LAWNMOWER WOMEN

This blipvert for the Schick Quattro for Women is airing in the United Kingdom....




Don't you get the feeling we'll never see it on American TV screens?

For Toobworld, I think we have a great way to insert this into the Great Link of the TV Universe. I think this small English neighborhood was "attacked" by the musical demon Mr. Sweet. We only saw him in the "Once More, With Feeling" musical episode of 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer', but he was still inducted into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame. That's because we're claiming that he was responsible for the environment of shows like 'Hull High' and 'Cop Rock'.

He's still out there at work, and I think it's a safe bet that he was causing these women to sing the praises of their "landscaping".....

BCnU!

My thanks to fellow Iddiot Fred for alerting me to this!

AS SEEN ON TV: GOD ALMIGHTY!

For the "Two For Tuesday" edition of "As Seen On TV", we're taking it to a higher source, One Whose name is spoken quite frequently in Toobworld as well as in the real world... and not often enough for the right reasons.

GOD

Specifically, the Almighty as seen in the Tooniverse.
AS SEEN IN:
'God, The Devil, And Bob'

AS PLAYED BY:
James Garner

In this short-lived but interesting series, God met up with former minion the Devil in a bar and made a bet: the Devil got to choose one human to prove whether or not Mankind is decent and deserves saving. If the test subject failed, God would have to destroy all of Creation and begin anew. The Devil picked out Bob Allman (as in Everyman, I suppose) who was a Detroit auto worker, which probably made him ripe for temptation. And although the Devil could lure Bob into Sin, God wasn't allowed to give Bob any help along the way.

What I enjoyed most was seeing God as Jerry Garcia with James Garner's voice...
AS SEEN IN:
'Family Guy'

AS PLAYED BY:
N/A

This was your typical one-shot throwaway joke, which 'Family Guy' must have a couple dozen per episode. Here we see what God would look like if He patterned Himself as "Flash Gordon" from the 1980s movie. (We even got to hear that "Flash! A-haaaaaa!" from Queen on the soundtrack. But this was the extent of the scene, so there was no dialogue for the Deity......

BCnU!

NUMBERS RUNNING: "ROYAL PAINS" & "LIE TO ME"

I found a couple of "The Numbers" from 'Lost' this week in my summertime viewing.

First up, from a repeat of 'Lie To Me': And then in the latest episode of 'Royal Pains': I think of all of "The Numbers", "23" is proving to be the most prevalent in Toobworld. If not, it's probably "4". Or "8". Or....

BCnU!

IS NIKKI NIXED?

After the events of last night's episode of 'Harper's Island' ("Splash"), and with only the two-hour finale left to be shown in two weeks, I'm not ready to abandon my theory about Nikki Bolton being involved in the murders.

She was introduced back into the story last week, able to insinuate herself back into the crowd at the Cannery. And what happened last night may have been a carefully staged ruse to draw attention away from her. Remember a certain impish character from "And Then There Was None"? And after seeing what supposedly happened, why would the others - already shell-shocked - bother to look took closely into the situation?

We'll see in two weeks....

I am going to miss Cal and Chloe though......

BCnU!

GENERAL KINDLE

In anticipation of the upcoming 'Torchwood' mini-series event, Star-Ledger TV critic and columnist Alan Sepinwall conducted a phone interview with Russell T. Davies, the writer/producer who brought 'Doctor Who' back from the dead and created the spin-offs of 'Torchwood' and 'The Sarah Jane Adventures'.

At one point, RTD was asked about the stories he never got to write for 'Doctor Who', now that he's stepped down to let Steven Moffat take charge of the production. And at one point in his answer, "Rusty" says:

I think there's a very good "Doctor Who" story to be told about Twitter, about the idea of communicating in 140 characters. There's a story somewhere, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone on the (new writing) team is thinking of that.

I've been thinking that there's a story to be found in this new phenom of Kindle, the electronic book-reading device; something similar to the electronic thumb-shaped edition of 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy'.

What if the ultimate aim for Kindle (a tele-version of course, not the real thing) was to enslave the minds of its users for some unknown but definitely heinous purpose? It would the technology of "The General" from forty years ago in 'The Prisoner' finally put to use on the populace.

If this was to be a 'Doctor Who' story, what I like best about it is that you wouldn't need to throw in some alien race once again trying to invade the Earth, blah blah blah. This could be a home-grown adventure with the Doctor up against it - the info downloaded into his own cerebral cortex already taking control over him and his secrets before he's had a chance to defeat the mastermind behind it (some Tobias Vaughn/John Lumic type).

I think the only non-alien story in RTD's run of 'Doctor Who' was the two part "Rise Of The Cybermen"/"Age Of Steel" two-parter. And even then, those Lumic Cybermen were dimensional analogues to the Mondasian Cybermen of the classic series. Before that, the last story to feature a purely human threat was "Black Orchid" (I think) with Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor.

So I'd welcome a 'Doctor Who' story in which the humans were the villains for once! And of course, it should be the utopian crossover with at least a mention of 'The Prisoner'.....

"Who Is Number One?" indeed!

BCnU!

By the way, Alan Sepinwall has a great TV blog called "What's Alan Watching?", the link for which you'll find to the left......

KNIGHT'S PAWN OR KNIGHT-SPAWN?

'Primeval' has already ended its run in the United Kingdom. We're up to episode seven of season 3, the last season, here in the States. So I don't know, maybe this gets addressed before the end of the series....

But did anybody else get the feeling that if Sir William deMornais (L) was killed in his future before he had the chance to father three children, that Danny Quinn (R) would never exist?

It's just me, isn't it.....?

BCnU!

AS SEEN ON TV: THE THREE STOOGES

It's Monday.

For me, it's the middle of the work week, but I feel your pain. I know it's a downer after your weekend to go back to the office. The Fourth of July is on Saturday and yet it feels so far away.

So that's why today's "As Seen On TV" feature is a showcase for the Toobworld version of Three Stooges: to lift the spirits and anticipate some explosive fun this coming weekend.

Ah, who am I kidding? I just love the Stooges! We used to watch an hour of Stooges everyday in T-House when I was at UConn, just before dinner. How our dining room survived a bunch of guys hopped up on Stooges antics, I don't know.....

A publicity shot that never happened in Toobworld.

See "Hold That Lion" for the only Columbia short

in which all four of these Stooges appeared together.

AS SEEN IN:
"The Three Stooges"

AS PLAYED BY:
Paul Ben-Victor ... Moe Howard

Evan Handler ... Larry Fine

John Kassir ... Shemp Howard

Michael Chiklis ... Jerome 'Curly' Howard These are some of the other members of the cast from this 2000 TV movie. Stooges fans should recognize the names on the right more than those on the left:

Marton Csokas ... Ted Healy
Linal Haft ... Harry Cohn
Lewis Fitz-Gerald ... Jules White
Peter Callan ... Joe DeRita
Laurence Coy ... Joe Besser
David Baldwin ... Louis B. Mayer
Len Kaserman ... Jack L. Warner
Geoff Bartlett ... Del Lord
Gary Baxter ... Felix Adler
Gunther Berghofer ... Clyde Bruckman

(That last name should also be recognizable to fans of 'The X-Files'. Peter Boyle won an Emmy for playing a man with the same name in "The Last Repose Of Clyde Bruckman".)

There are three other real life figures I would have liked to have seen listed:

Bud Jamison

Vernon Dent

and, of course,

Emil Sitka!

Who knows? I never saw the tele-flick, but maybe they were portrayed with no credit given......

Woowoowoowoo BCnU!

THE HAT SQUAD: BILLY MAYS

"I compare myself to a big-league slugger, a quarterback,

the doctor who delivers the baby.

I'm not an inventor,

but I'll take your product to the next level."

Billy Mays

New York Daily News

(May, 2009)

"Good night, and may God bless."

BCnU.....

TVXOHOF, 06/2009-D: MAYBERRY, TWD

As June blends into July (hopefully with a blaze of glory after about 20 days of rain!), I couldn't think of a better Toobworld location to induct into the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame than Mayberry, North Carolina. If anyplace in the TV Universe better epitomizes the lazy, hazy, and yes, crazy days of Summer than Andy Taylor's hometown, I've yet to see it on TV. Mayberry is the type of place you can just sit back and relax on the front porch, with some lemonade, and watch the world go by at your own pace. Mayberry of course was the setting for 'The Andy Griffith Show'. And when the Taylors moved away (save for Aunt Bea), it was the town itself that took center stage in the sequel. Well, okay, that would have been Sam Jones, but the title of the show was 'Mayberry, RFD'.
And 'Gomer Pyle, USMC' would often mention his hometown while he was stationed at that California Marine base. And he wasn't the only one to speak of it outside its North Carolina environs. On 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', Mr. Trick said of her hometown of Sunnydale that its death rate "makes D.C. look like Mayberry." In an episode of 'The Dead Zone', Dana Bright got ticked off at Johnny Smith because he "had to go and piss off Mayberry." I'm not sure what small town was being compared to Opie's hometown, but it probably was just as quaint and easy-going as Mayberry - until an angry mob got riled up!

How do outsiders know about Mayberry? More than likely through a combination of events - a documentary about the town, perhaps. Maybe from that movie that was filmed there. Perhaps a horrible still explosion made the news. Could Opie have written a best-selling novel about it? It could be for any number of reasons. I like the idea that it was the architecture and layout of the town that made it famous. Whoever was the City Planner who designed the area, they then copied the form for several locations near the great city of Metropolis, as seen in episodes of 'The Adventures of Superman'. In fact, I think aliens liked the layout as well and recreated Mayberry on an alien planet - as seen in the "Miri" episode of 'Star Trek'! Mayberry was finally the center of attention once again with a TV reunion movie in which Andy came back home and once again became sheriff, with Barney Fife returning as well. The former deputy had been hoping to get the job of sheriff, but settled for working by Andy's side once again. (And Opie was the editor of the town paper.) We even caught a glimpse of the old fishing hole last Fall, when Opie and his Dad fished while they talked about the candidacy of Barack Obama! So here's to the town of Mayberry, not too far from Mt. Pilot in North Carolina. But in the hearts of many around the world....

BCnU!

Thanks to "The Adventure Continues" for the comparison pictures of Mayberry and Metropolis.

MAKING AN IMPACT

I'm enjoying this mini-series of "Impact" on ABC. (Who are we kidding? It's a two-part movie!) Although I'm a bit surprised that it seems like the network is burning it off now rather than during a Sweeps month. They should have saved it at least until August if they were going to do that.

Anyway, it's about a condensed chunk of brown dwarf star that crashes into the Moon and is now causing weird effects on Earth - electrical surges, loss of gravity, etc. And because of its massive weight, it's now causing the Moon's orbit to eventually crash it into the Earth. Part Two of this German co-production airs tonight (Sunday). Who knows how this is going to be resolved? But I have a feeling it's going to be like "Deep Impact" - astronauts going up to destroy either the brown dwarf star inside the Moon or the Moon itself.

So O'Bviously this can't be a show set in Earth Prime-Time. Otherwise, all TV shows would have their Moon shots showing a big crater and crack in it. It has to be another dimension, and luckily one is already set up for it. In this alternate TV dimension, the Earth is just lousy with luck when it comes to disasters. Here are some other TV movies and mini-series that take place in it:

"NYC: Tornado Terror"
"10.5"
"10.5: The Apocalypse"
"Aftershock: Earthquake in New York" Those are just a few examples. (There's no connection to the series 'Three Moons Over Milford' which had a similar premise. That takes place in still another TV dimension, but I haven't given much thought to any other TV shows sharing that same world.)

And if any other disaster specials pop up, and it just happens that the Moon can be seen in the night sky, with no visible damage, then we can always claim that "Impact" is taking place in the near future, after any of those other disaster shows that come along later.

BCnU!