente. It's not a typical British comedy, or more accurately it's not what people think of as a typical British comedy, but it is highly enjoyable.
The X-Files Season 1 (New)
The X-Files Season 2 (New)
The X-Files Season 3 (New)
- Okay, we all know that The X-Files has been released on DVD before so why release it again? Well apparently there are a couple of reasons and they depend on where you happen to be, believe it or not. The Amazon.ca site lists this as the "Bilingual Edition" and apparently is only in French, while the Amazon.com site refers to it as a "Collector's Edition" (as a result I'm not linking these to the Amazon.ca site - there's too much confusion as to what you'd be getting from them). So what makes it a "Collector's Edition" beyond new cover art? Apparently the answer is a significantly lower price made possible by selling them in thin packs and not offering the bonus material from the seventh disk of the original season releases. The usual warning applies in this situation - if you already have these shows on DVD stay away, but if you don't (and particularly if price was a major reason why you didn't buy them originally) this might be something for you to get. Just don't buy it because it says "Collector's Edition".
It's National Gorilla Suit Day!
Of course this brings to mind the single worst and yet most beloved gorilla suit I've ever seen. By their very nature gorilla suits aren't particularly attractive - on the whole in fact an insult to gorillas in Rwanda Burundi and every zoo in the world. However the gorilla suit used on the Wayne & Shuster Show was perhaps the homeliest and most unrealistic ever. It was neatly groomed and probably made at a time when they didn't use synthetic fibers to make gorilla suits. The colour, as I recall, wasn't actually black but rather close to a chocolate or coffee brown. However, the single most memorable feature was that this gorilla was bald. No, I don't mean totally without fur or with patches of fur missing from parts of it's body. Rather the head was similar to nothing less than a bald man from the face up to the top of the head was bare brown - rubber I guess - in a pattern of baldness that basically reminds one of any bald man. It is impossible to truly do justice to this gorilla suit without seeing it, and I wish I had art for this, but I haven't been able to find a picture anywhere online. The suit was suit was, if I'm not mistaken, used by the boys since at least the 1960s and possibly in the 1950s, until Johnny Wayne's death in 1990 ended the act.
I meant to get this out sooner, but I was involved in a rather long online Poker tournament Sunday night-Monday morning (a bit of a breakthrough for me since I had an excellent finish in Razz, a variant of Poker that I've only just started playing) and was swamped with other stuff on Monday.
This poll is actually a recycling of one of three that I ran on October last year, and I'm running it to see if there has been any shift in the viewing habits of my readers based on the actual shows that have are on now. I'll probably run the same poll again in May or June.
Feel free to comment here on the why you voted the way you did.
So I hadn't actually planned that this would be such a light week for posting. I was part way through a review on The Office (finally - I had planned to review this in the first season and then in the beginning of the second season but stuff kept getting in the way including a lackluster season of what is still my favourite reality show, maybe my favourite TV show, The Amazing Race) but I managed to lose it. I also planned on a couple of articles about TV business, at least one of which will get written today, but I wanted to do both. But then I discovered sufficient impetus to update my blogroll, so that's what you get for now. Oh yeah, and I'll probably get a new set of polls up for Monday.
Deleted
- Wistful Vistas is now off the roll largely because the creator has announced that he won't be doing any more with it, which was fairly obvious since it hasn't been updated since October. Too bad, since Old Time Radio is pretty much the father of series Television. Who knows how TV would have developed if it didn't have the season and continuing story model of Radio. That's the sort of thing I had expected Wistful Vistas to look at but the blog never seemed to get traction.
Added
- Center for Creative Voices in Media Blog is pretty much a business blog. The focus is on the business of television and cable with a particular focus on the impact of media and cable concentration, and official and unofficial censorship on creativity in the media.
- John Kenneth Muir's Reflections on Film/TV. Muir is a professional writer who, in this blog, focuses on science fiction on TV and movies as well as his passion for TV related toys like the Eagle from Space: 1999. Generally interesting stuff though.
- The TVShowsOnDVD.com Blog is an essential supplement to the website which in itself is Indispensable if you want to find out what TV series are available or are going to be available on DVD. The blog allows Gord Lacey and Dave Lambert the opportunity to discuss things that the structure of the parent website necessarily doesn't permit, such as the potential impact of the iPod video as an alternative to DVD, or why series show up on Region 2 DVDs much sooner than they do on Region 1. Good stuff.
- What's Alan Watching? is a personal blog from professional TV critic Alan Sepinwall. Old timers from the rec.arts.tv newsgroup - like Ian J. Ball and I - remember the halcyon days when Alan, who is the TV critic for the Newark Star-Ledger, was a regular participant in the group. Needless to say his knowledge of the TV business put most of the rest of us to shame, but his opinions always carried a certain amount of weight - except among those who disliked him on general principle. Worth reading as both a critic and a blogger with added perceptions. This blog seems to have been a fairly well kept secret until recently when he mentioned the possibility that Tommy Schlamme and Aaron Sorkin might be at the NBC Press Tour leading to speculation that they'd be writing at least one episode of The West Wing. It proved to be false but it did catch the attention of a lot of people including "Wingnuts" like me.
I'll probably have more stuff for you later today.
I made a truly hideous omission yesterday which I only discovered this morning when I drifted over to Mark Evanier's blog (as I do every morning). Yesterday, January 26, was the birthday of the greatest character actor ever to grace the movie or TV screen. Yesterday Charles Lane - Homer Bedloe himself - turned 101 years young. I think I missed it because of all the attention being given to Mr. Lane's old piano teacher - Wolfgang Amadeaus Mozart's birthday is today. In fact CBC2 is playing his music all day today.
