ENTITLED TO BE RED

I've mentioned this in the past, I love episode titles. I hate it when a show doesn't have any titles at all for their episodes. (I'm looking at you, 'Primeval' and the UK version of 'Life On Mars'. Thank Jack Lord that 'New Tricks' finally wised up!)

I especially love when a show develops a theme for their titles. 'Remington Steele' tried to use the word 'Steele' in most of theirs; the classic would be 'The Wild, Wild West' in which all of their episodes began with "The Night Of". Currently, it's "Chuck vs." whatever each week on 'Chuck'.

'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.' and 'The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.' each used "Affairs"; 'Dundee And The Culhane' used "Briefs"; 'Perry Mason' had "Cases". 'Commander-In-Chief' tried to have every episode be a "First", but finally gave up the notion.

I think the American version of 'Life On Mars' is going for a rock lyric as their titles, although I'm not sure about that "My Maharishi Is Bigger Than Your Maharishi" from two weeks ago.

So I'm looking at the episode guide for 'The Mentalist' and saw that they're going for a color scheme:

23 Sep 08 Pilot (Bleep! I hate when they just use "Pilot" for the first episode!)

30 Sep 08 Red Hair and Silver Tape

14 Oct 08 Red Tide

21 Oct 08 Ladies in Red

28 Oct 08 Redwood

11 Nov 08 Red-Handed

18 Nov 08 The Thin Red Line

25 Nov 08 Red Brick and Ivy

TBA Flame Red

Will they be able to maintain this for the rest of the year? Will they go through a blue period for the sophomore season?

There's probably a reason for this that was brought up in the pilot, which I missed. Color me red-faced if I'm missing the obvious.

Sorry about that, Chief.....

BCnU!
Toby O'B

TODAY'S TWD: EPSILON ERIDANI

I saw that today is the feast day for St. Winifred, but I already wrote about her while I was deep into watching the 'Cadfael' series. So instead, we're getting a special guest appearance:

Dan Vergano wrote this article for USA Today last week:

Star Trek fans, take heart — Mr. Spock's fabled home star, the nearby Epsilon Eridani, could harbor an Earth-like planet.
NASA astronomers today report that the triple-ringed star has an asteroid belt and a Jupiter-like giant planet in roughly the same orbits as in our own solar system. Only 850 million years old, a fifth the age of Earth's sun, Epsilon Eridani resembles a younger twin to our solar system. About 62 trillion miles away, it is the closest known solar system.

It was borrowed by the creators of the TV series 'Star Trek' as the location of Vulcan, the planet that gave us the super-logical science officer Mr. Spock.

"We certainly haven't seen it yet, but if its solar system is anything like ours, then there should be planets like ours," say astronomer Massimo Marengo of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

The NASA Spitzer space telescope results, which measure the infrared heat given off by dust and ice rings circling the star, suggest Epsilon Eridani possesses three jumbo worlds, revealed by dust-free circular lanes in its asteroid belt and more distant comet belts.The circular asteroid belt that, like ours, orbits within 300 million miles of the star is particularly surprising, Marengo says, because earlier studies had suggested the star's Jupiter-like planet followed a looping path that would have destroyed the narrow belt. Instead, it must follow a nearly circular orbit.

Because Epsilon Eridani is smaller, dimmer and younger than the sun, the "habitable zone" for Earth-like planets there is closer to the star, says planetary theorist Sean Raymond of the University of Colorado-Boulder. "An Earth-like planet could actually form in the (star's) habitable zone," he says, if the report of a well-behaved Jupiter-sized planet bears out.

Another planetary theorist, Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institute of Washington (D.C.), is doubtful, suggesting such a planet is "likely to be too massive and too close to allow Earth-like planets to form in the habitable zone."

Jokes Marengo: "Of course there is disagreement among Star Trek fans about whether the planet of Mr. Spock could be at Epsilon Eridani, because it is such a young star and Vulcans are supposed to be an advanced civilization."

Well, maybe their ancestors moved there!

From Wikipedia:

Epsilon Eridani (e Eri / e Eridani) is a main-sequence K2 class star. It is the closest star in the constellation Eridanus, as well as the third closest star visible to the naked eye. This star has an estimated age of less than a billion years. Because of its relative youth, this star has a higher level of magnetic activity than the Sun and its stellar wind is an estimated 30 times as strong.
The rotation period is a relatively rapid 11.1 days, although this varies by latitude. Epsilon Eridani is both smaller and less massive than the Sun, with a lower level of metallicity, or elements with a higher atomic number than helium.

In 2006, a planet was suspected in orbit around this star, although the discovery is not yet secure enough to convince all planet hunters due to noise in the data. If the planet exists, it completes an orbit every 2502 days at a mean distance of 3.4 Astronomical Units (505 million kilometers) from the star. As of 2008, Epsilon Eridani is the nearest star to the Sun that is known to have a planet. The star also has two orbiting asteroid belts, one at approximately 3 AU, the second at around 20 AU, and perturbations in this material may be caused by an unconfirmed second planet. It also appears to have a Kuiper belt. The density of orbiting material, which is considerably more than that around the Sun, corroborates the star's suspected youth.

Due to it being a relatively close and Sun-like star, Epsilon Eridani regularly appears in science fiction. In the television series Babylon 5, the space station itself orbits the third planet (Epsilon 3) in this system. Gerry Anderson's television show Space Precinct is set on a planet in the "Epsilon Erandi" system, which may be an error for Epsilon Eridani.

Or as one Welsh blogger said about the star:

Mae Epsilon Eridani b yn blaned sy'n cylchio'r seren Epsilon Eridani (neu 'Al-Sadirah') yng nghytser Eridanws.Mae Al-Sadirah yn perthyn i'r un dosbarth o sêr fel yr Haul, er ei bod yn seren oren sydd ychydig yn fwy. Mae hi 10.5 o flynyddoedd goleuni i ffwrddd, sydd yn neud y blaned y mwyaf agos at y Ddaear o ran pellter.

Mae ei chrynswth 1.5 gwaith yn fwy na Iau. Mae hi'n cymryd dros 2000 o ddyddiau i gylchio Al-Sadirah, ac mae gwyddonwyr yn gobeithio y bydd hi'n cyrraedd pwynt ym mis Rhagfyr pan fydd yn bosib i'w gweld yn fwy manwl.

Gellir gweld sut mae'r nefoedd yn edrych oddi ar y blaned ei hun YMA.

But then, everybody knows the Welsh are aliens anyway.

Uh oh.....

Keep watching the skies while I go duck and cover!

BCnU!

Toby O'B

THIS ELECTION WILL BE A SHORE THING!

I'm not sure if any of the TV sitcoms or dramas were able to work the election into their plotlines this year, but I wouldn't be surprised if 'Boston Legal' did; they've always been pretty timely with their references to current events. And now it looks like David E. Kelley's legal dramedy will be the first to incorporate the election results into Toobworld.
ABC's November sweeps overview revealed that the November 17th episode of 'Boston Legal' will be about a woman (played by Cheri Oteri, pictured here with series stars James Spader and Candice Bergen) who lost her job because she voted for John McCain.

This coming Wednesday, the show will film a scene for that episode which will refer to the actual outcome of the election the day before. (I doubt there's going to be any trouble that lasts for days, as happened in 2000.)

As the show heads for its final episode in December, they're certainly keeping things interesting right to the very end!

BCnU!
Toby O'B

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