There are times when an actor is so dominant that just the mention of his name in association with a project is sufficient to to let you know that he (or far less often she) will dominate that project for good or ill. I mean let's face it, when Jack Nicholson is in a picture who is going to watch anyone else. Well maybe if DeNiro is there too. And then there's James Woods. When James Woods is on screen - in a movie, a TV show or even a poker tournament - he's the guy you're going to be watching. Not always because he's good because that's not always the case but because he seems to have this hyperactive need to be the centre of attention and whether it's showing up at a heads up poker game against Johnny Chan carrying a grapefruit (Chan is famous for sniffing an orange during a tournament, defense against the days when most poker rooms were also filled with smoke) or devouring the scenery in just about any movie he's in, he wants people watching him. And now he's come to television in the new CBS show Shark.
Woods plays Sebastian Stark, a high priced defence attorney to the stars. When we first see Stark he's addressing the jury at a high profile trial of a man accused of the attempted murder of his wife. His argument wasn't that the man didn't beat the crap out of his wife but that the charge of attempted murder was the wrong one since he had called 911 after he beat her and had kept her alive until the emergency services arrived. The wife beater, Gordie Brock, was found not guilty in about three hours. Six days later Brock beat his wife to death and had the arrogance to tell the cops "It’s my lawyer, boys. So why not save everybody some time and money and let me go right now." Stark went into what amounted to a state of depression for about a month before an offer came from the office of the Mayor of Los Angeles, an old friend of Stark's. He was setting up a "high profile crimes" unit within the Los Angeles District Attorney's office and he wanted to bring someone in from outside to head up the operation because he wasn't impressed with the quality of the people in the DA's office. The man he had in mind was Sebastian Stark.
In short order Stark becomes the newest Assistant District Attorney in the office of DA Jessica Devlin (Jeri Ryan, a much better actress than we gave her credit for when she was labouring away as 7 of 9 in Star Trek: Voyager) and is given the traditional new guy "hated by the boss" gifts - an office in the bowels of the building that is ever so slightly better than Ainsley Hayes's office in The West Wing and a team of the biggest screw-ups that the DAs office can find. And Stark knows it. There's a very impressive little scene where he goes through the resumes of each of his staff members from memory, including a young woman who "isn't on the list" but has volunteered to join the team because she wants to be a defense attorney and wants to learn from the best. "Know thy enemy" is part of his philosophy of trying cases in court which is summed up in his three rules of court: (1) Trial is war and second place is death, (2) Truth is relative - pick one, (3) in a jury trial only twelve opinions matter. In his first case Stark has to deal with an up and coming young singer who stabbed a cameraman working on her video shoot, supposedly because he attempted to rape her. In his first assignments for him, Stark's team lives down to his - and presumably the DA's - expectations of them. Not only can't they follow his instructions but they bring him a piece of evidence that apparently blasts his case apart. It's a video on the Internet showing the defendant and the victim having very consensual sex. Great thinks the team, it's not rape so the defendant can't claim self-defense - terrible says Stark because it makes the defendant look like a sleaze who tapes his sexual conquests and she acted when he tried to stop her from protecting her reputation by destroying the video. Things get worse when the defense is able to show that the victim, a young man portrayed by his mother (Melissa Leo - virtually unrecognisable to anyone who remembers her from Homicide: Life On The Streets and looking far older than her 46 years) as non-violent, had attacked a female nurse while he was under psychiatric care. That night, at his palatial home Stark shows his team his full-sized court - literally a courtroom in the basement complete with artifacts from various famous trials, like the Clarence Darrow's chair from the Scopes Monkey Trial - and how to attack a witness on the stand. This is a great motivational tactic and inspires his team members to work harder. But it is Stark himself who is able to figure out the final piece of evidence that induces a tearful confession on the stand from the defendant.
There's a "B" plot involving custody of Stark's daughter. Stark's divorce from his ex-wife (played by Lindsay Frost - again unrecognisable but this time because she's a brunette rather than a blonde) has been amicable and they've shared custody of their daughter until she makes a final decision who she wants to live with at age 16. However Stark's ex is getting remarried and moving to New York. As a result he expects his daughter to go with his wife and wants to spend time with her before she leaves. Their schedules don't exactly mesh and what he thinks is a final dinner with his daughter, he is so distracted by the court case that it turns into a disaster. All of which makes her final decision about custody a surprise, albeit a rather predictable surprise if you don't happen to be either of the girl's parents.
Shark is all about James Woods. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of scenes he's not in, and you'd probably only have to take of one sock to count the number of shots he's not in. And he so dominates the proceedings that the four young actors who he spends the most time with on screen - Sam Page, Sophina Brown, Alexis Cruz, and Sarah Carter - get about as much chance to develop their characters as one of those little dolls that come with Fisher-Price toys. Hopefully this changes in subsequent episodes. Danielle Panabaker,who plays Stark's daughter Julie, fares better. She brings a warmth to her character and is seemingly the only person who can penetrate Sebastian Stark's armour not to mention his overpowering ego. As I mentioned earlier, Jeri Ryan turns in her usual good performance and manages not to be totally overwhelmed by Woods' personality. What they do with the character could be interesting, but I suspect they're going to go with the tried and true "unresolved sexual tension" gambit - they can't stand each other but are still yearning to get into each other's pants. I hate "unresolved sexual tension" as a plot device.
The writing on this show is adequate. Certainly there's more than a few "bon mots" mostly for James Woods - "What can I say. There's no 'team' in 'I'." - but occasionally for other characters as well. A defense lawyer (with whom Stark had sex a couple of times) calls him "Shark" and he says "don't call me that" at which point she reminds him that she's seen his 'fin'. For all that the script isn't that bad. There are a couple of chances for Woods to have quiet moments, as when he's having a private meeting with Melissa Leo's character, and several with Panabaker where he comes across as a man who is a doting parent even if he can't remember the details of his daughter's life. And yet the whole thing comes across as being strained and forced to fit James Woods and his personality. I'm hard pressed to think of another actor for whom this script would have worked. As for the direction, the pilot was supposed to have been a "Spike Lee joint" but I really can't see anything about the way he did this episode that would set it - or him - apart from the average TV director. Not that I'm knocking TV directors of course, but I was expecting a whole lot more from a guy whose been nominated for a couple of Oscars. It's certainly not as distinctive as Tarentino's turns on either ER or CSI.
How to assess this show? This show wouldn't be on the air without James Woods - literally, since CBS apparently cancelled the purchase order for the pilot until Woods was cast as Sebastian Stark. In the show Stark tells the mayor of Los Angeles that "I eat prosecutors for breakfast. They’re my main source of fiber." I've always thought that James Woods' principal source of fiber is the scenery he chews and this series is no different. There have been inevitable comparisons between Shark and House but I think such comparisons ignore an essential fact. In House I never lose the feeling that Hugh Laurie is playing a character as he is written. Gregory House's ego, sarcasm, and personality have nothing to do with Hugh Laurie, and if another actor had been cast it wouldn't have made a bit of differences. With Shark I have the overwhelming sense that the character has been changed by the fact that James Woods is playing him and that if a different actor were playing Sebastian Stark a lot of his personal traits would have been different. Heaven knows I don't find the series "realistic" but if I want realism I can (and do) watch Justice. Certainly I don't think that Shark is as good a show as the one it replaces in this time slot, Without A Trace. Shark has nothing of the depth of character that the show about missing persons generated in its first episode. And yet there is something incredibly entertaining about watching James Woods do what he does. Is it a great show? Hardly, but it is watchable and since I grew away from ER years ago this may well be a show I'll stick with for a while.
CBS debuted their new series Smith on Tuesday night and while I basically like it, the show does have me asking some questions. Like this one - what is the show going to focus on between heists? You see, at the end of the pilot episode master thief Bobby Stevens (Ray Liotta) tells Charlie the woman who commissions his thefts (played by Shohreh Aghdashloo from 24) that he wants out of the business after three or four more jobs. Which leaves the question, what do you do with the rest of the episodes? Are these characters interesting enough to sustain the interest and the involvement of viewers without the benefit of flashy action sequences or a caper a week? At the moment I'm not sure. About the only thing that I can say is that what we saw in the pilot probably isn't typical of what this series is going to show on a week to week basis.
The pilot for Smith started with a museum heist. We see the thieves in white full faced masks cutting paintings out of their frames while another man holds one of the guards at gun point. The thieves are interrupted by a second guard, and as the shot shifts to the exterior of the museum, we hear gunfire. Most of the rest of the show is a flashback showing how we got to this point.
Bobby and Hope Stevens (Virginia Madsen) seem to have an average middle class life. He's in sales with a plastic cup company and apparently in trouble with his boss, not that this seems to matter to him. When his assistant tells him that the boss wants to see him, he essentially tells his assistant that whatever the boss wants will keep. Meanwhile Bobby is studying museum plans. Next we're introduced to Jeff (Simon Baker) who is off surfing in Hawaii. At least he is until a couple of locals inform him, with nothing more than their bulk and menacing looks to support their position, that he's surfing on a private beach. Apparently thoroughly intimidated Jeff leaves the beach goes to his car and, whistling a cheerful little tune, guns down the two locals with a high power sniper rifle. Next we're introduced to Annie (Amy Smart), a Vegas showgirl who has a profitable little sideline dealing in stolen credit card numbers, preferably stolen from high rollers. In business she's an ice queen. We meet Tom (Jonny Lee Miller), the next member of the crew, as he's leaving prison. He's met by Jeff who is driving a flashy (stolen) car. Tom has been released on parole, and it is immediately clear that he has some sort of history with Annie, and not a pleasant history. The final members of the crew are car expert Joe (Franky G) and Shaun (Mike Doyle), an electronics expert who works for him in his paint and body shop. They are all brought together by a text message from Bobby. When Bobby's crew gathers he informs them of their target, three paintings in a museum in Pittsburgh, including a Rembrandt. Annie immediately wonders about this - Rembrandts are nearly impossible to fence - but Bobby lets her know that this is a commissioned job and one where they'll have to move what they steal using conventional means. This is followed by a trip to Pittsburgh - Bobby tells Hope he's off on business to St. Louis - to work out the details of the caper and see the physical layout of the museum and its surroundings which includes a sort of booth for a couple of police officers who are there primarily to help tourists. The caper goes down, although not without a few hitches. The least of these is that Annie, who fakes being assaulted or possibly raped to distract the cops in the booth in front of the museum, is recognised by a woman she may have gone to school with and has to Taser her after the woman sees Annie ripping her own clothes and applying fake blood to her face and body. There a really menacing moment when Annie encounters the woman after the heist has been discovered and makes it absolutely clear to her that if she says anything or does anything that would reveal her real identity it would be a very bad mistake, and yet she does it without saying anything more threatening to the woman beyond "Stay put."
There are a number of nice touches in this episode. Bobby's seemingly pathological need to keep his "real" life separate from his "working" life as a thief is expressed in a scene where he leave home and goes to a virtually empty apartment where he drops off his watch, jewelry and wallet, replacing them from a stash of material he has in a safe there, the only reason for having the apartment. It becomes abundantly clear that the way that Bobby and his crew survive and thrive as thieves is not only by not doing anything that will attract attention to themselves but by actively taking measures that will disguise their identities. It isn't just a case of getting new identities, which is a major part of Annie's role in the gang, but of actively falsifying identifying marks and features. It's one of the reasons why Tom is mad at Jeff for stealing a fancy and readily identifiable car, and why Shawn's gambling debt is of such concern to Charlie and for Bobby when she tells him about it. Paying off the debt in one lump sum would attract attention to Shawn and might lead to identifying the crew. On a somewhat lighter note, Jeff takes a woman to bed, apparently with the sole purpose of stealing her cat. As part of his parole Tom has been equipped with an ankle bracelet to monitor his location - it is only through a plea to his parole officer that he is able to attend a wedding that is an essential part of the planning for the museum robbery. Shawn is able to remove the bracelet without setting of the alarms for tampering with it, and Tom and Jeff put it around the neck of the cat so that it will be in motion in Tom's home while Tom is in Pittsburgh.
Smith has a lot of things going for it. The primary cast is superb with particular notice going to Amy Smart and Virginia Madsen. Madsen's portrayal of a woman who probably knows what her husband is up to even if he's trying his hardest to protect her from the reality of his situation. She herself isn't as pure as most others think she is - she's nearing the end of a period on parole for a crime probably related to a drug addiction - may well put her in contention for an Emmy if the series survives long enough for it to be noticed by Emmy voters. Smart's role as Annie would seem to be a case of casting against type but she's letter perfect as the ice queen figure who draws Tom to her like a flame drawing a moth, even though he knows better than to become involved with her. Simon Baker does an excellent job as Jeff, a character who at his base is a cheery sociopath. Ray Liotta is also excellent, as always, but then it sometimes feels like he's been playing this sort of character for most of his career. The writing in the pilot was excellent. It didn't seem as though there was a false note in the whole thing, with plenty of nice little touches that weren't essential to the main plot but which helped to build the atmosphere. The pace of the show was just about perfect. We were introduced to this world in an unconventional manner - starting near the end of the heist - and then through the process of the flashback were brought into the characters' world. This is in contrast with some series that we've seen where everything has been thrown at us so fast in the first episode that it's nearly impossible to get details straight.
Based entirely on the first episode, Smith is a first rate show that deserves to run as long as the wirters, producers and the actors can make it work. My major concern - besides how well it will do against Boston Legal and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is how people will react to a show which has characters who are not conventionally heroic - in fact are the sort of people that most shows on TV these days have as villains - and how the audience will react to those episodes that don't focus on the sort of major action scenes that were a part of the pilot. Inevitably there are going to be a lot of those episodes, where we'll be primarily concerned with Bobby & Hope's relationship or Annie, Jeff, and Tom, if in fact Bobby is serious about what he told Charlie about only doing four or five more jobs before he retires. I really like this pilot but how well the show performs as a series will be seen in the second and subsequent episodes.
As promised The new poll is up - largely because I won't have too much time to do it on Sunday before or after I go to see my little nephew - and it's a big list. This time round you'll at least have more shows to consider and will have seen more of the series for whatever that's worth. Circumstances of course kept me from being able to make this what I wanted it to be, namely a poll in which you'd only seen a handful of the series - and those only because Fox had to get cute with things - but as the man said "dems da breaks."
As usual feel free to add comments or statements (but no spam ads) here.
Those of you who have been following this blog with baited breath waiting for me to come back... please go gargle, because you really shouldn't keep bait in your mouth. On the other hand those of you who waited with bated breath probaly know the results of the most recent poll better than I do, but let's go through it just as a matter fo form. There were seven votes cast. Tied in seventh place with no votes (which in this case is a good thing) are 20 Good Years, 'Til Death, and None of the Above. There's a massive log jam in second place with five shows tied at one vote (14%) each. They are The Class, Knights of Prosperity (or as I spelled it "Nights of Prosperity") Help Me Help You, 30 Rock and The Game. But the show with the greatest number of votes to be the first sitcome cancelled is Happy Hour with two votes (28%).
The show of course suffered under the handicap of actually being seen during the poling period. Before the show actually aired I would have been inclined to agree with the two people who voted against it. Now I'm not so sure. Oh don't get me wrong, it's pretty bad and it's in a really bad time slot for Fox given all of the heavyweight shows that the other networks have in the first hour of Thursdays. On the other hand that might actually help to keep the show, and its running mate 'Til Death on the air at least until the baseball playoffs - why throw something good away in this losing battle. And besides it is not without a certain charm, just not much.
New Poll - the Drama series cancellation one - up shortly.
After I replaced the 300 Gig Hard Drive that I loved but couldn't use with a 100 Gig Hard Drive at the same price (boo) I thought my troubles were over.
Wrong!
When I restarted the computer to format the new disk and install Windows I discovered that my keyboard was dead. I really liked that keyboard! The next day - Thursday - was my Uncle Al's memorial service but I was also able to borrow a keyboard from my younger brother. Everything should work right?
Wrong!
Testing the keyboard using a small hard drive I discovered that it was behaving as if the Control key were permanently depressed. When I tried to use it to at least format the hard drive it did nothing more than make the computer go *beep*. So on Friday I walked to the nearest Source by Circuit City location which isn't that far away, and bought the cheapest keyboard they had - if there were some sort of systemic problem, I wasn't going to waste a lot of money on a keyboard that was going to die soon anyway. But fortunately the keyboard is working fine.
And the rest of the system? So far so good, except that Windows refuses to install my DVD-ROM drive, but at the moment I could care less - I'll get around to it after I manage to restore a lot of other things.
But man do I hate this keyboard!
Here we are at the start of the roll-out period for most networks that aren't Fox and I haven't been posting. Here's the explanation. The day after I fixed my CPU cooling fan problem by hard drive died, taking with it just about everything. I bought a new hard drive; a 300 Gig Drive that was on sale for $109. Unfortunately my version of Windows doesn't support large hard drives. I've been fighting with Windows since I bought the thing and I've been loosing ... badly. I can't partition the drive and load Windows onto it without Windows repartitioning the drive and then not running, and I can't use the the Windows Installer to pput more than one partition on the drive after which it won't recognise that there is anything beyond that partition. I managed to cobble something together that works adequately but I can't get access to the whole drive so it goes back to Future Shop tomorrow to be replaced - one way or the other - with a 100 Gig drive that will work. That's cheaper than buying a new version of Windows XP. I should be back posting by Thursday or Friday.
Every so often you come upon a show that is either extremely good or mind numbingly bad. Fox's new comedy 'Til Death is neither. It is on the whole a rather pedestrian production with a couple of bright shining points. Those points are Brad Garrett and Joely Fisher.
The thing about Garrett and Fisher is that they look like they could have been married to each other for twenty five years. This is a good thing because they are in fact playing a couple who have been married to each other for twenty five years. All to often in modern sitcoms you come upon people who look like the only reason they could possibly have gotten married is because of failed birth control. Who would believe that Leah Remini would fall in love with Kevin James or that Courtney Thorne Smith would end up with Jim Belushi in real life? That's what made TV couples like Ray Romano and Patricia Heaton or even Tim Allen and Patricia Richardson work; you could easily conceive of them being a couple. The same is true of Garrett and Fisher. Plus they're both solid talents - I was never a fan of Everybody Loves Raymond but in the parts of episodes that I did see it was Brad Garrett not Ray Romano who I found funny. Having two solid performers in the mix is essential because this series really has a cast of four. There's Garrett and Fisher as Eddie and Joy Stamm, and Eddie Kaye Thomas (from the American Pie movies) and newcomer Kat Foster as Jeff and Steph Woodcock who have been married for all of twelve days.
It's hard to say much about a show with a cast of four people. Eddie and Joy are a couple in the stage of their relationship where, while they still love each other, the spark is basically gone. They're comfortable with each other but the passion is gone. For Eddie marriage is now so that you'll have someone to drive you to the hospital, and happiness is driving home with a warm bucket of chicken on your lap. Beyond that, Eddie's a cynic about marriage. It is the job of women to suck the fun out of everything. Jeff on the other hand is a young and idealistic to the point of naivete guy from Minnesota (for some reason sitcom producers equate Minnesota with idealistic to the point of naivete - Marshall on How I Met Your Mother is from Minnesota). He believes that if husbands and wives communicate marriage can be a equal partnership and love can triumph over all.
The show opens with Jeff & Steph moving into the neighbourhood and meeting their new neighbours, Eddie & Joy. As it turns out Jeff is the new Vice Principal at Winston Churchill High School, where Eddie teaches History, so Joy suggests that they car pool into work together. While they're getting to know each other in the front yard, Jeff suggests that since they probably aren't going to do much formal dining maybe they could have a pool table in the formal dining room, and Steph seems to agree. On their drive to work Eddie tells Jeff that he won't be getting the pool table and explains exactly how Steph will go about letting him know. Arriving at home Eddie finds that Joy wants them to go jogging - which goes against their fortieth birthday present to each other to allow themselves to get fat - but is soon persuaded to watch The Ellen DeGeneres Show instead (Joelly Fisher of course was a regular on Ellen's sitcom). More to the point Joy has invited Jeff & Steph over for dinner that night. Sure enough Jeff tries to show Eddie that communication and compromise and love has already allowed him to get his pool table for the formal dining room. As if it were scripted (!) Eddie's explanation of exactly how Steph would steal Jeff's fun - by not letting him have the pool table - plays out and the younger couple have their first fight. This amuses Eddie and horrifies Joy. They "catch" Jeff & Steph's fight when Eddie explains his theory about women sucking the fun out of life and giving as an example the hot tub he'd wanted years ago which Joy denied him. She in turn reminds him that in all their years of marriage they have never taken advantage of the free trips she can get as a travel agent because he refuses to travel outside of the USA. The next day at work Jeff is triumphant. He's getting his pool table! All it took was understanding and great make up sex - twice. The make up sex part really interests Eddie and when he gets home he decides to make up with Joy. Unfortunately his attempts are rather clumsy and only serve to reheat the argument. Eventually Eddie walks out to go over to Jeff's to play billiards. It turns out that Jeff got his pool table all right, complete with purple felt (Steph thinks purple's a nice colour...if you're a pimp), but it's not in the formal dining room but rather in what must be the house's smallest bedroom. The size of the room and the table make it virtually impossible to shoot a game. Still, in his anger Eddie tries, but only manages to bring the rack of cues down on his head. Joy takes him to the hospital and the argument is basically resolved to the point where they actually consider the idea of make up sex once they get home, but pretty quickly decide against it. In the final scene of the episode, Jeff tells Eddie that he really wants to get rid of the pool table because the room is too small. Eddie tell him that he can't get rid of it immediately because that would mean admitting that Steph was right. Jeff's just going to have to wait until the first child is born.
There's nothing special about 'Til Death. It's the sort of show that - with minor variations - the other three networks have at least one of. This show being on Fox there seems to be a bit fo a tendency to go for the low joke. Thursday's episode featured several repetitions of jokes or implied double entendres related to Jeff & Steph's last name - Woodcock - and Jeff's decision, which he believes is hip but is really incredibly naive, to create a website called mywoodcock.com (Sony Pictures, which produces the show, has actually set up that website; whether they do anything more with it than what you see is a whole other question). But that's not the big problem. The big problem is that this show just doesn't stand out from the crowd. At its heart it's a domestic comedy about a couple who have been married long enough that they basically take each other for granted even though deep down they love each other. It's the sort of show that gets stamped out using a cookie cutter. That's unfortunate for a lot of reasons but one of the big ones is that Brad Garrett and Joelly Fisher deserve to be working in something a lot better and a lot more original. While I don't see this show being cancelled quickly, I can't see it being renewed for a second season either. Then again no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public in general or Fox viewers in particular. That may explain why Arrested Development was cancelled and The War At Home not only wasn't the first series cancelled last year but was actually renewed for a second season. But, given just how competitive the first hour of Thursdays is, with Survivor, My Name Is Earl, Ugly Betty, and Smallville up against it, I don't expect a ratings stampede towards 'Til Death. It's a show that makes you go enh.
I really had intended to give you a review of Standofftonight but circumstances conspired against me, to the point where Tuesday was not one of my better days. Here's something of a timeline.
10:20 a.m.: Computer is on, I'm getting ready to sign up for a poker tournament.
10:25 a.m.: Computer suddenly goes into reboot mode then refuses to do anything at all including turn off. I immediately suspect the Hard Drive so attempt to boot from an Ubuntu (Linux) Live CD. Nothing.
10:30 a.m.: I now think it's either the CPU or the cooling fan. Open up the side of the computer. Turn on the computer. Fan not spinning, but is CPU gone too? Let CPU cool down.
11:30 a.m.: Turn on computer first with Ubuntu then with Windows. No problem but I turn the computer off - better safe than sorry.
11:45 a.m.: Proceed to do a number of unimportant things, including having lunch and watching my tape of most of the premier episode of Deadwood (cable company got some of the times wrong). It's showing on History Channel here and is basically one of the best things on TV and why people get to stand up at awards shows and proclaim that this is the "New Golden Age Of Television." Too bad it got cancelled after three seasons.
1:45 p.m.: Off to get a new cooling fan for my Athlon 2200+ processor. Set out on my bike for the nearest computer store. It's a ways away but the last time I was there they had just about everything.
2:10 p.m.: Arrive at Compusmart and after several minutes of waiting for the employees of the store to notice me I finally accost the two people standing at the single cash register talking and going over some papers. They can help me so the call for one of their sales staff. The first guy can't help me because he's got a guy looking at TVs. He goes in the back and gets a second salesman without even asking what it is I need. The second sales man is older but so utterly clueless that he literally takes me to the opposite side of the store from where I know the CPU fans to be (they're behind a counter which is why I couldn't help myself. He instructs me to try a place about 8 blocks up on Faithful Avenue.
2:23 p.m.: I begin to realise that the salesman's knowledge of the area and of retailers in his business is about as weak as his knowledge of the stock in his own store. I can't find the place he mentioned and certainly not in the area he mentioned.
2:45 p.m.: Head for the Staples store in the area. I recall in the past seeing computer equipment including parts like CPU fans there. They have tons of ink cartridges, no CPU fans.
3:10 p.m.: Heading home hot and frustrated I remember another store in the vicinity. Divert there. They've been out of business since August 15th.
3:30 p.m.: Arrive home. Down a can of iced tea without actually tasting it. I just need something cold and wet. Decide to do what I should have done in the first place and call until I find a place that has what I need.
4:02 p.m.: Having found a place that has what I need I decide to take the bus. It stops about four blocks from where I live and in an amazing bit of serendipity also stops four blocks from the store with my part.
4:15 p.m.: Discover several things. All of the busses in the city are running late. 25th Street is a parking lot from 3rd Avenue to the top of the University Bridge, and since virtually all of the busses in the city use 25th Street and the University Bridge this could be the explanation.
4:40 p.m.: Manage to complete my trip without strangling anyone although the temptation is great. Get my part and a bit more - they don't sell the fans without a heat sink, but fortunately you can take the fans off.
5:00 p.m.: Catch a DART bus a block away from the store. It's air conditioned and on a day like this I need it. My only regret is that the trip is too short. 25th Street is still a parking lot but only the eastbound lanes.
5:34 p.m.: Drag my sad and sorry butt home. Decide to have pot noodle for supper.
6:00 p.m.: Watch season debut of House. Good.
7:00 p.m.: Watch series premiere of Standoff. Will write about it next week but suffice it to say that this is not a show that will have people standing up at awards shows and saying "this is the New Golden Age Of Television."
8:00 p.m.: Install new cooling fan. This also included a series vacuuming of the interior of the computer and in particular the heat sink which is so disgusting that it makes me wish I was also installing the new heat sink.
9:00 p.m.: My God, the damned thing works.
10:30 p.m.: Discover that the poker tournament I've been looking forward to all day has been cancelled - They're doing system maintenance.
2:15 a.m.: The computer stops functioning again. Turns out that the power bar switch that I turned off and on repeatedly in the morning finally decided that it was in the "off" position... fourteen hours later!
Yes, after a brief hiatus it's the triumphal return of Short Takes, what I hope is my weekly column of TV news that's interesting to me, as well as a our recurring feature Who does the PTC hate THIS week? So without further ado, let's go to press.
Come back anytime "Barney": Longtime readers will remember just how much I enjoy the spewing of Brent "Barney" Bozell - so nicknamed by his repeated efforts to "nip it in the bud! Nip it! In the bud!" Well news has reached us that Mr. Bozell will be stepping down as head of the Parents Television Council (PTC) as of January 1, 2007, to be replaced by PTC Executive Director Tim Winter. Bozell will remain as head of the politically right-wing Media Research Center and will remain on the board of the PTC, but as he says in his letter of resignation "For 11 years I've been leading the PTC while simultaneously running another national public policy organization, the Media Research Center, and serving on the boards of a number of other groups. This was possible when these organizations were smaller, but not anymore. It has simply become too much for me, and with a large family, it's just not healthy for me. More importantly, however, it is not healthy for the PTC." His decision to drop out of the leadership of the PTC rather than the Media Research Center should prove - if such proof were really necessary - of where his priorities lie. Still I'm sure will be hearing more statements from Bozell, probably with the same amount of comprehension and logic that he's displayed in the past.
Ah Nuts!: Or to use one of the depressingly small number of curse words in my French vocabulary (my high school French teachers didn't teach me those words although I'm sure Mrs. Hall knew most of them) Merde! Donald Trump has fired Carolyn Kepcher from the Trump Organization, including the TV show The Apprentice. Kepcher, who was general manager of Trump's Briarcliff Golf Course and one of his other golf properties. According to Carolyn "After 11 years with the Trump Organization, Donald and I had different visions for my future role in the company." However sources report that Trump was concerned that Carolyn was spending too much time promoting herself and not enough time managing the golf course, what with writing a book and speaking engagements. That's what happens when you create a star Donald, they get asked to write books and do speaking engagements for more money than even you'd be willing to refuse. Of course, according to Trump he did her a favour by firing her. Carolyn will be replaced on the show by Trump's daughter (ugh) Ivanka, at least for a large number of episodes.
Readers of this blog will of course have caught the subtle hints that I am in fact in love with Carolyn, although of course it's a love that can never be. In fact one of my favourite moments from The Apprentice came in the second season when the newly hired Kelly Perdew pulled out Carolyn's chair for her as he had for the various women apprentices on the show that season. Carolyn smiled! Trump turned to him and said "you don't to do that anymore, you've been hired." All of which goes to prove a couple of things: 1) that West Point still takes the "gentleman" part of "officer and a gentleman" seriously, and 2) Donald Trump is no gentleman (but then we all knew that from the time he dumped Ivana, and then Marla - because he didn't want to "work" to maintain their relationship). He just proved it yet again.
New additions to my cable TV lineup: Shaw Cable, which is my cable provider as well as the provider for most of western Canada, has become the first cable company in Canada to add AMC to their cable lineup in spite of the fact that the channel has been licensed in Canada for almost 10 years. Oh....Joy! I understand that they show movies in between commercials. On the other hand it is replacing The Golf Channel, so it isn't a total loss (Golf Channel moves to the digital tier).
Also added to the digital tier is a Canadian time shifting package to go along with American channels from Spokane (for me - from Detroit for areas which normally get Spokane channels), although the Canadian package will cost and extra $3.99. This would normally not be of interest to me because most of the programs on these channels are available through the US packages, but one of the channels they're adding is CITY-TV from Toronto, which is a channels showing programs that aren't normally available here. I'll have to think about whether or not to add this package.
Who does the PTC hate THIS week?: When I took my brief hiatus from doing this, I missed informing you of some prime hating, including another jab at poor Michelle Lamour for her second appearance on America's Got Talent. (Incidentally they were concerned - for reasons known only to them - after her first appearance that she shouldn't be competing with an 11 year old girl; the same 11 year old girl who won the entire competition.) Currently on the PTC's hate list:
- DaimlerChrysler for not pulling their advertising from Rescue Me: According to the PTC "DaimlerChrysler is the Second Foreign Auto Maker to Endorse Graphic Rape on the FX Show", the first being Toyota (those evil degenerate furriners). Note this little item from the PTC's diatribe (italics mine): " Content provided by DaimlerChrysler includes a storyline wherein Tommy's ex-girlfriend Sheila drugs him with date-rape pills and Viagra then has sex with him while he is unconscious." Apparently DaimlerChrysler wrote that scene and sent it to the producers - that's the only way it could really be provided by them. And then there's this little bit of Bozellian rhetoric: "Millions of families are offended. DaimlerChrysler is essentially telling these families - including soccer moms - who buy its vehicles that it does not care about the filth it's dumping into their homes on a weekly basis. DaimlerChrysler is telling families that it will continue to support shows that contain graphic rape and brutality. Its corporate values are reflected in the content of the programs they sponsor. Where is the corporate responsibility? The irony is that DaimlerChrysler is spending millions of dollars advertising its commitment to improving air quality with environmentally-conscious vehicles, but apparently could care less about the cultural sewage they are helping FX dump into millions of homes on advertiser-supported basic cable." Will no one think of the children. Oh wait. Rescue Me is a show that's shown at 10 p.m. so children shouldn't be watching.
- NBC and the Emmy Awards for not bleeping Helen Mirren and Callista Flockhart. Coming up the steps at the Emmy's Helen Mirren apparently nearly tripped and stated that she nearly went "tits over ass" or as the PTC would have it "t*ts over a*s". Horrors! There are children watching! The PTC is filing with the FCC over the airing of this "obscene" language. As "Barney" Bozell puts it "It is utterly irresponsible and atrocious for NBC to air this vulgar language during the safe harbor time when millions of children were in the viewing audience. People are getting sick and tired of networks allowing unedited profanity on their award shows in front of millions of youngsters, and with NBC this practice is becoming habitual." Of course it's only obscene in the Central and Mountain Time Zones since the offending words were uttered in the third hour of the broadcast which is after 10 p.m. in the Eastern and Pacific time zones. The funny thing is that I'm pretty sure that I've heard the words "tits" and "ass" used numerous times in recent years in shows that the FCC (prodded by the PTC) have not found obscene.
- This week's "Worst Show Of The Week" was The Teen Choice Awards on Fox, for numerous dire, evil, sexual things. "Wearing the mask of an awards show which recognizes achievement in entertainment from a teen perspective, the show is nothing more than a publicity stunt to give entertainers a platform to plug their latest album, movie, television show, or tour to impressionable teens." Wow, your kidding, an awards show that was meant to promote things. What will they think of next? And then there was this: "The Teen Choice Awards Show did a great job of acknowledging the dangerous behaviors that teens partake in. The only problem was that the manner in which these behaviors were acknowledged actually promoted them. For instance, Marlon Wayans presented an award for best Myspace.com video. It is no secret that many teens are posting inappropriate information and pictures of themselves on Myspace and therefore being targeted by sexual predators. Wayans irresponsibly jokes that 'you’ve got to be naked to get in my [Myspace] top 8.'" And how about the depravity of this: "In addition to the verbal indecency, the show featured teenage girls in bikinis bathing in an on-stage hot tub directly in front of the podium. The hot tub served no purpose other than to establish the show’s atmosphere as one catering to sexually charged youth." According to the PTC, "The Teen Choice Awards is the perfect opportunity for America to witness how the entertainment industry views youth. Ignoring the potential celebrities have to encourage healthy behavior in teens, they manipulate teens by appealing to their vulnerabilities, insecurities, and temptations to benefit their careers." Oh, by the way, the nominees for the Teen Choice awards are selected by the readers of Teen People Magazine who must be between the ages of 13 and 19, and selected "by a committee of Teen People, Teenasaurus Rox, Bob Bain Productions, and Fox representatives."
After the celebration of television excellence that was the Emmys - I know, but that's how they want it to be seen - it's time to get down to the reality of television. Most shows don't get to choose when they take that last long walk into Television oblivion. Their creators don't get to go out at a time of their choosing. No most shows are ruled by the law of the jungle conquer or die. Or if not conquer then at least have competitive ratings on the night. And for most shows the time comes when the predators of their time slot come to claim them. Sometimes the show is a once proud monarch of the time slot brought down by the younger and stronger. More often than not though the prey of choice are the young sometimes the new born, unsure of themselves and unable to keep up with the pack. So our poll this time around is a simple one - which of this season's new network sitcoms is going to be the first to succumb to the laws of the Television Jungle and be cancelled. I've even included a choice if you believe that they'll all make it to the end of the year. Don't use it foolish mortals. Note that I'm asking for the first comedy to be cancelled, not the first show overall. There'll be a poll on dramas later on. Feel free to add comments.
I wasn't sure what the quote from People Magazine that was used in the ads for the new Fox series Justice meant: "like CSI at warp speed." Having seen the first episode of the show, I begin to understand. What I don't know is whether or not this sort of speed is a good thing or a permanent aspect of the show, but if ever a series cried out for a two hour pilot episode, I think it was this one just so that we could have a bit more time to understand what was going on.
Wednesday night's episode of Justice started with the body of a woman floating face down in a swimming pool, the water around her turning increasingly red with her blood, and the sound of a 911 emergency call from her frantic sounding husband, Kevin O'Neil. This leads to the credits, but as seems to be the trend with the first episodes of Fox series this year the credits do not lead to the first commercial. Instead, using the show's crime infotainment show American Crime as a framing device, the show vaults us ahead several weeks. We're shown a helicopter shot of a large number of police cars racing down the street and are informed that the police are on their way to arrest Kevin O'Neil for the murder of his wife and making it clearly seem as though he's guilty, particularly since he's hired the law firm of Trott, Nicholson, Tuller & Graves. His lawyers are at O'Neil's house; they know that he was going to be charged with his wife's murder but they believed that he would get the opportunity to surrender himself into custody rather than have the media show of an arrest, but the DA has apparently decided that he needs the publicity. The lawyers decide that they're going to thwart this ambition by sneaking Kevin out of his house and over to the local sheriff's station where he can surrender himself into custody voluntarily. Perception, according to Ron Trott (Victor Garber) is everything. It is a point that he will continually make to his client during the period leading up to the trial. According to Trott, in the weeks before the trial, guilt or innocence is decided based on a 60 second video clip on CNN. Trials used to be about the law, now they're about the law and media, so the way that the client is seen in his every action is carefully scripted.
The problem that I was having with the show is that we're introduced to concepts very quickly that develop results very quickly. No sooner are we told that the firm's forensic testimony expert Alden Tuller (Rebecca Mader) has to get to work finding a forensics expert and work out a scenario for what happened than we see the man finishing up production on a computer reconstruction of events, and getting reamed out by Trott for using big words. Similarly when Luther Graves (Eamonn Walker) is briefing a room full of "worker bees" (they can't all be associates or law clerks or even secretaries) on how they're going to scan all of the material that the prosecution has sent over as discovery evidence - show arriving in many many cartons - and then using the computers to search for key words in order to find out what the DA is hiding from them it is a matter of seconds really before he is holding the smoking gun - a lab report that shows that the murdered woman was having an affair, hidden amongst other extraneous material. This shows that the DA will be claiming the motive for the supposed murder is jealousy rather than to get the victims money which is what the defense team had assumed. Obviously the producers have cut the scene in order to eliminate the "boring" process of actually finding the document, but if nothing else showing a bit more would have given us a better sense of the process for future episodes.
All of this and more happens in the first half hour or thirty five minutes (including commercials) of the episode. The pace slows somewhat in the second half hour as the case goes to trial but there are still things that are extremely annoying. We're introduced to a jury consultant who tells Tom Nicholson (Kerr Smith), the lawyer who will actually be leading the defense in court, to reject a specific juror because he's a divorced Republican and more likely to vote to convict. We're given no sense of how she decides on what makes a good juror for this case. Later she's seen telling a "sample jury" what they have to do - watch the trial on TV and indicate the arguments that are working and the ones that aren't. The trouble is that we're given absolutely no indication of how the sample jury is picked. Are the people off the street or have they been chosen to reflect the actual jury? A couple of minutes of exposition on this point would have been helpful.
All of this makes it seem as if I don't like the show which isn't the case at all. For all of the fast pace so many elements of the principal characters come through with absolute clarity. Victor Garber has an amazing time showing us the arrogance and aloofness of Ron Trott. At one point Kevin O'Neil asks Tom if Trott will be trying the actual case and Tom asks him if he likes Ron. Kevin says no and Tom replies "neither do juries." And yet Trott is a master of what he does, spinning the media as shown by his statement to the press as Kevin is being whisked away from his house to surrender at the sheriff's station or in his interview on the clearly hostile host of American Crime. He's not only seen but the reaction of people is shown through audience meters. His polar opposite is Kerr Smith, whose Tom Nicholson has a loathing of dealing with the media even though he's the "all-American face of not guilty." His personality and abilities come out in alternately charming and persuading the jury. Separately Trott and Nicholson wouldn't be successful but as a team they're perfect partnership. Luther Graves' contribution to the mix is his understanding of the other side as a result of being a former prosecutor. He knows that the DA is grandstanding and knows the tricks that the prosecution is using because he's used them himself. So far at least Eamonn Williams hasn't been given much opportunity to show what he can do with the character. As the female member of the team, Alden Tuller, Rebecca Mader is also playing a secondary character but she does more with it. Alden is observant - she's the one who spots a key omission in the prosecution's demonstration of how the murder occurred - and is able to make the defense's forensic expert, a man with a habit of using Latin terms and big words, into following her lead and keeping the evidence he presents easily comprehensible.
The series is interesting in that it doesn't seem judgmental about it's characters, with the possible exception of the Nancy Grace clone who hosts American Crime and is clearly hostile to the team at TNTG, as she calls them, even as she uses them to get ratings because they (and in particular Ron Trott) are good television. As we saw in several of Dick Wolfe's series, and in particular his foray into a pure court drama Law & Order: Trial By Jury, he has a tendency to regard the police and prosecution as heroes and defense council as mercenary slime who are worse than the criminals they defend because they know that their clients are guilty. Last season's In Justice gave us a team of underfunded defense attorneys trying to protect those who have been wrongly convicted because the power of the state was opposed by poorly chosen or underfunded defense lawyers. Justice makes it clear that its defense attorneys aren't saints - they don't necessarily care or want to know if their client is really guilty. As Trott says at the end of the episode, in another interview with American Crime "If you've got the right lawyer we have the best legal system in the world" the clear implication being that the "right" lawyer is an expensive lawyer and the team behind him. On the other hand the cops and the prosecution on this show are little better. The DA is out for publicity at every turn, but in particular the way he stages the arrest of Kevin O'Neil, while the lawyer who is actually prosecuting the case is a tremendous grandstander who at one point produces a golf club - not the "murder weapon" but one obtained for demonstration purposes - and proceeds to smash it into a law book to show how the victim was murdered. This is during his cross examination of the defense forensic expert, and when the man restates his position that given the injuries it was more likely that the woman slipped getting out of the pool and struck her head twice, the prosecutor dismisses the statement by saying "that's what you were paid to say; you can stop now." But perhaps the most telling was the behaviour of the lead detective on the case. It's initially pointed out that he didn't try to verify any of O'Neil's statements about what he was doing while whatever happened to his wife took place. Worse, what would turn out to be a key piece of evidence - a patio umbrella - simply vanished. Certainly it wasn't included in the prosecution's demonstration video in which the detective participated. Just how important that umbrella was would be shown quite graphically in the court. In a demonstration in court, created because the sample jury "wanted to see blood", a dummy head with a blood pack built in was struck by the detective and showed that the missing umbrella would have collected cast off blood if the crime had been committed in the way the prosecution had said.
In perhaps the show's most important gimmick, after the trial had been completed and Kevin O'Neil had been found Not Guilty, the audience of Justice were shown what actually happened. In it we're shown Kevin's wife getting out of the pool... and slipping, hitting her head, trying to stand but in her disoriented state falling and hitting her head again before collapsing into the water. We, unlike the world of the show, know that Kevin O'Neil was not just Not Guilty but also Innocent of the crime for which he was charged.
On the whole I loved the show except for the minor quibble about the pacing of the pilot episode. There's a reason that CSI isn't presented at "warp speed" and that's so that the audience can get a sense of what's going on. I need a little more information on what a jury consultant does before seeing one tell a lawyer not to select one specific member of the jury. I need to know a bit about how a sample jury is picked in order to know that it is a valid technique for the defense. Before I'm shown a forensics expert creating a computerized reenactment of the wife's death, I'd like to know how he arrived at the specific sequence of events he is reconstructing. It's not necessary every time, just as it isn't necessary to explain how the equipment on CSI works every time, but it's helpful to my understanding of what's going on if it's explained at least once. With that caveat, I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the show because of the quality of the acting and the way the actors settled into their characters. It's an involving show that examines the real complexities facing the criminal justice system in the age of cameras in the courtroom, and trials as mass entertainment. I'm impressed that the show hasn't taken the easy route of making one side or the other perfect; the defense attorneys are sharp but mercenary and the prosecution is not above using less than admirable tricks. Despite the problems that I had with the pilot, this show is going on my list of shows to watch this season.
Another day another pair of shows from Fox. Debuting for the season are:
Bones
Bones is back for its second season featuring Emily Deschannel as coroner and novelist Dr. Temperance Brennan and David Boreanaz as her partner in crime fighting FBI Agent Seeley Booth. One cast change for this season is that a new character will add an extra layer of bureaucracy to the Jeffersonian Institute where Brennan works. Federal Coroner (whatever that may mean) Dr. Camille Saroyan will be played by Tamara Taylor has been added to the cast for at least six episodes which may mean a reduced role for Jonathon Adams who played Jeffersonian head Dr. Daniel Goodman in the first season. It's probably not a good sign though that Adams's bio is not on the Bones webpage. It seems that Saroyan and Booth have had a prior relationship of the personal kind. Not that that matters to Temperance of course.
Incidentally, the other day I had the rather odd experience of going into a book store and seeing a number of Kathy Reich's books featuring coroner and novelist Temperance Brennan - a character who bears no resemblance to the woman on the TV show who is in a relationship with a man who is not Seeley Booth. A couple of feet away was a copy of Max Allan Collins's book Bones: Buried Deep which does feature the man and woman on the TV show. This sort of thing is what our pal Tele-Toby unravels in his blog Inner Toob.
Justice
Justice is a new series from Jerry Bruckheimer about a law firm that provides what might best be termed "the best defense money can buy." According to the show's website, the law firm of Trott, Nicholson, Tuller & Graves mixes the different skill sets of four lawyers and "the most cutting-edge forensic technology" to defend their clients. The firm uses all of the techniques available to the modern defence attorney including jury consultants, forensic interpretation, mock juries and media spin. The show has a strong cast headlined by Victor Garber (formerly of Alias), Kerr Smith, Eamonn Walker, and Rebecca Mader. Presenting an opposing view on whatever high profile case the firm is dealing with this week is an "infotainment court show" (presumably modelled on Nancy Grace) called American Crime. People Magazine describes Justice as "like CSI at warp speed" whatever that is supposed to mean. I have a couple of misgivings about this show, which I'll discuss when I review it.
Let me just state right off the bat that I'm not the best judge of singing ability at the moment. Actually I'm not the best judge of singing ability at the best of times but this cold that I'm currently suffering with has really done a number on my hearing in both ears, with the left ear totally stuffed up and ringing. So you should probably take my opinion of the singers on Celebrity Duets with a grain of salt. What you shouldn't take as a part of a sodium free diet is my assertion that this is a fun little show with people who really are able to sing, and for the most part at a pretty high level of competency.
The premise is simple enough. Eight celebrities best known for work in other fields who are less well known for their abilities as singers. The whole thing sounds like Dancing With The Stars there are a couple of significant differences. The biggest of these of course is that the stars on Dancing With The Stars have comparatively little experience with ballroom dancing. On Celebrity Duets all of the celebrities are singers with more than a little experience. Even Cheech Marin has done some singing although most of his musical experience has been in character during his animation work rather than in his own voice. A second difference is that while the stars on Dancing With The Stars work with the same partner during the entire series and learn various styles of dance with them, the celebrities on Celebrity Duets change singing partners every episode and the professional singers change every week. Also, unlike Dancing With The Stars the celebrities on this show are competing for $100,000 for their favourite charities.
So how did the celebrities do? Well on the whole not top badly at all. Lucy Lawless started the evening off, teamed with Michael Bolton to sing Bolton's Time, Love, and Tenderness and I thought she did quite well, with her strong voice working quite well with Bolton. The judges - Marie Osmond, Little Richard, and David Foster - mostly liked it although Little Richard wasn't too sure. Then again, as the evening progressed I wasn't entirely sure about Little Richard - he seemed to talk more and say less as the night progressed. Next up was Alfonso Ribiero. Although best known as Carlton on Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air and the "Carlton dance" he is in fact an experienced dancer (who worked with Little Richard during one of his tours) and appeared on Broadway. Ribiero teamed with Michelle Williams from Destiny's child to sing I Knew You Were Waiting For Me and suddenly the bar went way up for the people to come. Olympic gymnast Carly Patterson was the third performer, singing Somewhere Out There with James Ingram. To me she seemed to have a "little girl's voice" and didn't really work well alongside Ingram. Cheech Marin was next, singing Baby I Love You Way alongside Peter Frampton. It wasn't great in part because I don't think Cheech was singing in his normal range and was really trying to match Frampton. The judges were not happy with it. Lea Thompson was teamed with country singer Randy Travis to do Travis's hit Forever and Ever Amen. It sounded to me as though Thompson was limited by trying to sing country as shown when her voice slipped into a bit of a bluesy style before Travis came on stage. It was something that Marie noted. Next up was what was the hit of the night. Jai Rodriguez thoroughly connected with Gladys Knight and the whole idea of duet singing, probably not surprising since he did play Angel in Rent on Broadway. The performance earned a standing ovation from the audience and the statement that Jai has set the bar for the competition. It's not a bar that the next competitor, professional wrestler Chris Jericho comes anywhere close to reaching. Part of it is choice of song and partner. He's teamed with country singer Lee Ann Womack for Mendicino County Line and it's immediately clear that soft and slow isn't Jericho's style of singing. He does badly with the song. The final celebrity to sing was actor and comedian Hal Sparks who had to sing Track Of My Tears with Smokey Robinson, a song which initially forces him into a falsetto that is not his strong point and always manages to keep him a bit higher than what his normal range probably is.
Tuesday night's episode was a two hour show, at the end of which the judges would eliminate one singer. The first duet in the second hour featured Lea Thompson and Michael Bolton and it was a much better fit for her style of singing. They did the Sinatra standard That's Life and it really gave Lea a chance to show off the jazz quality of her voice. Little Richard doesn't like it but both Osmond and Foster do. Carly Patterson also finds that her new partner sings in a style she's more comfortable with. She's singing with Lee Ann Womack. It's a nice performance and David Foster tells Patterson that if he were producing her, this is the type of music he'd have her doing. Next up were Alfonso Ribiero and James Ingram doing I'm Going To Be There. David Foster thinks that Alfonso was a bit out of tune but the other two judges loved it. Chris Jericho was teamed with Peter Frampton on Signed, Sealed, Delivered and if nothing else it really showed off just how much singing with Lee Ann Womack had restricted his singing style although at times it was hard to tell when Frampton was singing and when Jericho was. Next up was Lucy Lawless singing with Lucy Lawless. She looked gorgeous (not hard of course) but quite frankly the song wasn't exactly suited to her and she didn't deliver a great performance. Hal Sparks was teamed with Gladys Knight and the two of them did I Heard I Through The Grapevine. It was an interesting performance and Sparks voice seemed to be where it should be (although I swear he often sounded higher than Gladys). Marie summed up his performance as "a little bit white." Cheech Marin followed, teamed with Randy Travis on Pickin' Up Bones. It was definitely a song and style that was better suited to his voice which is closer to a baritone than a tenor but from what I've seen doesn't appear to have an extensive range. Foster told Cheech that while he didn't think he'd produce Cheech and didn't think Cheech would win the competition, as far as he was concerned Marin wouldn't be going home that night. The final contestant was Jai Rodriguez performing with Michelle Williams. Singing Say My Name, Say My Name it was absolutely clear to everyone that he understood how to sing duets. It was a great performance and David Foster admitted that in his mind Jai was leading the pack so far.
Unlike future episodes of the show, which will have the audience deciding who goes home, on this first show the decision was left to the judges. One by one the contestants were told that they'd be going on until only Hal, Carly and Chris remained. Then Hal was told he was safe and Carly and Chris were on the block. Finally Carly was told that she was going on and that Chris was eliminated. While I think he showed a bit more ability on his second song, this was probably the best choice.
Fox is billing this show as a Fall series. I'm not entirely convinced of this. I tend to think of it as the last Summer series. The show will be on the air for five weeks on Thursday and Friday nights. Coincidentally this will mean that the series will end just as the baseball playoffs begin. After this series ends the Thursday time slot will be taken over by the truncated order of The O.C. while the Friday time slot will be occupied by Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy. It seems at the very least to be a space filler, maybe with the hopes that if it becomes a hit in its time slot it might be renewed, and if it's a big hit, like Dancing With The Stars it might be injected into the regular season. As far as the show itself, I found it diverting and enjoyable. In truth it is less of a "reality show" or "reality-competition show" than it is a true "music-variety program" (to use the Emmy terminology). The "non-singers" on this show are for the most part actually talented singers who are either not known for their singing or have taken a career path where singing is not primarily what they do. When you consider how many of the contestants have done Broadway shows - Thompson, Lawless, Rodriguez, and Ribiero - the level of talent in this competition is apparent. At two hours the premier episode of the series was too long, but at an hour I think it will probably work better. It is true that it seems as though the class of the field at the moment are Ribiero and Rodriguez, but how well they'll adapt to a style of singing that isn't what they're used to will be telling. On the whole I enjoyed it although I can't see it as much more than a Summer series that happens to be airing at the beginning of Fall. It's not brilliant - it's not Dancing With The Stars - but it is enjoyable and in my opinion at least it's probably worth sticking with as long as there's nothing better on, and for most of its run, there really isn't.
Coming tonight to a television near you courtesy of Fox:
Celebrity Duets
Take eight celebrities not known for their singing ability. Team them up with eight professional singers. Have them sing competitively. Get Wayne Brady to host and David Foster (music legend and failed reality TV subject) to be one of the judges. Sounds like Dancing With The Stars crossed with American Idol right, although presumably without the sex scandal of Skating with Celebrities (where Lloyd Eisler dumped his pregnant wife to go make a baby with his celebrity partner Kristy Swanson). I mean we like to watch celebrities doing stuff they don't normally do and making fools of themselves in the process - hence the popularity of Dancing With The Stars and Celebrity Poker Showdown. Here's the interesting thing though. While I'm not sure about everyone in this cast I know that most of the people appearing on this series can actually sing. The celebrity cast are wrestler Chris Jericho, actresses Lucy Lawless and Lea Thompson, actors Alfonso Ribiero, Cheech Marin and Hal Sparks, Queer Eye For The Straight Guy "culture vulture" Jai Rodriguez, and Olympic gymnast Carly Patterson. Jericho is part of the satirical heavy metal band Fozzy, while Lawless, Ribiero and Rodriguez have all appeared on Broadway (and Lawless rather infamously sang the US National Anthem at an Anaheim Mighty Ducks game, during which she suffered a quite legitimate "wardrobe malfunction" that fully exposed one of her breasts). So has Lea Thompson, although she was originally a ballerina who trained with the American Ballet Theater. Hal Sparks appears with a metal band called Zero 1. Patterson has a demo contract with Joe Simpson, father of Ashley and Jessica Simpson. About the only person in the cast whose musical talent I'm not entirely sure of is Cheech Marin's. This could be an interesting show, although I suspect it won't have the drawing power of Dancing With The Stars.
I've been struggling to write about Sunday night's Emmy Awards, to find a way to write about them that didn't seem boring and did seem at least a little original. I've come to the conclusion that the only way to make that happen would have been to "liveblog" the event with entries as things happened, and given the way I was feeling on Sunday that wasn't going to happen. So, because I made such a fuss about polling about the Emmys I thought I'd compare the results of my polls to what actually happened.
Outstanding Actress In A Comedy
Poll: Four way tie between Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Stockard Channing, Lisa Kudrow, and Jane Kaczmarek.
Emmys: Julia Louis Dreyfus
Comment: Fairly obvious. Of the five nominees hers was the only show that is going to be back this year. Scarcely an edgy choice by the Academy but a fairly safe one. Maybe Kaczmarek, who has been shamefully overlooked by the Emmys for Malcolm in the Middle will have better luck in her new role on the new Ted Danson comedy Help Me Help You, but I doubt it.
Outstanding Actor In A Comedy
Poll: Tie between Tony Shaloub and Steve Carrel
Emmys: Tony Shaloub
Comment: There are some people who consider this a bit of robbery and maybe they're right but what the Academy has done is what they often do, given the Emmy to someone whose work they know and like rather than a relative new show. I would not be surprised if Carrel gets it next year.
Outstanding Actress In A Drama
Poll: Kyra Sedgwick
Emmys: Mariska Hargitay
Comment: This was robbery but it should scarcely have been unexpected given the way the nomination process is handled, where I believe only a single episode from each actor is submitted. Sedgwick had a great season but Hargitay had a great episode, and on a network rather than a cable series, and given the field she was facing it isn't that surprising that she won. Just disappointing.
Outstanding Actor In A Drama
Poll: Three way tie between Chris Meloni, Dennis Leary, and Kiefer Sutherland
Emmys: Kiefer Sutherland
Comment: With Martin Sheen's West Wing part really being secondary to the election arc, which was rewarded when Alan Alda won the Outstanding Supporting Actor Emmy, and Six Feet Under really a distant memory, it came down to the people the poll picked. And in truth while Meloni was for the most part workmanlike he had - and submitted - one good episode. It was really between Sutherland and Leary and it's my impression that the Emmy was awarded to Sutherland as much for the fact that without him there literally is no 24. Everything revolves around him and has for five seasons.
Outstanding Miniseries
Poll: Bleak House
Emmys: Elizabeth I
Comment: I'll be dropping this category next year because quite simply no one seems to see the nominated material. The look and the cast behind Elizabeth I is certainly enough to get me interested in seeing the thing if it ever comes my way, and certainly the Emmy voters rewarded it with Emmys not just for the show but for Helen Mirren as Elizabeth and Jeremy Irons as the Earl of Leicester.
Outstanding Reality-Competition
Poll: Survivor
Emmys: The Amazing Race
Comment: I hate to say I told you so....actually I don't. I told you that The Amazing Race would win its fourth Emmy in a row, in spite of the Family Edition.
Outstanding Comedy
Poll: The Office
Emmys: The Office
Comment: At least they got this one right. Not just the winner but most of the nominations (the exception being Two And A Half Men. Playing against Arrested Development was the simple fact that while the critics and the Academy loved it, it was simply impossible to keep it on the air given the commercial nature of broadcasting. The Office, along with the unnominated My Name Is Earl, and is one of the few comedies on broadcast television today that is both fairly innovative and actually works.
Outstanding Drama
Poll: House
Emmys: 24
Comment: The poll on this one was close and I can't help but think that it was also close in the Emmy voting. If anything the season long arc in 24 should have had voters going toward the more episodic House. Possibly the biggest thing in 24's favour may have been that it has established itself as a strong and intelligent action series for five seasons and has essentially paid its dues. It's the serious established show which has established itself but unlike The West Wing and probably The Sopranos isn't seen as diminishing in quality just yet.
Other Emmy Notes
- At no time during the opening sketch did I think of any plane crash except the one on Lost, a point made clear by the presence of Hurley, even if he wasn't "really invited". I thought the sketch was funny but NBC has already wimped out and apologized for airing it after the crash in Kentucky that afternoon.
- Writers give the best acceptance speeches but comedy writers give the funniest. Not thanking your Eighth Grade Social Studies teacher for telling you you're not funny is funny; not thanking God because you're bald and that was at least partly his fault - brilliant.
- I thought the best presentation of an Emmy was by Hugh Laurie and Helen Mirren when Hugh translated Helen's statements into French, but then John Stewart and Stephen Colbert came on - "Worship before your Golden Idol Babylonians!"
- Least funny presentation: John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor with Heidi Klum sandwiched uncomfortably in the middle. I like Tambor - have liked him since at least his time on Hill Street Blues but Lithgow's charms as a comedic actor elude me.
- Irony: The director of the Emmy Telecast was Louis J. Horvitz who was supposed to keep the show to time. He won an Emmy for directing the Oscars. His acceptance speech went long.
- The Music, Variety, and Comedy categories are the catch basin for anything that doesn't fit into the rigid categories of Comedy Series, Drama Series, or Reality Series. This includes Talk Shows, Awards Shows, and one increasingly rare noccassions actual Music and Variety specials. I saw a panel discussion on the increasingly annoying (to me who has recently entered the codger demographic - you kids get off my lawn!) Attack Of The Show saying that giving an Emmy to Barry Manilow proved that the Emmys had "lost their edge." Well beyond the fact that you had to have an edge in order to lose it and the Emmys have never ever been edgy, Manilow was the only performer who actually did music and variety on his show.
- Apparently NBC thinks that you can say "ass over tits" on network TV and not just if you're Helen Mirren, since Callista Flockhart said it too. We await the PTC complaints and the FCC reaction.
- The tribute to Aaron Spelling was yet another reminder of just how many shows in how many genres he was responsible for. It would have been nice to have seen one of the stars from one of his shows from the 1960s or '70s up there with Steven Collins instead of either Joan Collins or Heather Locklear. And did you notice that they showed one shot of Tori Spelling but several of Candy Spelling weeping appropriately?
- Jacklyn Smith still looks better than either Kate Jackson or Farrah Fawcett, at least in my book.
- The ultimate award show fashion accessory - not borrowed diamonds but the security guard who follows you while you're wearing the borrowed diamonds.
- Bob Newhart may be the funniest man alive. Who else can get a laugh with just a raised eyebrow the way he did on Sunday night? It's a pity that I suspect several other segments featuring him were cut for time.
We have a winner and a vote count that makes the poll relatively valid, which considering some of the previous polls in this series of Emmy Polls is a big change. I suspect it was the category.
Eighteen votes were cast. In fifth place with no votes is The Sopranos. In fourth place with one vote (5%) is The West Wing. In third place with three votes (16%) is Grey's Anatomy. Second place went to 24 which got six votes (33%). And the winner with eight votes (44%) is House.
You'll have to excuse me a bit on this one as I have a nasty cold. I totally agree with this result ... and I would have been totally in agreement if the vote had gone the other way. And that's speaking as a big fan of this season's West Wing. Of the shows nominated these are the two best and either one is deserving of the Emmy. But that's the problem you see; of the shows nominated these are the two best. The problem, which has been apparent throughout this edition of the Emmy Awards has been that the shows and people nominated haven't necessarily been the best possible (and this isn't just because I'm a big fan of Lost and Battlestar Galactica). While I'm not prepared to say that this is the worst collective set of nominations ever it does serve to highlight problems in the system, the sort of problems that my previous "modest proposal" post (see below) was directed at. The Emmy voters have a habit of finding a show that they like and sticking to it, that's true, which has a tendency to exclude new blood. The fact is that this year's nominations only managed to exclude last year's Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy (and most of the other nominees in that category from last year), and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama. Say what you want about last year's nominees, this sort of collective snub is unexpected. At the same time there's something unreal about an actress from a so-so show that was cancelled in the first half of the season getting a nomination as Outstanding Actress in a Comedy (Stockard Channing) or Chris Meloni getting a nomination as Outstanding Actor in a Drama because he had one great episode while Jame Gandolfini and Michael Chiklis aren't in the running. But then again, Jackie Gleason never won an Emmy.
I have an idea for a new poll which will be up shortly.
With Emmy weekend upon us, and this being regarded as one of the worst sets of nominations in a long time I'd like to offer a few suggestions on how to deal with some of the problems that the Emmys are exhibiting. And no I'm not talking about the length of the show or the boring acceptance speeches or any of the other stuff that we - we meaning most viewers including me - like to constantly complain about because let's face it that's not what really really bugs us about the Emmys. No what really bugs us is that shows we see as being superior end up on the outside looking in on the night. You know, shows like Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars. And this year is a good time to bring it up, because the "Blue Ribbon Committee" system that was meant to open things up to shows like these not only didn't give them a look but ended up not nominating two of last year's big winners, Lost and Desperate Housewives.
I gave this article the title A Modest Proposal. Those of you with more than a small education will recall that this refers to an essay by Jonathon Swift, the full title of which is A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public. In his satire Swift proposed eating the children of the poor - and presumably Catholic - people of Ireland. While I do not propose the ingestion of the members of the Television Academy - most of them look to be a rather tough and stringy lot - or their children - which in some cases would involve the intake of dangerous levels of chemical substances not recognised by the FDA - I would like to suggest some fairly radical changes to the way the Academy does things. None of them are as radical as what AP reporter Fraser Moore proposes. In his article 1 and done: Stop rampant re-Emmying Moore suggests that you get one Emmy nomination for any particular series or role. Or as he puts it, "Any program, and the individuals attached to it, get one shot apiece at an Emmy. One and done. Only a clear and demonstrable change in a series, or in a character or other aspect of the series, could warrant Emmy reconsideration." As a model he offers the Tonys, in which a play - Phantom of the Opera for instance - can't be nominated every year that it runs. The same applies with the Oscars, Grammys and Pulitzers. To which I say, in the words of Colonel Sherman T. Potter (whose actor, Harry Morgan was nominated for 8 Emmys for the role and won one): "Horse hockey!" The reason if obvious: CDs, articles and movies don't change as time passes, and a Broadway show that opened in 1998 hasn't changed every time it's performed. Broadway shows are stagnant, TV shows are dynamic in that they have new scripts and new situations at least 22 times a year. In his opening paragraph Moore cites Allison Janney's nomination for playing CJ Cregg in The West Wing, but the woman that Janney played in the first episode seven years ago is not the same woman she played in the series finale; CJ Cregg grew and evolved and that's something that a character in Phantom of the Opera doesn't get to do.
Of course I'm not the only one to have ideas on how to change the Emmys in the face of this year's mess. Robert Bianco of USA Today has some ideas in an article entitled Emmys need a fast fix. He has some good ideas - in fact so good that I've integrated some of them into my own proposals. Some of his ideas are impractical though. You are never going to eliminate "category shopping" (where a star of a show is nominated in the supporting category so that the other star of the show doesn't have his vote split and both lose) - I mean let's face it, that's been going on in the Oscars for decades. And forming up his "policing committee" who would "clean up" the nominations from network executives has a bit of a ring of the fox guarding the hen house about it. On the other hand his idea about the need to expand the Academy membership to bring in new voices which might prove to be a bit more representative is an interesting one. I'm not sure if it's practical but it is interesting. (Oh yeah, and he's right; the Emmys shouldn't be at the end of August just because NBC has Sunday Night Football, they should be at the traditional start of the TV season, the middle of September.)
So having disposed of Mr. Moore's arguments and acknowledged Mr. Bianco's, what are my proposals?
1. Increase the maximum number of nominees in each category to ten from five
Why are there only five nominees per category? Is it because that's what the Oscars do and the Emmys want to be like their older brother? At one point five nominees made sense. In the 1975-76 season (which I chose because it was 30 years ago) there were three networks, each broadcast 3 hours per night six nights a week (they programmed Saturdays then) and four hours on Sunday. That's 66 hours per week. Setting aside news magazines, variety shows, and scheduled movies, the networks were broadcasting (at the start of the season) 39 hour long dramas and 20 half hour comedies. Five nominations for Outstanding Drama Series and five for Outstanding Comedy Series translates to one nomination for slightly under 8 dramas, and one nomination for every 4 comedies. By way of contrast in the 2006-07 season five networks (My Network isn't being counted here because of its format) will be programming a total of 82 hours. Excluding reality programming and news magazines this means 45 dramas and 26 comedies (including several hour long shows classified as comedies). That's 9 dramas per nomination and 5 comedies. That's without counting original series made for cable networks which is a growing area of the industry and a sector which is producing product that is often of a higher quality than the networks are able to produce. There's more TV being produced so why not more nominations.
2. Scap the Blue Ribbon Panels
(This is one of Bianco's) The system of sending screeners to members and letting them vote on the nominees was actually putting different shows into the lists - it wasn't happening fast but it was happening - while the Blue Ribbon Panel system didn't achieve the goal that its creators set for it, opening up the Emmys to shows that had been excluded. It's arguable that if you didn't have the panels you wouldn't have had the Hugh Laurie situation where House is nominated but Laurie isn't, or the mess surrounding Desperate Housewives, not to mention the Outstanding Actress in a Comedy situation. The voters aren't perfect though - they were the ones who gave Ellen Burstyn a nomination for a 15 second appearance.
3. Change the composition of the Blue Ribbon Panel
If you don't scrap the Blue Ribbon Panel, change who makes it up. One of the early critiques of the Emmy nominations actually made the point that some shows - Lost was one that was cited - weren't nominated because they didn't "play the game" properly. The game is providing the right episodes for the people who come up with the preliminary nominations and the Panel. In the case of Lost the episodes they provided were what the producers regarded as the best episodes of the season. The problem was that these episodes were heavily tied into the show's "mytharc" and don't make that much sense to people who don't watch the show on a regular basis. Shows that were nominated were either shows without a heavy arc quality or provided episodes that stood on their own more readily. The Blue Ribbon Panelists were people in the business of television production in one capacity or another and therefore aren't people who watch a lot of TV (they're too busy making it). The obvious answer, and it's not one I'm entirely comfortable with, is to reach outside the television production business and form a panel of people who watch a lot of TV to weed out the duds from the preliminary rounds of voting. In short, critics.
4. Restrict the number of nominations a show can have in a given category to two
This is mainly directed at the writing and directing categories but sometimes shows up in the acting categories. Is there anything more annoying than seeing your favourite show not getting a nomination because some other series had two, three, or even four nominations (like The Sopranos did for Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series in 1999)? Sure you've got different writing teams but still there needs to be a limit. In truth if the nominations are kept at five, I think the limit should be one nomination in the writing and directing categories - the producers should have to pick the outstanding work that was done on their show before submitting it - but I'll settle for two.
5. Give any Blue Ribbon Panel a little extra to do
Another activity for the Blue Ribbon Panel could be to "vet" the nominations in all categories to remove the truly absurd choices like the Ellen Burstyn nomination. Their job in this area would be more along the lines of what the role of the Canadian Senate is supposed to be, a chamber of sober second thought. Their job in this area wouldn't be to pick and choose nominees, it would be to get rid of the real absurdities. As much as I feel that Stockard Channing's Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy nomination is a case of "hey I know her name, she's always good", that's not an absurdity; nominating Ellen Burstyn (who's always good) for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for 15 seconds of work is an absurdity.
6. Try a little honesty
Let's admit the fact that the Emmys aren't really about acknowledging the Outstanding Drama Series or the Outstanding Supporting Actress. The Television Academy doesn't see the complete series for the year or the whole work of the actors and actresses. What they're looking at is two or three episodes which obviously leads to cherry picking - submitting the best two or three episodes. Or rather submitting the best two or three episodes that play the game, the game being to submit the episodes that don't require you to know what happened before and what the consequences of this episode would be later. Lost lost in the nomination process because they submitted "best" episodes which they thought of as best but which required a lot of set up. Which is one reason for scrapping the Blue Ribbon Panel system, because with at large at home voting - the system that was in existence for the past few years - there were at least some voters whose memory or knowledge of particular shows extended beyond the episodes submitted. The other option is to do what the Writing and Directing categories do; nominate an actor or a show for one episode. Say specifically that the Emmy for the Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress in a Drama goes to Allison Janney of The West Wing for her performance in this one episode. If you can't judge a show or a performer by their full body of work for the year then acknowledge the fact. It won't help Lost get a nomination - despite being one of the best series on TV - but for now at least I don't how to change the game extensively enough that it doesn't favour the producer who works the system. And at least with this suggestion the public knows what they're getting.
I would really be interested in seeing some comments on this.
Let's see if this sounds a bit familiar. You have a male FBI agent who has a female partner. The male FBI agent has something dark in his past which affects the way that he approaches his job. He's also got a problem with authority. Not that he isn't good at his job because he is. There are those who even respect him, but he wants things done his way and doesn't want interference from above. The female agent is there to work as his partner but also to rein him in. Oh yeah, and there's a huge conspiracy running through the series that the FBI agents are initially unaware of, but put the pieces of the puzzle together to discover more.
Sounds sort of like The X-Files right? Add in the notion that the series is devoted to one case, the solution of which presumably will also reveal the true nature of the conspiracy and it sounds like a cross between the X-Files, 24 and more than a small amount of The Da Vinci Code. And if the thing is done right it could be worthy of those comparisons. The trouble is that based on the first episode (which aired on Monday and re-aired on Tuesday in Fox's second hour), it doesn't seem worthy of the lineage. There's something there, at least in terms of potential, but so far at least it feels as though it's all being badly mishandled.
The episode starts calmly enough with a hook for the viewers. Sara Collins (Joanne Kelly), second grade teacher and wife of Senator Jeffrey Collins, is sitting in her home office correcting papers. The hook is that she's also talking on the phone and she's agitated with the person that she's talking to. She ends the phone call abruptly when her husband comes home and tells the caller not to call her at home again. After a brief interlude at home which is intended to indicate how much in love the Senator and his wife are we go with them to an event for a charity that Sara is instrumental in organizing. At the event we're given indications that the Senator has political enemies. After a cute scene in which a little girl gives Sara a macaroni necklace and Jeffrey lets her replace the diamond necklace he just that day bought her with it, she's called away by a concierge to answer a phone call...and vanishes.
We're next given a couple of vignettes from the lives of what I think will be the other two key characters. FBI Special Agent Graham Kelton (Gale Harold) is seen reliving the ransom drop for a ten year-old kidnapping victim named Nathan Miller. Everything seems to be working out all right when an FBI sniper kills the kidnapper. And then it suddenly goes horribly wrong. Nathan has a bomb strapped to his body and the kidnapper has a "deadman switch". When the man's thumb goes limp the switch is released and the bomb on Nathan blows up. It's something that haunts him even as he watches his daughter Inez prepare for her first Communion. That's when he gets the In the other vignette we see a beautiful woman removing her bra in a high end apartment and hopping on top of a somewhat scruffy looking man. She's obviously used to being in charge, to the point of telling her lover which cheek to kiss. They are getting into their sexual frolics when the first news report of the kidnapping comes in. Immediately she gets off her lover (talk about your coitus interruptus!) and, naked except for a thong, calls in to her TV station telling them (not asking them) that she's covering the story and telling her lover/cameraman to get his clothes on. She is reporter Judy Nash (Rebecca Gayheart) and you just know that she and Kelton are going to tangle in one way or another (or possibly many).
All of this occurs within what seems like the first ten minutes of the show. Suddenly things shift into light speed. We meet Kelton's partner on this case Lin Mei (played by Ming Na) whose job is to rein him in from ruffling too many feathers and breaching too many procedures. Before the first commercial - which admittedly occurs about fifteen minutes into the episode) they lift a finger print from the chair that the Senator's wife had been sitting in and which the fake concierge pulled out for her when she left for the phone call, learned that the Senator's daughter was also missing and seen the SWAT Team - led by Lin Mei - go into a house where the daughter and her boyfriend, with whom she's running away to get married, are starting to do much the same thing that the reporter and her cameraman were doing. In the course of the episode we see two more forced entries into houses or hotel rooms by the FBI, a car chase which ended with the discovery of the fake concierge shot to death in the trunk of his own car and a couple of clues that are mentioned and processed almost as soon as they're found. If you thought that the CSI shows processed clues fast, they're positively snail-like compared with these guys. The pace is often frenetic which is a problem with this size of cast and the apparent complexity of the mystery they're trying to solve. What's worse is that in those moments when the pace slows down for what little character development there seems to be, the show seems to drag. This is particularly true when the Senator talks to Kelton about Nathan's death, or the scene where the Senator's daughter discovers that her boyfriend has a bloodied jacket in his washing machine and a sports bag full of money sitting beside it.
If you get the feeling that I'm not overly enthusiastic about this show, you're partly right. There are elements that I like. Kelton's a brash character who is invariably the smartest man in the room but I'm not sure that's entirely a bad thing, and he does have a line when he first meets Nash (and everyone thinks that the Senator's daughter has also been kidnapped) that largely sums up certain parts of the news media these days: "You want these women to stay missing so that maybe someday you'll be as famous as they are." The Senator comes across - initially at least - as a concerned and loving husband who doesn't know why this happened to him. The conspiracy elements are not seen much in the first episode but are just intriguing enough as a hint to start us wondering. The fake concierge has a symbol tattooed on his hand that everyone seems to believe is the numeral 9 rendered in an angular shape, although I'm not convinced. The mystery gets even deeper when the ballistics test on the bullet that killed the concierge comes back to an extremely rare gun, and there's only one in the Atlanta area. The address tied to the gun is an abandoned house that looks like something out of Gone With The Wind where the agents come upon the perfectly preserved body of the wife of the former Mayor of Atlanta who also disappeared...ten years ago. She's clutching a prayer card featuring Saint Nathan.
The acting in this series seems highly variable. John Allen Nelson is very strong as Senator Jeffrey Collins, a man who is used to being in charge and suddenly isn't, but I'm less than impressed with Gale Harold who may be best known for playing Wyatt Earp in two episodes of Deadwood and Brian Kinney in the American version of Queer As Folk. Rebecca Gayheart does what she can with the character of Judy Nash but she seems to be an amalgam of all the bad things people think about the press. Two quite strong actors seem like they're being wasted in this. While Ming Na is Kelton's partner but after the first episode we still know literally nothing about her. So far at least a piece of wood could have been cast. Another strong actor in the cast is Esai Morales, who played Lieutenant Tony Rodriguez on NYPD Blue. Here he plays Kelton's boss, Supervisor Kyle Tyner, but he seems to have even less to do than Ming Na. This is annoying because I think he'd be much stronger than Gale Harold in the role of Kelton. But casting isn't the major thing that's bothering me in this show.
What does bother me is the combination of pacing and character development. The first season of 24 offers a clue about how this first episode should have gone. In that first episode we met Jack Bauer, his wife Terri, and his daughter Kim, and we found out about them. We met many of the people at CTU and picked up some details of their lives. We met presidential candidate David Palmer and his wife and kids. The essence of the plot was introduced but the episode was primarily about discovering the people. It wasn't until towards the end of the episode that the first overt act - the kidnapping of Kim Bauer - took place, and because of what had come before it was a shocking event. That pilot episode built gradually so that we were prepared for the action that followed in subsequent episodes. The pilot of Lost gave us characters to care about before introducing us to the mysteries of the island. Even reality shows understand the need to give us "characters" that we can root for or regard as villains. By comparison Vanished dumped us right into the action without the opportunity to gain any sort of depth of understanding of most of the characters. More to the point the degree which any character development was undertaken seems to indicate just how important the principal characters are: Senator Collins - important; Kelton - important; Lin Mei - not important; Judy Nash - important; Tyner - thoroughly unimportant. I'm not sure that we even care that much about Sara Carter except as a Hitchcock style McGuffin. At this level of character development I wouldn't be surprised to see Lin Mei killed, and if she was I can't see myself caring that much. I'm not suggesting that the show should have delayed the kidnapping of Sara Carter until the end of the episode, but to stage it in the first five minutes makes the investigation the focus of the show without giving us people to care about.
In the end I'll watch a few more episodes of Vanished hoping, perhaps vainly, that it might improve. The concept is intriguing and I'd like to see the conspiracy elements being introduced into the show further. What I fear however is that if the pace is maintained without giving us people to care about, I'll end up not caring - and not watching - by the time the mystery is fully developed, if indeed the show lasts that long. I'll mark this series down as a guarded maybe.
There are times when an actor is so dominant that just the mention of his name in association with a project is sufficient to to let you know that he (or far less often she) will dominate that project for good or ill. I mean let's face it, when Jack Nicholson is in a picture who is going to watch anyone else. Well maybe if DeNiro is there too. And then there's James Woods. When James Woods is on screen - in a movie, a TV show or even a poker tournament - he's the guy you're going to be watching. Not always because he's good because that's not always the case but because he seems to have this hyperactive need to be the centre of attention and whether it's showing up at a heads up poker game against Johnny Chan carrying a grapefruit (Chan is famous for sniffing an orange during a tournament, defense against the days when most poker rooms were also filled with smoke) or devouring the scenery in just about any movie he's in, he wants people watching him. And now he's come to television in the new CBS show Shark.
