IN-JOKE OUT

Sometimes a TV in-joke comes from the fact that the expected in-joke never materializes.

In that aforementioned episode of 'Entourage', "First Class Jerk", agent Josh Weinstein was trying to convince Vince to do a TV series produced by real world producer Frank Darabont.

"It's not TV," says Josh, to which Vince asks, "What is it then?"

The audience, knowing this show airs on HBO, is expecting the advertising tagline, "It's HBO."

But instead, Josh says, "It's TV with Frank Darabont."

It's a gotcha!

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TURTLE WHACKS

Considering 'Entourage' is a show about the inside world of show business, TV Zonks should be expected in every episode. With the episode "First Class Jerk", there were two that cancel each other out when it comes to their ability to ruin the integrity of the TV Universe. (Actually there was a third Zonk as well, but for the life of - well, somebody other than me! - I can't remember it. TV.com was no help, and I'm too lazy to do HBO On Demand to watch the episode again.)

The first one is easy enough to dismiss. Turtle was described as a character from 'South Park'. Even though both shows are on TV, they don't share the same TV Universe. 'Entourage' is in Earth Prime-Time while 'South Park' is part of Earth Prime-Time/Toon, more commonly known as the Tooniverse. For the most part, residents of the main Toobworld only know animated shows as cartoons; they have no concept of them being "real" in their own TV dimension, even though several of them have crossed over into the main Toobworld. (Bart and Lisa Simpson, Brian and Stewie Griffin, Superman, Daffy Duck, Beavis and Butthead, among others.)

So there's no Zonk in Turtle being described as a cartoon character from 'South Park'.

However, it's apparently impossible to dance around the fact that 'Entourage' provided a 'Sopranos' Zonk because of the appearance of Jamie Lynn Sigler in that episode. It was bad enough that her former show was mentioned and that she had been a part of the cast, but at least that could have been handled. 'The Sopranos' is the type of title that could have a different meaning in Toobworld, so long as specifics about the show are never mentioned. For instance, it could have been a reality show about singers!

But at one point, Jamie Lynn was actually referred to as her character on 'The Sopranos', as "Meadow Soprano". No escaping that!

Unless.....

Here in the Trueniverse, there have been TV movies about real-life gangsters, mobsters, er, alleged criminals. Perhaps a TV movie was recently filmed in the last year (since 'The Sopranos' went off the air) which detailed the life of one of that crime family's members.

My guess would be Christopher Moltisanti. After his death, his affiliations with organized crime may have come out, and perhaps he's been linked to the murder of the screenwriter played by Tim Daly. And as he was beginning to make a name for himself in Hollywood as a low-budget movie producer, that would certainly have been a hook for the subject of a TV movie. And the televersion of Jamie Lynn Sigler, since she bears such an uncanny resemblance to Meadow Soprano, was cast in that role.

For the time being, I'm going to stick with that splainin, which means that particular Zonk now sleeps with the fishes.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TVXOHOF, 11/2008: W

With the November induction into the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame, it's been the tradition to celebrate the portrayal of a politician, usually a President, or some other newsmaker or even a newscaster. In the past the TVXOHOF has seen such luminaries as Walter Cronkite, JFK and Jackie Kennedy, John Kennedy Jr., Sarek, Murphy Brown, George Washington and Gerald and Betty Ford joining the Hall.

This year is no different. And this being an election year with a change in regime guaranteed since neither candidate is an incumbent, Toobworld Central is marking the occasion by inducting the outgoing POTUS, George W. Bush.

Actually, "marking the occasion" is too tepid; we're CELEBRATING his departure!

Let's leave it at that.

So here are W's qualifications for induction into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame:

In Earth Prime-Time:

'DC 9/11: Time Of Crisis'

'JAG'

'NCIS'

'Whoopi'

'12 Miles Of Bad Road' (provisional)

"Recount"

In Earth Prime-Time Doof:

'That's My Bush!'

In Skitlandia:

'Chappelle's Show'

'Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson'

'MadTV'

'Saturday Night Live'

'Frank TV'

'Rove Live'

'Tonight with Jay Leno'

'Late Night with Conan O'Brien'

In the Tooniverse:

'Family Guy'

'American Dad!'

'SuperNews!'

'Li'l Bush'

among others.....

I came into this thinking that Timothy Bush might be the official portrayer of George W. Bush in the Hall, but it looks like Steve Bridges (second row, middle) will be getting that honor because he played the Commander-in-Chief on three of the shows from the main Toobworld.

That's my strategery, and I'm sticking to it.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TODAY'S TWD: HINDU KUSH

Here's the TV.com episode summary for "Kush", the latest episode of 'Sanctuary':

While returning from a trip in Himalaya meant to capture an abnormal, Dr. Magnus and Will's plane crashes in a remote mountain range. But it soon appears that struggling to stay alive and wait for rescue is not the only thing they need to worry about, as the surviving passengers fall one by one to an unknown assailant...

From the show's official site:

Episode #105: "Kush"

Written By: Damian Kindler

Directed By: Martin Wood

Returning with an abnormal captured in the Himalayas, Magnus (AMANDA TAPPING) and Will (ROBIN DUNNE) are stranded from civilization and aid after their plane goes down in a desolate mountain range. While anxiously waiting for a rescue team, the surviving passengers begin to fall victim to vicious and deadly attacks throughout the night. It becomes chillingly apparent that surviving the cold is the least of their worries and no one, not even Magnus and Will, is above suspicion.

And here are some excerpts from the Wikipedia entry about the Hindu Kush mountain range:

The Hindu Kush is a mountain range located between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The name Hindu Kush derives from the Arabic word meaning "Mountains of India." It is the westernmost extension of the Pamir Mountains, the Karakoram Range, and is a sub-range of the Himalayas. It is also calculated to be the geographic center of population of the world.

The name Hindu Kush is usually applied to the whole of the range separating the basins of the Kabul, and Helmand rivers from that of the Amu Darya (or ancient Oxus), or more specifically, to that part of the range to the northwest of Kabul.

In some of the Iranian languages that are still spoken in the region many peaks, mountains, and related places in the region have "Kosh" or "Kush" in their names. In the Persian language of the Sassanian period, Hindu referred to the inhabitants of the area around and beyond the Indus River, or Hind - the people who were followers of Hinduism. The name is also said to be a corruption of Hindu Koh, from the (modern) Persian word Kuh, meaning mountain. James Rennell, writing in 1793, referred to the range as the "Hindoo-Kho or Hindoo-Kush".

The mountains of the Hindu Kush system diminish in height as they stretch westward: toward the middle, near Kabul, they extend from 4,500 to 6,000 meters; in the west, they attain heights of 3,500 to 4,000 meters. The average altitude of the Hindu Kush is 4,500 meters. The Hindu Kush system stretches about 966 kilometres laterally, and its median north-south measurement is about 240 kilometres. Only about 600 kilometres of the Hindu Kush system is called the Hindu Kush mountains. The rest of the system consists of numerous smaller mountain ranges.

The Eastern Hindu Kush range, also known as the High Hindu Kush range, is mostly located in northern Pakistan and the Nuristan and Badakhshan provinces of Afghanistan. The Chitral District of Pakistan is home to Tirich Mir, Noshaq, and Istoro Nal, the highest peaks in the Hindu Kush. The range also extends into Ghizar, Yasin Valley, and Ishkoman in Pakistan's Northern Areas.

BCnU!

Toby O'B

ON THE DOLE

Even before it first aired, 'The Mentalist' on CBS was being compared to 'Psych' from the USA Network. Both shows were about men who falsely claimed to be psychic and who were now working with the police in California. But that would be like saying 'Columbo' was like 'The Shield' since both were about detectives working in the Los Angeles area.

With the latest episode of 'The Mentalist', the producers decided to have a little fun with this comparison. Near the end, a key clue was provided through a little bit of hypnotic prodding by Patrick Jane, the so-called psychic - the killer had a smell of pineapple.
When Teresa Lisbon, Jane's superior officer from the CBI heard that, she realized that the sheriff's deputy who was accompanying her was the killer - he had a pineapple-shaped air freshener hanging from his truck's rear view mirror.

The in-joke is that pineapple serves as the "Hitchcock" in 'Psych'. Every episode either shows a pineapple in some form - as a lamp shape, an Hawaiian shirt design, or as a pizza topping, for example - or the word is used in some way.
This use in 'The Mentatlist' doesn't serve as a link, just to be clear; it's just a fun way for the producers to tip their hat to Shawn Spencer and company.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

#3200: A DOUBLE LIFE ON MARS

"Perhaps he is operating in an alternate reality...."
TV Scientist
'Life On Mars' (US)

Okay, it's finally time to render my decision about the American version of 'Life On Mars', now that I've caught up on the last two episodes (due to my trip to Colorado and this week's all-night bit torrent party down in the Village).
Just as it happened in the UK version of 'Life On Mars', NYPD detective Sam Tyler was struck down by a car and found himself back in 1973 at his same precinct.

Even though TV series remakes usually must be relegated to the alternate TV dimension for such series, it's the opinion of Toobworld Central that both versions of the show - the UK original with John Simm and Philip Glenister and the ABC freshman series which stars Jason O'Meara and Harvey Keitel - can remain in Earth Prime-Time. And we have the sequel to the original series to thank for that.

In 'Ashes To Ashes', police psychologist/profiler DCI Alex Drake read the full report of Sam Tyler's account of his life in 1973 Manchester which turned out to be a coma dream. When she found herself in a similar situation due to a bullet to the head, Alex drew upon that report to recreate Sam's "artificial constructs" of Ray, Chris, and the Gene Genie himself.
It's going to be the conceit of Toobworld Central that somebody else in Scotland Yard got hold of that account by Sam Tyler; somebody who knew a Manhattan police detective by the same name. Thinking his American friend might get a kick out of it, he (or she) downloaded almost the entire file and emailed it to the Sam Tyler of the NYPD. (He probably figured it was an amazing coincidence that the Sam he knew in America also had a girl-friend of color named Maya.)

I say "almost the entire file" because an important segment of it must have been left behind - sketches by DCI Sam Tyler which illustrated his mind's experiences.

Although we never saw him draw anything, only record his impressions to be later transcribed, at some point Sam must have had the police sketch artist draw up detailed renderings of what Gene Hunt and the others looked like in his dream-state. How else to explain that Alex Drake saw them exactly the same way? (A purer TV experience would have had other actors now playing the roles, fitting her personal vision of what the characters looked like.)

But Sam didn't get those details supplied by the sketches. So when he found himself in his own version of that coma-world at the 125th Precinct of 1973, his mind had to create his own versions of Gene, Ray, Annie, and Chris. In fact, in the case of Annie, his mind even gave her a new last name; changed from Cartwright to Norris. (Perhaps deep down the sub-conscious of Manhattan Sam realized that Manchester Sam had a special relationship with Annie Cartwright and didn't want to intrude on it.)

(The Manhattan Sam probably didn't have access to the tapes made by the Manchester Sam, either. If he had, his dream-version of Gene Hunt would have done a better job with my favorite line from the entire series - "You're surrounded by armed bastards." As delivered by Glenister, it was so full of bluster that I awarded it the Toobit for best catch-phrase. Keitel tossed it off as a throw-away; tired, resigned, and then the network cut right to the commercial, perhaps knowing the line was a wasted effort.)

Of course, this is all theory, but since it would have happened before the American version premiered, we don't have to really worry about it ever being contradicted.
Although most of the details of his new "life" are drawn from the account written up by the other Sam Tyler, the same report read by DCI Alex Drake in 'Ashes To Ashes', other details come from Sam's personal experiences.

One of these would be the name given to Nick Profaci.

As played by Lenny Venito, Profaci was a thug working for Casso in the 1973 world. But Sam dredged up a name for him from his past association with Detective Tony Profaci who worked down at the 2-7 until he was indicted for murder. (The character, played by John Fiore, made about fifty appearances on 'Law & Order' and was finally arrested in the TV movie "Exiled".)
The American Sam Tyler is rehashing most of the case details as experienced by the British Sam, but filtered through the fact that he just can't relate to certain aspects of British life. So instead of investigating the death of a soccer fan due to hooliganism, he's found himself back in 1973 looking into the death of a Vietnam Vet who was a closeted gay man. But the other details of the original case - like his bonding with the victim's son and even bumping into his younger self as his father took Sam-as-boy to a sporting event - remained the same.

The last nub to this premise is that there had been an earlier pilot episode filmed by David E. Kelley and distributed on the Internet. In this version, Sam Tyler - still played by O'Meara - was a cop in Los Angeles; his dream-world partners included Colm Meaney as Gene Hunt. Meaney's slight resemblance to Glenister would make me think that he did have access to the alleged sketches. However, there was no Ray Carling, but instead an older, comic-relief cop (as played by Lenny Clarke).

Even though this pilot was created before the one that eventually aired, the number of episodes already broadcast give the second version of 'Life On Mars' preeminence in Toobworld. So this would be one of those cases, like "The Strange World Of Horace Ford", where the original version is the one exiled, not the remake.

And so it goes.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TRAILER PERK

I have no qualms against product placement, so long as it's done with wit, style, and it plays under the radar for the most part. The biggest transgressor this season has been the (ab)use of Degree anti-perspirant in 'Eureka'. Its first appearance was cute, as it seemed to acknowledge that product placement was fast becoming "in yo' face" in TV shows. But then week after week, its intrusion became more noticeable, to the point that it finally became an actual plot point, the deus ex machina that saved the day in fact!

But recently there were two examples, both for upcoming movies, whose placement was much more subtle and therefore more effective, since they didn't turn away the potential audience.

On 'Entourage', the trailer for "Max Payne" was playing in the background on the monitor in Ari Gold's office. This also served as an in-joke since "Max Payne" stars Mark Wahlberg, who is the executive producer of 'Entourage'.

The other example was also an in-joke and perhaps even more subtle in its placement. On 'Mad Men' executive secretary Joan Holloway was at home with her fiance Greg and they were watching "The Day The Earth Stood Still". A new version of that sci-fi classic will be out soon, starring Keanu Reeves... and co-starring Jon Hamm, who plays the lead role in 'Mad Men', Don Draper.

Klaatu Nikto BCnU!
Toby O'B

TODAY'S TWD: THE PEACE CORPS

November 1, 1960 - While campaigning for President of the United States, John F. Kennedy announces his idea of the Peace Corps.

Here's the scoop from Wikipedia:

The Peace Corps is an independent United States federal agency. The Peace Corps was established by Executive Order 10924 on March 1, 1961, and authorized by Congress on September 22, 1961, with passage of the Peace Corps Act (Public Law 87-293). The Peace Corps Act declares the purpose of the Peace Corps to be:

“to promote world peace and friendship through a Peace Corps, which shall make available to interested countries and areas men and women of the United States qualified for service abroad and willing to serve, under conditions of hardship if necessary, to help the peoples of such countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained manpower.”

Since 1960, more than 190,000 people have served as Peace Corps volunteers in 139 countries.

There have been a few in Toobworld as well, not that all of them made it.......
As Thanksgiving approached in 1963, Elizabeth Walton of Walton's Mountain, Virginia, was inspired by President John F. Kennedy to join the Peace Corps. ("The Waltons: Thanksgiving Reunion")

The following year, Patty Lane also considered joining the Peace Corps. She lied about her age on the application and was accepted to work in Africa. ('The Patty Duke Show')

After marrying Dr. Bruce Gaines in 1986, Edna Garrett turned over the management of her shop Peekskill gourmet shop to her sister so that she could go to Africa to work with the Peace Corps. ('The Facts of Life')

In the early 1990s, Harrison Mills met his future wife Celia, a former Olympic cyclist, while they were both working in the Peace Corps. ('Beverly Hills 90210' - new version)

In the late 1990s, an idealistic hippie named Barney Stinson was planning to go to Nigeria to work for the Peace Corps with his girl-friend Shannon. But when she dumped him on the eve of their journey, the experience transformed him into the heartless, soul-less, but very funny womanizer he is today. ('How I Met Your Mother')

Anybody know of any other Peace Corps volunteers in Toobworld?

BCnU!
Toby O'B

BEAM ME UP TO BEANTOWN

"I watched 'Boston Legal' nine times
before I realized it wasn't a new 'Star Trek.'"
Tracy Jordan
'30 Rock'

I watched my DVR-tifact of the season premiere of '30 Rock' today, and quite frankly? I don't even remember that line.

I'm getting old.

At any rate, we can always count on '30 Rock' to Zonk the hell out of the TV Universe. What can you expect from a TV show about TV shows?

For us viewing at home in the Trueniverse, it's obvious what this Zonk implied - Tracy couldn't tell the difference between both shows because William Shatner starred in both. (I guess I have to get used to talking about 'Boston Legal' in the past tense.)

But the writers of '30 Rock' are not only brilliant, they also respect their audience. Some sitcom scribblin' hack might have overburdened that joke with splainins as to why Tracy made that mistake. The '30 Rock' writers know that we'll get it.

And that makes it easier to de-Zonk it!

Although we know the common factor between 'Boston Legal' and 'Star Trek' is Shatner, he was never mentioned; so we don't have to worry about getting around the fact that he plays Denny Crane on the former and James T. Kirk on the latter. As for the shows themselves, we've dealt with 'Star Trek' in the past. It has been mentioned and lampooned so often in the past on other TV shows (Halloween costumes, dream sequences, etc.), that it's almost tempting to just throw up my chubby meat-sticks in defeat. However, Toobworld Central has an all-encompassing splainin - somebody from the future, with knowledge of the "real" Starfleet came back to the 1960s and gave the televersion of Gene Roddenberry all of the information necessary for him to recreate the actual future of Earth Prime-Time, including such details as what the future participants looked like so that he could cast accordingly.

As for 'Boston Legal', we're lucky enough in that David E. Kelley gave it such a generic title. The joke had no mention of Denny Crane, or Alan Shore or of Crane, Poole, and Schmidt. So it could have been about anything that dealt with the legal profession in Beantown, even a reality show. And within the context of Toobworld, that just shows how off-kilter Tracy Jordan is that he couldn't tell the difference.

So as far as that Zonk goes, we can set our phasers on the highest setting and exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!

Okay, so I'm mixing my sci-fi shows. Go up to Boston and sue me.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TODAY'S TWD: THE GREAT HOUDINI

October 31, 1926:

Harry Houdini, Hungarian-born magician, died. (b. 1874)

Here's an excerpt of his biography from Wikipedia:

Harry Houdini (March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) whose birth name in Hungary was Erik Weisz (which was changed to Ehrich Weiss when he immigrated to the United States), was a Jewish Hungarian American magician, escapologist (widely regarded as one of the greatest ever) and stunt performer, as well as a skeptic and investigator of spiritualists, film producer and actor. Harry Houdini forever changed the world of magic and escapes.

Initially, Houdini's magic career resulted in little success. He performed in dime museums and sideshows, and even doubled as "the Wild Man" at a circus. Houdini initially focused on traditional card tricks. At one point, he billed himself as the "King of Cards". But he soon began experimenting with escape acts. In 1893, while performing with his brother "Dash" at Coney Island as "The Brothers Houdini", Harry met and married fellow performer Wilhelmina Beatrice (Bess) Rahner. Bess replaced Dash in the act, which became known as "The Houdinis". For the rest of Houdini's performing career, Bess would work as his stage assistant.

Harry Houdini's "big break" came in 1899 when he met manager Martin Beck in rural Woodstock, Illinois. Impressed by Houdini's handcuffs act, Beck advised him to concentrate on escape acts and booked him on the Orpheum vaudeville circuit. Within months, he was performing at the top vaudeville houses in the country. In 1900, Beck arranged for Houdini to tour Europe.

Houdini was a sensation in Europe, where he became widely known as "The Handcuff King". He toured England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Russia. In each city, Houdini would challenge local police to restrain him with shackles and lock him in their jails. In many of these challenge escapes, Houdini would first be stripped nude and searched. In Moscow, Houdini escaped from a Siberian prison transport van. Houdini publicly stated that, had he been unable to free himself, he would have had to travel to Siberia, where the only key was kept. In Cologne, he sued a police officer, Werner Graff, who claimed he made his escapes via bribery. Houdini won the case when he opened the judge's safe (he would later say the judge had forgotten to lock it).
With his new-found wealth and success, Houdini purchased a dress said to have been made for Queen Victoria. He then arranged a grand reception where he presented his mother in the dress to all their relatives. Houdini said it was the happiest day of his life. In 1904, Houdini returned to the U.S. and purchased a house for $25,000, a brownstone at 278 W. 113th Street in Harlem, New York. The house still stands today.

From 1907 and throughout the 1910s, Houdini performed with great success in the United States. He would free himself from jails, handcuffs, chains, ropes, and straitjackets, often while hanging from a rope in plain sight of street audiences. Because of imitators and a dwindling audience, on January 25, 1908, Houdini put his "handcuff act" behind him and began escaping from a locked, water-filled milk can. The possibility of failure and death thrilled his audiences. Houdini also expanded his challenge escape act - in which he invited the public to devise contraptions to hold him - to include nailed packing crates (sometimes lowered into the water), riveted boilers, wet-sheets, mailbags, and even the belly of a whale that washed ashore in Boston. At one point, brewers challenged Houdini to escape from his milk can after they filled it with beer. Many of these challenges were prearranged with local merchants in what is certainly one of the first uses of mass tie-in marketing.

Rather than promote the idea that he was assisted by spirits, as did the Davenport Brothers and others, Houdini's advertisements showed him making his escapes via dematerializing, although Houdini himself never claimed to have supernatural powers.

In 1912, Houdini introduced perhaps his most famous act, the Chinese Water Torture Cell, in which he was suspended upside-down in a locked glass-and-steel cabinet full to overflowing with water. The act required that Houdini hold his breath for more than three minutes. Houdini performed the escape for the rest of his career. Despite two Hollywood movies depicting Houdini dying in the Torture Cell, the escape had nothing to do with his demise.

In the 1920s, after the death of his beloved mother, Cecilia, he turned his energies toward debunking self-proclaimed psychics and mediums, a pursuit that would inspire and be followed by later-day conjurers Milbourne Christopher, James Randi, Martin Gardner, P.C. Sorcar, Dorothy Dietrich, Criss Angel, Derren Brown and Penn and Teller. Houdini's training in magic allowed him to expose frauds who had successfully fooled many scientists and academics. He was a member of a Scientific American committee that offered a cash prize to any medium who could successfully demonstrate supernatural abilities. Thanks to the contributions and skepticism of Houdini and four other committee members, the prize was never collected. The first to be tested was medium George Valentine of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. As his fame as a "ghostbuster" grew, Houdini took to attending séances in disguise, accompanied by a reporter and police officer. Possibly the most famous medium whom he debunked was the Boston medium Mina Crandon, also known as "Margery". Houdini chronicled his debunking exploits in his book, "A Magician Among the Spirits".

These activities cost Houdini the friendship of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle, a firm believer in Spiritualism during his later years, refused to believe any of Houdini's exposés. Conan Doyle actually came to believe that Houdini was a powerful spiritualist medium, had performed many of his stunts by means of paranormal abilities and was using these abilities to block those of other mediums that he was 'debunking' (see Conan Doyle's "The Edge of The Unknown", published in 1931, after Houdini's death). This disagreement led to the two men becoming public antagonists. Gabriel Brownstein has written a fictionalized account of the meetings of Houdini, Conan Doyle, and "Margery" in "The Man from Beyond: A Novel" (2005).

Harry Houdini died of peritonitis secondary to a ruptured appendix. It has been speculated that Houdini was killed by a McGill University student, J. Gordon Whitehead, in Montreal. Houdini died of a ruptured appendix, caused by Whitehead delivering multiple blows to Houdini's abdomen.

Although in serious pain, Houdini nonetheless continued to travel without seeking medical attention. Harry had apparently been suffering from appendicitis for several days and refusing medical treatment. His appendix would likely have burst on its own without the trauma.

When Houdini arrived at the Garrick Theater in Detroit, Michigan, on October 24, 1926, for what would be his last performance, he had a fever of 104 degrees F (40°C). Despite a diagnosis of acute appendicitis, Houdini took the stage. He was reported to have passed out during the show, but was revived and continued. Afterwards, he was hospitalized at Detroit's Grace Hospital. Houdini died of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix at 1:26 p.m. in Room 401 on October 31 (Halloween), 1926, at the age of 52.

Harry Houdini was portrayed in Toobworld several times, mostly in TV movies, but in episodes of 'Voyagers!' and 'Mentors' as well.

1976 - Houdini was played by Paul Michael Glaser, of 'Starsky and Hutch' fame, in a 1976 TV movie called "The Great Houdinis" (aka "The Great Houdini"), which was also highly fictionalized. The film focused on Houdini's relationship with his wife and mother, who were portrayed as frequently bickering (although, in reality, they had cordial relations) and on his fascination with life after death. The cast also included Sally Struthers, Bill Bixby, Vivian Vance, and Ruth Gordon.

1985 - Wil Wheaton played Houdini in "Young Harry Houdini", a made-for-TV movie that aired on ABC as a "Disney Sunday Movie." The film also featured Jeffrey DeMunn as the adult Houdini. DeMunn first played Houdini in the film version of "Ragtime".

1998 - Johnathon Schaech played Houdini in the TNT original movie "Houdini". The film co-starred Stacy Edwards as Bess and Mark Ruffalo as his brother, Dash (aka Theo. Hardeen). The TV movie first aired on December 6, 1998.

[Plot descriptions from Wikipedia]

Thanks to the leeway given to recastaways due to the aging of characters, I think "The Great Houdinis" (by virtue of being the first presentation of Houdini's life, even if it was greatly fictionalized) and "Young Harry Houdini" can both be placed in Earth Prime-Time, the main Toobworld.

As for his portrayal by Michael Durrell in the 'Voyagers!' episode "Agents of Satan", it's been the Toobworld Central contention that the main characters of the show are part of Earth Prime-Time, but that they are always meddling in alternate timelines so that they follow the follow chronological flow of Earth Prime-Time. So the Houdini that they met was of an alternate dimension.
BCnU!
Toby O'B