SATURDAY MORNING SUPER HERO-# SUPER VILLAINS!

'CONSTANTINE'

"QUID PRO QUO"

A DC super villain became Multiversal last night with the appearance of Felix Faust in 'Constantine'.

After being introduced in the pages of "Justice League of America", Felix Faust eventually crossed over into the Tooniverse:

• The Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians
  "The Case of the Stolen Powers"
• Justice League
  "Paradise Lost",
• Justice League Unlimited
  "The Balance",
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold
  "Evil Under the Sea!"
  "The Criss Cross Conspiracy!"
  "Triumvirate of Terror,"
• Young Justice
  "Misplaced"

And now he's live action in Earth Prime-Time. Plus! He committed a despicable act that put him in company with John Stamos, Archibald Beechcroft, and the Master as far as linking innumerable TV shows together.

This is because he cast a spell that put thousands of Brooklynites into a coma. Among these victims could have been characters from the following shows:

• 'Better Days'
• 'Big Brother Jake'
• 'Brooklyn Bridge'
• 'Brooklyn South'
• 'The Cosby Show'
• 'The Patty Duke Show'
• 'Everybody Hates Chris '
• 'The Fanelli Boys'
• 'Fish'
• 'Flatbush'
• 'Joe & Valerie'
• 'Living Single'
• 'Mama Malone'
• 'Man In The Family'
• 'The New Ghostwriter Mysteries'
• 'Take It From Me'
• 'Temporarily Yours'
• 'Time Warp Trio'
• 'Welcome Back Kotter'

I'd say we have a future candidate for the TVXOZF on our hands....

BCnU!

LITTLE BIG SCREEN - "FRIDAY THE 13TH", DONNA REED STYLE

"I know I'm out of my mind,
but I'm going to try 'glorious' Crystal Lake."

Dr. Alex Stone

'The Donna Reed Show'
"Weekend"

I have no idea where Hilldale is, only that it's a town shared by 'The Donna Reed Show' and 'Dennis The Menace'. So it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that it's located in New Jersey. The Crystal Lake from the "Friday The 13th" movie franchise is supposed to be in New Jersey....

The chronology for both the movies and the TV mention clash without splainin - The Stones visited Lakeview Lodge on Crystal Lake in the early 1960s while the tragic loss of young Jason Voorhees happened in 1958 (according to a wiki for "Friday The Thirteenth".) But we could say that Camp Crystal Lake was on one side of the lake while Lakeview Lodge was on the far side.

When the Stones visited Crystal Lake, the death of Jason Voorhees seven years before would hardly have come up in conversation with the owners of Lakeview Lodge. And it would be another fifteen years before the tragic events in which all those young counsellors were killed.

So any TV mentions of Jason could be attributed either to knowledge of the original event or to the movies made about the more "recent" attacks.

Strictly from a Toobworld perspective, I think the events leading up to and including the first "Friday The 13th" movie actually took place in the TV dimension as well. After that, those were just movies inspired by the original film.

BCnU!

WISH-CRAFT - MIXING "CSI: NY" WITH "GRACEPOINT"

'Criminal Minds' will make another attempt at establishing a spin-off beachhead. (The previoius attempt starred Forrest Whitaker.)  This proposed new series, which will first appear as a backdoor pilot on the original show, will be about FBI agents overseas who help American citizens in trouble.  Gary Sinise is the team's leader, Jack Garrett, while Anna Gunn, best known for 'Breaking Bad', will be playing Ally Lambert, an expert on international law and linguistics.

This casting automatically triggers a Wish-Craft for me.  For Toobworld purposes, wouldn't it have been great if Sinise was playing Mac Tyler, his character from 'CSI: NY'?  And Anna Gunn could be her character of Ellie Miller from 'Gracepoint'.  Let's face it, there wasn't much keeping her and her sons tied down to that small town on the Pacific coast....

Of course, the job descriptions would have to change and it would be a big leap to make it plausible.  Still, it's nice to dream.....

BCnU!

A WEDNESDAY WISH-CRAFT

From the Los Angeles Times:

[Iris] Murdoch was a Booker prize-winning novelist of fierce intellect who fell ill with Alzheimer's disease. [John] Bayley's account of their marriage, and Murdoch's unraveling, became a surprise bestseller. It was made into the Oscar-winning film "Iris," which starred Kate Winslet and Judi Dench as the younger and older Murdoch and Hugh Bonneville and Jim Broadbent as the younger and elder Bayley. (Broadbent won the Academy Award for supporting actor.)

Here's my idea: What if Julian Fellowes and the producers of 'Downton Abbey' wanted to do a flashback to when Lord Grantham's father, the husband of Dowager Countess Violet Crawley, was still alive?  If so, why not cast Jim Broadbent in the role since there is a resemblence between him and Hugh Bonneville?

Just sayin', is all.....

TUESDAY NEWS DAY - THE WHEEL OF "PRIME-TIME"

In order to keep hold of the rights to Robert Jordan's fantasy series of books, "The Wheel Of Time", Red Eagle Entertainment threw together a shabby half hour prologue featuring the characters of Lews Therin and Elan Morin walking around in a shoddily built set spouting inane dialogue at each other, not even TO each other, really.  And then they buried it in an infomercial timeslot they bought at 1:30 in the morning on FXX.

I've never read any of the books in the series, but I thought I'd check it out.  Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have our winner for the worst pilot episode in the 2016 Toobits Awards.

Robert Jordan's widow was not amused by seeing her late husband's vision debased in such a way.  Before the day was out she released this statement:

"This morning brought startling news. A "pilot" for a Wheel of Time series, the "pilot" being called Winter Dragon, had appeared at 1:30 in the morning, East Coast time, on FXX TV, a channel somewhere in the 700s (founded to concentrate on comedy, according to the Washington Post).

It was made without my knowledge or cooperation. I never saw the script. No one associated with Bandersnatch Group, the successor-in-interest to James O. Rigney, was aware of this.

Bandersnatch has an existing contract with Universal Pictures that grants television rights to them until this Wednesday, February 11 – at which point these rights revert to Bandersnatch.

I see no mention of Universal in the "pilot". Nor, I repeat, was Bandersnatch, or Robert Jordan's estate, informed of this in any way.

I am dumbfounded by this occurrence, and am taking steps to prevent its reoccurrence."

Dare you to watch it for yourself?  Here's your chance:

And here's a breakdown of the drek you just watched, to be found at the Observation Deck.

Does it become part of the Toobworld Dynamic?  I wish there was some way to keep it out, but depending on exactly where it should be placed on the Toobworld timeline, I would have to say yes.  Best to just leave it in the far-flung future and forget about it.....

And that's the way it was.....

MISSING LINK - SHERLOCK HOLMES, "FOREVER"

'FOREVER'

"HITLER ON THE HALF-SHELL"

In one of the flashbacks in this episode took place at the Diogenes Club in London. The year was 1812.

In the Sherlock Holmes mythos, the Diogenes Club served as headquarters for Mycroft Holmes and supposedly he was one of the founders of the Club. So this club had to be too many decades too early.

But there are two possible splainins - either the Diogenes Club seen in this episode was the original and it eventually folded, to be revive by Mycroft and his associates; or it may be a matter of semantics in which what Mycroft founded was the new purpose of the Club as a center for espionage and matters of State.

It could go either way. I'm not going to stress over it.

But I'll add this - I think the Hellfire Club was based in this earlier incarnation.

BCnU!

My thanks to Caeric ArcLight for the screencap.  (Mine had come out horribly!)

VIDEO SUNDAY - THE SUPER BOWL BLIPVERTS

Surprisingly, there weren't that many Super Bowl blipverts this year which merited televisiological study.  But I picked the batch that were worth the time...

This Super Bowl blipvert confirms that the 'Today' show's reality can be transformed into its own televersion; it's not just the fictional versions seen in shows like 'Will & Grace' and 'The Michael J. Fox Show' that are accepted as part of Toobworld. Both Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric are eligible for entry into the TVXOHOF, by the way.

This can't be a sequel to 'Breaking Bad'. But it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that it happened at some point during the show's timeline. Other than that, I would suggest Skitlandia as the home for this incarnation of Walter White.

When 'Heroes' first aired, it was in Earth Prime-Time. But with the arrival of Future Hiro to talk with Peter in the subway, the Toobworld Timeline was sundered and the show followed the heroes' storyline into an alternate dimension. It probably created other off-shoot Toobworlds before the show finally ran out of steam. (I wouldn't know, I dropped out during the second season.) So this sequel will have no bearing on the main Toobworld....

Until now, all of the characters in the Snickers ads who had transformed into celebrities when they were hungry had shared the same timeline as well as dimension with the celebrities who replaced them.  But this is 2015's Danny Trejo and Steve Buscemi; they weren't even on the show business radar yet.

I toyed with the idea that maybe celebrities were using quantum leap technology to leap into people at random, the new fad for the idle rich.  But that's too complicated.  I think it better to consider these Jekyll/Hyde transformations are not supposed to be considered as the celebrities but following a similar type.  So Marcia didn't transform into Danny Trejo but into the type of homicidal maniac he could play no matter the timeline.

The real problem is that this was a specific event in the lives of the Bradys.  And I don't think the timeline was rewritten, not one line.  So although it might seem unbelievable to us in the real world, it's entirely pozz'ble that Marcia was hit a second time by a football thrown by Peter.  And that's when Marcia's inner Machete surfaced.

I could say the same about Jan transforming into Buscemi, but this isn't about Jan.  It never is.  It's about Marcia!  Marcia!  Marcia!

This is easy.  The kid's a ghost.  A ghost with the power of serlinguism.  Case closed.

BCnU!