TVXOHOF DECEMBER, 2019 - CAPTAIN COLD (AKA LEONARD SNART)

It’s December.  But I guess you knew that if you looked out your window for most of the country.

As such, it’s our last monthly showcase for the 20th anniversary of the Television Crossover Hall of Fame, in which we chose TV superheroes and super-villains as our theme.

In the past, we’ve inducted Burgess Meredith’s incarnatioin of the Penguin and the animated version of Mr. Freeze, voiced by Michael Ansara into the Hall.  So who else among the superheroes and super-villains would be appropriate for the month which kicks off the coming Winter season?

CAPTAIN COLD!

And like Mr. Freeze and the Penguin, Captain Cold is multidimensional.  Played by Michael Champion, he was seen in Earth Prime-Time in the first TV series for ‘The Flash’.  He was also in the alternate Toobworld which houses ‘Smallville’ and ‘The West Wing’.  And there are several incarnations of the artistic style which were used to depict him in the Tooniverse.

But the Captain Cold who makes the TVXOHOF is the Leonard Snart found in the Toobworld that encompasses the Arrowverse.  Played by Wentworth Miller, he had been recurring in ‘The Flash’; starred in ‘Legends of Tomorrow’; and thanks to the “Crisis On Earth X” four series crossover, Captain Cold has interacted with both Green Arrow and Supergirl in Parts Three and Four.  He may turn up again in the mega crossover next week - "Crisis On Infinite Earths".

Additionally, Green Arrow dealt with the Rogues’ Gallery stalwart turned hero in the following:

• ‘The Flash’ – “Rogue Air”
• ‘Legends of Tomorrow’ – “Pilot Part One”
• ‘Legends of Tomorrow’ – “Star City 2046”

Let’s take a look at the background for Captain Cold in the four-color meta-fictional universe and then at the interpretation of the character by Mr. Miller….

Edited from Wikipedia:
Captain Cold (Leonard Snart) is a fictional supervillain/antihero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Captain Cold is the leader of the Rogues, a loose criminal association, as well as the older brother of Golden Glider. An adversary of the various superheroes known as the Flash, he has served as one of Barry Allen's archenemies, both foe and begrudging ally to Wally West, and one of the killers of Bart Allen.

IGN's list of the Top 100 Comic Book Villains Of All Time List ranked Captain Cold as #27.

Actor Wentworth Miller has portrayed multiple versions of the character in The CW's television series ‘The Flash’ and ‘Legends of Tomorrow’.

Leonard Snart was raised by an abusive father and took refuge with his grandfather, who worked in an ice truck. When his grandfather died, Snart grew tired of his father's abuse and set out to start a criminal career. Snart joined up with a group of small-time thieves and in planning out a robbery, each was issued a gun and a visor to protect their eyes against the flashes of gunfire. This visor design would later be adapted by Snart into his trademark costume. In recent years he has added a radio receiver to them which picks up the police band to monitor local law enforcement.

Snart and the other thugs were captured by the Flash and imprisoned. Snart decided to go solo, but knew he had to do something about the local hero, the Flash.

Snart read an article that theorized that the energy emissions of a cyclotron could interfere with the Flash's speed. He designed a weapon to harness that power and broke into a cyclotron lab, intending to use the device to charge up his experimental gun. As he was finishing his experiment, a security guard surprised Snart. Intending to use his gun only to scare the guard, he inadvertently pulled the trigger and discovered that his weapon had been altered in a way he had never imagined. The moisture in the air around the guard froze. Intrigued by this twist of fate, Snart donned a parka and the aforementioned visor and declared himself to be Captain Cold - the man who mastered absolute zero.

Snart then committed a series of non-lethal crimes, on one occasion placing the city in suspended animation in an attempt to force Iris West to marry him as he had fallen in love with her when he saw her in the prison, but the Flash got through a wall of ice and was able to reverse the process.

He later fell in love with a newscaster, and competed with Heat Wave (in his first appearance) over her in a crime spree, but they were both beaten by the Flash. But after Barry Allen's death, during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Captain Cold became a bounty hunter with his sister Lisa, the Golden Glider.

Captain Cold was declared the leader of the Flash's Rogues Gallery. His skill and experience have made him a strong leader to the likes of the Weather Wizard, the new Trickster, the new Mirror Master, and the new Captain Boomerang.

Traditionally, Captain Cold is driven by three things: money, women, and the desire to beat Barry Allen. Although not the lecher that Captain Boomerang was, Len Snart has an eye for the ladies, particularly models.

Like the majority of the Flash's Rogues, Snart had no innate superhuman powers. He instead relied on his cold guns and instincts.

Over the years, Snart had modified his weapons to allow a variety of effects such as:

• A cold beam that freezes anything it hits instantly.
• Creating a cold field where people and objects literally stop in their tracks. Cold uses this ability to slow down the Flash's movements.
• Bathing his opponent in a wide beam of ice designed to freeze the skin of the target so they stay conscious and do not go numb to the pain.
• Creating a slippery field of ice which can slow down the Flash.
• Forming sharp stalagmites on the ground to impale his enemies.
• An "ice grenade" which was stated to "turn this place into an iceberg". Used to freeze everything in a large radius, and the whole of Iron Heights during the events of Blackest Night.
• Creating "mirages" out of extreme cold-like heat.

Fellow ice-based villain Mr. Freeze has noted that Cold is the only cold-themed villain in the DC Universe to have mastered "absolute zero" with his weapons.

Now let’s take a look at the character as seen in the CW’s Arrowverse, as played by Wentworth Miller.

Again from Wikipedia:
The character first appears as a recurring villain on ‘The Flash’. Snart first appears as a regular robber, but when his attempted heist is foiled by The Flash, Snart obtains a "cold gun", created by Cisco Ramon to subdue a speedster, due to its ability to freeze anything to absolute zero temperatures, from a black market arms dealer.

Dubbed "Captain Cold", he makes several attempts to eliminate The Flash throughout the first season, eventually joining forces with his former colleague Mick Rory and his sister Lisa Snart, both of whom also get their own guns.

After kidnapping Cisco, Snart forces him to reveal the Flash's identity as Barry Allen. Snart then makes a deal with Barry: he will keep his identity a secret and refrain from killing innocent people, and in exchange Barry will not interfere with his heists. Barry later requests Snart's help with a metahuman prison transfer, and Barry eliminates all of the authorities' records of Snart in exchange.

However, Snart betrays Barry by freeing the inmates from captivity. In season two, Snart is blackmailed into working with his abusive father Lewis Snart who plants a bomb in Lisa to ensure his son's cooperation. When Team Flash deactivates the bomb, Snart kills his father in retaliation and is apprehended.

Snart is later freed from prison by Mark Mardon, but refuses to go along with his plan of killing the Flash and instead warns the speedster. In season three, Snart and Barry work together to steal a Dominator power source from A.R.G.U.S.

Snart returns as a main character in ‘Legends of Tomorrow’. In season one, he and Mick Rory are recruited into Rip Hunter's team to prevent the immortal Vandal Savage from conquering the world; the two join the time-travelling crew to steal valuables from the past. At one point, Snart unsuccessfully attempts to alter his own past and prevent the cycle of abuse he and his sister suffered at the hands of their father. Later Snart starts to reform, becoming a true hero, which leads him to a confrontation with Rory. When Rory later betrays the team, Snart maroons his partner in an isolated area.

The vengeful Rory then returns as the Time Masters' temporal bounty hunter Chronos. After Chronos is captured by the Legends, Snart convinces the team to try and reform Rory, who eventually rejoins the team.

At the end of the season, Snart sacrifices himself by blowing up the Time Masters, who are revealed to be working with Savage.

In season two, Eobard Thawne travels back in time to recruit a past version of Snart as part of his Legion of Doom in exchange for being able to prevent his death. This version of Snart has not reformed and is disgusted by the heroes his future self and Rory turned into. Snart manages to convince Rory to betray the Legends and join the Legion, bringing the Spear of Destiny with him and allowing the Legion to rewrite reality to fit their goals.

However, Rory eventually turns back to the Legends when he becomes disillusioned with the new reality and the increasingly abusive Snart. In the final battle, the Legends defeat the Legion; Snart's memory is wiped and he is returned to 2014 to preserve the timeline.

An alternate version, preferring to be called Leo Snart, first appears in the four-part crossover event "Crisis on Earth-X". The official preview synopsis for the crossover calls him "Citizen Cold", but the name is not used within the crossover itself. This version is from the parallel world "Earth-X" where the Nazis won World War II and acts as a hero against the New Reich. Snart is shown to be in a same-sex relationship with Ray Terrill / The Ray and helps Oliver Queen, Barry Allen, Kara Zor-El and their allies fight against the armies of Earth-X.

After the Nazi forces are defeated, Snart stays on Earth-1 for a period with the Legends, both to help them deal with their grief over Martin Stein's death and to give himself a chance to cope with the death of his own version of Mick Rory, but eventually returns to Earth-X.

In season four of ‘The Flash’, Barry Allen recruits Snart's help when transporting Neil Borman to safety from Clifford DeVoe. Snart is followed to Earth-1 by Siren-X, who begins targeting Borman. After Snart and the Flash defeat Siren-X, Snart returns to Earth-X to marry Ray.

The Earth-90 version of Captain Cold appeared in the 1990s ‘The Flash’ television show, which was retroactively established as part of Arrowverse at the 2018 annual crossover entitled “Elseworlds”, played by actor Michael Champion. Named Leonard Wynters and costumed in a trenchcoat, he is an infamous albino hitman in his self-titled episode "Captain Cold" who used a nuclear-powered freeze weapon to kill his victims. He was hired by Central City crime boss Jimmy Swain (Jeffrey Combs) to kill local mob bosses and later the Flash. Flash eventually manages to defeat Captain Cold.

O’BSERVATION:
This change in appearance and name might suggest that Leonard was adopted.  Since he has no super powers, nothing depends on his genetic make-up; it all came down to environment for the development of his character.

This means we can make an assumption that some other character played by Wentworth Miller in Earth Prime-Time might qualify as being the man who would become Captain Cold in the other Toobworlds.

However, we have to eliminate from consideration his characters of Michael Scofield (‘Prison Break’), Senator Mark Hanson (‘Madam Secretary’), and David Scott (‘Dinotopia’).

I’m intrigued by the idea of Nelson from three episodes of ‘Time Of Your Life’.  First off, the short-lived series starring Jennifer Love Hewitt was a spin-off for her character of Sarah from ‘Party Of Five’.  Secondly, Nelson was a gay hair stylist and since being gay is not determined by one’s environment, Nelson of Earth Prime-Time and Leonard of the Arrowverse could be the same guy.  In one world he grew up to become a criminal rogue and later an anti-hero, and in the other, a witty bon vivant, a friend to JB.

Once more unto the Wikipedean breach, dear friends:

Captain Cold appears, face unseen, in the ‘Smallville’ television show. In the episode "Prophecy", he appears as part of a group assembled by Toyman. Captain Cold is assigned to kill Bart "Impulse" Allen.

O’BSERVATION:
Even though Michael Champion established that Leonard Snart of Earth Prime-Time could not only have different genetics as well as a different surname, that doesn’t mean the mysterious hooded figure known as Captain Cold in the ‘Smallville’ dimension has to be some other actor – despite the fact that he is just that underneath that disguise.

Sorry, other guy.  We’re going to make the claim that the Leonard Snart underneath that disguise would look like Wentworth Miller.

Here then are the credits for Captain Cold to deem him worthy for induction into the TVXOHOF:

Smallville
Prophecy
(2011)

Superhero Fight Club
{2015)
A three minute promotional video

The Flash2016-2018
13 episodes

DC's Legends of Tomorrow
2016-2018
23 episodes

Welcome to the Hall, Captain Cold!  You’ll find a few acquaintances around the place….

FRIDAY HALL OF FAMERS FOR 11/29/2019 - ALEXANDER WAVERLY

Because of the holidays (Thanksgiving on Thursday, Dabsgiving on Friday), this week’s edition of the Friday Hall of Famers got off to a late start.  But thanks to the Dashboard system of Blogger, it will still show up as having been posted on this past Friday in the archives.  Time travel!

For our last induction of November, we’re going to be dealing with a man who wasn’t so much of a newsmaker who made the headlines.  He worked very much behind the scenes, doing his part through much of the 20th Century in shaping the course of the “Free World”.  Oftentimes the actions in which he either took part (in the beginning of his intelligence career) or oversaw (as one of the heads of U.N.C.L.E.) saved the lives of those who would be recognized as the newsmakers or prevented the actions of madmen from becoming the leading news story of the day.

In doing so, he never received the public accolades which he deserved, such as a knighthood.  Those of us in Earth Prime recognize his contributions and this honorific from the Television Crossover Hall of Fame is a paltry shade of the thanks due to him.

May I present….

MISTER ALEXANDER WAVERLY

“Hmm? Oh, yes.

Alexander Waverly.

Number 1 in Section 1.

In charge of this,

our New York headquarters.

It's from here that I send these young men

on their various missions.”

ALEXANDER WAVERLY

‘THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E’

From Wikipedia:
Alexander Waverly is a fictional character from the 1960s television show ‘The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’ and its spin-off series ‘The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.’.

Mr. Waverly is the head of the U.N.C.L.E. organization [an international espionage organization at the height of the Cold War] and was played by the English actor Leo G. Carroll.

[Carroll] had played the 'Professor', the head of the espionage agency in “North by Northwest” (1959), the film which inspired Norman Felton to bring the spy genre to the small screen.

O’BSERVATION:
On occasion, Toobworld Central absconds with movies from the “Cineverse”.*  Because of the character of “The Professor”, Toobworld has made the movie “North By Northwest” part of the TV Universe.  And it is our contention that “The Professor” was in fact Alexander Waverly.

(Nothing from the movie otherwise interferes with the integrity of the TV Universe.  It would take a lot more than killer crop-dusters, assassinations, and clambering over Mt. Rushmore to make this movie a Zonk in a world which is frequently invaded by Cybermen, Daleks, Black Oil, and aliens with bent pinkies.)

In his position as “The Professor”, working in Intelligence but not yet affiliated with U.N.C.L.E., Mr. Waverly may have been “working” undercover either at Channing College or at the Institute of Foreign Policy as Professor John Miller.  This would have occurred when Professor Paul Atherton was offered to become the new head of the Institute for Foreign Policy.  

Unfortunately I’ve never seen this episode, never seen any from the TV show ‘Channing’.  As the characters of the Professors John Miller and Paul Atherton were one-shots, I could see “Miller” (Waverly) as being the “retiring” head of the Institute (in order to take a position with U.N.C.L.E., no doubt) and that Atherton does take over its leadership.  But that’s supposition on my part.

Back to Waverly’s Wikipedia entry:
He is one of five regional heads in charge of the multi-national organization, though his position appears to be that of primus inter pares, i.e., first among equals. In one episode he presides over an annual meeting of the regional heads ('The Summit Five Affair').

In contrast to the ambiguity surrounding the backgrounds of Solo and Kuryakin, we are given some insight into Waverly's family situation. He mentions a grandson called Melvin in 'The Bat Cave Affair'. His cousin Lester Baldwin (also played by Carroll) appears in 'The Bow Wow Affair'. His brother-in-law is Professor Hemingway of Y.I.T., who he sometimes uses as a consultant ('The Mad, MAD Tea Party Affair'). In 'The Cap and Gown Affair' it emerges that Waverly is an alumnus of Blair University.

His niece Maude Waverly, played by Yvonne Craig, appears in the U.N.C.L.E. film "One Spy Too Many" although she does not feature in 'The Alexander the Greater Affair' the two-part television episode on which the film is based.

Mr. Waverly was also a regular in the short-lived, spin-off series ‘The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.’, making Carroll one of the first actors to play the same role in two television shows.  (He had two female agents using the code name of April Dancer.)

He is the head of Section One in U.N.C.L.E. headquarters in New York. He appears to have been something of a ladies man in his youth ('The Bow Wow Affair).

In the first two seasons Waverly is depicted as an unsentimental, tough, pragmatic leader. By the third season, however, he is presented as a more humane, although still pragmatic character. In the third season two-part episode 'The Concrete Overcoat Affair,' Solo objects to the fact that his partner Kuryakin has been sent on a suicide mission. Although he chastises the agent for questioning his authority, Waverly allows him to go to Kuryakin's aid. As Solo leaves, Waverly can be heard muttering, "Alexander Waverly, sentimental grandmother of the year."

Although primarily working out of headquarters, on rare occasions Waverly joins in missions in the field. He goes undercover in 'The Pieces of Fate Affair' and during the show's fourth season, he is captured along with three of his agents. He masterminds their escape with the aid of a blade hidden in a flower in his buttonhole ('The Deep Six Affair').

In 1968, Carroll made his final appearance in the role one week after the show's cancellation when he appeared on ‘Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In’, the series that replaced U.N.C.L.E. His final lines on screen are "Mr. Kuryakin, come quick. I think I've found THRUSH headquarters at last."

O’BSERVATION:
Toobworld Central has come up with a shadow ops organization to help in splainin away some of those discrepancies which we call “Zonks” – especially those in which TV characters talk about other TV characters from other TV shows as being fictional.

“UNREEL” is the group that foments this belief in the hopes that if the general public thinks characters like James Bond, and the Time Lord known as The Doctor are fictional, it then makes it easier for those do-gooders to continue in their work without alarming or generally involving ordinary citizens.  (But hey, it happens.)

The inspiration for UNREEL grew out of the details in Dr. Watson’s chronicles of his friend Sherlock Holmes’ exploits which he fictionalized for his friend’s sake, or his clients.  (Chief among these – in my opinion – would be the true identity of “The King of Bohemia”.)

We know that ‘Laugh-In’ is a TV show within the world of Earth Prime-Time  - Paul and Jamie Buchman dreamed about it!  So it’s our theory that UNREEL arranged it so that Mr. Waverly appeared on that pilot episode of the comedy sketch series to make it appear as if he was a fictional character, to go along with their earlier underwriting of ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’ series using actors who bore incredible likenesses to the actual agents.

In this case, Waverly was played by Leo G. Carroll who performed a similar service for UNREEL with an earlier series based on the life of a banker named Cosmo Topper.  (UNREEL didn’t want to cause a panic among the general public with reports that ghosts actually do exist in Earth Prime-Time.)

To help muddy the waters further, Leo G. Carroll himself later made an appearance on 'Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.'

To Wikipedia, once again:
Carroll died in 1972 and his character did not appear in the 1983 reunion movie “Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.:The Fifteen Years Later Affair”, where it is implied that Mr. Waverly had died relatively recently.

O’BSERVATION:
According to Wikipedia, there was a Mrs. Waverly (whose maiden name was Hemingway) and they had at least one child since Mr. Waverly does mention a grandson named Melvin.  He also has a cousin named Lester Baldwin who is one of those Toobworld “rarities”  known as identical cousins.  (As for Maude Waverly, who appeared in the movie adaptation of one of the TV adventures but not in the original story, I’ll leave that for others to de-Zonk.)

But there is another relative I think helps the case for Mr. Waverly’s inclusion into the TVXOHOF.  It was said during the series that in his day, Mr. Waverly was something of a ladies’ man.  So it’s not outside the realm of being pozz’ble, just pozz’ble (as Muskie Muskrat would say) that he wasn’t always that careful with the dispensation of the Waverly seed.  It could be that he sired a child outside of marriage, and to spite him for not divorcing Mrs. Waverly to acknowledge this child, the mother gave her son the legal name of Alexander Waverly.

I would rather think that this son was a bastard rather than that he was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Waverly, as we would meet Alexander Waverly II in 1981 (about two years before his father’s death.)  You see, Alexander Waverly II was running a “health club” in Las Vegas in which his male trainers also worked as escorts.

I have seen a wiki entry for Alexander Waverly with quite a padded backstory in which it’s declared he was born in 1892; give the name Francis Alexander Nugent; and that he attended the Greyfriars School in 1907.  I have no problem with him having attended that school, but the years would not have synched up with that attempt to link him into the Famous Five of the Greyfriars stories by Charles Hamilton.  (Not to be confused with the Enid Blyton books about a different quartet of young people – and a dog! – known as the Famous Five.)

I believe in adhering to the age of the actor portraying a character unless otherwise specified within their series.  As an example, there was Luke Carpenter of ‘The Second Hundred Years’ who may have looked to be in his thirties but thanks to a natural case of cryogenics, he was over 100 years old.

As for Alexander Waverly, I prefer to think that, like Leo G. Carroll, he was born in 1886.  This of course means that he was close to 97 years of age when he died, lasting about a decade longer than the actor who portrayed him.  If that reference to him in the reunion movie as having died “recently” also suggested that he had been still involved with the U.N.C.L.E. organization, I think there’s a fanfic way to splain that away which I’ll get to in a moment.

But first, here’s a list of the qualifications for the entry of Alexander Waverly into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame:

ABSORBED FROM THE CINEVERSE
North by Northwest
The Professor

(Either acting under his own name or perhaps the alias of “John Miller”)

OFFICIAL EARTH PRIME-TIME ENTRIES
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
(1964-1968)
105 episodes

The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.
(1966-1967)
29 episodes

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Premiere
(1968)
Guests: Barbara Feldon, Flip Wilson, Leo G. Carroll, Lorne Greene, Buddy Hackett, Sheldon Leonard, Tiny Tim, The Strawberry Alarm Clock

TENTATIVE:

Channing
- A Claim to Immortality
(1964)
... Professor John Miller

REASON: GAME OF THE NAME
Mr. Waverly could have been using an alias.

Vega$
French Twist
(6 May 1981)

REASON: THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY
The character of Alexander Waverly was either the U.N.C.L.E. chief’s son in his marriage or an illegitimate child.

I mentioned a splainin for why Mr. Waverly was able to be active with U.N.C.L.E. into his late nineties.  And for that we have to venture into pure fanfic speculation.

There are several TV series which I think Mr. Waverly could make an appearance in their fan fiction.  For instance, if he was born in 1886, it could be possible that as a child he might have met Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.  (Could he have been at the Priory School in Mackleton when the Great Detective investigated the kidnapping of a student from there?  He would have been about fifteen at the time.)

But there could have been any number of opportunities for the young Waverly to have met Holmes and perhaps he was allowed to partake in Holmes’ scientific studies into the revitalizing effects of a queen bee’s royal jelly.

During the Great War, he might have crossed paths with several TV characters who also fought the Bosch – Matthew Crawley, Sherman Potter, Thomas Barrow, and William Mason among others.

Then there could be involvement with Quentin Everitt Deverill, Nick Carter, Adam Adamant, Colonel Robert Hogan, Sgt. Chip Saunders, Ellery Queen, Hercule Poirot, James West and maybe Artemus Gordon, and members of the Bellamy household, among many others.

I could even see him somehow getting tangled in adventures with Maurice and Endora, Exigius 12½, and The Doctor!

For an old duffer who was in his eighties before he was officially introduced as Alexander Waverly, our latest inductee racked up an impressive number of official credits in the role.

Welcome to the Hall, Mr. Waverly!

* The term “Cineverse” was created by Craig Shaw Gardner for a series of his novels set in the movie universe.

FRIDAY HALL OF FAMERS - SENATOR BOXER, 11/29/19

Politicians are a natural fit for the Television Crossover Hall of Fame in November, so we’re going to induct the televersion of a former senator as this week’s Friday Hall of Famer.

BARBARA BOXER

From Wikipedia:
Barbara Levy Boxer (born November 11, 1940) is a retired American politician who served as a United States Senator for California from 1993 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives 1983 to 1993.

Boxer won the 1992 election for the U.S. Senate. She previously held the record for the most votes in any U.S. Senate election in history, having received 6.96 million votes in her 2004 re-election, until her colleague, Dianne Feinstein, the senior Senator from California, surpassed that number in her 2012 re-election.  Boxer and Feinstein were the first female pair of U.S. Senators representing any state at the same time.

At the time of her retirement, Boxer ranked eleventh in seniority in the United States Senate, and was the most senior junior Senator from the retirement of Tom Harkinin January 2015 until her own retirement two years later. 

On January 8, 2015, Boxer announced that she would not seek re-election in 2016.  She was succeeded by California Attorney General Kamala Harris.

Here are the places in Toobworld where she made an appearance:

Murphy Brown
- Brown vs. the Board of Education (1994)

Gilmore Girls
- Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days (2002)

K Street
- Week 3 (2003)

Curb Your Enthusiasm
- The Anonymous Donor (2007) 

Parks and Recreation
- Ms. Knope Goes to Washington (2012)
- Ms. Ludgate-Dwyer Goes to Washington (2015)

I used to have frame grabs from the ‘Murphy Brown’ episode in which Murphy had lined up Senator Boxer and Captain Kangaroo to vouch for baby Avery to get him into one of the better day care centers in D.C.  Hopefully I can track down some replacements.

But even so, Senator Boxer has a nice showing here for her televersion in Toobworld.

Welcome to the Hall, Senator…..

FRIDAY HALL OF FAMER 11/22/19 - JIMMY BERLUTI

This week’s November Friday Hall of Famer wasn’t exactly the Newsmaker, but he got caught up in quite the Breaking News story in Boston sixteen years ago – a mentally unstable former client kidnapped fellow Hall of Famer Les Moonves and threatened to kill him on live TV.

Plus, he's from Boston, which makes him a sadly tenuous connection to the anniversary of this dark day in American History.....

JIMMY BERLUTI

From Wikipedia:
Michael Badalucco as Jimmy Berluti (1997–2004), an associate and later partner at the firm from a working-class background. Jimmy often struggles with his conscience, loneliness, feelings of inadequacy, and a gambling addiction.

From Share TV:
An associate, and later, partner at the firm. An Italian-American from a working-class background, Jimmy often struggled with his conscience, loneliness and feelings of inadequacy, as well as a brief story arc involving his problems with gambling addiction. Jimmy, like Bobby, was raised as a Catholic, and his strict upbringing often played a part in his various ethical dilemmas.

From Ryana’s Practice Page:
Jimmy Berluti is the 'teddy bear' of Donnell, Young, Dole and Frutt. Always the underdog, Jimmy is the only lawyer at the firm who isn't a partner, even though it's only because of his lack of experience. Jimmy's not the best lawyer, but he is much better than when he first joined the firm.

Jimmy's the lawyer with the biggest heart, taking the cases that touch him, like the community stricken with cancer. Previously known (and advertised) as 'Jimmy the Grunt', Jimmy has had to struggle to get over a less than flattering reputation.

Jimmy has had to grow both professionally and personally.  Whether it was dealing with his mother's admittance she was gay or staying in the firm's background while others took the forefront, Jimmy has pulled his weight. A prime example of this was his spectacular win for the firm in the liability suit against them led by Tommy Silva.

Here are Jimmy Berluti’s qualifications for membership into the Hall:

The Practice
166 episodes

Ally McBeal
- I Know Him by Heart (1999)

From the IMDb:
Ally decides she's going to become a dating machine, but it causes a whole lot of awkwardness, especially when Ling has lined up a parade of men for Ally to choose from.

(Jimmy was one of Ally’s dates.  It did not go well.)

Jimmy:
"I don't know what feminism even means. The girls I know, they want you to get the door and pick up the tab but ask them to rinse a few dishes and it's "Whoa, I'm a feminist. " What? They like dirty plates?"

Boston Public
- Chapter Thirteen (2001)

From the IMDb:
When Coach Riley is fired for withholding information about Buttle's affair, he hires the best attorneys in Boston - Ellenor Frutt and Jimmy Berluti.  

Gideon's Crossing
- Flashpoint (2001)

From the IMDb:
Ellenor Frutt is brought to Metropolitan General after collapsing and tells Ben that her baby comes first if anything happens to her.

(Jimmy comes to see Ellenor in the hospital.)

O’Bservation:
In putting this tribute together, I realize Ellenor Frutt deserves to be in the Hall as well.  Maybe next May?

And finally, as part of 'The Practice', Jimmy Berluti played a role in launching 'Boston Legal' as his own show was winding down, interacting with Alan Shore.

“I've spent my whole life thinking:

I'm not good enough.”

Jimmy Berlutti

You’re good enough to join the TVXOHOF, and that’s good enough for us.

Welcome to the Hall, Counsellor....

TV GPS - HOOTERVILLE

‘GREEN ACRES’
“DOUBLE DRICK”

In order to secure electrical lines to his farmhouse, Oliver Wendell Douglas traveled to the county seat for Hooterville.  The county was also called Hooterville, according to the sign in the power company office.

The exact location for Hooterville has always been a matter of discussion.  Almost every clue given in the episodes could be contradicted later, sometimes even in the same episode.

With the “Double Drick” episode, there was a visual monkey wrench thrown into the discussion – with the establishing image of the government building in which the power company office was located, we could see a palm tree off to the side.

It doesn’t help the cause though.  Here are the continental Eastbound states which have palm trees:

• Georgia
• Alabama
• Mississippi
• Louisiana
• Texas
• Oklahoma (disputed but true)
• Arkansas (disputed but true)
• South Carolina
• North Carolina
• Virginia (disputed but true)

So the search continues…..

BCnU!

TVXOHOF'S FRIDAY HALL OF FAMERS 11/15/2019 - MAYOR MERLE JEETER

As you can imagine, with November chosen to be the monthly theme of “Newsmakers” with it being the time of year we go to the polls, it’s the month when we induct politicians into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame, both real and fictional.

And so for the latest Friday Hall of Famer, we’re welcoming one of the greatest politicians of Toobworld, who is also in my Top 20 favorite TV characters  (Just barely.)

Here’s to Hizzoner…..

MERLE JEETER

Mayor of Fernwood, Ohio

(1976-77)

From the ‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’ pages of the Mary Kay Place Place:

Merle entered Fernwood with an eight-year-old evangelist son and a scam called “Condos for Christ.” Neither made it very far. The Reverend Jimmy Joe Jeeter was electrocuted in his bathtub, and Merle’s plans for the condos dissolved.

Merle and the little reverend had attracted singer Loretta Haggers to their causes. Loretta was oblivious to Merle’s attraction to her...but not for long.

Merle tried to seduce Loretta in his motel room, but Loretta would have none of that. Just in time, Charlie Haggers arrived with his shotgun, which went off in the confusion. Unluckily for Charlie, the gun was aimed at his testicle. Ouch.

Merle was married to Wanda Rittenhouse Jeeter. Wanda was just about the only person who could outfox Merle. He sometimes treated her like dirt, but she often ended up on top.

Merle was Fernwood’s mayor and lived up to the negative stereotype of the crooked politician. Scandal after scandal kept viewers loving to hate him.

Merle was played by Dabney Coleman

Jimmy Joe warned Charlie Haggers that Merle had designs on Loretta when she was just about to fall into Merle’s lecherous clutches. Charlie showed up at Merle’s motel room with a shotgun and accidentally shot off his own testicle.

Soon after, Jimmy Joe was hoping to find one uplifting story on the evening news, but unfortunately the news schedule conflicted with his own bath schedule. Merle rigged a tenuously roped TV over Jimmy Joe’s bath and it was not long before Jimmy Joe gave his life for the 6:30 news.

For more about the series, click here.

Here we see Merle Jeeter in action, campaigning to weasel his way into the mayor's office.

Here are the shows which qualify Mayor Jeeter for membership in the TVXOHOF:

1976-1977
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
148 episodes

1977
Fernwood Tonight
- Talk to a Jew (1977)
- Episode #1.33 (1977)

1977
Forever Fernwood
Unknown number of episodes

Finally, here’s his appearance on Fernwood 2 Night:

Welcome to the Hall, Mr. Mayor!

FRIDAY HALL OF FAMERS, 11/15/19 - GORE VIDAL

CBS in their all-knowing and wise beneficence (I know how to kiss network ass with the best of them) has been airing the first season of ‘The Good Fight’ over “regular CBS” this summer.    It’s a great marketing “strategery” to get more viewers to sign up for CBS All-Access. (However, while I do love this series as I did ‘The Good Wife’, I’m adhering to my pledge of three premium platforms and no more.  But that trailer for ‘Star Trek: Picard’ is awfully damned tempting.)

‘THE GOOD WIFE’
“SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS DISCONTENTS”

In a recent episode about drafting new terms of service for a major client who is basically the Toobworld version of Google, the following dialogue came up:

MARISSA GOLD:
They're working to get around your racist N-word ban.
DIANE LOCKHART:
How? 
MARISSA:
Whenever they mean N-word they instead type ‘Neil Gross’.
DIANE:
Yeah.
MARISSA:
I can print up the posts, but there are a lot.
DIANE:
All racist jokes with Neil Gross as the punchline….
That's not gonna go over well.

Later, Diane meets with the client, one Neil Gross…..

NEIL GROSS:
They're using my name? 
DIANE:
Yes.
NEIL:
I-I don't understand.  How? 
DIANE:
As a replacement for the N-word.
NEIL:
What, seriously? 
DIANE:
- Yes.
NEIL:
- Why? 
DIANE:
- They know you can't censor it.
NEIL:
- Oh, my God.

That idea of substituting a person’s name for what could be an obscene word was very familiar to me.  And while I didn’t read it at the time, I remember the reviews for “Myron”, Gore Vidal’s prequel to “Myra Breckinridge”.

From Wikipedia:

“Myron” is a novel by American author Gore Vidal, published in 1974. It was written as a sequel to his 1968 bestseller “Myra Breckinridge”. The novel was published shortly after an anti-pornography ruling by the Supreme Court; Vidal responded by replacing the profanity in his novel with the names of the Justices involved (e.g., "He thrust his enormous Rehnquist deep within her Whizzer White", etc.)

In his introduction to the novel, Vidal mentions the Supreme Court decision Miller v. California, which in his words "leaves to each community the right to decide what is pornography." Saying that the decision has "alarmed and confused peddlers of smut" by eliminating guidelines, Vidal says he has decided to substitute the names of the five Justices who voted for the decision, plus the names of anti-pornography crusaders Charles Keating of Citizens for Decent Literature and Father Morton A. Hill, S.J. of Morality in Media (whom Vidal had debated on ‘The David Susskind Show’ in 1968), for the "dirty words". He has done this to conform to the Supreme Court's imposition of the "community standards" test, as he wants "to conform with the letter and spirit of the Court's decision."

These are the words and their substitutions:

blackmun: ass
burger: fuck
father hills: tits
keating: shit
powells: balls
rehnquist: cock
whizzer white: cunt

Later editions of the novel do not use these substitutions.

The young gay, racist, neo-Nazi in this episode who was spearheading this online attack against the search engine ChumHum was no dummy.  He was intelligent and more than likely had come up with this campaign inspired by the same source I was thinking of – he knew about Vidal’s literary technique of name substitution to get around a problem.  He may have even read the televersion of the book “Myron”.

And of course there would be a televersion of “Myron”.  It was written by Gore Vidal, after all, and there is a televersion of the author in the main Toobworld as well as in the Tooniverse.

In Toobworld, Vidal’s fictional televersion is best known for his visit to a little town called Fernwood, Ohio in 1976….

‘Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman’
- Episode #2.08 (1976) ... (credit only)
- Episode #2.10 (1976) ... (uncredited)
- Episode #2.18 (1976) ... (uncredited)
- Episode #2.20 (1976) ... (uncredited)
- Episode #2.21 (1976) ... (credited)
- Episode #2.22 (1976) ... (uncredited)
- Episode #2.23 (1976) ... (credit only)
- Episode #2.25 (1976) ... (uncredited)

As for the Tooniverse:

‘The Simpsons’
- “Moe'N'a Lisa” (2006)

‘Family Guy’
- “Mother Tucker” (2006)

These three appearances make Gore Vidal eligible for the TV Crossover Hall of Fame as a multi-dimensional, even without a definitive link to ‘The Good Fight’. 

And as November is the month in which newsmakers like the late Gore Vidal are inducted, we’ve chosen the author to join the ranks.

Welcome to the Hall, Mr. Vidal…..

O'BSERVATION:
When I began the research on this post and learned that only the first edition of the novel had the substitute words, I decided to get a copy for myself, if only for the crass reasoning that it would be worth money - more money than I paid for it anyway.

I got a nice copy of the first edition - and signed by the late Gore Vidal to boot! - for a very reasonable price.  Ha!  And now by publishing this post in November (just over four months from now), I must be trying to increase its value by posting about it here.

I'm probably screwed.....  LOL

BCnU!