RALPH MALPH: THE LATER YEARS

'THAT GIRL'
"7 3/4: PART TWO"



In the early 1960s, Ralph Malph received an honorable discharge from the army and return home to Milwaukee. He decided to pursue a career as an optometrist like his father, Mickey Malph, and so he soon departed for college.

Ralph Malph was never again seen in the TV series 'Happy Days".

Here is the Toobworld conjecture:

While at college, Ralph discovered a new passion that was more in keeping with his nature. He became a student of filmmaking, and years later got a job in Hollywood as a film editor.

The Hollywood life changed him. As Ralph got older he put on some weight, as can be seen in these pictures in which he is being interviewed by Donald Hollinger of NEWSTIME Magazine.





The recastaway problem gets a free pass from being a Zonk when the splainin involves the aging process. I don't know who played this film editor in the 'That Girl' episode, but I see no reason not to think that it was Ralph Malph.

BCnU!

DE-ZONKING "THE GOOD WIFE"

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.....



Michael Ausiello asked his readers:

"When is 'The McCarthys' going to do an episode that revolves around Ronnie and his mom’s weekly 'Good Wife' viewing party getting derailed by a football overrun?"

It got me wondering if the show's generic title made 'The Good Wife' Zonk-proof. So I checked the list of references from other shows which can be found at the IMDb.

I focused only on those shows that should be found in the same TV dimension as 'The Good Wife'. So that removed all the cartoon references and shows like 'Madam Secretary' or 'The Vampire Diaries'. And episode titles like "The Food Wife" and "The Giggity Wife" have no bearing on Earth Prime-Time. That's just for the benefit of the Trueniverse audience.

NO ZONK TO WORRY ABOUT

'The Office'
"Stairmageddon"
Angela says she'll play 'The Good Wife' by standing beside her husband, the Senator, as he gives a political speech regarding their fragile marriage.

"The good wife" has been a long-standing political term, used to describe the woman who stands by her man during a scandal. 'Little Britain' did a good job of spoofing it in their shows.

GENERIC REFERENCES

This is one I caught this week by chance. I don't watch this show, but I figured this particular episode would have plenty of Toobworld Hollywood goodies (fictional movie & TV show titles, fictional magazines etc):

 

'Stalker'
"Fanatic"
Ben Caldwell: Interesting how you can work side-by-side with someone and you don't really know them at all.
Janice Lawrence: Let me guess: you watch 'The Good Wife'?



'Friends with Better Lives'

"The Bicycle Thieves"
Lowell: Oh, I thought the girls were out tonight.
Bobby: They are.
Lowell: Then what's with the wine and the cupcakes? And what are you watching?
Will: 'The Good Wife'. It's a good show.
Lowell: What kind of dude's night is this?

(Interestingly, that "dude's night" was on a Friday. They could have been watching a recording, but based on the way Will eagerly kept saying "Here it comes!", I think the Toobworld version has a different place on the network schedule.)



'The McCarthys'

"Pilot"
Marjorie: This game better be over in twenty minutes.
Jackie: Why?
Gerard: They want to watch 'Good Wife'.
Marjorie & Ronnie: 'THE Good Wife'!

'The Big Bang Theory' "The Lunar Excitation"
Howard: Oh, Raj, no. Billions of dollars have gone into inventing the Internet and filling it with pictures of naked women, so we don’t have to peep through windows.
Raj: It’s not like that, I’m watching someone’s TV. 'The Good Wife' is on. I tell you, this is my new 'Grey’s Anatomy'.

('Grey's Anatomy' is another show that should be examined for Zonks in other shows. Hopefully it's generic enough as a title to be Zonk-proof.)

 

'Happy Endings'

"Blax, Snake, Home"
Penny: Just watch some TV.......  Aah! Aah! Why is the DVR filled with 'The Good Wife' and 'The View'? I didn't record these. These are for lonely women who talk to themselves. Oh, my God! I'm talking to myself!

 

'Hot in Cleveland'
"That Changes Everything"
Melanie: Babies make me think about Life. Now that I'm all caught up on 'The Good Wife', I could use another challenge.

'Last Man Standing'

"Mike Advises Mandy"
Mandy: Wait, did you see this? All these orders?
Vanessa: Yeah, about 20 minutes ago. I would have come down sooner, but 'The Good Wife' was on.

So far, so good. The plot for the Toobworld version of 'The Good Wife' could be about anything and even feature fictional actors.

SPECIFIC REFERENCES

 

 'Supernatural'
"Defending Your Life"
Sam: Objection!
Osiris: On what grounds?
Sam: Witnesses being called without prior notice.
Dean: Good one.
Sam: I saw it on 'The Good Wife'.

Not really a Zonk - we just know that 'The Good Wife' deals in legal issues.

But now.....?

Here come de Zonk; here come de Zonk.....

SPLAINABLE ZONK!!!



'Hot in Cleveland'
"Magic Diet Candy"
Melanie: It's my dress for the christening. It's the one the Good Wife wore to visit Big in prison.

Okay, so hopes that Toobworld's 'Good Wife' is a legalese reality show are not yet lost. We might have to bend over backwards with the splainin but it just might work.

It still could have been a multi-episode documentary about Alicia Florrick, who would have been the perfect candidate for a reality show because of her husband's scandal which led to his prison time. It's the mention of "Big" that could doom that idea.

"Big" was the nickname for Chris Noth's character in 'Sex And The City'. We never even learned what his real name was until that HBO series made the transition to the Cineverse.

O'Bviously, since Noth plays both men, Governor Peter Florrick does have a resemblance to "Big". They could have been "identical cousins", with the term being a euphemism for the two of them being half-brothers due to an illicit affair by their father, the senior Florrick. (I think "Big" is dead now.)

So how did Melanie know about "Big"? My splainin for now, subject to change, is that she was an avid reader of Carrie's semi-autobiographical columns which must have been syndicated across the country.

Such a splainin would keep 'Sex And The City' Zonk-free whenever it was mentioned in other shows... so long as the reference wasn't too specific.

UNSPLAINABLE ZONK???



'The New Normal'
"Pilot"
Shania: What were your dreams before you and Daddy accidentally had me?
Goldie: Uh, well I wanted to be a lawyer. An independent woman who didn't need a man, and wear these expensive suits, like Julianna Margulies in 'The Good Wife', but without the disgraced husband.

Okay. Hands in the air, I surrender. Toobworld also has a TV show called 'The Good Wife' starring Juliana Margulies and Chris Noth in which she is a lawyer and - thanks to the 'HiC' reference - Noth's character went to jail.

Toobworld Central accepts that lots of the people living on Earth Prime-Time have TV shows about them. At least in this case, there's a very good reason why the Florricks "deserved" such attention.

Aside from the scandal and the prison time, the Toobworld version of 'The Good Wife' could be avoiding all of the other plot lines from the real series. It might just be focused on Alicia's personal life and only some of her professional life. (Granted, that is the bulk of the show.)

So yes, 'The Good Wife' is Zonked, but so far it hasn't been fully unsplainable.... Yet.

BCnU!

ECHOES - IT'S TIME TO GO.....

Tony Fleming: 

Allon Vy! Is that how you say it? 

Simone Carnot:

Allon-sy! 

Tony Fleming:

Allon-sy! 

'The Rogues' - "Take Me In Paris"

Thanks for looking in on our annual "Who's On First" blogAthon, folks.  Drop by every day to see more Toobish goodness!

WISH-CRAFT: PERTWEE PLUS

Eleventh Doctor:

I never forget a face.

The Curator:

 I know you don't.

And in years to come you might find yourself revisiting a few,

but just the old favorites.

 'Doctor Who'

"The Day Of The Doctor"

 

 

That's what I would hope for at some point in the Future - to see Sean Pertwee play a future incarnation of the Doctor, from far in the Future if they so choose.  (But not locked into being a particular incarnation like the Valeyard was.)  And he should play it as an homage to his father, Jon Pertwee the Third Incarnation.

 

BCnU!

 

"DOCTOR WHO" IN BOOKWORLD

"We’re dicing with death on the information superhighway to hell."

A rebellion on another planet. A kidnapping in central London. The head of MI5 assassinated. A hostage siege suddenly and violently ended by the SAS. A computer CD slipped into the Fourth Doctor’s pocket by a dead man...

It’s 1998, and the global information superhighway is about to come on line. OffNet controls everything digita...l from cars to sliding doors, from interactive television to military command and control systems.

The Doctor and Sarah must join forces with an old friend in a race against time: to prevent the breakdown of technological society and foil an unconventional alien takeover bid.
 

'System Shock', written by Justin Richards. Published in June 1995

I know nothing more about this than that back cover description which was shared by a classic 'Doctor Who' page on Facebook.

But doesn't it look like the perfect opportunity for a crossover with 'V'?

BCnU!

CROSSED LINES - PHYLLIS & MISSY

Phyllis:
"You're bananas, you know that?"
'The Mary Tyler Moore Show'
"The Lars Affair"

Missy:
"Well, look at me, I’m bananas."
'Doctor Who'
"Death In Heaven"

 

MUSINGS ON THE CYBER-BRIGADIER

 

I'm sure there are a lot of 'Doctor Who' fanfic writers out there who enjoy writing about Brigadier Sir Alastair Lethbridge Stewart, in all facets of his career and even into retirement.

For my own part, I've notched an appearance by Nicholas Courtney on an episode of 'The Avengers' to be really about Lethbridge Stewart under an alias, and I claimed that one of the street urchins in "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances" was Alastair as a boy and again using a different name.

And now we have a final frontier to explore - the Brigadier as a free-thinking Cyberman roaming the galaxy.

If anybody knows of such stories out there, let me know.

BCnU!

CYBER-ZOMBIES!

'DOCTOR WHO'

"DEATH IN HEAVEN"

Missy's "Master Plan" was to revive all of the world's dead as Cybermen, and then hand control over them to the Doctor. It must have been her mad intent to show that he was just as bad as she was.

Most of those dead would have been zombie Cybermen, their minds and souls long since fled. The ones who would still have their souls attached were those she personally culled at the moment of their deaths. Missy focused on those who had some connection to the Doctor and used her TARDIS to collect them throughout human history.

We only saw her collect a handful of characters, and only those who died this season: CSO Matthew, Gretchen Allison Carlisle, the Half-Face "Man", and Danny Pink. (And we definitely know she garnered the Brigadier when he died in Peru.)

Missy must have been gathering up others who died in episodes from the classic series and from earlier in the reboot years - people like Lynda with a Y, Rita, Harriet Jones, the real Margaret Blaine, Sarah Kingdom, Dr. Edward Waterfield, Tobias Vaughn, and everybody from the lighthouse at Fang Rock.

Missy probably collected the mind/souls of those who (hopefully) died long after their encounters with the Doctor: like Cameca, Victoria Waterfield, Richard Mace, HG Wells, and even his wife Queen Elizabeth I.

We can't rule out that Missy also collected the souls of Rory and Amy Pond Williams into the hive-mind data core when they died in their eighties. (If she did, I have a feeling that they would hace overcome the inhibitors just as the Brigadier and Danny Pink did.)

As this is a blog about the Toobworld Dynamic, (even though we've spent the whole day talking about 'Doctor Who'), we've got to assume that dead characters from other TV shows must have been resurrected as these Cyber-Zombies. And not just from British TV shows but from all over the world.

Let's put aside those characters who might still be alive, even though the actors who played them have passed away. Characters like Archie Bunker, Dr. Richard Kimble, Carol Kessler Bondurant, Tony Soprano, and Mike Brady. There are still plenty of others - most of the cast from 'Lost' to be sure!

Edith Bunker, Marshal Matt Dillon, Gary Shepherd, Lady Sybil Crawley, Bill McNeil, Pierce Hawthorne, Coach Ernie Pantusso, Chuckles the Clown, Danny Solano and Danny Latimer.

It's a safe bet that the skeletal remains of Bret Maverick and Nichols were raised up as Cybermen, but I'd like to think Jim Rockford is still alive.

 

I wish I knew more about TV from other countries so that I might add in characters from their programs......

I think based on that possiblity, we can expect to see "Missy's Cybermen" one day induced into the Television Crossover Hall Of Fame (probably in the Birthday Honors List.)

BCnU!

BENEDICTINE MONK?

In one of the many 'Doctor Who' pages which I follow on Facebook, there was a thread wondering about a possible role for Benedict Cumberbatch in 'Doctor Who'. I suggested he should play the Meddling Monk after so many others thought he should play the Master. But one of the other commenters typed up that the Meddling Monk is the Master. And he based this on the fact that this claim is made in... some computer game.

As most of you know, I am heavily immersed in the Toobworld Dynamic. It's all about the Toob with me, with some movies and some online content added in. But I would not accept online gaming to be incorporated into the TwD.

And it seems like such a foolish idea. You've got two great characters, two great foes of the Doctor, why consolidate them into one character? They would work better as individuals, and possibly as a team up against the Doctor someday on the TV show.

I was heartened to read so many other responses which refuted that claim.

BCnU!

SONGS IN THE KEY OF FREAK



So far on 'American Horror Story Freak Show', we have seen songs performed that were written by Fiona Apple, David Bowie, and Alana Del Ray. All of these songs from the last forty years, but none of them could have been around when Elsa's troupe of freaks made camp in Jupiter, Florida, in 1952.

 

So where did they get the sheet music for those songs from the Future?

I think they were part of a package (There will be more!) delivered by a renegade Time Lord known as the Meddling Monk.





The Monk is better known for trying to disrupt Earth's major historical events - like the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Most of his attempts created divergent timelines which had to be set right by temporal agents like Phineas Bogg.

But as the Tenth Doctor pointed out, History was made up of small moments. And so the Monk launched a series of temporal anomalies in hopes of causing a permanent disruption to the timeline of Earth Prime-Time. And the anachronistic music is an example.

(The delivery of Pepsi to the "Middle Ages" style kingdom of Camarand on the planet Mondas is another.)

BCnU!