Fever Dream Of Laughlin

I had a weird dream last night in which Gordon Ramsay was somehow brought in to run Kid Nation. Now I know the source of this dream – I was running a fever and feeling like something my dog dragged in. Well except that my dog doesn't drag anything in so I suppose it's like something my dog left outside. As strange as the idea of Ramsay bossing kids around may seem that's nothing compared to the weird mixture of formats that is Viva Laughlin. The show can either be seen as an ongoing serialized murder mystery, or as a nighttime soap with plenty of sex and intrigue, all of which is wrapped up with the central conceit of the show, namely that people burst into song and dance at unpredictable times. It is of course the song and dance that has gotten all of the notice.

Ripley Holden (Lloyd Owen) is a man "livin' the dream." He had a secure life with a chain of thirteen successful convenience stores but sold them to fund his dream, a luxury casino resort in Laughlin Nevada which he wants to be the biggest thing ever on the Colorado River. His casino is already built but not yet open. Still he feels confident enough to buy his son a brand new Corvette as a belated birthday present. But for Ripley, trouble is just around the corner. His biggest investor, Buddy Baxter (Wings Hauser) is pulling his money out of the project. He wants to put it into wind farms, primarily at the instigation of his wife Bunny Baxter (Melanie Griffith). Ripley bluffs and says he has investors just waiting to put their money in but Buddy isn't buying it. Persuaded by his accountant Jonesy (P.J. Byrne), Ripley decides to go see Vic Fontaine (Hugh Jackman in a recurring role), owner of the biggest casino in Laughlin, and tries to get him to invest. Fontaine isn't buying. He knows exactly the sort of trouble that Ripley's in (Fontaine: "Do you play golf? I do; every week. With your bank manager!"). As we learn a little later Vic is responsible for getting Buddy to pull his money out; his "associate," Marcus (D.B. Woodside), is one of Bunny's lovers and got her to persuade Buddy to take his money out of the project. Trying to salvage things, Ripley goes to see Bunny to get her to talk Buddy back into the project. It's clear that Ripley and Bunny have some sort of history and Bunny wants to return him to her stable of lovers. That's something Ripley won't do; he is happy with his married life even if it includes a daughter who is dating a 42 year-old professor.

Things take an even worse turn for Ripley the next day. Buddy is found dead in Ripley's office. Suspicion falls almost immediately on Riley, a situation that isn't helped when Bunny screams at Ripley "Why did you do this?!" She happens to say this right in front of Peter Carlyle (Eric Winter), the lead cop in the case. Carlyle immediately makes Ripley his primary – possibly his only – suspect and sets out with his partner to learn more about Ripley. Buddy's murder, combined with the other stresses related to his casino, is making Ripley's home life tense. So it's fairly natural that Carlyle decides to pick on Ripley's wife Natalie (Madchen Amick) to find out more about Ripley. It does seem like it will be a drawn out process though. Eventually Ripley's son Jack (Carter Jenkins) comes to his father's unfinished casino. In his backpack is a wad of money, and Ripley initially thinks his son is dealing drugs. It turns out that Jack has sold the Corvette that his father bought for him and brought the proceeds back – he loved the car but he loves his father more. Ripley takes the money that Jack gave him, and an additional $200,000 from the casino's cage and heads for Vic Fontaine's casino. He's going to risk it all, just as he risked it all when he sold his convenience stores to build a casino. The floor man at the roulette table Ripley stops at is immediately able to tell just how much money is in Ripley's backpack and tells him that management has to approve. Fontaine shows up a few seconds later and is willing to take the bet. Ripley puts the $250,000 on Red (because Vic's cars are both black) and wins, and then wins again. His million dollars is enough to get the casino up and running.

I haven`t mentioned the music in all of this. It is the show`s big gimmick but if you want to know the truth I find the music intrusive. There are four songs used in this episode. Ripley sings (or lip syncs along with Elvis) Viva Las Vegas as he drives to his casino, Vic sings along with Mick Jagger on Shake Hands With The Devil, Bunny tries to seduce Ripley to Blondie's One Way Or Another, and Ripley's bet at Vic's casino is done to Bachman-Turner Overdrive's Let It Ride. The problems with the music are that the actors aren't really singing, or at least not so much that you'd notice, and that they surround the music with dancing or at least actions synchronised to the music. Ripley doesn't just sing along to Viva Las Vegas as he drives in his car, he greets workers at his casino in rhythm to the music and ends the number by standing on top of a craps table and mimics throwing dice. When Vic arrives to Shake Hands With The Devil there's one scene in particular where a group of chorus girls cross their legs as he walks past, in time to the music. There's a dance sequence with Ripley and Bunny during One Way Or Another. As I say, I find this sort of thing intrusive in that it breaks up the presentation of the storyline. While the musical element leads to comparisons between this show and Steven Bochco's Cop Rock the difference there is that the music on that show was original and for better or for worse the actors on that show did their own singing. I don't really hear the voices of the actors in this show taking a prominent position in the songs, it's more like they're singing along rather weakly to the music.

There's some nicely done casting here. Lloyd Owen really impresses in his portrayal of Ripley Holden. Holden's a gambler who is never satisfied with the safe and secure. He brash and volatile, but at the same time you can't help but feel an attraction to him. As much as I dislike her personally, Melanie Griffith is perfectly suited to play the aging slut Bunny. Bunny is exactly the sort of person who would have that strange voice that Griffith possesses. As Vic Fontaine, Hugh Jackman dominates his scenes. He exudes a quality of sneering superiority in his scenes with Owen, as though he's on top of the world and no one is going to knock him off. We don't see much from the lesser roles in this episode, which seems to be entirely based on the confrontations between Ripley and Bunny, and Ripley and Vic.

The show isn't as horrible as I had expected but it seems rather weak and lacking in terms of how things are going to progress. The music is – as I've already said – rather intrusive, but I'm not sure this series would have been made without the music. The storyline is fairly basic – the toll a murder investigation will take on someone who is willing to repeatedly risk it all, and the machinations that surround the casino business and Ripley's efforts to live his dream. I don't know where this series goes if or when Buddy's murder is actually solved. Remember, Blackpool (the BBC series this was adapted from) only ran for six episodes with a sequel movie later. I don't know how you turn this into even a single season on American TV (not that I think we'll have to worry about it going more than one season at most, and if it does it may well be courtesy of the upcoming writer's strike). Moreover the continuing storyline of this show is a trend which the television audience overwhelmingly rejected last season. There's some interesting stuff here and at least it's not a police procedural, but I think that the only reason it gets made is the gimmick (and because of Jackman's involvement as an occasional actor and full time Executive Producer. I don't think it's horrible but I also don't think I'll make it regular viewing except in times of desperation. For myself, I'd much rather have had a fall season of The Amazing Race than this in the show's eventual Sunday time slot.

Correction: The song is of course Sympathy For The Devil. Shake Hands With The Devil is the book and now film about Canadian General Romeo Dallaire who commanded UN forces in Rwanda during the genocide there.

Book Review – The Complete Directory To Prime Time Network And Cable TV Shows 1946 - Present

Thanks to Amazon.ca my copy of this book – which is in its Ninth Edition – arrived on Tuesday which was also the day that it arrived in bookstores. It's everything that I hoped for and more. Admittedly, since the only previous copy of this book that I've owned is the Third Edition just about any up to date material would be what I hoped for. Still, I've seen more recent editions and this one still goes beyond it.

First, the "tale of the tape" as they say in boxing. The Third and Ninth editions of

The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present (henceforth mostly known as The Directory if only because that title is so long that by the time you get finished reading it you've lost your train of thought) have about the same dimensions. The Ninth Edition is about 700 pages longer – 1854 pages versus 1150 for the third edition – and the print is noticeably smaller.

There's a blurb on the cover of The Directory that says "This is the Guiness Book Of World Records...the Encyclopedia Britannica of television." They are absolutely correct of course. There are more than 6,500 series listed running from 1946 to the end of the 2006-07 TV season and there are some real obscurities. Each entry includes a broadcast history of the show including the network that it ran on, length, when the original episodes ran and the number of original episodes, when the show premiered, and the cast list, all of which is followed by a summary of the show. In most cases the summaries are a single paragraph although in some cases there are more. The entry for 24 runs something like two and a half pages of just the show summary – the cast list takes up another page – and details the plot of each season. In cases where a show had a definitive finale, the events of the finale are described. In some cases – as with Star Trek: Voyager – this summary takes a full paragraph while in the majority of cases it's tacked on to the end of the summary of the final season, as with The OC. It's not just network TV shows either. Major (and not so major) syndicated shows are listed – for instance the Canadian made Neon Rider which ran four season in Canada but was only available in the US for one – as are major cable network series. Inclusion of the latter seems highly arbitrary: just as an example they include The Sopranos but omit Deadwood and Rome. Finally, added this year are listings for many US cable networks. These listings include the date that the network was launched, the total number of subscribers and the percentage of US homes receiving the network. That is usually followed by a brief history of the network and the sort of programming that is shown. In some cases there's a listing of shows that the network has aired if some of them have a separate listing and others don't.

All that makes for a great package for which you'd gladly pay the price you say? But wait! (as they say in the commercials) There's more!! There is a short, if somewhat opinionated, history of television by The Directory's co-author Tim brooks. He currently splits the history of the medium into eight eras. Six of these were in the Third Edition of The Directory: Vaudeo (1948-57) – the era where the dominant form was the variety show; The Adult Western Era (1957-early 1960s); The Idiot Sitcom Era (early to late 1960s – Brooks dismisses this period by saying "Was there anything serious on TV in the early 1960s? The answer is 'not much'; even the network newscasts were only 15 minutes long until 1963"; The Relevance Era (late 1960s-1975); The ABC "Fantasy Era" (1975-1980); The Soap Opera and "Real People Era (1980s). Subsequently Brooks has added two more: The Era of Choice (1990s) and The Reality Era (2000s). The book also has ten appendices. These include a listing of Fall TV schedules from 1946-47 to 2006-07 for all of the broadcast networks – well except for PAX but including MyNetworkTV. There is a listing of major Emmy winners from 1948 to 2006 (no "Outstanding Single Camera Photography in a Reality or Documentary Series" in other words), and a listing of the thirty top rated programs of each year from 1950-51 to 2006-07, and a list of the longest running series (The Tonight Show is listed at 53 seasons which doesn't take into account host changes. There's an interesting list of the "Top 100 Series of All Time" which is based on both longevity and audience size each year – the most recent series on the list at 99 is Desperate Housewives while 60 Minutes is #1. There's a listing of reunion shows (sometimes more than one per series), listings of series based on movies – did you know there was a 1987 TV version of the 1938 movie You Can't Take It With You; it starred Harry Morgan, Lois Nettleton and Richard Sanders – and of series were also on network radio. There is a listing of various websites – not just the network sites but also informational sites which are given letter grades – Wikipedia is rated highly while IMDB gets "an A for comprehensiveness, C- for accuracy", an evaluation I agree with for a variety of reasons not least of which is the tendency to not actually list the cast of the show on a show's page because actors who have the most number of episodes on the series get onto the main page and on many shows the stars either have "unknown number" or no number at all beside their listings). Finally there's an extremely hard 200 question "Ph.D Trivia Quiz" which is devilishly hard. I suggest reading the book from cover to cover before trying it.

Just to test The Directory I decided to look up The Rich List, a show which had a single airing on FOX. The Directory had four paragraphs on the show including this little nugget of information: "One of the teams in the first episode had apparently completed in a previous episode that had not aired, since they were introduced as the 'reigning champions' with current winnings of $25,000." Who knew? Next I looked up Power Play, a show that aired for two seasons on CTV in Canada but only lasted two episodes as a summer series on UPN – it's there, as is Traders, which ran for five seasons in Canada but only thirteen episodes on Lifetime Cable. In fact that's the greatest joy of this book – at least for me – and one of the reasons why it is taking me so much time to write. You look for something and find it, but then you see something else which leads you on a tangent that you never expected to take.

That's not to say that there aren't problems with the book. There are errors; in a review of the current Battlestar Galactica the authors refer to "Lieutenant Kara Starbuck" even though their cast list gets it right and calls her "Captain Kara Thrace ('Starbuck')." The omission of significant cable series like Deadwood,
The Wire, and even Oz, is arbitrary even given the authors' statement on the criteria for the inclusion of cable series: "Favored for inclusion are (1) series with casts, such as dramas and sitcoms, (2) series that had reasonably long runs, typically two seasons or more, and (3) series of any type with especially large audiences." Many (probably most) of the reviews for shows that had ended at the time of the Third Edition are unchanged in the Ninth, but really that's to be expected. What I find vaguely troubling is that entries for shows that were on the air at the time that the Third Edition went to press are either unchanged or just supplemented – the listing for Hill Street Blues is word for word the same as in the Third Edition even though the series had two more years to run after the Third Edition came out. The first two paragraphs for Cheers are the review from the Third Edition. There's some editorializing in reviews of some shows, like this from the review of Traders: "Overcooked drama about romance and backstabbing at Gardner/Ross, a powerful investment house located in Toronto, Canada....The camera swooped and dodged across the trading floor, as if looking for a plot and there were frequent extreme close-ups into characters' eyes (maybe the plot's in there?)." Things like this are annoying particularly when you like a show (Canadians were glued to Traders despite what seemed to be Global's best efforts to kill it off, for example scheduling it opposite ER, which it actually beat in its time slot). Still, all of these factors don't take away from the worthiness or the value of The Directory as a reference work. It would be nice to see the correction of errors like the one about "Kara Starbuck," which comes across as someone just not giving a damn. It would be nice to see periodic revision of previously written articles, not just to supplement them but to bring them up to a certain standard both in terms of seeing the show as a whole and maintaining a consistent degree of impartiality.

Brooks writes of the Era of Choice "When I first wrote about the (then) 'Six Eras of Prime Time' in 1984 it looked as if future updates would be easy. One network would sooner or later stumble upon the next trend and the other two would immediately copy it, and the viewing public would be inundated with clones – the next programming 'era.' But it hasn't worked out that way. Instead the once tightly controlled world of national television has exploded into hundreds of channels all with their own independent voices. No longer can three powerful networks dictate what you will see, and no longer does programming move in lockstep. For the first time viewers have a real choice, all the time, and they are using it." This is the sort of thing that may eventually spell the end of a source like The Complete Directory To Prime Time Network And Cable TV Shows 1946 – Present. There is a limit to how large a book like this can get while being both useful and affordable. I love this book for all its faults because it is a specialised reference on a par with the Encyclopedia Britannica or The Guiness Book of World Records. For any true Child Of Television it is probably a must have item, warts and all.

Blogger Poker Tournament – I’m Out in 557th

Not a particularly inspired performance on my part, couldn't catch any hands and probably played too conservatively until it was way too late to matter. As I write this Tim Gueguen (aka Saskblogger) is keeping his head above water although not setting the world on fire.

Scatterlings In Africa

Care to guess what the most successful series in terms of ratings was on the old WB network? Since I can't hear you shouting out Buffy or Smallville or Everwood I'll tell you. It was 7^th Heaven. I remember being amazed/bemused in the various newsgroups for the more "geek" popular WB shows – like Buffy, Angel or Smallville – when the hip young things would wonder at why that piece of (insert preferred noun indicating utter disdain here – I think I'll use crap) was still on the air or had been renewed by the morons at the network when other shows that "they" watched were cancelled. They didn't like having it pointed out that 7^th Heaven which they disdained usually pulled about twice the ratings as the shows they liked and perpetually had the highest ratings on the network. (That also explains the durability of Reba by the way, but don't try telling the executives at the CW that they cancelled their most successful comedy while renewing Girlfriends.) I don't know that it should have surprised anybody. 7^th Heaven was a show that you could sit down with your spouse and the kids and spend an hour a week watching something that wasn't going to deliver a murder a week, a string of dubious language, or much beyond the hint that people were having sex (they had to have been having sex given the number of pregnancies) and still produce dramatic and entertaining situations. In the '70s there was The Waltons and from the mid-'90s to mid 2007 there was 7^th Heaven.

So it's no surprise that after finally putting 7^th Heaven to rest (after a frankly ill-advised sudden renewal by for the 2006-07 season) The CW decided to create a show to replace it. Well, maybe create isn't quite the right word. Adapt, adopt, borrow, re-invent – those would be some of the right words, since their new show Life Is Wild is actually taken (another good word) from the popular British series Wild At Heart. No matter; despite some conflict, this seems like a series that even the PTC could love. And while I'm not saying that that's necessarily a recommendation, I would like people to admit that every so often you need a show that you can sit down with the spouse and the kids and enjoy.

The pilot starts with a Land Rover driving down a dirt road in South Africa. Inside are a man, a woman, two teenagers and two younger kids. We're quickly filled in about who these people are courtesy of a voiceover from the teenage girl, Katie Clarke (Leah Pipes). The man is her father veterinarian Danny Clarke (D.W. Moffat) while the woman is her step-mother Jo (Stephanie Niznik). The younger boy is Katie's brother Chase (K'Sun Ray) while the younger girl is their step-sister Mia (Mary Matilyn Mouser). Finally the teenage boy is Jo's rebellious son Jesse. They're a blended family, but the blending is considerably less successful than it was for the Brady Bunch. Which is part of the reason why they're driving down a road in South Africa – it's one of those things that families in crisis do, although for most of them it's a trip to Disneyworld or therapy instead. For them it's living in South Africa for a year while Danny works as a vet. An early incident in the show when they stop to let Mia pee and a large elephant charges at them indicates that Danny has been there before. He met his first wife there, when he was in the Peace Corp. Now they're heading for the Blue Antelope Lodge. The lodge is owned by Danny's former father-in-law, Katie and Chase's grandfather and it's not exactly what anyone is expecting. Instead of a resort with a swimming pool and spa, with a smiling happy staff to greet them and a fully equipped veterinary clinic for Danny to work in there's some derelict cabins, a main building that has seen better days, and an old man who looks like he could be dead but is just drunk. That's Art (David Butler), the kids' grandfather. He and the lodge are retired, or as he says, "It's hard to run a bed and breakfast when you're the only one making the beds."

Almost immediately Danny is called out to the nearby village to treat a sick baby goat. He takes Jesse and Katie along with him. The village isn't one of those postcard villages of mud huts and thatched roofs, but rather a sprawling place of shacks made up of what can be salvaged including a lot of corrugated iron, an apartheid era township. And it's not just one baby goat but instead a virtual parade of critters all waiting for a visiting vet. While Danny treats his patients Jesse and Katie are allowed to wander around the township. Katie hooks up with Tumelo (Atandwa Kani), an African boy of about her age who wants to work with her father so that he can learn to be a vet. Meanwhile Jesse goes into the marketplace where he finds a stall selling whiskey. He wants to steal a bottle but catches sight of someone watching him. Though we don't know his name at this point we later discover that he is Oliver Banks (Calvin Goldspink), son of the owner of the successful lodge in the area. Oliver offers to take Jesse someplace where they can get whiskey, which of course they go off to do without telling anyone – it's part of Jesse's rebelliousness. Needless to say, when Danny finally brings him back to the Blue Antelope Lodge (after Jesse engages in some skateboarding on the paved highway that nearly results in him being hit by a car) there's an argument.

The next day, Chase and Mia find a lion cub outside of the lodge. There's a wounded lioness in the area and as Art explains, in the search for food the lioness will abandon her cub, something that Chase in particular doesn't understand. The Blue Antelope's veterinary clinic is as derelict as the rest of the place so Danny and Art and the rest of the family go to the neighbouring lodge, owned by Colin Banks (Jeremy Sheffield). The lodge has swimming pools, a spa, and all the amenities (including a fully equipped veterinary clinic) that the Blue Antelope doesn't. Art is disdainful about the place, calling it an amusement park where you can see the animals. And indeed there seems to be little real need to leave the place to see animals since they have feeding points set up to bring the giraffes and other animals right up to the buildings. There's even a little something to attract Jesse besides the booze – Colin's sister Emily (Tiffany Mulheron). The lion cub is rather quickly restored to health thanks to an IV.

Chase is unhappy that they're keeping the lion cub in a cage especially after the lioness comes to the lodge and makes an even greater mess of the clinic than it already was. He's sure that the animal is looking for its baby and decides to set the free to find its mother. So he heads out alone into the bush and needless to say can't find his way home. Worried about the wounded animal Art and Danny head out to find Chase, but after they go Katie sets out to find her brother with Jesse chasing after her. They encounter the wounded animal which comes after them. Jesse, remembering how Danny stopped the charging elephant made a similar display which stops the lion in its tracks, just in time for Art to shoot it. Jesse thinks that the old man has killed it but instead he's shot it with a tranquilizer dart. They take the big cat to the clinic in the Banks' family lodge and Danny urges Jesse to help with the surgery to remove the bullet as a sort of veterinary nurse's aide. Jesse seems flustered at first but as he watches Danny work his face seems to register a sort of appreciation for what his stepfather is doing. The episode ends with the family attempting to reunite the lioness with the cub in a pen at the Blue Antelope, an attempt that is successful.

There's plenty of opportunity for exposition in the episode, as well as setting up ongoing storylines. Art has a sort of shrine set up to his daughter, a shrine which Katie can't look at even though she puts up a happy face and claims to be focussed on the present. We learn that Jo is a divorce lawyer (and that Art hates lawyers – I was expecting Jo to come back with a line like "Why should you be any different," when he mentioned that to her) and that her ex-husband is jail back in the States. There's a cute moment when Chase comes into a room with Katie and Art, carrying a T-shirt with a picture of Nelson Mandela on it. It belonged to Art's daughter, but while Katie knows whose face is on it, all Chase knows is its "that guy." Later we learn why Katie's mother ran away to marry Danny – she hated Apartheid and she fought with her father over it. They never reconciled even though he has accepted the facts of how things are. Finally there's an interesting subplot that I hope will be developed further. At one point, when Tumelo comes to see Katie and introduce her to his "sister" – a cheetah that he had rescued as a cub – she mentions that her father is at the Banks' lodge and that if he wants to meet him he could go there. Tumelo's reaction seems to be almost one of fear when he says that he couldn't possibly go there. It ties in with the fact that the local villagers are desperate for the help of a veterinarian despite the fact that the Banks family has a fully equipped facility on their property. I suspect that the only way one of the locals is welcome on the Banks place is as one of the "friendly helpful staff."

It's sort of difficult to evaluate this show. The plot is workmanlike and the family dynamics seem fairly realistic. The problem I have is with how much of this has been brought over from the original British series and how much is original. The scenery and animal footage is spectacular of course, and I do appreciate the sort of honesty that is shown by showing the conditions that the "villagers" live in rather than giving what might be called the "tourism bureau" view of their living conditions. This is particularly interesting given that the show is produced with the assistance of the South African government's industry department. The acting is adequate – there are no really outstanding performances here, at least not yet. I can't really fault the casting; even though D.W. Moffat looks too young to have a teenage daughter he is in fact older than I am. Butler has a suitably grizzled appearance as Art, although if there were one thing I might change it would be to make Art an Afrikaner rather than an English South African – it would somehow make his argument with his daughter over Apartheid seem more realistic. As well, making him an Afrikaner, with deep roots in the country, would make his animosity to the immigrant British Banks family more palpable. But that's quibbling.

My good buddy Toby stated when he voted for Life Is Wild to be the first show of this group to be cancelled that he felt that "Life Is Wild has two strikes against it - it sounds boring and it's on the CW." Having seen the pilot episode I have to say that while it may sound boring I didn't find it to be particularly bad. The CW part may be a much bigger problem for the show. The network has put it on following their two youth oriented shows, CW Live and Online Nation. Those two shows have had absolutely dismal ratings – according to Marc Berman Sunday's Online Nation had an audience of 762,000 and a 0.3/1 share and rating in the 18-49 demographic. Even more than doubling that – as Life Is Wild did (1.64 million viewers and a 0.4/ 1 among adults 18-49) – is a pretty dismal performance. I want to believe that there is a place for a show such as this in prime time and it seems as though The CW is about the only network willing to take a shot with a show like this. It might do better – comparatively at least – on a more important network like CW part owner CBS, but it would also be more likely to be cancelled on a big network for ratings that the executives at The CW would drool over. I don't know what the remedy for this situation is – replacing CW Live and Online Nation with reruns of Smallville or reviving Reba maybe, or perhaps moving Life Is Wild to a different night (like the second hour of Monday to replace Girlfriends and The Game) – but surely there should be someplace on broadcast TV for a show like this. Or do we relegate shows like this to cable networks like Nickelodeon?

No Short Takes This Week

Maybe I'm feeling disinterested or something this week, but it seems like there's nothing to write about. No shows have been cancelled, and while ABC has announced that they want Rob Thomas to come up with a new version of Cupid, it's not enough. Even the PTC has been quiescent this week. They haven't come up with any new "Worst Ofs" or Misrateds, and they haven't done their "traffic lights for parents" reviews of the new shows yet – not enough episodes to evaluate. That's never stopped them before; remember these were the people who gave Studio 60 a red light for sexual content not because the episodes that had aired had sex in them but because "sex scenes can be expected." For the record, the closest the show came to a sex scene was when we saw the bare back of one of the characters. Oh, and one of the characters got pregnant though we didn't see the process that got her that way.

I'm afraid I fell behind last week on my reviewing duties. Mid-week I suddenly felt like crap, and I mean that pretty literally – I think it might have been something in the bulk trail mix that I love. I was part way through a review of Bionic Woman and I just couldn't finish it. So I'll get back to the reviews in the coming week. Plus, no bowling tomorrow so you'll actually get a review of one or more of the Monday shows which I usually end up reviewing on a catch as catch can basis – which frequently means not at all.

Anyway, it's Canadian Thanksgiving weekend and I'll be ODing on tryptophan later today. If you're a Canadian, Happy Thankgiving and good luck explaining to the kids why those pictures of Pilgrims they're colouring in have no link with our holiday (it's a celebration of the harvest, not of the arrival of a group of religious dissidents whose ship got lost and ended up in New England rather than Virginia). If you're an American, Happy Columbus Day and enjoy doing whatever you do on Columbus Day – eat a pizza I guess or go out to Olive Garden or better yet, at a good Italian restaurant.

2007 Bloggers Poker Tournament

It's that time of year again!

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 4875936

Poll Results and the Week’s New Shows

Well at least this time around we actually had a result worthy of the name. There were ten votes cast. Reaper, Bionic Woman, Private Practice, Dirty Sexy Money and Life all went without votes. With one vote each (10%) Big Shots and Journeyman are tied for tied for fourth place. In a tie for second, with two votes each (20%) are Cane and Moonlight. But the winner – which means you thought it was a real loser – is The Big Bang Theory with four votes (40%).

This time around the poll will be slightly different because I'm going to lump all the remaining new shows together. Well except for Cashmere Mafia which debuts at the end of November – let's not get silly about this after all. Vote for the one that you think will be cancelled first and feel free to offer reasons. For the purposes of this poll "None" means that you expect the series to run for at least the length of the initial order (13 weeks in most cases).

Here are this week's series premieres (in red) and season debuts:

October 1st

• Everybody Hates Chris (CW)
  
• ALIENS IN AMERICA (CW)
• Girlfriends (CW)
• The Game (CW)

October 2nd

• CAVEMEN (ABC)
• CARPOOLERS (ABC)
  

October 3rd

• PUSHING DAISIES (ABC)

October 4th

• Supernatural (CW)
  
• 30 Rock (NBC)
  

October 5th

• Friday Night Lights (NBC)
  

October 7th

• LIFE IS WILD (CW)
  

Short Takes – October 1, 2007

Yeah, I know, I didn't do my DVD piece this week. Well are you really surprised? With the volume of new shows that popped up this week (and the backlog of reviews for me to still write), it didn't make sense for me to do a DVD list, and I don't know that I'll get around to one next week either. But I am doing my Short Takes piece because I enjoy it, new news is starting to flow and the PTC continues to make a collective ass of itself. That last one is my bread and butter).

(Incidentally, in case you were wondering my DVD Pick of the Week is the The Complete Thunderbirds Megaset. I was a huge fan of the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson "Supermarionation" series that I saw – particular favourites were Fireball XL5 and Stingray – but the king of them all for me was Thunderbirds The various ships were terrifically realised (my favourite was the submarine Thunderbird 4 for some reason – maybe it's the same reason why I felt sorry for John, always stuck in the space station) and the way that the characters got to their ships how the ships were launched was unique to an Anderson series. Having seen the show after my childhood enjoyment of it I've noticed details I never picked up on before or forgotten about (the smoking puppets besides Lady Penelope being one of them, as well as the times when human hands are used in close ups) but while my appreciation of it has changed, I still love it.)

Dead and alive: While Jorja Fox's character of Sara Sidle survived last season's CSI cliffhanger, the character won't be with the show much longer. Fox's contract with the show ran out at the end of last season and the parties were unable to come to terms on a new one, however she has apparently agreed to appear in six or seven episodes in the current season, I suppose to move the character's departure up to November sweeps. Fox's contract came up for renewal a year before most of the other actors on the show because she refused a raise that she considered to be "terrible, to be frank." A condition of accepting that wage increase was an extension of the contract for one year, Fox told TV Guide's Michael Ausiello. Part of the reason for her decision not to renew at that time was fallout from her brief firing from the show (along with George Eads) in 2004. At that time Fox was fired for not returning her contract for the fifth season of the show (which required that actors show up on the set on time); in fact she had sent her contract to CBS but unlike other cast members she sent hers by the mail and it was delayed. This time however, it appears that Jorja – and Sara – are really going.

Gomer Pyle makes Corporal – after 43 years: Well actually it was Jim Nabors who became an honorary Marine Corps Corporal. Nabors played Gomer Pyle on the Andy Griffith Show from 1962-1964 and then on his own spin-off Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C. from 1964 to 1969. In the latter show Pyle was a good natured but sometimes slow witted member of the Marines whose constantly aggravated his platoon commander, Sergeant Carter. In the series Pyle never advanced beyond the rank of Private First Class. Nabors, on the other hand, was made an honorary Marine in 2001 by then Commandant General James L. Jones and was immediately promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal. However, a Lance Corporal is an appointed rank and is not a Non-Commissioned Officer. On September 25, 2007 Nabors was promoted to the rank of Corporal by Lt. General John F Goodman "based on his outstanding contributions to the Marine Corps and the United States." Nabors was presented with an NCO's sword, the oldest weapon in the US Military today (it is based on the 1859 model Infantry Officer's Sword). The Marines are the only branch of the US military that authorizes NCOs to carry swords. Among other honorary Marines are/were Lon Chaney Sr. (made an honorary Marine following the 1926 movie Tell It To The Marines), Joe Rosenthal whose photo of the raising of the second flag on Iwo Jima was the model for the Marine Corps Memorial in Washington, and Chuck Norris who was somewhat controversially given the title in April of this year. As a Corporal, Nabors is superior to Norris, however both men have to take orders from a rabbit. Bugs Bunny was made an honorary Marine Corps Master Sergeant in 1943.

Nashville not "cancelled": In other news about things that were too long delayed, FOX has pulled their new reality soap Nashville from the line up after two dismally rated episodes, which was at least one too many. But the show isn't cancelled – oh no. The show will be returning FOX says. It's being "rescheduled" for later in October, after the Baseball playoffs (you know, the albatross that traditionally breaks the FOX line-up into two halves and gives the other networks a freeroll against the network because they don't do Baseball as well as NBC did). Or least that's what FOX says. Trouble is, after Baseball vacates Friday nights the network has The Next Great American Band which I gather is sort of like American Idol for bands. So where does FOX stick Nashville (and don't give me the answer I know you're all thinking – the PTC wouldn't approve)? And should they stick a show that drew 2.1 million viewers and a 0.8 rating 3 share against reruns any place but in the trash bin? FOX's promises to bring this show hasn't been cancelled are the equivalent of saying that "it's pining for the fjords." Lovely plumage though.

Is BEN SILVERMAN the reincarnation of Brandon Tartikoff?: Probably not but he is making a couple of moves on shows that Brandon would have found very familiar. First Ben Silverman announced that NBC would be looking at reviving American Gladiators as a prime time series. I'll let that concept sink in for a moment or two. American Gladiators. As a prime time series?! This past week it was announced that NBC was looking to revive Knight Rider as a two hour movie that could serve as a possible pilot. Knight Rider! Most of you know that Knight Rider was created and produced by Glenn Larson (the guy who gave us Battlestar Galactica and The Bionic Woman both of which have been re-imagined by NBC-Universal) but what you may not know is that the original concept came from the musings of Brandon Tartikoff. According to the The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present (of which I desperately need a new copy) Tartikoff and one of his assistants were talking about the problems of leading men who looked good but couldn't act. The solution they came up with was called "The Man With Six Words." Each episode would begin with the handsome (but talentless) leading man getting out of a woman's bed and saying "Thank you," after which he'd chase down the bad guys and at the end of the chase would shout "Freeze!" Finally, after the grateful people he'd saved thanked him, he'd quietly say "You're welcome." (Yes I know that's only five words; I suppose the guy would get a different wild card word each week.) The car – which could be portrayed by an actor with real ability since he wouldn't actually be seen – would do the rest of the talking. And while David Hasselhoff might not have been as bad an actor as in the original concept, it is still worth noting that William Daniels (who voiced the car) could act circles around him without ever being seen.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: Well not themselves of course. They were promoting a new website – www.howcableshouldbe.com – with a calculator which purports to inform us of the relative costs of various cable channels and how much the American consumer could save if only they were allowed the freedom to pay for only those stations they want to receive. One of the problems is the price they assert for the various networks. In a footnote at the bottom of the page the organization notes, "Cable companies and programmers do not reveal their contracted programming rates. Each of the 1,000+ cable operators in the US negotiates their network agreements separately, which will result in a range of programming fees. While every effort has been made to offer an accurate and representative picture of average programming prices, these rates should never been presented or published as fact." In other words, though the PTC says that ESPN costs the consumer $3.80 a month they're also saying that they don't know the actual prices because those prices vary between service providers, presumably with the bigger providers like Time-Warner having more clout with the networks than the small local companies (if any of them still exist). Another interesting point is the price that is charged on their lists. With the exception of seven networks (ESPN, Nickelodeon, ESPN2, TNT, CNN, The Sci-Fi Channel and what they label Regional Sports Network – by which they probably mean something like NESN or the various Fox Sportnets) none of the networks are priced at over $1 per month. Choosing to eliminate frequent PTC cable worst targets E!, MTV, FX, Comedy Central, and Spike would save the consumer $3.25 per month or $39 a year off a current cable bill of $375.60 per year. Among the stations absent from the PTC's list are religious stations – mostly of the conservative fundamentalist variety – and home shopping networks. Do Americans get those for "free"?

The PTC also seems to be branching out from "impure" TV content. They've always been adamant in attacks on video games but their new crusade is in support of a law that would restrict the sort of video content that the airlines can show on monitors in their cabins. In a press release in relation to a bill (which the PTC inaccurately refers to as legislation; legislation refers to a bill that has been passed and enacted as law) introduced in the House of Representatives related to airlines' in-flight entertainment programming. (The PTC also doesn't mention any details about the bill they're talking about, like the number or the member of Congress who introduced it.) In the press release, PTC President Tim Winter writes "We are asking the airline industry to take responsibility for the new barrage of adult-oriented entertainment they are forcing on captive audiences in the form of in-flight entertainment. It is ridiculous that this issue has become so commonplace, so outrageous, that our elected officials feel they have been left with no choice but to intervene." The "adult content" that Winter refers to includes the TV series Las Vegas and Desperate Housewives, the HBO series Rome ("that has been described as sadistic") and the Anthony Hopkins film Fracture which "features a graphic depiction of Anthony Hopkins shooting his wife in the face." The PTC uses some typically fallacious logic by saying, "Air travelers don't purchase tickets based on the airline's sexual or violent content on the in-flight entertainment system; therefore, there is no market demand for this type of material on airplanes with mixed audiences that regularly include children." Extending that logic, air travelers don't normally purchase tickets based on there being in-flight entertainment (or the food, or anything beyond the fact that the plane goes where they want to go at a price that they are willing to pay) therefore there no market demand for this type of service at all. Now it's been some time since I've flown and when I did there was no movies or video provided on flights to or from Saskatoon, but I was under the impression that airlines are increasingly moving to personal in flight entertainment systems of this sort which allows individual travellers a greater selection of what they want to watch rather than having to watch what everyone else watches no matter what. If these services are widely offered then surely it is the responsibility of the individual traveller to choose what they want to watch and what they want their children to see on their screens. And given that shows like Desperate Housewives and Las Vegas are broadcast on network TV without complaint except from organizations like the PTC it would seem to be an area that government shouldn't involve itself with.

So now we turn to the PTC's Broadcast Worst of the Week. Not surprisingly it's Prison Break on Fox, primarily for the violent content in the first hour of prime time. But they start with a scene that they object to for an entirely different reason: "The show opens with Michael trapped in a Panamanian prison run by a dictatorial warden. One of the warden's mistresses is shown getting dressed after an implied sexual encounter with the warden. As she stands exposed in her bra and panties, she picks up a crucifix and holds it close to her partially covered breast. There is no apparent meaning to this shot other than to show a disregard for the sanctity of such a symbol." Far be it for me to contradict the PTC...oh hell, I love to contradict the PTC. The PTC is so busy being outraged that they don't bother to offer context to a scene that they're ripping to pieces. From this description we have no knowledge of the status of the woman involved. Rather than the warden's willing mistress she might very well be the wife/lover/girlfriend/sister/mother of a prisoner forced to surrender her sexual favours in return for better treatment for her husband/lover/boyfriend/brother/father. Her action in holding the crucifix to her breast could – and indeed would – be seen as a part of a prayer, an act of contrition of a devout woman for her sin. And the warden? He isn't the warden, he's the meanest toughest inmate in the Sona Prison who has engineered the takeover of the place. There is no warden; there are no guards. That's important for the next two scenes that the PTC cites. In one "the warden threatens an inmate, to the point that the inmate wets his pants in terror." But of course he's not "the warden", he's one of the inmates which takes away all of the protections that even the warden of the worst South American prison would be bound by. In other words if this guy threatens to cut off your testicles and make you eat them to you there is absolutely no reason to believe that he won't do it. And then there's what the PTC calls the most violent scene of the episode, "when Michael is forced to fight to the death with another, much larger, inmate. Michael and the man engage in a fierce battle that ends when Michael breaks the man's neck, killing him." But as the preview in TVSquad says, "Internally run by inmate Lechero (Robert Wisdom), Sona is like one big Thunderdome where people settle their differences by killing each other. Lechero calls all the shots within the prison, including who fights, who eats, who gets water and, as we see early on of Bellick, who gets clothing."

Now here is where I'm going to shock you. The PTC's conclusion is that "After two seasons of Prison Break, it is still shocking that Fox has such a lack of concern for family viewers at 8 o'clock in the evening. Violent content such as this is suited for extended cable and R-rated movies, not the Family Hour." Set aside the comment about the non-existent "Family Hour" and the claim that the scene is suited only to R-rated movies or extended cable. I honestly don't think that Prison Break should be on in the first hour of prime time. It is violent. It should be on at a later time. But since Fox only programs two hours a night (for legal reasons that are too complicated for my poor wee brain, and also because their affiliates make a lot of money from early local news and an extra hour of old sitcoms) they can't put their most violent shows at a later hour. That said, if you don't know after two seasons that this show is totally unsuitable for kids under a certain age then I feel sorry for you.

Next up is the Cable Worst of the Week and this week it is the TNT series Saving Grace about a female cop played by Holly Hunter, whose lifestyle is on a self-destructive downward spiral of sex and booze. For whatever reason (I don't watch the show) she has a "last chance angel" beside her, named Earl. In the season finale, Grace has gone off on one of her typical assignations. I'll let the PTC pick up the description here: "To differentiate this instance of gratuitous sex from the many others, a naked Grace is tied down on her bed. But this unconventional foreplay comes at a cost: Grace is abandoned by her lover, and is left confined to her bed. Grace seeks Earl's help, but his own hands are tied. This angelic creature can transport Grace instantly to the Grand Canyon, but apparently untying Grace would violate a divine prohibition—or TNT's salacious ideas about programming. But worry not: Grace is eventually freed by her partner Ham." Now I'm not entirely sure what the PTC is objecting to here so I clicked on their handy video file. As it turns out Hunter is in fact naked but she is lying on her stomach and for most of the scene she is shot in such a way that we most we see is the side of her buttocks. The final shot in the clip is an overhead shot where we actually see her whole ass but frankly it is no more than we used to see on NYPD Blue in the days before Janet Jackson's nipple. Now I don't get why the PTC objects to the angel Earl not being allowed to untie Grace, except as being an instance of TNT's "salacious ideas about programming" it allows us more time to look at Holly Hunter's (not unattractive for a woman of 49) bare butt. I'm sure that in the context of the show it makes perfect sense – probably something about being found in this humiliating situation being a necessary step on the road to redemption or something. But then the PTC offers what to my puny brain is a non sequitur: "And what do viewers see after this sexually-charged instance of supposed character development? The dead body of Ella Duncan, with a knife lodged in her chest. Fellow investigators Butch and Henry offer graphic detail to Ella's death:
Butch: "She was tortured."
Henry: "Yeah. These slash marks, none of them are fatal. The killer spent some time hurting her."

I'm really not sure what the PTC is getting at with this juxtaposition except, I suppose, to say that the show is evil not just because of sex but also because of violence as well. Anyway, here's the PTC's conclusion with my own editorial content in parentheses: "Not long ago programming like Saving Grace was relegated to premium cable, permitting consumers to choose what kind of cable fare they paid for. (Untrue. As I pointed out the scene described and viewable on the PTC's website is not unlike scenes that were seen on broadcast TV until three and a half years ago on NYPD Blue.) But basic cable programming has dramatically changed. A&E re-runs HBO's Sopranos (without the nudity and with the obscenities removed) and TNT now emulates the FX network's successful expansion into TV-MA programming. While some basic cable subscribers may revel in this expansion of original basic programming, others are stuck with the bill. Households merely wanting CNN or ESPN must now subsidize programming they would find repulsive and would never watch." And here we run into the usual PTC nonsense about "subsidization of programming." Apparently we are supposed to believe that the $12 a year that the PTC claims that cable subscribers pay to get TNT underwrites this show without considering that profits from the network might also go to pay for other shows that the network presents that the PTC doesn't object to. Surely if you object to a show on TNT the proper course of action isn't to throw out the baby with the bathwater – not subscribe to the network even though it has more shows that you like than you object to – but to just not watch the show in question in the hopes that the decline in ratings will make it unattractive to advertisers.

Finally (and this has turned out to be a long piece hasn't it) we come to the PTC's Misrated section, which never fails to give me something totally ridiculous to, well ridicule. This time around the show was the series debut of Private Practice. The rating was TV-14 but the PTC felt it deserved a "D" (suggestive dialog) descriptor. The reason seems to be the use of the word "sperm." The episode's plot revolved around a couple, Ken and Leslie, who were trying to get pregnant. Because Leslie is having difficulty conceiving, the couple turns to Oceanside Wellness Group for help. Ken is required to produce a sperm sample, leading to crass dialogue like:
Ken: "Put my boys in a cup! We're gonna get Leslie pregnant."
Leslie: "I'm ovulating, finally."
Sam: "Uh, congratulations. That's great."
Ken: "I've never done it in a cup before."

Setting aside the fact that it was only one of about four plots in the episode (the others were Addison being forced to perform and emergency C-Section on a teenage girl; Violet and Cooper dealing with a woman having a psychological episode in a department store; tension over Naomi hiring Addison without consulting the partners in the clinic) and not even the dominant one (that would probably be Addison's case) the question is one of what, even in the context of the plot, deserved the "D" descriptor. Well the PTC tells us: "Over the course of the episode, the word "sperm" or a reference to sperm was used 22 times. But according to ABC, discussion about ejaculating into a cup, and then hearing the act being performed, and then a woman asking for a dead man's sperm, is not "intense" enough to warrant the "D" descriptor, indicating sexual dialogue, in the episode's rating.The Private Practice premiere's TV-14 rating gave parents no warning of the constant and consistently intense sexual dialogue that this episode contained." In my opinion the answer is that the TV-14 rating, which means that such programs are "unsuitable for children under the age of 14 without the guidance of a parent." The "D" descriptor is used "for highly suggestive dialogue" and I don't think that the material in the episode reaches that standard. (By the way, what the PTC interpreted as the sound of "the act being performed" sounded to me more like the sound of a man having a stroke. It was interpreted by the doctors standing outside as the sound of "the act being performed" because that's what "Ken" went into the room to do.) As usual the PTC not only takes material out of context and interprets it in the most salacious form, but they tend to impose a standard with an extremely low threshold for what it takes to trigger either a change in rating or the use of a descriptor. Of course that's not surprising given the PTC's central contention that the ratings system is irretrievably broken and the only way to make television safe for all viewers (since they attack shows at all hours not just when children are likely to be watching) is through legislative intervention, presumably with the PTC as the sole advisor to the government or the FCC as to what should be allowed.

Three Times To The Well

Sometimes you wonder about where TV producers get their ideas. At least I do. I recall reading a supposedly humorous story about a writer who wrote TV scripts based on working his way through a book like Leonard Maltin's Movies on TV and adapting the synopsis to whatever project he was working on at the time stripping off whether it was a comedy or a drama. I can't help but wonder if producers sometimes go through a guide to previous TV series and saying "there's a good idea for a new show. We can tart it up a bit take away some elements and add others and we've got a great new show." I mean sometimes it's pretty blatant; the source of the new series Bionic Woman can't be more obvious if you used the title of the old show – oh wait, they did – but at the same time they managed to knock off some aspects of the old show and graft on others. But this isn't about Bionic Woman (I'll get to that show before it's cancelled, I hope) it's about Moonlight and about how I think the producers managed to shave off the key elements of two shows that I really liked, in my mind to a less than salutary effect.

Moonlight is the story of Mick St. John. Mick is a private detective. Mick has a secret. Mick is immortal but not in a good way (like John Amsterdam on that show that Fox decided to postpone New Amsterdam). Mick is immortal because he's a vampire. Mick is pretty young in vampire circles. He's only been undead for about 60 years, which to his vampire friend Josef Constantine means that he's barely past infancy; of course Josef is 400 and one of the oldest vampires in Los Angeles even if he looks like he's not quite 30. Mick is a private detective who helps people because... well, the because part is one of the elements of both Angel and Forever Knight that the producers of this show decided to shave off. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We meet Mick in a dream – his dream to be exact – where he tells us the basics about being a vampire in this show. The dream is in the form of the interviews that have been used to promote the series. He sleeps in a freezer, not a coffin. A stake through the heart doesn't kill a vampire, neither does holy water, and garlic only repels his dates, not him (it's good on a pizza though). He doesn't like sunlight, but it doesn't make him burst into flames either. The only way to kill a vampire is with fire or by cutting their heads off. He personally doesn't take the blood of women or children or innocent people, but if you're a bad person, around him you're fair game. Of course he can't say that. The ordinary people would regard him as a monster and if there's one thing Mick doesn't want to be thought of it's as a monster. Something happened about 22 years ago and since then he's been protecting the mortal ones from his own kind. He has an interest in an online journalism site and it's on that site that he finds out about a woman who has been killed in a manner that seems like a vampire. He goes to the murder scene where he meets up with online journalist Beth Turner. Beth seems to recognise him but she doesn't know from where. While Beth goes off one way to investigate, Mick checks in with Josef. Josef is concerned that a vampire attack where the victim's body is found by mortals will cause people to believe that they do in fact exist, which will in turn lead to their destruction. Josef wants the news coverage to stop. Mick's next stop is the city morgue where morgue attendant Guillermo supplies him with information on recent murders...and blood. The supposed vampire victim has puncture wounds in the neck all right, but the woman bled out and the evidence suggests that it was a needle that punctured her neck, not fangs. Instead of a vampire this is the work of someone imitating a vampire.

Meeting up with Beth at the murder victim's funeral Mick discovers that the young woman was taking a class on ancient mythology and lore from a professor who claimed to be a vampire though Mick's heightened senses detected nothing of the vampire about him. Beth learns more about the professor and his class from a former friend of the victim's. Mick talks to the professor and his wife in his job as a private detective. He discovers that while the professor claims to be a vampire his definition tends to be different from either classic definition of a vampire or real vampires like Mick, although from the man's wife he discovers that the vampire angle is a very good way for the professor to get his female students to have sex with him. Meanwhile Beth has decided to find out more about the Professor and his "vampire sex cult" by joining his class as a late enrolling student and getting invited to the professor's special study sessions. She's brought to the study session by one of the professor's male students. They arrive late, just as the class is finishing, all the better for the professor to seduce her. Which is what he tries to do right up to the point where he discovers that she's wearing a wire in her bra. She manages to escape and asks the male student if he has a cell phone. What he has is a hypodermic with some drugs to knock her out. He's the vampire killer, a misogynistic disciple of the professors who believes that the vital "Pranic Energy" (it's a real concept – it apparently means life force) must be gathered and stored not "wasted on women." In other words while the professor is basically pushing the idea that he's a vampire to get laid by nubile young college students, his male disciple is killing the women he's doing it with. Maybe there's just the slightest hint of a bizarrely realised homosexual crush perhaps? Mick of course is focussed on the professor; he's found the body of the woman that Beth had spoken to before along with an artefact from the professor's collection. He arrives at the boiler room where the professor was holding his study group and for the first time shows his true face to a mortal. It's not overly impressive – his eyes get a sort of bluish white glow and his incisors grow into fangs – but it's enough for the professor to say that this can't be happening. Mick replies, "You're right; vampires don't exist," right before he throws the professor across the room into a wall. Having determined that the professor isn't the killer and that Beth isn't there, Mick comes back to the street where his hypersensitive sense of smell picks up her scent. He chases down the car – apparently not only do vampires have all their senses heightened beyond mere mortals but they are also able to run faster than the posted speed limit. He manages to get the car to crash but is stunned as a result. The killer is able to get a knife, presumably to kill Beth, but before he can do anything like that Mick grabs hold of him. The killer stabs Mick in the belly, which he expects is enough to kill him. It makes it all the more shocking when Mick not only stands up but smile before hurling him about 15 feet up against a light pole.

In the denouement we finally learn the details of Mick's relationship with Beth. Years ago a child was abducted by Coraline, Mick's ex-wife and the woman who made him a vampire on their wedding night. She took the child in an insane effort to get Mick back, to create a family for them – with a child – just like mortals. In a fight that had some definite sexual overtones Mick subdued Coraline and after taking the child left her locked in the room...which he had set on fire. The child was Beth.

Where to begin with this show? I think at its heart there might be something here but I don't think it's well realised in execution. We've seen the "good" vampire fighting crime in the past. Forever Knight was a serious romantic drama while Angel took the brooding "vampire with a soul" from Buffy The Vampire Slayer and giving him his own quirky supporting cast. What both shows had in common – besides the good vampire working against crime/evil – is that both Nick Knight and Angel were both seeking redemption and to restore their humanity. They were penitents trying desperately to exorcise their remorse for the acts of evil that they carried out for most of their existence as vampires. With Mick St. John I have absolutely no idea why he made common cause with the "mortal ones" (as Josef calls them) anymore than there's a real reason why one wouldn't want to be a vampire. I somehow get the feeling that the producers wanted to somehow create a film noir (or maybe neo-noir) detective who just happened to be a vampire; the voiceover being a frequent element of the genre. That, I think, could be a really intriguing jumping off point for a series. I'd like to see someone do it sometime because it's not what we got from Moonlight. The characters aren't particularly well formed and the dialog was less than sparkling. There were occasional moments – as when Guillermo wonders why Mick likes the A+ blood when the Type O has a much nicer finish – but they were few and far between.

The two leads, Mick and Beth are played by Australian actor Alex O'Laughlin and British actress Sophia Myles respectively. Neither particularly excited me. It didn't seem to me as though O'Laughlin was showing much in the way of real emotion while Myles was more animated as Beth. I fell know connection with either of them, nor did I feel a real connection between them. The most animated and interesting of the characters was Jason Dohring as the young looking 400 year vampire Josef. He had the energy and authority that I thought was lacking from either O'Laughlin or Myles. In the scene were Mick goes to talk to him about the first killing there's a moment that shows his total amorality. That's when he offers a Mick a drink of the "'84" – "it" is a young woman who seems to be quite content to let Josef feed off of her. Josef can't understand why Mick, or any other vampire for that matter, would want or even prefer to drink blood recovered from corpses or taken from blood banks rather than "the good stuff." The problem is that I don't get any sense from O'Laughlin about why it's bad to be a vampire beyond the fact that people would think you're a monster. Certainly there's no real sense of menace or evil from Josef; there is from Coraline (played by Shannyn Sossamon) in those moments when we see her, but it seems fairly obvious that she's insane (or perhaps just a delusional woman scorned).

Moonlight is disappointing. It's not that it's a bad show. That would be fairly obvious. Rather it's disappointing because it's mediocre; someone at CBS settled for mediocrity now rather than really good later and then clung to it even after the mediocrity was noted. With the exception of O'Laughlin the major characters were all recast – Myles replaced Shannon Lucio as Beth, Sossamon replaced Amber Valletta as Coraline, and Dohring replaced Rade Sherbedgia as Josef. David Greenwalt (who was the co-creator of Angel) was briefly associated with the project before leaving for "health" reasons (I suppose one has to wonder whether the "health" in question was the health of his career after seeing this). I get the sense that with more time in development and with the right people in charge this show's concept could have been better realised than it is. And the worst part (well besides the fact that CBS cancelled Close To Home which was
relatively successful in terms of ratings to put this show on) is that while there's a sense that some of this season's shows will improve, this show won't get much better than it is. As I say, it's a shame because I think a well crafted show about a vampire who happens to be a detective in the Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe mode has the potential to be a bigger success than this show is likely to be.

Life - The One I Didn't Have A Title For

I have to confess that one of the shows I was really looking forward to this season was Life. It's not that there aren't a lot of attractive shows on Wednesday nights this season. Between Back To You, Private Practice, Bionic Woman, Kitchen Nightmares, and Dirty Sexy Money, not to mention some of the returning series on the night (Criminal Minds and yeah, CSI: New York) Wednesday night has become one of the most VCR intensive nights on my personal schedule. But through it all, the show that I wanted to see the most was not Bionic Woman (it's really high on the list but as I type this I still haven't watched it yet) or Kitchen Nightmares (which is vaguely disappointing given some of the changes in format from the original British series), but rather Life. I knew I wanted to see it because I liked the lead actor (Damien Lewis who I enjoyed tremendously in Band Of Brothers) and I found the premise of a cop restored to duty as part of a settlement after being exonerated for a murder he did not commit to be fascinatingly original, or at least something not seen in a very long time. For me the show was sort of like that special package under the Christmas tree back when you were a kid; the one you couldn't wait to open even as you dreaded the possibility what was inside couldn't possibly measure up to what you were expecting from looking at the outside. So, did the reality of Life measure up to what I was expecting? To a large degree, yes. There are rough patches to be sure but with time and a little recognition of what needs to be tweaked, this show could really shine.

The writers of Life were wise enough to use a framing sequence to get the basic story of Charlie Crews. The sequence is a documentary about the Crews case – bad lighting and all – that is used to reveal the key points that we need to know. He was an ordinary cop who was intent on doing his twenty and out until he was convicted of a triple murder. He spent twelve years in prison where for the first year he was regularly beaten by other inmates because he had been a cop (and it looked as though at least one of the guards also got in on the action), before his new lawyer managed to get the evidence re-examined and the case against him collapsed. While he was in prison his wife divorced him and (based on the name displayed during her sequence of the documentary) remarried. A lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles not only resulted in him getting an undisclosed (but very big) cash settlement but also restoring him to the police department as a detective. That description probably took longer for me to type than it took to show on the screen (admittedly that may be because I was playing Poker online as I write this paragraph) but the sequence does a very effective job of introducing Charlie without us seeing him and gets his personal details out of the way rather than spend most of the episode revealing them to us. And it's important because the important parts – for the viewer – of Charlie Crews are all tied to what happened after that triple homicide. This means that the bulk of the episode is not spent discovering the principal character but in solving a case and starting to know the people who surround Charlie.

Of these people the most important is his new partner Dani Reese (Sarah Shahi). Charlie knows there's something bad in her past that is the reason why she's partnered with him, but she's not in a mood to open up. As far as she's willing to let him know it was all "luck of the draw." Part of her reluctance to confide in him comes from not knowing if she can trust him. As another cop puts it later puts it in a later scene "How do you know he's going to be there with you when you go through a door?" Dani undercuts this by pointing out that the cop's partner is Charlie's old partner, the one who didn't stand by him during when he was first accused of murder, but you know that she has to be wondering something similar herself. This question of whether or not to trust plays out in the episode. When confronted by her commander Lieutenant Davis (Robin Weigert, looking totally different from her last role as Calamity Jane in Deadwood) who wants something that she can use to get Charlie off the force she gives up something. After all she doesn't know Charlie, doesn't owe him anything and doesn't know if he'll be there for her going through a door. Her attitude changes when he does do the equivalent of going through a door for her and helps her a shotgun blast results in her being covered from head to toe in cocaine. Dani's a drug addict you see, in rehab and clean for almost two years. In the scene after Charlie showers the drugs off of Dani no words are spoken but each partner knows where the other stands.

I'd like to say that the case that Charlie and Dani were investigating was somehow deep or significant, and if you're someone who thinks that any crime involving a child is deep and significant, then it was. However the investigation itself was yet another way for us to get to know Charlie and to develop the relationship between Charlie and Dani. The two meet at their first case together. A young boy has been shot to death though there's no sign of any sexual molestation. The boy's dog, a golden retriever, is lying down on the ground some distance from the boy, something which immediately piques Charlie's interest. He soon discovers that the bullet that killed the boy lodged in the dog. He also discovers why the dog is so far from his master – he bit off the finger of what is presumed to be the killer. Charlie and Dani next go off to interview the boy's mother and step-father. Charlie almost immediately detects that the step-father is a recreational user of marijuana and also that he is almost certainly not the killer – for one thing he still has all his fingers and for another he is clearly feeling grief. He makes a very clear suggestion that the man flush his pot down the toilet – flush twice to make sure. The interview with the mother doesn't go nearly as well. It is discovered that the boy's natural father was heavily involved in drugs and when he went to prison the second time she divorced him. Charlie says "You just dropped the papers in the mail." It tells us a bit more about Charlie and his demons – his wife divorced him while in prison – but it upsets both the mother and Dani. He apologizes to Dani – he wasn't in the moment, he was thinking about where they had to go next. Where they had to go next was prison, to talk to the boy's father. The man is bitter at cops but knows that his enemies in prison wouldn't go after his son. Charlie explains it – everyone in prison has family so they're off limits. The prison scene is more important because we find out something more about Charlie. The guards are giving him a real hard time and we learn that while he may have been innocent of the crime he was convicted of he wasn't entirely a choir boy while he was in prison. There was an incident with a guard in the Pelican Bay Federal Prison that the guards in this facility still feel anger over.

A major break in the case comes when one of the boy's friends is interviewed. Both boys belonged to a Boy Scout troop made up of the children of cons and ex-cons. The child Dani is interviewing is scared, intimidated and unwilling to talk. Predictably it is Charlie who breaks through his defences – first by getting him to laugh by hugging and extremely reluctant Dani and then by telling him that he knew there was something that he was bottling up and that he wanted to tell. He tells the detectives that someone claiming to be a lawyer had IM'd the murdered boy, who wanted to get his father out of prison, claiming that for a certain amount of money he'd reveal some technical and procedural errors in the father's case, which would be enough to get him out. Talking to the boy's mother again, and making up for his earlier behaviour, Charlie discovers that the boy had stolen money and some jewellery from his parents in order to pay for the information. The only someone with ties to the scout troop would know what his online identity is. So it's somewhat surprising when the finger that the dog bit off comes back to a crack addict with no fixed address. They track him down and during a gun battle with Dani and Charlie (which leads to the situation with the cocaine) he admits to being there but that someone named Artie killed the boy. Dani and Charlie both agree that the addict, who Charlie shot and then comforted as he died, wasn't smart enough to pull off the scam. There is a parent named Arthur on the boy's Scout contact list, and while they can't prove that he committed the murder, his contacts with the crack addict are enough to get him sent back to prison on a parole violation. Charlie and Dani get him sent to the same prison as the boy's father and let him know it; the fear is enough to get him to confess.

But as I said earlier, the first episode of this show was about getting to know the character of Charlie Crews and to a lesser extent Dani Reese. Both characters are damaged by their experiences. Dani compensates for no longer being on drugs by drinking too much (apparently) and engaging in anonymous sex. There's a scene in which she gets out of bed in and dresses in an apartment littered with beer bottles, and the man in bed with her comments that they don't even know each other's names. Her reply is "If you don't know your name you can't contact me." Charlie's quirks are a lot easier to understand. His adherence to the principles of Zen, if imperfect, is what helped him survive in a prison – apparently the Special Handling Unit at Pelican Bay – where inmates spend virtually their entire day in isolation. His seeming addiction to fresh fruit, a fast car (a Bentley – probably a Flying Spur or a Continental GT), a big house, and sex with very attractive women are all probably a reaction to being denied the simple pleasures that even an ordinary cop would take for granted. Now that he's wealthy, because of the settlement from his wrongly conviction he can afford to go overboard with exotic fruits (and an orange grove), an exotic car, and a huge house. At the same time being in prison has hurt him. It is obvious in the fact that he doesn't understand certain aspects of technology – cell phones that are smaller than a Star Trek communicator and not only take pictures but can send and receive them as well, Google (which is nine years old today – in other words was created three years after Charlie went to prison), and instant messaging (AOL Instant Messenger debuted the year that Charlie went to prison). It's less obvious in some of his behaviours. He seems to talk incessantly – probably a response to extensive time spent in isolation – and his palatial house is largely unfurnished. While he has the big house he seems to restrict his presence in it to a fraction of its actual size. And he holds grudges. His response to his father's decision to remarry is to not attend the wedding; he holds his father responsible for his mother's death because she was forbidden from seeing Charlie in prison by his father. As he tells his lawyer Constance, "No Zen for daddy." No Zen either for the people responsible for putting him in prison for a crime he didn't commit. In what is going to be a major ongoing plot feature, Charlie has a room of his house devoted to connecting the people who are involved in the conspiracy that put him in prison. And while he may be very well be right – indeed is probably right if the behaviour of Lt. Davis – that doesn't necessarily mean that he isn't also suffering from paranoia. The old saying is that "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you don't have enemies," but surely it is equally true that just because you have enemies doesn't mean you're not paranoid.

Life has an excellent cast. Damian Lewis is great as the somewhat manic and frequently strange Charlie Crews. Not only is there no trace of his British accent but his accent and manner are very different from his previous role as an American, Major Richard Winters in Band Of Brothers. Lewis's skill as an actor shines through in the role of Charlie, which in turn is the key element of the show. As Reese, Sarah Shahi hides her incredible beauty except in the scene where she is getting out of bed after her one night stand. For the rest of the episode her hair is pulled back severely and she comes across as a working cop. As a cop her character is more than competent and yet she is truly playing Watson to Charlie's Holmes. Robin Weigert hasn't had a chance to show much as Charlie and Dani's boss; as yet she hasn't had a scene with Charlie, though her two scenes with Dani have had a sort of veiled menace to them. Adam Arkin put in a fairly nondescript performance as Ted, a former CEO who was convicted of stock fraud and whose life was saved in prison by Charlie. Ted is now Charlie's financial advisor and lives in a room above his garage. I suspect that Ted, at least initially, is there to provide a certain amount of comic relief. Finally there's Brook Langton as Charlie's lawyer Constance, the woman who reopened his case and got him exonerated. Again she doesn't get much to do in the first episode; a couple of scenes in the "documentary" and one scene in her apartment where they talk about Charlie's attitude to his father but where the unrequited feelings that Constance has to her client. (Of course some of this might have to do with Langton replacing Melissa Sagemiller as Constance after the pilot was shot.)

Life is one of those shows where there weren't a lot of expectations going in. NBC did a rather poor job of promoting the show and a number of reviewers have lumped the series in the "police procedural" bin. It's better than that. This is a show that rises and falls on just how intrigued we are by the initial premise and the lead characters. The premise is novel enough to be intriguing but not so farfetched as to stretch credibility beyond the breaking point – I can't help but thinking of an ABC show called Blind Justice which did
just that. It's not perfect. It does try to provide us with a ton of information about Charlie and Dani too quickly. It does emphasise Charlie's various quirks and annoying habits. It does use the first case they work together more as a bonding experience and a way for them – and us – to get to know each other. I have a sense that a lot of these elements are going to be toned down in future episodes. The strength of the show is Lewis. He's an outstanding actor and truly a delight to watch, quirks and all. While there are things that need work in this show I sincerely believe that for the most part it succeeds and is a remarkably enjoyable contrast to the other crime show airing at the same hour, CSI: New York. I'll definitely keep watching.

I’ve Been Plagiarized – I Think

See I'm not really sure if the story that follows qualifies as plagiarism. I might have served as someone's muse, or it might just have been a case of slightly greater than average brains thinking alike. Here's the story, you decide.

I used to enjoy sending letters to the editor of the local newspaper. It's an interesting challenge to muster arguments and craft them clearly and concisely for the public in a forum where they'll probably get more readership per day than this blog (sorry but it's a fact). I did it a lot back in the days when my instrument for such things was a Remington that had seen better days or some cheap Japanese made electric rebranded by Eatons as one of their store brands (the Remington still works by the way, but like the company that sold it the Eaton's store brand typewriter has ceased to function – broken belt). I went on about any number of subjects but I think my proudest moment was when I had a brief letter published in the international edition of Britain's Express newspaper, correcting a story that claimed that if Prince William were to come to the throne under his given name (they don't have to you know) he would be William IV – he would in fact be William V; apparently I knew the history of the English monarchy better than the English.

In the days after I started my old Diplomacy zine (Making Love In A Canoe – it would also be the name of my first attempt at blogging) my output for the newspaper dried up. I was my own editor, not bound by the newspaper's restrictions on length or content. However the other day I saw something in the paper that was enough to get me to write. The city has a program to honour veterans by allowing them free parking. Currently this is tied to a special license plate that is issued by the provincial government through its insurance agency SGI to qualified people. The problem is that the government's criteria includes anyone who has ever served in the Canadian military or the reserves regardless of time of service or whether the person had ever been stationed overseas. City Council voted on Monday to ask the city's parking officials to come up with a new parking pass that would be issued to surviving veterans of the First (!?) and Second World Wars and the Korean War.

For a variety of reasons – not the least of which is the current Canadian military involvement in Afghanistan this seemed unfair to me so for the first time in a long time I wrote a letter to the newspaper. In my letter I claimed that restricting the parking reward (for their service) to veterans of the World War II and Korea was to denigrate the actions of others; men in women in the armed forces, including reservist, who are currently serving in Afghanistan, who had served during the Gulf War (mainly Air Force and Naval personnel), or in a host of peacekeeping missions from the Sinai, Cypress, and the Congo to Croatia and Bosnia. I even mentioned Canadian soldiers who were deployed to Germany during the Cold War. I pointed out that the risks they faced – including actual deaths and permanent injuries – were equal to the risks faced by veterans in the World Wars and Korea. I sent the letter by an email form on the newspaper's website on Tuesday morning and received a phone call to confirm that I had in fact written the letter.

Today (Wednesday) the newspaper ran an editorial called "All true veterans deserve parking" (not sure if this link works if you don't have an account with the newspaper) in which the collective editorial brain of the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix came out with the exact same proposal that I made in my letter. Here are three paragraphs from the Star-Phoenix editorial:

While it's a good idea to de-couple the issue of free parking for veterans from SGI's special poppy plates, it makes no sense to treat the contributions of some uniformed men and women who risked their lives on foreign missions as of lesser value than that of people who did it in two world wars and Korea.

From the service people currently on duty in Afghanistan to those who participated in the Gulf War to naval personnel who enforced UN sanctions against Iraq, plenty of others deserve equal recognition. And that's not to gloss over the contribution of soldiers who were stationed in Europe during the Cold War or the countless peacekeepers who served everywhere from Cypress to Sinai, or in Rwanda, Congo or the Balkans, or Mounties who helped out in Haiti.

The risks they faced cannot be discounted any more than the injuries many of them suffered in Answering Canada's call to serve its obligations on the international stage.

It's not bad stuff but you'll excuse me for thinking that a significant portion of it seems familiar to me. And it's not as if I dismiss the possibility that the newspaper came up with this position without input from me – though if they did, why didn't they come up with the idea on Monday night for their Tuesday morning edition (which is when the report on the original proposal to restrict the parking "reward" was published) or that they got more submissions than just mine which served as an inspiration. And it's not as if I don't appreciate the fact that the newspaper has taken what I obviously believe is the right position on this matter, given that an editorial in their pages will have more influence than one little letter to the editor. The problem is that if they run my letter tomorrow it comes across as me saying "me too" when it's entirely possible that the opposite is the case – that they're saying "us too" to me.