NewMexiKen doesn’t routinely watch Jeopardy! like I did in the Art Fleming days, but I might want to watch today. According to news reports, some guy from Utah has been champion 16 days in a row through yesterday and he’s won more than $500,000. It used to be you could only be champion for five shows, but now there is no restriction.
(The current shows were taped in February.)
Hopalong Cassidy premiered on NBC-TV on this date in 1949. According to John Dunning’s On the Air —
One medium fed on the other, and by 1950 [William] Boyd was at the center of a national phenomenon. For two years he was as big a media hero as the nation had seen. In personal appearances he was mobbed: 85,000 people came through a Brooklyn department store during his appearance there. His endorsement for any product meant instant sales in the millions. It meant overnight shortages, frantic shopping sprees, and millions of dollars for Boyd. There were Hopalong Cassidy bicycles, rollerskates (complete with spurs), Hoppy pajamas, Hopalong beds. The demand for Hoppy shirts and pants was so great that a shortage of black dye resulted. His investment in Hopalong Cassidy paid off to an estimated $70 million.
Why a man of 52 years appealed to so many children remains a mystery. Possibly some of it had to do with the novelty of television: just as Amos ‘n’ Andy had capitalized on the newness of radio a generation earlier, a TV sensation was bound to occur. And the hero had a no-nonsense demeanor: he was steely-eyed and quick on the draw, and he meted out justice without the endless warbling and sugar-coated romance that came with the others. As for Boyd, he became Cassidy in a real sense. His personal habits changed; he gave up drinking and carousing and lived with his fifth wife until his death in 1972.
Hopalong Cassidy was NewMexiKen’s first hero. None has been as good since.
Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross, the wife and husband on the TV sitcom Family Ties, are both 57 today. Alex, their son on the show, was played by Michael J. Fox, who was 43 on June 9th.
From Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times:
There was an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on HBO in February in which Larry David, the show’s star, creator and executive producer, took a lady of the evening to a Dodger game so he could use the carpool lane on the freeway.
Footage shot at Dodger Stadium for that show, The Times and other media outlets reported recently, exonerated Juan Catalan, who had been charged with murder.
Outtakes, viewed by Catalan’s attorney, showed that Catalan, as he had maintained, was at the Dodger game last May at the time he was accused of committing the murder of a 16-year-old girl in Sun Valley.
As a result, a judge set Catalan free.
Said David: “I’m quitting the show to devote the rest of my life to freeing those unjustly incarcerated.”
Ron Howard’s brother, Clint Howard, has an Internet variety show, The Clint Howard Variety Show. It’s available in Quick Time and Windows Media. It has its moments.
[Update: See also here.]
“Announcing your plans is a good way to hear god laugh.”
Al Swearengen, Deadwood, Episode 12
Lean Left has a delightful — and insightful — essay on modern America vs. Mayberry. It’s evocative. Take three minutes and go read it.
Link via Body and Soul.
“My dad was a professional soccer play[er] for Manchester United, and when they toured America back in ’51, he brought me a little Roy Rogers suit. I’ve still got the pair of guns from it.
You know, I actually preferred the Indians, but they weren’t selling Indian outfits then.”
Ian McShane of Deadwood
Read the whole f***ing interview with McShane.
“Cold enough world without gettin’ done against by your own.”
Seth Bullock, Deadwood, Episode 11
Jeffrey Goldberg at Slate:
There were, as ever, some brilliant lines last night, perhaps the best being Christopher’s plaintive cry, “She was willing to rat me out because she couldn’t do five years? I thought she loved me.” I asked my wife if she loved me enough to do five years. Not only would she not do five years in jail, she said, but she wouldn’t even do five years for me at East Stroudsburg State.
Also from Bill Simmons:
Speaking of TV series, it’s been 10 years … why hasn’t “The Wolf” from “Pulp Fiction” been spun off into his own series yet? Would anyone have been against this? Has there ever been a character with more potential who received less screen time, with the possible exception of coach Fenstock? Even the title of the show would have been cool: “The Wolf.” I don’t get it.
Tom Wedloe, David Mann and Sam McCloud are 80 today. That’s Dennis Weaver.
Chester was from Gunsmoke, Tom Wedloe from Gentle Ben and Sam McCloud, of course, the Taos marshal in the NYPD. The best Weaver role though, was David Mann, the driver chased by the large truck in Steven Spielberg’s Duel.
Watching a prolonged sports championship on TV, such as the current NBA playoffs, becomes an ordeal about now. It’s not the games, which generally increase in drama and tension. (Tonight’s Lakers-Timberwolves game is a great example.) No, it’s the commercials. The same commercials are shown over and over and over and over. How many times have we seen Lance Armstrong riding with the Harley guys, etc.? Worse, how many times have we seen the three people text messaging “it’s over,” “so over,” “now it’s over”? (And, by the way, where do you get your hair cut while basketball is being shown on TV? Most hair cut places are closed for several hours before these games end.) How many more inane discussions must we see between people and jilted Budweiser bottles?
For the most part, the cost of producing a 30 second spot is minor compared to the cost of buying the television time to show it. Why can’t they have at least a handful of different ads for us to see?
And don’t even get me started on the network promos. They’re repeated even more often.
“In life you have to do a lot of things you don’t f*cking want to do. Many times, that’s what the f*ck life is… one vile f*cking task after another.”
Swearengen, Deadwood Episode 9
Virginia Heffernan in The New York Times has a great idea:
November’s general elections need a “results show” like the big bash “American Idol” staged on Fox last night. Instead of distracted anchormen calling tallies from boring desks, the hyperhappy host, Ryan Seacrest, could crow in a tieless tux about how fabulous voter turnout was. Past failed candidates – Carol Moseley Braun, Bob Dole and Howard Dean, certainly – could reprise old stump speeches, all smiles now. Finally, following a sax rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by a former idol, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and John Kerry could stand up, holding hands, trembling but beaming encouragement to each other, as Ryan announced our next American president.
Heffernan’s brief article on the final of American Idol is worth reading.
Thanks to Veronica for the tip.
From the Late Show with David Letterman
10. “You don’t have any money? That’s cool”
(Dominic Chianese) [Junior]9. “Screw this home cooking — I’m going to the Olive Garden”
(Aida Turturro) [Janice]8. “In addition to disposing of bodies, you’ll need to know how to use Powerpoint and Excel”
(Steven Van Zandt) [Silvio]7. “Wasn’t that the guy from Springsteen’s E Street Band?”
(Robert Iler) [A.J.]6. “I just hooked up an illegal cable box. Now I’m getting free HBO”
(Jamie-Lynn Discala) [Meadow]5. “Tony, I’m gonna need to leave early today for Rosh Hashanah”
(Tony Sirico) [Paulie]4. “I want a bigger part — what are you gonna do, kill my character?”
(Drea de Matteo) [Adriana]3. “Hey Paulie, how about you and me going up to Massachusetts and getting married?”
(Michael Imperioli) [Christopher]2. “I can’t go to prison — Martha Stewart will eat me alive!”
(Edie Falco) [Carmela]1. “I just whacked myself”
(James Gandolfini) [Tony]
Eric Alterman has two interesting analyses of The Sopranos from his correspondents. The first by Eric Rauchway last Thursday. The second by Ron Kampeas today. In both cases scroll down to find the Sopranos item.
Alterman himself adds this at the end of the Kampeas analysis:
I have always felt that Carmela is, morally speaking, the least defensible person on the series. Everyone else faces up to the consequences of their behavior to one degree or another. Only she considers herself pure, while sharing in the benefits of her ill-gotten gains.
Matt Feeney appreciates Deadwood:
If you gutted out that first exhausting night and tuned in to subsequent episodes, you’ve witnessed a show both politically insightful and aesthetically rousing. As the season has progressed, the characters’ motivations have become more transparent, their relationships more stable and human, and public crisis has spurred them to form a loose political order. Plot lines have become not just discernable but elegant and bracing. And the saturated setting has become—thanks to an aching mandolins-and-fiddles score and the stunning natural-light cinematography—sometimes overwhelmingly beautiful.
He particularly likes the language, profanity notwithstanding. Read more.
South Knox Bubba has some insightful commentary on Deadwood.
Defamer tells all about tonight’s Friends finale.
Isn’t Hunt for Red October on tonight? Or Shrek? Or something?
Frasier Crane as the shrink on Law & Order.
Writing for Slate, Chris Suellentrop takes a look at Friends:
Only 21 million viewers tuned in [to Friends] last year, compared to the nearly 30 million viewers who watched during the Ross-and-Rachel heyday of Season Two. And fans haven’t been coming back for the show’s final episodes, either. During last week’s time slot, more viewers watched CSI than the penultimate episode of Friends. As the South Florida Sun-Sentinel TV writer Tom Jicha pointed out this week, seven out of eight American homes don’t watch Friends, and this season’s ratings wouldn’t have cracked the Top 20 for any show only a decade ago, in 1995. This is mass appeal?
But there’s another, more fundamental problem with hailing Friends as the last great situation comedy: It misstates the genre to which the show belongs. Friends isn’t a sitcom. It’s a soapcom, a soap opera masquerading as a situation comedy. The earworm theme song, the laugh track, and the gooey sentimentalism all conspire to fool viewers and critics into thinking they’re watching a family sitcom like Growing Pains or Family Ties updated for urban tribes (a Golden Girls for the pre-retirement set). But the beautiful people with opulent lifestyles, the explicit sexual content (everybody’s slept with everybody, Ross’s ex-wife is a lesbian, Chandler’s dad is a transvestite, etc.), the long multi-episode story arcs, and each season’s cliffhanger ending are the show’s real hallmarks. Days of Our Lives isn’t the only soap opera that Joey has a role in. And this one’s got jokes to boot.
Jason is correct, NewMexiKen should have paid closer attention to the background on the Oprah complaints at The Smoking Gun .
In the wake of an Oprah Winfrey show that included explicit talk about teen sexuality (and addressed topics such as rainbows and getting one’s salad tossed), the Federal Communications Commission received more than 1600 letters complaining about the racy March 18 broadcast and demanding that the talk show host be cited for indecency. And since most FCC correspondents were prodded to write by the agency’s Public Enemy Number One, Howard Stern, and ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel, the Oprah complaints are particularly entertaining and vituperative in their decrying of a double standard employed by the fine-happy FCC brass. Below you’ll find a sampling of the Oprah complaints, a small chunk of the stack we received via a Freedom of Information Act request. Since the commission redacts the names of letter writers, there is no way to actually confirm the true identity of letter writers like the “parent” who, having returned home from “Bible day camp” with their three-year-old twins, had to endure Oprah’s “disgusting rhetoric.” Or the “teacher” who worried about his third grade students “viewing these vulgar conversations about sex.”
NewMexiKen is linking to the Olsen Twins legal age countdown only so that you can protect your loved ones from such depravity.
Link via Defamer.
Deadwood is slipping. From a story in USA Today: “On Sunday’s show, there were at least 63 mentions of the f-word in the hour.” Only 63?
The article goes on to discuss the pros and mostly cons of the high profanity quotient. Among others, Dennis Weaver isn’t pleased.
“When you use it and use it, it loses its emphasis and loses its dramatic effect.” Weaver says. “That doesn’t mean to say that the people in the West didn’t use pretty raw language.”
NewMexiKen has already expressed his own discomfort with too much profanity (in my case, the film Ladykillers). Deadwood is still pretty rough and sometimes the profane language just doesn’t resonate. (After you hear and use the f-word a few times you develop a feel for it.)
That said, Sunday’s episode (Number 7) was superb. The acting and writing is outstanding — across the board. The scene near the end where Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert) and Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie) are talking to their departed friend Wild Bill at his grave site was both amusing and moving. When you can get two opposing emotions going at the same time in a TV drama, you are definitely doing something right.