you might very well think so...

Eight ends. Bah! What the heck is next? Six-inning baseball games? 13-hole golf tournaments? Sheesh. Sonsabitches.

After patiently waiting, I'll be running home past my friendly local video store and snapping up (I hope, if they're not already gone) a copy of the Venture Bros Season III set. For some reason, the VB series hits all the right notes in my opinion. Go get yours today, and if you don't have the first two sets, they're also highly recommended.

Another great column from Lisa de Moraes skewers Fox' new, much-hyped drama, "Fringe". I'm rather glad I did not see this thing, now that I read her column. She gets right to the carving in her first couple paragraphs:

Fox noted it was the network's most watched drama premiere in two years, if you exclude most of its drama premieres of the past two years. Actually, what Fox said was that "Fringe" was its highest-rated drama series debut in two years "excluding premieres following sports and 'American Idol.' "

Since September 2006, all but three Fox dramas ("K-Ville," "Canterbury's Law" and "Drive") have launched after a sports telecast or "Idol."

Snap.

Apparently, even if you're the POTUS, you shouldn't try cracking on Bob "The Smartest Sportscaster On The Planet, And Don't I Know It" Costas.

So apparently Whedon has gone back to shoot a new first episode for his new project, Dollhouse. Apparently the suits at Fox¹ "loved the pilot when they read it", then saw the pilot, and thought it felt a "little different than [they] thought it was going to".

How long till we start thinking of Joss Whedon in roughly the same way we think about Tim Minear?

_____
¹Wait, isn't that the network that...? Yes. Yes, it is.

... and I say, thank goodness. The world has more than enough Babylon 5 material to watch, and re-watch, for better and for worse. It's time to move on and put money into making new things. I feel the same about most genre shows that get glommed onto by fannish devotion: nearly all of them have spent their time under the sun, told their stories, and in many cases long over-stayed their welcome. Some shows get canned before their chance to really solidly settle in (FireFly, for example, and Timothy Hutton's Nero Wolfe series).

But B5 is certainly not one of those.

I had no idea who Lisa de Moraes was, until I started listening to Mr Tony. Now she's one of my favourite columnists. Not because she writes about television; but rather, because she is one of the wittiest prickly pens without mercy I know of. Viz:

And nothing says "founding fathers" like a 17-hour MSNBC "To Catch a Predator" marathon, including two blocks of extra-special "Predator Raw: The Unseen Tapes." God bless America.→

Now, I do think there's something creepy, vile, and criminal about sexual abuse. And I also am saddened and mystified by what must be broken in the brains of those who compulsively lust after children.

But I cannot help but wonder how many notches up the pr0n scale from the criminality it purports to despise we find the natural home of voyeuristic pap like "To Catch a Predator".

Go Lisa.

According to AICN, here's the shows that Britain's Empire magazine are better than The Wire on their alltime best TV list:
- Friends
- 24
- Lost
- The West Wing
- The Sopranos
- Buffy
- The Simpsons

Oh, please. These sorts of lists always reveal more about how the source feels about their target demographic than it reveals about anything closely approximating an impartial judgement of quality.

MASH? not listed.

Mary Tyler Moore show? not listed.

I Love Lucy? not listed.

Dick vanDyke show? not listed.

The Honeymooners? not listed.

Jack Benny? not listed.

Gunsmoke? not listed.

Any television show at all made before 1980? not listed.

Bah. These sorts of lists only serve to add that frisson of enragement to my day. I must learn not to glance at them.

... but I'm getting a bit tired of Hollywood categorizing yet another "paranormal" themed product as "science fiction". I mean, it's certainly fiction, but where the heck is the science?

Bah!

Unfortunately, a comic icon of my youth has died. Suzanne Pleshette died on the weekend, of respiratory failure. The Bob Newhart show was one of the few shows I grew up with that my entire family enjoyed watching, together. (That, and MASH.)

Goodnight, Emily.