Category Archives: TV

TV

12 TV Shows…

…That Went On Way Too Long, at least according to Daniel D’Addario for Salon.com:

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/11/12_shows_that_went_on-way-too-long/

One of their top choices -and I don’t think this requires spoilers- is The Simpsons.  Man, do I agree with that choice.  I vividly recall when the show first appeared way, waaaay back in 1989 and being completely entranced by it.  To me it was absolutely must see TV, a show that provided seemingly non-stop laughs.

Then, something happened.

I can’t even put my finger on what exactly what it was but all of a sudden…I had my fill of The Simpsons.  More than my fill.  I haven’t seen an episode of the show -new or otherwise- in more than fifteen years.  Perhaps even as many as twenty years (the show is on its twenty fifth season).

Mind you, at the time I finally dropped the show I don’t think it had changed in any significant way.  The humor remained roughly as before but after five or six seasons of faithful viewing I no longer felt the need to continue doing so.

There are other shows on the list, like The X-Files and The Office, which reached a point they should have ended, particularly when one of the lead actors took off and were replaced by actors audiences didn’t care about quite as much.  There are other shows that have reached the proverbial point where they “jumped the shark” (a reference to a particularly stupid episode of Happy Days which sealed the fate of that show and became a point of reference when TV shows do something so silly or preposterous that a significant chunk of viewers are forever turned off from the series).

Looking beyond this list, let me indicate some shows that probably ended right on time.

My first nominee would be one of my favorite series: The Wild, Wild West.  The show lasted four seasons from 1965 to 1969, the best season of which was probably the very first.  The second and third seasons, however, weren’t all that bad either.  If you’re a fan of the show like me, though, and you bought the four seasons on DVD (I wasn’t around to see it during its first run), you can’t help but notice that the fourth season of the show, despite some good episodes here and there, features a clear drop in quality.  Some of these episodes feature a sloppiness not found in the early seasons, a sense that perhaps the cast and crew were focused on getting these episodes done as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Having said all that, The Wild, Wild West’s last season wasn’t a total disaster, but I suspect if the show had gone on to a fifth season, that may well have been the case.

Another show that ended in the proverbial “nick of time” was the original Star Trek.  Lasting only three seasons between 1966-69, the show was never a ratings darling and it is a wonder it lasted as long as it did before cancellation.  It wouldn’t be until after it was done and in reruns that the show achieved its cult, and then very real, hit status.  In retrospect the first two seasons of the show are considered the best while there is a marked drop in quality with the series’ third season.  But, like The Wild, Wild West, there are some good episodes to be found in that season along with outright clunkers such as Spock’s Brain and Turnabout Intruder.  Had the show continued with a fourth season, I suspect the bad might have started to overtake the good.  Again like The Wild, Wild West, I can’t help but feel that the cast and crew of Star Trek had grown tired of the series and weren’t as dedicated at making each episode as they were earlier on.

Finally, The Prisoner.  Lasting a mere 17 episodes from 1967-68 (one season), this fascinating, mind-bending show was meant to have a conclusion and boy-oh-boy did it ever.  Even in this short episode run, however, there were a couple of “lesser” episodes in the batch and a conclusion some have felt was way over the top.  While I would love to live in an alternative universe where The Prisoner -and, for that matter, Star Trek and The Wild, Wild West– lasted a little bit longer than they did, I also recognize that sometimes you have to appreciate what you have and realize more doesn’t mean better.

Anyway, just my humble opinion…

TV

What in the world..?!

Author Harlan Ellison is set to release his 1966 pitch for a never produced episode of…Batman?!

http://io9.com/harlan-ellison-releases-his-never-produced-1966-batman-1474360216

If you’re at all familiar with author Harlan Ellison, you know he’s a cantankerous yet very gifted author whose two scripts for the original Outer Limits TV show (Soldier and Demon With A Glass Hand) were the inspiration for James Cameron’s The Terminator.

But there’s more!

In  the 1960’s Mr. Ellison worked on several TV series and his perhaps best known work is the script to the classic City on the Edge of Forever for the original Star Trek series.

Changes were made to the script and the end result were bitter feelings between Mr. Ellison and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.  When the original script was eventually published (available here), I eagerly bought and read it and…frankly, I liked the TV episode as aired a little more than the original script.  While the central story was clearly there (and filmed), Mr. Ellison’s script went into some directions that I felt wouldn’t have worked as well.  For example, a crew member dealing drugs is the character who sets the events in motion versus the episode having it be Dr. McCoy (a far better choice). There’s also an extended bit involving a WWI amputee which, while quite interesting on its own, would have taken away the focus on the primary characters.  Finally, the ending in the episode was stronger -and far more emotional- than that of the script, at least in my opinion.

Regardless, I’m intrigued to see the proposed script to the Batman TV show.  I’ll have to put that on my “to get” list.

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Movies, TV

27 Insane (But True) Early Versions of Famous Characters

Fun list from Cracked.com featuring both early concepts and originally considered actors for some truly memorable roles/characters:

http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_591_27-insane-but-true-early-versions-famous-characters_p27/#27

Some of the early actor considerations, like Burt Ward (TV’s Robin) originally considered for the role made famous by Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, was known to me.  But John Travolta for Forrest Gump?  Interesting!  (I’ll repeat for the umpteenth time my favorite bit of original casting: Frank Sinatra as Dirty Harry!  Reportedly a painful finger injury made Mr. Sinatra bow out of the film as he didn’t think he could handle firing that massive 357 Magnum.  The role was offered to many other interesting names with various degrees of interest/disinterest, from Burt Lancaster to John Wayne to Robert Mitchum.  Eventually Clint Eastwood took over the job and Dirty Harry the movie and character arguably became the most famous/iconic role he ever played!)

Also like the revelation that Krusty the Clown was originally supposed to be Homer Simpson himself!  Makes sense as he did originally look an awful lot like Homer and the idea that Homer was secretly the character might have been an interesting concept for a few episodes.

Just goes to show that the creative process is rarely a very direct one.  People can come up with concepts and ideas but they are refined and changed over time and circumstance…sometimes giving far, far better results than were originally conceived!

 

Movies, TV

6 Famous Television Gags…

…we’ll never see again:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-famous-television-gags-well-never-see-again/

Pretty funny stuff…and very truthful.  Time marches on and what was once acceptable or maybe even possible can become obsolete or very politically incorrect.

I recall watching the DVD of John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 a few years back and listening to the director’s commentary.  When we reached this sequence presented in the first minute twenty seconds (which, in the clip below, features another person’s take on the chilling music originally created by Mr. Carpenter):

…Mr. Carpenter noted that the sniper scenes could not be used today as they were a little too strong for the current moral/movie standards.  I suspect this has changed as I recall a similar sniper type sequence in the recently released Tom Cruise film Jack Reacher.

Hmmm…having listened to the “remade” music above, I had to listen to the original from the movie:

This is perhaps my second favorite John Carpenter music theme, coming damn close to the one found on Escape From New York:

Pardon the thread drift within my own blog! 😉

TV

Lessons of “The X-Files”

Author Alec Nevala-Lee for Salon magazine offers a fascinating article regarding TV shows with long, overarching “stories”…and the perils inherent in doing this:

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/17/lessons_of_the_x_files_the_one_show_every-tv_exec_should_be_watching/

What I found the most interesting about the article can be found in the first few lines:

A television series is a shapeshifter. At birth, it looks fully formed, but its bones and vital organs are dangerously undeveloped, and it’s forced to compete immediately with countless other shows ravening to take its place. To stay alive, it evolves from one week to the next, sometimes radically, but also blindly, so it won’t know for months whether its latest adaptation is a brilliant strategy or a fatal mistake.

Love the above lines and found a lot of truth in them.  Further, it got me thinking about some recent shows with longer story arcs and a term that has been used to disparage such shows when said story arc suffers:  “They’re making it up as they go along.”

Such a term, unfortunately, really did apply to the revamped Battlestar Galactica series and was driven home at the start of each episode, when the title sequence announced that the dreaded Cylons had a “plan”.  Unfortunately by the end of the second season it didn’t appear there was any plan at all.

However, with regard to the notion that “they’re making it up as they go along,” ALL stories are “made up” and fixed and poured over as the many authors involved in them go along.  In the case of TV shows, its silly to think that what is set out by the writers before a single scene is filmed will be an immovable or unchangeable Bible when the time comes to actually film the show.

Star Trek, the original series, began as a pilot that featured only one character who would return to the second pilot and subsequent series, Leonard Nimoy’s Spock…though the Spock of the first pilot episode was considerably more emotional.

Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov -every one of them!- were later additions, some not appearing until well into the series.  As for William Shatner’s Captain Kirk, his first appearance was in the second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before”.

One of my favorite TV shows, The Wild Wild West, similarly, featured more and more interplay between the main characters and more and more outlandish, pulp inspired action as it went along, versus the far more “straight” pilot episode.

The second season of Lost, perhaps my least favorite season (except for a few interesting episodes here and there), made the bad decision (in my mind) to focus waaaay too much on the survivors of the rear of the fallen aircraft.  By this point, I as a viewer wasn’t interested in following a whole new cast of characters…I wanted to see what was happening to the characters we had grown to love in the first season.  Clearly the writers were trying out different things but even they appeared to realize the whole “tail section survivors” subplot was going nowhere and, by the end of the second season, essentially did away with the entire subplot (not to mention many of the characters!).

In the case of these and almost all other shows, the talent behind and in front of the cameras over time experimented with story lines and realized what worked and, assuming they had success with the series, what didn’t.  Over this same period of time adjustments were made, often on the fly.  In two sections of the article, the author notes the problem and, ironically enough, the resultant success of searching for a way to create a winning formula in The X-Files:

When I first encountered (The X-Files), part of me was irked by its narrative amnesia, in which each case’s incredible events were forgotten by the following week, but it didn’t have much of a choice. Each episode had to stand on its own; the show, always seemingly on the verge of cancellation, had to keep moving or die.

What strikes me now about the first season of “The X-Files” is how relentlessly it kept reinventing itself, and how willing it seemed to try anything that worked.

Again, The X-Files is hardly the first show that has had to creatively tap dance while looking for the ingredients to make the whole thing work and, even more importantly, succeed in an unforgiving marketplace where cancellation lurks behind every corner.

As I said, a fascinating article.  Give it a read when you get a chance!

TV

10 Greatest TV Pilots ever…

…at least according to Gary Sussman at Time magazine:

http://entertainment.time.com/2013/09/09/10-greatest-tv-pilot-episodes/

As with many such lists, it is one person’s opinion and I’m certain there will be those who debate the merits (or lack thereof) of the choices.  After seeing this list I thought hard about which TV show pilots really gripped me from the very beginning and had me totally sold on the show itself and had me watching until the end.

Lost certainly did this -at least for me- perhaps better than any pilot ever and therefore its inclusion on the list is quite appropriate.  Mind you, I’m not saying the rest of the series delivered on that white knuckle thriller of a pilot.  If memory serves, the second season in particular -the one that focused entirely too many episodes on the survivors of the rear of the aircraft- was for me a classic case of the sophomore blues and almost had me leaving the show.  The final season I didn’t view quite as dimly as others, though I did feel there were more than a few episodes in it that appeared to be there for little more than to string out time.

Still, I was amazed by the pilot of Lost and was stunned that two hours had passed so quickly (the pilot was presented in two parts and aired consecutively on one night).

Three other pilots that had me right off the bat:

The X-Files.  The pilot episode of the well regarded series worked so very well because right from the start the rapport/chemistry between David Duchovny’s Mulder and Gillian Anderson’s Scully was there in full force.  Granted, the storylines were eerie and quirky and helped sell this particular ride, but it was the interaction between Mulder and Scully, their clear liking for each other even though their views were sometimes very far off, that worked so well.

Miami Vice.  Granted we are talking about an older series set in a certain MTV inspired time frame yet it was one that blazed a trail many other shows would follow and improve upon.  Regardless, if you were around in 1984 when the pilot episode of Miami Vice aired you saw something radically different from your standard TV fare.  Again, the chemistry between Don Johnson’s Crockett and Phillip Michael Thomas’ Tubbs (not to slight the other cast, including Edward James Olmos as Castillo, who would arrive afterwards) proved a draw along with the flashy visuals and action.  But what really made this series a head turner at the time was its use of music to accentuate moods, something that so many other shows have mined afterwards but was really used to great effect the first time there…

Finally, the pilot for the 2004 Battlestar Galactica was, to me, a great success.  Given the fact that they were up against re-imagining a somewhat nostalgically beloved series and were already aware of (gasp!) switching character sexes and races, there was a very real possibility going into seeing the pilot that things could fall apart quickly.  Some say it did in toward the show’s end and I can’t convincingly argue against them…the final minutes of the final episode on primitive Earth and then seeing the “spirits” of two of the characters in modern times was odd and didn’t work as well as I suspect the writers hoped it would.  Regardless of how it ended, the show began with a mighty interesting (pilot) bang.

TV

What is real…?

So my sister tells me the other day about this fascinating documentary she saw on the Discovery Channel during the current very popular “Shark Week”.  It involved the search for a mysterious (and very scary) predator.  Presented as a factual documentary, Megalodon: The Monster Shark Lives, was, as she told it to me, a fascinating story.

I repeat: A story.

However, given the way the show was presented and the channel it was presented on, many people out there, including my sister, thought they were watching something real.  A controversy followed and Discovery Channel was forced to issue a statement defending its programming:

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/08/06/discovery-channel-defends-it-decision-to-air-dramatized-megalodon/

This hasn’t, however, entirely stopped the controversy.  Wil Wheaton, late of Star Trek: The Next Generation, offered some very strong comments regarding this special:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/08/06/wil_wheaton_discovery_channel_megalodon_documentary_betrayed_viewers.html

I agree with Mr. Wheaton’s statements and would go a step further:  Shows like this and the fact that they can fool people into believing a fiction are good examples of the dangers of mass media.  Often we are passive watchers of what the media offers us and, as is the case here, some of us can be “lied” to…and we believe the lie.

In the case of the Megalodon, I suppose watching this special and mistakenly believing it to be true is a fairly “benign” lie.

The danger, of course, is when the lie is no longer benign.

Books/Literature, Movies, TV

Richard Matheson, RIP

1 Comment

Found out a bit belatedly of the death of one of the 20th Century’s most influential authors, at least to me, Richard Matheson.  He was the rare author whose works spread out form “mere” novels and short stories to include screenplays and many, many famous episodes of classic TV shows, including The Twilight Zone.

Richard Corliss of Time Magazine offers a great essay about the works and influence of Mr. Matheson over his career:

http://entertainment.time.com/2013/06/28/richard-matheson-1926-2013-the-wizard-of-what-if/

For me, the ultimate Richard Matheson story was/is Duel.  There’s something about the idea of facing off against a mysterious -and homicidal!- truck driver that intrigued and terrified me.  The first movie I ever recall seeing was Duel, which was also director Steven Spielberg’s first big hit and an obvious template for what would become his first MEGAhit, Jaws.

But even taking Duel out of the equation, there are plenty of other memorable movies and concepts he created which are buried deep in my psyche.  The novel I Am Legend (and, more specifically, the Charlton Heston starring second movie version of the same, Omega Man).

There was also the very chilling Trilogy of Terror and that doll…

And let’s not forget the classic Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet!

I could go on, mentioning such classics as Kolchach: The Night Stalker or Legend of Hell House or The Incredible Shrinking Man…but suffice it to say, for the most part I’ve been delighted by Mr. Matheson’s work over the years.  Given the volume of said work, there were bound to be some disappointments and, sadly, my most recent experience with Mr. Matherson’s writing was the novel Hunted Past Reason.

Do yourself a favor and, if you haven’t already, check out the stuff I’ve mentioned above.  But avoid that last novel.

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Computers/Electronics, Movies, Music, TV

Is the Internet worth it?

Fascinating article by Andrew Leonard for Salon.com regarding something that has been on my mind often of late:  Despite all the great stuff it offers, what of the negatives regarding the Internet?  Is all the good worth all the bad, both potential and realized?

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/05/creative_destruction_government_snooping_is_the_internet_worth_it/

Mr. Leonard’s focus is mostly on governmental “snooping” and journalism but it also can relate to the general impact of the Internet on everything, including loss of privacy both unintended and unrealized.  For example, I recall in the earlier, wildly popular days of Facebook that some clever thieves realized that some posters on that social media website would over share their day to day activities, to the point where they posted information about upcoming vacations, including where they were going, when they were going, and for how long.

Which meant these clever thieves now knew when a poster’s home was potentially unguarded and empty and for what specific period of time, making it a perfect target for theft.

Revelations about the Government’s internet snooping should be alarming to most people, but there are other economic factors that I’ve were influenced by the rise of the internet.  I’ve mentioned before how certain “mom and pop” type stores simply cannot compete with full service internet “stores” like Amazon.com and how even some bigger retail chains, including bookstores and electronic stores, now are in danger of closing their doors because of the increasing ease of purchase and seemingly unlimited stock available online.

But there exists yet another big threat created by the internet, one that personally scares me for different reasons:  The possibility of creative destruction.  If you think about entertainment, you think about a few things: Music, movies, television, books/novels, comic books, etc.  All of these creative endeavors are now victims to pirate websites.

Looking for the latest album by artist X?  Download it for free…sometimes before the album is officially released!  Looking forward to seeing movie X?  Same thing.  Novels?  Comic books?  Television shows?  Ditto, ditto, and ditto.

Where will this piracy of creative ideas eventually lead?  If you’re a struggling artist, there’s precious little money to be made in your works.  Whatever little bit you can scrape together is helpful and may allow you to hone your craft and allow you to make better and better product…provided you can indeed pay your bills.  But what if your current work(s) find their way to pirate websites and whatever meager amount of money you might have earned on your current, best works takes a hit because of illegal downloads?

And what of established artists?  Will movie/music companies become more and more fearful of signing off on a big budget item if the worry about how much they’ll lose on the illegal downloads of said item?  Is it possible some companies will simply give up on funding films/TV shows/music albums entirely?  And where will that leave many of us, audiences hungry for new entertainment?

As Mr. Leonard put it in his article:

…we are increasingly sensing that we have no idea where this techno-roller coaster is ultimately headed. There’s a sense that things are out of control. Our growing uneasiness doesn’t jibe well with all the hype about how the world is being made a better place by a proliferation of smartphone apps.

TV

Enough with the TV Anti-Heroes…

First, sorry once again for the dearth of blog entries.  Vacation was spent far from easy internet access and, thus, there was little time or opportunity to get online.  On the other hand, seeing (and hearing!) glaciers first hand was an incredible, once in a lifetime -unless I were to go back or the glaciers melt away!- experience.  Highly recommended.

Now, onwards…!

The following link is to an article by June Thomas and is posted on Slate magazine.  At its surface it concerns the new Showtime series Ray Donovan but of course addresses something far more populous (perhaps too populous) in today’s TV, the “anti”-hero:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/07/01/the_tv_anti_hero_from_tony_soprano_to_ray_donovan_why_so_many_and_when_will.html

A personal story which I recounted before:  A long, very long time ago, when I was a very young child, for whatever reason I developed a strong sense of what a “good guy” and a “bad guy” were.  To my mind, a “good guy’s” characteristics were not unlike the old-time serial westerns.  You know, white hat, always helpful, never mean, never underhanded, etc. etc.

Boring, I know, but I was maybe six-eight years old and had a mind heavily into comic books and cartoons when I developed that notion.

Along came the TV series The Six-Million Dollar Man and, if you were a young child from that era, you know how popular the series was.  After a trio or so of “pilot” movies, the official series kicked off in January 1974 with the episode “Population Zero“.

I was one of probably millions of viewers that night and absolutely loved the episode…until, that is, the ending.

But let me back up just a moment:  The episode was very much a homage cough:rip-off:cough of Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain, at least in its initial sequences involving a small town where seemingly everyone has suddenly, abruptly, died.  To be fair, after that opening premise, the SMDM episode did go its own way.  The small town, it turned out, wasn’t wiped out after all, but somehow the entire population was simultaneously knocked unconscious by some kind of high tech sonic weapon.  The creator of that weapon, it turned out, was a scientist that held a bitter grudge against the government because funds for his weapon were cut in favor of, you guessed it, the Bionic Man program.

The fact that Steve Austin, the man who benefited from the Bionic Man program -indeed was the Bionic Man program, gets involved in the case turns out to be more of a coincidence than it probably should have been, but our hero investigates the situation and is eventually captured by the bad guys who, because they know about his abilities, also know his weaknesses.  The lead villain orders Austin put into a large meat freezer.  His bionic limbs are vulnerable to extreme cold and, therefore, this would be the way they would get rid of him.

So Steve Austin is locked in the freezer and the villains head off to a mountain range, intent on using their weapon on another town, upset the government hasn’t paid them their ransom demands and intent on pushing the settings of their sonic weapon from “stun unconscious” to “kill”.

Meanwhile, Steve Austin breaks out of the cooler and, in one of the better sequences of the story, stumbles about, unable to fully use his bionic limbs, desperate to get to the villains before they murder an entire town.  As Austin moves in the sun, his bionic parts limber up and he begins his heroic run, eventually reaching a point where he spots the villain’s van parked a short distance away.

Steve Austin also notes a small square fenced off area and runs to it.  He grabs one of the fence posts and pulls it from the ground, complete with cement block, and runs at the van.  The villains spot him, aim their weapon at him, but before they can eliminate the Bionic Man he hurls the fence post javelin-style at them.  The post slams through the van’s outer wall and the van and villains go up in a ball of explosive flame.  (You can see the entire thing I’ve just described here)

The young child I was back then was very disturbed by Steve Austin’s actions.

As I said before, my idea of a “hero” was pretty strict, and one thing a hero never, ever did was kill.  Especially not in a premeditated fashion.  Yet this is exactly what Steve Austin effectively did.  When he was hurrying to the van, he knew very well the villains needed large amounts of electricity from the power lines around them to juice up their machine.  When he pulled out the metal fence post, could he have flung it at the power lines around the vans and simply disabled their weapon rather than gun for them directly.

But even if the power lines were difficult to get to, how was he to know the villains would spot him as he ran toward them?  Granted, they did, but what if he managed to run up to them and simply rip the power cord between van and power line before they spotted him?

The fact is that Steve Austin pulled that metal post out of the ground with one idea and one idea only:  To use it exactly as he did and hurl it at the van, intent on at the very least hurting and at the most killing all the villains he was up against.

A big no-no to my child’s mind back then.

Today, of course, heroes killing hapless/helpless villains is hardly anything new or startling.  And, going back to the article above, the genre of the “anti-hero” has taken off…and off and off to the point where I’m in agreement with the author that this has become a rather boring -dare I say it- cliche.

That’s not to say that some of the “classic” anti-heroes have lost their luster, only that the most recent batches appear to offer us little in the way of something new.

Who knows.  With the way things have gone thus far, perhaps the next big thing will be the hero I imagined in my youth.

Or might that prove to be a bit too boring in this more cynical age?