JURY PRUDENCE

I don't know how limited the talent pool is for actors in the NYC region as compared to LA, but it seems as though a lot of faces are seen over and over again in the various 'Law & Order' series. What always gets me is when these actors play similar characters, especially the judges, but are given different names. I'd think at least the actor could speak up and say, "Hey, you must have my nameplate still hanging around from the last time in the prop room. Why spend the money on a new one?" And what's it going to take for a slight name change in the script, anyway? Probably some wrangling with the WGA......
I dealt with one such case, two judges played by David Lippman: Morris Torledsky on 'Law & Order' and 'Law & Order: Trial By Jury', and Arthur Cohen on 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'. In his case, I said that Lippman was playing identical half-brothers who went into the same field of endeavor. (Not so far-fetched in a world where there are identical cousins a la 'The Patty Duke Show'!)

There's a web page dedicated to the many actors who have played more than one role on the original 'Law & Order' series, "Repeat Offenders". I was looking through it today with the idea that maybe some of these repeat performers in different roles were "Actives" from a New York-based 'Dollhouse'. O'Bviously you couldn't make that claim for characters who were related to the victim or were defendants, and pretty much all of the defense attorneys. But there are a few options still available. I also noticed that a lot of actors appeared twice, with one of those roles being that of a jury foreperson. So I figure - why not just have both characters be the same person? Eventually everybody in NYC gets called upon to serve on a jury, and the fact that they may have been involved in a previous case (or in some cases, are later involved in a case after their jury service).

By combining these characters, we're at least cutting down on the population in Manhattan who resemble each other. And when none of their characters are identified by name, all the better! That way we can claim a character played by that same actor on some other show was the same person...... So, thanks to "Repeat Offenders", here's a sampling of such characters:

Carole Troll

9-194, "Hunters," Hospital Receptionist

11-231, "Turnstile Justice," Jury Foreperson

Kay Walbye

4-074, "American Dream," Jury Forewoman

11-241, "Teenage Wasteland," Neighbor

Yvonne Warden

10-217, "Mother's Milk," Mrs. Watkins

4-078, "Snatched," Jury Forewoman

Mary Ellen Ashley

11-242, "Phobia," Jury Foreperson

12-259, "Formerly Famous,"

Elaine Paul Eichel

3-046, "Conspiracy," jury foreman

8-172, "Faccia a Faccia," Manny Ebbs

Frank Guy

6-130, "Slave," Court Clerk

11-237, "Thin Ice," Jury Foreperson

C. C. Loveheart

5-107, "Cruel and Unusual," Receptionist

13-284, "Open Season," Jury Foreperson

William Pitts

4-069, "Discord," Jury foreman

8-158, "Thrill," Phone company worker

Mark Plastrik

1-010, "Prisoner of Love," Investigator

2-033. "His Hour Upon the Stage," Jury foreman

Buzz Roddy

8-179, "Damaged," Moskowitz

10-221, "Trade This," jury foreperson

So say we all!

BCnU!
Toby O'B

[The pics are from the first season L&O episode "Kiss The Girls And Make Them Die"]

ALL IN THE FAMILY HOUR

Lee Goldberg found this on YouTube.

Mark Evanier stole it from him.

I'm stealing it from Mark.

It's the 'All In The Family' cast singing about the "Family Hour" in 1975. I'd say they have to be dopplegangers from another TV dimension, but I'm not sure which one.....

BCnU!
Toby O'B

THE RETURN OF SHARONA

For the final season of 'Monk', Bitty Schram will be returning as Sharona for one last episode. It will be an opportunity for some closure to the relationship she once had with Adrian Monk as her boss.

No clue as to what the reason may be for the character's visit; it may be a while before we get some spoilers.

But I'd like to think they'll be using the plotline from Lee Goldberg's tie-in novel, "Mr. Monk And The Two Assistants" (a reference to both Sharona and current assistant Natalie).

I haven't read the book yet, but I plan to. Although I've burned out on tie-in novels for any series after years of reading them, this one just sounds like it could be part of the show.

However, if I had to come up with a scenario in which Sharona came back into Monk's life, I'd go for one in which she's accused of the murder of her husband Trevor.

Her departure from the show was splained away with her reuniting with her ex-husband and moving back to New Jersey with him and her son Benjie. But that just felt wrong; from what we saw of Trevor when he appeared on the show, there was nothing about the guy that indicated he might change his ways.

Whether or not I'd want her to be end up being really guilty of the crime or not, I'm still kind of torn on that idea.....

But I can't wait for a screen capture showing Natalie and Sharona sharing a scene together!

BCnU!
Toby O'B

AS SEEN ON TV: ANTONIN SCALIA

In a recent interview with a gay news web site, Rep. Barney Frank labeled Antonin Scalia as a "homophobe" because the Supreme Court Justice believes that cases involving gay rights and abortion should not come before judges. And he voted against the Court's 2003 decision which struck down state laws banning consensual sodomy.

But in Toobworld, Antonin Scalia has shown that his objections don't outweigh his observance of the law. If two men came before him in a state where it was legal to marry and they loved each other, then Scalia would preside over that union - provided they had the proper paperwork.

And that's just what he did while he was on a fishing vacation; he officiated over the wedding of Denny Crane and Alan Shore, "As Seen On TV" in the series final of 'Boston Legal'..... BCnU!
Toby O'B

HULUCINATIONS

Jean Claude Van Damme is dead.

It's more than likely Alec Baldwin is dead as well.

And I think we can count Elisha Dushku of 'Dollhouse' and Seth MacFarlane, the mastermind of 'Family Guy', among the deceased as well.

And yet Dennis Rodman lives.

Of course, I'm talking about the televersions of these actors, their fictional selves as seen on TV. The incredible simulations, not the real things.

Gee, I'd hate to think that I caused mass panic in the streets, or - in the case of Alec Baldwin - joyous celebrations among the conservative groups.

OOGA BOOGA!

This all begins with an episode of 'Las Vegas' from its first season, "Die Fast, Die Furious". (Has a nice Quinn Martin feel to it, don't you think?) Van Damme was at the Montecito to film a movie and he decided to do his own stunt in which it would look as though he rode a motorcycle off the roof. However, something went wrong and he ended up sailing off the roof to his death. (Sailing off the Montecito roof wasn't all that uncommon, as we'd later see....)

My blog buddy and fellow crossoverist* Thom Holbrook has run with this in his Crossovers And Spinoffs site (top o' the links to the left, folks!). He's started his own Westphallian-like subset of shows that are connected because of mentions of Van Damme and/or his movies or - in the case of 'Friends' - appearances by Van Damme as himself. Thom says that within this mini TV universe, Van Damme must be considered dead.

For the longest time, I wanted to think there had to be another splainin, that Van Damme had to still be alive and that somebody - or something - died in his place in Vegas. So I rounded up the usual suspects - aliens, cyborgs (aka Skinjobs), magical creatures, evil twins - but there was always the sticking point caused by another TV series - 'CSI'. If anybody but Van Damme died in that fall, the forensic scientists working for the Las Vegas Police Department would surely have noticed during the autopsy.

So I accepted at least that part of the premise - that in Toobworld, the real Jean Claude Van Damme is dead.

But I don't hold that he's dead in all those other shows that mention him. I think that he's still alive and making movies. (The latest of which - "JCVD" - has a song performed by my friend Marie Mazziotti playing over the end credits!)

Okay, what I mean is that someone is impersonating him and keeping his career going.

And I'm turning to a series of ads for Hulu.com to back up my claim. They kicked off during the Super Bowl (Not sorry about that, Chief!) with a blipvert featuring Alec Baldwin performing serlinguistic duties as he took the audience on a tour of Hulu's secret headquarters. And he revealed to the real world that he was in fact an alien - using the TV content providing online service to prepare our brains for alien consumption.

This has been followed by ads starring Ms. Dushku and MacFarlane. They too are revealed to be aliens (although all three are of different species, but maintain human guises.) So I'm thinking the Muscles from Brussels - if he's seen in Toobworld or if his films are mentioned - is an alien as well. Whether or not he belongs to one of those races or of yet another one, I don't know.

As to how this can be if he supposedly died in Vegas, well.... Okay, the alien version could simply tell the media that it was somebody (O'Bviously human) who went to great pains to pass himself off as Van Damme. As for Dennis Rodman, we know he's an alien because of an episode of '3rd Rock From The Sun'. But the inference there is that he's always been an alien; I don't think he replaced the original (unless it was in childhood).

Might have to do a McCarthy-style witch hunt and look through the League of Themselves rolls to see if anybody else playing themselves on TV could actually be an alien.

I'm looking at you, Carol Channing. How else can it be splained that she showed up in Stalag 13 with 'Hogan's Heroes' looking exactly the same age as she was back in the mid to late 1960's (as seen in a Jell-O commercial)? BCnU!
Toby O'B

* I no longer use the term "crossoverian". It sounds disturbing.....

NEVERWAS: SUGARFOOT MEETS THE DOCTOR

One of my favorite 'Doctor Who' bloggers, Combom, has posted a link to an audio-play about the Fifth Doctor. The story's title is "The Haunting Of Thomas Brewster" .

I haven't heard it, but I'm fairly certain it has nothing to do with Tom Brewster of 'Sugarfoot'! But what a crossover that could have been, right? And Sugarfoot had enough "book-larnin'" and an open mind willing to accept the many wonders he might have seen of the Universe, had he tagged along as a Companion.

I'd definitely put 'Sugarfoot' in my list of "Other TV Characters as Companions".......

To have done such a crossover "realistically" (as if such a thing could be found at Toobworld Central!), I suppose we'd have to have Tom Brewster flitting about Time and Space with the First Doctor. But I think he'd get along much better with the Seventh, for some reason...... BCnU!
Toby O'B

AS SEEN ON TV: HIMMLER

Today's spotlight will mark the end of "The Scarlet And The Black" theme for "As Seen On TV"......

HEINRICH HIMMLER

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (October 7, 1900 – May 23, 1945) was a Nazi German politician and head of the Schutzstaffel (SS). He was the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany, after Adolf Hitler. As Reichsführer-SS he oversaw all police and security forces, including the Gestapo.

As overseer of concentration camps, extermination camps, and Einsatzgruppen (literally: task forces, often used as killing squads), Himmler coordinated the killing of millions of Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma, many prisoners of war, and possibly another three to four million Poles, communists, or other groups whom the Nazis deemed unworthy to live or simply 'in the way', which included homosexuals and those with physical and mental disabilities.

Shortly before the end of the war, he offered to surrender to the Allies if he were spared from prosecution. After being arrested by British forces, he committed suicide before he could be questioned.
[from Wikipedia]

BCnU!
Toby O'B

OH! CANADA!

'How I Met Your Mother' may have won another Toobits Award for Best Online Crossover last night with their new fictional website: http://canadiansexacts.org/

Go ahead. You can check it out if you're at work. It's safe. Trust me. Have I ever lied to you....?

May I particularly recommend the "Two Girls, One Stanley Cup" option....?

BCnU!
Toby O'B

A DIAGNOSTIC TOON-UP

Recently I wrote about the upcoming 'Bones' episode in which Booth would unconscious and he'd hallucinate an encounter with Stewie Griffin of 'Family Guy'.

Although it's probably the first time such a team-up has happened in a murder mystery on TV, it wasn't the first time somebody came up with the idea.

On his own blog, William Rabkin relates his experience while working on 'Diagnosis Murder' with Dick Van Dyke':

"I supposed we were talking about teaming Dick up with another classic TV character, but we’d already brought back both 'Mannix' and Barbara Bain as Cinnamon Carter from 'Mission: Impossible'. It was beginning to feel like a well we’d been to an awful lot. Then someone had the idea — and I’m pretty sure it was me, because I’d been watching a lot of Dennis Potter at the time — that we should team Dick up with the greatest sleuth ever to grace a television set… Scooby Doo.

After a long bout of giggles, the story fell into place almost immediately. Dick’s character, Dr. Mark Sloan, would witness a crime, but before he could get away the criminal would attack and leave him in a coma. While the rest of the team searched for his attackers, Dick would be solving the crime in a series of hallucinations… with the help of Scooby Doo. There was one little problem, of course — we didn’t really have a lot of money in our budget for animated sequences. Fortunately, Lee can pull up TV trivia faster than Google, and he remembered that an animated version of Dick had “guest starred” in a Scooby Doo episode back in the 70s. All we’d have to do was get the rights to the footage, then write new dialogue, with our supporting cast doing the voices for Shaggy and the rest."

It would probably fall under the umbrella of unwritten fanfic, - and I know how Rabkin's fellow writer on that series feels about fanfic! - but why can't we just assume that Dr. Mark Sloan did have such an experience? It certainly doesn't cause a Zonk, as splained away in that previous article about 'Bones'/'Family Guy'.

It's a shame that the deal with Hanna-Barbera ultimately fell through because I think it could have been a TV classic. And H-B could certainly have ridden the publicity to bolster their dream to have a live action movie years earlier than it turned out.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

My thanks to Mark Evanier for pointing the way to this story......

TVXOHOF, 03/2009-D: FERNWOOD, OHIO

For the fourth week of March, the "Location, Location, Location" week in our 2009 inductions into the TV Crossover Hall Of Fame, we're keeping it simple: we're taking a trip to Fernwood, Ohio.

Fernwood is best known as the home of Mary Hartman in her doubly eponymous series, but it also got worked into the title of a spin-off and a sequel - 'Fernwood 2Night' and 'Forever Fernwood', respectively. ('Fernwood 2Night' had its own sequel, 'America 2Night', as well.)

It would be nice to see another series, not necessarily a stripped soap opera, take place in that quirkiest of TV's small towns. At the very least it should be mentioned in other TV series. (Maybe some have, and I just haven't picked up on it.) But no matter, Fernwood has three series to its credit, the number needed for induction, plus an offshoot as well.

BCnU!
Toby O'B