THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY - "DOWNTON ABBEY" & "PENNY DREADFUL"

Thanks to the wonderful 'Downton Abbey' wikia, here's what we know about Beryl Patmore:

Beryl mentions having two sisters, one who died prior to 1912 and another, Kate Philpotts, who is her nephew Archibald's mother.

In "Mistresses and marriage: or, a short history of the Mrs", Amy Louise Erickson states that "In the middle of the eighteenth century, 'Mrs' did not describe a married woman: it described a woman who governed subjects (i.e., employees or servants or apprentices) or a woman who was skilled or who taught".

She may have been born somewhere between 1869 or 1870.  

In the 2013 Christmas Special, Mrs Patmore mentions that no-one "has wanted to squire [me] since the Diamond Jubilee". Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee was on the 20th June 1887 and Mrs Patmore had to have had her season (though she would not get a debutante ball due to being a commoner) by that time. A woman typically has her season when she is 17 or 18. Going by the ages of a woman having her season and Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, Mrs Patmore would have been born in 1869 or 1870.

If it is true that Mrs. Patmore was never married and that her status as "Mrs." is an honorific based on her job in the Crawley family household, then it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that she was from the Hertfordshire area as that is the source for that surname.

When Beryl was about 22 years old, I believe her parents came to London to visit her in the early months of 1892, before she had found employment in Yorkshire at Downton Abbey.  I think the more... decadent side of life in the "Great Wen", the "Big Smoke" (both nicknames of London), was a bit more than Mrs. Patmore expected and she took a dim view of those who reveled in the brazen openness of their lifestyles.  

Here's why I think this to be the case: I believe this was a quick shot of the Patmores as they walked the city streets.  Mrs. Patmore is casting a VERY disapproving glance at Dorian Gray and his companion, the exotic Angelique.

This theory of relateeveety is dedicated to one of my bestest friends, Ivy Hurley, who is a big fan of both 'Downton Abbey' and 'Penny Dreadful'.

Happy birthday, Ivy!

MISSING LINKS: "BEWITCHED" & TOTINO'S PIZZA ROLLS

TOTINO'S:

http://youtu.be/cscqtNch5h4

http://youtu.be/OPYzp3CxsXU

A new batch of Totino's commercials for their pizza rolls invoke a Toobworld mainstay: that some foods are alive and even anxious for you to eat them. 

But also seen in these commercials are household objects which are also alive. 

In Toobworld, when a witch or a warlock feels he or she has reached the end of their usefulness, then they are supposed to use the last dregs and vestiges of their magical powers to transform themselves into something useful. 

On 'Bewitched', I've seen warlocks who were transformed into chairs and bedpans. In a feature I used to run, "Crossing Zone", I linked 'Bewitched' to the 'Twilight Zone' episode "A Thing About Machines" in which a man was eventually driven to death by the electrical machines he despised. 

It is my contention that each of those  infernal devices was an evil witch or warlock set on destroying their "owner".

So it is with the homes in these Totino's blipverts.  They are filled with such transformed witchy souls disguised as ordinary objects. 

BCnU!

TVXOHOF - WES CRAVEN

In 2015, celebrated horror movie director Wes Craven passed away. Currently my health prevents me from going into further detail on the topic, suffice it to say in this year in which the TVXOHOF honors the League of Themselves we have chosen the late Mr. Craven to be the inductee for the horror month of October. 

One of his qualifications is to be found in an alternate timeline but still makes him eligible. 

Here are the roles that put him in contention:

'The Chris Isaak Show'

"Storytime"

'Boston Legal'

"Spring Fever"

'Castle'

"Scared to Death"

Welcome to the Hall, Mr. Craven. 

At least in spirit.....

THE NBC FALL SCHEDULE - FOR 1969

With the 2016 TV schedule about to debut, here's a look back at what once.....

MISSING LINKS - LUCIFER LINK?

'THE LIBRARIANS'

"AND THE FABLES OF DOOM"

In this episode, Jake gushed over the annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" in the antique book section, but Jenkins promised he didn’t want to know who annotated it. 

I think it's O'Bvious who could be the only one knowledgeable enough to have annotated it - the only TV character who was actually there at the time of the Fall....

Lucifer himself.

So I can see this reference as a viable link between 'The Librarians' and 'Lucifer'.

And actually, it could be a reference to any TV show that depicted Lucifer, no matter the recasting.  There is no Zonk because Lucifer would have the ability to alter his appearance, as has been shown numerous times.....

BCnU... in Hell!

BIG SCREEN TV - "DAS BOOT"

Now that I have some time to blog here at Inner Toob for a bit, I'm looking through all of the "odd pieces of paper" which I have accrued that have/had some televisiological value.

According to TBIvision, there will be a televersion of the 1981 German movie "Das Boot" which made Jurgen Prochnow an international star - a reputation which was destroyed three years later by "Dune".  Unless there is some kind of indication within the new TV show otherwise,I don't see why 'Das Boot' can't be located in Earth Prime-Time's historical timeline rather than in some Tele-Cinematic Borderland.

Here are a few quotes from the people involved about the production:

“With Das Boot – the Series, we have once again found a subject matter that fits Sky perfectly and will excite our customers,” said Sky Deutschland CEO Carsten Schmidt. “We are looking forward to the creative development process. Das Boot – the Seriesis the next step into the field of original fictional productions at Sky, and others will follow.”

“Today, more than ever before, anti-war stories need to be told. The notions of war and terror are ubiquitous,” said Bavaria chief executive Christian Franckenstein. “The misguided actions of young men driven to commit acts of terror by false ideologies are obvious.

“The 1981 film Das Boot is unique, and we are approaching our work with the greatest of respect for this masterpiece. We want to build on the strong brand of Das Boot and continue telling the story in a contemporary manner by making use of every  film-making and storytelling technique available to us today.”

The series is considered a sequel to the actual movie, but I'm not sure any of the original cast will be involved.  If they are, playing their original roles, then great - we can absorb the movie into the TV Universe.  But if not, then I have no problem with there being two versions in separate fictional universe - the Cineverse and the Toobworld Dynamic.

At the very least I get this feeling that Prochnow's character will be killed off rather than recast for the TV show.

I'm sure the series will hew closely to reality in its depictions of the time; that it will not ever veer into sci-fi territory.  And that's why I figure this quote from the article had to be a misprint:

The series will focus on the crew of the U96 returning to La Rochelle, France, where a portion of the crew is immediately killed by a major air raid in 1842.

Click that link above and you'll see.

I don't think we can expect a German version of "The Philadelphia Experiment" or 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' for that matter.....

But that would make for a cool show!

BCnU!

SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCE: JENNIE FROM BRITAIN & THE NEW TV SEASON

Jennie Barnett is a fellow "Iddiot", from that confederacy of Vin Scelsa fans who first gathered in an email list group called The Idiot's Delight Digest 21 years ago.  Together we have met Matt Smith, so I'd like to think our televersions have had adventures with the 11th incarnation of the Doctor. (TV''s Jennie would be an international spy trapped in the bureaucratic paperwork of a certain world political organization, jumping at every chance she gets for field work. My Cathode Counterpart is the addled daydreamer whose imagination comes to life.  Together, we fight crime!) 

 JENNIE & MATT SMITH
[I TOOK THE PICTURE]

MATT SMITH SIGNING AUTOGRAPHS

[THE ARROW'S POINTING AT ME]

We pretty much agree on a lot of things - well, let's just say we're both fans of the American League and leave it at that......

So I trust her judgement on the following new TV shows coming in the next few weeks, although I am still hyped on one which she was a bit cool about.....

Jennie, the soundstage is yours:

For Brian, Toby, and anyone else who might be interested - a brief recap of my weekend at the Paley Center. (Well OK, it's not THAT brief):

We saw 18 pilots for the new fall season.  Hands down winner was the first one we saw - 'This Is Us' from NBC. Good characters, good writing; although in no way a clone of 'Parenthood,' it had a similar vibe (high praise from me, one of my favourite shows of recent years). Somebody sitting behind me said "I can't wait for this show to air so I can talk to people about it'. Yes!

Second favourite: 'No Tomorrow' from the CW. I never watch CW; don't even know what channel it is. I may have to find out. Cute, quirky, funny. 

Also from the CW, 'Frequency', loosely based on the Dennis Quaid movie from 15 or so years ago. I'm a sucker for "what if this happened instead of that' themes, so I liked this one a lot.

There's a new high-tech doctor show and a new high-tech lawyer show, and I shall probably be watching both of them - 'Pure Genius' and 'Bull', both from CBS.

Toby asked about 'Timeless' and 'Designated Survivor'. I thought the former was stupid (although I may be in a minority), but the latter has promise. and Kiefer Sutherland, not a bad thing at all.  (O'Bservation: I'm hoping for good things from 'Timeless', even if it produces Zonks to disrupt the Toobworld Dynamic.)

Brian asked about 'Pitch', Fox's drama about the first female Major Leaguer. My love of baseball helped my enjoyment of the show, but whilst it was reasonably entertaining, I don't know if I will watch more than a couple of episodes - depends how it develops past the inevitable initial locker room issues and general misogyny.

We saw a bunch of comedies - 

• 'Good Place'
• 'American Housewife'
• 'Son Of Zorn'
• 'Kevin Can Wait'
• 'Man With A Plan'
• 'The Great Indoors'.... 

If someone held a gun to my head and said I HAD to watch one on a regular basis, it would be 'The Great Indoors', which features Joel McHale and Stephen Fry, both of whom I like quite a lot. 'The Good Place' has Kristen Bell and Ted Danson and reminded me a bit of that show about the pie shop and resurrecting dead people from a few seasons back (can't remember the name ['Pushing Daisies - Toby) as it is colourful and quirky, but I feel like it might get old quite fast. The rest of them? Mo.

The rest: 

• 'Notorious' (Maybe - it has Daniel Sunjata in it). 
• 'Lethal Weapon' - amusing but probably not for me. 
• 'The Exorcist' - not for me, although I love Ben Daniels. 
• 'Chance' - I don't subscribe to Hulu and will not sign up just so I can watch this.  But it's Hugh Laurie and Gretchen Mol, and it is fairly intriguing, even though Mr. Laurie's character is not as far of a stretch from 'House' as the publicity would like you to believe.

Toby, 'Speechless' was not included in the screenings, but I'm also interested to see how that one goes.

Happy fall TV season, everyone!

THANK YOU, JENNIE!!!

TWO FOR TUESDAY - MacGREGOR'S SYNDROME (PART TWO)

From the early 1960s, Dr. Ann MacGregor had been working with a top-secret government project called Operation Tick-Tock, which was trying to conquer the laws governing time travel.  "She was an electro-biologist supervising the unit that determined how much force and heat a time traveler was able to withstand." (from Wikipedia) 

During her stint in service to the government, Dr. MacGregor discovered that the Time Tunnel was emitting what she called “temporal exhaust”, backwashes of temporal energy that could cause people to disappear into either the past or the future.  Some of these people were able to cross back through these temporal vortices to the time they had left (as an example – wagon train leader Christian Horn), while others were lost forever on the other side of the vortex (three soldiers from the National Guard named Connors, Langsford, and McCluskey, who died in the past at the Little Big Horn). 

But Dr. MacGregor also discovered that there were low-level fluctuations in the time-stream that created a type of radiation, perhaps tachyon-based, which affected humans on a cellular level.  While it may not have been strong enough to catapult those who encountered it into the time-stream, it did cause a rare blood disease that was always fatal.

This is why the Gallifreyan Time Lord known as the Doctor always tried to prevent Terrans from dabbling into the energies of time travel.  Dr. MacGregor began to focus her research on this new form of radiation sickness and eventually it was named after her, not that anybody knew that for several decades. (The government suppressed her findings until a dogged FBI agent began rooting around in the archives known as "the X-files".

For the most part, MacGregor’s Disease is only found in the alternate TV dimension known as Comix Toobworld1, but as it was Ann MacGregor who discovered it, it must be in the main Toobworld as well.  It could be that time travelers Dr. Tony Newman and Dr. Doug Phillips, who have not been seen in the Toobworld timeline since 1969, may have been exposed to the temporal radiation as they were not traveling via a protective vehicle.  It could be that they eventually succumbed to MacGregor's Syndrome.

Perhaps Dr. MacGregor gave her colleagues the bad news once they returned?

SHOWS CITED:

• ‘The Time Tunnel’
• ‘The Twilight Zone’
• ‘Doctor Who’
• ‘Arrow’
• ‘The Flash’
• 'The X-Files'
• “Batman And Robin”

My thanks to Martin Ross for bringing MacGregor’s Syndrome to my attention.

BCnU!

 

TWO FOR TUESDAY - MacGREGOR'S SYNDROME (PART ONE)

Martin Ross used to have a great website dedicated to fanfic murder cases solved by Lt. Columbo.  Sadly he had to give it up, but I'll always have fond memories of those times when he investigated murders that also involved TV icons like Jim Rockford, Carl Kolchak, Dr. Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce, and FBI agents Mulder and Scully.

Martin is one of the biggest supporters of the Toobworld Dynamic concept, and he's always got an eye out (but not in the traditional Peter Falk sense of the phrase) for items of interest that I might be able to use.

He gave me this one some time back, but as I was beginning work on "Through The Glass Furnace", the third adventure in my Toobworld series, I had put the blog on hiatus for a time.  So now I'm back - for the prime-time being - and I'm able to start going through the accumulated TV trivia that I can use.

So I figured - now's as good a time as any for Martin's observation:

Martin Ross:
You prolly got this one, but on tonight's 'Flash', Joe West's ex-wife announced that she has MacGregor's Disease -- the same fictional disease Mr. Freeze's wife and Alfred contracted in "Batman and Robin".

ALFRED PENNYWORTH,
SUFFERING FROM MacGREGOR'S SYNDROME

This is an exceptional catch!  At the time Martin sent this in, I was inclined to just say that MacGregor's Syndrome, athough not to be found in the Trueniverse, could be found in more than one fictional universe, let alone one TV dimension.  'The Flash' takes place on Comix Toobworld1, as the Earth Prime-Time, the main Toobworld, already had its own Scarlet Speedster back in the early 1990s.  This is the same TV dimension which houses fellow CW superhero shows as 'Arrow' and 'Legends of Tomorrow' - but NOT 'Supergirl', which takes place in Comix Toobworld2.  

Nora Friese, Alfred Pennyworth, and Francine West were not the only ones to suffer from MacGregor's Syndrome.  William Tockman, also known as the Clock King in 'Arrow', was inflicted with the disease as well.

FRANCINE WEST,
AFFLICTED WITH MacGREGOR'S SYNDROME

Comix Toobworld2 will have its own version of Superman this season, and Earth Prime-Time had theirs back in the 1950s until his death in early 1963 or so.  But so far there hasn't been any hint that Superman or Batman exist in Comix Toobworld1.

I don't see any reason why 'Lois & Clark' can't be part of Comix Toobworld1, and I suppose a perfectly good reason could be found as to why we don't see Superman and his Missus show up in those three CW series.  Then again, 'Smallville' could be the Superman show to call Comix Toobworld1 home, since it does have somewhat of a connected production history.  

As for the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder?  The Batman and Robin of the main Toobworld had his heyday back in the mid-1960s, and Earth Prime-Time absorbed a movie out of the Cineverse because of it.  One of the possibilites for an alternate dimensional Dark Knight would already be dead in the near future depicted in 'Birds of Prey', a show basically set "20 minutes into the Future".  And its grim urban setting seems to be a good fit for a world in which Starling City could also be found.

But should it ever be mentioned - and only mentioned - on 'Arrow', 'The Flash', or 'Legends Of Tomorrow' that Batman is still out there fighting the good fight, then perhaps Comix Toobworld1 could absorb the movie "Batman And Robin" out of the Cineverse.  DC and the CW have openly embraced the idea that it is a multiverse and that all of these incarnations of their superheroes can be found in different dimensions, both from movies as well as TV.

And that way, MacGregor's Disease could be said to exist only in that one TV Dimension, Comix Toobworld1, shared by 'The Flash' and "Batman And Robin".

Of course, all bets are off should the Batman ever show up in one of those three CW series.....

Thanks, Martin!

WELCOME TO MARY TYLER MONDAY!

Sarah: 

Poor Mom....

Ali: 

Poor Mom?
She has her TV shows. 

Sarah: 

We love our Mary Tyler Moore. 

'Transparent'

Taking inspiration from my Southern counterpart, Ivan G. Shreve, who has dedicated weekly features to the TV shows 'Mayberry RFD' and 'The Doris Day Show' (at the cost to his own sanity), I'm going to be looking at the televersion of Mary Tyler Moore every Monday... at least until I get bored.

That quote at the head of this post serves not only as the perfect introduction for the topic, but also as the first point of discussion.  

'Transparent' and 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' should share the same dimension - Earth Prime-Time.  So we can't accept that Raquel and Ali were talking about the show about a woman turning the world on with her smile.  And thanks to the way the dialogue was crafted, we don't have to.  

All they are referring to are TV shows in general, TV shows with Mary Tyler Moore involved in particular.  So while we shouldn't make connections between Ms. Moore and Mary Richards, there is still another possibility we can use: 'The Mary Tyler Moore Hour', the variety show she launched after her very successful sitcom came to a close.  

It doesn't have to be a slavish copy of the TV series we had in the real world, especially since at least one sketch dealt with the WJM TV station.  We've seen many of our TV shows have doppelgangers in Toobworld with fictitious episodes and/or guest stars which were never seen in the Trueniverse. 

And even though it did have a loose sitcom premise to it, the show really only affects the TV dimension of Skitandia.

Of course, as we'll see over the course of this weekly theme, there will be a lot more references that will be quite specific to 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'.  And hopefully, I'll be able to come up with a decent splainin so that it won't create a Zonk.

If you have any suggestions for the 'Mary Tyler Mondays' topic, let me know!

BCnU!