I want the original Star Trek on DVD in season sets as much as the next guy -- there was no way in HELL I was going to spend $800 bucks on 40 separate disks -- but could this box art be any stranger? What the hell is that, a chubby communicator?

Ah, I'll still buy it. There's something about the goofy charm of the original series that none of the later series quite captured. And I'm not just saying that because I spent an insomniac hour Monday night (or more accurately, Tuesday morning) watching "Court Martial" on the Sci-Fi Channel.

People who have been following this discussion should be aware that the woman formerly known as "Matter-Eater Wife" will henceforth be referred to in this blog as "She Who Must Be Obeyed."

Matter-Eater Wife and I have, to our chagrin, been enjoying the hell out of WB's Superstar USA, the mean-spirited version of American Idol in which the judges sought out the worst singers they could possibly find. Part of the appeal is the contestants' sheer willful ignorance of their own suckiness; these people are simply convinced that, while they've been living (to borrow a phrase from another fake-out reality show) their sad existences working for the man, deep down they're the most talented, good-looking, sex symbols ever born. And some of the contestants are instantly recognizable types: The busty blond girl who was told she could sing in first grade, the bizarrosexual teenage guy who announces to the judges that he's really controversial (which is true, if bu "controversial" you mean "sucks"), the white rapper, and so on. It may not be good clean fun, exactly, but the contestants make it hard to feel too guilty enjoying yourself at their expense.

Matter-Eater Wife also noticed that, while the male contestants came in all shapes and sizes, the women were pretty much all of the standard, socially-designated attractive size and shape. My guess is that that's because, when they were younger, people were willing to tell the women who deviated from the attractiveness mean that they weren't very good at singing or dancing and should maybe try painting a picture of a pony or something else, while people were more gentle with (or flat out lied to) the more conventionally attractive girls. An alternate hypothesis would be that pretty people are simply less talented, of course.

Two TV notes:

1. Due to a VCR FUBAR, I managed not to tape the season finale of 24 tonight. Anyone with a copy they'd like to share can e-mail me and win my eternal gratitude, as well as the people's ovation and fame forever. And a beer next time I see you.
   
2. BBC America's Design Rules is one of the flat-out most fascinating things I've ever watched. It's like someone turned Alton Brown into a metrosexual Briton and gave him a show about interior design -- it's just that good. The first episode alone delved into the use of color to alter perceptions of room size, furniture placement theory, maximizing light in a room, and other strategies for getting the most out of your housing buck. I can't wait to see the rest of the series, especially after/during our recent adventures in home remodeling.
   

There's something incongruous about seeing Jimmy Buffett play at a downtown arena show (as oppose to the sort of outdoor pavillion I got used to seeing him at when I lived in D.C.). There, we'd build time into the schedule to drive down to Bristow, eat in the parking lot, and take in the tailgating scene before heading to our seats. Afterward we'd sit in the parking lot for three hours while people slowly snaked their way out of it. Here, we took the bus to and from the show and hung out in Barnes & Noble for half an hour before the show because we were so far ahead of schedule.

We were also spoiled by the incredible ticket-buying luck we had in D.C.; most of the time we got center section pavillion seats, and one year we were seated third row center. This time we were in nosebleed territory, way the hell up in the second tier of the Target Center. It was disappointing, not being almost close enough to touch the band, but after a few numbers we got over it and really started enjoying the concert. Jimmy was terrific, as usual, and I can't wait to buy the concert CD once it's available at Amazon. Jimmy, ever the businessman, has been making CDs of each concert available through Amazon. It's a brilliant move; it's probably pretty cheap to produce for him and better quality than any bootleg for his fans.

And the view from the top has its advantages; it's fun to see a stadium full of white people with no rythym and too many drinks in them dancing to "Fins."

Weird.

"The office of straight-laced Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine (R) became the epicenter of salacious Capitol Hill gossip Wednesday, when it surfaced that an entry-level DeWine staffer apparently had been chronicling her steamy sex life on an Internet weblog," the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.

"The blog was removed from public view after another Washington blog, known as Wonkette.com, linked to some of the racier passages from the DeWine employee's online diary. The passages detailed the woman's affairs with several men, purporting to include a married (but unnamed) chief-of-staff in a federal agency, and discussed being paid for sex."

Leaving aside the terminal stupidity of the WB network, I've got to admit that last night's Angel finale was just about as perfect as I could have imagined it, from the spotlights on the individual characters to the series of fight sequences to the apperances by guest stars and cast members past...I'm not happy the show has ended, but what a way to go out. Bravo!

It's the end of the Whedonverse as we know it

In about nine hours, the final episode of Angel will have aired and Joss Whedon's remarkable series, which reinvented itself from the original Buffy movie and spanned two TV series, three networks, and innumerable books, comics, and toys, will effectively have come to an end for the forseeable future. The early reports that there would be a series of Angel TV movies on WB have proved to be premature exaggerations, alas. But I blog this day not to bury Angel but to praise it.

Angel always had a rougher time of it than Buffy did; it lacked the genius high concept of its parent series, which was summed up in one of the best titles ever conceived. Putting the words "Buffy," "the," "vampire," and "slayer" together in that order tells you a great deal about what's to come, whereas Angel could have turned into your standard good-vampire-fights-bad-vampires show. It never enjoyed the breakout pop awareness that Buffy did, either, and yet that lack of attention often worked to Angel's creative benefit; last season, for instance, wound up being structured as a series of escalating cliffhangers that was exhilarating to follow from week to week but that a higher-profile series probably could not have gotten away with.

And this (regrettably) final season was a pleasant surprise; the loss of Charisma Carpenter from the cast, and the addition of James Marsters as Spike, along with the new status quo of Angel and his compatriots taking over the evil law firm of Wolfram and Hart, all seemed like the kinds of shark-jumping shakeups that aging series tend to do when they're out of creative juice. Instead, though, we got what was arguably the show's strongest season ever; the law firm setup opened the door to the sort of done-in-one episode stories that both Buffy and Angel's writers and producers seemed to have forgotten how to do for a few seasons there. And in the midst of these episodes, larger plot and character threads weaved their way subtly throughout the season, until in last week's penultimate episode we stepped back and got to see what the larger storyline was about.

So whatever the resolution of tonight's final episode, I hope it's the sort of ending after which we can imagine Angel, Spike, Wesley, Gunn, Illyria, and Lorne still out there fighting the good fight.

And this seems as good a time as any to tell the David Boreanaz story. In the summer of 1998, I was nearing the end of my ill-fated escapade as a writer for Mania.com. One of my jobs was to cover the San Diego Comic Convention in August; this was the summer after the second season of Buffy, when the show was at its peak, creatively and popularly, and there was a panel featuring Joss Whedon and every cast member whose character was not named in the title. It was a huge, hot, sweatly ballroom packed to the gills with fans, many of whom were of the preteen female type.

Joss and the cast were great - funny, friendly, everything you'd hope they'd be. But the real treat came during the question and answer session. After a few of the standard questions ("Are Willow and Xander going to get together?" "Is Buffy coming back to Sunnydale?") a woman and her daughter, who was probably not older than 13 or 14 and who was literally shaking, came up to the microphone. The mom said she had two questions for David Boreanaz for her daughter, who was too scared to ask. Question one: "Are you married?" And Boreanaz said that he was, and you could hear 5,000 12-to-16-year-old hearts breaking. Question two: "Can she have a hug?"

You have to understand just how easy it would have been to say no: If I give one, I have to give one to everybody; security won't let us; etc. But instead he simply said, "Of course," and hopped down off the stage and made his way toward this girl, who was now flat-out crying with delight and heading toward the stage for her hug. I'm not exagerating when I say that this was one of the two or three most incredible things I've ever witnessed. Think about when you were the age that girl was, and just how much the stuff -- whatever it was -- that you cared about really meant to you. Imagine how much of herself she must have invested in her conception of Angel and the man who played him to get that worked up just being in the same room with him. And imagine her finding out that, at least for that one moment, he lived up to every hope, dream, and wish she had about him.

All of this happened right in front of the press area for the Buffy panel, and I managed to take three photos of The Hug; they're now framed and ready to go on the office wall as soon as I make some progress tackling the rest of our unpacking. If I ever run into David Boreanaz, I'd like to buy him a beer; and as for his vampiric alter ego, I'm hoping he gets a happy and triumphant ending.

This post by Augie de Blieck echoes something I've been thinking about myself for the last few years:

But where’s the science fiction on television now? It’s all gone. The once lucrative syndication market that used to be packed to the gills with sci fi show is now dead. The networks don’t have any shows anymore, and the cable networks don’t want to take the chances.

Part of the problem is that science fiction tends to happen on the margins of TV. The X-Files survived only because it was on the then-fledgling Fox network, which was thrilled at the time to have a well-reviewed show with a dedicated core audience. ST: TNG paved the way for Hercules and Xena in first-run syndication. At WB, Buffy essentially went the X-Files route: It debuted when the network was young and needed press, it was an excellent series, and it reliably brought in viewers who could be drawn to other new shows. Remember how relentlessly Dawson's Creek was promoted during Season 2 of Buffy? It was excruciating for those of us who weren't the typical WB target audience. But today a show like Buffy would probably never make it on the air; WB doesn't need the rabid fan audience the way it did eight years ago, just as Fox didn't need the kind of audience Firefly or Wonderfalls could bring. I'm not sure there are any margins left. Augie notes that Alias is an exception, and he's right, but that's largely because Alias is on a major network that simply doesn't have any new shows and can't afford to lose a show that brings in a reliable audience, even if that audience is smaller than the network would like.

This is a pretty hysterical take on the problem with the Kerry-McCain fantasy:

Hey, I’m all for injecting some life into Kerry’s candidacy. As it stands now I think their campaign slogan is: “John Kerry: Well ...oh, alright.” But if George Bush has taught us anything about campaigning it’s that it’s a lot easier to beat low expectations. As long as George Bush doesn’t drool on himself during a debate, he wins.

All this McCain talk sets too high a standard for a running mate. If I were the Kerry people I’d be out floating names like The Rock or Gary Condit. Then when you pick Evan Bayh Americans will be saying, “Oh, thank Christ it’s Evan Bayh!” and not “Who’s Evan Bayh?” and “How much time did he spend in the Hanoi Hilton?” In that sense I think it was wise for Kerry to steer the conversation to McCain for Secretary of Defense, which is an infinitely greater possibility. But how long did that last? A day?

The Post's indispensible Peter Carlson takes a look at Vanity Fair's profile of the strange ex-Presidency of Bill Clinton:

After leaving office in 2001, Anson says, Clinton was so bored sitting in Chappaqua, N.Y., while his wife worked in the Senate that he showed up at a local elementary school one morning to watch a school play. Another time, he invited a couple of local 12-year-olds into his living room to chat about the impact of technology on everyday life.

"He was," Anson theorizes, "desperate for company."

[...]

Clinton is full of energy but much of it is squandered, Anson writes. He can't sit still, flitting from place to place around the globe to make speeches and hobnob with celebrities. He thinks nothing of flying to Qatar and back in 24 hours. Paid $12 million to write his memoir, he dawdles, says Anson, wasting time on dubious projects like his lame "debates" with Bob Dole on "60 Minutes."

That's the comedy part; now the tragic part:

For a while, Clinton focused his ample talents on one issue -- AIDS -- and he made a difference. In 2002, Anson writes, Clinton used his connections and his charisma to line up sources of discount AIDS drugs for poor countries in Africa and the Caribbean, saving countless lives. Then he got restless and moved on to other things.

I guess in that regard Clinton's ex-presidency is a lot like his presidency: Well-intentioned, capable of the occasional success, but in the final analysis never about any damn thing except Clinton himself. What a waste.

Wow. Kitty Pride has never had a good costume.

I'm not one to bandy about the phrase "worst episode ever" lightly, but I used it with good cause twice last night. The Simpsons produced a tedious, subtle as a sledgehammer episode that consisted entirely of lame jokes dressed up as political satire that was pretty much painful to watch.

And then The Sopranos spent just about an entire episode on Tony's extended dream sequence. And it wasn't a cool dream sequence like the one on Angel a few months ago (stupid, stupid WB...), it was pointless and stupid and meanwhile, the only things that actually happened did so off screen. The only possible defense I can imagine for this episode is that it shows how Tony's being wrapped up in his own personal issues is distracting him from his duties as a boss and the events going on around him. But does it have to distract us, too? Especially in the third-to-last episode of the last full season of the series?

At least we got to see Khan lt himself turn into a redneck on King of the Hill. If not for that, I would have been better off reading a book or something instead of watching TV last night.

My college pal Phil Catelinet has written a marvelous post about going through family artifacts on a recent trip home.

I've had a Tuesday evening class all semester, but the end of classes and the onset of exams has finally freed that night up for me. Last night Kate and I actually watched Frasier for the first time in years, since it was on before 24. And while I tend to devote my TV viewing time to shows that are serial in nature (the aforementioned 24, the Whedonverse, Alias, Sopranos) or have more subtle continuing character through-lines (like CSI), there's a lot to be said for a well-done comedy that you can ease right back into after years away. The Frasier finale isn't getting anywhere near the hoopla that the far inferior Friends did, but I might have to find someone to tape it for me...

Political threads at Peter David's blog are a never-ending source of amusement, as they tend to devolve (from a pretty low point to begin with) into an orgy of generally ill-informed reactionaries and partisans (with a few notable exceptions) screaming at each other in increasingly shrill voices. This gem from PAD himself, though, strikes me as downright perverse:

Part of me is really hoping Bush is reelected.

Why? Because, without exception, every second term presidency in the past fifty years has become overwhelmed by scandal, misdeeds and wrongdoing on every level. Right now Bush still has defenders. If history holds--and considering the multiple debacles already in progress--a second term would be a fiasco of such epic proportions that even his most devoted apologists would have to throw in the towel. Granted, there won't be much left of the country, but hopefully the Democrats following him can rebuild.

Second term of Bush: Bring it on.

So let's get this straight: In PADland, George W. Bush is absolutely positively the worst person who ever lived and is snookering the nation into following him into the mouths of Mammon, madness, and misery...and PAD wants him to get re-elected just for yucks.

Peter David: WHAT THE FUCK?

Slate's Monday-afternoon mob-expert analyses of each episode of the Sopranos is a weekly must-read. I usually find myself nodding as I read, agreeing with points raised and gaining new insights into the show. But this line from Jeffrey Goldberg:

James Gandolfini was over-the-top compelling, taking Tony right to the precipice of permanent unlikableness. In fact, maybe he took Tony off the cliff. I felt pity for Janice, who is without a doubt the least pleasant character in a stable of unpleasant characters.

made me realize that, frankly, I didn't feel all that much pity for Janice when Tony went thermonuclear on her. Partly that's because Janice makes my skin crawl in a way no other character on the show, and maybe ANY show, for that matter, can; her evil is SO banal and SO petty it's far more likely to destroy directly innocent bystanders than a good deal of the actual crime we see on the show. Over and above that, however, I couldn't help but think we were simply seeing Janice at the start of one of her infatuation hobbies, which she seems to acquire at a clip unmatched by any fictional character this side of Bender. Of course she was being good; of course she'd taken what was said in her anger management classes to heart; it was her new thing, and she was going to stick with it until she got bored with it.

Last night I thought to myself, going out in your slippers to put something in the trash outside is about the most suburban, homeowner-y thing you can do.

I was wrong. The most suburban, homeowner-y thing you can do is, having gotten a note scolding you because one of your trash receptacles was too heavy, to be ELATED to go out after pickup and find that your redistribution of garbage between trash receptacles was a success, and the garbagemen took ALL your trash away this week.

This right here, THIS is what I imagined adulthood would be all about...

David Poland on Michael Moore's latest cry of "'elp, 'elp, I'm bein' oppressed!":

Moore finally started his inevitably endless whine with a reporter on Tuesday, though it is unclear in the article whether that interview was the genesis of the story. In a classic act of Moore-ish onanism, the Oscar-winning documentarian took $6 million from Miramax, making Fahrenheit 911 one of the most expensive documentaries ever made. After feasting on this capital from the "independent" division of a multinational, he brays to the Times, "At some point the question has to be asked, `Should this be happening in a free and open society where the monied interests essentially call the shots regarding the information that the public is allowed to see?"

Well, if ya don't want those "monied interests" to make decisions, Mike… Don't Take Their Friggin' Six Million Dollars!!!!! Adding to the pathetic nature of this scam, please be aware that Moore probably has $6 million himself and could have self-financed or sold select foreign markets to get enough money to get well within range of his production budget. What was his salary on this $6 million doc? And how much of the budget was based on the speed of completion of the film so that Moore could feel he might influence this year's election. Perhaps he feels the federal government should give him matching funds.

[...]

I have to say, it is odd to find myself defending Michael Eisner and Disney for the second time in just a few short weeks. But demagoguery is not attractive, regardless of what your role in the industry or your personal politics. And neither Michael Moore nor Harvey Weinstein, who has remained silent so far, has any position from which to claim status as a victim.

There is a huge difference between Michael Moore's six million polemic and some documentarian having his or her film bought and squashed by the distributor for political reasons. In fact, Oliver Stone has a much more reasonable beef with Time-Warner for forcing him to rethink his HBO-financed point-of-view doc about Castro than Moore has with Disney. I didn't like the shallow perception of Castro in Stone's original doc, but HBO didn't tell him that he had to make a balanced film… until the political heat revved up after people saw it. On the other hand, Disney made it clear to Miramax and Moore that this film would never see the light of day under any Disney banner back before the Miramax financing deal closed.

Dear Friends,

Just GO AWAY AND DIE ALREADY!

Yours,

CJG

Ahem. I've always been befuddled by the success of this lame, endlessly soap-operatic, and terminally annoying sitcom, and its departure from the airwaves is, to me, about 9 years overdue. Always found Lisa Kudrow about as funny as falling through plate-glass. Thought Matt The White's character should have been sent to live on a farm. Never understood the sex appeal of bad haircuts and eating disorders. Basically, I wanted all of the Friends to get shot.

But I do like this bit of counter-programming:

Fox, meanwhile, offers a very special two-hour "Cops: Crimes of Passion," featuring "15 heart-wrenching segments" of cops responding to domestic violence calls. More must-see TV.

UPDATE: And it's heartening to read this:

Most writers vastly overestimate the size of the Friends audience. (Sitcom declinists make no claims about the quality or critical reception of Friends, only its popularity.) Sure, it's been a Top 10 show from its inception, and it was the most-watched show on television as recently as the 2001-2002 season. But although Friends' eighth and ninth seasons were its highest-ranked seasons ever (No. 1 and No. 2 overall), the show isn't nearly as highly rated as it once was. It's just that its ratings remain higher than the still-lower ratings of other shows.

Only 21 million viewers tuned in last year, compared to the nearly 30 million viewers who watched during the Ross-and-Rachel heyday of Season Two. And fans haven't been coming back for the show's final episodes, either. During last week's time slot, more viewers watched CSI than the penultimate episode of Friends. As the South Florida Sun-Sentinel TV writer Tom Jicha pointed out this week, seven out of eight American homes don't watch Friends, and this season's ratings wouldn't have cracked the Top 20 for any show only a decade ago, in 1995. This is mass appeal?

Slate has a helpful guide to today's crop of teen actresses. On a related note, every man who watched last week's Saturday Night Live, hosted by Lindsay Lohan, is going to a very bad part of Hell.

Kurt Busiek smacks down Micah Wright:

You've already confessed to being a liar after years of insisting that you were telling the truth. Every time you insist that people take your word for something now, whether it's that you got death threats so they shouldn't judge you or that you came forward first and the Post is therefore lying or that all your friends told you to post self-serving shit about how Big Media should have checked up on you, all you're doing is making another claim with no credibility behind it. Could be so, could be no -- but you have no standing to say, "trust me, it happened the way I say it did." You burned that platform yourself, and got attention and money in the process.

[...]

You didn't "make it all better" by admitting the truth. That it was the right thing to do doesn't mean that it balances out doing the wrong thing, or that it erases the damage other people have and will endure due to your actions.

Just shut up for a while and let people throw bricks at you for your stupid behavior. You earned them.

I always did like that Busiek fella.

Jim Treacher has posted a pretty comprehensive review of the revelation that Micah Wright is a big fat lying liar who lies. So go read him for all the details.

I think the funniest part of the whole thing is not Wright's pathetic attempt to change the subject to media credulity and George W. Bush, nor his straight-faced declaration that he chose to come clean on the eve of a Washington Post article about his being a lying liar who lies out of the goodness of his heart, nor even Newsarama's toady-like willingness to run one of Wright's lame "remixed" war propaganda posters in its article about his announcement, but the fact that Wright was caught not by the likes of Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein or even Joel Achenbach, but by the Post's frickin' gossip columnist. That's like being busted by the ex-hippie art teacher instead of the vice-principal; your lameness is exposed by the lameness of he who busted you.

I'll also be curious to see how the Pulse, which featured a credulous, head-shaking, "we're so much smarter than everyone who disagrees with us" intervew with Wright last year covers the story.