I Like To Watch's topics - tribe.net

Capt Kirk meets Capt Archer!

2008-03-05T19:08:54Z

So how about that Scott Bakula on this week's episode of Boston Legal? I still say that sort of casting makes Boston Legal look like a Star Trek reunion show.

posted in I Like To Watch - 1 reply

Dick Tracy, Pussy from the Sopranos and Kim Basinger

2007-12-28T17:33:00Z

A week or so ago, I had this dream where I was in a car with Dick Tracy, Pussy from the Sopranos and Kim Basinger. Apparently, Dick Tracy was giving me a ride home while I was in the back seat drawing comics as Kim Basinger sat to my right. Plus Dick Tracy wasn't cartoon-looking. He was an actual person who looked a lot more like Dick Tracy than Warren Beatty. Dick Tracy and Pussy were talking about something or other that I don't recall, but I do remember seeing Kim Basinger looking somewhat uncomfortable. Soon she decided to get into the front seat with Dick Tracy and Pussy. I suspect it was because she wasn't impressed with my art.

posted in I Like To Watch - 4 replies

Writers strike

2007-11-06T14:42:25Z

Are TV and movie producers going to hire scabs during the screenwriters strike? If so, I'd like to write for Stargate Atlantis. If I wrote for that show, I'd have the Replicators rapidly defeat the Wraith, then the Atlantis team would defeat the Replicators. Then everybody would live happily ever after. On second thought, maybe not.

posted in I Like To Watch - 2 replies

Heroes Is Back

2007-10-29T13:40:49Z

Holy socks -- last night's episode was good -- Hiro's fateful confrontation, Petrelli in action mode, and to top it all off, Claire's grisly experiment.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the runaway Latino twins -- I wish the one would stop whining already, but I liked the goopy eye effects.

Did you guys catch this? Wow!

posted in I Like To Watch - 7 replies

Journeyman

2007-10-23T13:43:11Z

There's got to be more to Journeyman than just being a Quantum Leap ripoff. Otherwise, I may have to stop watching the show.

posted in I Like To Watch - 0 replies

This Just In

2007-10-22T13:32:22Z

Does anybody remember that cartoon on Spike TV called This Just In? It's about a conservative blogger guy who writes politcal columns while hanging out with his buddies at his favorite bar. From my view, this character is definitely extreme. In one episode, he calls for fund raiser for the war in Iraq despite the fact that the U.S. military budget is much larger than any other military budget on Earth. In another episode, it's revealed that G.W. Bush is a top-notch intellect and is only pretending to be a class A-1 moron. I guess I can say that I'm glad that toon is no longer on the air.At the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if a similar toon hit the scene.

posted in I Like To Watch - 0 replies

Smartest Character on Television??

2007-09-30T17:06:12Z

... there have always been "brainy" characters on various shows - who're some of the smartest, in your opinion?

Currently, I'm watching shows like Numb3rs, Bones, and Criminal Minds - all of which have a REALLY brainy character... hard to say exactly who's the smartest - but they're all strong nominees.

(Of course, we're going to dis-allow "devine" characters like "God" in Joan of Arcadia)

posted in I Like To Watch - 16 replies

New Favs and Returning Shows

2007-09-30T06:26:15Z

I'm really enjoying Torchwood. BBC America is showing it back-to-back with the 2nd season of the reboot of Dr. Who. I really love the writing and the cast. A scifi geek's wet dream.

I've missed quite a bit of "premiere week". I just zoned it out. The season opener of CSI was pretty compelling, a real nail-biter. I hate to say part of me didn't want Sara to survive. Love Jorga Fox, but hate office romances.

What are you watching?

posted in I Like To Watch - 1 reply

What I Watched on My Summer Vacation.

2007-09-30T00:38:37Z

On my summer vacation I watched way too much BBC America, IFC, and Sundance.

I became a real fan of BBC America this year with Jekyll, Hex, Murphy's Law, and The Innocence Project. The star Lloyd Owen is in the new series Viva Laughlin.

I really dug IFC's documentary miniseries Indie Sex. Saw Cronenberg's Crash way too many times.

Plus I loved loved loved Burn Notice on USA. Sorry for the misspelling in the earlier post. Great cast -- c'mon folks-- Bruce Campbell.

Rounded up with The D List, Rescue Me, The Closer, and Saving Grace. I liked Saving Grace better than I thought I would.

Yeah I'm not a hot and humid type lol.

posted in I Like To Watch - 0 replies

Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme, beauty and the geek

2007-09-21T15:56:04Z

My wish came true! They finally put presented a male beauty and a female geek. Anybody else see that?

posted in I Like To Watch - 2 replies

Propmaker from Star Trek movies...

2007-07-27T18:38:44Z

Dear Prop Friends,
There seems to be a big lost of interest in prop collecting.
Is it a trend or just a summer slump (but it seems deeper than years past)??
So if you will, tell me of any prop you're looking for and would buy in a heart beat, features and price.
Or tell me how your interests have changed and to what.
I hope to keep on making props and models but it is becoming hard to do so.
Your response will be a big help.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Richard Coyle
www.racprops.com

posted in I Like To Watch - 0 replies

What are you looking forward to?

2007-07-26T14:07:03Z

Venture Bros. Season 3 (Adult Swim)
Jeckyll (BBC America)
Torchwood (BBC America)
Heroes (NBC) -- Who's alive? Who's dead? Want to see more Christopher Eccleston and George Takei.
Ugly Betty (ABC) -- Did Santos (Hilda's boyfriend die?)
Battlestar Galactica (Scifi) -- Is Starbuck really alive? Is she a Cylon? Are any of those revealed as Cylons in the Season Finale really Cylons or are they frakking with our heads?
Law & Order: CI (USA) Will Vince Dinofrio be back? All season they set him up for some kind of a breakdown. In the last ep mom dies and it looks like his biological dad was a serial killer. That's enough to unhinge the shaky detective.

What are you yearning for (TV-wise, you geeks)?

posted in I Like To Watch - 14 replies

Current fav summer shows

2007-07-19T09:52:54Z

What are yours?

Burn Notice (USA)
Murphy's Law (BBC America)
Dr. Who (Scifi)
Footballers Wives (BBC America) a bad wicked guilty pleasure
Hex (BBC America)
Rescue Me (FX)
The Closer (TNT)
Life on the D List (Bravo) I wasn't initially really big on this, but the arc on her family issues and perfoming in prison really put a new spin on things. Love her or hate her KG's a really hard worker...

Not so much --
Hey Paula
Reality "talent" or competive programs -- I just want Project Runway back...

posted in I Like To Watch - 2 replies

Burnt Notice -- USA

2007-07-18T05:22:53Z

Good writing -- snappy action comedy.

Great actors Jeffrey Donovan (incredible in Touching Evil), and the god of all good things Bruce Campbell. Plus Sharon Gless and a pretty smoking Gabrielle Anwar.

Love the voiceovers, by Donovan a callback to film noir. He's pretty steely, but every once in a while slight emotion breaks out.

Plots are a little creaky, but the acting makes up for it. Hopefully they won't go the Monk route and replace "character" instead if really trying to have a cohesive plot. Love Tony, but the show's a bore.

posted in I Like To Watch - 0 replies

Post Heroes Crisis

2007-05-30T18:12:13Z

Gah! I didn't know what to do with myself last night -- NO HEROES!

I had to take a walk around the not-so-safe streets of my way uptown neighborhood.

What are you watching now that Heroes is gone?

posted in I Like To Watch - 13 replies

Are Geico's cavemen ready for prime time?

2007-03-12T18:16:47Z

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/AreGeicoCavemenReadyForPrimeTime.aspx?GT1=9215&wa=wsignin1.0

Marketers who once would have been thrilled to place a product in a movie or TV show now want to inspire entertainment programming that reminds viewers of a brand.

By The Wall Street Journal

Is finding a way for marketers to beat commercial-zapping DVRs and helping networks to cure the distressed state of TV comedy so simple that a caveman could do it?

ABC's decision last week to greenlight a half-hour pilot program based on Geico's popular cavemen characters highlights the blurring line between advertising and entertainment, as well as the trouble the network has had in launching successful sitcoms.

Although the project is at a nascent stage -- there's no script and no cast -- plans call for the comedy to be titled "Cavemen" and focus on a trio of prehistoric characters who battle prejudice in modern-day Atlanta. Walt Disney's (DIS, news, msgs) ABC will pay for the pilot and show, if one eventually materializes. Geico, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, news, msgs), will have no creative control but will receive a royalty payment for the use of the characters.

"We sell car insurance; we don't make TV shows," says Ted Ward, Geico's vice president of marketing. "We are excited to have an opportunity to do brand extension."

While marketers have long depended heavily on so-called product placement, in which products are written into the story line of a show, some are now going even further by creating entertainment programming that subtly reminds viewers of a brand name.

"It's about delivering to them something they want to see and not interrupting them," says Doug Scott, the executive director of branded content and entertainment at Ogilvy & Mather North America. In many ways, the trend harkens back to early TV, when shows such as "The Colgate Comedy Hour" were produced or sponsored by advertisers.

One of the most aggressive has been Burger King Holdings (BKC, news, msgs). The chain has focused over the last year on lifting the profile of its "king" mascot, a mute character best known for his creepy smile. The burger baron recently starred in a series of video games, and the company says it has lined up a studio and distributor for a feature film.

Russ Klein, Burger King's president of global marketing strategy, won't reveal the studio's identity or the likely plot. But he says the movie could appear as early as the end of this year, with the film aimed at "creating a back story for the king."

Geico introduced the cavemen characters three years ago, initially in an ad promoting Geico's Web site that used the slogan "It's so easy to use Geico.com, even a caveman could do it." The ad became popular and a series of sequels followed, mostly centered on the idea of cavemen being offended by the insensitive slogan of the first commercial.

The characters have achieved celebrity status, thanks, in part, to Geico's enormous ad budget. The insurer spent an estimated $403 million on ad time and space in 2005, according to TNS Media Intelligence, an amount expected to be up 20% last year although final data aren't available.

Geico receives hundreds of letters and e-mails about the characters, and fans at college sporting events have been known to hold up signs that say "Beating (team name) is so easy, even a caveman can do it."

More recently, the cavemen have been showing up outside ads. An actor dressed as a caveman showed up at the Academy Awards and attended an after-Oscars bash.

Last month, a caveman played a round of golf with football analyst Phil Simms during his Super Bowl pregame show on CBS Corp.'s (CBS, news, msgs) network. The five segments totaled about three minutes. The deal was part of an ad package that Horizon Media, Geico's media-buying firm, cooked up with CBS that included running cavemen ads during the network's hours-long run-up to the National Football League championship.

These appearances were part of a strategy by Geico and the ad agency that crafted the cavemen spots, Interpublic Group's (IPG, news, msgs) Martin Agency, to move the character beyond commercials. Like many other marketers, the insurer recognizes that the deluge of ads on television -- and digital video recorders that allow viewers to skip commercials -- means traditional ads aren't as effective as in the past.

"As a marketer, you have to look for new and unusual ways to get your brand out there because of large amount of messaging clutter and media fragmentation," says Geico's Ward.

The initiative for the cavemen pilot came from Joe Lawson, the writer behind the cavemen commercials and a Martin Agency employee, who decided in late fall to pursue a TV show. With Geico's approval, the ad firm hired entertainment services agency Management 360 to shop the idea to networks.

Although reaction was mixed -- NBC, for instance, says it passed -- the concept allowed ABC a chance to address a set of persistent challenges. While achieving enormous success with the dramas "Grey's Anatomy" and "Desperate Housewives," the network has for years failed to launch a successful sitcom. In "Cavemen," executives saw a funny idea with a built-in marketing hook.

A spokeswoman for the ABC Television Studio, which will produce the pilot, said no executive would speak about the project because "it's way too premature to comment." She cautioned that there is no guarantee "Cavemen" will result in a prime-time show. ABC has ordered 15 other comedy pilots for the 2007-08 television season and will likely OK fewer than five for full-fledged series production.

Much remains uncertain. It isn't clear whether ABC would use the three little-known actors who have starred in the ads. The three are identified by a person close to the agency as Jeff Daniel Phillips, Ben Weber and John Lehr. It's also not clear whether Geico would continue to use the cavemen ads if the series was to get off the ground, although ABC would see that as a positive, according to a person familiar with the network's thinking, as the ads would help promote the show.

The road to Hollywood isn't without potholes for advertisers. CBS in 2002 tried building a sitcom around a talking baby popularized in a commercial for an Internet company. "Baby Bob" lasted only five months.

Hal Ackerman, a UCLA professor who has taught dozens of successful Hollywood writers, shares trade secrets with an interviewer from Expanded Books.
Still, some ad characters have had some success. The California Raisins, which appeared in ads for the California Raisin Advisory Board, were a pop-culture hit in the 1980s. The clay-animated figures, best known for an ad where they sing and dance to "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," starred in a TV special and had a short-lived cartoon series on CBS.

If the cavemen series does make it to air, it will leave in the dust Geico's famed green gecko, which is in many ways more popular than the cavemen but has no spinoff in the works. Says Geico's Ward: "Evidently, the gecko doesn't have the right agent."

This article was reported and written by Brooks Barnes and Suzanne Vranica for The Wall Street Journal.

posted in I Like To Watch - 8 replies

We Could Watch Heroes...

2007-03-09T03:34:53Z

Wasn't last night's episode great? What amazes me about Heroes is that for a prime-time network tv show, it just keeps plowing full steam ahead, relentlessly adding new characters and subplots with apparently little concern for confusing new viewers or conforming to the "Everything right back where it started" formula of most tv shows.

Who is Claire's real father? And was that George Takai as Hiro's father?! Holy socks!

posted in I Like To Watch - 14 replies

Favorite Show Chronology

2007-02-26T17:39:24Z

Beverly Hillbillies
Star Trek
Laugh In
Johhny Cash
All In The Family
Mary Tyler Moore
The Bob Newhart Show
Jeffersons
Monty Python
Taxi
Saturday Night Live
SCTV
Simpsons
Newhart
Star Trek: DS9 and The Next Generation
Get a Life
Futurama
King Of The Hill
The Tick
Duckman
King of Queens

posted in I Like To Watch - 28 replies

Birch Barlow, Juidith Barlow: Related?!

2007-02-22T15:54:51Z

There was a recent Law & Order epsidoe that featured an arch-conservative Ann Coulter-like woman named Judith Barlow. As many of us know, there's an episodoe of the Simpsons that features an arch-conservative Rush Limbaugh-like man named Birch Barlow. Now the question of the moment: Is it a coincidence that they have the same last name, or is Judith Barlow a somewhat subtle homage to The Simpsons?

posted in I Like To Watch - 2 replies

Extras

2007-02-07T19:16:16Z

Has anyone seen this Ricky Gervais cable show? I've caught it about 3 times now and every episode is hilarious and filled with huge stars doing very funny self-parody.
Totally reccommended.

posted in I Like To Watch - 7 replies

music videos

2006-12-30T11:53:09Z

hey freaks,

I been playing with editing some music videos.

Check out a painting gallery here:
www.dailymotion.com/gamatron...g-gallery
or a train ride around Paris with Django Reinhardt here:
www.dailymotion.com/gamatron...is-subway
And for some wise words from Queens of the Stone Age, look here:
www.dailymotion.com/gamatron...one-knows

for you psy freaks out there:
you can check out a party in the woods, with a tune from the all mighty derango here:
www.dailymotion.com/gamatron...w-analize
for cows and horses from the Brabran lake grooving to Alrune (Aarhus super DJ), check out Saffi, here:
www.dailymotion.com/gamatron...n2b_saffi

For other stuff, check the gamatron's videos.

Those videos are just a begining, so stay tune for more insanity to come.
Also, if any of you psy or other music freaks have requests, ideas, or tunes you'd like to video up, contact me and lets chat about it;)

and happy 2007;)

posted in I Like To Watch - 1 reply

That Girl

2006-12-24T15:19:10Z

I saw some of the That Girl marathon on TVland, and I was kind of surprised at what I saw. You see, I haven't seen the show since the early 1970s. And since it was that long ago, I barely remember a thing about the show except that I watched it all the time. I was really surprised to see that Regis from Regis and Kelly was on the show. If only I had paid more attention when I was a kid.

posted in I Like To Watch - 9 replies

Video Killed The Radio Star

2006-12-24T14:56:15Z

Ah...the bygone days of the music video...If video killed the radio star, who killed the video star? Anyway, what's your favorite video? I think mine have to be "Take On Me" by A-Ha or "Night of the Living Baseheads" by Public Enemy. All of Bjork's videos are awesome, Bachelorette in particular...

posted in I Like To Watch - 11 replies

The Lost Room

2006-12-14T08:05:27Z

Really enjoying this SciFi Channel miniseries. Part 1 repeats tonight before part 2. It's a really cool idea, it's well-executed and very entertaining, plus stars Peter Krause from "Six Feet Under." Check it out while it's on!

I can't wait to see the explanation of the weirdness behind the "items."

posted in I Like To Watch - 5 replies

southpark

2006-12-14T01:29:38Z

yeah it's been around for awhile but it does make me laugh so that's why I watch it.
anyone else here enjoy it?

posted in I Like To Watch - 5 replies

"Studio 60" no more

2006-12-13T21:19:09Z

I did it last night.

I broke the "Studio 60" habit. That show was going nowhere fast, and I couldn't force myself watch another ep.

Word is that it's only going to last one season anyway.

posted in I Like To Watch - 10 replies

Funniest moment?

2006-12-13T20:02:54Z

What's the funniest thing you've ever seen on television?

posted in I Like To Watch - 31 replies

Day Break

2006-12-13T00:50:30Z

Did anybody see Day Break? Aw man, that show was pretty dang good! Yeah, I know time loop stories have been done a lot. But I think it works in this case.

posted in I Like To Watch - 1 reply

dexter

2006-12-09T08:29:25Z

only tv show I"m hooked on these days..showtime...sundays..at 10pm...two more episodes. Got to love Michael Hall

posted in I Like To Watch - 3 replies

Seinfeld: the Lost Episode

2006-12-02T09:59:42Z

That crazy Kramer!

http://tinyurl.com/yde7w5

(Warning: filled with layers of gooey wrongness.)

posted in I Like To Watch - 0 replies

The Greatest American Hero

2006-11-27T15:26:45Z

The Greatest American Hero: Seasons 1, 2 & 3
Cast: William Katt, Robert Culp, Connie Sellecca , Michael Paré Faye Grant
(ABC, 1981-1983)
US release date: 6 October 2006 (Anchor Bay Entertainment)
by Brian Holcomb

The Red Jammies

Returning to a show you watched during your childhood can be a disappointing experience. On the one hand, nostalgia can make the program appear better than it is, clouding actual critical judgment. On the other, the show’s flaws may be revealed to be as clear as day and a small part of the romance of the past can be destroyed forever. So, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that as an eight-year-old in 1981, I did in fact own the Joey Scarbury 45 of this progra< ?Thriller?. of release the until so remain would and album favorite new my as Man? ?Rocket John?s Elton featuring LP themed Sci-Fi a replaced quickly This Not?. or it ?

I sincerely hope that my taste has improved since that time. In those days, any program that featured spaceships or robots, raiders of lost arks, bionics, incredible hulks, ninjas, tales of golden monkeys, Lee Majors, Bruce Lee ,or Gil Gerard would catch my interest. I even felt sad the day ABC cancelled Manimal. Looking back, the ‘80s was clearly a golden age for adventure fantasy television as I can remember going from The Amazing Spider-Man to Buck Rogers to The A-Team to Knight Rider until Miami Vice and Moonlighting finally made me grow up. Not much.

Some things get lost in the haze of memory. I still half remember / believe I saw Captain Stuebing and the passengers of The Love Boat dock at “Fantasy Island” only to have their fantasies turned to nightmares by the devil played by Roddy McDowell. I also sincerely wanted to believe that the obviously Asian double in the ninja outfit was really “The Master” himself, Lee Van Cleef. This willingness to believe, so important for any fiction to function, is of primary importance to the fantasy genre.

This must’ve been on the mind of the very dedicated looking, bearded fella who seemed to appear at the end of so many of my favorite shows. He always sat at his office desk banging at the keys of an IBM Selectric typewriter before quickly tearing the paper out with intense determination. Now, this wasn’t the familiar MGM big cat meowing, or that bemused dog being told to “Sit, Ubu, sit”. This was just some guy in a cramped office who had just finished writing a hit show and seemed ready to start another one immediately. The sheet of paper flew towards the screen and we could read the name: Stephen J. Cannell. Now, if John Hughes was the king of ‘80s teen comedies, than Stephen Cannell must’ve been the king of the high concept television adventure fantasy. Here a list of just some of his hit shows :The Rockford Files, The A-Team, Riptide, Hunter, 21 Jump Street, The Commish, and Wiseguy. Cannell was kind of the pulp counterpart to Steven Bochco, carving his own niche out of wisecracking heroes and villains and well-constructed plots.
In 1981, he decided to put a twist on the comic book superhero. For those of you who missed it, The Greatest American Hero featured the adventures of high school teacher Ralph Hinkley (William Katt) whose busload of “Blackboard Jungle” students breaks down returning from a field trip. While looking for assistance on the long, empty night road, he has a close encounter with aliens who present him with a superhero suit that gives him all kinds of superpowers—superpowers he has to learn about through trial and error when he loses the instruction manual. With the grouchy help of FBI agent Bill Maxwell (Robert Culp) and his own girlfriend, attorney Pam Davidson (Connie Sellecca), Hinkley tries to deal with the weight of the responsibility he’s been given.

Having just suffered through a few episodes of TVLAND’s recent A-Team marathon, I was very apprehensive to return to a program I felt would be revealed to be nothing more than another juvenile adventure. No wonder my father hated The A-Team: seen as an adult, it’s really a very silly show that wastes a great musical theme by Mike Post.

I shouldn’t have worried because The Greatest American Hero holds up very well on its own merits and is actually wittier than I understood it to be at the time. There’s still too much slapstick involving Hinkley’s clumsiness in flying and landing, but aside from this, the show is remarkably adult and even somewhat political. For one thing, back in ‘81, I took the bantering between Maxwell and Hinkley as just some kind of Abbott and Costello routine. Maxwell seemed to be in a bad mood most of the time, telling Hinkley to get into his “red jammies” to save the world. What I missed was the fact that FBI man Maxwell was clearly a Reagan era conservative and with Hinkley presented as an idealistic liberal, the aliens clearly had something more in mind when they made the two of them work together. And within this context, maybe these “jammies” had to be red.

The Emmy nominated two hour pilot is a fantastic start to the series, focusing tightly on the relationships between the bickering characters and walking a very fine line between the absurd situation and a reasonably realistic world. Although armed with a magical suit which gives him untold powers, Hinkley still has to deal with his daily life as a single father trying to keep custody of his son. A situation the suit makes more complex, not easier. At first, Maxwell himself wants nothing to do with the alien mission, fearing a future in a white padded cell for both of them. But he quickly warms up to the idea that the suit could be the greatest secret weapon for the US since the atomic bomb or the “Star Wars” defense system. In a Dr. Strangelove-like monologue, Maxwell envisions a future in which the US could become a true super powered superpower by mass producing the suit and thus ending the cold war. His only fear is that Hinkley is too much of a peacenik to get his cape dirty in order to achieve a greater good.

Season one is still the best, even though it’s also the shortest. As a mid-season replacement, the show had to be produced quickly and yet the mix of tones and styles was more controlled and confident here than in Seasons two or three, when things started to come unglued.

In one of the DVD interview extras, Cannell explained that the original idea was to avoid the “saving the world” plot that was expected whenever a guy flew around in tights, and focus more on the character humor within the clash between the ridiculous and the everyday. This plan was compromised when the network underwent a regime change. The new regime demanded more conventional “superhero” plots, resulting in episodes involving nuclear destruction and even a genetically altered Nazi monster. Now, the show was never exactly “serious”, but there is a real difference between the kind of crime you might read about in the newspaper and the literally monstrous results of Nazi science. In many ways, these adventure fantasies always seem to jump this particular shark. I can still remember when The Six Million Dollar Man moved from fighting spies and criminals to battling it out with Bigfoot. Not exactly a red letter day for Bionics. Or even Bigfoot.
William Katt is still very likable and charismatic in the lead role, erasing all memories of his bouncing blonde afro in the slow motion climax of “Carrie”. Like his character, Ralph Hinkley, Katt was given a large responsibility to shoulder. Many actors before and since have lost the battle of the superhero tights, but Katt succeeds by playing the role honestly, with humor while avoiding parody. You care about Hinkley and the show would not have worked otherwise.

Robert Culp has long been underrated as an actor, writer and director. But I Spy, Hickey and Boggs, and A Name for Evil were all quite memorable and in the case of the globe trotting location filming of I Spy, actually innovative. It’s clear that his casting in The Greatest American Hero is meant to capitalize on his I Spy persona to a certain extent, but Culp doesn’t lean on it, instead making Maxwell his own man.

As Pam, Connie Sellecca completes this triangle of bantering protagonists and she is very much an important part of the series. It is the witty interaction and fast one liners fired among these three that is the heart of the program. Pam stands by Ralph’s more peaceful plans for the suit and will not allow Maxwell to reduce her to a “third-string backup” in order to catch some Commies. A second season pregnancy caused Sellecca to miss several episodes and the difference is noticeable. The show needed her presence to keep the engine running.

Michael Paré and Faye Grant round out the main cast with Joe Mantegna, Markie Post, Bob Saget, Rick Dees, June Lockhart, David Paymer, Barbara Hale(Katt’s real life mother), André The Giant, Dixie Carter, Don Drysdale and many other familiar faces appearing throughout the series run.

Anchor Bay has released all three seasons to DVD in a single box set of 13 discs which retails in a special tin box containing quite a few goodies for the collector. You get an honest to goodness full sized cape, a replica of the lost instruction manual, and, believe it or not, an iron-on decal of the alien superhero insignia. The DVD extras include over two hours of interviews with the cast and creators, a downloadable script for the episode, “The Two-Hundred Mile An Hour Fastball”, the usual photo galleries and the not-so-usual unaired pilot for the spin-off series The Greatest American Heroine. This curio is no lost gem, and proves that high concepts are nothing without the right execution.
The Greatest American Hero has it’s own flaws to be sure, but in many ways they just add to the charm. The special effects are, of course, incredibly dated and the overuse of post production overdubs are extremely silly. I can’t count how many moments a line of dialogue had been dubbed over the action in order to make sure that the lowest common denominator could follow the story. But this was the ‘80s, a decade when television and movies were ruled by the lowest common denominator and the tyranny of the high concept, in which a story would be celebrated for it’s shallowness and sound bite salesmanship. The show fails on those counts the same way many programs from that decade fail. It succeeds for all the reasons programs have always succeeded: good characters and well cast performers.

As a side note, it’s interesting that, all these years later, the theme song would have enough cultural relevance for Michael Moore to score George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” landing to the newly relevant lyrics:
“Look what’s happened to me-eee, I can’t believe it myself.
Suddenly I’m on top of the world, should’ve been somebody else...”

Maybe Maxwell told him to put on the red jammies.
http://www.popmatters.com/

posted in I Like To Watch - 0 replies

I Like To Watch: Winners and Losers

2006-11-20T14:55:39Z

I Like to Watch

The born losers of "Lost" and the born winners of "The OC" prove that victory is just another word for nothing left to lose.

By Heather Havrilesky

Nov. 19, 2006 | Americans savor the mythology of winners and losers. We love to declare people winners, then lament their fall to loser status, then pick them up and dust them off and call them winners again.

As long as someone falls in the "winner" category, we embrace them unconditionally, set them high on a pedestal, create a rich fable out of their rise to victory and celebrate their shortcomings as if they're strengths. But the second a winner's popularity slides, either on the retail shelves or in the theaters or in the polls or in the media, we shake our heads in faux-sympathy and then outline why their decline into loserdom was inevitable: Mistakes were made. Tragic flaws were there all along, poised to ruin everything. A taste for junk food or loose women is enough to knock a natural-born winner into the loserly gutter; a streak of luck or a bestseller is enough to bestow a coke-addled moron or an angry sociopath with endless praise and accolades. We gladly rewrite history over and over again, depending on whether a person is winning or losing at the moment.

The oppressive importance of winning is the root cause of the disingenuous nature of our culture. Whether you're winning or losing, it's crucial that you give the world the impression that you're winning, and winning big. When those in the spotlight -- politicians, musicians, actors, business leaders -- hint at the slightest weakness, the masses react with confusion and dismay. "Does this mean he/she is a loser?" we ask each other, befuddled. Stock prices fall, records don't sell, "industry insiders" hint that careers are being mismanaged.

Honesty is the worst policy

Consider the most brutally honest public figure of the last 30 years: Jimmy Carter. Every time Carter opened his mouth and spoke the truth, the media declared him an unabashed loser. How fitting that he would lose to Ronald Reagan, the most transparently full-of-shit president in modern history and, not coincidentally, the president most universally embraced by a culture that begs to be spoon-fed sugary lies. Reagan knew how to tell Americans what they wanted to hear: "We're winners, we're winning! If we keep stockpiling nukes, we'll be winners forever and ever!" Yes, every mushroom cloud has a silver lining.

But when you've told the world that you're winning and you're a winner and everything is going according to plan, over and over again, and obviously everything is going to hell in a hand basket, eventually the public is going to catch on. That's when you have to take drastic measures, usually by blaming your losses on outside parties, then distancing yourself from those losers.

Recently, a herd of deadbeats got the boot: Britney dumped K-Fed, Reese Witherspoon dumped Ryan Phillippe, Bush dumped Rumsfeld, and the country dumped the Republican majority in the House and the Senate. These rude dismissals afforded the involved parties an opportunity to redefine themselves as winners: Britney is clearly headed for a post-Federline makeover and an upsurge in popularity, Bush is likely to sell us on a "humbled" version of himself, and Democrats are sure to trumpet their new, aggressive reimagineering of the country. Winners once more! Winners all around!

Our popularity depends on our ability to serve up delusional optimism on command, resulting in a culture of strained smiles and forced cheer. Looking on the bright side, though, this patently fake climate ensures the cultivation of generation after generation of angry, bile-spewing rebels, clutching "Catcher in the Rye" to their chests, hunching their shoulders and gritting their teeth in disgust over the misfortune of growing up in a nation of professional cheerleaders. These misfits may not smell very good, but at least they recognize that the rest of us are patently fake and untrustworthy.

Think win-win

What's particularly nice is that many of these foul-smelling, hunchy-shouldered revolutionaries and suspicious, pissed-off alternative types have grown up and decided to make some money in the patently fake and untrustworthy TV industry. Gone are the grinning geezers that brought us '70s and '80s programming, with its insistence that every story feature at least one clear winner and a big, important, heartwarming moral at the end, replaced by people like Aaron Sorkin and Rob Thomas and J.J. Abrams, people who one suspects spent their formative years shuffling around in Army surplus jackets, pouting and replaying "London Calling" and "I Wanna Be Your Dog" on their walkmen so that everyone would leave them the hell alone once and for all.

Naturally the bed-headed, walkman-wearing demographic has a soft spot for losers and a suspicion toward winners, thus do we find a proliferation of stories on TV about the absurd importance of winning in American culture, and our culture's fickle, skin-deep responses to loss and victory. On NBC's "Friday Night Lights" (8 p.m. Tuesdays), for example, a high-school football coach in a small town in Texas is either reviled or widely embraced by the townspeople, depending on whether the team did well in the last game it played. Even when coach Taylor (Kyle Chandler) is winning, though, the rewards are bittersweet because the same people who praise him were insulting him to his face when he lost the week before.

More important, though, the emotional heart of the show lies with the team's fallen quarterback, Jason Street, a nice-looking, lovable, all-American boy with an adorable cheerleader for a girlfriend. In the pilot episode, Street (Scott Porter) takes a hard tackle during the first game of the season and ends up in a hospital bed, paralyzed from the waist down. Instead of treating us to the "You can do it!" clichés of a million-and-one late '70s and early '80s physical therapy and rehabilitation scenes ("Ice Castles" anyone?), Jason is brutally informed of his limitations day after day. In one particularly harsh scene, Jason and his girl make out, then the nurse comes in and dryly lets Jason know that he can't have sex, because semen could back up into his catheter and cause serious problems. Ah, yes! I'd love to watch footage of the professional cheerleaders of the world visibly flinching through that scene. The born winner's attempt to deal with being transformed into a "loser" -- at least through the lens of our shallow culture -- provides a vivid parable to contrast with the rather arbitrary struggle for victory on the football field.

"Heroes" (9 p.m. Mondays) also toys with our concept of winners and losers, throwing together a ragtag assortment of losers with freakish powers that present themselves first as liabilities. Following the age-old comic book narrative arc, these misfits and outcasts learn to redefine themselves -- and their powers -- as positive, joining forces to save New York City from a nuclear holocaust. Lest you take the swooning comic-book flavor of the show too seriously, the writers offer us a hopelessly kitschy motto for the show's heroes: "Save the cheerleader, save the world." Making one of the show's losers (one that needs saving) a cheerleader is a particularly sly way of turning the American stereotype of winning and losing on its head.

Land of the lost

And then there's ABC's "Lost" (9 p.m. Wednesdays), the show that wallows in the loserly status of its characters more than any other. Through those dreary flashbacks week after week, we learn that each of the lovely, sad characters stranded on that lovely, sad island has an incredibly tragic background, usually due to some major missteps or bad decisions he or she made along the way. Indeed, each time we return to any particular character's story, we learn that he's an even bigger loser than we originally thought he was.

Kate (Evangeline Lilly) didn't just kill her father, she also left her one true love shortly after marrying him. Not only that, she drugged her poor husband before she told him she was leaving -- for his own good, of course, so that he wouldn't lose his job as a cop when he refused to give her up -- which made the whole depressing, pathetic thing all the more depressing and pathetic. Meanwhile, Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) couldn't simply have gotten his priest brother killed. No, he also had to go back to his brother's church, interfere in the situation there, get a random villager killed and eventually ruin the church that his brother had built. Upon returning to his (comparatively) happy existence on the island, Eko scampered through the jungle and was summarily executed by the mysterious big black cloud that we hadn't seen for months.

Did the writers bring the black cloud back, along with the polar bear, simply to save face in light of criticisms that both elements of the island were central to the first few episodes of the show, then disappeared when the writers wandered into the more fruitful and interesting territory of the Dharma Initiative and the Others? Probably. But more important, why kill off Eko? Did they decide to kill him off in the Great Hatch Explosion of Season 2, but then they reconsidered, since, as long as they were executing the guy, they might as well squeeze a little bit more drama and sadness out of his story before they were through?

Sometimes it feels like Sawyer (Josh Holloway) and Kate and Jack (Matthew Fox) aren't the only ones being tortured around here. Remember the occasional hand-holdy, strummy-music scenes at the end of some of the lighter episodes from Seasons 1 and 2? Where have all the flowers gone?

Apparently J.J. Abrams is getting a little bit more involved in "Lost" this season after not really having a hand in things since early in the first season. If that's the case, then it's clear that Abrams has a real hunger for hardship and melancholia, given the way the third season is going so far.

And someone on staff clearly hates Jack's character and wants to make him into the whipping boy for the whole island. Just as Nate of "Six Feet Under," with his whiny, self-involved musings and selfish maneuvers, suffered a slow unraveling and untimely death in the final season of the show, so does Jack seem to be painted in increasingly merciless tones and made to endure exactly those conditions that are the least bearable for a control freak like himself. In addition to being a workaholic who loves/hates his drunky daddy, in addition to being left by his wife out of the blue, we learned this season that Jack became hopeless and angry and obsessive and paranoid in the wake of his wife's departure. Since he blamed his dad for everything crappy in his life, he actually started to suspect that his wife and his dad are having an affair. As if that weren't depressing enough, Jack woke up to the relative peace and comfort of his slimy underground prison cell, only to discover that his singular hope for happiness, his love for Kate, had been snatched out of his hands by that dirty hillbilly Sawyer. This was a torturous twist for tight-assed Jack: Not only did perky Kate not love him, but she was in love with a total loser -- a vastly inferior, unkempt, unpredictable specimen whom no reasonable woman would choose over a winner like Jack. (That's how Jack sees it, anyway.)

Poor Jack. His particular flavor of loserdom is that he overestimates his own control over the world, overestimates his charms, overestimates his logic and his instincts under pressure and vastly underestimates everyone around him. In other words, Jack is the ultimate ugly American. For all of his skills and obvious strengths, he has a superiority complex, a certainty that he deserves to win, without fail, that's destined to keep him angry and lonely and out of touch indefinitely.

And speaking of loserly behavior, didn't you find it a little odd that Kate and Sawyer stripped down and made sweet love in that open, outdoor cage, where Ben and any of the other Others could wander up and witness them in the act? I understand that they're in love (although I didn't really understand that at all until that particular episode) and that they're both exactly the devil-may-care types that would throw caution (and their clothing) to the wind under those circumstances, but since we've been waiting for Kate to bed down with someone, anyone, since the show began, couldn't the writers at least have offered her a firm bed, some nice, clean linens and a sweet-smelling, freshly showered mate? Is it really romantic to tangle with someone who smells like toe cheese? I appreciate the raw impulsiveness of the moment, but my inner professional cheerleader felt queasy over how dry and parched those passionately locked lips must've been, without access to Chapstick for so many long weeks.

But then, if I were a character on "Lost," I'd be the one whose tragedies are utterly trivial, yet who experiences them all as monumentally unbearable. My character would spend her time on the island loudly fretting over the fact that her contact lenses can't be removed and disinfected properly every night, and that the deodorant she found in some dead stranger's carry-on is the non-threatening hippie kind that has patchouli undertones and still doesn't cut the stink in half, not by a long shot. Occasionally, they'd offer a flashback of my character, ruining her marriage by spending most of her so-called date nights with her husband chattering neurotically about whether it's more dangerous to leave the HEPA filter running all day, which must present some kind of a fire hazard, or whether it's more dangerous not to run it constantly and therefore breathe in untold dust and allergens and little particles of that kind of mold that kills you in your sleep. Yes, it's true, Jack: Unnamed tropical islands are no place for the tightly wound.

Orange crushed

But if you think it takes a big, beautiful island in the middle of nowhere to incite an existential crisis of epic proportions, take a gander at the fourth season of Fox's "The OC" (9 p.m. Thursdays). With perpetual-loser Marissa dead and gone after she was killed in a fiery car crash caused by her born-loser boyfriend Volchok, all of the pretty little teenagers are left to grieve, each in his or her own quirky, adorable way.

For Ryan (Benjamin McKenzie), this means getting beat up by big, burly, mean-looking bully types. In the wake of Marissa's death, apparently Ryan moved out of his luxurious digs at the Cohen house and moved into a filthy supply closet in the back of a dive bar, and now he makes pocket money by crawling into a cage and letting big boys pummel him to a bloody pulp. This makes perfect sense, of course: Ryan has always loved being punched in the face, and he's always been suspiciously obsessed with bullies and angry misfits and sociopaths. Remember Luke? Oliver? His creepy older brother who almost brained him with an old-fashioned rotary telephone? Why was Ryan always provoking those guys into manhandling him and calling him their little bitch?

Sadly, instead of hanging out at leather bars frequented by bears (i.e., big, hairy gay men) in assless chaps, Ryan must funnel his latent homosexuality into sublimated "Fight Club"-style bravura. And instead of seeing right through Ryan's Herculean efforts to remain manly, Summer (Rachel Bilson) and Seth (Adam Brody) and the Cohens waste their time pulling together a nifty little slide show that only a preppy white-bread heterosexuals with too much time and money on their hands could love. You know those meticulously edited video odes to the happy couple you see at weddings these days? Basically, Seth and Summer apply their bourgeois logic to the problem of Ryan's self-destruction and spend all night on their little art project, and then they trick Ryan into coming to see it. He just blinks at them, but you can tell that, deep down inside, he's longing with all of his heart to shout at them, "I'm gay, stupid idiots! I'm gay for scruffy-looking drunks and blond meatheads! Are you blind?"

As convincing as Ryan is as a bloodied masochist, though, Summer is equally unconvincing as a student at Brown. We're meant to believe that, in response to her unacknowledged grief over Marissa's death, Summer has been pouring herself into activist causes, emerging as an unshowered, tree-hugging, drum-circle enthusiast with a hippie boyfriend who dresses in clashing Guatemalan garb from head to toe. The whole thing is supposed to be cute and comical, of course, but sadly, general clichés about college hippies (They say spaced-out things! They chain themselves to trees!) aren't all that funny. Plus, it's impossible to buy Summer the Lightweight as a Brown student, let alone a Brown student with a serious interest in global warming and deforestation and so forth. Now, if we saw Summer's boyfriend fixing her a grilled-cheese sandwich on the little hot plate he drags to Dead shows? If he strapped on one of those plastic-looking Ovation guitars and earnestly sang "Tangled Up in Blue" in a gravelly voice? That would be sort of funny. But it still wouldn't be remotely realistic.

The writers of "The OC" have been trying to walk this line for several seasons, and somehow it undercuts the show's (albeit skin-deep) drama more and more each season. There was a time when it worked: The Chrismakkuh episode was, indeed, a classic. Seth's witty banter has always been a welcome addition to the landscape. But please explain this bit of dialogue, between Summer and her dad:

Summer: Are you gonna take that job in Seattle?

Dr. Roberts: Well, the offer came at the perfect time. The hospital is famous for being wonderfully quirky ... It's called Seattle Grace.

Seattle Grace! Get it? Summer's dad is going to work with McDreamy and Meredith and Bailey of ABC's "Grey's Anatomy"! Ha! Ha. Heh. Erm...

Yes, Dr. Roberts actually said, "It's called Seattle Grace." I'm sorry, but it's bad enough to break the fourth wall and refer to another current TV show, compromising the audience's ability to see the characters as actual people (and look, even with a show this bad, we still want to try to suspend our disbelief, if possible), but then to do it with a line of dialogue that leaden and ridiculous and awful? How low can you possibly set the bar?

That said, though, I do love one thing about "The OC": Taylor (Autumn Reeser), the spunky geek. Whether she's primly doling out advice or busting out her fluent Korean or Spanish or French, she's a great character. Too bad they can't kill off everyone in a fiery bus crash, leaving only Taylor, Seth and an out-of-the-closet, masochistic, bear-loving Ryan to survive. Then, abandon the drama completely, or come up with some low-impact, fun stories that place the comedy front and center. In fact, the three of them would be much better off at Seattle Grace -- they could move up there with Dr. Roberts, Seth could use his pesky charms to steal Meredith away from McDreamy, Taylor could get a job as a meddling hospital executive, Ryan could awaken the angry bully/gay man in McSteamy and everyone could enjoy the luxuries of stories that actually go somewhere and dialogue that isn't hopelessly unrealistic.

Aww, but I feel sort of guilty, kicking "The OC" when it's down. Ratings have been abysmal this season, and even though the show's writers have apparently stopped taking their jobs seriously, you can't really blame them for that, can you? This show has always been a kitschy goof-fest, and even though it's not great right now, I'd still be sad to see it go somehow. Can't this loser make a comeback?

Winning beggars can be losers

Why, of course it can! The great thing about America is that almost any loser can become a winner again. One day, you're trashed by the media for being overrated, boring, dumb, anorexic and tedious; the next day, you're starring in your own, brand-new overrated, boring, dumb, tedious TV show. One day, you're considered a total loser, the next day, you're widely adored, even though no one can remember why, even though they have to use wildly imaginative words to describe you, like "Hollywood runaround" and "fire crotch" and "loser." And how do you continue to win? How do you remain in the public eye and continue to get cast in big movies so that you still have the cash to blow at clubs around town? By acting like a total loser, of course.

So there's your sure-fire recipe for success in America: Call yourself a winner, but act like a loser.

Next week: Which loser will win "The Amazing Race"? Why do winners like Caridee from "America's Next Top Model," Ozzy from "Survivor" and Sam Talbot from "Top Chef" always lose reality TV competitions?

-- By Heather Havrilesky
http://www.salon.com/index.html

posted in I Like To Watch - 0 replies

Heroes/X-Men

2006-11-19T13:20:53Z

Not that it's necessarily a rip-off, but doesn 't Heroes sound a lot like the X-Men?

posted in I Like To Watch - 9 replies

Nova: The Family That Walks On All Fours

2006-11-15T16:01:37Z

Okay, so tv isn't all dumb sitcoms and violent cartoons. Last night I saw a great episode of Nova that featured a family in Turkey who walk on all fours like apes! Some scientists think this may be a case of "reverse evolution," others aren't so sure...

It was really excellent, a fascinating look into the evolutionary biology, sociology anthropology and may other ologies. It'll be playing many times during the week, so check it out --
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/allfours/

Anything else on PBS worth watching...?

posted in I Like To Watch - 0 replies

Animated cartoon quality

2006-11-15T00:34:23Z

When I was a kid back in the 1970s, I noticed that older animated cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Popeye were better drawn and better animated than current cartoons like The Superfriends and Scooby Doo. And at the time, I was like, "How can these old-fangled toons be better than the current toons since we supposedly live in a more advanced era than when those old-school toons first came out." Then for years, I came to terms with the notion that newer animated toons may never surpass the quality of their predecessors. But just recenty, I realized that animated cartoons today have equaled and even surpassed the quality of toons like Bugs Bunny and Popeye. I thought back to the early-to-mid 1990s and noticed that a lot of good-quality animated toons had been produced back then. That was around the time that The Little Mermaid debuted as well as The Simpsons, Toy Story and Reboot-- the first all-computer-animated weekly TV series.

With all that being the case, I'm very happy to know that today's toons are getting better, stronger and faster than the toons of previous eras. Today's toons are so well-crafted that even the lousy ones are good. Could this be because there's more use of computers in the animation process? Well whatever the reason, cartoons today are overall better than they were in the age of Bugs Bunny and Popeye. Or at least that's my opinion.

posted in I Like To Watch - 24 replies

YCDTOTV on YOUTube!

2006-11-11T20:06:32Z

Wow! The world's greatest Canadian kids sketch comedy show, entire episodes on YouTube!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HZtyqFj9j-U

Ah, those golden 80's...

posted in I Like To Watch - 0 replies

Battlestar Galactica: Space Balls

2006-11-11T19:13:47Z

Salon can't heap enough praise on Battlestar Galactica, (and I can hardly blame them, it is fantastic,) here's the latest dallop of ass kiss --

Salon: Space balls

While politicians spent a campaign season avoiding the big issues, TV's bravest series has been facing them in thrilling fashion.

By Laura Miller

Nov. 10, 2006 | For the past month, while the national political conversation has concerned itself with racy military thrillers and antique racial slurs, the real issues -- the big, soul-scraping ones -- have been wrestled with in the wasteland of Friday night basic cable programming, on a channel otherwise devoted to no-budget thrillers about killer centipedes.

Surely you've heard by now (because we've certainly repeated it often enough) that "Battlestar Galactica," the new remake of the cheesy '70s series, is the most thrilling and trenchant dramatic series on TV at the moment (except, of course, for "The Wire"). Maybe you still haven't given it a shot because you just can't believe a show set on a spaceship could possibly engage you when you can watch the simpering narcissists of "Grey's Anatomy" instead -- in which case, you are an idiot. But if you've simply not yet gotten around to it, hurry: Rent the DVDs of Seasons 1 and 2 (they're short), and then hasten over to iTunes to catch up on the first handful of episodes for Season 3 because this one is not just about other planets; it's about our own.

The first season of "Battlestar" seemed daring merely for having the remnants of the human race persecuted by a genocidal, sanctimonious and devious enemy, the Cylons, who were not above sending suicide bombers onto the humans' ships. The series' troubled fighter pilot heroine, Starbuck, showed her darkest side when she was put in charge of interrogating a Cylon captive and tortured him without a tinge of conscience. (The Cylons, a kind of robot created by robots that were originally created by humans, are nearly indistinguishable from human beings, even under close scrutiny. The humans' position is that they're "toasters," and homicidal ones at that, but it's not always possible to maintain this position, as the story of the Cylon Sharon has demonstrated.)

At the end of Season 2, however, the show's creators executed a daredevil twist by scooping most of the characters (along with the remaining human population) off their ships and onto a dreary colony on a planet they called New Caprica. At the very end of the season finale, an overwhelming Cylon force descended, marching through the muddy streets of the tent city, and announced that they were taking over. Instead of trying to exterminate humanity, they were going to try to reform it. And the chosen method of reform would be a little thing we call occupation.

The two opening hours of Season 3 were, it must be said, unrelentingly grim. The humans, shivering in damp bulky sweaters and fingerless gloves, had mounted an insurrection. Gaius Baltar, the self-serving scientist and secret Cylon collaborator whom they had rashly elected president, was running a Vichy-like government that had become hopelessly implicated in the Cylon's brutal crackdowns on the rebels. Colonel Tigh, the former executive officer of Galactica, a leader of the resistance, lost his eye while being detained and interrogated, like many others, without charge or due process.

Some colonists, whether out of a misguided attempt to ameliorate the situation or out of bald self-interest, had signed on with the human police force that the Cylons set up to maintain order. They had to keep their identities secret, however, because the insurrection regarded them as collaborators. The Cylons just couldn't understand why the humans wouldn't behave. The humans just wanted the Cylons to go away.

The parallels to current events are obvious, but "Battlestar Galactica" has always kept more than one historical touchstone in play. The early scenes, when Secretary of Education Laura Roslin was sworn in as president because everyone above her in the civilian line of command had been massacred, cited the swearing in of LBJ after the Kennedy assassination. The scene of the shiny, terrifying Cylon centurions (a servant class of robots that actually look like robots) marching down the main road of New Caprica while the devastated colonists looked on was the Nazis marching into Paris.

The really audacious stroke of this season was showing us a story about a suicide bomber from the point of view of the bomber and his comrades -- no, it was more than that, because the cause of this terrorist was unquestioningly our own. We sympathize with the insurgents wholeheartedly. So when Colonel Tigh, a blood 'n' guts military man if there ever was one, insists that suicide bombing is the only way to end the occupation, the show leaves the question of whether he's right up to us. Is it worth it?

The humans in "Battlestar" don't have an overarching religious fanaticism to persuade them that it is. (The Cylons are the messianic monotheists.) So when Baltar confronts former President Roslin in her jail cell about the morality of the suicide bombing, and demands that she look him in the eye and tell him it's the right thing to do, she can't. Every time you start to get all starry-eyed and latch onto Roslin as the second coming of Josiah Bartlet, the show reminds you that it's a whole lot tougher -- on its characters and its viewers -- than "The West Wing" was. "Battlestar Galactica" may be set in outer space, with robots, in the far distant past, but it reminds us every week that the other TV shows are the fantasies. "This," as Roslin tells her stricken assistant in a recent episode, "this is life."

-- By Laura Miller
www.salon.com/ent/tv/revi...r/print.html

posted in I Like To Watch - 0 replies

My Proposed New Reality Show

2006-11-08T20:13:57Z

How about people try to beat a giant hourglass in assembling paperwork, properly coalated, then feed it into a computer printer.
In the time 20 pages print with the latest printing technology, see if the contestants can assemble a new pc or mac with most of the parts put together.
I hear they may have waterproof printing ink soon... :)

posted in I Like To Watch - 5 replies

VH1 & Comedy Central & E

2006-11-08T13:57:04Z

On VH1 I like to watch those I love the 70's, 80's & 90's shows. Comedy Central I like The Daily Show with John Stewart. Conan is ok whatever channel he's on. On E sometimes I enjoy those biographies about stars called "The Fabulous Life of _______________" Total cheese but sometimes I do like to watch that shit.

posted in I Like To Watch - 4 replies

Hi...

2006-11-07T12:21:42Z

Just joined this TV watching tribe here & wanted to say "Howdy" to the folk here.

I've been a TV addict since I was four years old & discovered that if you plug the antenna cable into the electrical outlet - it's a sure fire way to blow out just about every tube in the old tv-sets.

Been "worshipping at the prime time altar" for as long as I can remember... got so much television that I watch that I've got two VCR's hooked in so that I can record two separate shows at the same time while I watch a third on a different network.

I refuse to get cable-tv wired into my bedroom (at this point) because then I'd NEVER get any sleep because I'd find SOMETHING to watch 24 / 7...

I just recently bought a new tv set because the picture tube burned out on my old set... couldn't afford a "flat screen" at this point ... but didn't want to pay too much for something I could only use for another 2 years.

Anyone else annoyed at the idea that we're going to HAVE to get a digital converter box / cable-box / or satellite-feed in order to just watch "broadcast" television in 2009?? ...I think that's just crazy - but ... sigh ...I guess I'll have to deal with that, eh?

How's everyone else doing??

posted in I Like To Watch - 5 replies

PORN

2006-11-06T14:29:39Z

I like to watch porn. Not all the time but sometimes. : )

posted in I Like To Watch - 4 replies

New Shows

2006-11-04T18:22:08Z

Like Allen says, the pilot episode of Heroes left me cold, but I have to admit, with each subsequent episode it's gotten better and better, and is now one of my favorite shows on tv.

There seem to be a lot of sort of "different" format shows on the major networks lately -- Heroes, Ugly Betty, 30 Rock, are you watching any of them?

What's your favorite new show?

posted in I Like To Watch - 5 replies

Television is History

2006-11-03T17:55:35Z

I thought this article brought up some interesting points, in how even the notion of television as culture gets all trashed in our corporatocracy (did i spell that right?).

In my library world, issues of copyright are very touchy. Artists and creators deserve acknowledgement of their contributions to culture but how can we do this without restricting the information itself? Or giving lawyers a cut?

Or as this commenter said: "It is in this way that our world has become unbearably corporatist where those who venture to understand and record our very own history and lives will merely be called "elitest" academics who already find that history has a copywrite. Yes, in the current context of the USA an "elitest" is someone who asks the rich and powerful for the People's own history."

www.alternet.org/columnists/story/43796/

posted in I Like To Watch - 0 replies

30 Rock

2006-11-02T14:41:31Z

You know, I was really resistant to liking this show, after all, it's a behind the scenes comedy about a comedy that hasn't been funny for years (Saturday Night Live), but last night's episode was pretty darn good. Alec Baldwin as the sleazy corporate manager is of course the funniest part of the show, but I also liked the "2 minute dance party", I wish we did that at my office.

posted in I Like To Watch - 1 reply

Alias, Lost & 24

2006-10-27T03:56:36Z

My roommate got me into all of these. I watched all episodes of all seasons of Lost & 24 on dvd. I havent seen any of the last season of 24 till they come out on dvd. I havent seen any of the current season of lost either. I like to wait to watch them on dvd without commercials. I am only on the 8th episode of the first season of Alias. It is the show that the makers of Lost made before they made Lost. I like it alot. I even bought the soundtrack to season 1. It's electonic. Really good. My roommate bought 4 seasons on dvd. He says they just get better & better.

posted in I Like To Watch - 4 replies

I Like to Watch, 10-15-2006

2006-10-25T20:57:00Z

I think our patron saint, Heather Havrilesky is off somewhere having a baby, but here's her last column from Salon...

I Like to Watch
http://www.salon.com/ent/iltw/2006/10/15/model/print.html

The giddily dark "Heroes" soars to new heights, "Studio 60" flounders, and the wonderfully mean "Shark" devours the tiresome "Boston Legal."
By Heather Havrilesky

Oct. 15, 2006 | "Sometimes you just have to model through it." -- Tyra Banks

Brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, colleagues and second cousins and ex-boyfriends, take comfort in these fine words from Mother Tyra, for they shall bring you solace in times of trouble.

Now, some may say, "But dishonorable pastor of watching, how do these words apply to me? I am not a model nor even a particularly attractive human being, so how can 'modeling through it' possibly help?"

Understand, little lambs, that any time one is forced to set aside one's aches and pains and insecurities, to muster all of one's strength and face down the uncertainties of life and battle through it all, that is when one can be said to be "modeling through it." Because, as Mother Tyra knows all too well, as much as we all strive to align our minds, our bodies and our souls, to point our entire being toward all that is good and right, there are those times when the mind and the body and the soul will not cooperate. The body says, "I cannot endure!" and the mind says, "I am weak!" and the soul says, "I want one of those malted-crunch shakes from Carl's Jr.! I know it's disgusting and foul. I want one anyway!"

These are the times when Mother Tyra's words will lift us up. We need not be perfectly in step with our deepest beliefs at all times. No. There are times when we must simply model through it.

Talk the talk, catwalk the walk

Be certain of this: It is a wonderful blessing indeed be able to model through it, my friends! I was reminded of this recently when I found myself indifferent to the latest reality TV offerings. In a moment of weakness, I asked myself, "Am I not a preacher of the healing powers of reality TV? Am I not passionate in my loving embrace of the most trivial and base offerings from the most mediocre minds in television? What has become of my passion, of my faith in the worst televised entertainments known to humankind?"

But even as I deleted "Dancing With the Stars" unwatched, even as I was tempted to fast-forward through the part of "America's Next Top Model" where Anchal, the Indian beauty, hears Melrose, the snippy little anorexic perfectionist, bitching about her almost humanlike tendency to eat normal portions of actual food, I didn't lose hope. I set my teeth and continued to watch as Melrose expressed her desire that Anchal might keep eating like a normal human, because that would surely mean that she would never stand a chance of becoming the sort of emptied-out ghost of a human who deserves to totter down runways in overpriced garments. I folded my hands in my lap and watched as Anchal burst into tears and it suddenly became clear that the model house was divided between nasty soulless girls and humans with actual blood in their veins. In the past, I might've hooted and snickered and offered an elaborate analysis to my poor beleaguered husband about which of the girls were reasonably cool and which girls were gross and which girls were just really, really stupid. But instead, I was unmoved.

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A LAST LOOK AT THE TUBE

2006-10-25T18:36:58Z

And now, for a paranoid view, here's our pagan god, Marshall McLuhan with these obtuse thoughts....

A LAST LOOK AT THE TUBE

Marshall McLuhan

(New York Magazine 17 March 1978)

With TV, Shakespeare's "All the World's a stage" flips into "all the stage is a world", in which there is no audience and everybody has become an actor, or participant.

When one says that "the medium is the message", it is to point out that every medium whatever creates an environment of services and disservices which constitutes the special effect and character of that medium. Tony Schwartz points out that one of the major aspects of the TV image is that it uses the eye as an ear, since it is a resonating audile-tactile form of innumerable gaps that have to be filled in by the viewer:

In watching television, our eyes function like our ears. They never see a picture, just as our ears never hear a word. The eye receives a few dots of light during each successive millisecond, and sends these impulses to the brain.(1)

It is this open-mesh image that is so entirely involving, even to the point of inducing semi-hypnotic trance; and this raises a matter that confuses many people not familiar with the structural character of our sensory experience. It was the symbolists who had stressed the character of the discontinuous as the key to tactility and involvement: their structures were never continuous or connected statements so much as suggestive juxtapositions. As Mallarme put it: "To define is to kill. To suggest is to create." The simultaneous world of electric information is always lacking in visual connectedness and always structured by resonant intervals. The resonant interval, as Heisenberg explains, is the world of touch, so that acoustic space is simultaneously tactile.

Any medium presents a figure whose ground is always hidden, or subliminal. In the case of TV, as of the telephone and radio, the subliminal ground could be called the discarnate or disembodied user. This is to say that when you are "on the telephone", or "on the air", you do not have a physical body. In these media, the sender is sent, and is instantaneously present everywhere. The disembodied user extends to all those who are recipients of electric information. It is these people who constitute the mass audience, because mass is a factor of speed rather than quantity, although popular speech permits the term mass to be used with large publics.

Discarnate man, deprived of his physical body, is also deprived of his relationship to Natural Law and physical law. As a discarnate intelligence, he is as weightless as an astronaut, but able to move very much faster. Minus the physical mesh of Natural Laws, the user of electronic services is largely deprived of his private identity. The TV experience is an inner trip, and is as addictive as many known drugs.The discarnate TV user lives in a world between fantasy and dream, and is in a typically hypnotic state which is the ultimate form and level of participation.

The world of fantasy is an inner world whereas the world of dreams tends toward outer orientation and aspiration and deferred gratification. On the other hand, fantasies are instant and are their own satisfaction. The discarnate TV user, with a strong bias toward fantasy, dispenses with the real world, even in the newscasts. The news automatically becomes the real world for the TV user and is not a substitute for reality, but is itself an immediate reality.

Death on TV is a form of fantasy: On television, violence is virtually the sole cause of death; it is only on soap operas, and then very rarely,that anyone dies of age or disease. But violence performs its death-dealing service quickly, and then the victim is whisked off camera. The connection of death to real people and real feelings is anonymous, clinical, and forgotten in the time it takes to spray on a new and longer-lasting deodorant.(2)

The fantasy violence on TV is a reminder that the violence of the real world is much motivated by people questing for lost identity. Rollo May and others have pointed out that violence in the real world is the mark of those questing for identity. On the frontier everybody is a nobody, and therefore the frontier manifests the patterns of toughness and vigorous action on the part of those trying to find out who they are.

A more characteristic form of identity quest under electric conditions is the universal theme of nostalgia. When our world exists only in fantasy and memory, the natural strategy for identity is nostalgia, so that today revivals occur so frequently that they are now called "recurrences" (in the recording industry).

In his book Do It, Jerry Rubin wrote after the trial:

Television creates myths bigger than reality. Whereas a demo drags on for hours and hours, TV packs all the action into two minutes - a commercial for the revolution. On the television screen, news is not so much reported as created. An event happens when it goes on TV and becomes a myth...Television is a non-verbal instrument, so turn off the sound, since no one ever remembers any words that they hear, the mind being a technicolour movie of images, not words. There's no such thing as bad coverage for a demo. It makes no difference what's said: the pictures are the stories.(3)

The social myth is a kind of mask of one's time, a "put on" which is also a form of body language. It is this body language which relates the TV form of the right hemisphere of the brain and brings us directly into relation to TV politics. Whereas the left hemisphere is sequential and logical, verbally connected and syntactic, the right hemisphere is simultaneous and acoustic, emotional and intuitive. The electric environment tends to give a lot of stress and power to the right hemisphere, just as the old industrial and literate environment had given corresponding dominance to the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere had been favored by the words of literacy, and of market organization with its quantitative goals and specialist structure. These worlds have been increasingly obsolesced by the instant environment and instant replays that enhance the simultaneous character of the right hemisphere.

Electronic or discarnate man is automatically committed to the primacy of the right hemisphere. In political terms the instant mask, a mythic structure, gives sudden prominence to the charismatic image of the political leader. He must evoke nostalgic memories of many figures that have been admired in the past. Policies and parties yield to the magic of the leader's image. The arguments in the Ford/Carter debates were as insignificant as the fact of their party affiliation.

If discarnate man has a very weak awareness of private identity and has been relieved of all commitments to law and morals, he has also moved steadily toward involvement in the occult, on one hand, and loyalty to the superstate as a substitute for the supernatural on the other hand. For discarnate man the only political regime that is reasonable or in touch with him is totalitarian - the state becomes religion. When loyalty to Natural Law declines, the supernatural remains as an anchorage for discarnate man; and the supernatural can even take the form of the sort of megamachines of the state that Mumford talks about as existing in Mesopotamia and Egypt some 5,000 years ago. The megamachines of North America, for example, can take the form of the fifty-three billion dollar ad industry for manipulating our corporate psyches, or they can be the equally vast security systems constituted by what Peter Drucker calls our "pension fund socialism":

Through their pension funds, employees of American business today own at least 25 percent of its equity capital, which is more than enough for control. The pension funds of the self-employed, of the public employees, and of school and college teachers own at least another 10 percent, giving the workers of America ownership of more than one-third of the equity capital of American business.(4)

Meantime, our own megamachine for daily living presents us with the world as "a sum of lifeless artifacts", as Erich Fromm explains:

The world becomes a sum of lifeless artifacts; from synthetic food to synthetic organs, the whole man becomes part of the total machinery that he controls and is simultaneously controlled by. He has no plan, no goal for life, except doing what the logic of technique determines him to do. He aspires to make robots as one of the greatest achievements of his technical mind, and some specialists assure us that the robot will hardly be distinguished from living men. This achievement will not seem so astonishing when man himself is hardly distinguishable from a robot.(5)

When the viewer himself becomes a kind of discarnate information pattern, the saturation of that pattern of an electric environment of similar patterns gives us the world of the contemporary TV user. This is a parallel to the computer - the only technology that lives on, and produces, the same material.
___________________________________________
(1)-Tony Schwarz,"The Responsive Chord"[New York:Anchor Press1973],14
(2)-Frank Mankiewicz and Joel Swerlow,"RemoteControl: Television and the Manipulation of American Life" [New York, Quadrangle/the New York Times Book company,1978,from unrevised galley proofs.
(3)-Jerry Rubin "Do it",as quoted in Malcolm Muggeridge,"Christ and the Media:London Lectures in Contemporary Christianity"[Toronto:Ecclesia Books,Hodder &Stoughton,1977) 67
(4)-Peter Drucker,"The Unseen Revolution"(New York, Harper & Row,1976,1
(5)-Erich Fromm, "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness"[Greenwich:Fawcett 1975]389

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