TUESDAY'S TVXOHOF UPDATE

Let’s catch up on a few members of the Television Crossover Hall of Fame and a few who are at least ⅔ on their way to membership…..

‘The Big Bang Theory’
“The D&D Vortex”

Wil Wheaton, the new host of the ‘Professor Proton’ show, hosts a weekly Dungeons & Dragons with a lot of his celebrity friends.  And they include:

• William Shatner
• Kareem Abdul Jabbar
• Kevin Smith
• Joe Manganiello

Two of them are already members of the TVXOHOF – Shatner and Kareem.  Two will be entering before the year is out and the other one is on his way to becoming eligible.

In 2004, the year-long theme was ‘Star Trek’ and Captain James T. Kirk was inducted in January of that year.  But Shatner, along with all the cast members, were inducted as well as a group for my birthday honors.

There is a special “class” of the TVXOHOF which is called “the Proto-Hall”.  In the two years before the Hall was created, I wrote lengthy pieces in my first website (Damn you, AOLPress!) about certain people in the TV Universe who were basically my first salutes to those who deserved special attention for connecting so many shows.  Many were fictional characters, but there were a few historical figures as well as contemporary celebrities.  This category included basketball legend Kareem Abdul Jabbar. 

As for the others….

Wil Wheaton is a multidimensional.  Thanks to ‘Family Guy’, the actor appeared with most of the other members of the ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ cast, voicing themselves in an adventure with Stewie Griffin.  One reason Wheaton is memorable in this was that Stewie pronounced his name as “HWil HWheaton”.  Sort of like Mr. Tudball’s pronunciation of “Mrs. HWiggins” in many sketches from ‘The Carol Burnett Show’.

But he’s also a member of the Evil Toobworld dimension thanks to these two projects:

Loki and SageKing Go to GenCon (Short) 
&  
Every Little Something by Dave (Video)

For the main Toobworld, he has his long-standing recurring role as a member of the League of Themselves on ‘The Big Bang Theory’.  But he also has an appearance as a clue-giver on an episode of ‘Jeopardy!’ in 2018. If you didn't know, 'Jeopardy!' itself will one day be part of the TVXOHOF.

And he made an appearance on ‘Bill Nye Saves The World’, starring Bill Nye who will also one day be a member of the Hall of Fame.  (Coincidentally, Nye also has made appearances as himself on ‘The Big Bang Theory’.)

Kevin Smith is a writer/director/actor best known for the movie “Clerks” and his enthusiastic interest in fandom.  He’s now been on ‘The Big Bang Theory’ twice, but also as himself in episodes of ‘Speechless’, ‘The Mindy Project’, ‘Yes, Dear’, ‘Joey’, and ‘DeGrassi: The Next Generation’.

Look for him in the Hall before the year is out.

And then there was Joe Manganiello who is best known for his role in “Magic Mike” and as the werewolf in ‘True Blood’.  He’s only just beginning his trek to TVXOHOF membership which puts him almost two-thirds of the way to full qualification.  This episode of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ puts him on more solid footing to that end.  Before this, he had his appearance with his wife, Sofia Vergara, (another future member of the Hall thanks to all of those spokeswoman roles she’s done in commercials.)  They appeared together in a commercial as “serlinguists” – talking directly to the audience in the Trueniverse – for Hulu.

But he’s also appeared in an episode of a weird project from Neil Patrick Harris – “Neil’s Puppet Dreams”.  It was a seven episode Internet series which also starred his husband David Burtka.  Here’s the IMDb description: “Neil Patrick Harris sleeps a lot, and when he dreams, he dreams in puppets.”  One day I’ll have to track that down…..

In other news....

I don't know why it took so long for me to even know about this addition to the Los Angeles Tribune collection.  I must not have been looking at the screen when it came up during the episode.

This is from the 25th anniversary special episode for 'Columbo' - "A Trace Of Murder", which addressed the latest trend in police procedural TV shows... forensic science.

The Los Angeles Tribune gained prominence with the spin-off from 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show', 'Lou Grant'.  It was also seen fleetingly in the first episode of the 'Burke's Law' revival.  There have been a few other TV shows, 'Matt Houston' among them, but I'd count those first three as the heavy-hitters for the membership.

So there’s the latest update for the Television Crossover Hall of Fame.

BCnU!