CROSSING OVER: "MURDER, SHE WHISPERED"

Angela Lansbury will be making one last appearance as her character from the classic, long-running CBS series 'Murder, She Wrote'. Jessica Fletcher will be seen in a very special episode of 'The Ghost Whisperer' during the upcoming, all-important May Sweeps.
In the episode, Jessica Fletcher is gunned down while at a campaign rally for an old friend, the Mayor of Grandview. Afterwards, her ghost then teams up with Melinda Gordon (played by Jennifer Love Hewitt) in order to solve the mystery as to whodunnit. CBS says it will be a two-hour movie, but will be split into two parts when it's repeated.....

BCnU!
Toby 0B

STRIKE FAUX

Although Tina Fey has said that '30 Rock' will not address the writers' strike within their show, plans are underway for other shows to feature the edge of the seat excitement and derring-do that typified picket lines across the country. Among those shows that will feature the strike are:

'Reno 911'

'Chip 'N' Dale's Rescue Rangers'

'The New Adventues Of Lassie'

'That's My Bush!'

BCnU!
Toby 0B

AND ZOMBIE RICKY SAYS, "WANNNT SPLAINNNNNS"

Grindl Werts is a devoted fan of the late Lucille Ball, and she thinks that two decades without Lucy on the Tube is quite enough, thank you.

"She gave us so much with 'I Love Lucy', 'The Lucy Show', 'Here's Lucy', and 'Life With Lucy'," says Ms. Werts. "She's been gone for nearly twenty years and look at the state of the world - never mind television! - since then!"

So Ms. Werts has decided to take matters into her own hands and bring back Lucy in a new sitcom, and she won't let a minor deterrent like Lucy being dead stand in her way.

"My family has been pioneers in the field of reanimating the dead back in the Balkans since the 1800s," explained Grindl Werts. "And with the help of a little CGI, hopefully it won't be too noticeable that the Queen of TV Comedy is a corpse."

The show is to be called "Lucy Without Life", and CBS has expressed interest in the project. [After all, it appeals to their major demographic.] With any luck, the corpse of Gale Gordon can be retrieved from the medical school to which it was donated, so that Lucy can once more work with her best foil.

BCnU!
Toby 0B

A ROTTEN CABBAGE

Toobworld Central has come into possession of the script for a televersion of the Governor Spitzer sex scandal, so I thought I'd share this scene with you. It's a phone conversation between Eliot Spitzer and the second in command at the New York Daily News. Casting is still going on, but i'm told Clark Johnson is playing the paper's "Number Two" in an unbilled cameo. I guess we're supposed to assume he's Gus Haynes from the recently finished 'The Wire'....

It appears the Daily News' second in command called the Governor in the middle of the night. When he realized where the phone call was heading, Spitzer tried to change the subject so that it would be about his support as a super-delegate for Hillary Clinton's run for the White House but.....

Well, you'll see where it goes.....

SPITZER: What do you want?
DAILY NEWS: We want information... information... information...
SPITZER: You won't get it.
DAILY NEWS: By hook or by crook, we will.
SPITZER: Who are you?
DAILY NEWS: The News' Number Two.
SPITZER: Hil is Number One!
DAILY NEWS: You are Client Number Nine.
SPITZER: I am not a Number! I am a free man!!!!
DAILY NEWS: ::laughter::

BCnU!
Toby 0B

TODAY'S TWD: LOU GRUNTS

From Wikipedia:

Slash fiction is a genre of story that focuses on the depiction of romantic, and sometimes sexual, relationships between two or more male characters, who are not necessarily engaged in relationships in the canon universe. While the term originally was restricted to fan fiction in which one or more male media characters were involved in an explicit adult relationship as a primary plot element, it is currently more generally used to refer to any pairing between male characters. The term is also sometimes applied to fiction focusing on relationships between female characters; however, some fans distinguish femslash as a separate genre.

The name arises from the use of the slash symbol (/) in the description of the primary pairing involved in the story, as compared to the ampersand (&) conventionally used for friendship fiction.

I mention that because of the news this morning that Bonino Bianculli, the creator of the Italian 'Lou Grant' slash fanfic website, was brought before The Hague on international charges of crimes against humanity.
BCnU!
Toby 0B

TODAY'S TWD: WISCONSIN, WE LOVE YOU!

Felicia Forrester must have really enjoyed spending time in Genoa City, Wisconsin, last week, as she'll be returning there on April 8th. If she'd just visit Salem or Springfield, Felicia would be in the running for membership in the TV Crossover Hall of Fame!

SHOWS CITED:
'The Bold & The Beautiful'
'The Young & The Restless'

BCnU!
Toby OB

TODAY'S TWD: HEY, WILLIAM! 5-0!

Today is my brother Bill's 50th birthday.

I'd make fun of that, except for the fact I'm three years older....

He shares his birth date with Maurice LeMarche, the voice actor who's made a name for himself with his Orson Welles impression in "Ed Wood". (However, Vincent D'Onofrio physically embodied Welles.) In the Tooniverse, he has played the Brain (another Wellesian voice) in 'Pinky And The Brain', and several roles in 'Futurama'.

On this date in 1964, there was another Toobworld connection to my brother's birthday: 'Jeopary!' made its debut on NBC.

Happy birthday, Brothermine!

BCnU!
Toby OB

TODAY'S TWD: GOVERN MEN

While working up that Deep Six list of TV governors a few weeks ago (in connection to the Spitzer scandal in NY), I found a few other televersions of governors that sparked my interest for Toobworld connections.

DOUGLAS DUMBRILLE
First up is Douglas Dumbrille, who played Governor William Claiborne in a 1951 production of the 'Hallmark Hall Of Fame' - "The Pirate And The Lawyer". It's a role he also played in the movie universe back in 1938 in the original version of "The Buccaneer".

Claiborne was the territorial governor of Louisiana who had dealings with privateer Jean LaFitte.

MILTON FROME
Milton Frome played the Kansas governor (but left unnamed) in "The Pied Piper Of Dodge City", an episode of 'Bat Masterson'. That episode definitely takes place in June of 1883, as it was about the famous Peace Commission photograph of Masterson, Wyatt Earp, Luke Short and other peace-keepers.

"They call Dodge City the Queen of the Cow Towns.
It would be nice to know the lady wears an honest crown."
Governor
'Bat Masterson'

Frome also played Governor DeWitt in "That Taylor Affair", an episode of 'Riverboat'. But they can't be the same man since 'Riverboat' took place on the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers during the 1840s. Forty years earlier and too far away, but I suppose an argument could be made that they might be related... at least in Toobworld.

(The plot of that episode sounds like a doozy - Holden Grey, captain of the Enterprise, got the "bright" idea to boost fame for the riverboat by kidnapping President Zachary Taylor.)

J. EDWARD McKINLEY
This would be a "Born To Rerun" case with the governors played by J. Edward McKinley. Of the two he played in Televsion, his portrayal of Governor George C. Handley is perhaps better known. That's mostly due to the fervent following for 'The Andy Griffith Show' in which Governor Handley was seen in the episode "The Cannon".

Almost 100 years earlier in the Toobworld timeline, he played the governor in "The Immovable Object", an episode of 'Bronco'. It's a convention in TV for actors to play similar roles in the past and the future. Sure, usually it happens in the same TV series, but Toobworld absorbs them all into one universe.

McKinley also played an Old West governor in the movie "There Was A Crooked Man", but that's a different universe of course.

BCnU!
Toby OB

BELLY UP, JACK!

It was a dark and stormy night in Cardiff, and on a rain-drenched street Captain Jack Harkness could taste the estrogen in the rain.(He pronounced "estrogen" with a long e.) "At least I won't get pregnant," he said. "I'll never do that again."

That happened in the first episode of 'Torchwood' ("Everything Changes").

For the TV series, it was probably a throw-away line; we may never see onscreen how that could have happened. But it may show up someday in a tie-in novel, perhaps even in a future episode. Before the premiere night was over, there were probably fanwanks pounding away at their keyboards to come up with their own fanfic to splain how it came to be that a man got pregnant.

I'm more curious as to what happened afterwards.....

In "Something Borrowed" from the second season, we got to meet an old buddy of Rhys Williams by the name of "Banana Boat". Something of a dork, but then what would you expect from somebody still going around with a nickname like "Banana Boat"? (Kind of like "Boner" Stabone from 'Family Ties', and let's face it, much as we love him, "Beaver" Cleaver.)

When I saw Jonathan Lewis Owen, the actor playing Banana Boat, the first thing I thought was - "They cast this guy in the wrong 'Torchwood' role."

This season we learned that in the 52nd Century, Jack had a younger brother named Grey, whom he thought was lost forever. But then in the second season premiere, his old partner John Hart told him that he had seen Grey. So it's possible that in some future time-line, Grey is still alive.

But we don't know at what age he is/was/will be when John saw him.

Take a look at this picture of Jonathan Lewis Owen, the guy who played Banana Boat, compared to John Barrowman who plays Captain Jack Harkness.

Given the variables of the genetic mix 'n' match, don't you think it's possible that he could have played the adult version of Grey, Jack's brother? Or am I the only one who sees the similarities?

Of course, as it was established in "Kiss, Kiss, Bang Bang" that John Hart saw Grey, we're O'Bviously destined to revisit that storyline. So there's no use in speculating what might have been as far as that casting goes. Like I said, we don't even know what age Grey will be when Jack is reunited with him.

But there's still another route we can take, and Jonathan Lewis Owen's portrayal of Banana Boat doesn't have to negate it... just yet.

Here's the theory: Banana Boat is descended from Captain Jack. And it could be as close a genetic link as Jack being his Mommy!

Again, that would all depend on if the storyline about Jack'spregnancy is ever revealed. For all we know, what with this show's penchant for downer endings, Jack's pregnancy never came to term. And it also depends on when in Jack's personal timeline this pregnancy happened. If it happened while he was serving as a Time Agent, it could be at any point in the Toobworld timeline, and anywhere in the galaxy.

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that he got knocked up during those missing two years of his memory, and he still doesn't know how it happened; just that he gave birth once he remembered who he was.

Otherwise, it could have happened at any point after his transformation into The Man Who Couldn't Die, once he returned to Earth in 1869. (? - Check this date.) And if so, the farther back the better for making a claim that Jack was the founder of Banana Boat's family tree. Without either one of them realizing it, Banana Boat may have met his "great-grandmother" Jack; and neither of them would ever have to realize it.

And even if it turns out that Jack's pregnancy was a dead end, and he lost the baby, he still did a lot of what the Doctor would have called "dancing" over the next hundred years and more. Eventually he could have fathered instead of mothered someone in Banana Boat's family tree.

One last point: it looks like Jack Harkness will sometime in the future transform into the Face of Boe. And in 'The Long Game', it was reported that the Face of Boe was pregnant.

So much for Jack's boast that he would never get pregnant again.

BCnu!

Toby OB

TODAY'S TWD: GENERAL REFERENCES

My fellow Iddiot Brian-El [aka Uncle Brian] sent me this snippet from Wikipedia yesterday:

Easter eggs found in some Unix operating systems caused them to respond to the command "make love" with "not war?" and "why" with "why not" (a reference to _The Prisoner_ in Berkeley Unix 1977). The TOPS-10 operatingsystem (for the DEC PDP-10 computer) had the "make love" hack before 1971; it included a short, thoughtful pause before the response. This same behavior occurred on the RSTS/E operating system where the command "make" was used to invoke the TECO editor, and TECO would also provide this response.

The episode from 'The Prisoner' which was referenced was "The General", in which a computer was able to imprint whatever information it wanted onto the cortex of the human brain. It began as a learning tool, but it could be used to control the minds of an entire population or to turn the people into an army of zombies.

BCnU!

Toby OB