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Post by quantumcat on Aug 30, 2005 20:32:17 GMT -5
Think of the possibilities if we carefully matched sponsors to series.
Geico sponsoring NASCAR and "The Dukes of Hazzard" Playtex sponsoring "Howard Stern" Gerber sponsoring the WWF
Imagine insisting that Budweiser,Marlboro and their ilk pay for animating Rupert Bear or the Veggi-tales.
it could be...interesting.....
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Post by tjaman on Jun 5, 2006 12:16:29 GMT -5
A drinking game was proposed -- one shot every time the heroine chirped "Thank you!" -- but was quickly abandoned when it was realized that no one would be conscious by the end of the show and several attentive fans would die of alcohol poisoning.
Despite her effusive and often dismissive gratitude, Kyra Sedgwick as Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson of Atlanta, Ga., is arguably more endearing than irritating -- a judgment viewers can make for themselves as last summer's No. 1 new drama "The Closer" returns to the airwaves with all new episodes Monday night at 9 p.m. on TNT.
The case is a headline-grabber. With a cop-killer on the loose, an all-too-familiar turf war breaks out between Johnson's team in Priority Homicide and Capt. Taylor's Robbery-Homicide Division.
The landscape has changed, however. Unlike the first season, where Johnson had to prove herself at every turn, this year she is a much more known quantity. Her position is firm and her team's loyalty is secure. And in her personal life, her budding relationship with Agent Fritz Howard of the FBI seems to be moving in a good direction as well.
The most compelling aspects of this production are not the forensic sciences -- oftentimes Johnson must work in the dark pursuing leads because the forensic evidence can't keep up with her.
Instead, as discussed in the series premier, the problem for the cops -- and the purpose for Johnson's presence -- has been their lax handling of evidence and dubious interrogation styles.
Enter Brenda Leigh Johnson. Through eagle-eyed attention to detail, building on the tireless efforts of her team of investigators, she knows how to present the questions that will get her the confessions she's looking for -- playing on preconceived notions, masterful misdirection and her own considerable personal charisma.
By the second season premier, she has proven that she can get the confessions that will lead to convictions -- the goal for securing her in the first place. As she states with confidence -- or, as she puts it, forcefully expressed optimism -- "As any good interrogator will tell you: As hard as a secret is to uncover, it's even harder to keep."
If she's proven herself deftly capable professionally, her personal life is utter chaos, which is part of why she's such a great character. While Sedgwick is stunningly beautiful, Johnson is never convinced of this fact herself and presents such a painful sense of longing for the ubiquitous snack foods floating around the office -- willpower to which any self-depriving dieter can instantly relate.
And her personal life has been one of clumsy alliance with a friend of hers from the FBI, one which she's never completely comfortable with since she doesn't want to appear compromised in the eyes of her team or of her boss, with whom she had an extramarital affair in the past.
Add the fact that two of the guys who've come on to her most recently are convicted murders and a girl can easily begin to wonder what kind of vibe she's giving off.
But despite a stolen Ding Dong here and a stolen kiss with her agent friend there -- and a fluffy pile of adorable kittens she more or less inherited when she moved into the home of a murdered prostitute -- and I've gotta believe she got a deal on that piece of real estate -- at the end of the day, it's impossible to ignore how capable and competent Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson is when it comes to not only catching the bad guys, but putting them behind bars.
Features Editor tjaman compiles the Best Bets for The Minot Daily News.
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Post by tjaman on Jun 5, 2006 13:46:03 GMT -5
"Nothing's over. It's just starting. The war."
Twelve-year-old Maia Rutledge's most dire vision to date follows a wide-ranging conspiracy to infect abductees with a plague in the aftermath of a charismatic leader's apparent assassination and a change in leadership at "The 4400 Center."
The third season of USA's "The 4400" premiering Sunday at 9 p.m. promises even more darkness and paranoia as tensions between Homeland Security NTAC division agents Tom Baldwin and Diana Skouris and Tom's nephew, Shawn, who takes over leadership at the Center and tries to make it seem less like a cult.
Unresolved is Tom's son, Kyle, who turns himself in for his assassination of "The 4400 Center" founder Joseph Collier, although the attack occurred during a moment of blackout and apparent possession.
Kyle himself has already been identified as a conduit for information between the world of the present and the Future, a collective of human beings from the distant future which engineered the abductions in the first place in order to secure their survival without being completely explicit as to exactly what this meant.
Kyle's abduction had been interrupted, however, by his cousin, Shawn, and there's some indication that Shawn was never meant to be an abductee, despite the extraordinary gifts of healing that surfaced after his abduction.
Healing is just one of the many, many superhuman abilities that manifested after a group of 4,400 persons were abducted from various points in history and returned to the timeline in the present with no experience of having aged. People can read minds, project alternate realities and, in the case of Maia, predict the future.
At the center of the mystery -- that is, who are the 4,400 and what, ultimately, are they meant to do -- is the not unremarkable appearance of a child named Isabelle, who seems to be a significant guiding force. She was conceived while her mother and father were abducted, and she matures quite quickly, appearing as a grown woman at the beginning of season three, clearly with something to say.
Perhaps about the apparent castaway Jordan Collier who seems dazed and disheveled but very much alive, washed up on a shoreline far removed from all of this activity.
The war that Maia foresees in the aftermath of the collapsing conspiracy is only beginning, and shakeups seem inevitable. But if Season Three presents anything even remotely as interesting as Seasons One and Two, viewers are in for some exciting viewage indeed.
Features Editor tjaman compiles the Best Bets for The Minot Daily News.
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Post by tjaman on Jan 2, 2007 16:30:28 GMT -5
I admit, this show was difficult to take the first time around.
First of all, try finding it. "Star Trek: Enterprise" originally aired on UPN, which had a viewership of nine square blocks of unincorporated land near Eugene, Ore. It was then rebroadcast in this market at 2:37 a.m. Saturdays on ABC in months without an "R" using a fax machine connected to a typewriter. Add to that that it was regularly pre-empted by Pia Zadora specials, Latvian cooking shows, telethon bloopers and a test pattern so it was really hard to follow the plot.
And that was a shame, because this was the first voyage of the prototypical Enterprise, the "Star Trek" prequel that would establish the link between history as it is being written and the five-year misison of the original series.
Even that had an iffy quality to it. Scott Bakula as Capt. Jonathan Archer was an unlikely helmsman, and the goofs he blundered into were in no way dissimilar to problems faced by chronological successor, William Shatner as Capt. James T. Kirk in the original "Star Trek" series. It wasn't until Patrick Stewart as Capt. Jean Luc Picard took over the captain's chair in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," in fact, that anyone figured out that it was a generally bad idea to send the captain out on every single away mission.
Also, the design flaws in the tricorders were theoretically ironed out with the invention of the cell phone -- I can't imagine why they went back to fiddling with dials.
And I'm guessing that the chintzy pastel plasterboard construction of the 1960s version was a reaction to the dark, dark interior design of the ship envisioned in the "Enterprise" series -- I'd swear some of the scenes in "Enterprise" were lit with a birthday candle on an adjacent soundstage.
Of course, the ship in the "Next Generation" series looked like nothing so much as a 1980s office complex so really, all of the ships were very much products of their times.
The plot is very simple: With the development of warp drive on Earth sometime later than now, human beings were able to think realistically in terms of interstellar travel.
And leading this exploration was Capt. Archer, equipped with prototypical phasers and teleporters and perhaps most amusingly, magnetic drag lines that served the function of tractor beams before they came up with those.
This was very much a story in transition -- they hadn't even developed the Prime Directive in the context of the show (the philosophy guiding First Contact with alien species) -- but more to the point, "Enterprise" was a ship with a destiny. You could tell -- not just by the incredibly cheesy theme song -- but because it was beset week after week with time travellers waging some sort of war that crossed through Archer's timeline and beyond.
There were also new and different aliens that posed overwhelming threats to humanity -- and not just Vulcans with a mass of bureaucracy and an attitude problem.
"Enterprise" chugged along for three years before it all but ran out of steam, and then went for one more so as to hit the magic number required for syndication.
So now, here it is again in all its glory. "Enterprise" this week premieres with four back-to-back episodes starting at 6 p.m., airing every Monday on the Sci-Fi Channel.
It should be quite a bit easier to catch it this time around. And who knows? From what little I remember of the original run, it seemed like it might even be worth it.
tjaman compiles the Best Bets for The Minot Daily News.
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Post by quantumcat on Jan 2, 2007 22:35:47 GMT -5
Excellent essay ,tj!!! Why don't the studios and networks listen to fans and critics better than they do? Or common sense? tj,you should write a knockoff of the 'evil overlord's list' to demonstrate how to have a successful series. All who love quality films and television would thank you.
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