From CNN.com: Suzanne Pleshette dies at 70

(*sigh*) I’m surprisingly sad about this…we lost her husband, television comedy pioneer Tom Poston, earlier last year, and now this. Add in the death of Allan Melvin, a solid well-known actor who, while you probably didn’t know his name, you would recognize immediately from his bazillion television character roles starting with The Phil Silvers Show, and you get a bleak time for comedy.

From the AP via Yahoo: Return of Fox’s ‘24′ postponed by strike

Ok, now I’m ticked off. Although this will at least give Kieffer some time to pay off his dept to society…

As most of you know (at least if you read this space), the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention was held last weekend. While there’s way too much good stuff from the weekend to discuss in this brief posting (I’m dealing with car inspection today, yippee), I wanted to at least get up here a short video clip of one of the guests, Erin Gray (Buck Rogers, Silver Spoons) talking about an actor I thought was consistently underrated, Robert Urich (the only Spencer: For Hire, Vega$, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice).

 Erin Gray on Robert Urich: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention is next weekend, and for those of you in the area who might be on-the-fence about attending this great three-day event, I thought I’d show just a few clips from last year’s freshman version.

And if you are planning to attend, please stop by and say hello…I’ll be the rotund guy behind the video camera, probably swilling coffee or chugging down an energy drink. ;)

 Highlights of MANC 2006: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From the AP via USA Today: Emmy nominee Joe Mantegna joins ‘Criminal Minds’

There goes one of my favorite shows. Mantegna is an uninspiring actor (best-known in this household for butchering the character of Spencer) and certainly no replacement for the excellent although troubled Mandy Patinkin.

Ah, out with the old, in with the new. The television season is dead, long live the next television season. And to prepare for it, I’m going to review new shows as the pilots become available.

Pushing Daisies; ABC, Wednesday, 8:00 PM

You know, I was beginning to think I was getting soft…the last few pilots I watched, I liked, which made me wonder if I was getting too soft to be reviewing television. Thankfully, along came Pushing Daisies, a program that wants to be quirky and ends up just being creepy.

Anna Friel and Lee Pace, not touching, with Chi McBride

There’s this guy, Ned (Lee Pace, Wonderfalls who plays the character as so standoffish we don’t care about him - this role needs a Thomas Cavanagh-type, someone who can be endearing while standing apart) who when he is a boy discovers the strange power to bring dead things back to life; but in standard television fashion, there are more rules to this than there are to Deal or No Deal. 1) If the creature he brings back to life lives for more than one minute (thank heavens god or whatever supreme being this show accomodates lives by our watches), something else in the vicinity will die, and 2) if Ned touches the living being again, it will die forever (no word on whether or not the thing that died after the first minute comes back to life in that case - also no word on what plant dies when Ned brings strawberries back to life for his pies). So the main plot driver is that Ned works with a private detective named Emerson Cod (Chi McBride, The John Larroquette Show, Boston Public, Killer Instinct, The Nine) to find murder victims, bring ‘em back for a minute to ask who offed them, then touch ‘em again within that minute timeframe so they can die again. When not reviving corpses and then sending them back to death, Ned is the baker and owner of The Pie Hole, having something to do with his mother having been baking pies when she died, was resurrected, and then died again when she kissed him goodnight. Working there is Olive (Kristin Chenoweth, The West Wing), who has a crush on Ned, but Ned gets a little nervous touching the living, so she’s left out in the cold.

If you aren’t completely creeped out yet, it gets better. One of the victims Emerson has Ned revive is his first crush, Chuck (Anna Friel, The Jury); as you’d expect, Ned can’t bring himself to send her back, so their love affair is rekindled, in spite of (or more likely because of) that whole if-they-touch-again-she’ll-die-forever thing. The plot of the pilot deals with Chuck’s aunts, Lily (the delightful Swoosie Kurtz, Sisters, Huff, who seems to have had a little too much cosmetic work done) and Vivian (Ellen Greene, Little Shop of Horrors) receiving the item Chuck was smuggling (don’t ask) and being targeted by a killer we never know.

So apparently this is going to be part fantasy, part detective mystery, part unfulfillable love story…but mostly it’s a silly mish-mash with plot threads knotted so badly that no one is going to bother to try to unravel them. Catch the first episode or two of this one while you can…I’d be surprised if it outlasts Smith.

Ah, out with the old, in with the new. The television season is dead, long live the next television season. And to prepare for it, I’m going to review new shows as the pilots become available.

Reaper; CW, Tuesday, 9:00 PM

Yet another tired twist on a tired formula…once you see this, you’ll miss the old show Brimstone.

Sam (Bret Harrison, The Loop) turns twenty-one today, and finds out this is gong to be about the worst day of his life - where up to now his parents (Allison Hossack, Falcon Beach and Andrew Airlie, The L Word) have let him slide and do anything he wants to do, while pushing his brother Keith (Kyle Switzer, 15/Love), today they give him the interesting news that before he was born, his soul was sold to the Devil. Today is the day the Devil (Ray Wise, Twin Peaks, 24) takes his due. Sam is to become a Reaper, one who captures and returns souls who have escaped from Hell.

Giving the devil his due; Ray Wise and Bret Harrison

Now understand, unlike Ezekial Stone in Brimstone, who needed to shoot the escaped souls in the eyes, Sam needs to use a “vessel” to capture each one…this episode’s vessel is a DirtDevil hand vac (DirtDevil…get it? Real subtle, kids…), and his escaped soul is a firefighter who is setting fires all over town.

Add to this the twenty-something angst of him trying to ask his co-worker Andi (Nikki Reed, The O.C.) out for a date, and his getting other co-workers Sock (Tyler Labine, Boston Legal, Invasion and the stereotypical loser hippy) and Ben (Rick Gonzalez, Coach Carter) involved in his reaping, which involves Sock’s ex-girlfriend Josie (Valarie Rae Miller, Dark Angel), and oh, the merry mixups that can come into play.

(*sigh*)

Ok, some of the sequences were cool. As someone who has in his lifetime driven a Zamboni, the ice resurfacing sequence had me giggling a bit. The computer graphics were sorta cool in the firewalker sequences, and having the DMV be a portal to Hell didn’t seem to me to be so far away from the mark. Still, all in all, this is a program that doesn’t know what it is…unlike Supernatural, which walks the line between spooky and sappy with extraordinary aplomb, this thing just doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be when it grows up.

Contrasted to Brimstone’s Detective Stone, Sam isn’t a flawed nuanced character but rather an innocent sold into damnable slavery even before his conception…while there may be some pity for him, the character doesn’t have much to bite into starting out. And though I relish the chance to watch Ray Wise work (no one…I mean no one… can do smarmy like this guy - his mouth smiles while his eyes threaten unspeakable horrors), this doesn’t have much else going for it. The rest of the cast is competent but uninspiring, the plot predictable, the characters stereotypes, and I’m guessing even the running gags like the vessel-of-the-week will wear thin in a few episodes.

Sam’s destiny is to be a reaper. Mine is to look for better television programs to watch.

At this year’s Defcon convention (a hacker’s-and-crackers convention dealing with computer security), NBC Dateline producer Michelle Madigan attended as a conventioneer (allegedly refusing press credentials), allegedly carrying in her purse a hidden pinhole camera. She was busted, and…er…escorted off the premises:

Now I have to tell you, while you’ll probably never find anyone who is a stronger supporter of the freedom of the press (yes, I’m in the United States), a vital element in keeping the people of this country free and never more vital than today, I am getting a little weary of the tactics some “reporters” are using; many seem to think the First Amendment gives them carte blanch to do whatever they want, regardless of the legality or morality, to get a story — the more sensational, the better. Had this sleezy news magazine (anyone remember adding explosives to gas tanks?) just had its producer acquire press credentials, they might have gotten an excellent story about the good and the bad of computer security…instead, they wanted to ambush some thirteen-year-old bragging to impress the blonde, so they could put together some salacious “story” about the evils of kids learning about computer security with children seen through bug-eyed, night-visioned lenses.

She got what she deserved, in my humble opinion, and Dateline should issue a strong apology not only to the convention, but to the American people for abusing the Constitutional rights they have been guaranteed. I thought this nonsense was going away with the Weekly World News?

Ah, out with the old, in with the new. The television season is dead, long live the next television season. And to prepare for it, I’m going to review new shows as the pilots become available.

Chuck; NBC, Monday, 8:00 PM

This show has it all. Spies. Beautiful women. Nerds.

Huh?

Sarah Lancaster and Zachary Levi

Ok, let’s start at the beginning. Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi, Less Than Perfect) leads a pretty normal life for a member of the “Nerd Herd” at the “Buy More” store (think CircuitCity’s Best Buy’s Geek Patrol). His sister Ellie (Sarah Lancaster, Everwood, Dr. Vegas, What About Brian, and a d*mned good reason to watch any series although I prefer her as a blond) throws him a birthday party from which he wants nothing more than escape with his friend and fellow geek Morgan (Joshua Gomez, Without a Trace). Meanwhile, his old roommate Bryce who he thinks is an accountant but who is really a rogue CIA agent, is breaking into a top-secret headquarters and breaking into a massive computer database (front-ended by a Macintosh SE, no less) to steal secrets from the CIA, NSA, and lord-only-knows who else.

Bryce is stopped by John (Adam Baldwin, Firefly, Day Break), but with his dying breath Bryce sends an email to Chuck with a riddle from Zork (if you don’t know what that text adventure game is, check Wikipedia)…when Chuck solves it, a massive flood of information flows out of his monitor into his brain itself, filling it with information he isn’t aware he has.

Next day at work, he meets Sarah (Yvonne Strzechowski, Gone), a beautiful woman who seems to fall for him and finally gets him to ask her out, but a woman who holds secrets of her own…Sarah is really CIA, and sent to find out what he knows - problem is, John is also on his trail.

While the two fight over the secrets inside Chuck’s brain, Chuck puts together a terrorist plot from the information he gleaned from the email, and the race is on to save a NATO general while saving his own hide as well.

“Saving the world at $11.00 an hour” is the tagline for this series, but I have the feeling it’s going to cost a whole lot more than that, especially if Chuck gets the job as Assistant Manager. While some of the comedy elements seem a little strained in the pilot, the action sequences are top-notch (man, wouldn’t want to be the stunt team who handles Bryce in the mad escape - yeah, it takes a team of ‘em along with some computer graphics for the final jump). The premise suffers from the typical cluelessness when it comes to technology (they even got the computer viruses wrong), and it took me a while to stop laughing about the Mac SE as the front-end for the most powerful computer in the government, but those are small quibbles…the show kept me watching if not on the edge of my chair, and makes me curious to learn what else lies in store for Chuck.

I admit, though, I am curious how the series will handle the inevitable problem should it be successful…after all, the influx of secrets from this one email will eventually get stale, so Chuck will need a reload…

Ah, out with the old, in with the new. The television season is dead, long live the next television season. And to prepare for it, I’m going to review new shows as the pilots become available.

Aliens in America; CW, Monday, 8:30 PM

Ok, I’ll admit it, I was prepared to hate this show…after all, you can almost hear the one-line pitch meeting: “It’s Wonder Years with a Muslim!” But I have to admit the show gave me a couple of chuckles and a belly laugh, which is more than I can say for most “comedies” on the air now, so maybe I should be a little less harsh.

The replaced Patrick Breen, Dan Byrd, and Amy Pietz

The pilot opens with Justin Tolchuck (Dan Byrd, The Hills Have Eyes) telling us in Wonder Years-style narration how much life sucks for a nerd; his mother Franny (Amy Pietz, Caroline in the City, the despicable Rodney) dotes on him to the point of unhealthy obsession, his father (Patrick Breen, Kevin Hill but now replaced by Gilmore Girls’ Scott Patterson in a casting mistake, as Breen is perfect as the well-meaning but dysfunctional Gary) obsessed only with making an extra buck, his sister Claire (Lindsey Shaw; those without nine-year-olds can be forgiven for not knowing her years of work as Moze on the Nickelodeon comedy series Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide) returned from summer camp with…er…”girl-parts,” and the bullies in school make him a popular target.

Frannie decides to do something about it, and after talking to the guidance counselor agrees to take in an exchange student, or as Justin explains it to us, “I think any teenager’s lowest point comes when his mother decides she has to import a friend for him.” But imagine their surprise when that friend is a Pakistani named Raja…

Yep. Mom decides to dump the kid, Dad wants to keep him for the $500/month they receive from the exchange program, Justin doesn’t know what to think, and Claire doesn’t know the smitten Raja even exists.

Comedy abounds; Raja’s first day, Frannie’s plot to return him, etc., etc.

Yeah, it’s all pretty predictable (you’ve already written the plot in your head, haven’t you?), but the narration is smart and funny, the actors are all likable and talented when not being directed to chew the scenery, and even though the happy family dinner at the end may have those in Middle America cringing at the unsophisticated way they are portrayed, the program gave me a surprisingly large number of laughs…so I guess I have to almost grudgingly admit - I liked it.

From the AP via Yahoo: Mandy Patinkin departs ‘Criminal Minds’

No…no…NOOOOOOOOOOOO…..

The season finale of 24 is now over, and I’m still ticked off.

If you read the interviews with the writers and production staff, they have a thousand different excuses for why this season was so lousy. Heck, these guys have even blamed the mood of the country, saying we’re not close enough to 9/11 anymore to have the same bunker-mentality. But I’m certain I know exactly why this season was lousy.

Because they wrote it that way.

They decided this season that they were so clever they could serve us the last five seasons run through a blender and call it “new and exciting.” They figured the audience would swallow any regurgitated nonsense they pulled out and like it. Guess what…the audience (hey, that’s me!) is smarter than that. The bullpuckey with a Vice President trying to remove a sitting President named Palmer from office by using the Cabinet was insulting - we’ve seen it before, and to be blunt a whole lot better. Having Jack’s father kill his brother was just plain stupid. Having Jack himself go from years in a Chinese prison to completely operational in an hour is a bloody joke. And the season ending, which I won’t describe for those of you on the west coast, was done a whole lot better before, too.

This is directly to the producers of the show: Yeah, you have some of the most loyal fans in television today. But this year your hubris damned near cost you a whole lot of us. If you’re really lucky, we’ll give you another year to get your act together…but seriously, don’t think if you screw up next year Fox will honor it’s two-year contract. Treat me, and the rest of the fans, like an idiot again, and you’ll all be looking for work.

And, oh yeah - I darmed well expect the DVD version of this season to come with a price cut…this season isn’t worth full price.

From USA Today: ‘24′ hours later, it’s time for Audrey

From the article: “After thwarting plans for detonating suitcase nukes in Monday’s episode, 24’s action hero was hit with a staggering good news/bad news scenario: His true love, Audrey Raines (Kim Raver), is not dead, as he had been told, but is being held by his Chinese nemeses.”

I dunno…it’s clear they had to change directions, since this year has been little more than a pale rehash of other season’s perils (the 25th Amendment again…please…), but I’m not happy with the quick way the main plotline was handled, nor the convenient telephone call that launches us into a completely different direction.

Indeed, I know the writers on this show pride themselves with not knowing what’s going to happen from one episode to another (this has to be the first time outside of Congress I’ve seen people think it’s a good thing to be intentionally ignorant), but it’s long-past time they actually plotted an entire season in advance instead of flailing around like some fish on a pier - this nonsense (and the moronic box they painted themselves into at the end of last season) is exactly why this season has been the weakest of all…and it isn’t just me who thinks so, it’s everyone I’ve talked to, everyone I’ve read, everyone I’ve heard. While I’m sure you could say this about every serialized drama (Prison Break, anyone?), it’s particularly annoying on 24, since we’ve gotten into the habit of paying attention to the first six and last six episodes of every season, and completely ignoring the middle 12, which we know have nothing to do with the “real” plotline. (Hey, when’s the last time you wondered if Morris took a drink? Anyone remember that Chloe is even working at CTU?)

I’m also distressed at the writers completely ignoring the clock. During season 1, the clock was quite literally a co-star…other than the “cheats” required to handle the top-of-the-hour timeshifts (two minutes of “Previously on 24,” three minutes at the end for commercials, etc.) the clock actually ran in real-time - heck, even the mid-commercial cutouts reminded us where the characters were at that moment. Now, they’ve thrown all that out the window along with any solid plotting; Presidents make love in under three seconds, Jack is healed from years of torture in ten minutes, interrogations take seemingly hours of screen time until inconvenient, then it’s under five minutes to have CTU set up a complex sting operation…well, you get the idea. I don’t mind suspending disbelief, but if your “gag” is the real-time clock, then damnitall, use it as a plot device instead of ignoring it for convenience. I’m not talking cheating about driving across LA, I’m talking about doing the impossible in no time at all. C’mon, people, your viewers aren’t idiots, and it’s high time you stopped treating us as such. Drop the vanity of thinking you can get ourself out of any corner you paint yourself into…you can’t, and you’ve proved it beyond all doubt this season (after working darned hard at proving it season last).

Buck up, kids, or you’ll lose us all. You’re a whole lot closer at losing me than I ever thought possible after the first hour of season 1, when I realized at 1:00 AM that I was sitting on the edge of my seat. Lately, by the end of the episode, I’m just yawning.

Quick funny story, though…last night, Katie got up for a drink in the middle of the show. She came into the room for a quick night-night kiss just as Jack was shot and lying in the middle of the street. I said to my wife, “Gee, I’m not used to seeing Jack lose.” As my beautiful little girl left the room, she softly muttered, in her little-girl voice, “Yeah, unless you’re playing him,” a clear reference to my skills playing 24: The Game on the PlayStation2 (which, come to think of it, has a better thought-out plotline than the last two television seasons). When did she turn into a sardonic little mini-me?

Product placement is getting rampant in television programs today…companies have decided that since we go to the bathroom or kitchen during commercials, they only way to reach us is to shove their products into the show itsedlf. The production companies are thrilled at this, since they get the money directly instead of being paid by the networks wheich are paid by the advertisers. The only person who loses here is the viewer, who has to sit through all the garbage.

CSI:New York has got to be the biggest PPP (Product Placement Prostitute) on television today; practically every episode of this program has some gratuitous product placement in it; last night, between the batteries and the music promos, I thought I was going to retch.

So you know what? I’m done…CSI:NY has been a distant third of the CSI programs anyway (being behind CSI:Miami with it’s annoying subplots and even more annoying lead is saying something), and the plots have been less than weak. Even with the strengths of the cast, this show has been putting the “b” in boring for a while now, but the product placement nonsense has finally tipped me over the line. I’m not watching this show anymore…so advertisers, whether buying commercials or paying to shove your product on the show itself, you’ve lost a set of eyeballs.

And later, I’m buying a pack of EverReady batteries, just to make myself feel better.

From The New Yorker: Whatever it Takes, The politics of the man behind 24.

From the article: “This past November, U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind 24. Finnegan, who was accompanied by three of the most experienced military and F.B.I. interrogators in the country, arrived on the set as the crew was filming…Finnegan and the others had come to voice their concern that the show’s central political premise - that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security - was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. ‘I’d like them to stop,’ Finnegan said of the show’s producers. ‘They should do a show where torture backfires.’”

Maybe Gen. Finnegan should spend more time telling the kids that it’s a television show. Sheesh, what’s next - they jump off the gym roof because they watched Heroes?

Ever wonder what it would be like if Jack Bauer were a Pizza Delivery Driver instead of an agent for CTU? Between Seasons four and five of 24… Agent Jack Bauer, with aid from a former US President, faked his own death to avoid an unjust trial overseas. Unable to provide employers with his true identity, Jack Bauer succumbed to working many service industry jobs which he is, sadly, unqualified for.

Received an updated flier from Bob Burchett on the upcoming Cincinnati’s 21st Annual Old-Time Radio and Nostalgia Convention. Check it out!

 Cincinnati's 21st Annual Old-Time Radio and Nostalgia Convention: Download

From USA Today: ‘24′ firing on all cylinders

From the article: “It’s easy to see now why so many of the season’s serialized shows failed: They weren’t 24.”

No, I won’t give you any spoilers (ok, ok, just one - there are no cougars in the first four hours of this season). But DO NOT MISS this Sunday and Monday’s four-hour season-opener. “The following takes place between 6:00 am and 10:00 am…”

From The New York Times: New Serials: Now You See Them, Now You Don’t

From the article: “Unlike ABC’s ‘Lost’ and a few other hits that have followed the serial format, many of the most recent successors to ‘24′ have met a grim fate, dying quickly before most viewers could get to know anything about them.”

And yes, folks, I know I’m behind in posting some OTR shows promised and such. I was behind before, and then got a little under the weather this week. I’ll catch up, honest.

From the AP via Yahoo: ‘Munsters’ star Yvonne De Carlo dies

Yvonne De Carlo, the beautiful star who played Moses’ wife in “The Ten Commandments” but achieved her greatest popularity on TV’s “The Munsters,” has died. She was 84.