As part of the celebration for Fin Tutuola's induction into the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame, here is a very strange meme which leading crossover archivist Thom Holbrook discovered back in August of 2015.....
Saturday, February 1, 2020
FEBRUARY, 2020 TVXOHOF - FIN TUTUOLA
After last Sunday’s tragic news, I got an email from a member of Team Toobworld wondering if I had any candidate in mind for February’s monthly showcase induction ceremony. Even if I did, they wrote, maybe I might consider bumping them in favor of Kobe Bryant.
I do have the post honoring Kobe already set up to run on Monday as a “Monday Memorial TVXOHOF Tribute”. But I couldn’t see bumping the already scheduled “honoree” – not when he was bumped two years in a row and then set aside last year for the 20th anniversary theme of superheroes and super-villains. I couldn’t do that to the guy.
And his body of work – the character has appeared 464 times so far in the multiverse (even if most of that is from one show) and counting with no end in sight – far outweighs that of Kobe Bryant’s as seen in a cold logical light.
Therefore, for February 2020, the newest member of the Television Crossover Hall of Fame is…..
From Wikipedia:
Tutuola was raised in the Harlem area of New York City and was six during the 1968 riots following the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, making his birth year 1961 or 1962. When he was a child, he witnessed his mother being murdered by a business rival of his father, a petty criminal; 30 years later, while investigating an unrelated case, he inadvertently discovered that his mother's killer was himself murdered.
According to the Season 11 episode "Disabled", Tutuola, while still in the police academy, was forced by circumstances to place his maternal grandfather, whom he credits for raising him, in a nursing home. His grandfather later died as a result of abuse from the staff. Tutuola later describes this action as "the worst decision [he] ever made", and says that in his grief, rage, and guilt, he repeatedly started fights with fellow officers "for the hell of it" and was almost kicked off the force until an academy instructor intervened and helped him salvage his career.
Tutuola was previously a US Army Ranger and served on two tours. His military background remains sketchy as he rarely speaks of it or only makes vague and indirect references to it; however, in season 10, he explicitly mentions serving on Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia in order to connect with a military rape victim.
Tutuola has a son named Kwasi (nicknamed Ken) with his ex-wife Teresa Randall. Subsequent episodes reveal that he has a strained relationship with his family. As of "Intersecting Lives", he is due to be a grandfather, as that episode revealed that Ken and his husband are expecting a baby via surrogate.
As of the Season 19 episode "Mood", his paternal grandfather Iggy is still alive and healthy at the age of 95, despite suffering from diabetes. At the start of the episode "Send In the Clowns," Ken and his husband bring their infant son Jaden to the squadroom for a birthday party.
Tutuola is an avid fan of first-person shooter video games, and is a regular at an annual video game convention. On why he would play such games considering the nature of his job and his military background, he explains to his colleagues that he views these games as an escape from the grey areas he faces in his job, and that he finds solace in the "black and white" nature of these games in which he gets to hunt down and defeat a clearly defined "bad guy".
Here are the appearances for which Fin is being honored:
458 episodes (2000-2020)
- Flaw (2005)
- The Song of Gregory Williams Yates (2016)
- The Number of Rats (2015)
- Conventions (2014)
- ¡Qué Sorpresa! (2011)
O’Bservation:
It is a Warholian mantra that eventually everybody in Toobworld will be featured in a TV show. The incredible work done by the Special Victims Unit over the last twenty years certainly deems them as being worthy to be showcased in a series.
But is it a fictional reenactment or a documentary series? Are we seeing the TV character Fin or the televersion of Ice-T? Based on references in the dialogue of other shows, I’m siding with it being a fictional TV show More on that in a few weeks. (nudge nudge wink wink.)
And Fin is seen in Skitlandia as well, making him a multidimensional:
- Kit Harington/Sara Bareilles (2019)
O’Bservation:
Again, this is an acknowledgement that ‘L&O: SVU’ is a TV series in Skitlandia as well. It’s likely we’re seeing Skitlandia’s Ice-T playing his impression of the Skitlandian cop. (And again, this may come up again in a few weeks.)
Two Hall of Famers
Welcome to the Hall, Detective! You’ll find many other members of the ‘Law & Order’ franchise here, mostly from the 27th Precinct, as well as the man who made it all possible, Dick Wolf.Friday, January 31, 2020
JANUARY HALL OF FAMER SHOW - "STAR TREK"
My goal has been to keep as many TV series on the same world, the main Toobworld, as possible. Of course, certain TV shows were always going to defy me on that. Naughty shows! The zombie shows had to be relegated to their own dimension and the same goes for any remakes with all-new casts.
And thanks to the influx triggered by ‘The West Wing’, a whole slew of new Toobworlds had to be created for each concurrent series dealing with a fictional President of the United States. (Earth Prime-Time has to have the same President as Earth Prime because plenty of shows will eventually mention the POTUS. And with Presidents like Clinton and Drumpf, there were references a-plenty!)
But I wasn’t going to just keep tossing TV series out the window just because some TV show considered them to be a TV show and not part of their own world. So I had to come up with that splainin.
And it’s a multiple part splainin. First of all, I had to accept that there were citizens of Earth Prime-Time whose lives proved to be so fascinating to some producer that they made a TV show about those people which would then be shown on TV within the TV Universe.
Sounds confusing, don’t it? But think of all those times you’ve seen clips from our TV shows being watched by fictional characters who should be living on the same world as the people who are in those TV shows they’re watching. This is the best way to get around that.
Although the show may be based on their lives, the plots don’t necessarily have to adhere to the storylines we saw on our own version of those shows. There have been times when a character will mention an episode of a TV show which has a plot that bears no resemblance to what we actually saw in the real version of the show.
I saw this happen in a TV movie clip in which the main character mentioning that she saw her current situation play out at a wedding reception in an episode of ‘Columbo’. No such scene existed in the ‘Columbo’ episodes we got to see. And in an episode of ‘Extras’, Andy Milman got to act out a scene in ‘Doctor Who’ with David Tennant which never existed for us.
But the actors they hire to do those shows have to be the televersions of those actors in the “real” version of the show, because of those clips being shown. The aforementioned Tennant is a good example.
In my head, I keep coming back to ‘The Brady Bunch’ as an example of Toobworld citizens whose home situation was perfect fodder for a TV series to some fictional version of Sherwood Schwartz (just in case he ever gets cited in the dialogue.) For us, we’re seeing the televersion of the Bradys being played by the real actors. For the fictional characters in other shows who are watching ‘The Brady Bunch’, they’re s’eeing the Brady Family’s televersions being played by the televersions of the actors we know.
Another reason these Zonkish TV shows exist is because of a shadow ops group which I’ve called UNReel creates them in order to debunk claims that such things actually happened in their world. So that people who claim to have seen something outrageous – like superheroes, alien invasion, secret agents and a certain alien Time Lord in action – they could be dismissed as crackpots who can’t distinguish between “reality” and a TV show. A video version of “swamp gas”.
I bring this all up because this year I’ll be inducting a few of those televersions of TV shows within TV shows into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame – as long as they pass the requirement of being mentioned or even seen in at least three other TV shows.
And I’m kicking it off with ‘Star Trek’.
From Wikipedia:
It followed the voyages of the starship USS Enterprise on its five-year mission, the purpose of which was "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before!".
The USS Enterprise was a space exploration vessel built by the United Federation of Planets in the 23rd century. The ‘Star Trek’ canon includes the Original Series, an animated series, five spin-off television series, the film franchise, and further adaptations in several media.
“Star Trek” has been a cult phenomenon for decades. Fans of the franchise are called "Trekkies" or "Trekkers". The franchise spans a wide range of spin-offs including games, figurines, novels, toys, and comics. ‘Star Trek’ had a themed attraction in Las Vegas that opened in 1998 and closed in September 2008. At least two museum exhibits of props travel the world.
The series has its own full-fledged constructed language, Klingon. Several parodies have been made of ‘Star Tre’k. In addition, viewers have produced several fan productions. As of July 2016, the franchise had generated $10 billion in revenue, making ‘Star Trek’ one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.
‘Star Trek’ is noted for its cultural influence beyond works of science fiction. The franchise is also noted for its progressive civil rights stances. The Original Series included one of television's first multiracial casts.
And I blame the time traveler known as The Doctor.
In a way, it’s probably like the ‘Doctor Who’ episode “Blink” in which Sally Sparrow had to get all of her notes to The Doctor so that he could then prepare her for what was coming in her past. A temporal loop.
In this case, The Doctor brought a massive file to the late fifties, early sixties, and delivered them to a motorcycle cop named Gene Roddenberry with instructions that he should develop it all into a TV series, right down to supplying suggestions as to who to cast in the proposed series.
It’s one way to splain how a CHiPs officer could come up with such an idea.
I’m not sure if the world of ‘Star Trek’ exists in the future of those shows which have to be relegated to other Toobworlds and yet still have mentioned the show, like ‘Lois & Clark’ or ‘Spin City’.
As for ‘Blake’s 7’ which made a somewhat veiled reference to the show, it is set in the Evil Mirror Dimension an thus is current with the Evil Spock as Captain of the Enterprise.
‘Star Trek’ is a good show to begin this end of month series of TVXOHOF inductions – there are so many TV shows in which fictional characters are watching ‘Star Trek’ or discussing it, and sometimes even acting it out themselves, complete with costumes. An episode of ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ even mentioned that there was a ‘Star Trek’ musical!
But even if the name ‘Star Trek’ isn’t actually stated, we know that the show exists when characters from other shows start spouting the dialogue. Lines like “Beam me up” (Scotty or no), “He’s dead, Jim”, “To boldly go where no man has gone before”, “Set your phasers on stun”, and “I’m a doctor, not a (fill in the blank.)” - these are a sure sign some fictional character is a Trekkie. Or Trekker.
It's time to present the evidence to support its membership. We’ll begin with those shows which actually showed scenes from ‘Star Trek’.
- ‘Young Sheldon’
- “Der Minister” (a TV movie)
- ‘St. Elsewhere’ (Actually we heard it on the TV as John Doe #6 changed the channels. Our POV was from an angle where we couldn’t see the screen.)
‘The Wonder Years', 'Bewitched’, ‘Last Of The Summer Wine’, ‘Here‘s Lucy’, ‘Sanford and Son’, ‘Love Thy Neighbor’, ‘Family’, ‘Man About The House’, ‘Nurses’, ‘Are You Being Served?’, ‘Mork & Mindy’, ‘Lou Grant’, ‘Diff’rent Strokes’, ‘Sykes’, ‘Terry and June’, ‘WKRP In Cincinnati’, ‘The Muppet Show’, ‘Fraggle Rock’, ‘Fame’, ‘Emu’s World’, ‘V’, ‘The A-Team’, ‘Just Good Friends’, ‘Riptide’, ‘No. 73’, ‘E/R’, ‘Moonlighting’, ‘Miami Vice’, ‘St. Elsewhere’, ‘Doctor Who’, ‘Juliet Bravo’, ‘Lovejoy’, ‘Cheers’, ‘Perfect Strangers’, ‘Growing Pains’, ‘Hill Street Blues’, ‘Out Of This World’, ‘Sledge Hammer’, ‘Golden Girls’, ‘Boys Will Be Boys’, ‘ALF’ & “Project ALF”, ‘Beauty and the Beast’, ‘Valerie’, ‘Family Ties’, ‘It’s Garry Shandling’s Show’, ‘Day By Day’, ‘China Beach’, ‘Knots Landing’, ‘Superboy’, ‘Press Gang’, ‘Night Court’, ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’, ‘Alien Nation’, ‘Doogie Howser, M.D.’, ‘Red Dwarf’, ‘My Secret Identity’, ‘Nearly Departed’, ‘Not Necessarily The News’, ‘Parker Lewis Can’t Lose’, ‘Saved By The Bell’, ‘Only Fools and Horses’, ‘Degrassi High’, ‘Operation Blue Line’, ‘Seinfeld’, ‘Clariss Explains It All’, ‘Knight Rider 2000’, ‘Golden Years’, ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’, ‘Married… With Children’, ‘Roseanne’, ‘Eerie, Indiana’, ‘The Larry Sanders Show’, ‘Quantum Leap’, ‘Absolutely Famous’, ‘The Tomorrow People’, ‘The Nanny’, ‘Boy Meets World’,’Goodnight, Sweetheart’, ‘Frasier’, ‘Weird Science’, ‘Melrose Place’, ‘Dead at 21’, ‘Home Improvement’, ‘Friends’, ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge’, ‘NYPD Blue’, ‘Northern exposure’, ‘The Vicar Of Dibley’, ‘The X-Files’, ‘Full House’, ‘Dream On’, ‘The Langoliers’, ‘The Big Bang Theory, ‘Caroline In The City’, ‘Cracker’, ‘Law & Order’, ‘Flash Forward’, ‘Are You Afraid Of The Dark’, ‘Home And Away’, ‘Might Morphin Power Rangers’, ‘ER’, ‘Due South’, ‘Mad About You’, ‘NewsRadio’, ‘3rd Rock From The Sun’, ‘Suddenly, Susan’, ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’, ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’, ‘Psi Factor: Chronicles Of The Paranormal’, ‘Honey, I Shrunk The Kids’, ‘Hard Time’, ‘Teen Angel’, ‘Student Bodies’, ‘Homicide: Life On The Street’, ‘Almost Perfect’, ‘The Red Green Show’, ‘Muppets Tonight’, ‘Dawson’s Creek’, ‘Team Knight Rider’, ‘Two Guys, A Girl, and A Pizza Place’, ‘Sliders’, ‘Cupid’, ‘Diagnosis Murder’, ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’, ‘Will & Grace’, ‘The Outer Limits’, ‘Stargate SG-1’, ‘Queer As Folk’, ‘Spin City’, ‘Charmed’, ‘Farscape’, ‘Freaks and Geeks’, ‘Sports Night’, ‘Twice In A Lifetime’, ‘Angel’, ‘Just Shoot Me’, ‘Action’, ‘A Touch Of Frost’, ‘Cleopatra 2525’, ‘Roswell’, ‘That’s 70s Show’, ‘Popular’, ‘Coupling’, ‘Neighbours’, ‘Popular’, ‘Gilmore Girls’, ‘Time Gentlemen, Please’, ‘The Lone Gunmen’, ‘Malcolm In The Middle’, ‘Undergrads’, ‘The Office’, ‘Odyssey 5’, ‘CSI’, ‘That’s So Raven’, ‘Da Ali G Show’, ‘Tremors’, ‘Train 48’, ‘Dead Like Me’, ‘NCIS’, ‘Degrassi: The Next Generation’, ‘Joan of Arcadia’, ‘Scrubs’, ‘Stargate: Atlantis’, ‘Corner Gas’, ‘Lost’, ‘Law & Order: Criminal Intent’, ‘Smallville’, ‘My Wife and Kids’, ‘Robson Arms’, ‘Entourage’, ‘Criminal Minds’, ‘Boston Legal’, ‘Supernatural’, ‘The King of Queens’, ‘Everybody Hates Chris’, ‘Bones’, ‘How I Met Your Mother’, ;Life On Mars’, ‘Veronica Mars’, ‘Joey’, ‘Heroes’, ‘Psych’, ‘Pastewka‘, ‘Eureka’, ‘Ugly Betty’, ‘Numb3rs’, ‘General Hospital’, ‘Peep Show’, ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures’, ‘Chuck’, ‘Hannah Montana’, ’30 Rock’, ‘Bionic Woman’, ‘Primeval’, ‘Zoey 101’, ‘Weeds’, ‘Wizards of Waverly Place’, ‘The Middleman’, ‘Sons of Anarchy’, ‘Cold Case’, ‘The Mentalist’, ‘House’, ‘Being Human’, ‘Fringe’, ‘Dollhouse’, ‘Castle’, ‘Warehouse 13’, ‘Californication’, ‘The Thick Of It’, ‘Sanctuary’, ‘The New Adventures Of Old Christine’, ‘White Collar’, ‘Cougar Town’, ‘NCIS: Los Angeles’, ‘Skins’, ‘In Plain Sight’, ‘Breaking Bad’, ‘Parks and Recreation’, ‘Ashes to Ashes’, ‘Community’, ‘Party Down’, ‘The Hard Times of RJ Berger’, ‘The Middle’, ‘iCarly’, ‘Being Erica’, ‘Blue Mountain State’, ‘Lost Girl’, ‘CSI: Miami’, ‘Gossip Girl’, ‘Hawaii Five-0’, ‘Breaking In’, ‘The United States of Tara’, ‘Stargate Universe’, ‘Haven’, ‘Leverage’, ‘Bodies of Evidence’, ‘Terra Nova’, ‘Life’s Too Short’, ‘Revenge’, ‘Star Trek’, ‘The Secret Circle’, ‘Portlandia’, ‘Mrs. Brown’s Boys’, ‘Nikita’, ‘Mad Men’, ‘Continuum’, ‘Suits’, ‘The Newsroom’, ‘Raising Hope’, ‘Defiance’, ‘Arrested Development’, ‘Perception’, ‘Orange Is The New Black’, ‘Sam & Cat’, ‘The Killing’, ‘Switched At Birth’, ‘Chicago Fire’, ‘It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’, ‘Last Man Standing’, ‘From Dusk Til Dawn’, ‘Modern Family’, ‘Orphan Black’, ‘The Inbetweeners 2’, ‘Lab Rats’, ‘Looking’, ‘2 Broke Girls’, ‘Forever’, ‘Hot In Cleveland’, ‘iZombie’, ‘Maron’, ‘CSI: Cyber’, ‘Liv and Maddie’, ‘The Mysteries of Laura’, ‘The Librarians’, ‘The Magicians’, ‘Shadowhunters’, ‘NCIS: New Orleans’, ‘Santa Clarita Diet’, ‘The Goldbergs’, ’12 Monkeys’, ‘Superstore’, ‘This Is Us’, ‘Ryan Hansen Solves Crimes On Television’, ‘Young Sheldon’, ‘Fresh Off The Boat’, ‘The Kids Are Alright’, ‘The Good Fight’, ‘Pandora’, ‘The Neighborhood’, ‘The Good Doctor’.And that list is still growing! The series premiere of 'Avenue 5' had Hugh Laurie's
That’s-a some spacey mentions!
Here's just one example from an episode of 'Nurses':
Welcome to the Television Crossover Hall Of Fame, ‘Star Trek: The Original Series’!
Thursday, January 30, 2020
THURSDAY THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY - MOCHRIE MEN
Colin Mochrie appeared in two episodes of ‘Murdoch Mysteries’ – “8 Footsteps” & “Manual For Murder”. In both he played Ralph Fellows who was the hotel detective at Windsor House. He was jealous of Detective William Murdoch’s success which eventually drove him to desperate measures.
It appears Fellows had no offspring, at least not officially. He may have had “relations” with a woman in Toronto which led to the birth of a child outside of marriage.
Neil was known by the Bishop police as a chronic conspiracy fanatic, always reporting crimes that had not taken place. So when he alleged that his wife was missing and perhaps kidnapped, only Harley Carter, now a private investigator, believed in him.
If Neil and Ralph are related, Ralph is probably either his grandfather or even great-grandfather.
And there’s another theory of “Relateeveety”, eh?
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
TWO 4 TUESDAY NEWS DAY SUPER SIX LIST
This will be one of them:
“Vita da Carlo” (“Life as Carlo”) featuring Italian comic actor and director Carlo Verdone whose films systematically score well at the Italian box office. This Rome-set comedy series will see Verdone star as a fictionalized version of himself alongside cameos from some of Italy’s biggest stars. Aurelio and Luigi De Laurentiis, who have a longstanding rapport with Verdone, with produce the 10-episode show via their Filmauro shingle with production set to start this year.
This will be a big boon for Toobworld’s League of Themselves which feature the televersions of famous people as seen in the TV Universe.
If the show comes to the States, it’ll be good for those Italian actors as well.
So that was Tuesday News Day. Let’s make this a Two for Tuesday now and add in a Super Six List.
My Six Favorite TV Shows Featuring The League Of Themselves
1. The Larry Sanders Show
2. Curb Your Enthusiasm
3. Extras
4. Arli$$
5. Entourage
6. Here’s Lucy/The Lucy Show
BCnU!
Monday, January 27, 2020
MONDAY MINUTIAE - JOE THE BARTENDER
PERRY MASON
THE CASE OF THE VIOLENT VEST
I think that’s a good indication that she had to be a fan of Jackie Gleason’s sketch character of Joe the Bartender (with Frankie Fontaine as Crazy Guggenheim) in ‘Jackie Gleason: American Scene Magazine’ which ran on CBS from 1962 to 1966.
There is no Zonk involved. Jackie’s Joe the Bartender does not exist in the main Toobworld. He and Crazy Guggenheim would be found in Skitlandia, an alternate Toobworld.
