television Archives - Page 33 of 43

The New TV Season

Vince Guaraldi’s maternal uncle Muzzy Marcellino whistled the theme to the Lassie show.

After careful consideration, here is the list of new shows I’m watching this fall TV season:

Not a very long list; in fact, nada. The fact is that, while there were shows that have interested me, I have developed a higher standard for actually committing to a new show. I’m very suspicious of dramatic serials because if the network decides to cancel it before it’s over, as ABC did with The Nine a few seasons back, it’s terribly frustrating.

I look at the ads for a program such as ABC’s Last Resort, about an apparently rogue military operation, and it stars Andre Braugher, who I LOVED in Homicide: Life on the Streets. Yet the new show looks as though it ought to be a miniseries. What can they do with this format by season 3? And I see it’s already “on hiatus,” or whatever they call it when they haven’t canceled a show outright.

I was hanging out with my friend Fred Hembeck about five years ago, and he has this theory that once you start watching a show, generally you watch it to the end. I suppose I’m inclined to agree with this, although I gave up on 24 after a season and one episode because I found it upsetting. I quit The Office after the Michael Scott character left, but that’s when it should have gone off anyway.

I don’t watch a lot of cop procedurals. Reality TV bores me; there a certain sameness to the way they drag out the “drama.” And most comedies I don’t find particularly funny.

My friend Dan HATES TV as a medium; I’m not entirely clear why. I do like it for some news and sports, e.g. Though, TV writer Ken Levine rants about the current state of television, and he’s not wrong.

Whereas Cheri of Idle Chatter LOVES TV. Her enthusiasm is nice; I used to love TV like that, years ago. I remember noting on her blog the name of the Leonard Nimoy character on Mission: Impossible (Paris), which was on 40 years ago, and I hadn’t seen it since.

I was reading a book about Vince Guaraldi, best known for the piano on the Charlie Brown/Peanuts TV specials, and it noted that his maternal uncle Muzzy Marcellino whistled the theme to the Lassie show; I knew that theme right away. This led to a discussion in my office about whistled themes, which of course meant the theme to the Andy Griffith Show, which I knew was written by Earle Hagan, the same guy who wrote the Dick van Dyke theme. But I also knew – and I suppose this is sad – that Hagan also WHISTLED the theme.

I do this test with my SEVEN CDs of TV theme songs, to see if I can name the shows without checking the list; the ones with words don’t count. If I watched the show, I’m pretty good, but if I never watched it, like Simon and Simon, not so hot.

Some folks watch shows because they like the look of a performer, such as Kat Dennings on 2 Broke Girls, even as they suggest that the show itself isn’t all that great. I probably haven’t done that since Sela Ward was on Sisters. If that were my criterion, I would have watched Desperate Housewives, but never saw 10 minutes of it.

But casts do matter. The last two new shows I decided to follow were Parenthood and The Good Wife. I think I was intrigued by the parallels between them. First, they initially aired at the exact same time (Tuesday, at 10 pm, on NBC and CBS, respectively.) Both starred the two anchor guys from a series called Sports Night, which I watched late last century, Peter Krause and Josh Charles. They both also feature actors from Gilmore Girls, Lauren Graham, and Matt Czuchry. And then there are Bonnie Bedilia and Christine Baranski, who I have liked over the years.

OK, those weren’t technically the last shows. The most recent program I added was Major Crimes from this summer, which is a direct spinoff of The Closer, thus also violating my own rule about cop procedurals. But it’s the same set as the previous show, with most of the same actors, rather like how The Andy Griffith Show became Mayberry RFD.

But I never fret about a show being pre-empted. Most shows run only 22 episodes, and some, less, so even if they rerun each one, that’s only 44 out of 52 weeks max. When you only watch TV on DVR and your wife both records Dancing with the Stars and figure skating, then doesn’t get around to watching them, pre-emptions are good things.
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Re: Larry Hagman, who died last week: I watched exactly one episode of Dallas, THAT episode everyone watched. I figured out who shot J.R. halfway through, I was correct, and never had the need to watch the program again. Whereas I watched I Dream of Jeannie religiously. Hey, it had a character named Roger, played by Bill Daily.

Here is Mark Evanier’s Larry Hagman story, which is very nice. And a link to Hagman performing with his mother, Mary Martin.

I’m rather neutral on whether Angus T. Jones should have told people to stop watching ‘filthy’ Two and a Half Men. Never turned on the TV to watch it, but I’ve been uncomfortable letting my daughter see it when the syndicated program would happen to be on, during the 7 pm hour.

Why Is The ‘Normal Television Family’ Always White?

October Rambling: Name That Tune

Me, uncharacteristically, if not ahead of the curve, at least with it.

Briticisms in American English.

Black and White Vernacular in American Sign Language.

Give this man a Silver Star; a future President got one.

I want to tell you something about the future. “It will either be: A mind-bendingly awesome; utopian landscape where all of Earth’s problems have been resolved and technology and humanity have evolved to create harmony. Or it might be a f@#$ed-up dystopian nightmare.” Gotta say that I’ve tired of the latter portrayal, but these movie clips are still interesting.

Erich Von Stroheim Radio Broadcast (1948) Talks about the Death of D.W. GRIFFITH, the early and controversial filmmaker.

Why film critic Roger Ebert won’t stick to his knitting, talking about (GASP!) politics when he “should” be limiting himself to movie reviews.

Sad that Alex Karras died. Followed him as an All-Pro defensive tackle for the Detroit Lions, on “Monday Night Football”, and as an actor in the movie Blazing Saddles.

Being hit on by a swinger couple. Actually, a lovely piece by Ken Levine on the phenomenon of storytelling. He also wrote a lovely tribute to the late NBC exec Brandon Tartikoff, which also explains why so much of today’s TV is lousy.

What IS the name of that mysterious music? YOU’VE heard it – it’s the thing playing HERE and HERE and even HERE. I’ve finally discovered from various sources that it’s called Mysterioso Pizzicato, a/k/a Here comes the villain. It was first published in the ‘Remick Folio of Moving Picture Music, vol. I,’ in 1914, compiled and edited by one J. Bodewalt Lampe, who may (or may not) have written it. The tune was used as background to scary scenes in silent movies.

The Beethoven Mystery: Why haven’t we figured out his Ninth Symphony yet?

“Perfessor” Bill Edward: Professional Purveyor of Pianistic Pyrotechnics.

The website for CBS Television City in Hollywood; fascinating history, which you can also see in this video.

Mark Evanier’s mother died at the age of 90. “Someone… might think, ‘Hey, smoking can’t be that bad if Mark’s mother smoked 75 years and made it to age 90.’ Yeah, but for about the last fifteen, she could barely walk and barely see.” He’s been writing a series called Tales of My Mother. The fourth one, about her and the TV show LA Law and Jimmy Smits, is a particular hoot, but they are all worth reading.

Glenn Fleishman describes what it’s like to be on the game show Jeopardy! Here are Jeopardy’s most memorable moments, including what happens if a certain person says something.

Ray Bradbury matches wits with Groucho Marx.

Charles Darwin And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

Every Infomercial Ever.

Matching birthday probabilities and Johnny Carson.

Let’s look at the rise of Gangham Style and how media events and social networks can trigger massive sharing. I noticed that I blogged about it on August 15, which put me, uncharacteristically, if not ahead of the curve, at least with it. Then, of course, I find some real life Simpsons opening from June, and I realize, nope, still behind the curve.

Chuck Miller explains why 45s have big holes in the center, while vinyl albums have small holes.

The Marshmallow Test.

25 Foods You’ll Never Be Able To Eat Again. I never had most of these, though I did try Apple Newtons a few times.

Jaquandor writes about the superhero cat named Little Bootie; oh, and technology. Also, a pie to the face; no, I don’t quite understand, but it seems to make him SO happy.

FROM MY OTHER BLOGS

Robots shut down live broadcast of scfi award ceremony.

An unwitting participant in an international travesty.

RFID; the F does NOT mean freedom, or foolproof. This one got excerpted in the newspaper.

What if the technology went away?

Scanning whole books is fair use?

Obviously, we WERE a Christian nation. Ask a Native American.

GOOGLE ALERTS

In his attempt to compose a soundtrack to a novel — Lair Hunt’s The Impossibly — Roger Green, with the help of Mark Harris on saxophone and bass clarinet…

Roger Green and Associates, Inc.
Attribute importance is a key information need for marketers. An understanding of attribute importance can help explain physician prescribing, it can help identify …

Past/future

If Hitler never lived, then does Stalin take over Europe?

Film critic Roger Ebert had a blog post Did you choose your religion? But the original title, as one can see in the URL, was “Would you kill Baby Hitler?”

The original entry began: Of course, you would have needed to know on April 20, 1889, that the little boy would grow up to become Adolf Hitler, and would commit all of the crimes we now know he committed. The only way you could know that, apart from precognition, would be to have traveled backward in time from a point when Hitler had committed all his crimes and you knew about them.

This was in context with a discussion of, among other things, the new film Looper, for which a big-time spoiler alert should have been stamped.

But this is a popular theme. There’s some current CBS show called Person of Interest about a computer that foretells crime. There was a previous CBS show(what was that called?) about a guy who would get tomorrow’s newspaper today and had the day to stop some heinous event from happening; a cat was somehow involved. I have actually never seen either show nor read Stephen King’s The Dead Zone. The piece generated very interesting and enlightening points, unlike most comment threads these days.

The problem, if one COULD go back in time, would be the unintended consequences. If Hitler never lived, then does Stalin take over Europe? These are obviously unanswerable questions, but they fascinate me.

Dustbury points to a variation on the theme:

>Steve Sailer…has imagined two different scenarios in which we’d already had a black President:

Walter Mondale picks Tom Bradley for the Veep slot in 1984, manages to beat a rattled-in-the-debates Ronald Reagan, and is killed when Air Force One crashes;
Colin Powell, urged on by Mrs. Powell, defeats Bob Dole, then Bill Clinton, in 1996.

Given either one of these scenarios, Sailer asks:

In either alternative history, does Barack Obama become the second black President? If there had already been a first black president, would anyone have ever even considered Obama to be Presidential Timber? Would you have ever even heard of Obama?

It’s been my contention that a President who is black (or Hispanic, or a woman) may be held to a different standard, higher by at least some so that the viability of a second black as President would be inextricably linked to the success or failure of the first. That said, if there HAD been a previous black President, would Obama have played such a huge role in the 2004 Democratic convention? Possibly not.

What thinkest thou?
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Making the case for future voter fraud.

Who starred with whom, and where?

The IMDB has an advanced search function.

There is this list of the five best television series of all time, compiled by ABC News and People Magazine, and conveniently broadcast on ABC in the past couple of weeks. Interestingly, all were comedies, none of them were broadcast on ABC, and the latter four would probably be canceled quickly these days because the early ratings were not particularly good. The list included:
I LOVE LUCY (CBS)
SEINFELD (NBC)
MASH (CBS)
ALL IN THE FAMILY (CBS)
CHEERS (NBC)

I read about it on Ken Levine’s blog. He (pictured) mentioned this because he was a writer for two of the shows, MASH and Cheers, which I suppose I’d consider for my list as well. I’d also pick Lucy, if only because it was seminal in the development of the TV rerun. All in the Family, which I did enjoy at the time, did not age well, though. And Seinfeld I liked for a few seasons, but grew tired of it, about the time the character Susan died from licking an envelope. There are plenty of dramatic shows (Twilight Zone, Hill Street Blues, among others) I’d put on the list, but if I were limiting it just to comedies, certainly the Dick Van Dyke Show would be on the roster.

What was most interesting to me, though, is that someone asked Levine: “Other than you and David [Isaacs, Levine’s writing partner], is there anyone else associated with 2 or more of the top 5? Probably not. You are in a very special group.” Levine named some writers. He also noted that “George Wendt and Shelley Long [of Cheers] both did guest stints on MASH.” In the comments section, a guy noted that the IMDB has an advanced search function – go to Collaborations and Overlaps – so that one can discover, e.g., that there are 16 people with credits on both The Dick Van Dyke Show and MASH, starting with Jamie Farr and Bernard Fox. Or that five people were affiliated with both the Van Dyke program and Cheers, including Ann Morgan Guilbert and Sheldon Leonard.

One can also put in Dick Van Dyke and Ted Danson to discover that Van Dyke appeared on Danson’s show Becker, as Becker’s father, and Danson was a guest on Van Dyke’s Diagnosis: Murder, as himself, both in 1999. I will definitely make more use of this feature.
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Ken Levine’s thoughts on the GQ CHEERS article.

H is for Paul Henning and the Hooterville Trilogy

To understand just how popular The Beverly Hillbillies were in the US, look at a list of the top rated show episodes of all time.

A man named Paul Henning was the creator or co-creator of a number of TV shows. For this piece, I’m going to concentrate on what has been dubbed the Hooterville Trilogy, all appearing on CBS-TV in the 1960s.

The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-1971) starred Buddy Ebsen as Jed Clampett. If you’ve heard the theme song, written by Henning and performed by bluegrass artists Flatt and Scruggs, with Jerry Scoggins on vocals, you know the whole story. Poor mountain man finds oil on his property and moves his family to southern California, where they are in a series of “fish-out-of-water” situations. The show also starred Irene Ryan as his mother-in-law, usually referred to as Granny; Donna Douglas as his daughter Elly Mae; Max Baer, Jr., son of the boxer, as his nephew Jethro, and occasionally as Jethro’s sister, Jethrine. Also featured, the conflicted banker, Mr. Drysdale (Raymond Bailey) – he liked their money in his bank, but not always their antics; and Drysdale’s put-upon assistant, Jane Hathaway (Nancy Culp). There was an occasional appearance by Jethro’s mom, Pearl Bodine, played by Bea Benaderet, who was the original voice of Betty Rubble on The Flintstones.

To understand just how popular The Beverly Hillbillies were in the US, look at a list of the top rated show episodes of all time. Over 20 are Super Bowls; eight are from miniseries (six Roots and two The Thorn Birds); three are series finales (The Fugitive, MAS*H, Cheers); 11 are special/rare/highly anticipated events (the Beatles on Ed Sullivan; Olympic figure skating with Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding; the “Who shot J.R.” episode of Dallas, e.g.) The highest-rated “regular” TV shows on this list: some episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies from 1964.

The network wanted more, so Henning created Petticoat Junction (1963-1970), featuring Bea Benaderet, the proprietor of the Shady Rest Hotel, on the train line, just outside the town of Hooterville. The widow Kate Bradley had three pretty daughters, Betty Jo (redhead), Bobbie Jo (brunette), and Billie Jo (blonde), who we see in the opening, skinnydipping (presumably) in a large railroad water tank. Here’s the season 1 and season 3 theme song, written by Henning and Curt Massey, and sung by Massey. Billie Jo was played by three different actresses over the years, the longest by Meredith MacRae, daughter of singers Gordon and Sheila MacRae. Bobbie Jo was played by two actresses, the latter, Lori Saunders. Betty Jo was played by only one actress, Linda Kaye, who was the voice of Jethrine on the Beverly Hillbillies; not incidentally, she was Paul Henning’s daughter. Maybe that’s why, even though she was the youngest, she was the one to win the heart of handsome pilot Steve (Mike Minor).

When Bea Benadaret died in 1968 from lung cancer, a new character, Dr. Janet Craig, was created, requiring a change in the theme lyrics: “Here’s our lady MD, she’s as pretty as can be”. She was played by June Lockhart (pictured with the latter Jo’s), who had played mom to Timmy and Lassie, and on Lost in Space. Uncle Joe (Edgar Buchanan), who’s “a movin’ kinda slow” was the only actor to appear on every episode.

A direct spinoff of Petticoat Junction was Green Acres (1965-1971). CBS offered Henning yet another half-hour on the schedule, but he didn’t have the time, so he suggested his buddy Jay Sommers create the series. A New York City lawyer, Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Albert), decides to ditch city life for the country, much to the chagrin of his fashionable wife Lisa (Eva Gabor); it’s all there in the theme song, written by Vic Mizzy, and sung by the stars themselves. Interestingly, Lisa seemed to fare better than Oliver in encounters with the wacky locals. The shopkeeper Sam Drucker, played by the late Frank Cady, was a regular on Petticoat Junction, and even appeared on the Beverly Hillbillies, but who was a pivotal player on Green Acres. Despite decent ratings, Green Acres was canceled due to the infamous “rural purge” decision by CBS.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission, Newton Minow, had indicated back in 1961 that television was a “vast wasteland” of violence and frivolity, and to the latter category, these shows were often guilty. Yet, much of my misspent youth was spent watching these programs.

ABC Wednesday – Round 11