Saturday Videos – Spy Show Themes

We lost another favourite actor from my 1960s childhood. Robert Culp died this past week at age 79. He apparently collapsed and struck his head on the sidewalk outside his home. For those who grew up in the 1980s he may be best remembered for playing the hard bitten, sardonic FBI agent Bill Maxwell in Greatest American Hero with William Katt and Connie Sellecca – of the three he was undoubtedly the best actor. More recently he had a recurring role on Everybody Loves Raymond playing Ray's father-in-law Warren, opposite Katherine Helmond. His first series was the 1957 CBS western Trackdown, in which he played Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman. The series featured a number of noted directors and guest stars including directors Richard Donner and Sam Peckinpaugh, and Oscar winning actors James Coburn and Rita Moreno. The series may be best known for an episode that introduced bounty hunter Josh Randall, played by Steve McQueen. The Randall character was spun off into a series the next year, called Wanted Dead Or Alive which is generally credited with being McQueen's breakout role. However, for people like me, who grew up in the 1960s, Robert Culp is best known for playing CIA agent Kelly Robinson opposite Bill Cosby as Alexander Scott. Rhodes Scholar Scott was the brains of the team while Culp's Robinson was the athletic playboy. Culp not only starred in the show but wrote seven episodes including the first episode to be broadcast (So Long, Patrick Henry) and directed one of the episodes. The series spawned a lifelong friendship between Culp and Cosby, who later teamed up again in the theatrical movie Hickey And Boggs, which Culp directed, and Culp appeared in single episodes of both The Cosby Show (playing a character called "Scott Kelly" – taken from the names of their two characters in I Spy) and Cosby, where he reprised the character of Kelly Robinson in a dream sequence (with Cosby's name being replaced in the show credits with the name of his character in the show, Hilton Lucas). As Mark Evanier explained in his obituary, Culp was very active in union work, both with the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild.

It would be very easy to do this Saturday videos segment using just the themes of I Spy and Greatest American Hero, and maybe trying to find a few clips from both. The one really good clip that I've found of I Spy features a great deal of Walter Koenig (just before he was tapped to play Chekov in Star Trek and very little Cosby and Culp. However in an interesting turn, the first five episodes of I Spy are available in their complete form on YouTube, courtesy of Image Entertainment which has the home video rights to the show. This includes So Long, Patrick Henry.). But just playing those two themes seems a bit pedestrian. In that mid-Sixties period there were a number of series based around spies and espionage on American TV – by 1966 there were a dozen such shows on the American networks. Many of them were done with a varying amount of tongue in cheek humour, ranging from I Spy through Man From U.N.C.L.E. all the way to Get Smart. There was even an odd blending of genres with Wild Wild West, a series that blended the Western with spies. In fact, about the only people who took the espionage genre the slightest bit seriously were the British. Two British series, Danger Man – renamed Secret Agent when it came to CBS – and The Avengers were bought by American networks. The decade ended with one of my personal favourites, It Takes A Thief.

Let's start off our tour of 1960's spy show themes with the one that got me to thinking about this topic, I Spy even though it debuted a year after The Man From U.N.C.L.E. All of these shows drew their inspiration from the James Bond films, particularly Goldfinger, but as we'll see, the title sequence for the first season of I Spy is practically grand theft intro rather than an homage. Subsequent seasons dispensed with this sequence and replaced it with clips from the episodes (and included the title "Emmy Winner Bill Cosby"). In this sequence the emphasis is definitely on Culp's character, who is the one seen in silhouette, but I swear that producer Sheldon Leonard gets the biggest credit of all.

Next up, here's an extended clip, including the opening theme to the British series Danger Man starring Patrick McGoohan as John Drake. The series ran in Britain from 1960-1962 as a half hour show and then from 1964-1968 as an hour series. Thus, in its original incarnation it predated the James Bond phenomenon, while its revival was at least partially because of the James Bond phenomenon.

CBS had been involved in financing he show's first version , which they aired as a summer replacement for Wanted Dead Or Alive but pulled out after the first season. When the show was revived the network again acquired it, and replaced the original theme with its own sequence featuring Johnny Rivers singing Secret Agent Man. Here's the American version of the same episode with the original theme reduced to incidental music (so don't stop the player when the commercial starts).

The biggest of the American made spy series that at least tried to be semi-serious was Man From U.N.C.L.E. which starred Robert Vaughan as Napoleon Solo, Leo G Carroll as Alexander Waverly, and Robert McCallum as Ilya Kuriakin. The show was apparently based on an original concept created by James Bond creator Ian Fleming, and the original plan was to tie the show more closely to the Fleming name. The show itself got increasingly campy as the seasons went on for a variety of reasons, and the quality took a definite downward turn. The show's first season was done in Black & White while subsequent seasons were done in Colour, but while the slide of the show into camp may have coincided with the introduction of colour, the two states were entirely coincidental. The show had a variety of opening sequences during the four seasons it was on the air, but this sequence featuring the bullet proof glass is probably my favourite.

The other big British import was of course The Avengers. The show started in 1961 and actually starred two men – Ian Hendry had the lead role while Patrick Macnee was his partner but his role was secondary to the point where Steed didn't appea in some episodes. It soon became apparent that MacNee's character John Steed was popular and he increasingly became the co-lead. When Hendry quit to do movies after the show's first season Macnee took his place seamlessly. Steed had a number of partners, notably Honor Blackman as Connie Gale, before he started working with "talented amateur" Mrs. Emma Peel, played by Diana Rigg. The two had a definite chemistry, even though Rigg was only on the series for three years. She was in turn replaced by Linda Thorson for the show's final two season... the less said about the better. This was actually the second theme for the series; the first was composed by John Dankworth and was used for the Hendry and Gale episodes. This version of the titles was for the Black & White Emma Peel episodes. The colour title sequence is probably better known but this one features Rigg in her iconic leather cat suit. Edit: Oops, the character played by Honor Blackman was Cathy Gale. There is a character in the current run of the Annie comic strip called Connie Gale and I mixed up the names.

Finally, here's the title sequence for one of my favourite shows of the genre. It Takes A Thief ran for three seasons and featured Robert Wagner as Alexander Mundy, a professional thief who was arrested and given the choice; he could go to prison or he could steal for the government – specifically an agency called the SIA, where his boss would be Noah Bain, played by Malachi Throne, who was replaced by Ed Binns as Wallie Powers in the show's third season. It's not clear when this version of the title is from – I was hoping for a clip from the third season which featured Fred Astaire in a recurring role as Alistair Mundy, Al's equally larcenous but more successful (he never got caught) father, but I can't seem to find one.

Update: This is in fact a third season episode, just not one with Astaire in it. The first two seasons featured the voice of Noah Bain saying, "Hey, look, Al, I'm not asking you to spy... I'm just asking you to steal!"

As I've said, there were a dozen spy shows on TV in 1966 alone. These clips have only scratched the surface of what's out there and I may revisit this area at a later date.

Saturday Video Clips

So I guess it was the other day, when I heard that Fess Parker had passed away, that I had the idea of doing some sort of YouTube video tribute to him. It was an idea that quickly morphed – because just about everyone else was doing just that – into an idea of doing a YouTube based post every weekend. The idea would be to find several TV related videos and posting them on Friday night-Saturday morning. These videos might be related to some news item, like casting for a new version of the Rockford Files, the death of a TV icon like Fess Parker, or just anything that tickled my fancy (or fancied my tickle – no, that doesn't work in this situation). Maybe this won't last long, or maybe it will – let's give it a try.

First up of course is Fess Parker, who passed away on March 18^th at age 85. Parker was born in San Angelo Texas, and after brief service in the Marines in World War II (he wanted to be a pilot but at 6' 6" he was too tall to fit into a cockpit or even serve as an aviation gunner in a bomber) he graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in History, and moved to California to get a Masters in theatre History at USC. He soon found himself too busy because of acting jobs. Initially under contract at Warner Brothers he was nominated for an Emmy in 1954 as "Outstanding New Personality" – he lost to "Lonesome" George Gobel. In December 1954 he debuted in the role that would shape his later career – Davy Crockett. Some people classify Davy Crockett as the first TV miniseries. In three episodes the series told the story (or a highlighted version) of the frontiersman, politician and soldier who died at the Alamo. The series was so popular that it is said to have revitalized part of the fur industry – there was a sudden need for racoon fur for coonskin caps. It also spawn two follow-up episodes – set before the Alamo or even Crockett's time in Congress – in which he was involved with legendary keel boat skipper Mike Fink. Parker was soon under contract with Disney, but the contract restricted the parts available to Parker – he was typecast in roles like Boone in movies for Disney while the studio refused to loan him out for roles outside that persona. Thus he missed parts in films like The Searchers with John Wayne and Bus Stop with Marilyn Monroe. So first up we have the complete version of the Davy Crockett theme song. Unfortunately there are no clips of the show on YouTube but this clip includes the complete Davy Crockett Theme (more complete in fact than I can remember it being!).

In 1962 he appeared in the TV version of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington on ABC. The show isn't notable for much, but it did feature the final TV appearance of Harpo Marx. It lasted one full season but it did clear the way for Parker to do the other part for which he was famous, Daniel Boone which ran from 1965-1970. The series is a highly fictionalized version of the life of the legendary frontiersman who pioneered the settlement of Kentucky. The show was hardly historically accurate but as a kid in the 1960s I found it great fun. It was Parker's last hit. After Daniel Boone ended he turned down the role of Marshal Sam McCloud which went to Dennis Weaver he did a short lived sitcom called The Fess Parker Show for CBS before leaving acting to run a well respected vineyard, the Fess Parker Family Winery and Vineyards. Here's the theme from the first season of Daniel Boone with both the opening and end credits.

Casting continues for the new version of The Rockford Files, with Beau Bridges being cast as "Rocky" Rockford (originally played by the great character actor Noah Beery Jr.), Jim Rockford's father. He joins Dermot Mulroney in his first major TV role as Jim Rockford (the role immortalized by James Garner), and Alan Tudyk (best known for playing Wash on Firefly) as Jim's police contact Dennis Becker. Among the parts yet to be cast are the roles of Angel, Jim's slightly less than legitimate former cellmate, Beth Davenport, Jim's lawyer and occasional romantic interest, and Lt. Doug Chapman, Becker's boss who was constantly getting on Dennis's case for helping Rockford...and then taking credit for any arrests that resulted from the work that Dennis and Jim had done. This is being done as a pilot for NBC and while I'm not particularly enthusiastic about the idea of remaking this absolute classic of a show, I have to admit that the casting looks extremely good. Here's the original Rockford Files Theme. I was hoping to find one of the opening segments with the answering machine but any of those that were posted appear to have been taken down at the "request" of NBC. This is a pretty good version of the theme though.

Finally, Nikki Finke reports that there is going to be a big screen remake of 77 Sunset Strip coming from Warner Brothers. Normally the very idea of these things leaves me cold, and for the most part this one does the same. Of interest is that the studio, which produced the original series, will be giving it a period feel. This will presumably include references to the Dodger moving from Brooklyn to Los Angeles (which happened at the end of the 1957 baseball season) and period movie stars. The series, based on several books written by Roy Huggins during the 1940s (and legally stolen from Huggins by Jack Warner who screened the pilot as a feature film in the Caribbean to "establish" that the series derived from a theatrical feature not Huggins's books), featured two former secret agents working as private detectives and "assisted" by hipster speaking Gerald Lloyd Kookson III, better known as "Kookie", who worked as a parking valet at the night club next to their offices – it was a real night club, Dino's, owned by Dean Martin. The original show starred Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Stu Bailey, Roger Smith as his partner Jeff Spencer, and Edd Byrnes as Kookie. Here's the intro to the series.

And here is a clip from the show in which Stu and Kookie "talk." Funny, I vaguely remember the series from my youth, but I don't recall Kookie smoking. The cars and his ever present comb I do remember.

Let's see what next week brings.

Shaking The Family Tree On Network TV

Last Friday night I saw a new NBC series called Who Do You Think You Are? It could I suppose be labelled under the catch-all soubriquet of "reality show" but that would be doing it a disservice. It is perhaps the most unusual show to appear on a commercial broadcast network since the early 1950s (there were some truly bizarre concepts that were tried back then including at least one series about toy trains!). That a show is unusual is not necessarily a good thing and the case of Who Do You Think You Are? is a perfect example. Who Do You Think You Are? is a non-fiction series about genealogy. When was the last time that any commercial broadcast network in North America has done a non-fiction series about genealogy? Frankly it is a poor fit for just about any commercial network. (Okay, I just checked; CBC in Canada did their version of Who Do You Think You Are? Back in 2007.)

I'm not saying that you can't make an interesting program out of genealogy. Alex Haley proved that fact with Roots. The series made from his quest to discover his family history dating back – somewhat improbably according to some experts – to the Kunta Kinte, the first member of his family to come to America as a slave made compelling television. But a non-fiction treatment? I honestly don't think that it will work on commercial broadcast network TV. Despite the fact that this is an import from Britain, where it has run for seven seasons, the format and the concept seem to be totally at odds with what a commercial network should be doing. Not that there isn't room for a show of this sort, but my feeling is that it is better suited to PBS than it is to NBC.

Not that the show is without merit. In the episode that I saw on March 12^th we followed former football player Emmitt Smith as he attempted to trace his family history back to "mother Africa." As is the case with most African-Americans he was unable to fully trace his history with historical records. He progress was not without some interesting revelations however. Starting with his father's mother he was able to trace his way back to a small town in Alabama; really just clutch of abandoned buildings and a small store, operated by a second cousin of Emmitt's, who gave him a clue about where to find more information about his grandmother. This led him to the country courthouse where he was able to find records of his family going back to the 1870 census, the first census after the Civil War and also the first in which African American names were recorded. This gave him further information, particularly related to the racial designation used at the time. His ancestors were classed as "mulatto" meaning of mixed race. It also led him to the white family that had owned his ancestors, the Puryears. He was finally able to trace his family back to Mecklemburg County in Virginia in 1815 and the identity of the probable white father of his ancestor Mariah, Samuel Puryear, who Smith and the local expert who was working with him assumes was a child of rape. It was there that the records apparently ended. However at the beginning of the episode Emmitt had taken a DNA test, the results of which were available at the end of the episode. This revealed that he was 7% Native American, 12% White and 81% African. According to the person explaining the report to him, this is an incredibly high percentage – this person has never seen an African-American who is 100% African. The DNA researcher also suggested that his family probably originated from the "slave coast" of West Africa, probably in the region of Benin. Smith's journey took him through a series of emotions. In visiting the part of Alabama where his family had lived, he was sad that while the grave of the white woman in whose will they have found the name of his ancestors was still in existence and visible, the graves of the slaves, presumably including some of his ancestors were unmarked and abandoned in the woods around the white cemetery. His disgust related to Samuel Puryear, who it was assumed had raped an unnamed ancestor and fathered Mariah, the earliest ancestor he could find, was also palpable.

Now I'm just guessing here, but I suspect – based on what little I've been able to see of the BBC show on YouTube – that Emmitt Smith himself hasn't done all, or even much, of the research on his family described in the show. I don't think that this is really a bad thing although in the British show it appears to be openly stated that the research on a participant's family tree has been previously researched by "professionals."

Who Do You Think You Are? is apparently doing well in the ratings, "well" being a relative term when it comes to Friday night programming on network TV. The second episode actually improved on the ratings for the first episode, which is unusual for any new series. The show finished second in its timeslot and apparently tied for first in the 18-34 demographic. This is surprising – amazing even – given the subject matter. And still I don't really think that the idea is well suited to commercial TV. Remember that the British series is done on BBC2, which is a popular but non-commercial network. Emmitt Smith's story was a compelling one but would the telling of that story have been more compelling if it hadn't been interrupted every ten minutes or whatever for a commercial from an insurance company or whoever was sponsoring the show? A more seamless retelling of the story would have been the result and perhaps we as an audience would have had a greater sense of the passage of time in Emmitt's search. This is the sort of programming that PBS does so well, and which commercial TV, because of its dependence on commercials and both the resulting demand for ratings and the necessary series of interruptions for commercials, has trouble doing well. As I've said, this show – in this episode at least, because of the subject matter – is relatively compelling and capable of holding viewer interest. I just don't think that it is as well done as it could have been were it not for the demands of commerce.

Five For Fighting

Usually it's a good thing when people say that something isn't as bad as they expected... but not always. Case in point, the new NBC show The Marriage Ref which was previewed on NBC on Sunday night after the Closing Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. And it wasn't as bad as I had expected. The problem was that I was expected an utter and total train wreck. Marriage Ref was not in fact a total and complete train wreck. Does that mean it was good though? Hell NO! It was bad if sometimes funny, and I'm convince that it will be even worse when it is expanded – or rather inflated – into its full hour long format to replace the prime time Jay Leno Show on Thursday night. It just wasn't as bad as I had expected it to be.

In part I blame Marc Berman's podcast for my extremely low expectations for this show. For the past two weeks Marc has been talking about the Olympics and about how NBC has been on an extreme high in terms of rating because of the Olympics – although not so great a high that they've were able to beat American Idol during the Games – but that the network had nothing to follow up their success with. Which is, of course, totally true. If I were in charge of the network I'd have a nearly completely new line-up in place after the Olympics. NBC has a couple of new shows, one of which is The Marriage Ref. And The Marriage Ref attracted much of Marc's scorn. He didn't like the concept of the show, he didn't like that it was created by Jerry Seinfeld, and he most assuredly didn't like the fact that Alec Baldwin, whose split from Kim Bassinger was one of the dirtiest and messiest divorces in recent Hollywood history, was doing a show that was "saving people's marriages." In short a train wreck that would be the equivalent of the 20^th Century Limited smashing into the Super Chief and then getting T-boned by the City of New Orleans. The problem is that, having seen the show, I have to acknowledge that it isn't quite that bad for a lot of reasons.

The big thing is that no one but no one is taking this thing seriously. The "Marriage Ref" is Tom Pappa, a stand-up comedian rather than a "relationship expert," who just happens to be a close friend of producer Jerry Seinfeld's and has been the opener for Seinfeld's stand-up act for years. On a set that looks as though it was borrowed from a late, late late talk show (like Carson Daily's maybe) he is joined by "experts" which in the show's definition is anyone who is married, has been married or has ever thought of getting married. This is why you can get Seinfeld (married), Kelly Ripa (famously married to her former All My Children co-star and on-screen husband Mark Consuelos), and of course Alec Baldwin as marriage experts. Also in the cast was Natlaie Morales of the Today Show as the "fact checker" – apparently this will be another "celebrity" role – and announcer Marv Albert who seemed embarrassed to be there rather than in Vancouver (and to my eyes at least didn't look particularly well; that may be because I haven't seen him in a while).

And the "problems" that Pappa and the celebrities had to resolve are scarcely the stuff of Dr. Phil or even Jerry Springer. The first episode featured two couples with stupid/funny problems. The first couple was from an obviously affluent part of Long Island. The cause of stress in their marriage was his dog Fonzie. Or rather his late dog Fonzie. Fonzie, a Boston Bull Terrier, was pining for the fiords – or in his case probably pining for the bleachers at Fenway – and the husband decided to have the dog stuffed by a taxidermist and located in a place of honour, a shrine if you will, in the family living room. The wife, who didn't like the dog when it was alive (because as the celebrity fact checker informed us, it bit her more than once and had a habit of peeing on guests) certainly didn't want it in the house dead. The panel, in a session filled with quips and funny comments that included questioning what the husband might do with his wife when she died if he was willing to stuff his dog, decided that the whole idea of keeping the stuffed dog around, particularly in the designated "shrine area" was utterly creepy and he shouldn't do it. Pappa then rendered his decision to the couple, who were shown "live" in their home in front of the "shrine" with the stuffed dog enshrined (and looking worse than the first time we saw it in the video presentation of the family problem). Pappa said that the man could keep his dog but had to put it in the "open air attic," where part of the episode was shot.

The second problem was a man from Atlanta who wanted to put a stripper pole in the family bedroom for his wife to "work" on. His wife, who wasn't exactly stripper material in the weight department (a little heavy thanks to giving birth to at least two kids) told him that there was no way in Hell that that was going to be in her bedroom. In the course of the presentation and analysis of the problem by the panel, we learned that the man had bought his wife something like 60 thongs, and that working a stripper pole can burn about 200 calories, and is considered good exercise. In fact the husband in this case went from saying that they could put the pole in the garage and tell people that it was a fishing pole (what kind of fish does this guy go out for!) to saying that it wasn't a stripper pole, it was an exercise pole. Alec Baldwin pointed out that even if they did put the pole in the bedroom, she'd never be happy using it and that who wanted to be danced for by an angry resentful and disinterested stripper. Kelly thought that it was just plain creepy, but Jerry Seinfeld thought it was a great idea. When Pappa rendered his decision he told the man that he couldn't have his stripper pole.

The Marriage Ref is a rather obvious satire of the pretentious nature of a lot of afternoon talk shows, in particular Dr. Phil's show. Viewed in that way I think that it works well enough, but I can think of better ways to work something like that. I don't think that the show was entirely without merit. There were some very funny moments, but several of those came from the "civilians" rather than the celebrity panellists. Selection of "problems" for this series has to be key. It stops being valid if there is even a hint that the problems are really big enough to cause these people to come anywhere close to divorce or any real emotional distress. Fighting over whether or not to put up a stripper pole hardly qualifies. That said, I think that the premise is rather thin and the longer you string it out, either in episode length or in the number of episodes in an order the more threadbare it's going to appear. I think that the premise would work brilliantly as an entirely scripted regular segment on a show like Saturday Night Live. As it was presented on Sunday night, with two problems in one half hour it works adequately. One couple in a half hour episode would have spent too much time on either of the problems that these people had. Basically the problems should have been "no-brainers" for anyone anyway. My opinion is that taking this show to an hour format, whether they look at four problems or even three problems is stretching things to the breaking point, though I can see people getting bored with it at that length. If they are foolish enough to try to do just two problems in an hour, well they'll soon discover that some things just won't stretch that far. NBC should keep this show at a half hour, find something else to fill the other half of the old Leno slot on Thursday nights and hope and pray that it gets an audience. I just don't think that an hour of this is going to fly; a half-hour was testing my patience.

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.