Category: Television & Radio

I don’t intend to watch all 456 episodes (and one TV movie) but I have started from the beginning with Law & Order (Netflix streaming). The pilot, “Everybody’s Favorite Bagman,” was filmed more than 23 years ago. The series premiered on September 13, 1990.

I’ve seen many of these before, mostly in syndication 10-12 years ago, so the plots are familiar. Even so, and given that they are 21+ years old, they hold up pretty well. It’s an enjoyable 45 minutes of not quite mindless diversion.

It was interesting to read that Dick Wolf first developed the show for Fox and the pilot for CBS, but the series was on NBC. Considering the money the franchise has made for NBC, one wonders about the executives who made the wrong decision at the other two networks.

Jerry Orbach was considered for the role of the senior detective but in the first season George Dzundza got the part. After Dzundza quit, Orbach was passed over a second time for Paul Sorvino. The third time was the charm — Orbach played Lennie Briscoe for 12 seasons beginning in the third.

Cynthia Nixon, William H. Macy, Philip Bosco and Al Freeman Jr. were people I recognized among the cast in the first eight episodes.

A very interesting looks at HBO: How it revolutionized television.

If I could have cable or satellite and have only HBO and ESPN and absolutely no other channels, that would be perfect.

1967-2000

A smart, critical review of Whitney by Mary Elizabeth Williams.

Ken Levine answers some questions. An excerpt:

Your final writing credit for MASH was “Goodbye Radar”, apparently written as the 7th season finale but held back (at the network’s request) till the 8th season. Did Gary Burghoff or anyone have special requests for the episode in terms of storyline or particular scenes? And by the time the episode was produced you and David were no longer the head writers, did the new regime tinker with your script at all? Any other tidbits?

No one had any special requests, but David and I were very adamant that we didn’t want a sappy ending. That’s why we constructed the final sequence so that all of the final goodbyes were during triage and the farewells had to be quick and on the run.

I’m a big fan of “little touches”. Hawkeye discovering Radar’s teddy bear on his bed says more about how Radar matured from the MASH experience than any speech could have ever done, no matter how eloquently it was written.

. . .

Yes, a great moment in TV history. Thanks for writing that, Ken and David.

Ken Levine can’t spell Jeopardy, but he can write an amusing review of “101 Ways to Leave a Game Show.”

JEAPARDY contestants have college degrees; one 101 WAYS contestant has a big tattoo on his arm of Lady Gaga, another wants to use the prize money to build a waterfall for his iguana, and a third plans to use her winnings to buy a backstage pass to a Justin Bieber concert. Shooting these nitwits out of cannons isn’t cruel. It’s what they deserve.

Read more on the dumbest game show… yet.

A graphic view of TV shows Democrats and Republicans prefer — and voters and non-voters prefer.

Why Do Liberals Love Wife-Swapping? – The Atlantic

“Earlier today, The Wire actress Felicia ‘Snoop’ Pearson was arrested as part of a large-scale drug raid in Baltimore and surrounding counties. Slate asked David Simon, creator and executive producer of The Wire (and currently in production on Treme), for comment. He offered this statement, provided to Slate through an HBO spokesperson.”

David Simon, Creator of The Wire, Speaks on Felicia “Snoop” Pearson’s Arrest

111 million people tuned into at least some of the Super Bowl (a record).

84 million of them changed the channel before Glee came on.

Perhaps the producers of the Super Bowl halftime show could learn from this.

A look at the subsequent acting work by many of the actors of The Wire.

The last of the Nelsons has died, David dead from colon cancer at 74. The show, “Ozzie and Harriet” was on the radio from 1946 and TV from 1952-1966.

“Ozzie and Harriet” laid the groundwork for other mild, family sitcoms like “Leave It to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best,” but it also had a weirdly postmodern and prescient aspect to it: the four Nelsons were, in some ways, television’s first reality stars.

The show was scripted, but the characters were based on the Nelsons themselves, named after the Nelsons themselves and, from 1949, when 12-year-old David and 8-year-old Ricky replaced the actors who had initially voiced their roles on the radio, played by the Nelsons themselves. Their actual Los Angeles home was used in filming, and a reproduction of its interior was built in the studio. When David and Rick married in real life, their wives were incorporated into the show.

David Nelson was probably the least prominent of the four characters, dully mature as a son, quietly sage as an older brother. (In one departure from reality, his character graduated from college and became a lawyer.) Ozzie was the know-it-all dad whose presumptions often got him into trouble and drove the story. Harriet was the wisely, teasingly understanding helpmeet, and young Ricky was the adorable one, the mischievous boy who mispronounced words, made wisecracks, grew up impossibly handsome and became a pop star.

NYTimes.com

Ozzie died in 1975, Harriet in 1994. Rick Nelson was killed in a plane crash in 1985. To anyone my age, losing a Nelson was losing a member of the family.

Netflix has a new contract with Disney-ABC.

And you know what that means.

Phineas and Ferb. Streaming. To my TV.

I was organizing some DVDs and stopped to watch the first scene of the first episode of the fourth season of The Wire. That’s the scene where Snoop goes into Home Depot to get a better nail gun and the salesman sells her on the benefits of the Hilti DX 460 MX 27-caliber powder-actuated fastening tool.

The joke isn’t the salesman or the nail gun or even Snoop, although she is one of the great characters. It’s knowing what the gun is used for and the cleverness of making its purchase into an opening scene. “The Wire,” with 60 episodes, is unparalleled on television, I think, in its use of the seemingly throwaway scene that makes it all worthwhile.

R.I.P.

Link via Charles Pierce who got it from TBogg.

‘The Wire’ Monopoly Game.

Based around the journey a young gangster might take through the fictionalised Baltimore of the show, players move from corner to stoop, past institutions featured in successive series like the school system and the stevedores union, acquiring real estate, money and power before ending up at the waterfront developments and City Hall itself.

“Where the original game has ‘Community Chest’ and ‘Chance’,” McDougall continues, “we have ‘Re-up’ and ‘The Game’ which reflects the chance element of life on the streets. If you draw a ‘The Game’ card you might for instance get ‘Prop Joe calls a meet – go straight to Collington Square’ or ‘Drive-By! You get shot. Miss a go’ or even ‘Chris and Snoop are looking for you! Hide! Miss 2 goes.’”

From The Poke via kottke.org.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor is good today on the founding of PBS (1970), the first World Series broadcast (1921) and Monty Python’s Flying Circus debut (1969).

. . . so I thought I should pass this along.

Among the highlights, Netflix members will be able to instantly watch:

• Episodes from every season of NBC’s signature comedy franchise “Saturday Night Live,” including day-after broadcast of the upcoming 2010, 2011 and 2012 seasons plus hundreds of episodes from the first 35 years of “SNL.”
• Every episode from the last season of the multiple Emmy® Award-winning series “30 Rock,” “The Office” and “Law & Order: SVU,” as well as earlier seasons of those shows renewed for streaming from Netflix under the current deal.
• All prior seasons – and eventually next year’s final season – of “Friday Night Lights,” the small-town drama surrounding high-school football in Dillon, Tex.
• All prior seasons of USA Network hits “Psych,” the comedy featuring James Roday as a fake psychic who solves crimes with his best friend, Dule Hill; the drama “In Plain Sight,” starring Mary McCormack as a U.S. Marshal in New Mexico; as well as all seasons of “Monk,” starring Emmy® Award and Golden Globe® Award winner Tony Shalhoub in the title role.  Prior seasons of all three shows are available to watch instantly at Netflix for the first time.
• More than 75 prior season episodes of Syfy’s mainstay “Battlestar Galactica,” as well as prior seasons of the network’s popular series’ “Destination Truth” and “Eureka” – all streaming from Netflix for the first time.

Netflix and NBC Universal Announce Agreement to Stream Prior Season Cable and Broadcast TV Series New to Netflix Members

If you don’t already know, there are many ways to connect Netflix to your TV(s). Streaming doesn’t require that you watch just on your computer or phone.

The Andy Griffith Show — “Opie and the Bully” pt.1/3

“Opie and the Bully” pt.2/3

“Opie and the Bully” pt.3/3

Go ahead. Watch all three parts. You got nothing better to do.