The Bat Segundo Show: Kathleen Collins

Kathleen Collins appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #290.

Kathleen Collins is most recently the author of Watching What We Eat.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Contending with traumatic cooking show associations.

Author: Kathleen Collins

Subjects Discussed: TK

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

kathleencollinsCorrespondent: I should probably start this conversation off by confessing something to you. I think that Rachael Ray is a bit on the crazy side. She’s not someone who really makes me comfortable. I’m actually quite frightened by her. You know, I don’t find her down-to-earth at all. And I think maybe we can start off by describing how we went from this relatively benign cooking show setup, in which you had a quieter, less frenetic impulse, to this more exhibitionistic cooking show that involves a Jerry Springer-like audience shouting for the EVOO and all that. How did we get from one extreme to the other? Do you have any fundamental observation throughout the course of your meticulous observations?

Collins: I do. Although first I have to address your fear of Rachael Ray. Of which I don’t think you’re alone. I can’t remember where I read it. But I heard somebody liken her to Shrek. I don’t know if it was physicality. Or the monsterness. But you’re not alone. I mean, there are people who absolutely adore her. And they’re usually moms. Somebody’s mom who loves her. But otherwise I think, yeah, she can be pretty scary. How we got to that from, let’s say, the home economists of the 1940s and ’50s?

Correspondent: Yeah.

Collins: Long story. I mean, that’s basically what I tried to cover. And it was just a gradual process from the early days of cooking shows where it was all about selling the sponsor’s products. And let’s just use this kitchen space that we have in our studio. Let’s sell this refrigerator. How are we going to fill the time? Well, this is a cheap thing to do. Let’s have some home economists in here and whip something up. Very dry. And then gradually though, they would add some spiciness. There were some shows in the ’50s that had a little entertainment in them. There was Chef Milani out of Los Angeles. And his show was almost slapstick. There was a lot of comedy in it. So for the most part, it was the home ec ladies in the early days. Very, very gradual. Adding entertainment elements. But things didn’t really change until the entertainment aspect really came on with Graham Kerr. The Galloping Gourmet in 1969. At least 1969 in the U.S. Julia Child, everyone will tell you they were in love with her. They were completely entertained by her. But that was not her sole purpose. That was not her purpose at all. She just happened to be extremely charming and lovable. And there’s been no one like her since. So, you know, as soon as the Galloping Gourmet came on the scene and people saw what you could do with the cooking show, it was sort of a light bulb going off. And then other people tried to do it. But none of them for a while. You know, there was a dry spell.

Correspondent: Yeah. But there’s a fundamental difference between Graham Kerr leaping over the divide.

Collins: And leaping over the chair.

Correspondent: Yeah. Leaping over the chair. That is something I can kind of accept. Because I can imagine a friend of mine cooking penne alfredo doing just that.

Collins: (laughs)

Correspondent: I cannot imagine, for example, Rachael Ray, who is bulging her eyes at the camera, holding the utensils in a manner that is completely unnatural — just from the start — and having this thirty-minute, almost exhibitionistic quality to what we’re doing. We move from something that is plausible. Something that is — okay, we’ve got this fourth wall between the television and us. And it’s just plausible for us to have a realistic connection. We can imagine Graham Kerr possibly coming into the kitchen with us.

Collins; That’s true.

Correspondent: But we can’t quite imagine Rachael Ray demanding that we conform to this thirty-minute rigid time. I mean, she’s almost like an HR manager controlling the exact conditions of your employment.

Collins: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, I think a lot of it has to do with the highly produced nature of the show. They have these sets that are just glistening with stainless steel and granite and all the perfect elements that we don’t — many of us don’t have in our homes. Most of us probably don’t have such nice stuff in our kitchens. So we can’t relate to that. And, you know, she doesn’t really cook a meal in front of us. She puts ingredients together in front of us. So it doesn’t look like a real activity. And as for the exhibitionism, I mean, it’s all about personality. I mean, that’s when the Food Network came into being. That’s what they quickly realized was the focal point of every show.

BSS #290: Kathleen Collins (Download MP3)

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Skipping the Super Bowl

Several individuals have reminded me that today is the Super Bowl. A thuggish “working-class” team will be duking it out with a Red State team. Bruce Springsteen has either been enlisted for a halftime negotiation between the two sides, or will be performing some music which suggests that, despite the millions of dollars he has reaped from his fans, he is still somehow “working-class,” “a man of the people,” and that he understands what it means to live from yesterday’s flimsy paycheck to tomorrow’s nonexistent one. And the millions of people who will watch this football match will swallow such illusory class roles without question, because that is what they have been trained to do for so many years. Pundits will be examining the many commercials for their apparent artistic and entertainment merits, but they won’t consider the possibility that drawing attention to a commercial is, in a considerable sense, serving the commercial’s purpose: to sell products and to get a specific brand name discussed among the “rabble.” It will not occur to the Super Bowl crowds that perhaps they are being manipulated, viewed with condescension by those who have put up the money, and that the painted faces of fans serving as B-roll aren’t so much celebrated, as they are ridiculed. Plus, the anchoring amalgam of Al Michaels and John Madden is more dowdy than innovative. (Love or hate Dennis Miller, it took some chutzpah to have him tossing around esoteric references during Monday Night Football some years ago. The anchoring choice was so idiosyncratic that I was then a regular watcher.)

I’m certainly not against the shared television experience. I was there for the 2008 presidential elections and the Obama inauguration. I’ll likely be there for the Oscars. I’ll even be there for future Super Bowls and likely the World Series.

But this year, I will be sitting out the Super Bowl. At this time of this year, it seems more trivial than anni previous, particularly with so many phony working-class labels attached. There’s the practical concern of not having any money on the game and therefore possessing no pecuniary incentive to watch. But there’s something fickle here that goes beyond mere money: how can anyone enjoy a game of football while this nation faces a rising unemployment rate, an economy that may not correct itself for some time, various international skirmishes with no resolution in sight, and the like? I’m not suggesting that the Super Bowl should transform into a political forum. It is, when it works, a rousing form of entertainment. And I have often gotten involved in all this, bellowing at the screen in favor of a team I have either (a) followed through the year, (b) selected at the last minute without thought, or (c) selected the contrarian choice because everybody else in the room has hedged their ballyhoos with a particular favorite. There’s something wonderfully primitive in shouting at the top of your lungs, blaming the quarterback for blowing a snap or faulting a head linesman for a failed call.

I approve of all this. I just wonder why, in a time of national crisis, this nation can’t direct the same energies towards more pressing concerns. If they could do that, there might be a televised event that’s more entertaining, more meaningful, and certainly more historical.

[UPDATE: I'm as much of a sucker for a good football game as anyone. And I ended up getting sucked into the fourth quarter after catching a fire-like flicker of the 100 yard TD while on the street and hearing later reports of a potential Cards comeback. If, as some of the commenters suggested, this game was a healthy diversion, well, given how crazy the game was (even crazier than last year's), I'd have to agree. In fact, if you didn't catch this game, then you missed out on one of the best Super Bowls in recent memory. So I stand partially corrected, while likewise repeating my concern over why these energies aren't also directed towards more substantive issues.]

Keep Your Head Above Water

Here are a few interesting side notes. The above video clip wasn’t the only embarrassing flub that Sylvia Browne made on The Montel Williams Show. She managed to get ITV2 in trouble when Browne informed two parents that their missing son, Shawn Hornbeck, was dead. He turned up alive later. A court found that The Montel Williams Show had violated Rule 2.1 of the Broadcasting Code, which pertains to protecting UK viewers from “offensive material.” The show was temporarily pulled from ITV2.

In addition, the Guardian’s Jon Ronson has a lengthy profile on Ms. Browne. (Did you know, for example, that Ms. Browne pleaded no contest to charges of investment fraud and grand theft in 1992?)

Good Greif

In a predictable piece of contrarianism, n+1 manboy Mark Greif completely misses the point of Mad Men. Calling the famed television show “an unpleasant little entry in the genre of Now We Know Better,” Greif dismisses the idea that television should depict unpleasant human realities such as sexism, racism, and other assorted human weaknesses. Greif has neither the balls nor the acumen to understand that Don Draper likewise possesses a throwback masculinity that is the key to his apparent success and his command at the ad agency. Jon Hamm plays his character with a certain insecurity because the show is about, among other things, the loss of confidence and individualism in American society, and the overlooked qualities which sustained this. While it is true that one can appreciate Mad Men from the more civilized comforts of the present age — parsing it as a depiction of uncivilized human behavior run amuck — the show’s more intriguing thematic involves how Draper’s masculinity is the key to how he, and American society, operates.

Greif appears more enamored with Mad Men’s handsome production design and is more interested in quibbling over needless details than he is with the show’s more interesting depiction of human behavior, and this says more about Greif’s inability to comprehend a television show that goes out of its way to depict uncomfortable truths. Decades ago, women were stifled (and still remain so to a lesser degree today). Men were expected to keep the household together with steely fortitude. But despite these atavistic realities, this is, nevertheless, what made America such an innovative nation. Mad Men works, because it does not present us with a dichotomy. It gives us the troublingly cohesive whole. If you were a smart and successful woman during that time, you had few options and were inclined to give into this patriarchal bullshit. But the patriarchal bullshit, as abject as it was, did galvanize people to make active decisions. This is a daring and much needed representation in our age of schlumpy protagonists in Judd Apatow films and Worst Week. Mad Men doesn’t just ask us to revisit this human quality. It asks us to consider the good things that we may have lost with the ugliness.

Mad Men is indeed a “smart” show. But then you have to have an interest in people in order to fully appreciate it.

Television

Oliver Reed vs. Shelley Winters

They certainly don’t make television like this anymore. Too bad.

Sesameqatsi?

In Praise of “Peep Show”

In the past two weeks, I have wolfed down all five seasons of Peep Show, a dark and frequently hilarious British television series written by Jess Armstrong and Sam Bain (with additional material from the two lead actors). I am now a fan. I am convinced that Armstrong and Bain may very well be the heirs apparent to Ricky Gervais. David Mitchell (no relation to the great author), who plays a portly Tory named Mark, who tries to pick up a woman by describing the battle of Stalingrad in the first episode, and Robert Webb, oozing solipsistic charisma as the rudderless romantic Jez, evoke an especially subtle chemistry that is one of the show’s silent strengths. Like Oscar and Felix, this odd couple bonds through inept bickering. But they also need each other in odd and self-destructive ways to get through the follies of life.

Yes, much of this plays like farce. But Peep Show is very much the antithesis to Friends. And thank goodness. Because good art, even art delivered through the populist medium of television, shouldn’t always involve pining for the expected. The storylines take unexpected turns, veering into truly godawful moments followed by further cringeworthy revelations.

While Peep Show does throw its characters into a few too many stock situations (weddings, pregnancies, relationships), it frequently refuses to take the easy way out. Consider one episode in which Mark’s sister momentarily moves into the flat to recuperate from a marriage on the rocks. Jez is alarmed to learn that his girlfriend has started to spend time with Mark, and it isn’t too long before he sleeps with Mark’s sister out of revenge. Midway through doing the nasty, Jez realizes that his conquest smells like his roommate and even says, “Tickety boo,” one of Mark’s pet phrases, in media Jez so to speak. And this is just the beginning of a series of remarkable and unexpected embarrassments that I wouldn’t dare spoil.

Peep Show is the kind of ballsy television show that is currently unthinkable in America: a program willing to venture fearlessly into uncomfortable truths while likewise relying upon jittery and amateurish camerawork (representing the perspectives of the characters, much like Robert Montgomery’s 1947 first-person film adaptation of Lady in the Lake). Unwanted pregnancy, drunken fellatio, grown men terrified by children, racist drinking buddies, accidental deaths of animals (see the above clip), and wedding disasters are just a few of the subjects the program explores. And when was the last sitcom you saw that featured a character being immersed into a Scientology-like cult while a LAN party was going on in another room?

Unfortunately, you’re not going to find anything more than Peep Show’s first season on DVD in the States. While Peep Show aired over BBC America, I am fairly positive, given broadcast standards and the bawdy subject matter, that it did not air as its creators intended. But many of the episodes can be found at YouTube and downloaded through more illicit distribution methods.

The Early Films of Jim Henson

Before the days of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, Jim Henson was an independent filmmaker in New York, making experimental films between commercial gigs. It was the mid-sixties. According to John Bell’s Strings, Hands, Shadows: A Modern Puppet History, Henson was sharing a workshop space for a few months in the basement of a New York City library with a German sculptor and choreographer named Peter Schumann. Schumann specialized in avant-garde performances, entertaining crowds with masks, puppets, and postmodern dance, often employing these for political demonstrations.

In watching 1965’s “Time Piece,” seen above and recently unearthed by Metafilter, it’s difficult to consider it without Schumann in mind. The film played in New York theaters on a double bill with Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman and concerns itself with a man (played by Henson) being examined in a hospital. As the clock ticks away, a grand surrealistic array of experiential memories overtakes his existence. Gorillas bounce on pogo sticks. There is the quiet Kermit-like plea of “Help!” Chickens emerge in strip clubs. And all this is intercut with optically printed pixellated squares.

The film is set to a intermittent drum rhythm that echoes the heartbeat of time. What’s particularly intriguing is that, according to David P. Campbell’s The Complete Inklings, “Time Piece” so captured Campbell’s imagination that the film was shown at an a seminar at the Minnesota Statewide Testing Program annual conference, with Henson’s film projected on one screen and the test results of a random individual projected on another. The idea was to show Henson’s film, with Campbell announcing to the students, “We should always remember that there is a person behind each of these test scores; to make that point dramatically, here is one person’s test scores and here is a product of his considerable imagination.”

This permissive cultural climate permitted Henson to make “The Cube” in 1969, a teleplay that independent filmmaker Vincenzo Natali appears to have handily pilfered from.

A protagonist, known only as “The Man in the Cube,” is trapped inside a cube of white rectangular panels, with strange individuals who enter and exit through other doors. This premise gave Henson the opportunity to explore a wide variety of topics: racism, sexism, the realm between reality and fantasy. There is even reference to the fourth wall. At one point, a professor addresses the man, pointing out that he is in a television play.

Believe it or not, “The Cube” was commissioned for a television series called Experiment in Television, a now forgotten program that aired on NBC between 1968 and 1971. This series came about because NBC needed filler material to provide late Sunday afternoon programming when the football season had ended. And they decided, quite amazingly, to provide a venue without commercials for documentaries and experimental films.

In the end, it was public television that secured Henson’s rise to fame. But today, unless you’re as squeaky-clean as Ken Burns, your prospects for national exposure are slim. Now that the first season of Sesame Street has been issued on DVD, it’s been issued with a parental advisory reading, “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” The idea of children running around an inner city, looking to learning as a way out, is apparently too threatening a concept.

Given this drastic shift in priorities — the unusual idea of commissioning an experimental film for a testing conference, the now antediluvian notion of creating a space on national television where filmmakers can pursue alternative ideas, and the censure on anything slightly offensive to “suit the needs” of children — one is forced to contemplate the current media atmosphere. Certainly, there is YouTube and the Internet. But this online landscape increasingly values views — and thereby advertising revenue — over notions that are not popular or lucrative, and one wonders just how tomorrow’s Hensons will thrive. Of course, any artist who feels compelled to create will not let any obstacle stop him. But by hindering the spectrum of expression with our priorities (what sells, what’s safe, et al.), I’m wondering if we’re closing the floodgates to those who might have new and innovative ways to get a mass audience excited about the world around us.

Hillary’s Tears, Our Tears

hillary.jpgLorrie Moore’s naive essay on Hillary Clinton not only demonstrates the unspoken precept that skilled fiction writers are sometimes remarkably simplistic when they write about politics, but deploys the same scripted liberalism that every progressive is now expected to chant to peers in coffeehouses. The formula, it seems, boils down to this: Hillary Bad, Obama Good.

Now I’m not exactly a Hillary lover. Clinton waffled from a 1993 universal health care plan which mandated all employers to provide health care for employees to her latest “universal” plan, which shifts the mandatory financial burden to individual citizens. But a proper universal health care program is single-payer, regulated by the government, and doesn’t abdicate the spoils to HMOs. Clinton is also the senator who received the most money from HMOs in the 2008 election cycle. (Obama was second.)

Like every good left-leaning American, I have been seduced by the seemingly limitless reserves of Obama’s charisma: his smooth handling of Bill O’Reilly’s arrogant attack dog antics, his adroit response to anti-abortion protesters, insert your magical Obama moment here.

The man is slick. Slicker than Bill Clinton. I firmly believe that he can be the next President. He looks good. Too good.

In comparing Obama with Clinton, Moore writes that “unlike her, he is original and of the moment. He embodies, at the deepest levels, the bringing together of separate worlds. The sexes have always lived together, but the races have not.”

wecandoitreal.jpgI wonder if Moore remains aware that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, women earn 77 cents for every dollar their male counterparts make. (The disparity, incidentally, is better in Washington, DC, where women make 91 cents to the male dollar. This may explain why Capitol Hill remains somewhat out-of-touch on this issue. An Equal Rights Amendment may provide succor to these problems.) Or maybe Moore remains unaware that young women are earning degrees at a higher rate than men do.

This certainly doesn’t reflect a case where the sexes “have always lived together.” Unless, of course, we’re talking garden-variety cohabitation. And while Obama may talk the talk, I fail to see how Obama’s legislation record brings together separate worlds in any way that is substantially different from Hillary Clinton. The oft bandied boast is that Obama was not Senator in 2002 and therefore unable to vote for the congressional resolution authorizing Bush to use force in Iraq. But what’s not to suggest that within this climate of fear, Obama wouldn’t have done so? (The record demonstrates that John Edwards also voted for it. Kucinich and Paul did not.)

The distinction then is predicated on retroactive speculation. Which is a bit like seriously considering the ridiculous question Bernard Shaw asked of Michael Dukakis during the 1984 Democratic presidential debates: “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?” Kitty Dukakis was not raped and murdered. Obama was not Senator during 2002. Nonetheless, it is an American political tradition to rate presidential candidates according to what they may have done under certain circumstances, as opposed to a more reasonable survey of what they are likely to do based on their past records.

So ultimately the difference between Obama and Clinton comes down to charisma. To watch Obama in action is to experience the most pleasant and capable of political machines. He’ll jazz up a crowd in minutes and give them the fleeting sense that they can change the world. But who is the wizard behind the curtain? Progressives — including myself — were so eager to fixate upon Karl Rove, but why do we fail to apply the same standards to those who run Obama’s campaign?

Last week, Hillary Clinton welled up on camera and was roundly ridiculed. The question arose over whether this was sincere. Cruel YouTube parodies surfaced soon after. For some, the tears confirmed the inevitable. Here are some of the YouTube comments:

I really feel that Hillary Clinton is a worhless [sic] piece of shit.

i hate this woman

This bitch won because she got on national television with her fake crocodile tears in front of million of viewers.

Yea what a fucking cow. She should be making pizza.

This is a very EVIL fricken human being…She should be ashamed of herself! If she had any heart at all she would finally tell the truth!

Go and fuck Bill.. instead of cheating people

Hillary Clinton is a worthless piece of shit.

And so on.

This was not, however, a Muskie moment, even if an op-ed columnist like Newsweek’s Karen Breslau was keen to dredge up the droplet that careened down Muskie’s cheek and sealed his political fate. Until the primary results dictate otherwise, Clinton is still very much in the game.

What was not factored in Breslau’s article was the double standard with regard to gender. I find myself being one of the few who remains suspicious about never seeing a gaffe from Obama. Real humans screw up. But presidential politics demands perfection or, as Bush’s two victories confirm, a guy you can drink a beer with.

The cult of personality remains so seductive that even adept writers like Moore offer this foolishness: “it is a little late in the day to become sentimental about a woman running for president. The political moment for feminine role models, arguably, has passed us by.”

On the contrary, the present political moment is very much about whether a president has the right to appear sentimental before the cameras, which in turn is very much predicated upon whether the candidate is a man or a woman. It does not matter what Hillary Clinton’s positions are. What matters most of all is whether or not the “bitch” or “the worthless piece of shit” fabricated her tears.

The question we should be asking is just why these gratuitous issues of telegenic interpretation are deflecting more pressing concerns, such as platforms and positions, and why even the best of us are happily swallowing the bait.

“Jesus Came First!”

Sherri Shepherd of The View has uttered, in all seriousness, that “Jesus came first.” Shepherd seems to believe that, in the great collective whole of human existence, there was no religion before Christianity. One must ask how such an ignorant fuckwit was picked from the available pool of candidates and hired as co-host. Granted, one does not expect penetrating insight from The View, but surely there are minimum intelligence standards. Surely, there is some producer on the show who is doing more than tearing out hair and begrudgingly accepting this dunce as a talking head for our time. Because this baffling statement truly represents the nadir of talk shows. I’d expect such a conclusion from a four-year-old who still believes in Santa Claus and doesn’t know any better, not a forty year old adult who has had decades to form her conclusions. But there it is. “Jesus came first!” A statement as foolhardy as shouting “The world is flat!” at a geography convention.

If this were a just world, Shepherd would be employed at a full service gas station somewhere, assuming of course that her diseased mind was capable of understanding that inserting the nozzle does not come first (although Jesus DOES come first and he shall save you from rising gas prices!) and that you actually unscrew the cap before putting in the nozzle. Of course, since this is a task repeated multiple times throughout the day, perhaps after the thirty-seventh time, she might catch on. Then again, maybe not. Because as seen in the clip, when presented with the facts by her peers, Shepherd is incapable of even confessing that her co-hosts may be right.

Why the hostility? Because this isn’t just about the glorification of ignorance, but the glorification of people who refuse to accept anything but their ignorance. A remotely thinking person would stop in his tracks and realize that they’ve made a mistake or consider that facts and evidence may have some bearing on maintaining a mind set. And here’s the thing. It’s not as if Shepherd is being asked to weigh in on the Jungian influence on advertising or distinguish between an AK-47 and an M16, but she’s being asked to respond to a basic fact that anyone with a basic elementary school education knows! In continually employing a numbskull as dumb and dense as Shepherd’s on the show, The View’s producers are complicit in celebrating one of the most abhorrent qualities that has pervaded this country. Maybe Mike Judge was right. If we continue to accept such rampant stupidity without protest, at this rate, we’ll be queuing up for Ass: The Movie in a lot less than 500 years.

Unintentionally Hilarious BBC Pilot

And here’s Part 2.

Mainly for Men was a disastrous 1969 pilot in which the BBC attempted to get in touch with “what men wanted” by filming this magazine show. The result involved awkward attempts at interviews, how to fill up your leisure time with shark hunting, and even a song that you could sing along to (with a blonde polishing furniture in the foreground): “Men say they don’t just want little to make up an ideal woman / They talk about hair, the clothes that you wear, as part of the ideal woman!” (At the end of this ridiculous number, the host says, “And very nice too. The only way to do the dusting, I can tell you that.”)

In Part 2, you can groove along with the guy snapping his fingers along as sitar music plays in the back as he photographs a model.

Watching this today, one wonders what people will make of Maxim in forty years.

(via MeFi)

Andy Kaufman on “The Dating Game”

Look Carefully and You Can See the Gust Blowing Through Her Head

BSG “Razor”: Discouraging Signs

Heather Havrilesky: “‘Razor’ is neither the fascinating, heart-pounding ‘Battlestar’ of our fondest memories nor the cheesy, ‘All Along the Watchtower’-lyrics-spewing ‘Battlestar’ of our worst nightmares. But those hungry for a glimpse of Starbuck and Apollo will eat it up faster than a leftover-turkey-and-stuffing sandwich.”

Okay, let’s come clean and get geeky. I don’t watch much television, but, in the interests of keeping reasonably au courant with contemporary culture, BSG is one of the four shows I keep up with. Last season was pretty damn dreadful — the kind of soporific writing reminiscent of people whose exposure to science fiction doesn’t extend past the purported Golden Age of Science Fiction from the 1950’s. (The “expertise” of Dave Itzkoff comes to mind in considering these flaccid plots, particularly that wretched flashback-laden boxing episode.) And the fact of the matter is that the mealy-mouthed metaphor of a leftover sandwich simply isn’t enough to exonerate the egregious missteps in last season’s finale. Sure, I’ll watch out of morbid curiosity. But someone needs to demand better standards from Ron Moore. Perhaps the WGA strike will force Moore to ruminate for a while and find his mojo again. (Or maybe he might want to try writing a few episodes instead of sitting it out as “developer” or “executive producer.” Or does he wish to become another Rick Berman?)

I cannot believe that “it’s pretty impossible to keep that level of intensity going on for too long, and there’s no way that ‘Battlestar’ could escape falling into a repetitive formula.” Does Havrilesky so easily forget that Moore once had the balls to recast the series in dramatic fashion at the end of the second season, only to allow the show to deteriorate into derivative third season episodes once the crew escaped New Caprica? He lacks the courage to lay down the one card he has to play: the discovery of Earth, which presumably will occur in the forthcoming fourth and final season. Maybe he knows that his chips are up.

Further n.b.: I am by no means watching this show that closely, but if Havrilesky cannot remember the Centurions (and that would be with an O, not an A; are the Salon copy editors asleep at the desk?) who have appeared at various points throughout the series — largely employed in planetary surface battles — then one wonders whether Havrilesky is even paying attention.

Peter and David

Nudge Nudge

A compendium of 150 Monty Python Sketches. (via Quiddity)

Did Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson Rip Off Grant Naylor?

In consideration of British comedy history, here are two video clips. The first clip is from “The End,” the first episode of Red Dwarf, written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor and produced in 1987:

The second clip is “The Exam,” written by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson, taken from the first episode of Mr. Bean and produced in 1989:

Both of these scenes are funny, but there are a number of striking similarities: the effort to blow into the paper, the cheater flipping over the paper and being surprised that there is information on both sides of the exam, and the cheater closing his eyes in disbelief only to open his eyes and see the exam in front of him.

The National Post reported that Mr. Bean was conceived as a test character in 1987. Sketches for Mr. Bean had apparently been performed on stage. But in this interview, Atkinson revealed, “And so we thought wouldn’t it be interesting to bring them to Montreal, which we did in 1989. We tried them out on basically a French-speaking audience. And then we did the English-speaking side.”

The big question here is what Mr. Bean sketch he’s talking about. Was “The Exam” one of the candidates? According to the Just for Laughs page:

The sketch, which was in the form of a lecture on dating techniques, was first tested out at one of the French galas. It was met with such an overwhelming positive response, that it was added to the HBO special, and was met with the same response. BBC brass watched the tape of his performance at Juste pour rire and the following year Atkinson’s “Mr. Bean” TV series aired for the first time and made Atkinson an international star.

This suggests that “The Exam” may have been written sometime in 1989 — shortly after the BBC commissioned the first thirty-minute installment of Mr. Bean. A version of this sketch was also included in a Rowan Atkinson one hour HBO special, which was performed and filmed on December 19th and 20th, 1991 in Boston’s Huntington Theater.

Still, I have to wonder whether Curtis and Atkinson were inspired, in part, by Red Dwarf. Obviously, hot off the success of Blackadder, they were very concerned about whether Mr. Bean was going to draw a major audience. But did they see Red Dwarf and abscond with a few of Grant Naylor’s ideas just after signing on with the BBC? And what do Grant and Naylor have to say about this?

The Caves of Androzani

Yes, the mercenaries clearly use Super Soakers as their weapons. Yes, Sharaz Jek is nothing more than a Phantom of the Opera ripoff. Yes, the “technology” hasn’t dated all that well. Yes, one of the bad guys speaks in Shakespearean soliloquies directed at the camera (and, really, why can’t we see more of this on television?). Yes, Peri’s “American” accent shifts into British at certain spots. Yes, the death of one of the supporting characters in Episode 3 could have easily been improved upon with Adobe After Effects. Yes, they had no budget. But, man, this is some pretty fun stuff — in large part, because the script and the acting are pretty fantastic under the circumstances.

Witness the Doctor Who episode, “The Caves of Androzani” on YouTube: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6] [Part 7] Part 8] [Part 9] [Part 10] Part 11] [Part 12]

Ellen DeGeneres, Scab

The Hollywood Reporter: “DeGeneres skipped filming on Monday in support of her writers but returned to work Tuesday despite the strike, though she said she missed and supported her scribes.”

Apparently, Ms. DeGeneres does not know the meaning of a strike, which involves not working until you come to a resolution. Showing “support” for writers one day, only to work the next, is not striking. I don’t care how many tears Ellen DeGeneres wishes to shed over this or dogs. These are the actions of a self-serving bimbo without integrity. Her pathetic statement can be found here.

DeGeneres, incidentally, is a WGA member. Whether the WGA will initiate proceedings to remove her from the guild or consider her a special case remains to be seen. But if the WGA lets this fly and opts for the latter, then I’ll have little faith in the WGA’s powers of representation.

[UPDATE: Nikki Finke has obtained two letters from AFTRA thanking DeGeneres for her support. She's also cited WGA's Minimum Basic Agreement, which excludes material written by a presenter for a comedy-variety program broadcast. Maybe so, but it's a pretty shitty thing to carry forth with "support" for writers one minute and the filming of a television program the next. You don't see Leno, Letterman, or Stewart carrying on these days.]

The Impact of the Writers Strike

Variety; “The canaries in TV’s creative coal mine are latenight hosts such as David Letterman and Jay Leno, whose monologues and sketches are dependent on union writers. If history is any guide, both shows will almost instantly go dark, as would ‘Saturday Night Live.’ Comedy Central’s latenight stalwarts ‘The Daily Show With Jon Stewart’ and ‘The Colbert Report’ would also likely switch to repeats in the immediate aftermath of a strike.”

It’s 1988 all over again. And there’s a part of me quite curious about how long it will go on, how patient audiences will be for reruns, and whether the late-night television titans might at long last be revealed as mimetic melonheads desperately reliant they are upon their writers.

The difference this time is that this WGA strike is going down in the Internet age, with the largest possible depository of non-union talent showing off their wares at YouTube.

Sure, 95% of everything is crap. But what if the networks and the WGA can’t come to an agreement? Let’s say that the strike ends up going on for longer than six months, which would surely make the promised spate of sixteen uninterrupted episodes of Lost impossible and piss off the fans. That’s certainly sticking it to the man. But is it possible that a spate of enterprising nonunion talent, shut out by the WGA system, might drastically court the networks during this strike? And if they do not approach the networks or the networks do not approach them in scab-like manner, then perhaps television audiences, desperately searching for new material, might be drawn to either the Internet or reading books to find new stories.

In other word, this WGA strike couldn’t have happened at a better time. As the relationship between old media and new media remains transcendent and ever-evolving, I’m wondering if we won’t see some serious shock waves if the WGA strike isn’t resolved within two months. Unless, of course, the WGA strike proves the inevitable: that current television audiences are quite happy to get their reality TV fix. Which would be considerably ironic, given that this was precisely what the WGA has gone to the mat for.

Geek Alert! Geek Alert!

Peter Davison will reprise his role as the Fifth Doctor. And yes an “Eeeeeeeeeeeek!” is in order for this.

Babylon Fields

The pilot for Babylon Fields, the zombie crime drama that was noted on these pages a few days ago, now lives in its full 42 minute glory on Google Video. Watch this while you can. One never knows the vagaries of lawyers who will want to take this down.

I’m Too Easily Amused

Dark Shadows reenacted by dolls.

Wouldn’t She Have Learned About Joints in the Joint?

I don’t know what’s funnier: the mad genius who teamed up Amy Sedaris with Martha Stewart in the kitchen or the fact that Stewart doesn’t know what bongwater is. (via Quiddity)

For Tyra Banks, “Experts” Are Plastic, Unreal & Non-Threatening People

Violet Blue: “As I told the producer (who I saw quite quickly), I will not lie about my appearance or who I am, for anyone or anything. It does my readers, my listeners, my viewers, my friends and the sex-positive, non-judgmental message I bring and represent a disservice to lie. And, I told her, I have to look at myself in the mirror when I wake up the next day and look at myself. Would she have me change my appearance to look ‘less Asian’ to seem more of an expert?”

Thirty Years of Jumping the Shark

And Speaking of Red Dwarf…

…apparently, you can watch every episode online. (via Quiddity)

Lionel Shriver Attacks British Television

Scotsman: “And Shriver, 50, condemned game shows that ‘create cruelty and humiliation,’ endless reruns of Friends, weight-loss programmes, a ‘lunatic profusion of British property shows’ and ‘the worst of American exports.’”

“Hey” is for Horses

I’ve noticed a troubling trend in television dialogue for two characters to begin their conversation like this:

CHARACTER A: Hey.
CHARACTER B: Hey.

Now “Hey” is a perfectly reasonable word. I use it myself. But what bothers me so much about this recurrent exchange is that the actors always deliver their “Hey” like some languorous hipster, generally when in the middle of working on a farm or meditating on a porch or doing some kind of “thinking” in relation to an emotional exercise. Never mind the age or the character relationship. The double “Hey” is used among couples who have been together for multiple years, siblings, between shopkeepers and customers — in short, it now serves in lieu of a name. It is also used when one character has returned from some pressing errand and has just finished talking with the other character only an hour before! Instead of even a rudimentary exchange like:

CHARACTER A: Everything okay?
CHARACTER B: (silence, as CHARACTER B ponders death of a loved one)
CHARACTER A: Is there anything I can do?
CHARACTER B: Leave me alone.

we get

CHARACTER A: Hey.
CHARACTER B: Hey.

No sense of empathy. No sense of giving someone space. At the end of the day, there’s the lazy television writer’s trusted “Hey,” which signals to the audience that the show will go on and we will be right back for a message from our sponsors. And the characters don’t even bother to refer to each other by their first names!

Well, I’m sorry, but this is lazy writing. “Hey” has become the detached crutch that has now replaced beats and silent emotional reaction. Apparently, television space must be filled up with dialogue or an action scene at every moment, even if it’s a monosyllabic word. And instead of conveying excitement, the “Hey” is drawn out, as if Southern Californian vernacular could be found in every scenario.

Perhaps the solution to all this is for fans of television to count the number of “Heys” in any given episode and to publicly shame these writers into writing more convincing dialogue.

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