THE JAY WARD SYMPHONY

Here's a musical tribute to the genius that was Jay Ward:

My thanks to Mark Evanier for bringing this to the attention of his blog's readers.

I'm sending this out to my friend Maurice Steinberg, in the hopes that one day he might lead the orchestra in Torrington in a similar salute.....

BCnU!

MUSEUM PIECE: MIKE HAMMER IN TOOBWORLD

For the Saturday edition of Inner Toob's Video Weekend, we present the first three episodes of Darren McGavin's TV series about private eye Mike Hammer, who is also our featured character in today's "As Seen On TV" showcase.....

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: MIKE HAMMER

MIKE HAMMER

AS SEEN IN:

'Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer'

AS PLAYED BY:

Darren McGavin

TV DIMENSION:

Earth Prime-Time

STATUS:

Recastaway (Deceased)

CREATED BY:

Mickey Spillane

From Wikipedia:

Michael "Mike" Hammer is a fictional detective created by the American author Mickey Spillane in the 1947 book "I, the Jury" (made into a movie in 1953 and 1982).

Several movies and radio and television series have been based on the books in the Hammer series. The actor most closely identified with the character in recent years has been Stacy Keach, who portrayed Hammer in a CBS television series, 'Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer', which ran from 1984–1987 and had a syndicated revival in 1997–1998. (An earlier syndicated version, originally aired in 1957–1958, starred Darren McGavin as Hammer.) Spillane himself played Hammer in a 1963 motion picture adaptation of "The Girl Hunters". Spillane himself favoured ex-Marine and former Newburgh, New York police officer Jack Stang, on whom he based the character, to play him. Stang appeared with Spillane in the 1954 film "Ring of Fear" and in the film adaptation of "I, the Jury".

While pulp detectives such as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe are hard-boiled and cynical, Hammer is in many ways the archetypal "hard man": brutally violent, misogynistic, and fuelled by a genuine rage that never afflicts Raymond Chandler's or Dashiell Hammett's heroes. In "The Big Kill" Hammer describes himself to a bargirl as a misanthrope.

While other hardboiled heroes bend and manipulate the law, Hammer holds it in total contempt, seeing it as nothing more than an impediment to justice, the one virtue he holds in absolute esteem. Hammer nevertheless has a strong respect for the majority of police, realising they have a difficult job and their hands are frequently tied by the law when trying to stop criminals.

Mike Hammer is a no-holds barred Battle of Guadalcanal veteran private investigator who carries a .45 Colt M1911, named "Betsy" in a shoulder harness under his left arm. His love for his secretary Velda is only outweighed by his willingness to kill a killer. Hammer's best friend is Pat Chambers, Captain of Homicide NYPD.

Hammer is also patriotic and anti-communist. The novels are peppered with remarks by Hammer supporting American troops in Korea, and in "Survival...Zero" Vietnam. In "One Lonely Night", where Hammer attends a communist meeting in a park, his reaction to the speaker's propaganda is a sarcastic "Yeah."

So far as violence is concerned, the Hammer novels leave little to the imagination. Written in the first person, Hammer describes his violent encounters with relish. In all but a few novels, Hammer's victims are often left vomiting after a blow to the stomach or groin.

The Washington Times obituary of Spillane said of Hammer, "In a manner similar to Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, Hammer was a cynical loner contemptuous of the 'tedious process' of the legal system, choosing instead to enforce the law on his own terms."

'Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer' is the title used for two syndicated television series that followed the adventures of fictional private detective Mike Hammer. The gritty, crime fighting detective—created by American crime author Mickey Spillane—has also inspired several feature films and made-for-TV movies.

From the source:

"It was a fine day. The sun was warm and the streets full of kids making  67th and walked back to the park. She wasn't on any of the benches, so I hopped the fence and cut across the grass to the inside walk. The day had brought out a million strollers, it seemed like. Private nurses in tricky rigs went by with a toddler at their heels, and more than once

racket like a pack of squirrels. I drove to the corner and stopped in a cigar store where I put in a call to Charlotte's office. She wasn't there, but her secretary had been told to tell me that if I called, I could find her in Central Park on the Fifth Avenue side near 68th Street. ....I drove in from the cutoff on Central Park West and drove all around the place, circling toward Fifth. When I came out I parked on

I got the eye."
- ("I, The Jury")

I'm willing to entertain the notion that the Mike Hammer played by Stacy Keach (above, right)  in the 1980's was the son, probably illegitimate, of Darren McGavin's Mike Hammer. (I would prefer to keep as many TV shows as I can in the main TV dimension, if I could.)

If anyone should know of any reason this should not be - a mention in some episode's plot point, an appearance by some other actor as his father - please let me know.

For a recent, insightful overlook to the series from the 1950's, click here.

BCnU!

GIVING CHASE TO A ZONK

When Dave's Dad started dating Penny's Mom on the latest episode of 'Happy Endings', Penny saw it as the chance to finally have a sibling. But Dave objected to her calling him "Baby Bro", saying that she was no Johnny Drama.

This was a reference to Johnny Chase, a character played by Kevin Dillon in 'Entourage'. That HBO series was about the guys who hung out with Johnny's younger brother, Vincent Chase, a Hollywood movie star.

But the show wasn't mentioned and as a character in Toobworld, Johnny "Drama" Chase should be known by a lot of TV characters in other series. He was a movie st-# er, actor himself and even starred in several TV shows - 'Viking Quest', 'Four Corners', and he provided the lead voice for a cartoon series 'Johnny Bananas'. So there was no Zonk here and instead provides a connection between the two series.

Too bad there's no easy splainin' for the mentions of 'The Wire' and 'Blue Bloods' in the same episode.....

BCnU!

ENJOY EVERY SANDWICH

The eleventh episode of my favorite comedy series from 2011, 'Happy Endings', was "Meat The Parrots" and it had three awesome guest stars - Michael McKean as Dave's Dad, Megan Mulally as Penny's Mom, and Ed Begley, Jr. as himself.

Because Ed Begley, Jr. is a member of the League of Themselves, 'Happy Endings' gets three connections in the Toobworld Dynamic:

'Happy Endings'
– "Meet the Parrots" (2012)

'Dharma & Greg'
– "Protecting the Ego-System" (2002)

'Ellen'
– "When Ellen Talks, People Listen" (1998)

'The Larry Sanders Show'
– "Putting the 'Gay' Back in Litigation" (1998)

And I didn't notice it earlier, but he's also been eligible for membership in the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame someday!

PLUS!  (There's moooore?)  Thanks to him, Toobworld has a new breakfast sandwich - the Egg Begley, Jr.!

No matter that he's a vegetarian.  That just means there's more for the rest of us!

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: HUCKLEBERRY FINN

HUCK FINN

AS SEEN IN:

"Huckleberry Finn"

AS PLAYED BY:

Ron Howard

TV DIMENSION:

TBD

STATUS:

Recastaway

BASED ON:

"The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn"

WRITTEN BY:

Mark Twain

From Wikipedia:

"Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is a novel by Mark Twain, first published in England in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. Commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels ("Tom Sawyer Abroad" and "Tom Sawyer, Detective"). It is a sequel to "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer".

The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Satirizing a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about twenty years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.

Perennially popular with readers, "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" has also been the continued object of study by serious literary critics since its publication. It was criticized upon release because of its coarse language and became even more controversial in the 20th century because of its perceived use of racial stereotypes and because of its frequent use of the racial slur "nigger", despite strong arguments that the protagonist, and the tenor of the book, is in fact anti-racist.

From the source material:

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece -- all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round -- more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.

  

In Toobworld, many literary characters share the same world as the televersions of the authors who created them back in the real world. We've seen this with at least three of our previous showcase figures this year - Holmes & Watson with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (seen in, among other TV productions, 'The Murdoch Mysteries') and Hercule Poirot with Dame Agatha Christie (seen in the 'Doctor Who' episode "The Unicorn And The Wasp").

In such cases, those authors didn't create the characters within the reality of Toobworld; they chronicle their adventures for the public. (Although Conan Doyle didn't write the adventures of Sherlock Holmes; Dr. Watson did. Conan Doyle was just the literary agent. But apparently Holmes didn't mind as it helped remove him from the notice of the general public, who came to think of him as being fictional. I'm not sure how Dr. Watson felt about Conan Doyle taking the credit for his work.)

As seen with both examples listed above, sometimes those authors embellished the stories, making it sound as if they were indeed creating them out of whole cloth. But they were just adding fictional details to spice up the story. (Like Conan Doyle toying with the idea of changing the "true" location of the Baskerville case.)

So here we have Huck Finn existing in the same dimension as his "creator", Mark Twain.  (And for those of you who wouldn't know a good character actor if he bit you, Mark Twain was played by Royal Dano in this production.)

This would be in an alternate TV dimension, as there are plenty of televersions for Huck Finn (and Mark Twain as well!) to spread out among a plethora of other dimensions. (The first TV Huck Finn was played by Clifford Tatum, Jr. in 1953, as part of the anthology series 'Excursion', as pictured on the right......)

BCnU!

HERE'S THE STORY OF A PERVY LADY

"You look like Carol Brady

right before she got arrested for molesting Bobby."

Max Blum

'Happy Endings'

It took me a long time, but I finally, begrudgingly, came around to the acceptance that in Toobworld everybody will eventually have a TV show about them. There were far too many Zonks - that is, discrepancies - in which TV shows mentioned other TV shows when they should have all been sharing the same universe as realities.

It's kind of the Toobworld version of Andy Warhol's aphorism that in the Future, everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes. (And that bon mot exits in Toobworld as well.)

There will still be the individual splainins to bring variety into the picture toob - that not all TV series titles mentioned in other shows will be the same show as seen in the real world. Shows with generic titles like 'General Hospital' could be reality programming in Toobworld.

And that's the premise we're going for here. 'The Brady Bunch' has long been a "zonkish" title, mentioned in so many other TV shows that it's most likely in the top ten of Zonks. Apparently, some Toobworld TV executive (May they be nibbled to death by TV ducks!) thought that a blended family of three boys and three girls would make for compelling TV.

And he would probably be right - if it was done as a reality show, a fore-runner to that show about the Gosselins, and a contemporary to the ground-breaking series about the Loud Family.

If we accept Max's statement as true, and not as a reference to a TV show, then I think we can understand why the Toobworld version of 'The Brady Bunch' proved to be so popular - to the point where it spawned a couple of theatrical movies (if it has ever been mentioned as such in other TV shows.)

But was Carol Brady's sexual transgression with her youngest stepson part of the original reality show, or was it the scandal that brought 'The Brady Bunch' to an end? When we met them again in the main Toobworld, there didn't seem to be any hint of a scandal in their past.

Maybe they found religion.......

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: JUDGE RUSTY SABICH

JUDGE ROZAT "RUSTY" SABICH

AS SEEN IN:

"Scott Turow's 'Innocent'"

AS PLAYED BY:

Bill Pullman

TV DIMENSION:

Earth Prime-Time

STATUS:

Multiversal Recastaway

(Book, Movie, TV Movie)

SOURCE:

"Innocent"

CREATED BY:

Scott Turow

From the source:

From Wikipedia:

Twenty years after being cleared in the death of his mistress, Judge Rožat "Rusty" Sabich is charged with the murder of his wife Barbara.

Bill Pullman plays Sabich, now a judge and once again romantically involved with a colleague and on trial for murder: This time he is accused of killing his wife, Barbara. His accuser is his old nemesis Tommy Molto, while his longtime friend and lawyer, Sandy Stern, is in charge of the defense.

Unlike the case of Peter Ustinov's Hercule Poirot, there is no connection to Sabich's doppelganger in the Cineverse. That Judge Sabich was played by Harrison Ford and so was a different man.  However, the events of "Presumed Innocent" still played out, unseen, in Toobworld.  But if we could see what happened, we'd see Bill Pullman and Marcia Gay Harden rather than Ford and Bonnie Bedelia.  And that would apply to the supporting players as well - Joe Grifasi/Richard Schiff, Raul Julia/Alfred Molina, etc.

I see no objection to Greta Scacci playing the same role in both realities.  At least, I'm certainly not going to object!

BCnU!

POIROT IN THE BORDERLANDS

In the past, Toobworld Central has sent raiding parties across the border into the "Cineverse" to kidnap certain movies and claim them to be part of the Toobworld Dynamic.

"Batman" (1966)

"Maverick"

The first "Highlander" movie

The "Star Trek" franchise

Sometimes, only one character from a movie crosses over into the TV universe to join the counterparts to those left behind - Radar O'Reilly of 'M*A*S*H' for example.

Neither situation applies in the case of Hercule Poirot, as played by Sir Peter Ustinov.

Why would Earth Prime-Time have any need for Ustinov's Poirot when it already had David Suchet as the little Belgian? (And who is about to complete filming on the entire series of stories featuring the detective. Not even Jeremy Brett was able to accomplish that with the Sherlock Holmes canon.)

But there must be an alternate TV dimension whose boundaries with the movie universe are not defined, where there is a blend at certain junctures so that characters can exist in both at the same time.

Such would be the world in which we would find Hercule Poirot as played by Ustinov.

Ustinov played Poirot sixt times - in three theatrical films

"Death On The Nile"

"Evil Under The Sun"

"Appointment With Death"

and in three TV movies.

"Thirteen At Dinner"

"Murder In Three Acts"

"Dead Man's Folly"

However, in the TV movies Poirot was situated in the Toobworld timeline for the 1980s. He was even interviewed on TV by David Frost in "Thirteen At Dinner". By the time he returned to the theatrical movies with "Appointment With Death", he was seen once more back in the proper timeline.

I'm not prepared to say that Ustinov was playing two different Poirots. Rather, I think there could a more fanciful splainin and Occam's Razor be bleeped!

Perhaps Hercule Poirot of this "Borderlands" dimension found a way to extend his mortal life. He may have paid a visit to a certain Sussex "scientist" and beekeeper for the secret benefits of the Queen Bee's royal jelly......

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: HERCULE POIROT

HERCULE POIROT

AS SEEN IN:

"Thirteen At Dinner"

"Dead Man's Folly"

"Murder In Three Acts"

AS PLAYED BY:

Sir Peter Ustinov

TV DIMENSION:

"The Borderlands"

STATUS:

Recastaway

CREATED BY:

Dame Agatha Crhistie

From Wikipedia:

Hercule Poirot is a fictional Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Along with Miss Marple, Poirot is one of Christie's most famous and long-lived characters, appearing in 33 novels and 51 short stories published between 1920 and 1975 and set in the same era.

Poirot has been portrayed on radio, on screen, for films and television, by various actors, including John Moffatt, Albert Finney, Sir Peter Ustinov, Sir Ian Holm, Tony Randall, Alfred Molina and David Suchet.

From the source material:

"He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. Even if everything on his face was covered, the tips of moustache and the pink-tipped nose would be visible.The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police."

- "The Mysterious Affair At Styles"

"By the step leading up into the sleeping-car stood a young Belgian lieutenant, resplendent in uniform, conversing with a small man (Hercule Poirot) muffled up to the ears of whom nothing was visible but a pink-tipped nose and the two points of an upward-curled moustache."

- "Murder On The Orient Express"

BCnU!

Fear not, Team Toobworld!  At some point this year, David Suchet's portrayal of Poirot will get its due.  Even though he was not the first to play Poirot on TV (Ustinov beat him to that by four years, plus there was Martin Gabel back in the 1950s), nor would he be the last, Suchet's version is the definitive one for Earth Prime-Time.

I just thought Ustinov's portrayal had some interesting televisiological aspects to it that I'll be exploring in the next post......

DR. WATSON - THE PARADOX ABOUT A PAIR OF DOCS

As I've said many times in the past, Jeremy Brett is the definitive Sherlock Holmes for the main Toobworld, Earth Prime-Time.  However, there is a slight niggle.....

 What concerns me as a televisiologist is the recastaway problem with Dr. John H. Watson. 

David Burke portrayed Watson to Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes in the first fourteen adventures, with Edward Hardwicke picking up the mantle with the second series.  (Each series had a different umbrella title, as listed in the earlier "ASOTV" post, which is why we're going with the DVD box set title.  The same holds true for the literary version; we're going with the umbrella title for the omnibus on the volume I purchased back in the mid-1970's.)

 David Burke held the role until just after the final confrontation between Holmes and his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls.  This happened in the spring of 1891.  When we meet him again three years later when he's reunited with the Great Detective, Edward Hardwicke now was Watson.  So whatever the splainin for his transformation, it had to happen between the summer of 1891 and probably April of 1894.  (The timeline for the TV series clashes with the established canon due to episode broadcast order and the recasting.)

 I used to throw out a lot of wild ideas on how to splain away the difference in Watson's appearance to my friend Sean Cleary (the Little Buddy to my Skipper as I've often described him).  And the lad would either expand on those ideas or throw back some equally fanciful theories.  We dealt with time travel, dimension-hopping, alien substitutions.

 But I think Occam's Razor must apply here: "Among competing hypotheses, selecting the one that makes the fewest new assumptions usually provides the correct one, and that the simplest explanation will be the most plausible until evidence is presented to prove it false."

 Therefore, I'm thinking we must turn to that old reliable, plastic surgery.

 According medical history, plastic surgery was practiced as far back as 800 B.C. in India.  It is believed that the first truly successful surgical procedure in this field occurred in 1917.  But in the Toobworld Dynamic, we know of at least two skilled plastic surgeons in the 1870's, both of whom were to be found in 'The Wild, Wild West' - Dr. Faustina ("The Night Of The Big Blast") and my all-time favorite TV character, Dr. Miguelito Loveless ("The Night That Terror Stalked The Town").

 So it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, within the reality of the TV Universe that plastic surgerty was used to alter the appearance of Dr. Watson at some point between 1891 and 1894. 

But why would Watson have needed it?

 Perhaps someday I may find the reason within a TV show.  But for now, I've turned to the real-life history of the Trueniverse, our world, to find the splainin.  And since so much of the real world's history has been adapted for television, the event I found may have been covered in a French documentary at the very least.....

 On November 8, 1892, a young anarchist named Emile Henry planted a bomb at an office building on the Avenue de l'Opera in Paris.  Discovered before it could blow up, it was carried to the police station on the Rue des Bons Enfants where it exploded and killed at least five people (most of them police officers.)

 Emile Henry was all of nineteen and highly intelligent with an adept facility for mathematics, having been eligible for a college education by the age of sixteen.  It could be that - as far as his televersion was concerned - his proficiency in this field of study brought him to the attention of Professor James Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime and a mathematical genius in his own right.  (He wrote "The Dynamics Of An Asteroid".)  In Toobworld, Moriarty may have led young Henry down the path to anarchy.

 After that first explosion for which he later took credit, Emile Henry fled to England where he openly bragged about his accomplishment to others in London's underground circle of Anarchists.  By February of 1894, Henry had returned to Paris, where he flung a bomb into the Cafe Terminus which only killed one person but wounded 20 others.  He was caught fleeing the scene and defiantly took credit for the bombing a year and a half earlier.  By the age of 22, Emile Henry was dead, beheaded by the guillotine in front of a crowd of Parisians.

 So what does this have to do with Dr. Watson?

 I don't think he was present at either bombing in Paris.  While no stranger to the continent, I think Watson spent the days of the "Missing Years" in re-establishing his practice in London, assisting the Metropolitan Police as a medical examiner, and perhaps finding love with the TV equivalent of Miss Mary Morstan?  (In re-acquainting myself with the Jeremy Brett series, I've yet to find any indication that Watson ever marries, but then I'm only up to having seen "The Second Stain".)

 Here's an excerpt from a book about the Anarchist movement in the 19th Century:

 "Three days after Henry flung his bomb into the Cafe Terminus, that is on February 15, 1894, a remarkable discovery was made in Greenwich Park at no great distance from the Observatory, a man's body being found there in a more or less mutilated condition. It was surmised that this individual had stumbled whilst walking, and had been killed by some explosives which he was undoubtedly carrying at the time. The police were apparently of opinion that he had entertained some design against the Observatory." - [Ernest Alfred Vizetelly. The Anarchists: Their Faith and Their Record. Turnbull and Spears Printers, Edingurgh, 1911.]

 Fictional characters have been inserted into so many of the real world's historical events - look how many more people have booked passage on the Titanic than actually were on board.  Currently we see the same thing happening with the bombing and collapse of the World Trade Center towers.  So I think this is an "adventure" in which Dr. Watson may have been involved through his capacity as a police consultant.

 Once again I play a fanfic enabler, throwing out the suggestion that Dr. Watson, using the rudimentary skills he learned from his "late" friend, Watson may have discovered the plot by Martial Bourdin and was successful in stopping the French anarchist before he could blow up the Observatory.  But in doing so, Bourdin died in the explosion of the bomb he was carrying, and Watson was severely injured in the blast.

 Apparently, Sherlock Holmes revealed himself to be still alive to Watson in April of 1894.  A month and a half of recuperation during that less sophisticated, almost primitive, stage in the development of plastic surgery might not seem like it would have been enough.  But as we saw in those two episodes of 'The Wild, Wild West', the two patients were up and about in far less time.

 And to make this truly a crossover event, perhaps Dr. Watson was aided by another TV doctor, not only in the rebuilding of his face, but in the original case of the Observatory Anarchist.  Perhaps Dr. Watson was a temporary companion to The Doctor of 'Doctor Who' fame.  And as he was a Time Lord, not only would he have been able to bring Watson to the best plastic surgeons available in the Future - Drs. Christian Troy and Sean McNamara of 'nip/tuck', anyone? - but he then might have allowed Watson to become a "resident patient" in the TARDIS, letting him recuperate at his leisure outside of the timestream. 

Eventually the Doctor would have brought Dr. Watson back to his own timeline, mere moments after he left it.  (And all that time spent away from Earth would account for the grey hair Watson now sported.)

 And maybe it was Dr. Watson who first introduced the Doctor to the joys of wearing a fez (which means he was probably involved with the Seventh Incarnation of the Doctor.)

Of course, plastic surgery wouldn't splain away the change in eye color - Burke's Watson had blue eyes; Hardwicke's Watson sported brown.  (Or so it looks to me, anyway.....)

But maybe Dr. Watson was subjected to heterochromia because of exposure to the Time-stream.....?

BCnU!

 This post is dedicated to Robert Wronski, Jr. whose own explorations into shared universes, the TVCU, celebrates its first anniversary today. 

AS SEEN ON TV: DOCTOR WATSON

JOHN H. WATSON, M.D.

 AS SEEN IN:
'SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE COMPLETE GRANADA TV SERIES'

 AS PLAYED BY:

DAVID BURKE

 "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (13 episodes )
A Scandal in Bohemia (24 April 1984)
The Dancing Men (1 May 1984)
The Naval Treaty (8 May 1984)
The Solitary Cyclist (15 May 1984)
The Crooked Man (22 May 1984)
The Speckled Band (29 May 1984)
The Blue Carbuncle (5 June 1984)
The Copper Beeches (25 August 1985)
The Greek Interpreter (1 September 1985)
The Norwood Builder (8 September 1985)
The Resident Patient (15 September 1985)
The Red Headed League (22 September 1985)
The Final Problem (29 September 1985)

EDWARD HARDWICKE

"The Return of Sherlock Holmes" (11 episodes )
The Empty House (9 July 1986)
The Abbey Grange (16 July 1986)
The Musgrave Ritual (23 July 1986)
The Second Stain (30 July 1986)
The Man with the Twisted Lip (6 August 1986)
The Priory School (13 August 1986)
The Six Napoleons (20 August 1986)
The Devil's Foot (6 April 1988)
Silver Blaze (13 April 1988)
Wisteria Lodge (20 April 1988)
The Bruce-Partington Plans (27 April 1988)

"The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes" (9 episodes )
The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax (21 February 1991)
The Problem of Thor Bridge (28 February 1991)
Shoscombe Old Place (7 March 1991)
The Boscombe Valley Mystery (14 March 1991)
The Illustrious Client (21 March 1991)
The Creeping Man (28 March 1991)
The Master Blackmailer (2 January 1992)
The Last Vampyre (27 January 1993)
The Eligible Bachelor (3 February 1993)

"The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" (5 episodes )
The Three Gables (7 March 1994)
The Dying Detective (14 March 1994)
The Red Circle (28 March 1994)
The Mazarin Stone (4 April 1994)
The Cardboard Box (11 April 1994)

TV DIMENSION:
Earth Prime-Time

STATUS:
Recastaway
(Due to plastic surgery)

 SOURCE MATERIAL:
"THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES"

 WRITTEN BY:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
(Actually, Conan Doyle served only as the editor and literary agent.  Dr. Watson wrote the stories.)

From Wikipedia:
John H. Watson, M.D. (born 7 July 1852), known as Dr. Watson, is a character in the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Watson is Sherlock Holmes's friend, assistant and sometime flatmate, and is the first person narrator of all but four stories in the Sherlock Holmes canon.

 In "A Study in Scarlet", Watson, as the narrator, recounts his earlier life before meeting Holmes. It is established that Watson received his medical degree from the University of London in 1878, and had subsequently gone on to train as a surgeon in the British Army. He joined British forces in India, saw service in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, was wounded at the Battle of Maiwand, and was sent back to England on the troopship HMS Orontes following his recovery.

 In 1881, Watson runs into an old friend of his named Stanford, who tells him that an acquaintance of his, Sherlock Holmes, is looking for someone to split the rent at a flat in 221B Baker Street. Watson meets Holmes for the first time at a local hospital, where Holmes is conducting a scientific experiment. Holmes and Watson list their faults to each other to determine whether they can live together, concluding that they are compatible; they subsequently move into the flat. When Watson notices the multiple guests which frequently visit the flat, Holmes reveals that he is a "consulting detective" and that the guests are his clients.

 When John Watson first returns from Afghanistan, he is "as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut." He is usually described as strongly built, of a stature either average or slightly above average, with a thick, strong neck and a small moustache. Watson used to be an athlete, as it is mentioned in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire" that he once played rugby for Blackheath, but he fears his physical condition has declined since that point.

 Watson is described as a crack shot and an excellent doctor and surgeon. Intelligent, if lacking in Holmes's insight, he serves as a perfect foil for Holmes: the ordinary man against the brilliant, emotionally-detached analytical machine. Conan Doyle paired two characters, different in their function and yet each useful for his purposes.

 From the source material:
Holmes was a man of habits... and I had become one of them... a comrade... upon whose nerve he could place some reliance... a whetstone for his mind. I stimulated him... If I irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly and swiftly. Such was my humble role in our alliance. – "The Adventure of the Creeping Man"

 BCnU!

TVXOHOF, 2011 - A LOOK BACK

As I'm about to begin research into the January 2012 inductees into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame, I thought I should present a look back at the fifteen lucky(?) recipients of this "honor" from 2011.

Here they are, with three of their qualifications for entry.  (Several of them had even more than that!)

JANUARY

Aunt Bea Taylor

'The Andy Griffith Show'

'Mayberry RFD'

'Gomer Pyle, USMC'

FEBRUARY

Arnold Jackson-Drummond

'Diff'rent Strokes'

'The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air'

'The Facts of Life'

MARCH

Joan Rivers

'Nip/Tuck'

'Z Rock'

'Boston Legal'

APRIL

Elmo

Trust me. He's eligible. Don't make me relive it.

MAY

Honey West

'Burke's Law'

'Honey West'

'Burke's Law II'

JUNE

Edison Hotel

'Seinfeld'

'Becker'

'The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show'

'Naked City'

BIRTHDAY HONORS LIST

Nurse Griffin

'Medical Center'

'The Bold Ones - The Doctors'

'Barnaby Jones'

&

Lucille Brewer

'Burke's Law'

'Emergency'

'The Fall Guy'

JULY

Amos Burke

'Burke's Law'

'Amos Burke, Secret Agent'

'Burke's Law II'

AUGUST

Marshal Matt Dillon

'Gunsmoke'

'Dirty Sally'

5 TV movies

SEPTEMBER

Susan Harris

'The Golden Girls'

'The Golden Palace'

'Empty Nest'

OCTOBER

The Observer

'Fringe'

'American Idol'

'NASCAR'

&

Judge Margaret Barry

'Law & Order'

'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'

'New York Undercover'

NOVEMBER

Meredith Vieira

'30 Rock'

'All My Children'

'SportsNight'

DECEMBER

Santa Larry

'Frasier'

'The Middle'

'It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia'

I don't have 2012 mapped out at all (except for January, of course), so it should be exciting to see what comes up as each month's deadline approaches......

BCnU!

LAYAWAY PLANS

This past week's episode of 'Happy Endings' ("The Shrink, The Dare, Her Date, And Her Brother') gave a good example of the type of investment I have to make in being a Caretaker for the Toobworld Dynamic.

Brad and his sister-in-law Alex went to see a new rom-com with the generic title of "That's The Way It's Gotta Be". Michael Cassidy and Sarah Wright played the movie's leads, and their credits for the episodes listed them simply as "Male Lead" and "Female Lead".

This is information which I'll store away - the time may come when Cassidy and Wright will be playing actors in another TV show, where their characters will actually have names, and I can make the claim that they are the same actors who played in the movie "That's The Way It's Gotta Be".

And should there ever be such an episode of some other TV show in which they guest-starred that is so Zonk-filled there is a danger it might toss the entire series out of Earth Prime-Time.... Then I'll claim that it was an episode of a TV show based on the "real" characters' lives since everybody in Toobworld apparently will have TV shows made about them eventually. And the characters played by Cassidy and/or Wright were being played by the actors from that previous TV show, who had starred in the movie shown in an episode of 'Happy Endings'.

I'll understand if you have to pause now to take some Dramamine.....

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: MITCH McDEERE

The new series 'The Firm' - based more on the novel than the movie - premiered last night on NBC.....

MITCH McDEERE

AS SEEN IN:

'The Firm'

AS PLAYED BY:

Josh Lucas

TV DIMENSION:

Earth Prime-Time

STATUS:

Multiversatile?

(At any rate, part of the multi-verse - book, film, television - like Radar O'Reilly of "M*A*S*H".)

SOURCE MATERIAL:

"The Firm"

WRITTEN BY:

John Grisham

From Wikipedia:

Mitchell Y. "Mitch" McDeere is a fictional character portrayed by Tom Cruise in Sydney Pollack's 1993 film adaptation of John Grisham's T"he Firm" (1991 novel). He is the main protagonist of the highly successful series and the husband of Abby McDeere. The character is currently being protrayed Josh Lucas for Entertainment One Television's show also named "The Firm". McDeere is a Harvard-educated tax lawyer who has a certified public accountant credential.

The television show picks up on the story of McDeere and his family ten years after the fictional setting of the 1991 novel and 1993 film. Both the novel and the film recount the story of an upstart attorney who unknowingly was hired by Bendini, Lambert & Locke, the white-collar crime operation of an organized crime family's enterprise. After graduating third in his Harvard Law School class, he became a whistleblower to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and brought down the corrupt Memphis law firm with Chicago mob ties. The TV series begins as the McDeere family emerges from witness protection to encounter old and new challenges.

From the source:

THE SENIOR PARTNER studied the résumé for the hundredth time and again found nothing he disliked about Mitchell Y. McDeere, at least not on paper. He had the brains, the ambition, the good looks. And he was hungry; with his background, he had to be. He was married, and that was mandatory. The firm had never hired an unmarried lawyer, and it frowned heavily on divorce, as well as womanizing and drinking. Drug testing was in the contract. He had a degree in accounting, passed the CPA exam the first time he took it and wanted to be a tax lawyer, which of course was a requirement with a tax firm. He was white, and the firm had never hired a black. They managed this by being secretive and clubbish and never soliciting job applications. Other firms solicited, and hired blacks. This firm recruited, and remained lily white. Plus, the firm was in Memphis, of all places, and the top blacks wanted New York or Washington or Chicago. McDeere was a male, and there were no women in the firm. That mistake had been made in the mid-seventies when they recruited the number one grad from Harvard, who happened to be a she and a wizard at taxation. She lasted four turbulent years and was killed in a car wreck.

He looked good, on paper. He was their top choice. In fact, for this year there were no other prospects. The list was very short. It was McDeere or no one.

BCnU!

"DOCTOR WHO" IN SKITLANDIA

I'm still celebrating my god-daughter's ninth birthday.....

One TV show that I have in common with Rhiannon is 'Doctor Who'. And while I may have made a half-way acceptable victim in an alien invasion, I think Rhiannon - teamed up with her older brother Eli - would have made great companions in the TARDIS for the Doctor!

Now, I ask you, what would an Inner Toob Video Weekend be without some 'Doctor Who'?

In Skitlandia, they have gone through far more Time Lords than in the other TV dimensions. (Currently, in case you didn't know, the Doctor is into his eleventh incarnation - his tenth regeneration - in the universe of Earth Prime-Time.)

Here are a couple of those other Doctors from Skitlandia, including the comic variations of the originals:

Happy birthday, Rhiannon!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RHIANNON!

The following video clips about 'Anne Of Green Gables' are going out to my god-daughter Rhiannon, who's celebrating her ninth birhtday today......

 

 

 

 

 

AS SEEN ON TV: ANNE SHIRLEY

Today is my god-daughter Rhiannon's 9th birthday. She's a very lovely and talented young lady living in Taiwan with her parents Sean & Gosia, and her older brother Eli. While they are all "living in exile" (actually Sean is out there as a teacher), the kids are being home-schooled by Gosia and from all reports they are both doing fantastic in their studies.

I've been following Rhiannon's projects in arts & crafts through the family's blog, and I thought that was the best way to go with a birthday present. Since what I do best is this, my Inner Toob blog, I thought I'd dedicate today's posts to her.

I asked Sean which literary character might be someone Rhiannon would like to see featured on this site, and without hesitation he gave me:

ANNE SHIRLEY

AS SEEN IN:

'Anne Of Green Gables'

AS PLAYED BY:

Megan Follows

TV DIMENSION:

Earth Prime-Time

SOURCE MATERIAL:

"Anne Of Green Gables"

WRITTEN BY:

Lucy Maud Montgomery

From Wikipedia:

Anne, a young orphan from Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia, finds herself on Prince Edward Island, after shuttles between families and even the orphanage. Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, siblings in their fifties who live together at Green Gables, their Avonlea farmhouse on Prince Edward Island, decide to adopt a boy from the orphan asylum in Nova Scotia to help Matthew run their farm. Through a misunderstanding, the orphanage sends Anne Shirley.

Anne is bright and quick, eager to please and talkative, and extremely imaginative. She does not see herself as beautiful, but is interesting-looking, with a pale countenance dotted with freckles, and long braids of red hair. When asked her name, Anne asks Marilla to call her Cordelia, which Marilla refuses; Anne then insists that if you are to call her Anne, it must be spelled with an e, as that spelling is "so much more distinguished." Marilla insists that the girl will have to go back to the orphanage, but after a few days, she decides that Anne may stay.

Being a child of imagination, Anne takes much joy in life, and adapts quickly, thriving in the close-knit farming village. She is something of a chatterbox, which initially drives the prim, duty-driven Marilla to distraction, although shy Matthew falls for her immediately; they are what Anne calls 'kindred spirits'.

From "Anne Of Green Gables":

When he reached Bright River there was no sign of any train; he thought he was too early, so he tied his horse in the yard of the small Bright River hotel and went over to the station house.

The long platform was almost deserted; the only living creature in sight being a girl who was sitting on a pile of shingles at the extreme end. Matthew, barely noting that it was a girl, sidled past her as quickly as possible without looking at her. Had he looked he could hardly have failed to notice the tense rigidity and expectation of her attitude and expression. She was sitting there waiting for something or somebody and, since sitting and waiting was the only thing to do just then, she sat and waited with all her might and main.

She had been watching him ever since he had passed her and she had her eyes on him now. Matthew was not looking at her and would not have seen what she was really like if he had been, but an ordinary observer would have seen this: A child of about eleven, garbed in a very short, very tight, very ugly dress of yellowish-gray wincey. She wore a faded brown sailor hat and beneath the hat, extending down her back, were two braids of very thick, decidedly red hair. Her face was small, white and thin, also much freckled; her mouth was large and so were her eyes, which looked green in some lights and moods and gray in others.

So far, the ordinary observer; an extraordinary observer might have seen that the chin was very pointed and pronounced; that the big eyes were full of spirit and vivacity; that the mouth was sweet-lipped and expressive; that the forehead was broad and full; in short, our discerning extraordinary observer might have concluded that no commonplace soul inhabited the body of this stray woman-child of whom shy Matthew Cuthbert was so ludicrously afraid.

Matthew, however, was spared the ordeal of speaking first, for as soon as she concluded that he was coming to her she stood up, grasping with one thin brown hand the handle of a shabby, old-fashioned carpet-bag; the other she held out to him.

"I suppose you are Mr. Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables?" she said in a peculiarly clear, sweet voice. "I'm very glad to see you."

Happy Birthday, Rhiannon!

Maktoob!