October 2005 Archives

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The investigation into who leaked the name of a covert CIA agent in an apparent effort to punish a critic of the Bush administration's justification for war in Iraq took a shocking turn when Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald indicted Scooter, the long-time gofer on The Muppet Show.

The indictment of the 43-year-old muppet -- long the right-hand man to Muppet Show host Kermit T. Frog -- sent shockwaves through both Washington and the Muppet Theater, as the investigation moved closer to implicating other muppets, including Dr. Teeth, Sam the Eagle, and George W. Bush.

"For Scooter, it is not time to play the music, nor is it time to light the lights," Fitzgerald said, at a hastily called press conference. "Rather, it is time to get things started and co-operate fully with this investigation."

Astute TeeVee readers may remember my praise for gritty Canadian crime drama Da Vinci's Inquest, the show which predates (and easily outshines) American fare like CSI and Crossing Jordan despite having a tiny fraction of those shows' budgets. Well, there's news: episodes from Da Vinci's seven seasons are airing in syndication throughout the U.S. to surprisingly good ratings, so if you don't receive the CBC, check your local listings for a dose of Nick Campbell and some of the sharpest television crime drama ever produced.

And more news: although there's no eighth season of Da Vinci's Inquest, our friends up north have made a brand-new show: Da Vinci's City Hall (CBC, Tuesday nights). The seventh season saw the cranky, intrepid coroner Dominic Da Vinci gearing up to run for mayor of Vancouver. Da Vinci's City Hall opens with Da Vinci taking office and taking to its dirty politics like a fish to water (or a moose to beer, depending on your perspective). Several cast members make the jump to the new series, including Ian Tracey's Mick Leary taking over the Vancouver coroner job, Venus Terzo's detective Angela Kosmo getting partnered with Patrick Gallagher's Joe Finn (the IA officer who almost brought her down last season), and The Untouchables Charles Martin Smith in a recurring role Friedland, a homeless advocate. (Sadly, Donnelly Rhodes is not returning as Leo Shannon: we wish him the best playing the pack-a-day ship's doctor over on Battlestar Galactica.)

On the "art imitates life imitates art" front, Da Vinci is as weird as ever. The show is loosely based on Larry Campbell (no relation to Da Vinci actor Nick Campbell), the former British Columbia coroner who later became mayor of Vancouver, partly by riding momentum from the Da Vinci's television show. Got that? It gets weirder. Larry Campbell acted as a consultant and helped write some episodes of Da Vinci's Inquest, and, after initially opposing B.C. Premiere Gordon Campbell's (again, no relation!) bid for the 2010 Winter Olympics, recently decided not to run for re-election—and then found himself appointed to the Canadian Senate. Huh? And now Da Vinci has followed Campbell's steps into the mayor's office, and Larry Campbell had weekly script meetings with Da Vinci creator Chris Haddock to craft the new show. "He reads everything I write," Haddock said in a Canadian Press interview. "He's actually given much more now that he's off to the Senate and he doesn't have to protect that mayor's seat."

Well, Da Vinci has always kept me in my seat. If you receive CBC, give it a shot.

The Sci-Fi channel announced today that Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis have been renewed for a 10th and third season, respectively. (Hat tip: TV Barn.)

Now, I've been a promoter of Stargate for almost six years. But let's be honest here: the show has rapidly run out of steam. And ideas. The past two years of Stargate have been far less fulfilling than the seasons that preceded it. This year's infusion of new talent and a new storyline hasn't really picked up the pace either. Even given the opportunity to make a fresh start, the show's producers seem to turn far too often to rehashes of pet topics that were dullsville even when they were new: shiny ascended energy beings and threats of pentagon budget cuts (!) being at the top of my personal hit list.

So let me put out one final plea: please, let this be the end of Stargate. Either that, or it's time to clear out the writers' room and bring in a whole new staff of people to write these shows. Because even with new cast members and a young spin-off series, this is one once-proud franchise that feels old and decrepit.

(In other news, Battlestar Galactica hasn't been picked up yet, although I assume that's a formality. Because that's the show -- not Stargate, and certainly not their ridiculous attempts at reality TV series -- that's the channel's breakthrough series.)

Five weeks into the second season of Lost, many people are wondering if the show has lost its zip. But while Teevee newbie Ed Carson argues that the show ground to a near-stop in the latest episode, veteran Vidiot Lisa Schmeiser holds out hope that the show may have turned a corner. They took time out of a busy day at work to debate the burning issue: Is Lost lost?

So last night on "The Amazing Race: Family Edition" -- which grows more unwatchable by the second -- the team that believes Jesus died for our sins and because we need directions to places is driving across Lake Pontchartrain when the matriarch remarks, "This is one of the five Great Lakes."

For the record, the four other Great Lakes are Lake Titicaca, Salt Lake City, Land O' Lakes butter, and the Pacific Ocean. They should not be confused with George Mikan, Elgin Baylor, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Gail Goodrich, who are the five Great Lakers.

I'm not sure whether to be awed or underwhelmed. Apple's big announcements today (video-capable iPod and an iMac G5 with built-in videoconferencing camera, remote control, and media center capabilities) included the unveiling of video content on the increasingly inaccurately named iTunes Music Store.

Yes, you can now pay a ridiculous $2 each for Pixar short films and thousands of music videos. (Although "The Weapon of Choice" is awfully tempting -- my love for the dance stylings of Christopher Walken knows no rational bounds.)

More interestingly, you can pony up the same $2 for episodes of Lost (hooray), Desperate Housewives (boo), The Night Stalker (yawn), and two godawful-looking Disney Channel kids shows (retch) the day after each new installment airs. You can even pick up the entire first season of Lost for slightly less than the price of a DVD box set. It's kinda lame now -- copy-protected, sold in a 4x3 aspect ratio at rinky-dink standard TV resolution, and there's no way yet to burn any of these shows to DVD -- but this could be the tip of the iceberg.

Suppose Fox announces that it's cancelling Arrested Development. Now suppose that Apple and the show's producers put up a whole new season on iTunes for preorder, promising to crank out the episodes if enough folks pay up to see it. Say the same 2 million or so folks who watch Arrested each week sign up for a 22-episode season at $35 a pop. If Apple gets, oh, 25 percent of that, it still works out to roughly $2.3 million an episode for producers to crank out the further adventures of the Bluth clan. (A quick Google search suggests the show currently costs $1.5 million an episode to produce. Does anyone else hear cash registers?) If those episodes also air on TV, the ad revenue would kick in even more to the budget. And even more money would trickle in over months and years as new folks discovered the show and signed up to download the newly made episodes.

This could be big. This could be Veronica Mars never getting cancelled big. In my sad, sad little dreams, this could even be new episodes of Firefly or Farscape big.

That sound you hear is several thousand die-hard fans rushing to their keyboards, looking for someone, anyone to bombard with e-mails. Be afraid. Or excited. Or possibly both.

October is here, and you know what that means for television viewers. An atmosphere of foreboding and dread! Carnage! Slaughter! And then, after the San Diego Padres are eliminated from the playoffs, horror flicks!

That's right, horror flicks galore, more than you can shake a bloody stump at. So many that it's kind of intimidating, actually. How can you possibly pick one or two good fright films to watch from this huge selection, and be assured you aren't setting yourself up for an hour's worth of cinematic offal?

What you need is some kind of handy guide to help you separate the wicked wheat from the chilling chaff. But where can you find such thing? Who would be so lacking in the life department that they would sit through hours and hours of crap just to find one or two worthwhile productions? And who, after already burning so many hours of precious, fleeting existence, would be so pathetic as to waste even more time writing about it for no thanks or compensation of any kind?

Oh, hello there. Welcome to TeeVee.

Happy Halloween!

Before reviewing The Amazing Race: Family Edition -- synopsis: not as bad as feared, but not nearly so good as The Amazing Race: Original Recipe -- I would like to briefly discuss a troubling trend on the show. It involves the Weaver family and its matriarch, who has gotten into the habit of soliciting Jesus Christ for help at every opportunity. I am not talking about noble, humble entreaties such as "Lord, please keep my family safe from danger," but rather more prosaic requests such as "Jesus, help me find the off-ramp" or "I need help reading this map, Jesus."

I have attended Sunday School. I have read the Bible, including the middle parts which tend to drag a little bit. I have, over the course of my life, been acclimated to the tenants of Christianity, or at least, the Lutheran version thereof.

And up until now, I had no idea that Jesus was now employed by OnStar. I guess that happened after He ascended into heaven.

"OnStar Jesus, help me!"

"Yes, ma'am? How may I be of service today?"

"I'm on my way to a wedding, and I must have taken a wrong turn. I'm hopelessly lost. Also, I was supposed to bring the wine and all I have are these jugs of water."

"Fear not, ma'am. I can solve both of your problems."

"Great! Also, I think my son is developing leprosy."

"Ma'am... one miracle at a time, please. Let's get started on those directions..."

A few afternoons ago I'm trying to make a decision about Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Like other parts of the Law & Order juggernaut, its formula driven stories, pacing, and cues get a little old after a while, but, dang, you know: I'll watch Vincent D'Onofrio in just about anything. Especially as he sort of ambles around a room touching and fondling any old thing on a table, counter, or shelf while his partner delivers question after question to the confused maybe-perp. Put Leslie Hendrix's often-snacking medical examiner Elizabeth Rogers in a few scenes, and my VCR is right there. Although the writers unfortunately never seem to leave much space for co-star Kathryn Erbe, she more than holds down her end of the deal.

But last season, my buddy Vinnie collapsed from exhaustion during filming. Not once, but twice--which, understandably, called into question the future of the series. D'Onofrio is typically in three dozen or more scenes per episode, and that's a lot of long days. At least the original Law & Order splits the action neatly between two largely separate casts; Law & Order: SVU also splits material across a much larger cast. But CI landed largely on one man, and after four seasons he got kinda wiped out.

Not one to let a spoke fly off the wheel of his chuck wagon too easily, producer Dick Wolf settled on a new strategy: bring back original Law & Order bad boy Mike Logan, played by Chris Noth, to hold down half the CI episodes. D'Onofrio and Erbe will own half the shows, Logan and a new partner Carolyn Barak (played by Annabella Sciorra) will lead the other half. And, if Noth's and Sciorra's strong introductory episode is any indication, the new formula may work.

But as I'm experiencing a little bit of existential angst over whether I have time and energy to follow the show when, essentially, the main reason I watch it is cutting back to part-time status, I realize, dang, NBC should just change their logo from a peacock to an image of Jerry Orbach, who played long-standing Law & Order detective Lennie Briscoe. Here's why:

• Chris Noth is now anchoring half of NBC's CI; his character Mike Logan was Lennie's partner for a few years.
• Benjamin Bratt is now anchoring NBC's new series E-Ring. Bratt played Rey Curtis, Lennie's partner for many years.
• Jesse L. Martin continues to contribute the "smooth" to one half of the original Law & Order on NBC. His Detective Green was Lennie's partner for many years.
• Jill Hennessy is still quipping her way through Crossing Jordan on NBC. She played opposite Lennie on the original Law & Order for a couple years as ADA Claire Kincaid.

I mean no disparagement to any of these actors, who have repeatedly shown they're more than capable of delivering strong performances and keeping demographically-appropriate viewers engaged. But some people wonder why NBC is staunchly buried in last place among major broadcast networks... gosh, maybe it's because they're been casting the same people in their primetime lineup for fifteen years?

We have taken Sex, Love, and Secrets off the board of the TeeVee Dead Pool. It's stopped production, so while UPN may continue to burn off its episodes, it's officially dead as a dinosaur.

As shows get the axe, we will continue to mark them as "off the board" and will not grant any more points to Dead Pool participants who select them. However, those of you who have already voted for SL&S in your entries, those ten points are yours.