LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND "ROSEMARY & THYME"

During the slow overnight hours at work, I watch an episode, sometimes two, of a TV series - much easier than a movie when it comes to having to stop and start due to work concerns.

My Netflix queue is stuffed to the gills with full seasons of shows that I think will work best there, where I'm not tempted to get on the computer and surf away. Coming up: I'm still working on completing the run of 'Poirot', but I've also got lined up 'Rome', 'Foyle's War', 'The Adventures Of Robin Hood' (Richard Greene), 'Crime Traveller', 'Damages', the Gillian Anderson adaptation of 'Bleak House', and 'Here Come The Brides'.

I've also got the second and third season of 'Rosemary & Thyme' in there. It's a light-hearted murder mystery with a gardening theme, but most important for me - it stars the lovely Felicity Kendal as Rosemary Boxer.

In the first season episode "A Simple Plot", Rosemary's partner, Laura Thyme (Pam Ferris), visits one of the suspects at her home. And the number of her address gives her a numerical connection to 'Lost':
4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42......

BCnU!
Toby OB

TODAY'S TWD: THE WECKQUAESGEEK SQUAD

When Johan Van Der Zee, a young Dutch soldier in the Manhattan territory of the New Netherland colony, intervened to save the life of a Native American woman about to be skewered by one of his fellow soldiers, it nearly cost Van Der Zee his own life. It turned out he had saved the life of a shamaness, and with the help of other women in her tribe, she brought Van Der Zee back to life. She also blessed/cursed him with immortality, but with a hitch: he would live forever, until he met the one who would become part of his own heart. And then he would become mortal again.

That shamaness must have been part of the Weckquaesgeek tribe, a subset of the Wappani. Here's what I cobbled together from various Wikipedia entries:

The Wappani, or the Wappinger, were a group of Native Americans whose territory in the 17th century spread along the eastern side of the Hudson River from Dutchess County south to Manhattan and east into parts of Connecticut. Although the European understanding of "tribes" did not generally apply for most of the Wappingers' history, they were most closely related to the Lenape and Mahicans, all speaking the Algonquian languages.

Manhattan was home to the Weckquaesgeek, who were not pleased by the May 24, 1626 barter exchange between Peter Minuit and the Canarsee Native Americans of Brooklyn for the possession of Manhattan. By 1643, the two groups went to war.

Kieft's War, also known as the Wappinger War, was a conflict between Dutch settlers and Native Americans in the colony of New Netherland from 1643 to 1645. The war is named for Willem Kieft, who was the Director-General of New Netherland at the time.

During Kieft's War in 1643, the various Wappinger groups united against the Dutch, attacking settlements throughout New Netherland. The most prominent group in that war were the Weckquaesgeek, more than 1500 of whom were killed in the two years of the war. (There were little more than 500 Dutch settlers in New Netherland at the time.)

After the war, the confederation broke apart and the remaining Wappingers left their native lands for the protection of neighboring tribes.

That skirmish in 1642, which set Johan Van Der Zee on the path to becoming John Amsterdam (as seen in 'New Amsterdam'), must have been a prelude to the major conflict to come.

BCnU!
Toby OB

BORN TO RERUN: THE CHEKOV LIST

New York Newsday's TV blog, "TV Zone", has a great feature everday - Boomer TV Noontime Nostalgia. Each day they present a link to a video clip from classic Television.

It's a trap! Everybody knows you can't go into places like YouTube without spending hours!

Yesterday they had a link to a scene from 'Mr. Novak', which was a 1960s show about an idealistic high school teacher starring James Franciscus and Dean Jagger. In the episode "Boy Without A Country", Walter Koenig guest-starred as a student who grew up in Soviet Russia.

It's not hard to make a case for this to be a Theory of Relateeveety!

Alexei Dubov may have decided to move back to Russia. If not, then probably one of his children did so, disillusioned with America. Eventually the Dubov family tree branched out to produce Pavel Chekov. Chekov would become a distinguished officer of Starfleet in the 23rd Century.

If any of Dubov's family stayed behind in the United States, eventually their family tree produced Alfred Bester, a dark master of Psi Corps.

SHOWS CITED:
'Mr. Novak'
'Star Trek'
'Babylon 5'

Look to the left for Newsday's TV Zone in my bloglist.

BCnU!
Toby OB

NO TOOB GOOBERS TODAY

I thought I had a nice little commercial crossover with the latest "Life Takes Visa" check-card blipvert, but alas! It was not to be.

As the hordes of you humans stormed into the movie theatres at the local googaplex, somebody dropped something they bought at the concession stand. I thought it was a bag of Goobers - the lettering and package design were similar.

But I've just checked out the video at YouTube and it's just a generic bag of chocolate.

Too bad. Might have been beneficial for both parties had it been Goobers. Remember the boost Raisinettes got after their mention in "Blazing Saddles"?

BCnU!
Toby OB

TODAY'S TWD: CALICO JIM

"A crimp, Gene, is a man who delivers live bodies to ships who need crews."
Jarrod Barkley
'The Big Valley'

I enjoyed 'Kidnapped' when it aired on NBC two years ago, and was glad I could follow the story to its close via Netflix. Jeremy Sisto as Knapp was a great character, and I think he and his partner Turner (Carmen Ejogo) might have worked better in self-contained episodes. Having them teamed up with FBI Agent Latimer King each week wouldn't have been as far-fetched as seeing the Jeffersonian Institute's team of forensic scientists working FBI Agent Seely Booth each week.

But at least they were able to have a self-contained season and brought the Cain Kidnapping to a conclusion.

At any rate, during the run of the series, Agent King told the story of San Francisco's Calico Jim, a Chileno crimp whose customers at his Battery Point bar kept disappearing - kidnapped by Calico Jim's press gang to fill out the rosters of ships. The police went undercover in order to find out how it was happening and each of them were shanghaied into service.

I think the creative team for the show meant for us to think that this was the fate that lay in store for Leopold Cain. However, as it turned out, I think the story was really clueing us in about policemen who aren't always who they appear to be....

As Jim Dale would say, the facts are these:

"Some time during the eighteen-nineties Calico Jim is said to have shanghaied six policemen who were sent, one after another, to arrest him. Soon afterwards he left San Francisco. When his victims returned from their enforced cruise, they pooled their resources, chose one of their number by lot, and sent him to South America to search for the crimp. After several months the policeman came upon Calico Jim in the streets of Callao, Chile, and shot him six times, once for each shanghaied officer."
[From a San Francisco History page]

Maybe I shouldn't have said those were "facts". The story of Calico Jim is well-known in San Francisco legend, but there is no record of six policemen being shanghaied and then making that pact.

No one has brought Calico Jim to life in Toobworld. Paul Fix did play the crimp in the movie universe in "The Flame Of Barbary Coast", however. (Probably the only chance to see John Wayne, Joseph Schildkraut, and William Frawley in the same picture!) About the closest we come to seeing press gangs in action in Toobworld would be in episodes of 'Maverick' ("The Cats Of Paradise") and 'The Big Valley' ("Barbary Red").

But because Agent King told the story of Calico Jim as historical fact, we know he existed in the TV Universe as well.

BCnU!
Toby OB

NEWS VIEWS: REAL OR NO REAL

The main Toobworld, Earth Prime-Time, is a reflection of the real world, the Trueniverse, in all the major facets. Same President of the United States, same Pope, same monarch of the British Empire. If they're different - as happened with shows like '24', 'The West Wing', 'Prison Break', 'The Dead Zone', etc. which had different Presidents from Clinton and Bush - off they go to an alternate dimension. But otherwise, Toobworld can absorb the changes from the reality of our world without being too radically different.

And the people watching at home have no problem with these differences from the life they know back in the real world... for the most part. They know there are no chains of Buy More and Work Bench stores, no Oceanic Airways, no WJM-TV. Their maps won't have Fernwood, Hooterville, Hollyoaks, Dante's Cove, Frostbite Falls, or the Isle of Mypos. They know that androids don't really walk among us; we haven't been subjected to countless alien invasions; Valencia, California, didn't go up in a ball of nuclear fire; and there is no secret lunar colony. (Then again, if it's secret, maybe there is one up there!)
But every so often people forget they're watching a TV show. In Great Britain, complaints have been made against 'The Bill' for making up the name of a drug which could alleviate the symptoms of multiple sclerosis. Apparently, the MS Society in Great Britain has been getting calls from people who saw Wednesday's episode, during which an MS patient was told about Plavitron. Plavitron doesn't exist and at present there is no drug that can make that claim.

The MS Society called 'The Bill' "grossly irresponsible" for creating this fictional drug because it raised the hopes of those with the disease. But ITV claims that it "told the story responsibly and sensitively".

A spokeswoman for ITV countered that "We researched both the condition and possible treatments - existing and proposed - before and during the writing process. It was certainly not our intention to offend or mislead."

She added that fictional places, names and products were featured in storylines "often for legal reasons".

According to Chris Bentley, the spokesman for the MS Society, "There are few effective treatments for MS and any mention of a new drug generates a lot of hope and excitement in people living with and affected by the condition. People with MS have a tough enough time as it is without being misled over treatments."

So in this case, I guess I can understand why people would have confused the fiction with the reality. If they're stricken with the disease, or they have loved ones afflicted with MS, they'll reach out for any possible hope.

What the writers of 'The Bill' probably should have done would have been to talk about a possible treatment being researched, as I'm sure there must be, rather than state that the drug already exists. Or maybe they should have claimed that the drug puts alien larvae into your bloodstream, a la the "Reset" episode of 'Torchwood'; that would have kept people from calling. Because technically, that one bit o' trivia about Plavitron now makes this soap opera with the trappings of a cop show (Thanks, Rob!) a science fiction show just as much as 'Torchwood' is.

And I'll bet nobody called in looking to get hold of that miracle cure.....

BCnU!

Toby OB

BORDERLANDS

Here's what Lee Goldberg, author of the 'Monk' and 'Diagnosis Murder' tie-in novels, and who produced 'Diagnosis Murder', had to say about the season finale for 'Monk':

I thought the two-part MONK season finale was great, but it points out one of the pitfalls of writing a tie-in series while the TV show that it is based on is still in production. It means that there are going to be some continuity miss-matches between the TV series and the books...and there's nothing that can be done about it.

Of course, in Toobworld we don't count the tie-in novels as being part of the overall TV Universe because of such discrepancies. (And believe me, I'd REALLY love to throw "Mr. Monk And The Two Assistants" into the mix!) When you think of the hundreds of 'Star Trek' franchise tie-in novels and of those for 'Doctor Who', it would be impossible to keep the "Zonks" from ruining the whole concept of a unified field theory when it comes to the TV Universe.

And you can't pick and choose what books to include into the TV Universe; it's not only unfair, but the process would drive you mad. Mad, I say! (Otherwise I'd gladly accept Barbara Hambly's 'Star Trek'/'Here Comes The Brides' novel "Ishmael" into Toobworld, as I've often stated here in the past.) And the same would go for the audio plays for 'Doctor Who' produced by Big Finish.

Straight-to-DVD productions (like 'Babylon 5: The Lost Tales'), online video (the "Missing Pieces" of 'Lost') and certain movies can be absorbed into the TV Universe. (This includes the 'Star Trek' franchise, 'Maverick' - with splainin, and the 1966 'Batman'. The series of 'Batman' movies launched in 1989 at best belong in the 'Birds Of Prey' alternate TV dimension.) Being visual media, they're easier to deal with anyway; most times they are striving to remain constant with what was already established in Toobworld.

I realize this is a retread of old "Inner Toob" material, but new visitors arrive here every day. Observations made by others like Goldberg give me the opportunity to clue them in on what exactly all of this craziness is. So that's why I trot out the rules by which I keep the sandbox clear of contamination.

Otherwise it gets treated like kitty litter and becomes too big of a mess.

BCnU!
Toby OB

MILES AND MILES

This is just a Toobworld Theory of Relateeveety, which means I can't prove it. But you can't disprove it either....

CLAUDIA SUTTON & VIVECA SCOTT

Claudia Sutton and Viveca Scott are identical cousins. (If they're both still alive, they're now close to 80 years old.) Claudia worked as a partner with Charles Lee Horne in running a top modeling agency, while Viveca had her own cosmetics firm as well as a "health farm". After Horne's murder, Claudia took over the agency as her own.

I would imagine that both Viveca and Claudia threw work towards each other. In fact, I think it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, as Mush Rat likes to say, that Claudia was a silent partner in that health farm. She believed in a strict regimen of diet and exercise, but secretly she cheated - with her concoction of carrot juice, psyllium, wheat germ, saurkraut, and dehydrated seaweed, Claudia would add a dollop of vodka to give it that extra kick.

Besides looking nearly identical* and being leaders in their similar fields of endeavor, Claudia and Viveca had something else in common: both of them were suspected of murder.

The only difference is, the "Lovely But Lethal" Viveca Scott was guilty. She committed two murders - that of a chemist who worked for her but who was stealing trade secrets from BeautyMark, and of a rival's assistant who tried to blackmail her. However, Lt. Columbo only arrested her for the murder of the chemist, for which he had her dead to rights. (She had been exposed to the poison ivy at the chemist's home.) I don't think he'd be able to prove conclusively that she killed the assistant without her admission of guilt (in order to broker a plea deal).

Claudia Sutton had everything to gain from the death of senior partner Charles Lee Horne, but in the end it turned out to be a low-life masseur who was responsible for killing the multi-millionaire. He also murdered his own "ex-wife" with the hope to pin it on Detective Tim Tillson.

After Captain Amos Burke solved the mystery of "Who Killed The Horne Of Plenty", he was free of ethical issues in dating Claudia Sutton. They were together probably only a few weeks before Burke moved on to his next conquest. Meanwhile, Claudia's cousin Viveca Scott would have been tried and convicted for manslaughter, probably only serving twenty years for the crime. (However, my compadres at The Ultimate Lt. Columbo Site believe she was found not guilty due to insufficient evidence.)

The actress who portrayed them both, Vera Miles, is still alive and so there's no reason not to think that both Claudia and Viveca are still alive as well. But who knows? Maybe the rigors of prison life took their toll on Viveca Scott......

SHOWS CITED:
'Columbo' - "Lovely But Lethal"
'Burke's Law' - "Who Killed The Horne Of Plenty?"

BCnU!
Toby OB

*Viveca had red hair and Claudia was blonde. Viveca's beauty mark was a fake.

TODAY'S TWD: COLTRANE AND AMSTERDAM

The only person who knows John Amsterdam's secret about his immortality is Omar, who runs a bar in NYC. When John offered to make him a desk which would pay off his gambling debts, Omar remembered back when Thelonious Monk bought one of John's desks. It was after a midnight show at the Five Spot in 1957, when John Coltrane sat in.

Here's what Wikipedia had to say about those shows:

During the latter part of 1957, Coltrane worked with Thelonious Monk at New York City's Five Spot Cafe during a legendary six-month gig. Unfortunately, this association was not extensively documented, and the best-recorded evidence demonstrating the compatibility of Coltrane with Monk, a fund-raising concert at Carnegie Hall on November 29, 1957, was only discovered and issued in 2005. It was accidentally found in an unmarked box at the Library of Congress and issued by Blue Note, along with another of their recordings, The Complete 1957 Riverside Recordings. His extensive recordings as a sideman and as a leader for Prestige have a mixed reputation.

John Coltrane died on July 17, 1967, and he died hating John Amsterdam. In that first episode of 'New Amsterdam', we didn't learn why this was. But it may come up again, as the show will be revisiting John Amsterdam's memories of his 400 year past.

It could have been something recent, in the days leading up to his death, that really bleeped off Coltrane towards Amsterdam. One possibility could be that under whatever name Amsterdam was using back then, he could have been working as a cop in Newark, New Jersey. And maybe Coltrane was angry about the actions he took as a police officer during the Newark race riots which began on July 13.

Or maybe "Train" just didn't like the fact that John never made a desk for him.....

But that's all just speculation. We'll have to see if the reason is ever addressed on the show.

BCnU!
Toby OB

THE HAT SQUAD: LEONARD ROSENMAN

Leonard Rosenman was a film composer who won two Oscars for adapted score - the first for "Barry Lyndon" (a film I always loved), and the other for "Bound For Glory", which used the music of Woody Guthrie.

He also composed the scores for Bakshi's version of "The Lord Of The Rings", "Rebel Without A Cause", "East Of Eden", and "Beneath The Planet Of The Apes".

I have to figure his score for "September 30, 1955" must have been a very personal composition, as the movie was about the effect James Dean's death had on several young people that day. Dean was a piano student of Rosenman, and he introduced the composer to the director Elia Kazan.

Mr. Rosenman has died of a heart attack at the age of 83.

Besides his film work, Mr. Rosenman composed extensively for television, which is why his passing is noted here. He won two Emmy awards: for “Sybil” (1976; with Alan and Marilyn Bergman, and for “Friendly Fire” (1979). He wrote music for “The Defenders,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and 151 episodes of “Combat!”, among many other shows.

Here is a list of the TV movies and the TV series for which Leonard Rosenman composed the score:

TV RELATED MOVIES
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

TV MOVIES

The Face on the Milk Carton (1995)

Keeper of the City (1991)

Aftermath: A Test of Love (1991)
Where Pigeons Go to Die (1990)

Promised a Miracle (1988)

First Steps (1985)

Heartsounds (1984)

The Return of Marcus Welby, M.D. (1984)

Miss Lonelyhearts (1983)

The Wall (1982)

Murder in Texas (1981)

City in Fear (1980)
Nero Wolfe (1979)

Friendly Fire (1979)

The Other Side of Hell (1978)
Mary White (1977)

The Possessed (1977)

Sybil (1976)
Kingston (1976)
Lanigan's Rabbi (1976)

Sky Heist (1975)

The First 36 Hours of Dr. Durant (1975)

Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders (1974)
Nakia (1974)

The Phantom of Hollywood (1974)

The Cat Creature (1973)

The Bravos (1972)

In Broad Daylight (1971)

Banyon (1971)

Vanished (1971)
This Savage Land (1969)

Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969)

Any Second Now (1969)
Shadow Over Elveron (1968)

Alexander the Great (1968)

Stranger on the Run (1967)

TV SERIES
"Amazing Stories"

"Celebrity" (1984) (mini)

"Gibbsville" (1976)

"Holmes and Yo-Yo" (1976)
"The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau"
"Primus" (1971)

"Marcus Welby, M.D." (1969)

"National Geographic Specials"

"Garrison's Gorillas" (1967)

"Combat!"

"The Alfred Hitchcock Hour"

"The Defenders" (1961)

"Law of the Plainsman"

BCnU....
Toby OB