Well, dear readers, once upon a time there was television. Just as now there IS television. Some would say that we’re in a second Golden Age of Television and, I suppose, if you count the plethora of cable stations that might be true. I have truthfully watched almost no network TV for the past, oh, I don’t know, thirty years. Therefore I have no knowledge of hit shows that ran eleven years or shows that ran a week. Yes, I’ve seen an occasional bit of one of the CSI shows, a short bit of Law and Order, maybe ten minutes of Friends, a couple of episodes of Seinfeld, and that’s about it, other than an odd look at short bits of other more recent shows, especially now that I’m getting all these SAG screeners, although the majority of them are from cable channels. But last night I had occasion to watch something called Criminal Minds because our very own Sandy Bainum had a small role in it (she did very well, by the way). But from what I could tell, it just looks like every other crime show on TV and I found not one thing about it interesting. It’s a bunch of people sitting around giving boring exposition to solve the case of the week. From what I gather, this is now in its eleventh year. Go know. I mean, the characters, at least at this stage of the game, are not exactly compelling, and the case itself was rather, well, tritely written. So, what did I learn from watching this forty-two minute hour-long show? Well, I learned that “perp” is old news and “unsub” has replaced it. I’ve learned that the new buzzword on shows like this is “PTSD”. I’ve learned that all FBI agents are young and pretty. I’ve learned that there’s always a hard-bitten older “leader” (here played by Joe Mantegna), and a younger FBI stud. Oh, and the comical girl at the computer, whose job it is to type away madly and play the same beat for eleven years. The writing on these shows is really no better than any cop show of the 1970s – in fact, the plots are really all the same, just gussied up in newspeak, bleak and grim settings, with more violence shot in a today way. At least it’s not one of those oh so with it series with one storyline that goes on for the entirety of the season. The comedies I’ve seen are, for me, worse than any of it.
So, are my memories of what I considered to be amazing television really all that? Why yes, I do think so. One look at Name of the Game, for example, where mostly every week we were treated to a really good story with non-mumbling actors. We had fun detective shows – some great, some horrible, but all better than these CSI-type shows, at least for me they were. The sitcoms of old? Well, I don’t think there’s one comedy on TV right now that gets the laughs of even the worst I Love Lucy. But even in the 70s, the likes of Laverne and Shirley had episodes that were wildly and unpredictably funny. Why? Because they had two stars who based their characters in at least a modicum of reality. In the sitcoms I see today, the lead may escape being a cliché, but none of the supporting players do. In Younger, for example, Sutton Foster is terrific – good timing, nice way with a line, and she plays her character as real. The supporting players? All archetypes who speak in writer speak, which I absolutely hate. Of course, we have reality TV, which I loathe (especially having toiled in it for a short time). Everything I see is overproduced, overhyped, and overdone. I don’t know, we got through forty years of TV without lower thirds, network bugs, and an hour show that actually ran close to an hour. When thirty-minute shows were first done, they ran twenty-six minutes. They probably don’t run more than nineteen minutes now. And they can’t fill nineteen minutes with funny? That’s what’s really horrifying.
Were sitcoms like The Brady Bunch or The Partridge Family really better than today’s shows? Well, they were certainly more innocent and certainly the characters were at least trying to be real. My belief is it all started really going to hell in the 80s. Have their been great shows in the 90s and 2000s – of course, even some on the networks, I’d have to imagine. But the major stuff has been on cable, but even that stuff has become trying these days. The best TV I’ve seen has usually been Danish and Swedish crime shows, which are very much their own thing. And there’s been some wonderful Brit stuff recently.
But I think back on stuff like Naked City and Route 66 and The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits and the old-fashioned doctor shows like Kildare and Ben Casey, and even the silliest stuff like Highway Patrol and Superman and The Lone Ranger and Zorro, and then the groundbreakers like Dick Van Dyke and the Mary Tyler Moore Show and All in the Family and Maude – those were all shows you just never wanted to miss – and you couldn’t because there was no damn tape or home video or anything. You could catch them in reruns or syndication ultimately, but we all wanted to see them first run. I was blessed enough to be in TV as an actor during what was, again for me, the last great burst of television. On Criminal Minds I literally had to stop counting the number of producers, supervising producers, executive producers, co-executive producers and on and on. I don’t really know that point of any of this rambling, but watching this show last night just made me all nostalgic for older shows.
Yesterday was quite an okay day of no real substance or interest. I was up at nine and to the car dealers at ten to pick up my motor car. I stopped at Gelson’s on the way home and got some chicken filets and some shrooms of mush, then came home. The helper came by and took everything she needed to ship the vocal selection books, so those should have all gone out yesterday by one. Then I rustled up some grub, namely I sautéed the chicken filets, the shrooms of mush and some onions, then made my Wacky Noodles sauce and poured the whole damn thing over some rice. I ate it all up and it was really tasty. I also realized that they hadn’t fixed the keyless button on the car – it simply will not lock the car as it should and hasn’t for a year now. It was on the list to fix and they simply didn’t even look at it. So, I called the service guy, he saw that was correct, apologized, and said to bring it in today and that they’d fix the programming in about ten minutes. Then I did some writing and other work and eventually I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a DGA screener that had just arrived, entitled Black Mass, the story of gangster Whitey Fulger. I’d recently watched a documentary about him on Netflix, so I basically knew the story. There’s nothing really new in this film – it’s competently made, it’s violent, of course, but not as violent as others I’ve seen, it has a nice score, and good performances, including an unmannered one by Johnny Depp as Fulger. In the end it’s just another crime boss film with nothing that really makes it stand out from the crime boss films crowd. It does run under two hours, which is always a plus.
Then I watched a hoary old thing from 1959, entitled The Bat, starring Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. I saw it back then and it always stuck with me – I thought it had good atmosphere and I liked the masked Bat and thought it was a good little mystery, so much so that I went out and bought the play of it. Well, it’s really doesn’t have good atmosphere and the masked Bat is rather silly, and the mystery you can solve in about ten minutes, and it just lumbers along for its eighty minutes. The transfer is from a 35mm print – and guess what? The wags are saying it’s quite good, which is interesting because the same wags are usually crying about transfers that aren’t 4K and from the original camera negative. Funny how that works. This print is riddled with negative dirt, positive dirt, splices, and emulsion scratches. It’s got nice contrast and reasonable sharpness, and since the film is in the public domain it far outshines any previous home video releases. But for the distributor to call this “restored” is a huge joke.
For my evening snack I sautéed up a small chicken filet and made a little chicken sandwich – tiny, really, but very tasty. Then I watched Criminal Minds, and then I did some more work on the commentary for Sunday’s party.
Today, I’ll mosey on over to the car dealer to have them fix the keyless button so that it actually works, then I’ll come home, finish the commentary, begin the commentary for the Kritzerland show, eat, hopefully pick up some packages, and then relax.
Tomorrow we’re having a look-see at the program for Sunday’s show and I’ll make any suggestions I need to, and see if his order works for me. Last year, I flipped a few things around and cut a couple of things. Saturday I’m seeing a play, and Sunday is the birthday bash.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, go to the car dealer, eat, hopefully pick up packages, write, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What TV shows do you like that are currently on the three major networks, and what were your favorite never-miss shows of old? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland where I shall ruminate on my favorite old TV shows. Oh, and please do send your strongest most excellent vibes and xylophones for quick packaging approval, so we can get this damn title announced.