FANFICCER'S FRIEND: FIRST IN A SERIES

So here it is: the launch of a new monthly feature here at Inner Toob, the Fanficcer's Friend.

Each month (until I run out!) I'll be presenting a picture from a movie featuring actors and actresses better known as TV characters. Then you can take those to illustrate whatever TV fanfic stories you're writing up.

This was from the movie "The Racket" which starred Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan. The actors seen in this still from near the end of the movie are Ray Collins and William Conrad as a crooked D.A. and cop, respectively.
But this picture could help illustrate that in the past, the TV shows 'Cannon' and 'Perry Mason' shared a common history. Collins played Lt. Tragg who arrested Mason's clients, and Conrad was the private eye Frank Cannon.

But Cannon used to be on the Los Angeles Police Force. So for Toobworld purposes, we can claim that this is a picture of Tragg and Cannon working together back in the 1950s when they both were part of the LAPD.

This would be before Amos Burke was in charge of the Homicide department at Metro Division, and before Lt. Columbo moved to the City of Angels.......

BCnU!
Toby OB

FANFICCER'S FRIEND: A PREVIEW WARNING

It occurred to me after I offered to do the new feature "The Fanficcer's Friend" that there'd be a lof of fanficcers out there who are probably just looking for something else entirely from what I was offering. They'd be wanting the types of pictures that can help spice up the salacious stories they're scribbling - stories usually relegated to within their own frameworks and featuring sexual liaisons between the characters.

That's slash-fic. I've seen that stuff out there as I ::ahem!:: do research for Toobworld - Greg and Marcia Brady "playing ball" in the house; the Professor AND Mary Ann (You have to sing that one!); and lots and lots of gay slash with Kirk and Spock. But it occurs to me that slash-ficcers out there are probably only interested in pairing off current characters from 'One Tree Hill' and 'Gossip Girl'; threesomes from 'Lipstick Jungle'; workplace assignations for 'CSI', '30 Rock', and 'Chuck'; and plenty of bungles in the jungle for the many combinations from 'Lost'. And they'd have no interest in the classic TV history pics I'll be serving up.
If I was going to read that stuff, I'd be looking for the stories about 'Kyle XY' and his hot foster mom Nicole Trager, or about John Connor and his bot "sister" Cameron from 'Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles'. However, I think most people out there are looking for a different combination from that show.......

Sorry. For a minute there, I was... somewhere else.......

Well, that's all the titillation you're getting from me! When it comes to photos that could help tighten up the links between shows in the TV Universe, I'm just looking for basics. You're on your own to turn it into smut.

And I don't think you want to explore in that direction with this month's picture......

BCnU!
Toby OB

TODAY'S TWD: NERO WOLFE

At one point during his investigation into "Who Killed Cassandra Cass?", Captain Amos Burke of 'Burke's Law' said, "In the immortal words of Nero Wolfe, 'Phooey!'"

Burke was quoting the actual private investigator, not a character from a book. Nero Wolfe lived in New York City back in the 30s and 40s and rarely left his brownstone. All of his legwork was done by gumshoe Archie Goodwin.

Wolfe had an illegitimate son, whose mother also named him Nero Wolfe. He grew up to be a private eye with a fondness for orchids as well, and in one of those amazing coincidences found in the TV Universe, the junior Wolfe's leg man was also named Archie Goodwin. There was no relation to the original however. Nero Wolfe the younger hired the investigator because it amused him that Goodwin shared the name of his father's associate.

Captain Amos Burke may have known this Nero Wolfe personally.

A third Nero Wolfe showed up in 1977, but as he only exists in the pilot movie (star Thayer David died before the series could begin), he has been relegated to the TV dimension for the movies of the week.

SHOWS CITED:
'Burke's Law'
'A Nero Wolfe Mystery'
'Nero Wolfe'
"Nero Wolfe"

BCnU!
Toby OB

TVXOHOF, 3/08 - BETTY, LIVING THROUGH TELEVISION

For the March of 2008 induction into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame, we're saluting a lady who's still going strong in Toobworld well into her eighties. She's not only appearing as herself in shows like 'Ugly Betty', but she's also playing other characters in TV shows like 'Boston Legal' and 'The Bold & The Beautiful'.

BETTY WHITE

Of course, Betty White will always be known for her roles as Rose Nylund on 'The Golden Girls' and as Sue Ann Nivens on 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'. She's also starred in her own series 'The Betty White Show' and 'Date With The Angels'. (In the TV Universe, Betty White also starred on 'The Golden Girls', but their version of the show must be different from ours in some way.)

There is one series I'm still not sure about. 'Life With Elizabeth' had Betty White playing Elizabeth White, but I'm not sure if that was supposed to be a fictionalized view of her own life. If it was, there had to be some kind of splainin to go with it, as there has to be with 'The Drew Carey Show'.
And then there are the hundreds of game show appearances she's made over the years, especially with her late husband Allen Ludden on 'Password' (not to mention her commercials for 1-800-PET-MEDS!)

It was Ms. White's association with 'Password' which led to her first big appearance as herself in a fictional setting. As usual, she was the celebrity partner, this time playing against a famous New York sportswriter, Oscar Madison. Madison unfortunately was teamed up with his roommate, Felix Unger. ('The Odd Couple')
There's a spoof poster you can see online which declares "Betty White Is Sick Of Your Shit". That no-nonsense attitude served her well on 'The Naked Truth' when she drove off with Nora Wilde stuck in the passenger side window, and when she was keeping bus depot manager John Hemingway in a "Sunset Boulevard" style arrangement.
Miss White also has doppelgangers in other TV dimensions. In animated form, she appeared twice on 'The Simpsons' and in an episode of 'Family Guy' as well. And in the TV dimension for those movies of the week that couldn't fit into the main Toobworld (mostly because of alternate history Presidents) she showed up in "Vanished", based on the novel by Fletcher Knebel.

Here's a full list of Betty White's appearances as herself in the TV Universe:

EARTH PRIME-TIME

"Ugly Betty"

- Bananas for Betty (2007)
"I'm with Her"
- Meet the Parent (2003)
"The John Larroquette Show"

- Here We Go Again (1996)
"The Naked Truth"
- Star and Comet Collide! Giant Bugs Invade! (1995)

- Elvis Is Coming! (1995)
"Matlock"
- The Network (1987)
"Madame's Place"

- Episode #1.19 (1982)
"The Odd Couple"
- Password (1972)
"O'Hara, U.S. Treasury"
- Operation: Lady Luck (1972)

EARTH PRIME-TIME/MOTW

Vanished (1971)

THE TOONIVERSE

"The Simpsons"
- Homerazzi (2007)

- Missionary: Impossible (2000)
"Family Guy"
- Peterotica (2006)

Betty White turned 86 back in January and she's still going strong. So there's still hope she'll be showing up again in some other TV series as herself.

I'm thinking 'Torchwood'........

Well, we wouldn't want it to be 'Dexter', do we???

BCnU!
Toby OB

IN THE POST 2525, BERMAN IS STILL ALIVE.....

A quantum leap for Leap Day!

"A brief if frenetic introduction to Mr. Archibald Beechcroft, a child of the twentieth century, a product of the population explosion, and one of the inheritors of the legacy of progress. Mr. Beechcroft again. This time act two of his daily battle for survival. And in just a moment, our hero will begin his personal one-man rebellion against the mechanics of his age, and to do so he will enlist certain aids available only in the Twilight Zone."
- Rod Serling
'The Twilight Zone'

When actors play more than one role on Television, sometimes it becomes necessary to find a reason why those two characters look alike - especially when several of those characters appeared on the same show.

For example, Bruce Kirby is known best for his role as Sgt. Kramer on 'Columbo', but he also played a custodial worker in a cosmetics research lab in the episode "Lovely But Lethal" and as a TV repairman in "Make Me A Perfect Murder". In the episode "Strange Bedfellows", he was called Sgt. Brindle, not Kramer. (Quick splainin for those - the custodian was Sgt. Kramer's brother, who got his TV repairman's license after losing his job at BeautyMark for spilling secrets to Lt. Columbo. It was through the brother that Columbo met and began working with Kramer. As for Sgt. Brindle, that was still Sgt. Kramer, but for some reason, his co-workers had taken to calling him by the nickname of Sgt. Brindle as some sort of a joke. It's something never explained to the viewers.)

Vito Scotti and Michael Lally each appeared in many different roles on 'Columbo', but their splainins would take too long for this piece. (And it's "been there, done that". Bored now......)

The typical, classical splainin is "identical cousins", a tradition that was formalized with 'The Patty Duke Show'. Although it wasn't applicable on that show, sometimes the term "identical cousins" actually refers to bastard half-brother (or sister). I covered this topic in the blog post "A Double In Justice", dealing with the several judges David Lipman has played on the various 'Law & Order' series.

Otherwise, some of the main reasons for these lookalikes running around Toobworld are strong family genetics, plastic surgery, robots, aliens, quantum leaping, and when there are too many "twins" because of the popularity in casting certain actors (a condition known as "urichosis"), we have to rely on cloning. (In the case of characters played by Robert Urich, from whom "urichosis" got its name, all of his many contemporary TV characters from the late 70s until his death in 2002 were all cloned from the genetic material of his character in 'The Lazarus Man', kept in storage for many decades.)

As usual, I'm going the long way around to get to the topic of this post - I've found a new way to splain away multiple TV characters in the TV Universe all looking exactly alike, but it can only be applied to those characters played by one actor.

Shelley Berman.

True televisiologists have probably already figured out where I'm going with this one.

In May of 1961, Berman played Archibald Beechcroft in "The Mind And The Matter". Beechcroft was an insurance agent who read a book by that title and used the power of his mind to rid the world of people. When he became too lonely, he decided to repopulate the Earth - but only with carbon copies of himself in all walks of life, men and women alike.

The experiment lasted just over an hour, but Beechcroft finally put back the world to the way it was because as he put it, "A lot of me is just as bad as a lot of them."

We don't know if he ever used his mental powers again, but we also don't know if he was really successful in making the correction to his earlier experiment. After all, he was a novice when it came to using his mental powers; and the world is a mighty big place. It could be that some of his "test subjects" in the human populace never got the upgrade.

So it could be that any of the TV characters portrayed by Shelley Berman after May of 1961 - and there is quite a list! - didn't originally look like Shelley Berman. It could be that they were victims of Archibald Beechcroft's experiment of mind over matter, but when it came time for the reversion, they somehow fell through the cracks.

There are two characters whom I would eliminate from this possibility, and that's only because they already looked like Archibald Beechcroft. They were his brothers.

One of these is Marcus Beechcroft, who appeared in an episode of 'Brothers', and the other is Mel Beach, who was a member of the cast of both 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman' and its sequel, 'Forever Fernwood'. For reasons unknown, probably to disassociate himself from at least one of his brothers (Gee, which one?), Mel Beach changed his last name from Beechcroft.

Here's a list of the other TV characters who now all resemble each other because of one fateful day in May of 1961:
"Walter & Emily" .... Albert
"Curb Your Enthusiasm" .... Nat David
"Boston Legal" .... Judge Robert Sanders
"L.A. Law" .... Ben Flicker
"ABC Afterschool Specials" .... Harold
- The Kid Who Wouldn't Quit: The Brad Silverman Story
"CBS Summer Playhouse" .... Harry
- Mabel and Max (1987)
"State of Mind" .... Harvey Fleischman
"Entourage" .... Uncle Shelley
"Grey's Anatomy" .... Jed Sorento
"Dead Like Me" .... Theo
"The King of Queens" .... Arthur's Half-Brother
"Walker, Texas Ranger" .... Ira Goldberg
"Arli$$" .... Ollie Fogle
"Chicago Sons" .... McGlashan
"Friends" .... Mr. Kaplan Jr.
"Living Single" .... Hyman
"MacGyver" .... Abe Sherman
What's Alan Watching? .... Mel Krasoen
"Night Court" .... Al
"Knight Rider" .... Josh Bevin
"Hotel" .... Barney
"Matt Houston" .... Dicky Bevac
"CHiPs" .... Strum
"Vega$" .... Mickey
"Police Woman" .... Eddie Bender
"Emergency!" .... Art Frommich
"Love, American Style"
(segment 'Love and the V.I.P. Restaurant') - George
"Adam-12" .... Phil Duke
"Mary Tyler Moore" .... Dr. Walter Udall
"That's Life" .... Mr. Quigley
"The Girl from U.N.C.L.E." .... Dr. Toulouse
"The Man from U.N.C.L.E." .... Sheldon Veblen
"Bewitched" .... Mr. Brinkman
"Burke's Law" .... King Dmitri
"Breaking Point" .... Roy Chase
"General Electric Theater"
- The $200 Parlay .... Stanley
I haven't been able to track down the names of the characters Shelley Berman played on these shows:

"Providence"
"L.A. Doctors"
"The Hero"
"Eischied"
"Flying High"
"Love, American Style"
(segment "Love and the Ledge")
"Civil Wars"
"Monsters"
- Werewolf of Hollywood
"St. Elsewhere"

But they were all probably subjected to the Beechcroft Transformation of 1961.

(I do know that his 'St. Elsewhere' character died at the St. Eligius Hospital in Boston and his head was mistakenly mailed to Dr. Mark Craig's mother-in-law. Finding it, she suffered a heart attack and died..... I don't know if that says anything about the Beechcroft visage.......)

Those characters who looked like comic actor Shelley Berman before May, 1961.....? Well, for better or worse, they were probably born that way........

"Peter Gunn" .... Danny Holland
"Rawhide" .... Mendel Sorkin
"Mister Roberts" - The Replacement (character name unknown)

Beechcroft's power could have extended across the vortex into other TV dimensions. In the Toobworld classified as Earth Prime-Time/Dolt, the Principal bore his likeness in an episode of 'That's My Bush!'. And in the Tooniverse, Mr. Alderman resembled Archibald Beechcroft (at least vocally) in 'The Blues Brothers Animated Series'.

His mental mastery even held sway over non-human beings who live on Earth, as evidenced by Santa's elf Nobby Frostybump, who never reverted back (perhaps due to magical interference. ('Lizzie McGuire')

Hopefully, all of the women who were transformed to look like Beechcroft were able to revert back to their original looks. But if any of them were pregnant at the time, it may have permanently altered the looks of their babies......

I'll be returning to this topic on my birthday. You can probably guess why.......

BCnU!
Toby OB

"Mr. Archibald Beechcroft, a child of the twentieth century, who has found out through trial and error - and mostly error - that with all its faults it may well be that this is the best of all possible worlds. People notwithstanding, it has much to offer. Tonight's case in point in the Twilight Zone."
- Rod Serling
'The Twilight Zone'

[Editor's note: Despite the way the heading may read, Shelley Berman is still alive. I just wanted to go for that play on words from that weird song as this was Post #2525......]

TODAY'S TWD: THE LEAGUE OF THEMSELVES

A few years back I thought I'd dedicate the month of March to the League of Themselves when it came to the inductions into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame. And that idea fell by the wayside with theme years and other nominees of note.

The League of Themselves consists of real world people, not always celebrities or famous, who play fictionalized characters based on themselves. Same names, same reputations, but meeting characters and becoming involved in situations that never could happen in the real world.

A lot of crossover fans don't include those who play themselves when it comes to establishing connections between shows. But not at Toobworld Central. We don't see any difference between Archie Bunker and Sammy Davis, Jr. (Well, Archie would see three major differences, anyway!) Both of them are fictional characters within the framework of 'All In The Family' and 'Archie Bunker's Place'. That version of Sammy Davis, Jr. is distinct from the real world celebrity.

Sometimes a celebrity playing himself even gets his own show:

Jerry Seinfeld
Bette Midler
Charlie Ruggles
Charles Farrell
Drew Carey (although he's a clone of the comedian. Long story)

Why should these shows get excluded from the Great Link?

Over the years we've celebrated several celebrities who are sometimes better known from portraying themselves in Toobworld than they are for any other TV characters in their resume:

Jack Benny
George Burns
Milton Berle
Sammy Davis, Jr.
Rudy Giuliani
Dick Clark
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Dr. Joyce Brothers
Walter Cronkite
Bob Costas
Roy Rogers & Dale Evans
Shari Lewis
the original cast of 'Star Trek'
Adam West (in the Tooniverse)

So all of that is just a warm-up for tomorrow's induction into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame.......

BCnU!
Toby OB

ECHOES: OH, THE HUMANITY

"I despise people. I loathe them."
Archibald Beechcroft
'The Twilight Zone'
"People... I'm glad I'm not one of them."
Store Clerk
'That's Life'

LOST TOOB

William Keck of "USA Today" interviewed Henry Ian Cusick for tonight's episode of 'Lost' which will center around Cusick's character Desmond Hume (a fave here at Toobworld Central). And this selection jumped out at me:

Q: What was it like for you and Naveen Andrews (Sayid) working on that freighter out in the middle of the ocean?

A: We filmed off Barber's Point (the west coast of Oahu) — about 10 to 15 minutes offshore. Once you're there, you're stuck on the boat, so we all had to find places to sleep and hide to be out of the shots. We had days and days being on that freighter and had a few night shoots as well. Because Naveen and I are both from the U.K., we had a lot of things to talk about — like characters from crappy old TV shows from our childhoods.

Now THERE'S a conversation I'd love to join. Nobody loves crappy old TV like me; I don't care from what country!

BCnU!
Toby OB

PASSAGES: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY

"William Buckley, with his winningly capricious personality, his use of ten-dollar words and a darting tongue writers loved to compare to an anteater’s, was the popular host of one of television’s longest-running programs, 'Firing Line,' and founded and shepherded the influential conservative magazine National Review."
- The New York Times

Roger Catlin gave this description of Buckley that is probably the most palatable for this knee-jerk moderate:

"William F. Buckley, Jr., was, in addition to a columnist, a frequent figure on TV where his brand of conservatism was of a most erudite type – so far away from the oafish know nothing bullies of today’s right wing broadcasting brethren."

Buckley was his own best representative in TV Land with his hosting duties on 'Firing Line' for 33 years, beginning in 1966. But he was also served with several televersions in the sketch comedy dimension of Skitlandia, most notably played by Joe Flaherty on an 'SCTV' "show" called 'Just For Fun' with the televersions of Indira Gandhi and Pierre Trudeau, and hosted by Stan Kanter.

William F. Buckley died Wednesday at his home in Connecticut at the age of 82.

BCnU.....
Toby OB

"Last call for lunatic liberals and their 3rd-world girlfriends."

'William F. Buckley'

'SCTV'

MARCH PREVIEW

I'm going to be adding a new monthly feature to the Inner Toob in March, one which will probably make Lee Goldberg grind his teeth a bit - "The Fanficcer's Friend".

I don't consider what I write here at Inner Toob to be fanfic. I do theorize about unseen adventures of TV characters, but that's all in the service of making the TV Universe more cohesive. My aim is to eliminate discrepancies and to suggest possible connections between shows so that we can consider as many of the TV shows and commercials as possible to be in the same dimension.

After that, if someone wants to come along and write up a story using those concepts, that's their own bidness.

"Fanficcer's Friend" will be a monthly photo illustration of a possible crossover between at least two TV series which have never been officially linked together. My only stipulation is that the picture must come from a movie source, and not from some other TV show. That would be a scene that has already played out in Toobworld and there are enough reruns in that world as it is.

So these examples would not be acceptable:

While that is Dr. Zorba in the picture on the left, as played by Sam Jaffe on 'Ben Casey', that cannot be Admiral Harriman Nelson, the character played by Richard Basehart in 'Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea' nor Wilton Knight of 'Knight Rider'. This was already established to be Mark Cassidy in the episode "Light Up The Dark Corners".

In the picture on the right, we can't make the claim that somehow Mr. Spock of 'Star Trek' went back in Time and served alongside Sgt. Chip Saunders during World War II. Instead, that's Private Baum as played by Leonard Nimoy in the 'Combat!' episode "The Raider", starring Vic Morrow. (However, I am willing to entertain the notion that Private Baum is the father of Paris, a member of the IMF in 'Mission Impossible'.)

Here are two other good examples from 'Poirot' that might have proved tempting to other "Whovians:

Hercule Poirot and The Doctor (in his 8th and 9th incarnations respectively)? No, that's Paul McGann as a different doctor (Dr. Peter Lord in "Sad Cypress") and Christopher Eccleston as Frank Carter ("One Two, Buckle My Shoe").

But a screen capture from a movie comes from a different universe, created from another aspect of Mankind's creative spark. And as such, we can make the claim that in Toobworld, the actors depicted in that photo could instead be TV characters for whom those actors are better known.

So we'll be premiering the first such suggestion in just a few days......

BCnU!
Toby OB