Solidarity - 11/13/2007

We stand by the TV Writers.

Short Takes – November 6, 2007

I'm back after a week of not being able to feel motivated about putting my thoughts into words – at least not about the idiocy of the PTC (which has gotten so voluminous that I may have to start doing separate articles with just the PTC stuff). When I started writing my piece for last week they seemed not to have come up with anything new except a challenge to the license for CBS's Salt Lake City station, which is something I wanted to go into in greater depth. The trouble was that as I looked on it and tried to get into it I just couldn't find the words. Eventually I threw in the towel. And besides, the big news, probably for the next little while, is going to be the Writers' Strike.

Bad Dog: A&E has removed Dog: The Bounty Hunter from their network following the release of a transcript of a telephone conversation Duane "Dog" Chapman in which he told his son to drop his Black girlfriend and repeatedly used the "N-word." In one exchange he said "We use the word n---er sometimes here. I'm not going to take any chance ever in life of losing everything I've worked for 30 years because some drunken n---er heard us say n---er and turned us into the Enquirer magazine...I'm not taking that chance at all never in life. Never."

I am in such a quandary about this one. On the whole I am for anything that removes reality shows from the once proud A&E network. Even though I occasionally enjoy watching Gene Simmons: Family Jewels I would be overjoyed if it were removed from A&E along with every other reality show that the network has, so that we might actually be able to go back to the days when critics of PBS were saying the PBS wasn't needed because A&E would show all the good British shows. If they were to say that today they'd be laughed out of whatever forum they were addressing. A&E no longer has an interest in the arts and is only as entertaining as any other network that is primarily dependent on not very good reality crap. Nothing on A&E comes up to the level of Big Brother, let alone The Amazing Race.

That said, I find the way that he was exposed highly distasteful. It wasn't a public statement or even something caught by the film crew following him around, it was a private conversation between Chapman and his son Tucker. That's what sets Chapman apart from someone like Don Imus who said what he said knowing he was on live radio and TV. Reportedly Tucker sold the tape of the phone call to the National Enquirer for "a lot of money." I find this a nasty invasion of privacy, although in a different way than I would have if the Enquirer had obtained it my somehow monitoring one of his phone calls without either party knowing about it. The fact is that in private conversations and interactions with people who we consider to be friends and family – in other words people we trust as confidants – everybody says or does things that they would never say or do in public. We have an expectation that these people at least will respect our privacy. And in an era where daughters release video tape of their drunken father trying unsuccessfully to eat a cheeseburger, where a voicemail of a father getting mad at his daughter because she's been avoiding his calls becomes public, or where a man releases tapes of his sex acts with his once or former girlfriend, maybe the expectation of privacy from family, friends, or others we would consider to be confidants is gone. I don't condone Chapman's words or his sentiments but if his son sold the tape to the Enquirer, I condemn him more. As for the Enquirer, well all I can say is it is nothing less than I expect from them.

STRIKE!: The Writers Guild of America strike started at 12:01 a.m. Monday November 5^th. Now I'm sure that there are members of my reading audience who think that unions are the spawn of the devil and that the poor companies like Warner Brothers, Paramount, Universal, Disney, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and The CW will be driven into bankruptcy by demands from these ungrateful swine – don't laugh, this very sentiment was expressed by a comment on a TVSquad article about the strike, not to mention in a statement by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP): "Instead of working toward solutions that would give the industry the flexibility it needs to meet today's business challenges, the WGA leadership continues to pursue numerous unreasonable proposals that would result in astronomical and unjustified increases in our costs, further restrict our ability to produce, promote and market TV series and films, and prohibit us from experimenting with programming and business models in New Media." Those evil, greedy Union bastards. For a more accurate picture of what a writer experiences check out this Huffington Post article from Howard A. Rodman. One key point: "As re-runs and syndication dry up, and a decent formula is replaced by an indecent one, our members stand to lose roughly 80% of their residual income – of what tides them over."

As you can tell I stand by the Union. And it's not because members of my family have, when they've been able, always been in unions. I tend to look at the issues and in this case the demands of the union seem far more realistic than the claims of gloom and doom (not to mention statements about how cushy writers "really" have it) emanating from AMPTP. But what are those demands? The major demands are (according to Variety):

• Increase the base rate for calculating home video residuals from 20% to 40%. Sounds like a lot but the actual per unit increase would be from approximately 4 cents to 8 cents (this latter figure comes from an MSNBC article). The current home video residual scheme that AMPTP wants to retain was established in 1985.
  
• Increase of residuals for "New Media" to 2.5% of receipts
  
• Material made for new media: "The WGA's seeking jurisdiction, with TV minimums applying -- pro-rated in one-minute increments with a two-minute floor -- with residuals paid for even the first use. The AMPTP's asking for the status quo, which includes pension and health contributions."
  
• Residuals on material for promotional use. This is included in the "made for new media" section by the WGA while AMPTP asserts that "promotional use of its property is essential to keeping the biz healthy and for maintaining TV audiences.
  
• Reality TV – the WGA wants coverage for the people who "write" reality shows; that is creating the story lines in shows.
  
• The CW: "The WGA's seeking network minimums and residuals for the CW, while the AMPTP wants to keep the current lower rates."
  

So now, couch spuds that we are, the big question becomes how this will affect our TV watching? The LA Times has a good piece on the impact the strike will have on many, but not all, shows. The first big impact will be on Late Night TV – Letterman, Leno, O'Brien, Stewart, Colbert etc. – and any show that depends on topical humour, like Saturday Night Live. They depend on fresh material and while it's possible that the talk shows could continue by just doing interviews and performances (Letterman in particular has become a pretty good interviewer when pushed) that's not going to happen because the hosts, like Letterman and Leno, are all members of the Writers' Guild. The big exception will probably be ABC's Nightline which is a product of the network's news division. ABC also claims to have contingency plans for Jimmy Kimmel's show. Daytime shows will probably be the next area to see an impact. Soap operas will probably run out of new scripts by the end of the year, possibly longer in some cases. In the 1988 strike, the networks hired "scab" writers for the soap operas, a lot of them fans, who took the shows in directions that the real writers had planned (Mark Evanier has an interesting anecdote about a soap opera writer who said "When we get back, it's going to take me months to get some emotional logic back into those characters.") ABC claims that The View won't be disrupted, and Live With Regis & Kelly "has no writers." The fate of Prime Time series varies. Most series expect to have about 13 episodes completed and depending on whether they've received extended orders. One notable exception is The CW's Everybody Hates Chris which has all 22 episodes completed (they apparently shoot their entire run at one time so that the kids don't change too much from episode to episode, which they might if they shot conventionally, with a hiatus). The expectation is that most series will run out of episodes by January or possibly February. What we know about mid-season shows is sketchier. ABC's Eli Stone will have a full order of thirteen episodes while Lost is expected to have eight of thirteen episodes. Jericho will have its complete order of seven episodes ready to air.

Mark Evanier (I do seem to be cribbing a lot from him on this don't I) has a list of news sources for material about the strike, ranging from the websites of WGA West and WGA East, through various news media (the LA Times, The Huffington Post, and even Variety and The Hollywood Reporter) to the AMPTP website. You can also get perspectives on the strike from other writers' blogs, notably those of Ken Levine and Bryce Zabel.

For the record (just in case you haven't figured it out by now) this Blog supports the Writers' Guild.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: So much to cover. I suppose we should start with their hatred for CBS. The PTC has called on the FCC to review the licenses of all CBS radio and TV stations, starting with KUTV in Salt Lake City, the first CBS station license to come up for renewal. Is one requires a bit of explanation. CBS and the FCC (and the other networks) negotiated a consent decree to clear the backlog of complaints from the network (most generated by the PTC it should be noted). Most of these were related to Howard Stern, but among the complaints cleared was apparently one directed against the original broadcast of the "teen orgy" episode of Without A Trace. The episode was rebroadcast in January 2006 and resulted in a finding by the FCC that the episode was obscene...but only in the Central and Mountain Time zones. I blogged about the absurdity of this at the time. CBS was fined over $3 million (the then maximum fine of $32,500 times the 100 or so stations that were "in violation" for showing the episode before 10 p.m. local time). CBS has appealed the decision to the FCC, and if (when more likely) the decision is upheld are likely to bring the matter to the courts.

The airing of the episode of Without A Trace led to the issuance of a "Notice of Apparent Liability" by the FCC because the network did not have a mechanism in place to prevent the broadcast of the "obscene" material. CBS has stated that they did not believe they were obliged to – their efforts were directed to putting safeguards in place to handle live radio situations. Not to mention of course that the original finding is under appeal. Needless to say, the PTC is on the warpath, clad in their usual righteous indignation: "CBS' response to the FCC's inquiry is utterly disgraceful. By saying they did nothing wrong by not taking any action after receiving the NAL, they have openly and defiantly breached both the spirit and the letter of the agreement that they freely negotiated with the FCC. Remember that the CBS Consent Decree summarily dismissed thousands of broadcast indecency complaints related to the original broadcast of the Without a Trace episode at issue; so then how could its re-airing not trigger the remedial action specified in the Consent Decree? We therefore call on the FCC to review each and every broadcast license held by CBS, beginning with its owned-and-operated television station in Salt Lake City, KUTV." Of course it goes beyond the whole issue of the Consent Decree. The PTC claims that CBS is engaging in "Jekyll and Hyde" style behaviour: "Its own executives have testified before Congress that they have a zero-tolerance policy towards indecent broadcasts, and by signing the Consent Decree they have admitted to broadcasting indecent material. Yet CBS has filed suit, along with other TV networks, to use the 'F-word' at any time of the day – even in front of children. And they have filed suit to assert that the Janet Jackson striptease on the Super Bowl broadcast was not indecent." In other words, in the PTC's view, an FCC decision is unimpeachable and any effort taken to appeal to such a decision is evil. Unless of course it's a decision that goes against what the PTC declares to be correct, in which case they will howl in righteous indignation about the wrong headedness of the commissioners. Given that, because of the various appeals to the courts, it seems unlikely that the FCC will review the licenses of the CBS stations, one can expect the PTC to start howling soon.

The PTC has also announced its ratings of the "20 Most Popular Prime Time Broadcast TV Shows Watched by Children Ages 2-17." Of the top 20 shows, only seven are scripted shows, and only one of those gets a rating (using the PTC's "traffic light" system) other than Red Light. That show is The Simpsons which earns a Yellow Light. The 20 most popular shows are (Green Light and best to worst) Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, NBC Sunday Night Football, Deal or No Deal, Are You Smarter Than a 5^th Grader?, The Singing Bee, Don't Forget the Lyrics, American Idol, Supernanny; (Yellow Light) America's Funniest Home Videos, Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, Amazing Race, Survivor, The Simpsons; (Red Light) House, Grey's Anatomy, Heroes, C.S.I., American Dad, Family Guy. It's an interesting list although as usual it is marred by the PTC's usual flawed methodology by lumping shows watched by 2 year-olds with shows watched by 17 year-olds. I doubt for instance that there are too many 2 year-olds who are watching House, or who would be engaged by Grey's Anatomy (or for that matter answering surveys about their TV viewing habits). At the same time I truly doubt that there is that much of a 17 year-old audience for Supernanny. Here's the somewhat more impressive thing for me though. This list seems to disprove the root causes for all of the PTC's demands for increased government regulation, and the claimed failure of the V-Chip. Of the 20 shows named, only six fall into the PTC's "Red Light" category. Now obviously they will claim that one is too many, but I would suspect that most of the audience for the "Red Light" shows are in the older end of their demographic. Of course we don't know that – in fact we don't actually know the actual order in terms of Nielsen Ratings for the entire demographic or portions of the demographic – but I would say it is a pretty good bet. In other words parents are doing their jobs, either with the assistance of the V-Chip or by paying attention to their children's viewing habits and watching TV with them, and the majority of the shows they are watching are shows that even the PTC finds acceptable.

For a change, let's start our look at the PTC's bloviating about shows with a look at the Cable Worst of the Week. I want to lead with this because it shows that behind the guise of wanting every show to be child friendly (and the definition of child, as we've seen above runs from birth to the time the kid can vote) what the PTC really wants to do is control every show that we see. The Cable show they are going after this time is something called Manswers on Spike. Now I've never seen Manswers but when this came up I looked up a couple of clips on the show's website as well as the clip that the PTC supplied on their site. The big portion of the organizations attack is on the show but not before they take some quick shots at Spike and parent company Viacom first. Explaining the networks evolution (or as the PTC would have it, its devolution) from The Nashville Network to Spike, they then add this: "And what came with all this cable channel soul-searching, spearheaded by the takeover of Viacom? Prurient content. Shows exploring NASCAR shifted to ultimate fighting competitions. Talk shows went from playful light-night diversions to proliferators of inane and sexually explicit content." Because of course "ultimate fighting" is prurient. The PTC really hates Viacom: "This shift isn't shocking. Viacom merely brought TNN into its fold, making it a little sister to MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central — fellow Viacom entities." But then we get down to the actual show. The show answers questions, usually about sports or women. One of the clips I viewed on the show's website asked whether "big boobs float" (the answer is yes, if they're natural – "enhanced" breasts aren't buoyant because the saline solution or silicone is heavier than water; natural breasts being mostly fat do float). In the clip the PTC objected to the question was what constitutes nudity in terms of swimsuits. They had someone from law enforcement judge various bikinis. Of course that's not what the PTC saw: "The October 23^rd episode of Manswers tackled the last question mentioned above. Simply answering what constitutes indecent exposure (pretty obvious, if you ask me) was not enough. Instead Manswers enlisted two women — appropriately named Brandy and Mandy — to perform a strip show inside a nightclub. Each woman pranced down a catwalk, inundated by sexually charged dancing and the sound of inebriated catcalls, donning progressively skimpier outfits. We all know where it goes from there." First of all, while they were at a night club Brandy and Mandy (and why were those names "appropriate"?) were not performing a strip show. And secondly this show is one that airs at 11 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, and presumably after 10 p.m. elsewhere well after even the FCC thinks that such things are acceptable. But of course nothing of this sort is ever acceptable to the PTC who tells us – without supplying proof of course – "The reason why this show exists is simple: a paltry viewership, buffered by the monthly bill of every cable subscriber." Now I think that the PTC is wrong about the network's viewership, but it really galls me that they take an issue like cable choice, and assume that everyone who supports it – like my blogging buddy Ivan – does so because they want "prurient content" off the air.

The Broadcast Worst of the Week is Private Practice. The episode in question deals with teenage sexual activity, sexual fantasies and the question whether an adult woman should masturbate to relieve he sexual tension. Of course the PTC puts its own spin on it. For example, in an early scene Addison is talking to her friend Naomi about a sexual fantasy she's been having about a co-worker when Naomi's daughter and a friend enter; Addison worries that the daughter may have heard some of their conversation. The PTC says "if Addison's dialogue was inappropriate for the 13-year-olds in the program, how much more inappropriate was it for the real-life young viewers who heard the fantasy described on television?" I don't know, maybe because the description of the fantasy in and of itself was pretty mild? But of course the big thing for the PTC was the teen sexual behaviour. Naomi's 13 year-old daughter Maya and her friend reveal that Maya has been sexually active and that she may have gonorrhoea. Addison decides, quite rightly by the way, not to tell Maya's mother due to patient confidentiality. As it turns out it isn't Maya who has been sexually active but rather her friend Ruby, who suffers a miscarriage. It is also revealed that she is in fact pregnant. The PTC of course paints an extremely graphic word picture of one of the scenes: "In an extremely disturbing sequence, Ruby is shown lying on the kitchen floor with blood flowing from her vagina due to her miscarriage." Of course we only have their word for just how graphic and disturbing the scene is. They conclude (in an atrociously written sentence), "Recent studies indicate that the depiction of sexually promiscuous teens on television can lead impressionable children to believe that teen sex is more common than it in reality is which can in turn influence them to become sexually active." The problem I have with this conclusion is two-fold. First, the episode depicts the result of sexual promiscuity in an extremely negative manner. Secondly, by not wanting the situation addressed, the PTC is pulling blinkers over the eyes of the public just as they did with the teen orgy scene on Without A Trace. When I was studying to be a teacher in the mid-'70s, one of my texts indicated that the average age at which a teen lost their virginity was 16; at the high school where I did my first practicum Grade 9 girls (14 years-old) were pulled from a physical education class I was monitoring for some fairly basic sexual education because a number of the 14 year-old class mates had gotten pregnant. I doubt that teens have changed that much in 30 years. Ignoring the situation does not make it go away.

Finally (because I'm way over length and I really don't want to do their TV Trends this week, an article on Nip/Tuck that starts with the words "Nip/Tuck, the FX network's disgusting "drama" of explicit sex and graphic gore, began its fifth season on expanded basic cable October 30^th. While the program's return delighted a handful of smarmy and smug television critics the overwhelming majority of America's cable subscribers were once again forced to subsidize execrable programming that they never watch, and which most sane people would find offensive," but of course doesn't offer any proof of that assertion) we turn to Misrated. This time around – as it frequently is – the show is Ugly Betty. The PTC has a vendetta on against the show perhaps because the Association of National Advertisers' Family Friendly Programming Forum supported its development. Suffice it to say that the PTC has repeatedly gone out of its way to assert that Ugly Betty is larded with "smirking innuendo and lewd visual and verbal references to sex" The episode in question aired on October 25^th and was rated TV-PG L (for mild coarse language). The first part of the show that the PTC latches onto (and the one that the clip they showed related to) was a scene of Betty's friend Christina measuring a male underwear model. They insinuate things such as Christina measuring the man's genitals that I really didn't get from the clip, and implies this bit of misinformation, "The model turns so that his crotch is directly before Betty's face. Betty goggles and rolls her eyes in shock, then turns away…but continues to peek at the man's crotch out of the corner of her eye." Actually she doesn't turn away, she immediately walks over to Christina before taking a seat away from the model, but still looking at Christina. Only a dirty mind (and the PTC bounds in dirty minds) could interpret that as continuing "to peek at the man's crotch out of the corner of her eye." There is also comment upon a scene in which Christina helps Betty create a profile for an online dating service. An equally major focus of the PTC's complaint that the show should have been given a TV-14 rating (and if it had been they would most likely have demanded lots of qualifiers for it) was the show's homosexual characters specifically Wilhelmina's assistant Marc. The article goes on at length about various lines of dialogue and situations that they claim are sexually salacious. They even have the audacity to claim that there is a homophobic slur, uttered by one of the episode's gay characters: "When Marc chooses a date with hunky Gus over one with Cliff, Cliff rants at him using a homophobic slur: 'Look at you! You're such a cliché! You and Gus? What is that? That's Beauty and Beauty. That's not a story! Now Beauty and the Beast – that's a fairy tale!'" (Emphasis theirs.)

Now I'm willing to accept that the episode might have warranted a D descriptor (suggestive dialogue (mature themes)) to be added to the L (mild coarse language) if only for a joke that has Betty misspelling "bowl" in a text message to a potential online date, but it's an iffy call. However I would also note that most of the material – including the gay innuendo material that the PTC was so upset about – is the sort of thing that the British were doing thirty years ago on shows like Are You Being Served? which used to get a lot of comedy out of things like the effeminate Mr. Humphreys measuring a client's inseam. The fact is that, as is frequently the case the PTC is focussed on seeing sex in any situation, particularly for a show that they patently do not like and Ugly Betty is just such a show.

Amazing Race 12 – The Teams

Okay, I know it's Friday and the show doesn't come back until Sunday, but since I anticipate being busy on the weekend (doing a couple of things like writing my Short Takes piece and not turning any clock in the house that adjusts for Daylight Savings Time to what the time really is here – we don't do Daylight Savings Time in Saskatchewan) I want to get this written now.

You all know that I love The Amazing Race with a passion that outshines the sun. It is the only reality-competition show that I would love to be on if only it weren't for the pesky fact that I'm a Canadian and you have to be an American to be on the show. I, rather immodestly, consider myself something of an expert on The Amazing Race and so I take it upon myself to try to rate the teams.

Teams in The Amazing Race can usually be split into several categories, and the groups' track record of winning allows a certain amount of handicapping of current contestants:

• Alpha Males – the dominant group. Of nine races run (not counting Amazing Race 8: Family Edition or Amazing Race 11: All Stars) Alpha Male teams have won five (TAR1, TAR2, TAR4, TAR9, TAR10). An Alpha Male Team is defined as male, under 40, and generally physically fit. There are no Alpha Male Teams in this edition of The Race.
  
• Married Folk – the other prime group. They're under 45 and either married or in an extremely committed relationship (including separated). Although there is some overlap with Alpha Males (Reichen & Chip described themselves as married) for our purposes they are a male-female couple. Married Folk have won TAR5, TAR6, and TAR7 and finished second in TAR1, TAR2, TAR3, TAR4, and TAR7. There are no Married Folk in this season of The Race – at least not by this definition.
  
• Trust Issues – For some reason a number of couples have gone on The Amazing Race to strengthen their relationships. Or to see if they actually have a relationship. Only one team from this group has won The Race – TAR3's Zach & Flo or as they were sometimes known, Zach & Dead Weight. Usually squabbling destroys them. There's at least one Trust Issue couple in this season, possibly two.
  
• Next Level Daters – They're a couple who are in a relationship but who are wondering if they should take it to the "next level" although what that means is frequently nebulous. It can range from moving to the same town to moving in together to getting engaged. The Race puts a lot of strains on relationships, but if they can survive it can make for a strong partnership. None has won by a couple of teams have come close. There are at least three Next Level Daters this time around.
  
• Flirty Girls – No all woman team has ever won The Amazing Race but in recent years they've come close. Flirty Girls are where both women are under 30 and have the desire to use their feminine wiles to win The Race. Best performance by a Flirty Girl Team was probably Dustin & Kandice in TAR10, who finished fourth. Flirty Girls have a tendency not to do well, most spectacularly Heather & Eve, Team Legally Blonde in TAR3. There is one Flirty Girl team this season
  
• BFFs – Women between say 30 and 45. They tend to be more level headed than Flirty Girls and so perform better. They sometimes struggle in physical tasks. Best performance by a BFF Team was Lynn & Karlyn who finished third in TAR10, but my personal favourites were Tian & Jaree in TAR4. None in this season though.
  
• Older Women – No woman likes being describes as "older" but in this case they are over 45 and getting a bit of adventure in their lives, perhaps for the first time ever. They can do very well or fall flat on their faces. Best performance by an Older Women Team was by Linda & Karen, the Bowling Moms who finish fourth in TAR5. Generally though they don't do so well. There is one Older Women team this time around.
  
• Older Guys – Over 40, usually not in the best shape try to make up in guile what they lack in fitness. Sometimes they go pretty far but often physical woes stop them. None in this Race.
  
• Older Marrieds – My favourite group because although none has ever won they usually put up a great fight. Personal favourites include TAR7 fourth place team Gretchen & Meredith and TAR9 fifth place team Fran & Barry. Best finish though was by Terri & Ian in TAR3 – they finished second. None in this Race though.
  
• Parent/Child combos – They tend to be trying to "reconnect" somehow, whether because of philosophical differences or because of the parent being not as present as he (inevitably a he) would have liked to have been during childhood. Tend not to do too well – best performance was by Nancy & Emily in TAR1; they finished fifth. There's a father/daughter and a grandfather/grandson in this Race.
  
• Siblings – There have been a couple of great sibling teams, notably Blake & Paige from TAR2 and Ken & Gerard in TAR3. Both teams finished third. In general though sibling teams don't do well in The Race and frequently don't finish in the top half. Sisters tend to do well but tend not to do quite as well as other all women teams. There are two sibling teams – one mixed gender, the other sisters in this Race
  

So let's look at the teams and try to figure out where they'll finish.

Kynt & Vyxin – Described by CBS as "dating Goths" they're biggest worry is supposedly maintaining their make-up. I classify them as "Next Level Daters." They claim to have an "us against the world" attitude because they stand out in a world of "normal" people. This could be a problem if for some reason they antagonise local people in the countries they visit. I don't see them progressing into the top six and they could be one of the earliest teams eliminated.

Jennifer & Nathan – They definitely have a case of "Trust Issues" that they're trying to iron out. They claim to have broken up several times during their two years together and in the TV commercials for the show there have been allegations that he has cheated on her. Still, they're an athletic couple and if they can hold their personal issues in check during The Race, I think they have a chance at the top four or five.

Ronald & Christina – They're a father/daughter team and apparently the most travelled of the players in this race. The story with them is that he was away for most of her formative years so this is a chance for them to reconnect. He travels a lot on business and she is a policy analyst who used to work for the State Department. Travel experience normally doesn't mean that much in The Race because of the various challenges and the various bottlenecks that restrict advantages in airports. Could be a contender if they do well in physical challenges but mostly I see a dfinish in the bottom six.

Shana & Jennifer
– They're actually older than I expected from the commercials – their age says "BFF" but their attitude (in the commercials) comes across as "Flirty Girls." They're both intelligent and well travelled which makes me think that the "Flirty Girl" thing is mostly a pose. I think they can definitely make it into top five or six and might even pull off a win, given the absence of "Alpha Males" and "Married Folk."

Azaria & Hendekea – The "mixed gender Siblings," this pair definitely has an early elimination vibe about them. Personality conflicts could definitely be a factor with the team: "She describes him as confrontational and emotional while he describes her as irrational." They could definitely be the first team out and I don't see them going much beyond the bottom three or four.

Lorena & Jason – Another pair of "Next Level Daters" with more than a hint of "Trust Issues" between unspecified cultural differences and a description of the relationship that includes the word "volatile" (a word that Jason also applies to himself). This could be a tough one. Their fitness could make them definite contenders but if the relationship becomes too volatile they might fall apart. Beyond expecting a finish in the top five I'm not willing to make much in the way of a prediction.

Nicolas & Donald – Grandson and grandfather could be an interesting twist on the Parent/Child relationship. Nicolas (the grandson) is a 23 year-old airline pilot which if nothing else should give him a leg up on navigation. On the other hand his 68 year-old grandfather has a tendency to being opinionated and outspoken. For as long as they last (which I fear won't be that long) they should be fun to watch.

Ari & Staella – Hard to read these two. They come across as a mix of "Next Level Daters" and "Siblings" – he currently lives with her family but they've been best friends for eight years. More worrisome than whatever their relationship may be is Ari's description of himself: "mean, rude and hilarious." While The Amazing Race isn't a show where alliances generally come into play, it is never a good idea to antagonise other teams who may start working to help anyone but you. If his meanness and rudeness comes into play either with other players or with locals, this could be a short adventure for them.

Marianna & Julia
– Sisters but I wouldn't be surprised to see a bit of "Flirty Girl" asserting itself. On paper they could be a strong team. One is a self-described problem solver while the other is more athletic. They've travelled together in the past and they claim that they're modelling themselves on TAR9 winners BJ & Tyler. The question is whether their relationship as sisters (Julia claims that Marianna "doesn't have a censor button and that at times she can be quite mean") will undermine their ability to work together as partners. The strength of the BJ & Tyler relationship was that they didn't argue and they had qualities that complimented each other. If they work together well they could finish in the top five, maybe even the top three.

Rachel & TK – A "Next Level Dating" couple that could be my favourites to win it all. He was a college athlete (swimming) at UC Santa Barbara while she bought her own business straight out of high schools. They're both smart and ambitious, and based on previous seasons it never hurts to have significant swimming skills. They describe themselves as "free-spirited" which is never a bad thing. The big question is whether their relationship is sound enough to handle the stresses of The Race. If so, they could win (then again I picked Rob & Amber to win the All Star Season so what do I know).

Kate & Pat – The first openly lesbian participants in The Amazing Race they've been married for three years and both are ministers in the Episcopal Church (Anglicans to us Canadians). Male Gay couples have been a fixture in previous seasons of The Race, and according to Adam Troy-Castro's book on the show My Ox Is Broken, there have been lesbians on the show but they were not (at that time at least) "out." The big thing for me isn't their sexual preference but rather their ages – Kate is 49 and Pat is 65 – combined with their gender which puts them at a disadvantage. As I pointed out earlier, Older Women tend not to do as well in The Race as virtually any other group. Sorry to say it but I expect them to be an early elimination.

The Amazing Race 11 starts Sunday night at 7 Central and Mountain, 8 Eastern and Pacific. I can't wait!!!!

The Mysterious Mr. Webb

I'm going to steal a march on my buddy Toby, since he obviously missed this one in his fine blog Inner Toob.

Tuesday night's episode of NCIS – the title was Chimera – was the 100^th episode of the show. Now as we all know Donald P. Bellisario spun NCIS off from the immensely popular JAG. One of the most "beloved" characters on JAG was CIA Agent Clayton Webb (played by Steven Culp). He was there from the beginning, well at least the beginning of the show's run on CBS – he first turned up in the episode We The People which also introduced Harmon Rabb's long time partner and eventual fiancé Sarah Mackenzie. Webb was a suitably shadowy figure though he appeared in a lot of episodes. For a time he was even Mac's bed buddy (she did have a number of them). He'd turn up, sometimes as an adversary for Harm and Mac, sometimes as an ally. On the whole he tended to be a very frustrating person for our friendly naval lawyers. Eventually Webb died but like a good spook it didn't take. It was enough to end his relationship with Mac though, leaving the field open for Harm.

In Chimera, NCIS Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs and his team – Agent Anthony DiNozzo, Agent Tim McGee, Mossad Officer Ziva David, and Medical Examiner Donald "Ducky" Mallard – were sent to investigate a mysterious death aboard a naval auxiliary vessel, the USNS Chimera, only to find the ship entirely deserted (well almost). Left back at headquarters were forensic scientist Abby Sciutto and NCIS Director Jenny Sheppard. Gibbs and his team need to know what the Chimera's mission was but that's classified above their level, so it's left to director Sheppard to try to find out. She has to try to get the information from the mission's (apparently) over officious CO, Commander William Skinner. He's full of reasons why he won't tell The Director what's on the ship: the mission is "need to know" and you don't need to know; the mission is classified higher than her clearance level (which is Top Secret); and so on. But of course our Jenny is not one to let little things like that get in her way – she is after all someone who calls the Secretary of State "Condi," and she's only occasionally intimidated by Gibbs. So Skinner comes to NCIS with a file that supposedly explained the mission as "biological warfare research." That's bad enough, but as we later discover, it wasn't the "real" mission.

Now here's the thing: Commander William Skinner bears a stunningly suspicious resemblance to Clayton Webb. He also bears a stunning resemblance to Rex van de Kamp (Desperate Housewives), Speaker Jeff Haffley (The West Wing), Special Agent in Charge Fred Chambers (Traveler) and MACO Major Hayes (Star Trek: Enterprise) but unlike Toby I don't try to fit all TV into a single universe. The works of Donald P. Bellisario on the other hand are a different story. Particularly JAG and NCIS since the latter used the former for its backdoor pilot and Lieutenant Commander Bud Roberts (Patrick Labyorteaux) appeared in the show's second episode. The two shows are patently tied together despite what TV.com says ("Steven Culp had previously appeared on many episodes of "JAG" as CIA agent Clayton Webb. "NCIS" was a spin-off from "JAG," also created by Donald Bellisario. Several other actors have crossed over the 2 series, but in different roles. It would appear that despite starting in the same universe the 2 shows have gone their separate ways.") All of which has allowed me to come up with the "real" story.

Following Clayton Webb's "death" – which only a handful of people including his former fiancé and her new husband know was faked – Clayton Webb was able to return to covert operations. One of these operations involved the use of naval assets – the USNS Chimera – to recover a compact Russian nuclear device that had gone down with one of their submarines during the Cold War. Webb was inserted into the Navy with the identity of Commander William Skinner. His association with naval personnel, primarily with the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps, gave him a sufficient air of authenticity to allow him to fit in. However, complications arose in the operation with the death of one of the crew members (possibly another CIA officer), Lieutenant Commander Satoshi Takada. Notification of this death leads to an immediate NCIS investigation. Now "Skinner" is in a bit of a panic. He knows it's likely that he'll have to go to NCIS headquarters, and he also knows that Ziva David is serving at NCIS. This is a problem because not only is Ziva a Mossad officer, she is also the daughter of the Deputy Director of the Mossad. While Ziva might have met Webb at least once, it's more likely that she has been briefed about Webb and would recognise him, so either he arranged for Gibbs and his team to be sent to ship or counted himself lucky that they were – most likely the former. With Ziva out of the way "Skinner" can now safely go to NCIS and give Director Sheppard the cover story, although he makes sure that he has to drag it out of him. Of course there are complications – the arrival of some state sponsored Russian pirates aboard the Chimera, but they are dealt with in a way that Gibbs suspected was also supposed to deal with his team, including Ziva David.

Scary Stuff

Okay, I haven't been able to get my camera to work to do a self portrait, and I keep getting too busy to do any reviews, and the PTC has altered their schedules for new material, but I have got something really scary for you on Halloween.



Imagine running into him tonight while trick or treating!

Filler Post - Poker On TV...Shows

Finally got the new camera on Friday and I've got a bit of a learning curve to master. I managed to actually take a picture on Saturday and it looks okay, but there is no way that my photography is ready for prime time. One thing that has been annoying the crap out of me is the manuals (there are two plus one for the included software and one for direct connection to my printer, which I can't do anyway, plus assorted other inserts; it's enough to make you weep). I can read the pages but what's bugging me – and slowing down the learning – are the icons on the page. They're white on black and my eyes are finding it impossible to really focus on what's exactly being pictured. No problem reading them on the screen but on the printed page...headache inducing is putting it mildly. Anyway, I'll try to get a picture of myself on the blog Sunday or Monday. The video idea may take a while longer.

So I bailed on watching Women's Murder Club again on Saturday and instead watched Friday Light Nights and Las Vegas. Trust me, they were better than the ball game. The Las Vegas episode was particular fun thanks to the appearance of Larry Manetti and Roger Mosley along with Tom Selleck. Manetti played "Larry Ryan", billionaire night club owner while Mosley played "Roger Hartley", billionaire airline owner from Hawaii who got started with a single helicopter. There was supposed to be a British billionaire with them but he was a no show; perhaps appropriate because John Hillerman retired from acting in 2000. The only thing they didn't do was to put A.J. Cooper (Selleck's character) in a Hawaiian shirt or ball cap. The major point of the guys being on the show was the annual poker game between Cooper and his friends. After scaring off one of Sam's "whales" (a big spending casino guest) by lurking around trying to figure out what Sam does, Cooper decides to make it up to her. She wants into his card game and she wants him to provide her with the buy-in, which he does. And it's the game that I want to talk about because it is typical of most of the poker games that are seen on TV.

First off, there's the game itself. They're playing Five Card Draw, which is the classic Poker game, the first version of poker that most people ever play (or at least it used to be before Hold'em started showing up on TV). It is however a game that is virtually never played in a casino setting or in tournaments. I'm willing to accept that these guys are playing Draw, though one might have expected a more challenging game like Seven Card Stud from guys like these. Then there are a couple of occasions when a character says something like "I call your $10,000...and raise you $30,000 more." This is something that wouldn't happen in a public card room. It's called a string bet and wouldn't be allowed because the first verbal declaration takes precedence over everything. In other words by saying "I call" you are limiting yourself to that action; correct form in this incident is to say "Raise to $40,000 total," or "Raise by $30,000," or simply to say "Raise" and move the number of chips representing the call and the raise into the centre of the table. Yet this is another thing that you can probably let go because it's allowed in home games by common consent of the players. In fact at the World Cup of Poker Tournament put on by Pokerstar and broadcast online, I saw a member of Team Canada who was playing his first tournament in a casino setting make that mistake at least twice – you don't say anything in online poker obviously and his only other experience was in home games.

All of these things are comparatively minor and even acceptable in social situations. The key element of this episode is not. After losing a hand to Cooper in which he admits to bluffing, Sam thinks she has picked up on his "tell." During a break in the action she borrows $75,000 from Delinda to stay in the game because she's sure that she can beat Cooper when she sees him make this action again. Sure enough she sees him doing his "tell" a second time (he slowly turns a chip that he is holding on edge with a finger) and calls a huge bet that he makes. The problem is that she doesn't have enough money to cover his bet. As a result she bets an extremely rare coin that she received as a bequest from a former customer even though the coin is worth more than the amount that is needed to cover the difference between the amount that Sam has and what Cooper bet. She has four Queens but he has a Six High Straight Flush. She loses.

This doesn't happen – ever – even in home games. This would allow the player with the most money to win pots by simply betting more than any of the other players has to play with. And you can't bet money or other assets that aren't known before hand. In other words you can't reach into your wallet and pull out a $100 bill and bet that on an active hand. You can pull the money out and buy more chips before the next hand starts, but you are restricted to playing the money you have on the table at the time the hand starts. In cases where a player bets more than another player has available to play with, the player with the lesser amount calls and the amount they play for is capped at the amount that the player with lower amount has. If there are more than two players in the hand there is a "split pot" where the other players play for any amount over what the player with the lowest amount has bet.

The thing is that this isn't just restricted to Las Vegas although it is somewhat irritating in a show that has had Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and Howard "The Professor" Lederer on it. Most television shows that have featured occasional Poker games have had the players playing Five Card Draw, had them making String Bets, had players reaching into their pockets for extra money, and had players forced to find extra assets to cover a bet that exceeded what they had on the table. I don't remember enough episodes of the series (and it's been so long since I've seen it that I don't remember the episodes that I did see all that well) but it probably goes back at least as far as Maverick. I don't expect this will ever change either even though viewers are growing increasingly sophisticated when it comes to Poker knowledge. Or maybe, as a Poker player, I know just a little bit too much for my own good.

(BTW: There's art for this but Blogger won't let me upload it when I'm posting - I'll try again later.)

(Update: Image posted.)

Short Takes – October 21, 2007

I promised myself that I'd get more written this week, so what happens? Well what happens is a lot less than I was expecting to happen in terms of getting actual work done. There are a lot of reasons. A big one is that I'm finding it harder and harder to find time to watch the shows that I don't normally watch. Another thing is that I sometimes get so freaking tired that I fall asleep while watching a show and don't really know it until I wake up (that's not unusual for me – I've been known to fall asleep while playing poker online). Or I get sicker than a dog, which happened on Wednesday. Still there were things I wanted to accomplish that didn't get done and I'm frankly disappointed with myself.

By the way, I'm getting a new digital camera (they didn't have it in stock and I've been waiting three weeks for it) and of course like just about all digital still cameras it's got video capability, and there a couple of vague ideas running around in my head for using video in the blog once I get used to using the blasted thing. After all, Vista comes with video editing software – not great editing software but good enough for my purposes. So not only will I be able to post an up to date picture of my ugly mug but I might give you a chance to hear me stutter and stumble my way through a script. Just don't expect Brigette from TVSquad Daily – I'm not that pretty, that composed, or that prolific.

The first leaf – er show – of Autumn falls: Even though FOX was the first network to put a show on indefinite hiatus – that would be the little watched Nashville – The CW has the "honour" of being the first network to cancel a new show. They cut loose (cancelled, canned, sent to the glue factory) their extremely low rated video show Online Nation, and this one ain't coming back folks no way, no how. Nor should it. The show was essentially a look at the most popular amateur videos from YouTube and other video sites, and that was the problem – if I'm looking at stuff on YouTube I choose what I watch. So do you and so does everyone else. Who needs a middle man to tell us what to watch? And middle man was exactly the role that The CW's show producers had assigned themselves. The show had a measly 0.2 rating and was averaging 540,000 viewers – 300,000 in the 18-49 demographic so a lot of people shared my opinion on this. (Oh wait, CBS just canceled Viva Laughlin, and not a moment too soon either.)

Full and partial orders: The first series of the new season to get a full order was also on The CW. That was Gossip Girl in a move which was actually announced on October 10. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the show pulls about 3 million viewers in its regular time slot but viewership goes up significantly (20% in adults 18-34 which is the audience that The CW wants) once data from DVRs was factored in as Nielsen is now doing. More to the point the show is drawing the "right" people. The show is averaging a rating of 1.9/5 in adults 18-34 but 2.8/7 in women 18-34 and a whopping (well relatively speaking) 4.7/15 in female teens. That's a 15% share of that age group. Two other new shows got full season orders last Thursday according to Michael Ausiello. They were ABC's Private Practice and CBS's comedy The Big Bang Theory. As well CBS is giving a full season order to The Unit. The Grey's Anatomy spin-off Private Practice is the top new show among adults 18-49, while The Big Bang Theory actually builds on its lead-in, Two And A Half Men. Finally E! Online's Watch With Kristin is reporting that NBC has given an order for more scripts for four shows while CBS has given an order for more scripts for one. The NBC shows – Chuck, Life, Bionic Woman, and Journeyman – have all received orders for three more episodes while the CBS series Cane got an order for four episodes. Finally, Kitchen Nightmares, featuring Gordon Ramsay, has been renewed for next season. Again, not surprising – they can't give him a traditional full order because Ramsay's availability in North America is necessarily limited.

Conspiracy theory: Okay, I should preface this by saying that this is my own opinion and it has nothing to do with anything beyond how my twisted little mind works. It may be absolutely not what the networks are doing but I have to admit, I kind of think it holds together.

As you probably know all too well, the Writers Guild of America will be in a position to strike as of November 1^st with contracts with the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America coming next year. The strike authorization vote saw 5,507 votes cast out of about 12,000 members (most WGA votes have about a 30% turnout, according to Mark Evanier from whom much of the hard information in this piece come), with 90.3% voting to authorize the strike. If nothing else this indicates a far more united front than Mark at least expected. The issues of the strike include – but aren't limited to – raising the rate of residuals paid for DVDs (the companies pay more to the manufacturer of the box and packaging (about 50 cents) than they pay in residuals to the writer, director and actors combined (about 20 cents)), setting up a residual system for material distributed by other means such as the Internet (iTunes for example – each studio or network has cited $500 million or more a year in online revenue but claim not to have a business model in this area), and expanding the definition and protection of the union membership to those who work on reality shows. In the case of reality shows the situation is summed up by Howard A. Rodman in the LA Times in an op-ed piece: "It seems that the companies are content to make large profits on these shows but don't want to compensate the writers at standard guild rates. Sometimes they even deny that there's any writing going on at all. (Hint: in a "reality" show, look in the credits under "story producer.") And when they do admit that their shows are actually written, they don't want to pay the pension, healthcare and wages that are the industry standard."

Now I know enough about strikes and union negotiations to be dangerous. It used to be that the postal unions in Canada were actually split between two unions, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) for inside workers and a different union for the letter carriers. CUPW was the more militant union, and went on strike with depressing regularity. The non-striking union was still willing to work but the letter carriers could only deliver sorted mail and wouldn't cross the CUPW picket lines to sort it; that had to be done by employees classed as managers. The situation is similar with the WGA except of course that there are no managers. With the writers on strike production grinds to a halt.

So what does television do when production grinds to a halt? Here's where my theory comes into play. You may have noticed (like in the first news piece on this page) that the networks haven't been cancelling a lot of shows and certainly none of the scripted dramas and comedies. The only show cancelled has been The CW's dismal Online Nation. In the 2006-07 season two scripted shows had already been cancelled by this point in the season and by the end of November nine series had left the air including on replacement series. At the same time ABC and FOX have both got backlogs of programming set up as midseason replacements (including the previously cancelled According To Jim from ABC)while NBC has announced plans to revive American Gladiators and a celebrity version of The Apprentice. I think that the networks that are prepared for the strike are willing to run their existing series longer than they would if there were no strike in the offing – in other words run low rated shows until they run out of scripts rather than cancelling them quickly as has been the pattern in recent years. At the same time they are having scripts prepared for their replacement series (like According To Jim). Is it not possible that the networks that have been taking this action weren't thinking of the replacement shows as replacements for cancelled shows but rather as replacements for shows that have run out of scripts, something that is expected to occur for most shows sometime in January or early February? At the same time NBC has two reality franchises that people are familiar with ready to go. CBS has a season of The Amazing Race that hasn't shot yet, and of course FOX has American Idol in addition to their backlog of scripted shows set to debut in January. What if the networks aren't going to cancel the poorly performing shows this season unless the absolutely have to? What if instead they're behaving like a bear preparing for winter hibernation by building up a stockpile of fat – shows – to carry them through until the end of the season or the end of the strike, whichever comes first? Am I crazy; does this actually make any sense?

Oh wait, maybe I am crazy, because CBS has cancelled Viva Laughlin – the series with the singing casino owner – after two episodes. It will be replaced by The Amazing Race as of November 4^th.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: I'm going to break tradition here a little this time around and first say who they don't hate. They don't hate The CW's Life Is Wild for which I heartily congratulate them for an all too rare bit of good taste. You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I reviewed Life Is Wild and actually found it to be rather good. And I'm not the only one; Mark Berman, the Programming Insider at Media Week wrote this about the show when discussing last week's ratings: "It's a pity more viewers are not finding Life is Wild, which takes the traditional family drama and adds a new dimension by the on-location filming in South Africa. Before you close the door on it (and I had to label it a loser with ratings this low), keep in mind that it grew out of Online Nation by 447,000 viewers and 50 percent in the demo." It's exactly the sort of programming that people from the PTC on down to families who disdain everything that the PTC stands for except some quality programming that you can watch as a family say that they want, and it's light years different from the mawkish sentimentality of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition with which it shares a time slot (and which I have come to loathe).

Now as to hatred, the PTC sent its North Jersey Chapter Director, Crystal Madison, to shame News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch at his company's annual shareholders' meeting. The targets of Madison's ire were some of the usual PTC targets – Dirt on FX, and Family Guy, American Dad, and Bones of the FOX broadcast network. Surprisingly there was no mention of either Prison Break or Rescue Me in her little diatribe. Her conclusion actually quotes PTC Chairman Leon J. Weil: "The PTC chairman Ambassador Leon Weil [he was ambassador to Nepal for 3 years under Ronald Reagan – make of that what you will] summed it up best while speaking here last year with his common sense solution; (quote) '…if you are going to air mature content on your broadcast network, air it after 10 pm when children are unlikely to see it. And if you are intent on putting degrading programs like Nip/Tuck on the air, programs that violate your own corporate speech policies, put them on premium, not basic cable, where tens of millions of families who don't want it, and are in fact offended by it, aren't forced to pay for it.' (End quote)" Airing network programming after 10 p.m. is hardly an option for FOX which like The CW only offers two hours of prime time. But the funniest part of Madison's little speech actually came before her detailing of the wrongs of specific FOX and FX shows when she said this: "Fox Broadcasting and the FX network have repeatedly embarrassed you, the board and the shareholders with such programs as Family Guy, American Dad, Bones and Dirt." This is Rupert Murdoch and the board of News Corp. she's speaking to. They own both the News Of The World and The Sun in Britain and see nothing wrong with putting topless pictures on Page Three. Reportedly Murdoch was prepared to launch the Page Three Girl in the United States until his then wife threatened to divorce him if he did. The very fact that he owns the New York Post and made it what it is today should be ample evidence that nothing that makes money embarrasses this man. If someone were to ask Murdoch, "Have you no shame sir?" his answer would be "No." So what if FOX and FX incite the ire of people like Crystal Madison or Leon Weil. Murdoch is perfectly happy to laugh all the way to the bank.

The Broadcast Worst of the Week is a traditional PTC target, American Dad. It's not a show that I watch (because I don't like it) but the PTC hates it and Family Guy with the sort of burning passion that is usually associated with hating Hillary Clinton or George W. Bush. Here's a quote (well several actually, linked with ellipses) from the first paragraph of the PTC's commentary on the episode in question, which amazingly doesn't actually mention anything about the episode. In fact the first paragraph takes up more space than the rest of the commentary combined.

There is no shortage of people with perverted minds in our world, and most parents go to great lengths to make sure their children are not exposed to these people. In general we live in a society that frowns heavily on topics like incest and teen promiscuity and all those who promote or participate in such behaviour. It would be nice to say that all people frown on such behavior, but the people at the Fox network simply don't....Fox's Sunday night lineup has demonstrated season after season that if you can draw it they can air it, and the more perverted the better. With a complete disregard for decency, morality, and the general will of the average American family, Fox delivers smut-filled content week after week under the untouchable umbrella of satire and animation. However, the time has come for shows like Family Guy and American Dad to be called out for what they really are....it must be acknowledged that Family Guy and American Dad are not on the path of animated satire that popular shows like The Simpson paved nearly two decades ago, but rather that they are promoting the concepts and perverted fantasies of truly sick minds that are far more suited for the adult entertainment industry.

Tough stuff, right, but what brought this on? Well the episode of American Dad in question "featured, in a disturbingly normal fashion, an inadvertent sexual attraction between two teenage siblings." Well that's debatable. In the plot Haley, the 18 year-old daughter of the house, poses nude for an art class. In the art class is the family alien, Roger. Roger paints Haley's body but doesn't paint her head or face. He then brings the painting home. Later, 14 year-old Steve "is shown coming out of a candle lit bathroom carrying a box of tissue and the painting." According to the PTC, it "is clear that he was masturbating to the sight of his sister's nude body." Later when viewing the painting with a group of house guests, "Steve is shown rubbing his nipple in a perverse sexual manner. But of course he wasn't masturbating to the "sight of his sister's nude body" because Roger didn't paint her head. He has absolutely no way of knowing to whom the body in the painting belongs to. That of course is where the comedy can or should come from – wanting to be with owner of that body only to discover that she is in fact your sister. But of course the PTC sees vile and evil smut everywhere.

The Cable Worst of the Week is VH-1's I Love New York. Now I know that this show has been spun off from the Flavor Flav series Flavor Of Love I've never watched either show and have no desire to (I kind of think that Flavor Flav is either one of the ugliest people in the world or someone who is deliberately cultivating a ridiculous image for whatever reason). I'm not going to go into the reasons for why the PTC hates the show except that it involves sexual innuendo and a reference to the size of one man's (bleeped dick). It all degenerates into the usual PTC cry for cable choice as a means to remove "smut" from TV: "VH1 has shown its scorn for family audiences and quality entertainment for years. And that might be fine for three million people who watched the premiere. But what about the 75 million + subscribers who chose not to tune in, and in fact will never tune into I Love New York: 2? They're stuck with the bill." Well except of course that there is no show that gets 100% viewership, and indeed the advent of basic cable has meant that the television audience is increasingly subdivided by interests. Which I always thought, in my depressing naiveté was the whole point behind having cable in the first place, so that – as much as is possible – there is something for everyone.

This week's Misrated looks at Boston Legal. The episode in question, which aired on October 2^nd was rated TV-PG DSV. According to the PTC, "A TV-PG rating suggests that the episode contains some material that parents may find unsuitable for younger children; that parents may want to watch the episode with the child; and that the theme of the program may call for parental guidance." The PTC then argued that because the episode dealt with an incident of rape and the mention of the words "semen" and "vaginal bruising" as well as two large photos of a murder victim are sufficient to have the show rated TV-14: "According to the TV ratings guidelines, this is material that 'many parents may want to watch with their younger children.' A discussion about a brutal rape and murder; discussion of semen being found in the victim; vaginal bruising; discussion of how the defendant was having an affair with the victim; all this warrants a mere TV-PG DSV?" In a later paragraph they add, "Considering the rating that Boston Legal did receive, apparently the entertainment industry feels that the discussion of rape and murder is suitable for children of all ages—as long as a parent is present." Of course they fail to mention that Boston Legal is a show that airs in the third hour of prime time or that it is opposite Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show that the PTC complains about when it is rated TV-14 and is frequently far rawer in its depictions than this, or – most importantly – that the rating given to Boston Legal for this episode is entirely consistent with the rating given to other programs with similar themes and plotlines. But of course they're all wrong and the PTC is right.

Recently the PTC has added a new section called TV Trends to their weekly offerings. This time around they're focused on the first hour of prime time with the rather appropriately titled Family Hour Follies although as we shall see the "follies" come from the PTC. The article starts with a rather odd description of the creation of "The Family Hour": "In reaction, during the 1970s the TV networks showed a sense of restraint by voluntarily choosing to set aside that early hour for programs suitable for children. Ever since, the time between 8 and 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and between 7 and 9 p.m. on Sundays, in the Eastern time zone (7 to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday in the Central time zone) has been referred to as the Family Hour." Well actually no. The Family Hour was not voluntary but was imposed on the networks by the FCC from September 1975 until the policy was overturned by one of those pesky circuit court judges in 1976. So we've established that "The Family Hour" doesn't exist and that the networks are able to air just about anything they choose in the first hour of prime time. The PTC seems oblivious to this though and claims, "After the release of The Sour Family Hour: 8 to 9 Goes from Bad to Worse, the PTC's study of Family Hour programming in 2001, even Congress was shocked by our findings. As a result, a bipartisan coalition of senators and congressmen urged the broadcast television industry to restore the Family Hour. At first, the networks responded positively. ABC introduced a "Happy Hour" featuring family programming several nights a week. The WB network retained some of its older family-oriented shows in the 2001 fall season and began developing new programs suitable for children. Even program sponsors got into the act, with several advertisers agreeing to fund the development of family-friendly TV scripts. At least some of the broadcast networks seemed to be making a concerted effort to return programming during the Family Hour to a semblance of its previously family-friendly orientation. But it wasn't long before programming in the first hour of prime time slid into the gutter, with new programs featuring even more graphic violence and explicit sex than those aired in the 1990s. In the years since 2001, the broadcast networks have increasingly ignored the Family Hour." There are further descriptions of how TV has slid headlong into sleaze and evil but that's not really my point in looking at this. In this article, the PTC turns into a network programmer and shows conclusively that they don't understand the television business. Take these suggestions (my comments are in italics and parentheses):

• On Tuesdays, ABC is showing its new programs Cavemen and Carpoolers, both of which contain anatomically explicit sexual dialogue, at 8:00 and 8:30 p.m. Yet it shows the family-friendly hit Dancing with the Stars at 9 p.m. Simply having these programs exchange places would put the child-appropriate dancing program on in the Family Hour, while reserving the more adult material for a later time. (This of course is like putting the kiss of death on Boston Legal since the two comedies – which I haven't seen – have done atrociously in the ratings and wouldn't provide a good lead-in for the third hour drama.)
  

• On Mondays, Fox shows its violent drama Prison Break at 8 p.m. On Thursdays, the same network shows the delightful game show Don't Forget the Lyrics at 9 p.m. Why couldn't Lyrics be put on in the 8 o'clock hour on Mondays, with Prison Break after it? (Which effectively kills both shows. The "delightful" Don't Forget The Lyrics goes down before the "family friendly" Dancing With The Stars, Chuck and the CBS comedies How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory. Meanwhile Prison Break goes against Heroes, Two and a Half Men, and Rules of Engagement, which are already beating the FOX series K-Ville. And if K-Ville goes to Thursday night it gets to be destroyed by CSI, Grey's Anatomy, The Office, Scrubs, and most likely Supernatural.
  

• Sunday nights on ABC begin with the clean and upbeat family shows America's Funniest Home Videos and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition at 7:00 and 8:00 ET respectively; and at 10 p.m. the network shows comparatively clean Brothers and Sisters. Why does ABC feel the need to intersperse the raunchy sex comedy Desperate Housewives in-between? If ABC had Housewives and Brothers and Sisters switch places, it could have a fairly clean programming block from 7 until 10 p.m. on Sundays. (Now wait, weren't we talking about the first hour of prime time, or even the first two hours on Sundays? So why are they moving the "comparatively clean" Brothers and Sisters. And I'm even ready to argue that assessment of that show – their own site about the show states "There is some sexual content and some homosexual content, with some brief heterosexual and homosexual sex scenes and sexual dialogue." This by them is "comparatively clean?")
  

In their diatribe about the "Family Hour", the PYC mentions "several advertisers agreeing to fund the development of family-friendly TV scripts." This probably refers to the Family Friendly Programming Forum of the Association of National Advertisers, an organization which I wholeheartedly support, in part because their attitude on family friendly programming is not that every show in every timeslot but rather "to provide optional programming to families every day of the week, with the best-case scenario within (primetime)." They accomplished that this year with shows whose script development they funded on each night except Saturday with the addition of Chuck, Bionic Woman, and Life Is Wild to a list that includes Ugly Betty, Friday Night Lights, Brothers And Sisters, and Everybody Hates Chris. Because let's face the fact that television is a business and the networks have to appeal to a wide audience. To the degree that Prison Break works in the time slot that it's in (which I don't really think is suitable either), it is because it is an alternative to dancing stars, geeks, a variant of Friends and a spy who is part of the "Nerd Herd." If you don't like the show, or even the very idea of the show, don't watch it, but in a free country, shouldn't the option at least be there?

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.