WHAT NOT TO ZONK

Based on the way they clutter up the BBC-America schedule, I'd say that shows like 'Cash In The Attic', 'House Invaders', and 'What Not To Wear' must be staggeringly popular in the manor, squire.

And being so popular, they're irresistible TV references as pop culture touchstones in other shows. This is fine, since they fall into the category of "reality" shows and could just as easily be seen by the residents of Toobworld as they are in the real world.

So when 'Antique Roadshows' and 'Cash In The Attic' are mentioned in an episode of 'Torchwood', there's no worries about a Zonk.

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

NEW @ TOOBWORLD CENTRAL

Based on what I read in Ivan's "Thrilling Days Of Yesteryear" (link to the left), I ordered several DVDs from DVD Pacific. And the first batch from that order arrived today.

First up, "Legendary Lawmen", which contains 2 episodes each of 'Bat Masterson' starring Gene Barry, and 'The Deputy' with Henry Fonda.

All four episodes may end up being in the 12 DVD boxed set 'Ultimate TV Westerns', which has 150 episodes of shows that were all probably in the public domain.

Besides 'Bat Masterson' and 'The Deputy', this set also has episodes from:

'26 Men'
'The Adventures of Champion'
'The Adventures Of Jim Bowie'
'The Adventures Of Kit Carson'
'Annie Oakley'
'Bonanza' (10 episodes? Must have been really cheap to acquire.)
'Buffalo Bill'
'The Cisco Kid'
'Cowboy G-Men'
'Death Valley Days'
'Frontier Doctor'
'Fury'
'The Gabby Hayes Show'
'Hawkeye And The Last Of The Mohicans'
'Hudson's Bay'
'Judge Roy Bean'
'The Life And Times Of Wyatt Earp' (I already have that boxed set.)
'The Lone Ranger'
'Northwest Passage'
'Pistols And Petticoats'
'The Range Rider'
'The Rifleman'
'The Roy Rogers Show'
'Sergeant Preston Of The Yukon'
'Shotgun Slade'
'Stories Of The Century'
'Wagon Train'

The bookshelf I built in high school, long but not high, is now officially full with TV DVDs.

Putting them away just now, I realized I better call a moratorium on Classic Western compilations. I have another, smaller, boxed set of TV Westerns with 26 episodes from several of the shows listed above. I'll not be surprised to see that they're all the same episodes.

Still, these will be nice to work through during my lunch hour at the hotel. And now with the HIS system installed, I could probably squeeze in a few more during the long quiet stretch after the audit is finished and before the first checkouts come down.

There's still more to come from that initial order I made; several episodes of 'Studio One' and 'Telephone Time'.......

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

"THE OFFICE" ON GALACTICA

Dwight:
"Do you watch 'Battlestar Galactica'?"
Party Guest:
"No."
Dwight:
"You're an idiot."
'The Office'

Here's the splainin that Will Devine came up with for us back in January 31st:

In Toobworld, the new BSG is actually a TV series (because the Toobworld inhabitants have to be entertained by something), but it comes from the 'mind' of Ron Moore, who himself is a Galactican that came to Earth in 1980. The public at large doesn't yet know about humans not of this Earth, and as such Ron Moore decided to take advantage of this situation by taking the real personas that guided the ragtag fleet to Earth in the first place and making them into characters in his television show.

Then, perhaps due to network involvement or to appease his fellow Galacticans on Earth, he changed some of the characters around, like making Starbuck and Boomer into women and creating new characters like Number Six. If you want to take this theory even further, you can even say that Moore had to appease Captain Apollo, now going by the name Richard Hatch on Earth, by giving him the role of Tom Zarek on this television show.

It's a bit out there, I know, but I feel like the public at large in Toobworld should be much like the public at large in reality: mostly oblivious to the more fantastic things going on around them. Galactica saving the Earth from a Cylon invasion, and everyone knowing about it, would be a serious blow to that idea.

I'll add to this that Dwight Schrute is the kind of guy who would know about the Galacticans living among us. (He's also the kind of guy who found out about the Dharma Initiative and wants to know who else knows about it. This is why he asked Ryan about it out in the radish field.)

How does Dwight come by all this conspiratorial knowledge? He used to be a subscriber to "The Lone Gunmen" while it was still in circulation (before its publishers - Langley, Byers, and Frohike - were killed).

I'll still hold to my own premise that any mention of Six in relation to Galactica by citizens of Toobworld refers to the young woman who was born on the original Battlestar but raised on Earth. It's too good to pass up.

SHOWS CITED:
'The Office'
'Battlestar Galactica' (remake)
'Battlestar Galactica' (original)
'The X-Files'
'The Lone Gunmen'
'Lost'
'Blossom'

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

TWIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES

There are times when 'Boston Legal' takes a page from 'Law & Order' and does "ripped from the headlines" stories. At the very least, they find inspiration from actual events taking place in our society. Like the recent storyline about a preserved body being exhibited at a museum which was stolen by the deceased's daughter.

Here's a news item that might find a better home at 'Boston Legal' than at 'Law & Order': a man in Wisconsin burst into the apartment of his upstairs neighbor, brandishing a sword, in order to save a woman he heard being raped.

As it turned out, the upstairs neighbor was watching a pornographic video.

The full story can be found here.

I wouldn't put it past the show to have Jerry Espenson be the client... again. Or the sex museum professor.

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

ZONKS: LEGAL FILES

This week on 'Boston Legal', Jerry Espenson mentioned 'The X-Files' as a TV show, one that aired in a lousy time slot on Friday nights; and that it was a TV show in search of the Truth.

Seems like a pretty damning case for a Zonk, doesn't it?

But 'The X-Files' and 'Boston Legal' can still exist in the same TV dimension. And we have to make sure theydo since both can eventually be officially linked to 'Homicide: Life On The Street' ('The X-Files' more directly so).

In Toobworld, 'The X-Files' was the name given to those FBI cases that dealt with the supernatural, paranormal activities, unexplained phenomena, and the just plain weird. I'm thinking that some enterprising TV production company - perhaps the one that brought 'Wormhole Extreme' to the airwaves - must have used the Freedom of Information Act to get those files declassified.

They they would present docu-dramas based on those files; dramatizations combined with interviews with actual participants. All of this would be hosted by some aging, fading star, perhaps someone like Dennis Dupree.

Here in the Real World, these shows used to be popular - 'Unsolved Mysteries', 'Rescue 911', 'Ripley's Believe It Or Not', 'Beyond Belief', 'In Search Of....'

The Toobworld version of 'The X-Files' is no longer on the air; Jerry spoke of it in the past tense. And it may not have broadcast many episodes before it was cancelled - he asked the jury if they even remembered it at all. But one dramatization may have focused attention on a case from Boston itself, when a deadly biological threat was found in the subway system.

This splainin could be used to support a different theory used to disable 'X-Files' Zonks. Sometimes characters won't mention the show, but they will bring up the two main characters. ("Okay Mulder and Scully, say now that I believe you." - PC Andy, 'Torchwood')

I've dealt with that kind of Zonk before, splainin that those two FBI agents gained notoriety and even fame (infamy) after they went on the run. The Toobworld version of 'The X-Files' might have added to that, since they would have been key players in the cases dramatized for each episode.

Plus there was that big-screen movie based on an "X File", which starred Garry Shandling as a Mulder type and Tea Leoni as an agent based on Scully. (Also there's a roman a clef novel entitled "From Outer Space" by Jose Chung.)

So that Beantown Zonk has been disabled, and can be filed away.

SHOWS CITED:
'Boston Legal'
'The X-Files'
'Homicide: Life On The Street'
'Stargate SG-1'
'Hope & Gloria'
'Rescue 911'
'Unsolved Mysteries'
'Ripley's Believe It Or Not'
'Beyond Belief'
'In Search Of.....'

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

LEAGUE OF THEMSELVES SKED ALERT: NELLY FURTADO

Today at 2 pm EST, Nelly Furtado will be appearing as herself on 'One Life To Live'. The Grammy winner will be performing two songs at the Capricorn Club - "Say It Right" and "Promiscuous".

In the fictional world of the TV Universe, the televersion of Nelly Furtado has known club owner Antonio for a very long time, which splains why she's there in Llanview, Pennsylvania.

This links 'OLTL' with 'Roswell', in which she appeared as herself in an episode ("Baby, It's You") back in 2001. But there's no connection with 'CSI' in which she also appeared, because in that she was a character named Ava Brandt.

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

DOUBLE VISION: SUNSHINE SUPERMEN

A commenter in another TV blog mentioned this bit of mult-casting:

"Something else I found really funny is that the guy who played Desmond’s friend, Donovan, [on 'Lost'] is the same person who played Mohinder’s friend, Nirand, in 'Heroes'."

For Toobworld's purposes, they are identical cousins, although I don't think hot dogs make them lose control. And being so closely related, they both found success in the fields of academia.

While Nirand's family stayed behind in India, Donovan's family moved to Great Britain. This probably happened back in the early to mid-sixties before he was born. It's my contention that Donovan's parents were so caught up in the culture of the times that they became big fans of the music of Donovan Leitch. So much so, that they named their son after the musician.

It could have been worse. His name could have been Barabajagal.

Not that Nirand is much better.

Just sayin', is all.....

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

SPEAKING OF ADDISON'S DISEASE.....

Shawn Spencer and Burton Guster of the 'Psych' Detective Agency proved in the episode "Game, Set.... Muuuurder" that they're only playing at being tele-cognizant, that Toobworld ability to know that you're living within a TV universe.

Gus kept trying to match Shawn in the delivery of portentous and gripping dialogue, the kind that would be heard in murder mysteries. But... he kept coming up short.

It's a skill mastered by David Addison of the Blue Moon Detective Agency (as seen in 'Moonlighting'), who also knew that he was in a TV Show and that he was just following the script.

If Gus and Shawn actually knew they were in a TV show instead of just acting like it, they would have heard the dramatic surge of music when Gus tried out the line about the mystery attacker going back to the hospital to finish off the victim.

I'm going to have to add David Addison to my Wish-Craft list of Toobworld guest stars and what shows they should be visiting.

And a nice in-joke in that episode: the victim was named Deanna Sirtis. Marina Sirtis played an empathic counselor on 'Star Trek: The Next Generation', who in her own way was able to read minds - at least the moods and feelings of her patients. That counselor was named Deanna Troi.

Deanna would have given Shawn a run for his money!

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

BREADED LAMB CHOPPED

So if a soldier dying in a Korean 'M*A*S*H' unit back in the 1950s and the Sheriff of Neptune, California, dying just the other day both smell bread in their final moments, is this some kind of neurological condition found only in Toobworld, or is it just an in-joke for the real world?

I was sorry to see Sheriff Lamb join the choir invisible this week on 'Veronica Mars', if only because I don't think we ever got to find out if any of his "boys" were utilized in siring Lamb progeny. Was Lamb married? Did he have any kids? Maybe he had one off the wrist on a regular basis at the Neptune sperm bank.....

There was just something about the look of Michael Muhney as Sheriff Lamb that made me think he could have been a factor in the family tree of one Captain Jack Harkness, as played by John Barrowman in 'Doctor Who' and 'Torchwood'.

Of course, many centuries separate the two. Captain Jack (Harkness was not his real name by the way.) was from the 52 Century. But DNA in Toobworld is a mighty chain of chromosomes and it can repeat itself many times down the line in the genetic makeup of a family.

The imagery/symbolism of Lamb and the smell of bread on Mardi Gras, the eve of Lent, was kind of creepy for this old altar boy. Just thought I'd mention that......

Not that I'm saying Christ was a self-centered doofus, mind you!

BCnU!
Tele-Toby

SPINNING GREY

It's being reported that Shonda Rhimes will be developing a spin-off from her monster hit for ABC, 'Grey's Anatomy'. Although there's no title yet and no description of the plotline, it looks like the show will focus on Dr. Addison Montgomery Shepherd, played by Kate Walsh.

"We are producing an enhanced episode that has a potential for an afterlife," said a representative for the show's producer, ABC Television Studio. (Sounds like the typical corporate-speak you'd expect from a network suit.)

The spin-off would focus on Addison rather than on a cadre of co-stars like the mother series, and it's unclear just yet as to where the show will take place. I'm betting that she'll move back to New York City, to keep the interaction between the characters of both shows to a minimum. Otherwise, viewers might start asking why she doesn't see Alex or Dr. McDreamy more often if she was still in Seattle.

But it doesn't look like the character of Alex will be joining her in the new show, so that relationship is probably headed to the trash heap by May.

In fact, it appears as if Addison will be the only character to be jettisoned into the spin-off, but the others will be involved in setting up her departure. There will be a two-part showcase on 'Grey's Anatomy' timed for May Sweeps so that ABC can look at the numbers for the episode and decide whether or not to develop it into a full-blown series.

So 'Grey's Anatomy' was a title geared to the main character, Meredith Grey. What will they do for Addison? 'Addison's Disease'? Eeeyuhhh.

BCnU!
Tele-Toby