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.

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

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?

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]