Category: Television

Is there nothing this cabal cannot do?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took time out from matters of war and peace to catch this week’s finale of American Idol. Unlike many adults who claim they watch the show only because their kids commandeer the TV, Condi is an unabashed fan.

Rice was rooting for fellow Birmingham native Taylor Hicks and will soon send him a congratulatory letter, says a State Department official.

Nothing is too trifling for a conspiracy for these people. Rigging American Idol? Hey, they’ve got to stay in practice between elections.

So in the year 2030, when someone from the retrodivision of an immersive entertainment syndicate plumbs the depths of arcana and comes up with a re-imagining of Firefly wherein “Mal” Reynolds is actually Mallory Reynolds and both Mal and her assistant Zoo (a guy, of course) are actually mystical religionists whose uprising has been thwarted by the corporate mercenaries of a Big Nuclear puppet regime, I shall merrily taunt, “So now you know how it feels!” to Firefly partisans who think the new Battlestar Galactica is better than the original.

Hopefully, Lawrence will be the chair at SLU by then so he’ll be nearby for a good personal taunting. Or perhaps I shall take the sympathetic high road. But only if I can be patronizing about it.

Dirk Benedict is Starbuck FOREVAR!!!1!

How modern; the premise of the original, where the Cylons where the mechanical spawn of an ancient race inimical to man (or, if one goes extra-textually to the actual broadcast of the original series, merely an ancient race inimical to man), has been replaced with the premise that man created the Cylons to serve man.

Kinda like America funded Saddam Hussein in the 1980s or any other variation on the Biblical theme that all the evils you face today are retribution for the sins of your fathers and so on.

Your honor, note that this person is a hostile witness (and a rabid partisan of the original series).

Man, I hope this improves after the expository stills.

The MacGyver Mastercard commercial

Facts about Jack Bauer, from television’s 24.

24 Drinking Game

Jeez, one could get lit just from the promos during football.

Dennis Franz:

Old School: Norman Buntz
Damn Kid: Andy Sipowicz

How you answered the question certainly bespeaks your age, if nothing else.

The next time Marge and Homer invite you over to dinner, you can find your way to the Simpsons’ using this insanely-detailed Map of Springfield.

An ABC news special tonight, anchored by Peter Jennings: The UFO Phenomenon — Seeing Is Believing

Extra special nod, sadly, for the radio commercials who play up that ABC News is asking the things the government won’t consider!

Credible. I would say incredible, but I too easily believe ABC News would do this and treat it as a serious matter, since that’s what its audience believes, and some beliefs are valid because one believes them. A select few, anyway.

SCI FI Renews Galactica.

Yea, verily, and the angel opened the eighty-second or eighty-third seal (for lo, I had lost count by then), and the number of Battlestar Galactica episodes where the Starbuck was a woman exceeded those where the Starbuck was actually, you know, a buck who roamed the stars. “By this,” the angel said, “will you know the end is nigh.”

(Link seen on Signifying Nothing.)

Trek fans, spot the error in this story about the end of Star Trek: Enterprise.

Here, let me help:

Enterprise, the fourth spinoff of the 1966-69 flagship, and the first prequel, contributed 98 episodes to the institution when it signs off on May 13. That’s the shortest run since the original series was axed by NBC after only 80 adventures; it’s the first spinoff series to last less than seven seasons.

Let’s count the spin-offs, in reverse order:

1. Star Trek: Enterprise
2. Star Trek: Voyager
3. Star Trek: Deep Space 9
4. Star Trek: The Next Generation

That’s for, by golly. You damn kids! You always, always forget:

5. Star Trek (The Animated Series)

Which lasted only two years, so it’s the shortest Trek series yet and it illuminates that there has been hot new Trek action in every decade since the 1960s, which somehow coincides with the same decades in which Cher has charted hits….. Hmmm….

(Link seen on Signifying Nothing.)

Okay, so some twenty-five or more years after I spent Sunday mornings watching the Lone Ranger scattered among old episodes of Sgt. Preston and his dog King of the Yukon, Hopalong Cassidy, and the Bowery Boys, I bought a DVD containing the “pilot” episode of the Lone Ranger from 1949. To you damn kids who attend public schools, I will helpfully calculate that it was 55 years before the cheap DVD was released and by now about 56 years ago that network television presented a hero that:

• Was rescued by a minority person of color whom the hero had helped previously, in a time when helping minority persons of color was not respected
• Rescued a quadraped and nursed it back from the brink of death and managed not to eat it
• Offered the wealth of his and his brother’s share of a silver mine to a poor substinence farmer but for some small stipend
• Vowed to shoot to wound, not to kill
• Lived as a symbol of the rule of law, not the rule of self-defense or revenge

Cheese, Louise, had the Lone Ranger lived to vote in 2004, he might have voted for John Kerry.

This is the shared herotage that some people would deny America. I’d like to think that perhaps we could share these ideals, but then some schmuck starts thinking that perhaps since my house is so nice I should give more than what I can spare beyond it that I start casting my own bullets out of whatever the heck they make nickels out of these days.

I just heard, while listening to Michael Medved show on KRLA 870 in Los Angeles, Gary Coleman doing a radio spot for CashCall.com, an unsecured loan broker.

Heather and I have most recently seen him in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century where he played Hieronymous Fox, a child genius. As he did so many times. I grew up with Gary Coleman as a kind of hero, a kid my age who was always smart, clever, and funny. I’m somewhat sad to see him reduced to stumping for a lender based on his own past poor credit.

Does anyone else wonder what this implies?

ABC is teaming with veteran TV movie producer Robert Halmi Sr. for “The Ten Commandments,” a four-hour miniseries that will retell the classic biblical tale of Moses.

Halmi was quick to point out that the miniseries will not be a remake of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 movie starring Charlton Heston, but will rely on extensive biblical and historical research for a realistic, truthful presentation of Moses and the Jewish people’s exodus from Egypt and their travel to Mt. Sinai, where, according to the Old Testament, God descended to deliver the Ten Commandments.

“I felt that (the Ten Commandments) is the first written document of law, morality and order for the human race, and we completely ignore it,” said Halmi, whose myriad credits include “Legend of Earthsea,” “Dinotopia” and “The 10th Kingdom.”

Story: ABC to make new ‘Ten Commandments’

That sounds swell. Recasting a biblical “tale” by the fellow who produced The 10th Kingdom (A father and daughter are caught in a parallel universe where the great queens Snow White, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood have had their kingdoms fragmented by warring trolls, giants and goblins.) and The Legend of Earthsea (A reckless youth is destined to become the greatest sorcerer that the mystical land of Earthsea has ever known.).

Does anyone see the potential for offense-giving in this? Let the prelash begin.

From an entertainment story at CNN entitled Lisa Kudrow set for ‘Comeback’. Lead paragraphs:

Lisa Kudrow isn’t waiting for “Friends” to become a distant memory — she’s already signed on for a new sitcom that sounds tailor made for her.

Kudrow will star in and executive produce “The Comeback,” which has received a 14-episode order from HBO, the premium cable channel said Tuesday.

She plays a former sitcom star trying to revive her career. Kudrow co-wrote the pilot episode with Michael Patrick King, who also is serving as an executive producer. An air date was not announced.

The pretty non sequitur comes at the end:

Kudrow played ditsy Phoebe Buffay in NBC’s hit sitcom “Friends,” which ended in May after 10 years. Her film roles include “Analyze This,” its sequel “Analyze That” and “The Opposite of Sex.”

Former stars of “Seinfeld” have mostly found that success hard to top. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards and Jason Alexander each had a flop after the show ended. Alexander is trying again with the freshman series “Listen Up” on CBS.

No idea why Seinfeld was important to note, since Kudrow didn’t star in it, nor did the article mention anything about Seinfeld cast members before that. Perhaps it’s a product tie-in with the new Seinfeld DVDs. Who knows? Who cares? I have four and a half discs of Buck Rogers to go.