New Poll – Who SHOULD Win The Emmy For Outstanding Host For A Reality or Reality Competition Program?

Okay, I've thought it over and decided to go with the Reality-Competition Host category.The thing is that I don't really think that it's very likely that the show that has won in the Reality-Competition series category literally since before the category was created will lose this year. And I don't just say that because The Amazing Race is one of my favourite shows. I just don't see it losing against the same four shows that it beat last season, and the season before that. While I'm not convinced of the necessity of the Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program, at least it seems like the category is more competitive(!) than the Series category is. Besides, it contains one of the oddest nominations of any category in the Emmys, the two hosts of Top Chef being nominated as one. So here are the nominees:

Tom Bergeron - Dancing With the Stars
Phil Keoghan - The Amazing Race
Heidi Klum - Project Runway
Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio - Top Chef
Jeff Probst - Survivor
Ryan Seacrest - American Idol

As usual, vote for who you think should win, not who you think will win. And as always feel free to submit comments here about how you've decided to vote – or even if you've consciously decided not to vote. I want to see comments. I'm begging you to comment. I'm down on my knees here people! (And believe me with my knees the only thing harder than getting down on them is getting up.)

Deadline for votes is August 31, 2009.

Poll Results – Who SHOULD Win The Outstanding Actor In A Drama Emmy?

Well here we go again with another round of poll results. There were twenty-six votes cast. In sixth place, with one vote (3.85%) is Simon Baker from The Mentalist. In a tie for fourth place, with two votes each (7.69%) are Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston and Dexter's Michael C. Hall. John Hamm from Mad Men came in third with three votes (11.54%). Second place is held down by Gabriel Byrne from In Treatment with six votes (23.08%). But the overwhelming winner, with twelve votes (46.15%) is House himself, Hugh Laurie.

Simon Baker brings a charming and witty take to his role as Patrick Jane on The Mentalist, something that is not totally surprising since he had the same qualities on his first North American series The Guardian. Behind that facade though there's frequently an unsuspected depth to the character. Still, I'm afraid that I'm convinced that – not knowing which episode he was nominated for (and not really caring since this poll tends to focus on overall performance) – the principal reason why Baker was nominated was because this show is the highest rated new show of the 2008-090 season. But then I'm a bit cynical about these things. I haven't seen either Cranston or Hall's performances in Breaking Bad and Dexter. In both cases its rather a case of having too much on my plate rather than the shows not being available on channels that I get. Cranston's performance however was strong enough for him to stage a major upset by winning the Emmy in this category last year for his role as the science teacher who has turned to making and dealing drugs to provide a nest egg for his family after he dies of cancer. Still, I'll turn to my friend Ronniecat for her thoughts. She was conflicted between Cranston, John Hamm, and Hugh Laurie before finally coming down on the side of Bryan Cranston: I think I have to go with Bryan Cranston. His work in Breaking Bad is just outstanding. The character's desperation is so palpable I feel sometimes like I need to leave the room. Like her, I find the lack of support for Cranston this time around to somewhat disappointing and more than a bit surprising given both his success in last year's Emmys. I am a big fan of John Hamm's Don Draper character from Mad Men, which has become appointment TV for me. Draper's internal demons came to the fore in this past season and he finds himself increasingly questioning whether or not to throw all that he has away. It's a powerful performance. As far as Gabriel Byrne's second season of In Treatment goes, it is one that I haven't seen because it is on HBO and I don't have HBO's Canadian service.

This leaves us with House and the always strong Hugh Laurie. This season's storylines have focussed on Dr. House's relationships with his two peers and best friends, Wilson and Cuddy. At the same time we were privy to House's descent into mental instability – or at least greater mental instability than had been produced by his drug addiction and his generally abrasive personality. The last two or three episodes of the season, where House is unable to differentiate between his reality and his fantasies or hallucinations, are impressive bits of acting, and as is always the case with Laurie's performance as House deserving of acknowledgement. While I think that the Emmy will most likely go to Cranston, I don't think that anyone would be shocked, surprised, or unhappy if Hugh Laurie won the Emmy.

Turning away from the actual poll, I want to discuss something that I observed in the voting. Analysis is providing interesting results – I won't go into detail until this set of polls is completed but next time I run a poll the amount of time it will be open will be shorter – but one thing is rather odd. The poll receives fewer votes for the Actress categories than for the Actor categories. For the two comedy categories Actresses had a total of five votes cast while Actors had a total of twenty-two. In the Drama category Actresses had eleven votes cast while Actors had twenty-six. I'm not sure what this means. Are most of my readers (or at least the people who stop by from time to time) men? Or do my readers just find performances in the actor categories easier to judge? Thoughts?

New poll will be up shortly. It will be Outstanding Reality-Competition although there is a part of me that thinks it should be Outstanding Reality-Competition Host.

New Poll - Who SHOULD Win The Outstanding Actor In A Drama Emmy?

I'm putting this poll up a few hours later than expected, but we were making Borscht and large quantities of soup take precedence over just about everything.

The nominees are:

Simon Baker - The Mentalist
Gabriel Byrne - In Treatment
Bryan Cranston - Breaking Bad
Michael C. Hall - Dexter
Jon Hamm - Mad Men
Hugh Laurie - House

Vote for the actor that you believe should win rather than the actor you think is going to win, and as always, please feel free to post comments on this post about why you believe that the person yu chose should take home the Emmy.

Deadline is Saturday August 22^nd,2009 at noon or there abouts.

Poll Results – Who SHOULD Win The Outstanding Actress In A Drama Emmy?

With nine votes cast, the turnout for this poll wasn't as large as for the one for Outstanding Actor in a Comedy where there were 22 votes cast, it was still larger than the turnout for the Actress in a Comedy category where only five people voted. The voting pattern continues to solidify my views on just how long future polling periods should be. And while my Internet connection has gotten faster (much faster than it was) it has a tendency to drop for a few seconds without apparent provocation. Just in case you were interested.

The results were as follows. Tied for fifth place with no votes were last year's winner Glenn Close from Damages and Holly Hunter from Saving Grace. In a tie for third place are the 2007 winner Sally Field from Brothers and Sisters and
Mariska Hargitay from Law & Order SVU who won in 2006. They each had one vote (11.11%). In second place was Kyra Sedgwick from The Closer, with three votes (33.33%). But the surprise winner was Elizabeth Moss from Mad Men with four votes (44.44%). It's interesting to note that Sedgwick and Moss led from the beginning, with Sedgwick edging ahead on the fifth day of polling but with Moss taking the lead the next day.

I have to say that I'm not at all convinced that the voters are right in this one. First of all I think that Glenn Close will win this battle of the Oscar nominees (Hunter has four nominations and one win, Field has two nomination and won both times, and Glenn Close has been nominated five times – and never won which I constantly amazed at). I'm not entirely convinced that she's the best actress of the group, but she has the name and the reputation and it's a showy role. Since I don't watch Brothers And Sisters on a regular basis I can't be sure if Field has brought anything new to role of Nora Walker. Certainly Mariska Hargitay hasn't changed things up too much in Law & Order: SVU. She's an excellent actress but I'm not sure why she keeps getting nominated.

Turning to the actresses who I consider to have turned in the best performances, my personal favourite is probably Holly Hunter. Grace Hanadarko is a deeply scarred and twisted character who has been given a second chance to try to be a good person even though the temptations that she faces and the life she is living aren't always conducive to her reform. As for Kyra Sedgwick's Brenda Leigh Johnson, she faces none of the metaphorical demons (and one very real angel) that Grace does but she is very hard when she is in her element – interrogating suspects – and confused and vulnerable when she is out of it. As a character Brenda is a great deal of fun to watch.

Which leads us to Elizabeth Moss and the character of Peggy Olson on Mad Men. There is a part of me that feels that Moss is nominated in the wrong category; that the only lead character in Mad Men is John Hamm's Don Draper, and that the other characters are there to support him. And yet I don't think you can ignore the emergence of Peggy Olson as a character on this show. She has gone from being the largely innocent secretary turned junior copywriter with a secret in the first season to become one of the powers in the office of Sterling Cooper, eclipsing both the women that she worked with in the secretarial pool, including the chief secretary Joan Hollaway, and many of the male characters, some of who are senior to her. Time and again we see glimpses of Peggy that give her greater depth and reveal more about her. Meeting the women of her family, who basically resent her for rising above her station (this is particularly true of her sister) give us a sense of why she frequently acts in such a repressed manner. And yet Peggy is coming into her own. There's a scene in the next to last episode that illustrates this quite well I think. Alone in the empty office before a huge presentation, without her mentor and safety net Don Draper to take charge, Peggy takes a cigarette and starts smoking. It's clear from the way that she does it that this is the first time she's smoked, and perhaps the last. In a way it signifies the moment that she becomes an adult at the office because after a few puffs she puts the cigarette out and has apparently gained the confidence that she needs because she wins the contract for the company. Throughout the season Elizabeth Moss has turned in little moments like that that add up to a strong performance. But I'm still not sure if it is a role that deserves to be considered a lead, and I'm definitely not convinced that it is on a level with Holly Hunter's Grace.

New poll up shortly.

No Phones, No Lights, No Motorcars – At Home!

One of the worst things you can probably say about a TV series may be that it is derivative. Everyone wants their show to stand out as original, or if not original then as the best of the type. I think that's why CSI and The West Wing became such huge hits when they debuted. They were original; they weren't derivative (of course the fact that the shows treated their audiences like intelligent human beings not only didn't hurt but helped). And maybe that's why there are so few reality shows that really pop. Most of the reality shows out there, particularly the summer reality shows, are as derivative as hell. A few years ago there was a deluge of The Apprentice clones, and only one of them worked. That was Hell's Kitchen, and it works not because of what is similar to The Apprentice but because of what is different. Unlike Trump, and the hosts of virtually all of the clones, Gordon Ramsay has his eyes on the donkey's every working minute of the process. Ramsay is very much a part of the process, and his personality – or at least the part of his personality that comes out when dealing with a crew of what are essentially novices that he is trying to mould into a team – is an essential part of the show, even more than Trump's personality shows up in The Apprentice. (Anyone who has ever seen Ramsay's big British show, The F Word, will have seen a different aspect of his personality; of course that show would never sell on FOX.)

In the new CBS show There Goes The Neighborhood the show being cloned is Survivor, with some Big Brother thrown in for good measure. Call this Survivor: Family Edition if you want to and you wouldn't be far wrong. Of course you can't whisk kids – some as young as 6 years old – off to a tropical hellhole paradise, so the show instead tries to replicate the tropical hellhole paradise atmosphere in their own homes. This is accomplished by erecting a concrete wall around eight houses in an Atlanta neighbourhood (it looks like the Berlin Wall without homey touches like the guard towers), and then cutting the power to the neighbourhood. The loss of power not only means no TV, no video games, no chargers for cell phones but also no electric stoves, no refrigerators, no hot water and no air conditioning. And they're in Atlanta. That makes it the next best (?) thing to a tropical hellhole paradise but without the poisonous snakes and man-eating fish. Of course in Survivor (and Big Brother) the real threat isn't from those things but from the people that you're competing with and on this show that makes things more than a bit complicated.

Casting in a reality show is essential of course. That's complicated in this case because they're actually casting a neighbourhood with both pre-existing relationships and pre-existing groups. It's not like they can bring people in to fill some real or imagined quota system that requires a certain number of each group. That said, the producers managed to find a street to do this show on that is almost surprisingly diverse, both demographically and interms of human interest stories, which is another aspect of reality show casting. There's a mixed race family (the Upshaws), a mixed faith family (the Schindlers – the father is Jewish, the mother is Christian – they go to temple and celebrate Christian holidays), a same sex couple (listed as the Mullenix family), a single parent family (Laurie Southey and her daughter), a family consisting of three generations (the Bussieres), and another where the wife's niece is living with them while going to school (the Johnstons). The human interest stories are there as well. Clarissa "Chris" Mullenix has her own son from her previous marriage and adopted her two nephews after her brother and sister-in-law were killed in a freak accident (only one of the nephews is participating in the show). When Susan Bussiere suffered a stroke in 2008 her mother moved in to help the family out and has stayed. David Schindler is a workaholic whose kids often don't see him as much as they'd like, and when they do see him he usually has his phone glued to his ear. The participants on the show range from 5 to 74 (Jake Bussiere and his grandmother Marcia Flerra, with most of the "adults" being in their 40s.

As you might expect most of the first episode deals with the players getting used to their new situation and throwing in the various twists – like the power going out – before the game part of the game really gets going. Losing the power, is a big thing of course. The children and teenagers primarily think about playing their video games, using the computer to communicate with their friends and being able to charge their cell phones. For adults of course the worries are more basic questions of survival; storing food (think how much of it goes into the refrigerator), cooking it, staying cool (think of how dependent all of us are on air conditioning), and even being able to do things after dark. It is very much like being on the island in Survivor. And of course that's where competitions come into play.

The competition in the first episode required one player from each team to wear a T-shirt covered in mud and another player from the team to unravel a tangled fire hose and use it to wash the mud off the shirt, revealing three numbers printed on the shirt (water supplied by a fire engine on the other side of The Wall). Once the numbers were revealed the two team members had to run to a box locked with a combination lock – the three numbers on the T-shirt were the combination to the lock, but they had to be put into the correct order to open the lock. It was a close race, but in the end it was won by the Nelsons, the self-described "Southern Family." They became "Kings of the Neighbourhood, which carried both a Reward a Responsibility. The Reward in this case was a refrigerator full of food powered by generator, probably on "the outside." There's also a plentiful supply of food, and of course the Nelsons are expected to share with their neighbours. The Responsibility is to nominate two families one of which will be removed from the game. The Nelsons choose the DeGirolamo family (a competitive but overweight poker player) and the Mullenix Family. Chris Nelson (the father of the family) has some rather interesting logic in making his selections. He believes that the neighbours will see the Mullenixes as being weak competitively – he sees Chris Mullenix as being a bit of an emotional basket case – so that they will vote to keep them and eliminate the "strong" team," the DeGirolamos. After the nominations are made, the other families adjourn to their homes to talk about which of the families they wanted to keep. Voting was done by handing in photos of the family they wanted to keep. As Chris Nelson predicted all but one of the teams – probably the Southeys – elected to keep the Mullenixes.

I'm not entirely sure what to think about There Goes The Neighborhood. On the surface it seems like a rather ordinary reality-competition show, a reworking of an older, superior, format that manages to rise slightly above the level of most such reworkings of originals. It's not on the same level as Hell's Kitchen when it turned the format of The Apprentice on its ear, creating – in my opinion at least – a product that is in some ways superior to the original (or maybe I just like Gordon Ramsay's personality better than I like Donald Trump's – Ramsay would have appreciated Annie Duke over Joan Rivers in a second). On the other hand the show is much better than that ersatz version of The Amazing Race that NBC put on the air called The Great American Road Trip. Quite frankly, as viewers we basically know what to expect from There Goes The Neighborhood; there will be competition and interpersonal conflicts and from a purely detached point of view there's nothing really to object to. The show isn't cheaply done or badly thought out. It is, in its own way, as comfortable for the viewers as an old boot.

My problem with this show isn't with the show as television, it is with the concept itself. In most reality-competition shows the relationships are transitory. With relatively few exceptions the people who appear on these shows have no previous exposure to each other, no bonds to be tested, and after the event they will have as much or as little connection as they wish with each other. Famously, Rob & Amber got married after their time together on Survivor: All Stars (and in July of this year became parents of a daughter, Lucia Rose), but I have no idea of how close Amber is with her fellow Survivor: Australian Outback competitor Elisabeth Hasselbeck. These are, by their nature mostly transitory relationships so that the disagreements and battles and other relationship stressors cease to matter outside of the context of the game. A major exception is The Amazing Race in which team members have pre-existing relationships, but the teams are competing against people with they don't have a history. That's different in There Goes The Neighborhood. There are pre-existing relationships, friendships or at least acquaintances. Chris Nelson was able to make the strategic move that he did because he knew his neighbours, both the ones he nominated and those who would be doing the voting. That's where the show seems somehow unsavoury. There will come a time when, despite the fact that everyone knows that it's just a game and that what goes on in the game stays in the game, feelings are going to be hurt in a way that goes beyond the game, and that after the game things aren't going to be the same. I find it vaguely unsettling that the production company was willing to take that chance with people's lives. I find it even more unsettling that the producers were able to find eight families willing to risk their friendships.

As a detached TV viewer I find There Goes The Neighborhood to be an competently executed, if not particularly compelling, summer reality-competition; the sort of thing that will hold your interest for a while but which you won't particularly miss when it's gone or care about when it's not back next year. But part of me is disturbed by the voyeuristic aspects of this show. It's one thing to see people who don't know each other brought together in a highly stressful environment and watch how they interact because they know that once they're done with this show they don't necessarily have to see each other again. It's quite another thing to watch the possible disintegration of existing relationships. Somehow it makes me feel just a little unclean. But maybe that's just me.

New Poll - Who SHOULD Win The Outstanding Actress In A Drama Emmy?

Here we go again with the Emmy poll for the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama. As always, vote for the actress that you think should win in this category, not necessarily the one that you believe will win. The Nominees are:

Glenn Close - Damages
Sally Field - Brothers & Sisters
Mariska Hargitay - Law & Order: SVU
Holly Hunter - Saving Grace
Elisabeth Moss - Mad Men
Kyra Sedgwick - The Closer

As always I desperately want to see comments on why you voted the way that you did, and I am more than willing to keep those comments anonymous.

The poll will end at noon (approximately) on Thursday August 13^th.

Poll Results - Who SHOULD Win The Outstanding Actor In A Comedy Emmy?

I'm back with the results of the poll on who should win the "Outstanding Actor in a Comedy" Emmy, and I have to say that I'm impressed on a number of levels. After the anaemic turn-out in the first poll, I wasn't expecting many votes, but the response to this poll totally exceeded even my most optimistic expectations. On another note, the voting patterns, which I have also been tracking seem to reinforce the results of the first poll as to when people vote in these things. Of course more data is required to come up with a definitive answer, but what I'm getting so far is probably going to have an effect on how I do poll in the future.

Now to the results of the voting. There were 22 votes cast – four times as many as in the first poll for reasons I don't fully understand...yet. In sixth place, with no votes is Charlie Sheen from Two And A Half Men. In fifth place, with one vote (4.55%) was Jemaine Clement from Flight Of The Conchords. In fourth place with three votes (13.64%) was last year's winner in this category – both in this poll and at the awards – Alec Baldwin from 30 Rock. In third place, with four votes (18.18%) is another previous winner in this category, Steve Carell from The Office. In what for me was a surprising second place was yet another multiple winner in this category, Tony Shaloub from Monk. But the winner with eight votes (36.36%) was Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory.

As usual, Charlie Sheen gets no love from people voting in this category on this blog. And as usual I will make the comment that he's probably crying all the way to the bank. His father has enough Emmys for the whole family anyway. The poor turnout for Flight Of The Conchords star Jemaine Clement probably has a dual cause; his show is on HBO and the focus of this blog tends to be on broadcast TV. Clement, and the show, was the subject of the only comment that I received for this poll (and just as a reminder, I do welcome, and even beg for, comments on why you voted the way you did – I'm even willing to make them anonymous on the blog) even though part of it was a sales pitch for some merchandise: "Their music rocks and i love their show. Who knew kiwis were so funny! I especially love there (sic) First season of songs." Since I can't afford HBO Canada, I can't possibly comment intelligently. The only New Zealander that most of us get exposed to is Phil Keoghan, who I find to be somewhat funny.

Moving on, we have Alec Baldwin and Steve Carell. Although Carell received one more vote than Baldwin, I'm lumping them together here because it is my expectation that either Baldwin or Carell is the likely winner in this category (although they aren't who I want to win) and if I had to choose between the two I'd say that it would be Baldwin who will win. I believe that the Academy voters like what they perceive to be "intelligent" and "sophisticated" comedy. What will probably give Baldwin an edge in the voting is that 30 Rock is a show about television and very specifically about NBC. I'm willing to bet that people in the industry will see people that they know reflected in the show.

I want to spend a minute on Tony Shaloub who is doing his last season of Monk right now. Shaloub regularly gets more votes in this poll than I usually expect him to – he finished second to Alec Baldwin last year and in third place in 2007 – for a show that, if others better qualified to comment than I (who again doesn't have access to the most recent episodes of this show) are to be believed is becoming less sharp as the years have passed. I'm not saying that Shaloub doesn't deserve the nomination, I am however questioning whether he deserves eight votes in this poll.

Or winner however is Jim Parsons, and I think that the acclaim here is well deserved (I should mention however that this is the only one of the nominated comedies that I watch on a regular basis). While The Big Bang Theory is at its heart a fairly routine comedy about a group of friends with a "fish out of water" aspect in the form of Kelly Cuoco's character Penny, and a hint of unrequited love thrown into the mix, Parsons as Sheldon is an absolute stand-out. As the obnoxious roommate/best friend from Hell he's hilarious. He nails the behaviour of this uber-geek so well that there have been several things written trying to diagnose Leonard's behaviour – they tend to come down on the side of Leonard suffering from Asperger's Syndrome, a view that Parson himself agrees with, saying that Sheldon "couldn't display more traits" of AS." His lack of a sense of humour, his total failure to understand irony and his obsessive compulsive adherence to routines ("You're sitting in my spot.") are the principal sources of comedy in this show. What makes Parsons worthy of this award – and why I personally think that he should win it – is that in the wrong hands this role could be obnoxious and a caricature, one of the most disliked characters on TV. The obvious comparison is with Jaleel White's Urkel character on Family Matters; Urkel took over the leading part in the series, but can anyone really say that they liked Urkel as a person? Sheldon could have been the "next Urkel" but instead Parsons has given him enough endearing qualities that for all of his obnoxious character quirks we, as the audience, like him and his friends on the show don't want to throw him under a bus...too often.

New poll up in a few minutes.

Soup Can Post Minus The Soup Can

Mark Evanier created the "tradition" of posting a picture of a Campbell's Tomato Soup can on his blog on those occasions when he knows or believes that he won't be able to post for a while. Well even though I haven't been posting all that often this summer I'm posting the Tomato soup can. Except that I can't post the image, and here's why.

A few days ago I got an email from my ISP, Shaw Cable telling me that because of changes they were making that would make my Internet faster, but to make this work I'd have to replace my modem which wasn't being supported by the manufacturer, which was reaching the end of its expected life span. So yesterday – Saturday – I took my old Motorola Cybersurfr modem down to the soon to be closed office in the mall and replaced it with a brand new SB5102 Surfboard Modem. I took it home and hooked it up... and I've been hating it ever since!

Downloads have been significantly, observably, slower. Images in particular have slow in downloading. Running Speedtests – including Shaw's own Speedtest – revealed download speeds hovering around 1 mbps and upload speeds of about 450 kbps. For the service that I'm paying for I am supposed to be getting download speeds as high as 7.5 mbps. Podcast downloads, which usually take about a minute now take up to ten. The breaking point came when I was trying to play poker online at Full Tilt Poker. It was a nightmare. The client kept disconnecting and at one point crashed entirely. I had to restart the program and when I did it took about five minutes for it to actually connect get me back to the tournament I was playing in. I think I can safely say that this has cost me (a small amount of) money. I've done everything that I can think of – short of calling Shaw, which is the next step after I finish writing this post – and nothing has changed. And since I don't how long this is going to take I post the Tomato Soup Can.

Ah, but of course I can't. That would mean uploading an image file and with the way things are going, who knows how long that would take. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to post the Tomato Soup Can without actually posting the Tomato Soup Can.

P.S.: It took me three tries to get this posted from Word. Wholly unacceptable.

Update: Apparently the problem has remedied itself without my having to call Shaw. Well not quite remedied itself. Turns out that for some unearthly reason best left to wizards and gurus, all it all had something to do with my power bar. I plugged the modem into the power bar as I have with just about every electronic device on my cluttered desktop. The exception is the printer because the cord won't reach. In a last desperate move I pull the printer plug from the wall socket and the modem plug from the power bar, plugged the modem into the wall socket and Hocus Kadabra, Alika Pocus (as a certain Wascally Wabbit would put it) everything is working as advertised, although I haven't tested it yet with Poker. Makes me wonder if maybe I should get a new power bar though.

New Poll - Who SHOULD Win The Outstanding Actor In A Comedy Emmy?

Here's the new poll: "Who SHOULD win the Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Emmy?" The nominees are:

Alec Baldwin - 30 Rock
Steve Carell - The Office
Jemaine Clement - The Flight of the Conchords
Jim Parsons - The Big Bang Theory
Tony Shalhoub - Monk
Charlie Sheen - Two and a Half Men

Remember, you are voting for who you think should win the Emmy, not who you think will win. This is a case where I have a personal favourite to win but I expect one of two other people to actually win the Emmy. No, I won't tell you who right now, but I also won't be voting in the poll.

Deadline for voting on this poll is noon on August 4^th. Please, please,
please feel free to comment here on the nominees and why you think the person you believe should win in this category deserves to win.

Poll Results - Who SHOULD Win The Outstanding Actress In A Comedy Emmy?

Our first Emmy Poll and I've got some interesting preliminary data. Oh not about who you think should win the Emmy; we're dealing with a small sample size here and the result was about what I was expecting. No, what I'm thinking of here is when you voted. If nothing else this should allow me to streamline next year's process assuming some degree of consistency in the data over the long term. Assuming of course that there is a "next year" (well you never know what's going to happen in 365 days – we've all lost friends suddenly).

As to the poll results, there were five votes cast. Tied for fifth place in this six horse race were Sarah Silverman and Mary Louise Parker with no votes. In a three-way tie for second place are Christina Applegate, Toni Collette, and Julia Louis-Dreyfuss with one vote each (20%). But the winner with two votes is Tina Fey with two votes (40%) Yeah, I know, hardly a ringing endorsement.

Still I think you guys got it exactly right. You know that I don't watch comedies very much, but you'd have to have your head buried pretty deep in the sand (or some other dark and even more inaccessible place not to hear the news that 2008-09 was Tina Fey's year. She was in the perfect place at the perfect time for the arrival of Sarah Palin on the scene, which is why I anticipate that she'll win the Guest Actress in a Comedy Emmy as well, but you can't ignore the fact that doing Palin on Saturday Night Live had have an impact on viewership of 30 Rock. Add to that the fact that she won last year – deservedly – and that 30 Rock has maintained its quality, and you come to the conclusion that she's heading for another date with Emmy. But hey, what do I know – I've never seen a full episode of any of these shows!

New poll up in a few minutes.

40 Years Ago

It was forty years ago today that man landed and walked on the Moon. Everybody is going to be posting about this of course, particularly we old farts, who remembers seeing it when it happened. I think we want to share our memories.

I don't know that my memories are much different from most people. Back in those days Saskatoon was a one channel town. CFQC was a CBC affiliate – as was every station in a single station market. What CBC did was to take the CBS coverage pretty much in its entirety and intercut some of their own material into the coverage. Lloyd Roberston was the CBC news anchor, but the face of it that we all remember was Walter Cronkite working along with Wally Schirra. In fact I remember very little about the CBC's own coverage beyond a very strong memory of a sort of three sided interview involving writer Isaac Asimov and (I believe) Abbie Hoffman, and the only part of that I remember was Hoffman "explaining" to Asimov that "obviously" no one with a name like Asimov would ever walk on the Moon, because a name like that didn't fit the WASP white-bread vision of America that NASA was designed to promote. Which of course has turned out to be true but certainly not for the reasons that Hoffman imagined.

I watched the Moon landing with my grandfather, and I'm pretty sure that we saw it on a black & white TV (which I still have by the way). As you'll see from the clips it didn't make too much difference. While the show was in colour, the important bits – the events from the surface of the moon – were in pretty low definition black & white. Apollo 12 was the first Moon mission with a colour TV camera; not that it did them much good after Alan Bean accidentally pointed the camera at the Sun which burned it out. The parts that were in colour were the clearly labelled animations and simulations. Thus we saw Neil Armstrong step on the Moon live, but thanks to the positioning of the camera (which dropped out on a shelf on the side of the descent stage of the Lunar Module, deployed when Armstrong pulled a lanyard on the "porch" of the module) we could barely tell what we were seeing. It got better.

My grandmother wasn't watching. She hated the idea of men walking on the moon, as if the very fact of their presence changed it somehow. In fact, at the time I remember her saying, "It's not the same Moon." In a way I guess she may have been right. A bit of the mystery had been taken away. Later flights would take away more of the mystery, but they would add more as well. As it turns out, the Moon Rocks weren't just gifts to be handed out to foreign dignitaries, they reveal a considerable amount about the formation of the Earth and the Moon and have led to at least one new theory about how the Moon was created (the Giant Impact Hypothesis which is currently the leading theory on the formation of the Moon). Still, when I was watching the Moon Landing as a 12 year-old kid I wasn't worried about the Moon being somehow changed by the event, or even about the science of the thing. I was excited by the sheer joy of the exploration in the one place where it seemed there was still the chance to explore. We knew our world (or thought we did) now there was nowhere else to go but up and out of the cradle. Little did we know how brief the time out of the cradle would be.

Regardless, here are the key events of that marvellous (in the true sense of the term – full of marvels) day forty years ago, mostly as I saw it. There are eight 10-minute parts to this playlist.

New Poll – Who SHOULD Win The Outstanding Actress In A Comedy Emmy?

I wrote this yesterday and thought I had posted it but obviously something went wrong, so here's the abbreviated version.

Vote for the Actress who you think should win the Emmy in this category. The nominees are:

Christina Applegate - Samantha Who?
Toni Collette - The United States of Tara
Julia Louis-Dreyfus - The New Adventures of Old Christine
Tina Fey - 30 Rock
Mary-Louis Parker - Weeds
Sarah Silverman - The Sarah Silverman Program

The polling period will last nine days. This year for the first time I will be tracking the number of votes cast by day and for whom they are cast (just to satisfy my own curiosity).

Please feel free to comment on the reasons why you voted the way that you did. I'll include the comments in the post listing the results and offer my own opinions. Actually my knowledge of the shows in this category is so limited that having someone else available to offer opinions would be most welcome.

Remeber, the deadline for this poll is noon on July 26^th.

Ah For Those Simpler Times!

And of course before Ted's time there was a period when shows went off for the summer and the networks made new shows that were, shockingly, actually reasonably good, and didn't involve people calling each other "bleeps" and "blaps" and words that aren't obscenities but that the networks don't think we should be allowed to hear. Or calling the wife of the network president a whore. (Sorry; I watched a clip of the live feeds of Big Brother yesterday and it's still seared into my brain.)

Emmy Nominations 2009

The Emmy nominations are out and I'm suddenly left to wonder where the summer has gone. Oh sure, we've still got half of July and all of August and the first couple of weeks in September before the new TV season starts but all the things I wanted to do that haven't been done. I was (and still may) recap the one and only season of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, a show I still feel was unfairly abused by the critics, mishandled by the network, and sadly ignored by the mass of the public, in the latter case for apparently treating the audience as if it was smarter – and less sheep-like – than it apparently was. But no, the Emmy nominations are out and that means the Emmy polls and the analysis of the categories and the comments that go with it and even now it is putting me to sleep just thinking of it. Or maybe that's the allergy tablet I took a couple of hours ago. And yes, for anyone who thinks that this stuff is unimportant, I do realise that in the context of worldwide recession, international crises and yet another Canadian soldier dying in Afghanistan this morning writing about the Emmy Awards is a frivolous use of time, but writing about TV is what I like to do.

Before I get on to a quick glance at the "major categories" in this year's Emmy Awards, I would like to show you part of what is wrong with the Emmy Awards by showing you the nominees in the two writing categories:

Outstanding Writing For A Comedy
Flight Of The Conchords – "Prime Minister" (HBO) - James Bobin, Jemaine Clement, Bret McKenzie,
30 Rock – "Reunion" (NBC) - Matt Hubbard
30 Rock – "Apollo, Apollo" (NBC) - Robert Carlock
30 Rock – "Mamma Mia" (NBC) - Ron Weiner
30 Rock – "Kidney Now!" (NBC) - Jack Burditt, Robert Carlock

Outstanding Writing For A Drama
Lost – "The Incident" - (ABC) - Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof
Mad Men – "A Night To Remember" - (AMC) - Robin Veith, Matthew Weiner
Mad Men – "Six Month Leave" - (AMC) - Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton, Matthew Weiner
Mad Men – "The Jet Set" - (AMC) - Matthew Weiner
Mad Men – "Meditations In An Emergency" - (AMC) - Kater Gordon, Matthew Weiner

And there you have part of the problem with the Emmys summed up in a proverbial nutshell. Apparently only two comedies and two dramas were considered "worthy" of a nomination in their respective categories. And presumably if Mad Men and 30 Rock could have come up with a fifth writing team they could have gone without competition from any other show. This business of multiple nominations for a given show – even if the categories are for writing teams rather than shows – indicates a certain clsed mindedness amongst the academy. I'm certainly not convinced that there wasn't at least one episode of Battlestar Galactica that was better than the worst of the for four episodes of Mad Men that were nominated, and the same goes for the comedy category – surely there was an episode of The Office that could or should – have been nominated instead.

Several of the major categories have more than five nominees. This apparently is a result of a quirk in the Emmy rules which allows shows to be nominated if the number of votes they receive in the nomination process falls within a certain percentage of the nominee with the fifth highest total. Even so, as always there were a lot of snubs and a lot of "questionable" inclusions. Is Tony Shaloub really worthy of yet another Actor in a Comedy nomination for the tired and soon to be departing Monk? Anyway here are the major categories and a few more which caught my attention.

Outstanding Comedy Series
Entourage - (HBO)
Family Guy - (Fox)
Flight of the Conchords - (HBO)
How I Met Your Mother - (CBS)
The Office - (NBC)
30 Rock - (NBC)
Weeds - (Showtime)

Entourage is nominated yet again even though a lot of critics that I respect feel that the latest season of the show has been the worst yet. One interesting entries in this seven-way race is Family Guy. Family Guy is the first animated show to be nominated for Outstanding Comedy since 1960 and The Flintstones. Of course back then the category was called "Outstanding Program Achievement in the Field of Humor," but it was up against The Jack Benny Program (which won), Candid Camera and The Andy Griffith Show so that counts.

Outstanding Drama Series
Big Love - (HBO)
Breaking Bad - (AMC)
Damages - (FX)
Dexter - (Showtime)
House - (Fox)
Lost - (ABC)
Mad Men - (AMC)

More proof – if any is needed – of the depths that network drama has fallen. Of seven shows nominated, only two – House and Lost – are from a broadcast network. Beyond that there are no shows from the most watched network CBS. Of course there are no shows nominated from NBC or The CW but really, have either of them produced any show that is worthy of a nomination? A bigger travesty is that two departing shows Battlestar Galactica and The Shield weren't nominated (something that we shall see carried on through most of the categories. The snub for Battlestar Galactica can probably be explained by the collective prejudice that the Emmys have against science fiction and fantasy, regardless of how good those shows are, but what explains the refusal to honour The Shield? And what explains Friday Night Lights?

Outstanding Reality-Competition Program
The Amazing Race - (CBS)
American Idol - (Fox)
Dancing with the Stars - (ABC)
Project Runway - (Bravo)
Top Chef - (Bravo)

I confess that this is one of my favourite categories because it includes my favourite show. Of course it has edged towards a "usual suspects" line-up of nominees. In fact this is the exact same list of shows that were nominated in 2008... and 2007. Obviously the Emmys decided not to reward the "sturm und drang" that was on display in this year's edition of Celebrity Apprentice. I have no expectation (or wish) that the winner will be different this year than it was last... or the year before... or the year before that.

Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy Series
Alec Baldwin - 30 Rock (NBC)
Steve Carell - The Office (NBC)
Jemaine Clement - The Flight of the Conchords (HBO)
Jim Parsons - The Big Bang Theory (CBS)
Tony Shalhoub - Monk (HBO)
Charlie Sheen - Two and a Half Men (CBS)

It must be very frustrating to be Charlie Sheen, to star on the top rated situation comedy on network TV, and to be nominated repeatedly for an Emmy and not only never win but have people complain about you being nominated more than they complain about Tony Shaloub being nominated for the increasingly unfunny Monk. Charlie will never be the hip new thing. That role is filled this year by Jermaine Clement from The Flight of the Conchords and even more by Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory. Nor will he ever have the critical acclaim that Alec Baldwin and Steve Carell receive for their shows (and how awesome would it be to have Baldwin and Carell present an award and actually hav time to work off of each other – make it happen please). Yeah, I'm sure that Charlie Sheen is crying about this... all the way to the bank.

Outstanding Lead Actress In A Comedy Series
Christina Applegate - Samantha Who? (ABC)
Toni Collette - The United States of Tara (Showtime)
Julia Louis-Dreyfus - The New Adventures of Old Christine (CBS)
Tina Fey - 30 Rock (NBC)
Mary-Louis Parker - Weeds (Showtime)
Sarah Silverman - The Sarah Silverman Program (Comedy Central)

What I know about this category is this: Tina Fey - very funny; Christina Applegate - cancelled (and had a mastectomy); Mary Louise Parker - nude scene in the bath. In other words I know nothing about the performances nominated in this category.

Outstanding Lead Actor In A Drama Series
Simon Baker - The Mentalist (CBS)
Gabriel Byrne - In Treatment (HBO)
Bryan Cranston - Breaking Bad (AMC)
Michael C. Hall - Dexter (Showtime)
Jon Hamm - Mad Men (AMC)
Hugh Laurie - House (Fox)

The only change in the list of nominees this year from last year – which also had six nominations – to this year is that they've quite rightly dumped James Spader and in his place inserted Simon Baker from The Mentalist. Now don't get me wrong, I like Simon Baker. He mixes an impish charm and inquisitiveness with a sense of tragedy and sadness that totally makes his character. He's just not going to win. Edward James Olmos or maybe Michael Chiklis would be contenders in this category if it weren't for that whole not being nominated thing. Kyle Chandler should have been nominated too for Friday Night Lights. Bryan Cranston pulled out a surprise win last year, and I think it's between him and John Hamm again this time around.

Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama Series
Glenn Close - Damages (FX)
Sally Field - Brothers & Sisters (ABC)
Mariska Hargitay - Law & Order: SVU (NBC)
Holly Hunter - Saving Grace (TNT)
Elisabeth Moss - Mad Men (AMC)
Kyra Sedgwick - The Closer (TNT)

Just about everything I said about the Lead Actor Drama category can be said about this one. Okay, so there were only five nominees in the category last year, but all five are nominated again. This time they're joined by Elizabeth Moss for her work as the ambitious Peggy Olson in Mad Men but good as she was she probably won't win the Emmy. In terms of snubs in ths category, I'm not familiar enough with The Shield to know if there was a strong enough female role to to qualify for lead actress (maybe CCH Pounder?), but I do think it was incredible that Mary McDonnell as President Laura Roslin deserves not only to be nominated but also to win. No mention of Friday Night Lights star Connie Britton either. And I don't even want to start on the Katherine Heigl thing except to say that she was right to take herself out of contention in 2008 – given the Emmy's obvious propensity to repeat nominations as if by rote as seen in these two categories – because her part wasn't nomination worthy last season.

Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Comedy Series
Jon Cryer - Two and a Half Men (CBS)
Kevin Dillon - Entourage (HBO)
Jack McBrayer - 30 Rock (HBO)
Tracy Morgan - 30 Rock (HBO)
Neil Patrick Harris - How I Met Your Mother (CBS)
Jeremy Piven - Entourage (HBO)
Rainn Wilson - The Office (HBO)

Why does Jon Cryer always get sent to the Supporting Actor category from Two and a Half Men? It strikes me that he carries at least as much of the acting load as Charlie Sheen does and does so with far less credit. Not that he's going to win in either category of course. Jeremy Piven has totally owned this category for the past three years, and even though the show has increasingly gone down hill he can't be counted out. There's a lot of talent in this category, and a lot of great characters as well. The hope is that Neil Patrick Harris will finally win some recognition for playing the legen – wait for it – dary Barney Stinson, but I can't help but worry that he'll lose to the showier roles played by Tracy Morgan, Jack McBrayer and Rainn Wilson. As long as he doesn't lose to Jermey Piven, I'll be happy.

Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Comedy Series
Kristin Chenoweth - Pushing Daisies (ABC)
Jane Krakowski - 30 Rock (NBC)
Elizabeth Perkins - Weeds (HBO)
Amy Poehler - Saturday Night Live (NBC)
Kristin Wiig - Saturday Night Live (NBC)
Vanessa Williams - Ugly Betty (ABC)

The nominees are all worthy – which is to say that none came from According To Jim, Kath & Kim or Do Not Disturb, but I would love to see Kristin Chenoweth win just because. I don't expect her to, but I love for her to.

Outstanding Supporting Actor In A Drama Series
Christian Clemenson - Boston Legal (ABC)
Michael Emerson - Lost (ABC)
William Hurt - Damages (FX)
Aaron Paul - Breaking Bad (AMC)
William Shatner - Boston Legal (ABC)
John Slattery - Mad Men (AMC)

Shatner? Shatner?! Hasn't he been nominated enough for this award? Otherwise this is a category stocked with strong actors and and amazing performances. But again, four out of the six actors in this categories were nominated last year and there are only one new shows represented on this list at all, the nomination for Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad.

Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Drama Series
Rose Byrne - Damages (FX)
Hope Davis - In Treatment (HBO)
Rachel Griffiths - Brothers & Sisters (HBO)
Cherry Jones - 24 (Fox)
Sandra Oh - Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
Dianne Wiest - In Treatment (HBO)

The Supporting Actress in a Drama category is another one with strong performances. Only three of the nominees form last year are back – Rachel Griffiths, Sandra Oh and last year's winner Dianne Wiest – which is a pleasant change from the other acting categories. I've seen Cherry Jones's performance as the tough but loving (at times to the point where her love for someone overrides her good judgement) President of the United States in 24 and Sandra Oh's work in Grey's Anatomy which first rate. Naturally I don't expect either of them to win.

Outstanding Guest Actor In A Comedy Series

Alan Alda - 30 Rock (NBC)
Beau Bridges - Desperate Housewives (ABC)
Jon Hamm - 30 Rock (NBC)
Steve Martin - 30 Rock (NBC)
Justin Timberlake - Saturday Night Live (NBC)

I'll be honest with you; of the nominees I only saw Beau Bridge's performance on Desperate Housewives and while I liked the character and his story, quite frankly it totally failed to blow me away. One of the others has to be better, right?

Outstanding Guest Actor In A Drama Series
Edward Asner - CSI: NY (CBS)
Ernest Borgnine - ER (NBC)
Ted Danson - Damages (FX)
Michael J. Fox - Rescue Me (FX)
Jimmy Smits - Dexter (Showtime)

I wanted to comment on this category to to mention how blown away I was by Ed Asner's work in this particular episode of CSI: New York. The show doesn't get that much attention but his performance as an elderly man whose whole life since World War II has been an elaborate lie absolutely blew me away. He won't win – it will probably go to Michael J. Fox for playing against type in Rescue Me because the Emmy voters love him and his fight against Parkinsons Diseas – but I thought it was a great performance.

Outstanding Guest Actress In A Comedy Series
Jennifer Aniston - 30 Rock (NBC)
Christine Baranski - The Big Bang Theory (CBS)
Tina Fey - Saturday Night Live (NBC)
Gena Rowlands - Monk (USA)
Elaine Stritch - 30 Rock (NBC)
Betty White - My Name is Earl (NBC)

Tell me that we don't know that Tina Fey is going to win this one. She had the perfect character served up to her on a silver platter and she knocked it right out of the ballpark, sometimes just by using Sarah Palin's own words.. Which in a way is a shame, if only because it cuts out Christine Baranski's inspired performance as Sheldon's mother.

Outstanding Guest Actress In A Drama Series
Brenda Blethyn - Law & Order; SVU (NBC)
Carol Burnett - Law & Order: SVU (NBC)
Ellen Burstyn - Law & Order: SVU (NBC)
Sharon Lawrence - Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
CCH Pounder - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (HBO)

I've only seen all of Sharon Lawrence's performance in this category and just the tail end of Carol Burnett's part so it's not fair of me to comment. Still, the little bit I saw of Carol's role in this episode absolutely blew me away and reminded me once again of just how much range this lady has.

Outstanding Host For A Reality Or Reality-Competition Program
Tom Bergeron - Dancing With the Stars (ABC)
Phil Keoghan - The Amazing Race (CBS)
Heidi Klum - Project Runway (Bravo)
Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio - Top Chef (Bravo)
Jeff Probst - Survivor (CBS)
Ryan Seacrest - American Idol (Fox)

How do you get seven nominees in six nominations? Are Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio somehow joined bodily to each other? (I mean I'd like to be joined bodily with but that has nothing to do with hosting unless it was on Cinemax.) The only notable thing in this category this year is that the Emmys corrected last year's snub and nominated Phil Keoghan for his work on The Amazing Race. I for one am glad that he wasn't nominated last year so that he didn't have to participate in that hosting travesty last year.

The Primetime Emmy Awards will be held on September 20^th – I think, since they were moved at least once due to conflicts with something else on TV. Sadly this, together with the absolute determination to end the show on time at the expense of prepared material and even acceptance speeches in major categories, shows the regard with which the awards are held in the very medium they honour. At least this year they have one host, and an awesome one at that: Neil Patrick Harris who did such a spectacular job at the Tony Awards that people were actually talking about the Tony Awards after they ended.

Are We There Yet?

Anyone who is anything more than an occasional view of The Amazing Race will tell you that the Family Edition of that show was undoubtedly on of the worst viewing experiences ever. Coming off of what might have been one of the show's best seasons, which featured the Machiavellian efforts of Rob Mariano and his then fiancée (now wife) Amber Brkich and the eventual triumph of "good" (in the form of Uchenna & Joyce) over "evil" (Rob & Amber), just about anything would have been a let-down, but the show's Family Edition was a let-down of the "watch that first step, it's a lulu" variety. Foreign travel was limited to an excursion to Central America – Panama and Costa Rica, with a trip to Belize being cancelled due to the threat of a hurricane – and a trip to Canada. Most of the travel was done by car or by RV, and the challenges were by in large pedestrian; things like climbing a ladder to the top of the biggest office chair in the world, or searching the holes of a golf course to find balls coloured to match your motorized golf cart. And the "villains" of the piece weren't villainous because they were sneaky and conniving because this family acted superior to others (because they were "Christians" though you'd be hard pressed to prove it by their actions in the race) and frequently insulted other players (at one point they laughed at one opponent because he drove a garbage truck and in another they threw an apple core at the vehicle of another team). And although "right" triumphed it was less that a team that deserved to win was victorious than that the team that annoyed the life out of competitors and viewers alike were beaten down. Had the producers not been wise enough to realise that this season was a dog, the Family Edition might have been enough to kill The Amazing Race. At the time that the Family Edition of The Amazing Race aired, it was suggested by some people that perhaps the problem wasn't entirely the format but the timing. Maybe, they said, if something like the Amazing Race Family Edition was run during the summer, outside the ordinary rotation of the show, it would work better. Amazing Race producers Bertram van Munster and Elise Doganieri wisely decided not to try but slightly less than four years after the CBS show ran NBC has brought its own version of the show to the air. Based on the first episode the NBC show, called The Great American Road Trip, won't be any more successful than what preceded it.

Hosted by comedian Reno Collier, who apparently is well known on Comedy Central (I confess I've never heard of him; he bears a vague resemblance to Andy Richter) the show sends seven families on a road trip down Historic Route 66, the so-called Mother Road of America. Although the road has been officially decommissioned following the completion of the interstate system the road has been maintained in many states in various forms, and still holds a place in popular culture thanks to the old TV series and the Bobby Troup song. The seven teams consist of a mother and father and two teenage (or younger) children from diverse backgrounds. Starting from Wrigley Field in Chicago the teams are each ushered to a motor home. Each of the motor homes has the name and pictures of the family that occupy them and decorated in a manner deemed "appropriate" for the family. For example the Pollard Family (from Alabama) has a motor home decorated with empty shotgun shells. The seven teams are:

• The Coote Family from Lockport Illinois: Keith, Jennifer, Cassidy (12) and Jake (9). Keith is a former marine who is now a carpenter, Jennifer works during the day and goes to school at night. Cassidy is described as "an academic princess" while Jake is called "high energy" (I have other words for him, none particularly flattering).
  
• The DiSalvatore Family from Yonkers New York: Silvio, Amy, Mason (16) and Blake (13). Amy is a medical insurance administrator, while Silvio is a stay at home dad. He frequently seems overly concerned with his hair. Blake is the one who tries to settle family disputes, while Blake has never been separated from his video games for more than three days.
  
• The Favery Family from Long Island New York: Lenny, Dee, Dylan (15) and Ashley (10). Lenny is a Manhattan doorman who's a stickler for routine, while Dee is a special education teacher's aide. Ashley is a committed student with a taste for the better things in life, which the family can't afford particularly in these economic times. Dylan is a musician who breaks the tension with humour.
  
• The Katzenberg Family from Westport Connecticut: Marc, Hyleri, Sami (15) and Andrew (14): Marc and Hyleri aren't married yet but they already have blended their family. Described as "active philanthropists." The kids are Marc's son and Hyleri's daughter who bonded over accusing each other of being high maintenance.
  
• The Montgomery Family from Montclair California: Darius, Alecia, Darius Jr. (15) and Tyiler (11). Darius is a former Marine who served in Iraq while his wife Alecia is a pre-school teacher. Their kids are both strong students and Darius Jr. also excels athletically, while Tyiler shows signs of following in his footsteps.
  
• The Pollard Family from Newton Alabama: Ron, Amie, Aaron (17) and Anslie (12). A typical close-knit southern family. Ron is a homebuilder who loves hunting and fishing, while Amie is a radio host, who describes herself as wearing the pants in the family. Aaron is an athlete who plays varsity football and baseball and joined the gymnastics team to meet girls. Anslie is the "apple of his mother's eye" who has won several beauty pageants.
  
• The Rico Family from Katy Texas: Ricardo, Erica, Danielle (13) and Ricky (8). Ricardo and Erica are both in the advertising business but Erica is the more forceful of the two. She owns her own business and is the "dictator" of the family, while Ricardo describes himself as the spiritual sort who is the family peacekeeper. The kids are both involved in sports.
  

Reno makes it perfectly clear that this is not a race, and emphasising the fact is the police escort that the teams get from the Chicago police from Wrigley Field. That is the escort they get when they're able to get started. Silvio it seems wants to drive the motor home but is unable to get the thing started, which holds up the four teams parked behind them. It's only when Amy takes the wheel – and refuses to give it back to Silvio no matter what he wants – that they get on the road. Their first objective is the Illinois state capital of Springfield. Because this is not a race, the fact that vehicles pass each other is of little or no import, and the only real action is kids and parents being impatient with the trip. I'm not sure which is worse, the various kids asking "are we there yet?" or Silvio being impatient with Amy driving and the flat countryside that they're passing through.

The teams spend the night at the Illinois State Fair Grounds getting to know each other (and learning how to empty the sewage tanks in the RV – something that Silvio doesn't want to be anywhere near, apparently out of fear of what it might do to his hair, and no I'm not kidding. before their first challenge at Abraham Lincoln's home in Springfield. The first challenge is cheesier than anything in the Family Edition season of The Amazing Race. The Presidential Race. One of the adults from each team has to carry as many "ballots" from the starting point to their Ballot Box. They can't stuff the "ballots" into their clothing. Getting to the Ballot Box means travelling through one of the most pathetic obstacle courses you're ever likely to see on TV, escorted by the kids as "Secret Service Agents." First they have to walk through their "Reflecting Pools" – really kid's wading pools. Next they have to pass through the "Rose Garden" – a zigzag passage for each team, decorated with artificial roses. Then they have to get past "The Cabinet" – a barricade of desks that they have to climb over. Finally there's the "Red Tape" which was one of those obstacles where you have to step over ropes – or red tapes – without tripping. There's one more thing; the person carrying the ballots has to wear a giant presidential caricature head, including Washington, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush (the Younger), and Obama, which restrict their vision. The Pollards are positively ecstatic that they got the Bush. The objective of the thing isn't to get to the Ballot Box first, but to get to the Ballot Box with the most ballots before the three minute time period for the event is completed. The Katzenbergs (dad is wearing the Obama head) complete the course first, but it was the Coote Family who carried the most ballots. Their father was smart enough to use his team jersey to carry the ballots. Amy DiSalvatore complained but it didn't count as stuffing the ballots into their clothes. Still it bred a bit of conflict between the two teams. The Coote family earned a special reward, while the three teams with the slowest times had to participate in an elimination challenge.

The Cootes get their reward at the next camp site in Madison, Illinois; a ride in a fire truck to the middle of the Chain Of Rocks Bridge over the Mississippi River, right on the border of Illinois and Missouri where they'd have supper with the Mayor of Madison. The next day the teams pull into St. Louis and on the grounds of the Gateway Arch the elimination challenge is staged. One member of each team is strapped into the center of a giant inflatable ball. The team then had to manoeuvre the ball through five replicas of the arch, not unlike croquet hoops. To complete the course the ball has to travel completely through the final arch. The problem is that the ball is attached to the starting point with a rope, and if the team ran out of rope before they got the ball completely through they'd have to try a different route. Naturally there was only one route that left them with enough rope. Teams couldn't watch as the teams before them went through the course The Favery Family went first and had some troubles with it, but it was the Katzenbergs who had the most difficulty. It took them over forty minutes to do a course that the Faverys did in just over fifteen minutes and the Montgomerys flew through in under three. This meant that the Katzenbergs were the first team to go home.

The Great American Road Trip may not be the worst reality TV show ever. Some of the attempts to clone The Apprentice probably deserve that title, as does an early NBC attempt at the reality competition form called Lost. It is certainly the worst Amazing Race imitator – but then that's a pretty small group. The only other Amazing Race like show that I can think of was Treasure Hunters, a show that was vastly superior to this mess, even when it seemed like an extended product placement for Motorola Phones, Orbitz, Ask.com and Genworth Financial Services. The fact that this is not a race renders all of the travel segments essentially meaningless. They could just as easily be transported from point to point in limousines – which would probably be sounder for the environment than the motor homes. The only thing that having these people go from point to point in motor homes provides the viewer with is a chance to see the kids, and some of the adults, being annoying. If the first episode challenges are typical then the competition aspect is reduced to the pathetic. And remember the competitions are the deciding aspect of this show. It doesn't matter how well they navigate, if for no other reason than the fact that most of their route is preordained – Route 66. So it is left for the competitions to be involving and they aren't. This show would have been so much better if they had found a competition designer who was able and willing to both make the challenges fit the location and to make them – well challenging. Tasks like the "Presidential Race" are downright infantile. Like the challenges, this show could have been so much better than it is. Compared to this the Family Edition of The Amazing Race is absolute poetry. Don't watch it.

Blogger’s Block – Summer 2009 Edition

Okay, this is downright embarrassing; I'm having so much trouble motivating myself to write that I'm having trouble writing about having writer's block. I'd rather be playing poker online – or just about anything else – than writing about TV right now. Right now I just don't have the fire or the desire to write. I can get stuff started but just don't seem to be able to finish it off. Nothing seems to be igniting the fire and desire. This will pass (hopefully) but right now the get up and go has got up and gone. So there'll only be sporadic posting for the present while I try to figure out how to get out of this funk.

(A Belated) Fathers Day 2009 – Bring Your Kid To Work Edition

I got caught up in some other stuff yesterday (that seems to be happening a lot – blame it on the summer I suppose, not to mentin that getting these pictures together ain't easy) so this is a belated Father's Day tribute. Then again, aren't most tributes to fathers a little late and a little less interesting than tributes to mothers?

As you may have noticed, men are not women. In most cases this doesn't matter for acting – you know, besides the peeing sitting down bit, and the nudity thing – but one of those is the fact that when a man is in the process of becoming a father there are no obvious signs. A man can go through an entire pregnancy without anyone noticing. Unlike a woman of course, which after all was the subject of my Mother's Day post this year. But what about after the baby comes and becomes a full-fledged human being. Even then we really don't have to know anything. Nothing is obvious after all. No one has to know that dear old dad is a dear old dad in real life (or for that matter on a drama – since most are set in a workplace you don't need to know much about their personal lives while for women it's often a major plot point; but that's a subject for next year's Father's Day post). But what fathers can do is appear in a show with their off-spring. And some of those children grow up to be actors in their own right.

Desi Arnaz – Desi Arnaz Jr. and Lucie Arnaz(?): This is a bit of a stretch but inevitably I go back to I Love Lucy for a first. In the last episode of the half-hour I Love Lucy (the show went to an hour length as the The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour for the last two seasons of its existence) there were two small children at the dedication of a statue in Westport Connecticut – a statue which Lucy has accidentally destroyed of course. At the statue dedication there are a couple of kids, a little boy and a little girl. Vivian Vance, as Ethel Mertz asks the little boy if he can see. The little boy is none other than Desi Arnaz Jr. while the little girl has long been thought to be his sister Lucie. However in its notes on the episode TV.com claims that "It has been said that the Arnazes' daughter Lucie appears in the episode. She doesn't show up in the episode, although Desi Arnaz, Jr. and Lucie's childhood playmate do." Lucie and Desi would later co-star on their mother's third series Here's Lucy. Subsequently both children went off to their own careers. Lucie had some success in film, TV and Broadway, notably in the 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer opposite Neil Diamond, and the Broadway musical They're Playing Our Song. She even had her own series - The Lucie Arnaz Show – which ran for six episodes. Desi Arnaz Jr. has a much more extensive IMDB resume with a lot of guest starring work in the 1970s. Improbably he appeared in his own series, Automan. Even more improbably it lasted thirteen episodes – seven more than his sister's show (which in my not so humble opinion was infinitely superior). Perhaps his most interesting movie role was his small part in the movie The Mambo Kings: he played Desi Arnaz Sr. – his father.

Lloyd Bridges – Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges: Lloyd Bridges's first entry into Television was probably one of the iconic syndicated series of the late 1950s, Seahunt. On the show Bridges played former Navy frogman turned freelance diver Mike Nelson. Nelson – so far as we could tell at least – was a single man without children. In real life Lloyd Bridges was married with four kids. The two oldest children Beau and Jeff both made appearances on Seahunt on several occasions – twice each for Beau and Jeff Bridges. Subsequently Lloyd Bridges starred in the Aaron Spelling produced anthology series The Lloyd Bridges Show which ran from 1962-63. Not only did Jeff and Beau Bridges appear in episodes of the series, but so did Lloyd's daughter Cindy Bridges. Years later, in the 1993 series Harts Of The West starred Beau Bridges in the lead role and his father Lloyd Bridges in a supporting role.

James Daly – Tyne Daly and Tim Daly: James Daly did a number of TV shows over the course of his career, including the Star Trek episode Requiem for Methuselah, but he is probably best known for playing Dr. Paul Lochner in the 1969 series Medical Center. Actually these days he's probably best known as the father of actress Tyne Daly and her brother Tim Daly. Tyne Daly appeared four times on Medical Center with her father, playing different roles in each episode. This must have been confusing for Dr. Lochner because one of the roles that she played (in the episode "Moment of Decision") was Jennifer Lochner, Dr. Lochner's daughter. But Medical Center wasn't the first time that father and daughter had worked together; they did an episode of Ironside called "The People Against Judge McIntyre" together in 1970. And Tyne wasn't the first of his children that James Daly worked with. In 1966 he did an adaptation of Ibsen's An Enemy Of The People for National Educational Television (NET) with his then 10 year-old son Tim. It was the only time they ever worked together.

Martin Sheen – Renee Estevez and Emilio Estevez: Everyone knows that Renee Estevez appeared on The West Wing, appearing as Nancy, one of President Bartlett's numerous secretaries. Her role on the show was never a big one; a few words here, a "Mr. President" there. It wasn't a big part but she was a member of the regular cast. Emilio Estevez also made an appearance on The West Wing, although he didn't appear with his father. In the episode "25" there are some home movies of a young Jed Bartlett with his youngest daughter as a small child. The younger version of Bartlett was played by Emilio Estevez. Martin Sheen also appeared with his son Charlie Sheen in Charlie's series Two And A Half Men playing the father of Rose, Charlie's neighbour/stalker.

Ozzie Nelson – David Nelson and Rickie Nelson: If ever there was a case of taking your kids to work it was Ozzie Nelson. When The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet made the transition from radio to TV in 1952 he decided that the ideal actors to play his two sons David and Ricky were... his two sons David and Ricky! It's not really surprising – they'd been playing themselves on radio since 1949 but sometimes radio actors didn't make the transition very well. Later when his sons married Ozzie brought their wives June Blair and Kristin Harmon on as their wives. Ricky of course went on to be the big star of the family. Between 1957 and 1962 he had 30 Top Forty hits and appeared in several movies. As for David, he never became a huge star but did do some acting and a certain amount of work as a producer and director. In fact he even directed episodes of The Adventures Of Ozzie And Harriet.

Get Those Celebrities Off My TV

I have something better than a review of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here – pelicans.

I shot this photo at the weir in Saskatoon. And let's face it Pelicans have made a greater contribution to art than the producers of this show have simply by being the inspiration for Dixon Lanire Merrith's poem (misattributed to Ogden Nash):

A wonderful bird is a pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week;
But I'm damned if I see how the helican.

What have the producers of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here given us? A location, described by one of the participants on the show as "absolute torture," that any cub scout let alone anyone who ever appeared on Survivor – including Elizabeth Hasselebeck – would call the lap of luxury by comparison to what they had to deal with. A bunch of challenges that substitute the gross-out factor for any need for actual physical ability. A group of people, most of whom most viewers have never heard of, who have so little to do in the day that the only thing they are left with is annoying the crap out of each other. And us. These people, who are living proof of the saying that "hell is other people," are frequently self-centred, self-important and suffering from overinflated egos, who take offence at the least little thing. I'm not even going to mention Heidi and Spencer from The Hills except to say this – watching them on the first episode of this show not only gave me a headache but I'm pretty sure contributed to the nauseous feeling that came over me after the show.

The simple fact is that there have been reality shows that not only weren't renewed (like Treasure Hunt) but were pulled off the air before they completed their run (Pirate Master) that were better than this steaming pile of crap. I was struggling with what to write about this show all week before I finally came up with this, and I'm more than slightly concerned that I've wasted more electrons with this than the show deserves.

But at least it gave me a chance to post a picture of pelicans.

Upfronts 2009 – Video Previews

Still busy trying to chase that dream I mentioned in my last post, with limited success – finished third the other day in the first round tournament but needed to finish second to do anything. Oh well. Between that, an assortment of real world chores, that brand new time waster Twitter (I'm BrentMcKee there and of course can always use followers), and of course the general summer ennui, I haven't been writing much, and haven't really found the urgency to get this posted. Still I have wanted to get the clips for the season's new show posted on the blog.

The US networks haven't made it easy for the Blogger who just wants to publicize their shows. CBS, FOX and The CW all have YouTube sites but in the case of CBS, the clips aren't accessible to Canadians. NBC abandoned YouTube several years ago, and ABC has followed suit over the past year. Still there are sources available if you're willing to look for them. In fact some of these sources (notably the German Serien Network) provide clips that are longer than what the networks themselves posted. Naturally enough these clips are presented for promotional purposes only, and are the property of the networks and the production companies that made them.

First up we have ABC. I have structured the clips on this playlist (and all of the others) with the shows debuting in the Fall first and in some reasonable approximation of the order in which they'll air. These are then followed by the midseason replacement shows. For ABC the order is The Forgotten, Hank, The Middle, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Eastwick, Flash Forward, Happy Town, and finally The Deep End. Complete running time for this group of clips is about a half hour.

Next we have the CBS shows: Three Rivers, NCIS: Los Angeles, The Good Wife, The Bridge, and Miami Trauma. I was unable to find a clip for the Monday comedy Accidentally On Purpose that I was able to view. Running time is just under 15 minutes.

The FOX playlist includes The Cleveland Show, Brothers, Sons of Tuscon, Past Life and The Human Target. Running time is about 16 minutes.

The NBC clips run at a little over 20 minutes. They are Trauma, Parenthood, Community, 100 Questions, and Mercy.

Finally The CW has two clips from Melrose Place, a clip from The Beautiful Life, three clips from The Vampire Diaries and an extended clip from Parental Discretion Advised. Running time is about 15 minutes.

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While it is impossible to determine the quality of a new series from this sort of brief clip – particularly when some of the roles have been recast (Julia Ormand is out at Three Rivers and Louise Lombard is gone from NCIS: Los Angeles), I would really like to comments in the realm of first impressions about the new shows. Do they look better than the shows that were dropped to make way for them? Worse? Which ones do you think you'd watch and which ones do you intend to tell your friends neighbours and perfect stranger to avoid like the plague? Where do you think there's potential and where do think that a show represents the total collapse of western civilization. Just remember, I don't control what networks do and don't put on the air. I wish I did – just like everyone who has ever written a review of a show either for a newspaper or a blog, and maybe things will be different come th eerevolution – but as it stands people who write in the comments section "...you are really considering dropping Without a Trace???" will get no satisfaction from me because I don't have the power to bring Without a Trace back.