The Poker Conundrum

So the other night I fired up the DVR to watch something other than the Olympics. Yes it's true. Olympics junkie though I may be, there are times when I just have to watch something other than the Olympics. It usually happens when the "Olympics Broadcasting Consortium" (meaning CTV and its cable networks TSN and TSN2 aswell as Rogers Sportsnet) are showing tape of events I've already seen – or some figure skating – but that's beside the point. On this particular night I decided to catch up on an episode of The Big Bang Theory whichis one of the few sitcoms that I can not only sit through but actually enjoy. I was rewarded with the episode in which Sheldon – the character who elevates the show to another level – encounters his mortal enemy Wil Wheaton.

The reason why Wil Wheaton is Sheldon's mortal enemy is complicated but when is anything with Sheldon not complicated. Essentially Sheldon's favourite character on Star Trek: The Next Generation was Wesley Crusher – well you knew there had to be one – and when the opportunity to see Wil Wheaton at a Star Trek convention and to have him autograph a collectible action figure came up, Sheldon travelled nine hours by bus (twice violating his personal rule going to the bathroom on a moving vehicle – I have the same rule for busses and so do most people who have travelled by bus; gross!) to attend a Star Trek Con in Jackson Mississippi only to discover that Wil Wheaton wasn't going to be there. Finally Sheldon's chance for vengeance comes when he discovers that Wil Wheaton will be competing in a collectible card game that sounds like Magic: the Gathering...but isn't for copyright reasons. It is also a tournament that Raj has been begging Sheldon to enter – Raj wants the money – but that Sheldon has been dismissive of...until he learns that Wil Wheaton is playing in it. Inevitably Sheldon and Raj triumph over all opponents on the back of Sheldon's eidetic memory which allows not only to remember what cards have already been played but to deduce with incredible clarity what cards each of his opponents has. It's something that, in his smugly arrogant manner, he delights in telling them. Eventually he comes face to face with Wil Wheaton. And it is Sheldon's delight in explaining things to his opponents that proves to be his eventual downfall. He explains to Wil Wheaton why he is so hostile, and Wheaton explains that he missed the con because his grandmother died. Suddenly Sheldon, who is devoted to his Meemaw, melts and much to Raj's consternation throws the match to Wil Wheaton, who after winning informs Sheldon that his Grandmother will probably be very pleased that he won the money in the tournament – she's still alive.

The episode contains some elements of truth. Wil Wheaton is well known as a gamer, particularly a Dungeons & Dragons player. What's also fairly well known is that Wheaton is a competitive Poker player. How good is he? Well I've outlasted him in a couple of tournaments but that occurred in large part because I never played a hand against him. He's a solid recreational player who would have cleaned out the game on the USS Enterprise (those of you who remember Star Trek: The Next Generation will recall that a number of episodes centered around a Poker game featuring Riker, Worf, Data, Geordi, Dr. Crusher, and Counsellor Troi; like all TV poker players they played Draw Poker, a version of the game that is largely extinct in the casinos). This connection got me to thinking about how Sheldon would do as a Poker player. It's not really idle speculation on my part, rather it stems from a couple of things that's I've observed about Poker and what non-Poker players think about the game. One is that the most successful Poker players tend to be highly intelligent. Several of the top players either have PhDs or (in the case of Annie Duke) were close to getting the post-graduate degrees. Several were involved in high tech companies. We are also confronted by people who insist that poker isn't a game of skill but rather all about the luck of the draw.

If you believe that Poker is about the luck of the draw, which a recent "gamble responsibly" ad around here stated (not even suggested) then Sheldon would be an excellent Poker player. He's capable of calculating odds almost instantaneously, and obviously he'd know the relative values of various hands. His Eidetic Memory would be a tremendous asset in any of the games based around Seven Card Stud because he'd remember every card that had been played including the ones that had gone into the muck and been able to tell what each of his opponents had. It would be like the scene in Rounders where Matt Damon's character tells each of the players in the "Judges Game" what they had. That of course is what the situation would be if poker were entirely about the "luck of the draw."

In fact Sheldon would be a lousy Poker player just as Wesley Crusher, admitted into his mother's game, would be a terrible poker player (but not as bad as Sheldon; in this Sheldon would be more like Data). Sheldon would be easy to bluff because he wouldn't understand why someone would lie in that sort of situation or would always expect an opponent to bluff once a bluff is exposed. He'd only play good to great hands rather than the marginal hands that turn into something. As a result, when he does collect pots they wouldn't be as big as they might be. Big pots are usually pulled in when a player has a hand that develops into something greater than the losers expect them to be. With Sheldon playing only strong hands opponents would know that when he bets he has a very strong hand. In being a winner in the luck of the draw he would lose in the game of taking ships from opponents. Sheldon would be a disaster playing a Seven Card Stud style game because of his tendency to gloat when he wins, or more accurately when he knows he's going to win and sets out to explain why his opponents will lose while the hand is playing out. This is a breach of poker etiquette which in tournament play would probably result in penalties from the organizers and in standard "ring" games would probably result in a player being thrown out of the card room.

Sheldon's greatest weakness as a poker player is that he doesn't relate to people. In Poker playing the person is often a bigger thing than playing the cards, which is why Poker is a game of skill. An experienced poker player will be able to read his opponents, even online, and know when one of those opponents has a good hand and when they don't. They know when to bluff with a weak – or at least a not very strong – hand and when to fold their cards and wait for a better hand. It's about knowing when the other player is bluffing and when that player really is strong. It's about knowing the right time to apply pressure. It's about adopting different personas and styles of play during a tournament based on the skills and actions of opponents. Poker is about being one person at one table and a different person at another. It's knowing the right time to be loose and aggressive and when to be tight and conservative. They say that great comedy is all about timing. So is great Poker playing..Great comedy is about understanding people, at least in so far as it involves knowing what they'll laugh at. The key to great Poker is also understanding people and how they think. Sheldon would never get any of that – you can see that from the way he interacts (if you can call it that) with other people not to mention what he allegedly describes as his sense of humour – and more to the point he would care that he didn't get it. Sheldon's Eidetic memory would make him a great Blackjack player (at least until the casinos banned him and put him in "The Black Book") and his skills as a physicist would turn him into a wonder at the Roulette table, calculating orbital mechanics in his head, but when it comes to Poker, he'd be a disaster.

Now his roommate Leonard might have potential....

A New Beginning

I've finally switched over to the new, more customizable layout for Blogger, after a considerable amount of resistance. The reason for the change is that the blog commenting service that I was using - Haloscan has been shut down because the hardware and software were failing. They were prepared to switch me over to their new product Echo, but Echo costs $12 a year. Sorry no sale.

Unfortunately it was nearly impossible for me to remove the old Haloscan commenting system and regain the Blogger commenting system, so I bit the bullet and switched. Rigth now I'm mostly happy. I've migrated most of the stuff I had on the old blog and dropped a number of links that I didn't need. I am not pleased with the new location of the top Adsense ad but as far as I can tell I can't put it where I want it, which is above the title.

I'll probably make a few changes in the foreseeable future but for now this is what I've been able to come up with.

Man Undercover

There's one word that sums up the new CBS series Undercover Boss – "Meh!" In fact to paraphrase Lucy Van Pelt of all the "Meh" shows out there, Undercover Boss may be the "Meh-iest." I'm not saying that it's a bad show, but it's not a good show. It is probably a better fit for Friday nights on most networks and for the summer on all networks.

Undercover Boss, based on a British series of the same name, debuted after Sunday night's Super Bowl game and as a result had good ratings. But the problem is that while the premise seems sound the execution left me with a ton of questions, and the whole thing seemed flat.

The first episode of Undercover Boss followed Lawrence O'Donnell III, President and COO of Waste Management, which is one of the two largest waste disposal companies in North America. And here is where the problems start for me. The introduction to the show – before we met O'Donnell – made a big thing about out of touch CEOs that didn't care about the little guy and how it hurt in this time of economic troubles. The problem is that Waste Management is generally describes as one of the best companies in terms of corporate ethics. In 2008 and 2009 the company was named by business magazine Ethisphere as one of the most ethical companies in the world. And for his part O'Donnell comes across as pretty level-headed and likable sort of guy. He has an attractive but age-appropriate wife, a son and a daughter. O'Donnell's daughter suffered a Brain Injury as a child as a result of a doctor who failed to follow proper procedures; as a result he is a stickler for doing things the proper way in his business. In terms of safety it is not a particularly bad attitude to take.

When O'Donnell first notified the members of his executive team that he was going undercover to work for the company at what amounted to entry level positions there was a certain amount of surprise not to mention an attitude that amounted to "Is he serious?" Indeed he was. Going undercover as "Randy Lawrence" an unemployed construction worker who is being followed by a documentary film crew as he starts a new career in the waste management industry, O'Donnell gets a first-hand look at what's going on at his company at various locations. His first working day is at a recycling plant in Syracuse, New York where he's put onto a line to separate cardboard and trash from paper on a conveyor belt. Almost immediately he has difficulties getting all of the unwanted material off of the belt which to him seems to be moving impossibly quickly. Sandy, the woman who is training him informs him that this is the slowest line in the plant. But the real revelation comes when a piece of cardboard that "Randy" apparently missed jams a machine and they are forced to take their half hour lunch break early. "Randy" is shocked when Sandy suddenly bolts for the door in the middle of a conversation. The machine breakdown is lasting longer than the 30 minutes of their break and she has to clock in so as not to clock in late. The local plant manager has instituted a policy that docks an employee two minutes pay for every minute they are late clocking in.

The next working Day, "Randy" is relocated to Pompano Beach Florida where he works picking up trash that's blowing around at a landfill. His boss there is Walter, a man has little patience for able bodied workers who can't measure up to his standards – in this case filling a bag with scrap paper every ten minutes. At lunch "Randy" learns that Walter is on dialysis but is still able to do his job. Randy hadn't been able to measure up before lunch and isn't able to after lunch. Walter Fires him, which according to O'Donnell is the first time anyone has ever fired him from a job.

And so it goes. One day "Randy" is in Rochester, New York meeting Jaclyn, a woman who has one official job and several other posts that she's unofficially filling and is still in danger of losing her house. The next day he's cleaning portable toilets at a fair in Houston (where Waste Management's corporate headquarters is located) with Fred, a man who is extremely cheerful in his work despite the nature of the job.

Maybe the most eye-opening event for "Randy" comes on the final day when he works on a garbage collection truck with Janice, again in Syracuse. She has a bit of a grudge with "corporate" because of productivity targets that O'Donnell himself had put in place. The implementation of these policies includes supervisors who check up on how fast the collection trucks accomplish the requirement of collecting from 300 homes per day. Feeling under pressure to complete the requirements which she feels doesn't take her gender into account she resorts to peeing in a tin can rather than taking normal restroom breaks. Still, she manages to develop relationships with various customers along the route. Most touching for O'Donnell is when he meets a mentally challenged woman who has written a poem for Janice.

At the end of the week, O'Donnell retires the "Randy Lawrence" identity and reveals himself to the people that he worked with, who have no idea why they have been brought to Houston. There are no really big changes that O'Donnell makes from his time in the field although the show tries to make it seem like there are. He personally takes the manager of the plant in Syracuse to task for the docking policy that had Sandy so worried, and he arranges for Walter to have extra time off so that he can work with other dialysis patients. Indeed it is later revealed that Walter has become a health mentor within the company. He compliments Fred on his attitude and arranges for him to address senior managers He makes Jacklyn a supervisor – her first task is to hire two people to fill the jobs that she previously held, and arranged for her to be given salary status and eligibility for bonuses. Finally he explains to Janice that he empathises with her concerns over the productivity quotas and promises to work with her to help improve conditions for female workers within the company. Most of this is still ongoing, although Fred has left Waste Management to work in a hospital.

I have a lot of problems with this show. For example I don't know why the various plants in different parts of the country were chosen for this show. Was it because the producers pre-screened the various facilities within the company – which is not only across the United States but is very important within Canada – for various conflicts, or did they follow the idea that you can find a story anywhere. What would have happened if everywhere that O'Donnell had gone was full of happy employees who loved their jobs just the way they were without any complaints at all? Obviously that wasn't going to happen simply because the concepts put forward by corporate headquarters are put into real terms by the local managers like the guy in Syracuse who decided that clocking in a minute late would mean being docked two minutes pay. (Indeed the Syracuse operation seems to have huge problems with management since that was the same operation where Janice was concerned about supervisors following her truck to make sure she accomplished the productivity goals.)

Setting aside that however are two concerns. First of all Lawrence O'Donnell seems like an essentially good guy who is concerned with his company and his employees. There are things that are wrong with the company but it's not so much that O'Donnell is deliberately creating a hostile work environment so much as the fact that the policies are sound ideas that are being applied locally in a way that isn't sensitive to either the employees or what corporate headquarters is trying to implement. O'Donnell isn't the sort of guy that the voice-over that introduces the show is talking about. It might be interested in seeing a boss who really isn't so concerned with what's going on down the line within his company seeing how their policies were affecting employees, but of course such a CEO would never appear on a show like this. The other major thing I was hoping to see was O'Donnell making sweeping changes within his company; that seeing up close the sort of things that were going on would lead to big changes within Waste Management's corporate culture. That didn't happen. With respect to the people who were "Randy's" bosses, the changes that O'Donnell implemented were to a large degree very personal to them. It was great that Jacklyn was put on salary and given a better position in Syracuse but it doesn't do a lot for some man or woman in a different plant who is filling a number of jobs "unofficially" and is only being paid for their "official" job. The only areas where there are opportunities for real change come in Sandy and Janice's stories, both of which seem to reflect some of the worst attributes of efficiency experts Frank and Lillian Gilbreth's time and motion studies. In the case of Sandy's story it is apparent that there is a need to clarify policy regarding docking pay for clocking in late since the one manager took it in a different direction than O'Donnell intended for them to go. In the case of Janice, her story is more far reaching if it does change the way that the productivity goals are implemented and perhaps makes things better for lower level female workers.

In the end Undercover Boss lacks many of the qualities that I would like to see in this sort of reality show. There is little in the way of conflict; far less than on shows like Supernanny, Wife Swap or even Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (okay, I only watch the last of these). At the same time, in O'Donnell at least you have a boss who wants to change what is wrong, but the changes that this experience allows him to make are at best minor and "local" rather than "global." For the most part change for specific individuals that he met while he was "Randy" rather changes to the way that the company works overall. Add onto that some questions about the way that locations and people that he would be working with were selected and the show becomes less than a success for me. It certainly didn't deserve the post-Super Bowl slot (I'd have put the first episode of the new season of The Amazing Race but by now you know that The Race is my favourite reality show and high on the list of my TV shows overall, so I'm a bit prejudiced). The show was competently done for what it was, but between the lack of real conflict and the absence of real, significant change this show really doesn't do it for me. Instead of running it on Sundays after The Amazing Race CBS should have saved it for the summer. It earns too much of a "Meh" from me to be on at such an important time on Sunday nights.

2010 World Blogger Championship of Online Poker

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! Bloggers can register for to play for free in the WBCOOP, if you don’t have a PokerStars account you can get your Poker Download here.

Registration code: 896482

On The First Day Of Christmas...

On the first day of Christmas my true love – television – gave to me... One Epic Fail.

And surprisingly it wasn't my total failure to write anything for the past how many months?! It was close but... well actually no, it wasn't. Because the epic fail I refer to in this article was the attempt to move Jay Leno into a five night a week prime time series. Whatever they were smoking at NBC when they came up with that one was not just illegal but dangerous to the health. The problem was that it was dangerous to the health of one of the four major television networks, and if you look back to the days of radio, the company that spawned the idea of bringing a string of stations together and forming a more powerful union called a network.

I'm not saying that the prime time Jay Leno show is a failure compared to the hype surrounding the show. It would in fact be difficult for what Leno is doing to live up to the hype. The hype was over the top. If you remember when the show was announced, well before the upfronts, the brain trust at NBC – which at the time was Jeffrey Zucker and Ben Silverman if I'm not mistaken – was saying that this one show with this great host would change the face of television. Other networks would waste their time and considerable amounts of money producing dramatic series while NBC would prosper with equal or slightly lower rating because Leno's show wouldn't be that expensive to do... and this is even factoring in the amount of money they would be paying to keep Leno and his cars in the style to which they have become accustomed. And when you consider that the media en masse bought into the NBC hype – to the point where there were articles in big media (and we're talking Time Magazine here) were pubishing articles about how Leno moving to prime time would change the face of television – it would be nearly impossible to live up to the hype. And it didn't.

The problem with the Leno show is that it hasn't even lived up to NBC's normal standards. Fact one: the show routinely finishes third in its time slot in the ratings each and every week night. Fact two: the show routinely finishes third in the 18-49 year-old demographic each and every night of the week, including on Wednesday night when ABC had been airing the now cancelled Eastwick and Tuesdays when ABC airs the "hanging on by the skin of Jerry Bruckheimer's teeth" The Forgotten. Fact three: the show is not providing as good a lead-in to the local newscasts on NBC's affiliates as just about everyone had hoped. And since the late local news is a profit center for the affiliates they are not happy, to the point where there have been preliminary rumblings that they'll stop carrying the show which in turn will affect audience and advertising revenues for NBC. Fact four: increasingly the quality of guests that Leno is able to attract seems to be in decline. It's not a radical decline but it does seem to be trending down. Fact five: Leno's ratings have not improved when the show was up against reruns. This is a big one; it was always stated by NBC in their packages about Leno that while his show might not win the time slot against new dramatic shows it would perform better against reruns because 46 out of 52 weeks would be new shows. If that's not happening, and it certainly looks as though Leno is only improving slightly against reruns and CBS reruns are winning every night Leno's new shows. We know that hasn't happened when the CBS shows were running up against NBC dramas like the Law & Order franchise and ER. Which brings us to...Fact Six: Running Leno in the third hour of primetime has forced NBC to run their more adult programming – such as the Law & Order series – in the second hour at a time when either the content has to be dialled down or it is totally unsuitable. Or, in the case of the extremely gritty police series Southland they were forced to scrap the series entirely. Southland, which has fortunately found a home on TNT, was deemed to be too extreme for the Friday second hour time slot that it was originally slated to appear in and was cancelled by NBC.

Look, I can see the machinations that were going on at NBC with the whole Leno-Conan O'Brien thing. In simple terms the network had two cakes and wasn't willing to set down either one to safely deliver one of them. When they announced Jar's retirement from the Tonight Show in 2004, the network was undoubtedly worried that they couldn't keep the popular O'Brien in the second late night slot indefinitely and if they didn't move him to the Tonight Show they'd lose him to ABC. And Jay's statement at the time, "You can do these things until they carry you out on a stretcher, or you can get out when you're still doing good," seems to indicate that he may have thought the time had come to go. If that was the case, then the transition would have been smooth, but for many people – even those who thought that if Leno wasn't, "still doing good" – thought that the workaholic Leno would come to regret deciding to step down. And of course he did, which left NBC on the horns of a dilemma. Should they break their promise to O'Brien and keep Leno on the Tonight Show for as long as he wanted to stay, in which case Conan would be out the door and over at ABC or FOX. Or should they hold Leno to his agreement, in which case Jay would have been on ABC or FOX or even the Tribune stations and presumably demolishing Conan O'Brien. So they gave Jay Leno his prime time show and hyped it to make it appear as if it were the second coming of television...which it wasn't. The net result has been bad for Jay Leno – his show is not a good fit for primetime – bad for Conan O'Brien – there's the constant feeling that he's still under Jay's shadow – and good for one man, David Letterman. Since Conan has taken over the Tonight Show ratings for Letterman's Late Show have surpassed the Tonight Show not just overall but in the major 18-49 and 18-35 demographics. And not even the revelation that Dave had, before his marriage, slept with female members of his staff had an effect on that.

I can't fault Jay Leno for the Jay Leno show as much as I probably should. The decision to put the show on the air was after all NBC's. The network was the organization that wanted to keep Jay around at any cost and given Jeff Zucker's frequent musings on abandoning the third hour of primetime putting Leno on there must has seemed like a good idea at the time. Still, if there was anyone left at NBC who had an institutional memory that extended beyond Knight Rider and Bionic Woman they might have hearkened back to the first two hosts of the Tonight Show and what they did after leaving the late night grind. Both Steve Allen and Jack Paar had primetime series on NBC after they completed their runs on the Tonight Show, although Allen's series, which was on opposite The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights, started while he was doing the late night Tonight Show. Allen's NBC primetime show ran for four years from 1956-1960 while Paar's show ran from 1963-1965 (Paar pulled the plug on the show himself). The thing about these shows is that they were both hour long shows, one night a week. While it is entirely possible that the modern television industry would not accept a live hour-long talk and comedy series one night a week they way they did – at least for a while – in the 1950s and '60s, but it would have presented an opportunity for NBC to keep Leno and give Jay a real opportunity to do superior. Just about anyone who has seen even a few minutes of Jay's current primetime show will tell you that what he's delivering isn't the quality of comedy that he's capable of.

Apology Time Again

It's been a while since I've written anything for the Blog. Bad me, because while part of this has been due to circumstances beyond my control, part of it has also been a deliberate policy on my part which has been exacerbated by circumstances beyond my control.

I made a very conscious decision before the start of this TV season that I would not review a new show based on watching the pilot. There are good reasons for not reviewing a show based on the pilot. Inevitably the first episode of any new show is atypical, and that is true for a number of reasons. Pilots are inevitably about introducing people to the characters and situations that they encounter. I won't say that story comes second but the emphasis has to be setting the characters and the premise. Later episodes, after we know who's who and what's what, are inevitably truer to what the show is going to be like than the pilot.

Another thing about pilots is that they really aren't intended for those of us at home. Believe it or not that's true. In most cases pilots are made to sell the shows to the networks. They have to attract and hold the interest of the network executives who choose the shows they're going to air. And to a degree they have to sell it to the professional TV critics who get show screeners (and assorted press kit swag – I wish I could get either one!) well ahead of the premiere date so that they can tell the world how great the new show is (or not; I'm guessing that a lot of this is calculated risk). Often the episodes that they use to "sell" the shows are more spectacular than what appears in the following weeks. Don't believe me? Think about the pilot for Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. The critics raved about the pilot to the point where they were calling it the best of the season, but once the second show aired the critics were picking nits like monkeys grooming each other. Another example: Bionic Woman. That show had a spectacular pilot including the rooftop battle in the rain with Katee Sackoff's evil Bionic Woman. Fabulous pilot but what came afterwards was a steaming pile of crap – and that's insulting steaming piles of crap. Time and again you will see pilots with tons of bells and whistles, explosions and car chases which are never seen again after that first episode.

Pilots are also problematical because of changes in casting and, often more importantly, behind the scenes, with changes in writers, directors, and showrunners. Often these people have a different mindset than the people they're replacing, sometimes taking the show off in a direction than was anticipated in the pilot. So you can review the pilot and discover that the show you reviewed has changed in subtle – and not so subtle – ways. And maybe the result is a show that you like better than the one you reviewed. But maybe the result is not as good if not downright bad.

So that was the reason for holding back on reviewing pilot. It's a good idea... and an experiment that I won't be doing again. Because I wasn't reviewing pilots I got caught up doing other things. Real world concerns intervened. I was sick for a week; felt like crap, and not the good kind but the "Hershey Squirts" kind. There was work that needed to be done in the garden, and then there was the garden produce to deal with – including the tomatoes that my brother grows in his garden but doesn't actually eat himself because he doesn't like tomatoes. And when I actually had time to do some writing I sort of found that I forgot how to write reviews without having that base of mutual discovery that reviewing pilots gives you. It's not quite writers block; I know what I want to say and I know what I like and I don't like about the shows I've seen, I'm just having a problem setting it up. Worst of all I think I've settled into a comfortable pattern of what to watch on a given night. Not good!

I will be back to writing reviews again, probably with some stuff coming out next week. And from now on, I'm reviewing pilots.

Notes on the 2009 Emmys

I have a few notes related to Sunday night's Emmy Awards. They might be of use to someone.

Note #1 – To ABC, NBC, and FOX: Guys this is the way that you do an Emmy ceremony. When you talk about awards shows you usually end up talking about "flow" by which you generally mean the pace and whether or not the transition between segments was smoth and logical. Sunday night's Emmy awards didn't just "flow" they "flew." Things kept moving at a fast pace and that meant that the show, which clocked in a three hours and a few minutes didn't really feel like a show that ran for three hours and a few minutes. A well timed and well paced awards show can be a pleasure to watch. Comparing this year's Emmy awards with last year's fiasco is like comparing a Japanese Bullet Train to the Hooterville Cannonball. Last year you see every spot where jokes or comedy bits were cut to save time. By the time the last award of the night was presented even the presenter was acknowledging that they wanted to get this thing over and done with. By comparison if there was anything cut from this year's Emmys because of a need to save time it really wasn't obvious. Oh to be sure there were one or two moments when things seemed extraneous – I've heard a couple of critics say that they used Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Karina Sminoff's dance before the Reality Show awards section (which consisted of two awards – that's something to look at for next year) as a convenient pee-break – but there were no really obvious problems and a lot of high points. Having Sarah McLachlan singing "I Will Remember You" for the Memoriam segment may not have been needed but was a nice touch, and the decision to use the Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog the way they did was a thing of beauty. There were very few bits of the show last night that I'd want to fast forward through if I hadn't been watching it live.

Note #2 – To CBS: Today – right now in fact, don't read another word before you do this – I want you to go down to the set of How I Met Your Mother and sign Neil Patrick Harris to a contract to host the Emmys the next time you have them. Really, I am serious, and I won't go away while you do it. Neil was the perfect host for this awards show. He didn't take himself or his role too seriously, and really when you are hosting an awards show taking yourself too seriously is death. As Mark Evanier pointed out he was "well aware that the evening was not all about him." That's an important quality. As much as anyone the host of an awards show is like the ringmaster in the circus – he's always present but people really aren't there to see him. Best of all, of course, is the fact that there was only one of him. That's actually a big deal. Last year's fiasco had a lot to do with the lack of a single face for the show. It was confused and confusing and it wasted a lot of time – well actually the whole absurd business of setting up the presentation of the Reality Show Host award wasted a lot of time, but that's beside the point. We've seen shows with two hosts that have worked, but that's a matter of chemistry between the hosts. We've also seen shows with no hosts, where the presenters simply came out, announced by some disembodied voice and that really hasn't worked. One central focus seems to work best, and when it is someone like Neil Patrick Harris who is in charge of keeping things moving, well that's just the cherry on the sundae.

Note #3 – To the Emmy Voters: You people might want to consider not being so locked into the same-old same-old. I mean take a look at the major categories. You voted for last year's winner in:

• Outstanding Actor in a Comedy
  
• Outstanding Actor in a Drama
  
• Outstanding Actress in a Drama
  
• Outstanding Reality Show Host
  
• Outstanding Reality-Competition Series
  
• Outstanding Comedy Series
  
• Outstanding Drama Series
  
• Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series
  

The only acting categories where someone won who didn't win last year were the Supporting categories and Outstanding Actress in a Comedy, and probably the only person more surprised than me that Tina Fey didn't win was Toni Collette (of course the most surprised person at the Emmys was Jon Cryer; I mean for heaven's sake he's on Two And A Half Men and they never win anything...ever – Charlie Sheen just shows up for the booze). Don't get me wrong, I think that most of the people who won this year were deserving, which is something that you can't always say, but things are getting a bit predictable when the way to pick winners for an Emmy pool is to say, "Is the person who won last year nominated again? Well put them down and we'll probably be right. Now let's go to that place where they make guacamole at the table." The only thing worse is that the people who are voting for the Emmys seem to be saying the same damned thing.

While we're at it the writing categories are even worse than the acting categories. Are we supposed to believe that there are only two comedies and two dramas that have writing worthy of nomination? Really only one, since both the Comedy and Drama categories each had four entries from one series and one from another to fill things out. This practice needs to change and quickly. Series should either be rewarded for an entire season of writing or be limited to one – at most two – nominees. It is absurd to keep this the way it is.

I should say something nice about the winners. I was happy to see Kristin Chenoweth win for playing Olive Snook in Pushing Daisies even though the nomination seemed like a reward in itself and the win like a massive extension of the middle finger in the direction of ABC. Of course I love Kristin with a heart that is true, in part because she is a real trouper – on Sunday she attended your little Emmy shindig despite a serious Migraine (I read her Twitter feed), and believe me as someone who sometime suffers from migraines that is dedication above and beyond the call. Seeing Michael Emerson win for playing Ben in Lost was also a pleasure. Brian Cranston deserved his win as Outstanding Actor as well. In fact about the only win that I don't fully agree with was Jeff Probst winning for Reality Show Host, but then I'm a Phil Keoghan fan.

Note #4 – To My Emmy Poll Voters: You really really don't know how "well" you performed. If it's any consolation, at least you got Probst right.

Poll Results – What Series SHOULD Win As Outstanding Drama Series?

Final poll of the current Emmy Season and for me this is the big category. Comedy is fine but TV thrives on Drama. So let's get on with the results. Fourteen votes were cast. Tied for sixth place with no votes were Big Love and Damages. In a tie for fourth place with one vote each (7.1%) were Breaking Bad and Dexter. In a tie for second place with three votes each (21.4%) were Mad Men and House. The winner in this category however is Lost with six votes (42.9%).

This is another case where I don't entirely agree with the poll. I haven't watched Lost since the beginning of the third season (when they pulled that "we'll give you six episodes and then pull the show off the air for three months" stunt; it seemed as though they were treating us with a certain amount of disdain/arrogance). Still no one can deny that the show gave us a kick-ass season with plenty of twists and turns, not to mention time travel. Still I just don't think that the Emmy voters will reward the show. Part of it's because it does have the science fiction elements like time travel, and I suppose that in part the Academy is likely to see it as being past it "best before" date. I suspect that Mad Men is more likely to win in the category in part because it won last year and in part because it is a strong dramatic series (no matter what Marc Berman may say). Still, it may be the second best dramatic series on AMC because the network also has Breaking Bad, which won the Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series for Bryan Cranston last season. The question is then whether the Academy is willing to give a series about a terminally-ill former science teacher who becomes a drug dealer the Emmy any more than they're willing to give one to show about an ethical serial killer (Dexter) or a pot selling suburban widow (Weeds). I think that House was another series that delivered a kick-ass season but I think it is unlikely to win against the array of cable shows. I'm convinced that while the people who vote in my poll tend to favour broadcast shows, the Television Academy is largely biased towards Cable series. So while I think that House, and Lost have had seasons good enough to win if no biases are figured in I think the probable winner will be either Mad Men or Breaking Bad. But that's just a guess on my part.

The Emmys air tonight. I don't think that I will be live-blogging the awards tonight (if I had a laptop and could report as I watched) it might be different but as it stands I have to run between the living room where the big screen TV is and my bedroom. There just isn't time to do a good job of reporting during commercial breaks. I will try to summarize the show after it ends though.

Emmy Poll Results – What Show SHOULD Win Outstanding Comedy Series

Damn!

When I put up the poll for Outstanding Drama Series I fully intended to post the results for the Outstanding Drama Series I fully intended to get these results out within a few hours. Stuff kept popping up that had to get done (like digging potatoes) or that had a definite time line. Or that I've become increasingly involved with. eRepublik you are a harsh and unforgiving mistress... but if anyone is interested in giving it a try please sign up using this link (for every ten people that I "invite" and who make Level 6 I get a lollipop – well really some in-game gold. If you do sign up and are American or Canadian be sure to sign up in a region that is still American or Canadian – right now theres a big war going on and Canada is partly occupied by Hungary(?!) and Iran (?!?!) while the USA is partly occupied by Hungary, Russia(!) and Colombia (?!?!?!)).

Okay, there's the plug. Now the results. There were seven votes cast, which in a way isn't surprising since I suspect that my dislike for Comedy Series is apparent from the fact that I don't write about too many of them. This poll is rather unusual in that a number of votes arrived later than I expected and they were enough to tip the tide. In a tie for fifth place (remember there were seven shows in this category) with no votes are Family Guy, Flight of the Conchords, and Weeds. In a tie for second place are Entourage, The Office, and 30 Rock with one vote each (14.29%). But the winner is How I Met Your Mother with a massive (for this poll) four votes (57.14%).

Right. I'm now going to tell you not only why How I Met Your Mother not only won't win but maybe why it probably doesn't deserve to win. As I have said numerous times Flight of the Conchords or Weeds (though the latter is more accessible for me than the former was) but I think that applies for a lot of viewers. I also don't watch Entourage but reports that I've seen in various media – including other blogs of course – is that this season is nowhere near as good as previous seasons have been. A big clue in this is that Jeremy Piven, who won in the Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series Emmy the past three years wsn't even nominated this season. That has to say something about the quality of the show. So with four shows pushed to the side We're left with The Office, 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother.

Of these three, the most conventional sitcom – although the definition of "conventional" has changed significantly over the past few years – is How I Met Your Mother and I think that notion that it's convientional is why it probably won't win. Don't get me wrong; How I Met Your Mother is a staple in my house, one of only two sitcoms that I actually watch (the other is The Big Bang Theory). When How I Met Your Mother debuted I saw it as being an American version of the British series Coupling done right, and that is an assessment that still holds. I like the characters and for the most part I like the situations. But if you ask me whether it is better than either The Office or 30 Rock I'd have to say "no." Part of my reaction is to that very conventionality. How I Met Your Mother is, dare I say it, safe. It doesn't push the envelope too much in terms of creativity and really doesn't "advance the form" the way that either the British or the American versions of The Office have. Both versions of The Office took the conventions of the workplace comedy and turned them on their ear through the use of the pseudo-documentary. Instead of the jerky boss being an aloof figure who is something of a nemesis for the lead characters, the jerky boss is the principal figure through whose eyes we see the rest of the office. But while doing this humanizes him somewhat it doesn't make him entirely sympathetic. Our sympathies – for the most part – are mostly with the poor schlubs who work for Michael Scott rather than with Michael himself. As for 30 Rock, which I think is likely to win, and which is not a bad choice, the key is the strength of the performances of Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin and the palpable but non-romantic chemistry between the two of them. Add to that the fact that it is a satire not just of television but of NBC – with all the problems (which are the obvious seeds for comedic situations) that that implies – and I think it is a show that people within the TV industry can identify with. I think it's going to win for those reasons – it's seen as being cutting edge, a satire on the Television industry that people in the industry can identify with (or maybe just recognise people that they're familiar with), and it just happens to be extremely funny.

New Poll – What SHOULD Win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series?

I'm changing the order of things around slightly today. I've been away from the computer all day but I wanted to get the Drama Series poll up right away. I'll give all the details on the Outstanding Comedy Series poll out in the morning.

The nominees for Outstanding Drama Series are:

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

As always vote for the series that you think should win in this category rather than the series that you believe will win, and remember that I crave your comments on why you are voting for the show that you choose to vote for. Due date for this poll is September 19^th, 2009.

Series Debuts – Week of September 7

Even though the "official" start of the 2009-10 season is two weeks away the first of the new fall shows are debuting this week. Well sort of, given that Glee aired its pilot back in May and FOX has been re-airing it at least twice in the last week or two, and ABC has been running The Shark Tank on Sundays since the middle of August, but in the latter case the show seems to be more of a placeholder for ABC's revival of the science fiction cult favourite V. With that in mind we really do have several shows starting this week, mostly from The CW a network which, in terms of getting people to watch their shows, needs every advantage they can get.

Here are this week's new shows:

Tuesday September 8^th

• 90210 The CW – The revival of Aaron Spelling's FOX "classic" returns for its second year. I watched the pilot for the first season and found it to be less than I expected... or hoped for. I gather that the stories got a bit more adult than they had been in the first few episodes but it was never a high priority on my "to watch list." It won't be again this season.
  
• Melrose Place The CW – Having had a certain amount of success in reviving one of Aaron Spelling's FOX hits, The CW has gone back to that well again by reviving Melrose Place. This version of Melrose Place follows much the same path that 90210 did by bringing on a mix of new and old characters – notably Laura Leighton reviving (literally) her character of Sydney Andrews (who had apparently been the end of the fifth season of the original) and Thomas Calabro in his role of Dr. Michael Manicni. Other cast member from the original expected to appear on the show in later episodes are Daphne Zuniga and Josie Bissett. Still the focus will be on the younger cast members, notably Katie Cassidy, Shaun Sipos and Ashley Simpson-Wentz. From the description of early episodes it sounds just as "soapy" (in a good way) as the original. Still, while I'll probably look at the pilot, I doubt that it will be a permanent part of my viewing diet.
  

Wednesday September 9^th

• America's Next Top Model The CW – The CW's big reality-competition hit. Actually it may be the networks biggest hit of any genre, drawing an average of 4.35 million viewers last season. It's a two hour episode this week, cutting back to its usual one hour next week with the debut of new series The Beautiful Life. I've never watched an episode of any national version of Top Model (and there are a lot of them) but we can expect the usual mix of catty diva-ish bitchy behaviour that gathering a covey of models together inevitably produces.
  

Thursday September 10^th

• Vampire Diaries The CW – When you think about it this show is a perfect fit for The CW. The current "Vampire Chic" trend exemplified by the HBO series Tru Blood and the Twilight movie franchise is a perfect fit for The CW's target young female target demographic. Like Gossip Girl the series is based on a popular "Young Adult" book series targeted at teenage girls which actually predates the Twilight series of novels. The CW is putting a lot of stock into the series by moving long-time Thursday favourite Smallville out of the first hour time slot to create a "supernatural" night by pairing the series with the more male oriented Supernatural. Descriptions of the show seem to have elements of Twilight/Tru Blood mingled with a slightly sinister Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls with maybe a touch of Buffy The Vampire Slayer added for flavouring. While The CW has been giving a lot of promotion to Melrose Place, this could be the most interesting of the network's new series.
  
• Supernatural The CW – One of only two male-oriented series on The CW – the other is former Thursday series Smallville, this is the series fifth season and there are rumours that it is the final one (although the Jensen Ackles and Jared Padelecki are under contract for a sixth season). It's another season of the Winchester Brothers (along with this Blog's favourite character actor Jim Beaver) battling demonic forces. It's not a show that I watch but I do understand the mass appeal.
  

Saturday September 12^th

• Cops Fox
  
• America's Most Wanted Fox – I'm lumping these two together. The doyens of the Reality genre, these two shows will probably outlast us all.

New Poll – What Series SHOULD Win As Outstanding Comedy Series?

This, together with the Drama Series category, is one of those where the voting was close enough for an additional nominee to be added to list. The seven nominees are:

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

Remember, you are voting for the series that you think should win for Outstanding Comedy Series rather than the one that you think will win in the category. (Come to think of it, running two polls for each category might be an interesting experiment for next year.) Deadline for the next poll is Wednesday September 9^th.

Poll Results - Who SHOULD Win The Emmy For Outstanding Host For A Reality or Reality Competition Program?

Before i do anything else, I'd like to state that this is probably a category that won't be polled next year. The response was better than I had hoped it would be yesterday, thanks to a sudden influx of votes between when I checked on Sunday and when I checked today. Of thirteen votes, eight were cast on the first two days and five were cast on the last day of polling. With anticipated changes to the way that I run polls dropping the reality categories entirely will allow me to do some other things that I want to get done.

Turning to the actual poll, as I said there were thirteen votes cast. Tied for fifth place with no votes are Dancing With The Stars host Tom Bergeron and Top Chef hosts Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio. In fourth place with one vote (7.69%) is Heidi Klum from Project Runway. In third place with three votes (23.08%) is Phil Keoghan, host of The Amazing Race. In second place is American Idol's Ryan Seacrest with four votes (30.77%), while the winner is last year's winner in this category Jeff Probst from Survivor with five votes (38.46%).

This category really should come down to two people, at least in my opinion; Jeff Probst and Phil Keoghan. Tom Bergeron is very personable and definitely the right person to host Dancing With The Stars if only because he tends not to take things too seriously and is very good in the live portions of the show, with an ability to react to the sort of surprises that come in live TV (like Marie Osmond fainting or just about anything that Cloris Leachman did). As far as the combination of Padma Lakshme and Tom Colicchio is concerned all I can say is that if that is allowed then Tim Gunn should have been nominated along with Heidi Klum. After all they're pretty much the same show, with fashion subbing in for cooking. As far as Ryan Seacrest is concerned, since I don't watch American Idol I'm not absolutely sure of how great his involvement in the show is. One obvious omission in this category is Gordon Ramsay who has more personality than just about anyone in this category. (While I going on about omissions in reality categories, you can't ignore the drama and conflict that dominated the most recent season of Celebrity Apprentice – even though I think the wrong person won and Trump set up the criteria to benefit a charity that his soon to be ex-sister-in-law is on the board of. Annie Duke raised more money throughout the process and Joan Rivers was a witch who came very close to libel.)

This leaves me with the person that you, and last year's Emmy voters thought should win, and the person I think should win although he wasn't nominated – Jeff Probst and Phil Keoghan. While there are six (well seven in a way) nominees in this category It is my belief that it will come down to a race between these two. Personally I favour Keoghan, who should have been nominated last year. There is a significant difference between Phil and Jeff and it's a contrast in their typical day on the show. On a day when Jeff shoots (which is usually two out of every three days) he puts on his nicely pressed khakis and either takes a boat or a helicopter (or maybe and SUV) to the challenge site, then greets the players. He explains the challenge and then carries out the most strenuous part of his job – raising his hand and dropping it. After that part is done he head back to the crew site, and probably has supper and a couple of beers before watching the crew's satellite TV. Now compare that to Phil Keoghan. On a typical production day – which is pretty much every day when the race is being run – he sends all of the teams off from the starting line. Then he has to rush ahead to each of the route marker on that segment of the Race to shoot stand-ups explaining and sometimes demonstrating the activity that they'll have to perform. That could be two, three or even four stand-ups during the course of the leg frequently at different locations (Roadblock, Detour – two activities – and on some occasions either a Fast Forward or a Speed Bump). After that he has to reach the next Pit Stop before the first team arrives to greet them. On travel legs during the Race he's frequently travelling on the same plane as at least one of the teams. This also means that hair, make-up and wardrobe also have to keep up with him. In short, while Probst seems primarily to hold more of a traditional host role on Survivor, Phil Keoghan is almost a participant in terms of what he has to do to host The Amazing Race.

New poll up in a few minutes. I'm running a bit behind time on this.

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.