The Christmas Movies

OK, there's a good chance that at some point this week, you'll find yourself in a room with Christmas movies running on TV.  Here is what you should know:

The best new Christmas movie I saw this year was Christmas Above the Clouds.  Erin Krakow plays Ella Neezer, a Scrooge-like heroine whose life is changed by three spirits who appear to her on an airplane.  I believe that A Christmas Carol is actually underrated, and the folks who made this movie had fun with the story.

I cannot strongly recommend Holiday Touchdown:  A Bills Love Story.  It's a bit too generic in almost every way, and the basic difficulty (the guy is too intimidated to tell the girl how he feels) isn't very exciting.  But there are a lot of old pros in the cast, including Joe Pantoliano and Tracy Pollan, and everyone tries hard and has fun.  The football stuff is pretty good as well, and they make a real effort to give it a Buffalo flavor.  On the whole, however, you're better off with last year's Holiday Touchdown:  A Chiefs Love Story.

If you haven't seen A Biltmore Christmas, which aired in 2023, you really should look for it.  To me, it's the best Christmas movie of the post-COVID era -- a time travel story that combines the Golden Age of Hollywood with unusually good chemistry between the two primary actors.  A Biltmore Christmas was so popular that it inspired many imitators.  To me, the best one so far is A Grand Ole Opry Christmas.  This time travel story only goes back to the 1990's, but it's a great father-daughter story, and Kristoffer Polaha -- who played the male lead in A Biltmore Christmas -- does his usual solid job.

Another time travel story -- A Newport Christmas -- has gotten a lot of favorable attention, and is currently rated at 7.1 on IMDB, very high for this type of film.  I thought the actors tried very hard, and there were some really great costumes.  On the whole, it's solidly above average for the genre.  But at my house, the script wasn't strong enough -- and the actors weren't charismatic enough -- to put this one in the "must-see" category.

She's Making A List, which stars Lacey Chabert as a women who acts as an inspector for the Naughty or Nice Group -- they're the ones who make the list for Santa -- has also gotten a lot of attention.  It's an interesting setup, and some of the stuff with Santa -- such as the fact that he operates out of Delaware -- is clever.  But it's one of those where you have to really root for the daughter who is trying to help her dad find romance, and that part of the story didn't work for me.  If you really want to see Lacey Chabert, I recommend Matchmaker Santa, a 2012 movie from the Golden Age of Hallmark, in which Santa weaves a web of intrigue to bring two couples together.

Finally, let's give credit to Candace Cameron Bure, who continues to do solid work in this genre.  This year, I enjoyed A Christmas Present, which unusually features a married couple whose relationship has gone somewhat stale, mainly because they are too busy to spend time together.  (You see, she has to learn to be "present" -- thus the title).  Ms. Bure also did her own time travel movie -- Timeless Tidings of Joy -- in which she goes back to the 1940's to learn about her grandmother's printing shop.  Yes, the plot turns on a big machine where you print cards to carry special messages.  It's fine, but not worth going out of your way for.

Good luck and happy viewing!

Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story

We have a new NFL-themed Hallmark movie this year.  It's called Holiday Touchdown:  A Chiefs Love Story.  Of course it's about the Chiefs, because Hallmark is in Kansas City. Here's the set-up:  Alana Higman is a 20-something woman whose parents met when their parents both bought season tickets to the Chiefs back in 1967.  The two families have been obsessed with the Chiefs ever since, and they own a store that sells Chiefs memorabilia.  (It's called "KC Corner," and it has this really cool sign where the "KC" looks like the KC on the Chiefs' helmets), along with two arrowheads.

Anyway, Alana is going to take over the store.  She tells her family that there's someone coming to the score on Tuesday that she wants everyone to meet.  They all think that she's finally met a guy -- but no, it's someone from the Chiefs' Fan Engagement operation.  The family is up for Chiefs Fan of the Year -- if they win, they get a special tour of the stadium and sideline passes.  The family is excited.

Great American Christmas

Sling TV is offering a free view of Great American Family, which is showing all Christmas movies these days.  Now they are showing "My Christmas Hero," which stars Candace Cameron Bure ("CCB") as an orthopedic physician based in Lacey, Washington, home of I Corps and the 62d Airlift Wing.  According to the Internet, she is "on an mission to honor a special fallen soldier and bring much needed healing to her own family."

I was watching with the sound turned off, so I just realized that the person who I thought was CCB's husband is actually her boyfriend.  She's all depressed because he's a military guy and he's being transferred somewhere else.

Anyway, now her mom is talking to the boyfriend and trying to convince him that love should conquer all.  What will happen?

Thoughts on the Big Ten

Every generation or so, American sports undergoes a big shakeup.  There was a big shakeup in the 1960's, which gave us the Super Bowl, integration, the ABA (for awhile), and major league expansion.  There was another in the 1990's, which cancelled the World Series, led to major strikes in the NBA and the NHL, and created another bevy of expansion teams.  And now we're going through another one.  The NFL has added a 17th game.  MLB is making significant rule changes, will probably add expansion teams, and just barely averted a strike.  Pro golf is riven by civil war.  And, of course, almost everything about college sports are up for grabs.

For over 200 years, the South has largely lived by the ethic of "get your enemies before they can get you."  Sometimes this ethic is more helpful than at other times, but one has to ask whether today's South -- which is so much richer and more powerful than any other iteration of the South in living memory -- would do better to rely more on diplomacy and less on cunning.  Nevertheless, Americans live with the South they have, not the South they want -- and no one should have been surprised when the SEC, not content with its current dominant position on the sports landscape, decided to upend the very fragile applecart of college sports by poaching Texas and Oklahoma from the Big XII.  Now we know that this move will have far-reaching ramifications.  The Big Ten is bringing in USC and UCLA, which effectively wipes out the Pac-12 and ends the long-standing partnership between the Big Ten and the Pac-12 that had so often served as a counterweight to the SEC.

We don't know where any of this will end.  There is talk of the Big Ten and the SEC moving to more than 20 teams each -- talk of a new playoff that would include only the Big Ten and the SEC -- and so on.  Add in the future of name and image licensing, and a political environment (at least on the East Coast) that is generally hostile to college sports, and one can imagine all sorts of bizarre scenarios.  But a review of the last 125 years of sports history reveals that administrators in college sports, and owners of professional teams, are limited in their ability to torment fans.  There is an Iron Law of sports competition, and it goes something like this:

The number of fans who will pay money to watch a sporting competition is directly related to the number of people who care about the outcome of that competition.

The green eyeshade crowd who are always looking for ways to squeeze more dollars out of sports fans are often very poor at guessing what we want -- but over time, the market tends to correct their mistakes.  Back in the 1990's, MLB decided to let more teams in the playoffs.  That made the World Series less meaningful to significant numbers of Americans, and TV ratings have plummeted as a result.  That's just one example -- a more vivid one would be how, in the late 1980's, people like Don King interfered with the structure of boxing, and effectively destroyed boxing as a big-time spectator sport in the United States.  Here's the point:  to make money, you need devoted fans -- to get devoted fans, you need competitions that they care about.

And here it's important to recall that hype can only do so much.  Hype can make sports fans aware of a particular competition, but it cannot make them care about it.  All the hype in the world, for example, couldn't get Americans to care who won the XFL.  Fans follow their own logic, and they make their own decisions about what matters.  Those decisions are usually grounded in passion and emotion, and over time, entrepreneurs and administrators cannot trick fans or force them to care.

So what does all of this mean for the current round of changes?  When the dust settles, the sports that survive will be the ones that continue to put on competitions that fans actually want to watch.  If guys like Koepka and DeChambeau aren't available for the Ryder Cup anymore, my guess is that viewership for the Ryder Cup will plummet.  If the SEC and the Big Ten decide to ban all the small schools from going to the NCAA Basketball Tournament, then the NCAA Basketball Tournament will fade in importance.

But that doesn't mean there won't be anything to watch.  Wrestling, boxing, horse racing, rowing -- all of these used to be major sports, and they really aren't anymore.  But fans moved on to pro football and other sports.  MLB may be in trouble now, but college baseball is booming.  Folks in the Northwest may lose interest in the Pac-12, but they can always watch MLS games between Portland and Seattle.

Of course, some fans fall through the generational gap.  Ring Lardner never recovered from the rise of Babe Ruth and the end of the dead ball era.  I will go to my grave missing the old Big East and the old Southwest Conference.  But there will always be new Pete Rozelles and Roone Arledges who know how to organize competitions that people like me want to watch.  And if the SEC and the Big 10 lose the ability to do that, my guess is that we fans will all survive somehow.

I don't say these things in the expectations and college sports are going to collapse -- I don't actually think that's true.  I say them in the belief that the people who run sports competitions are more constrained than we usually realize.  They can do a lot -- but they cannot succeed and also put on competitions that no one wants to watch.  Last year there were over 120 major college football programs, and I think the vast majority of fans like it that way.  If the Big 10 and the SEC think they can convince people to care as much about a world with only 30 or 40 major college football teams, they are badly mistaken, and they will pay heavily.  But I don't expect it will come to that.

Wisdom from Roone Arledge

In its issue for December 22, 1969, Sports Illustrated ran a long feature on the relationship between television and sports, and as part of that feature, it ran this quote from Roone Arledge, who was then a 38-year-old wunderkind in charge of ABC Sports:

Sport is a business, not a religion, and there is no sacred way things must be done.  Sport is a set of created circumstances -- artificial circumstances -- set up to frustrate a man in pursuit of a goal.  He has to have certain skills to overcome those obstacles -- or even to challenge them.  And people who don't have those skills cheer him and admire him.  It's that simple.

I think this is really good, and it certainly helps to explain how ABC used to frame a lot of their coverage back during their Golden Era.

MLB Playoffs, Days Six and Seven

As we've previously noted, on Tuesday the Astros closed out the ChiSox and the Braves closed out the Brewers.  But the Giants could not close out the Dodgers -- L.A. rolled to a 7-2 win and knotted the series at two games apiece.

So we all took Wednesday off, and the Giants/Dodgers series will be decided tonight.  This should be one of the most dramatic games in recent baseball history.  Consider the following facts:

1.  The Giants/Dodgers rivalry is one of the most storied in baseball history and this is the first time they've met in the post-season since 1962.

2.  During the regular season, the Giants won 107 games and the Dodgers won 106.

3.  The Giants and the Dodgers have met 23 times so far this year.  The Giants have won 12 of those games, and the Dodgers have won 11.  That one-game difference is the only reason that the Giants, and not the Dodgers, won the NL West this year.

4.  The Giants and Dodgers had an extraordinary pennant race all year that wasn't decided until the last day of the regular season.  Then the Dodgers had to survive a one-game playoff with the red-hot Cardinals just to get this far.

5.  Whoever wins tonight will be heavily favored to beat the Braves in the next round.  In fact, there's a decent chance that the MLB champion will effectively be decided tonight.

Now imagine that the 49ers went 15-1 and the Rams went 14-2.   Or imagine that the Warriors won 70 games and the Lakers won 69.  Or imagine that Stanford was number one in the country, and Southern Cal was number two.  Can you imagine the sort of hype that any of those match-ups would receive if they came down to a one-game shot to see who reaches the semi-final?  It would be off the charts.  For most sports fans, that match-up -- in whatever sport -- would be must-see television.

But not for MLB.  The owners of MLB, and their hand-picked Commissioner, apparently operate under the assumption that most people just don't like baseball very much, and don't really care who wins the World Series.  They have ceded ESPN to the other leagues, and put their playoffs on TBS and Fox Sports One.  They air games at odd times, making them impossible for most people to watch on the East Coast -- even if they knew where to find the game.  (I'm sure that tonight, there will be people who want to watch the Dodgers and the Giants, who will try Fox and the various ESPN networks, who may even think to try Fox Sports One or NBC Sports or CBS Sports or the MLB Network -- and who will give up completely, never knowing that the game was on TBS).

For this game MLB has really outdone itself.  By creating an extra day between Tuesday's triple-header and today's Game Five, they have given everyone an excuse to forget about baseball.  Then they decided to air the game on TBS.  And then -- best of all -- they decided that it would start at 9:07 P.M. Eastern Time, making it impossible for almost any but the most determined viewers on the East Coast to see what should be the Game of the Year.

In 1978, the Yankees played the Red Sox in a one-game playoff.  I was 12 years old.  That game started at 2:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time (1:30 P.M. Central) on Monday, October 2.  It aired on ABC.  It took two hours and 52 minutes to play, which means that it finished at 5:22 P.M. Eastern (4:22 P.M. Central).  I got home from school around 3:15 P.M. Central, which means that I missed most of the game.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that I missed Bucky Dent's home run.  But I saw the last two innings, and I've never forgotten them.  Now, almost 45 years later, that game is still legendary -- even if a bunch of folks had to miss it for work or school.

By contrast, almost no one outside of California will remember this game, or will even see it.  That's a real shame.  The Giants and the Dodgers are really great teams, PacBell Park is one of the best stadiums in America, and the whole contest tonight should so baseball at its best.  I'm really looking forward to it, and I just wish more people would get to enjoy it.

Here's where we stand:

Boston defeats Tampa Bay 3-1

Houston defeats Chicago 3-1

Atlanta defeats Milwaukee 3-1

San Francisco and Los Angeles are tied 2-2

Tonight's game:

8:07 P.M. Central:  Los Angeles at San Francisco (TBS)

MLB Update

The Red Sox and the Yankees are battling for AL Wild Card positions in Fenway Park right now.  The BoSox lead 2-0.  The most interesting thing about this game is that it's on MLB Network, and Bob Costas is doing the play-by-play.  Gus Johnson just did the Notre Dame-Wisconsin game on FOX, so this has been an unusually good day for TV sports announcing.

Downton Abbey

I just want to say a few quick things about this show, which I love. 

I've just started the sixth and final season. And as previously mentioned, I love it, which surprises me because I tend to struggle with shows heavy on British accents. I remember once, when we were in high school, being a real pill one night when we all got together and rented and watched A Room With a View. I really tried to ruin the experience for everyone. I threw a tantrum in the video store because I wanted to instead rent some sports thing, and I tried to make it all about you guys not being masculine enough. The real problem was that I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up, but I felt stupid to admit that. That actually wouldn't've been stupid; what was stupid was how I acted. Sorry. 

Also, I'm the only person our age who never got into the Monty Python stuff. Same issue--I never really know or understand what they're saying.

But, again, I love Downton Abbey, and I'm sorry to see that I'm coming to the end of the series. I know about the movies--I'm glad there's a 2019 thing to watch when I'm done with the TV show, and I'm glad they're coming out with Downton Abbey 2 next March, and I hope they make 50 more after this one. But I prefer TV to movies, and, so, what I really want is about 100 more seasons of the TV series.

What I also want, and here's what I really wanted to say this morning, is for sweet Mrs. Patmore and sweet Mr. Mason to fall in love and have a beautiful and fun marriage growing old together right there at Downton and for Daisy to care for them and for everyone to end up superhappy.

I accept that the smart people who make TV shows have to inject conflict and problems into a series to keep viewers like me interested over the long haul, and I respect that a person who goes to the unimaginably massive effort of writing something as huge and great as Downton Abbey (5 stars, highly recommended) is going to want to get into the pulpit and make whatever statements (however hard) about the human condition and our relationship to God that he or she feels called to make.

But I also think it is not too much to ask, after investing in the lives of these fake people and falling in love with them over however many hours, that I get to see them all get to be happy in the end. I've always appreciated the people who made Friends for giving our friends happy endings, and I'm very much hoping for the same payoff with all of the people on Downton. 

Because I really do love them all. Even mean, ol' Thomas.

TV Ratings for Non-Football Sportscasts

According to SportsMediaWatch.com, since 2019 only seven non-football sporting telecasts have topped ten million viewers in the United States:

1.  2021 Men's College Basketball:  Baylor defeats Gonzaga (CBS) -- 16.92 million

2.  2021 Men's College Basketball:  Gonzaga defeats UCLA (CBS) -- 14.94 million

3.  2021 Kentucky Derby (NBC) -- 14.37 million

4.  2020 World Series Game 6 (FOX):  12.70 million

5.  2021 NBA Finals Game 6 (ABC):  12.52 million

6.  2021 NBA Finals Game 4 (ABC):  10.25 million

7.  2020 World Series Game 5 (FOX):  10.06 million

How to Improve MLB

I really think the powers-that-be in MLB have under-estimated the potential popularity of pennant races.  Right now, the A's and the Angels are locked in a terrific battle at the top of the American League, while the Nats, Brewers, Dodgers, Giants, Braves, and Cardinals are all bunched together at the top of the National League.  But no one cares very much because almost all of those teams will make the playoffs no matter what -- and when the playoffs finally get here, those games will be on cable in the middle of the night.  As a result, American sports fans are missing what could be some amazing drama.

But everyone is obsessed with the idea that you can never go "back" in America -- every change, no matter how unpopular, is usually defended on grounds of "progress."  (New Coke being a rare exception of where an unpopular change was actually reversed.)  So since Americans refuse to go "back," is there a way to go "forward" and make new arrangements that give us pennant races?

Here's one idea:

Add the Montreal Expos and the Brooklyn Robins to the National League
Move the Milwaukee Brewers back to the American League.

Now you have 16 teams in each league.

Play one more season with all the wild cards – But after this season, the eight teams with the best record in each league will go into the first division, and the other eight teams go into the second division.

Then, going forward, each league has two divisions, and each division has eight teams.  You play 22 games against every team in your division – that's 154 games.  The winners of the two first divisions meet in the World Series.

The two bottom teams in each first division are relegated to the second division.  The two top teams in each second division are promoted to the first division.

Current luxury tax rules apply to the first division, but there is no salary cap or luxury tax for teams in the second division.

So next year, using the current stats, the first division in the American League would be the A's, the Angels, the Brewers, the Tigers, the Orioles, the Yankees, the Blue Jays, and the Mariners.  The first division in the National League would be the Nats, the Dodgers, the Giants, the Braves, the Cardinals, the Pirates, the Reds, and the Marlins.

Here's another:

Keep the teams and leagues as they are, but eliminate all divisions.  Every team plays the other 14 teams in its league 10 times, and then plays 16 interleague games.  That's a 156 game season.  The two pennant winners go to the World Series.




Under either scenario, the regular season always ends on the first Sunday in October, and the World Series always begins at 3 P.M. Eastern on the next Saturday.  The schedule for the World Series is always as follows:

Saturday:  3 P.M. ET
Sunday:  2:30 P.M. ET
Tuesday:  7:30 P.M. ET
Wednesday:  7:30 P.M. ET
Thursday:  7:30 P.M. ET
Saturday:  3 P.M. ET
Sunday:  2:30 P.M. ET

All World Series games would be broadcast on over-the-air T.V.  This way, all kids would be able to see the first two games of the World Series -- as well as games 6 and 7, if the Series went that far.  And since the pitching staffs wouldn't be burned out from three weeks' worth of playoff baseball, I think you'd see more World Series go that far.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

About a month ago, Number 1 Son told me about something that sounded almost like a parody of modern culture:  somewhere on the Internet, a group of people had done a modern version of Pride and Prejudice.  They took the characters and plot from Jane Austen's classic novel, updated them to our time, and told their story in a series of short videos, tweets on Twitter, and other Internet posts.  The whole idea seemed very odd, but Number 1 Son claimed it was good, and he normally knows what he's talking about.  So one night just before bed, I decided to see if it was any good.  At 2 A.M., I was still watching and I had been convinced.

You can see the whole thing here.  The basic set-up is that Lizzie Bennet is a 24-year-old American grad student with two sisters.  Jane (her older sister), is sweet and kind, while Lydia (her younger sister) is . . . well, let us say, more outgoing.  All three of the sisters -- but especially Jane and Lizzie -- are coming under pressure from their mother to find rich husbands.  Lizzie isn't that interested in finding a husband, but she decides to keep a video blog about her life as part of her graduate work in communications.  Twice a week, she posts short videos telling us about the latest events in her family's life.  And so we learn about how Bing Lee (a wealthy med student) has bought the house next door, and about his friend Mr. Darcy (who appears to be a big snob).

Each video is only about 3 to 5 minutes long, but that turns out to be a great length, because each video is basically a short scene in a much larger story.  At first the videos all take place in Lizzie's room at home, but as the story progresses, we follow her to other locations, each of which ties back to something in the original novel.  If you want, you can follow the story by merely watching Lizzie's diaries (100 in all), or you can also follow the tweets and videos from the other characters.  Lydia, for example, has 29 videos of her own, which she tends to make when Lizzie's not around.

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole project.  And I was not alone.  Each of the videos has hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, and the whole project won an Emmy Award.  Last year, the London Guardian picked The Lizzie Bennet Diaries as the best small-screen adaptation ever made of any Jane Austen novel -- even ahead of the legendary BBC production with Colin Firth.

Much of the credit for the success of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries must go to the actors, who have to perform within the tiny confines of a video blog.  Every time we see them, they are simply sitting in front of the camera.  But they do a remarkable job of projecting real personalities nonetheless.  Special credit should be given to Ashley Clements, who must carry the whole project as Lizzie.  She is onscreen almost the whole time, and must win the affections of the audience to keep people watching.  She also has to portray all of the countless emotions experienced by Lizzie over the course of the story.  Mary Kate Wiles, who plays Lydia, also deserves special praise for giving depth to a character who is often portrayed merely for laughs.  And Daniel Vincent Gordh must get credit for portraying Mr. Darcy in a way that was both consistent with all the bad things we had heard about Darcy and also likeable enough to make the audience root for him.

But most of the credit should go to Bernie Su, the Head Writer and Director.  He does a masterful job, not only of getting excellent performances from his young actors, but by turning out hour after hour of snappy dialogue.  He also had to work out all the issues presented by modernizing one of the most popular stories of all time.  As you follow the story, you realize just how many difficult decisions go into something like this.  How do you get Lizzie's parents to appear in her video diary?  (You don't; Lizzie imitates them for the camera.)  How do you find room for all five daughters from the original story?  (You cut it down to three daughters and then develop clever ways to bring Kitty Bennett and Mary Bennett -- the other two daughters from the novel -- into the story).  In the novel, Elizabeth Bennett receives a proposal from a Mr. Collins -- a tiresome Anglican priest.  What's the modern equivalent of that?  (That would be spoiling).  The choices go on and on, and if you love the novel I think you will be impressed with the thought and care that went into each of them.  If you don't love the novel -- or don't know anything about it -- you can still enjoy the story.  (Some of the folks commenting on YouTube didn't know The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was based on a book.)

I'm sure there will be people who believe that Jane Austen's masterpiece shouldn't be turned into a video blog, but personally my respect for her genius was increased.  As a guy, I tended to see the story more from the perspective of Darcy or Mr. Bennett, and I never fully appreciated the many tortures suffered by Elizabeth.  But in this version -- where we see everything from her perspective -- I can now better understand just how embarrassing and awkward she finds her situation.  At the same time, without Colin Firth's dramatic presence to distract us at the beginning of the story, one can see that Jane Austen has perfectly captured the behavior of the nervous guy with a crush:  Darcy constantly hangs around Elizabeth, and regularly drops vague remarks that are designed to draw her out, but he won't declare his feelings until he can't help himself.  This is exactly how a certain type of guy behaves when he runs into the woman of his dreams, and most girls (like Elizabeth Bennett) find it very confusing.  I give Jane Austen a lot of credit for figuring it out.

The success of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has led to imitators.  Someone is doing an adaptation of Jane Eyre, which you can see here.  And Bernie Su is now working on a version of Emma.  I am very happy to see the classic novels of the 19th century getting a new lease on life in this manner.  (Vanity Fair, anyone?)  But it will be very difficult for anyone to do this sort of thing as well as it was done in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

Trapper John, M.D.

I was watching some Battle of the Network Stars reruns on ESPN Classic the other night, and the CBS team featured several members of the Trapper John, M.D. cast. I was 11 when that show debuted Sept. 23, 1979, and it seems like I watched it pretty much every time it was on the air--at least for the first several seasons. Trapper got the One Day at a Time-Alice-Jeffersons lead-in, and I watched all of those CBS shows. Only ABC from 7 to 7:30 Central, with Mork & Mindy vs. CBS's Archie Bunker's Place, got me off of CBS during prime-time Sunday nights in fall 1979.

So, anyway, here's the pilot. I'll put stuff in the comments as I watch. But I'll go ahead and say thank you to all the people who take the time to post stuff on YouTube--I really appreciate your effort and its product.

Smart Girl Review: Doctor Who Season 3

Nothing drives traffic on the Internet like references to Doctor Who, the legendary British television series.  So we have brought back our very own Smart Girl, with her review of Season 3 of the Doctor Who revival.

Hi everybody, Smart Girl here.  I’ve finished all of Doctor Who, but I haven’t been able to write any more season reviews until now, so without further ado, here’s the next one!

Season Three (Warning: there will be spoilers)

Summary:  This season begins with a Christmas special starting where the second season ended.  At the end of last season, the Doctor was saying goodbye to Rose Tyler in her parallel universe and about to tell her something, when the connection ended.  The Doctor was naturally very sad, but his moping was interrupted by the appearance of a red-headed woman in a wedding dress.  As we all know, red-heads in wedding dresses can’t just appear in the TARDIS, so the Doctor is naturally very confused.  They find out she appeared because of special particles somebody had been feeding her, and they solve the whole situation, saving the world in time for Christmas.  Sadly, the woman, Donna Noble, refuses the Doctor’s offer of traveling, and he takes off once more.

Next, he meets a young doctor-in-training (a medical doctor, not a Time Lord "Doctor") named Martha Jones and takes her along with him after saving a hospital.  They travel together, with Martha developing a crush on the Doctor and the Doctor missing Rose.  The Doctor is told he is not alone, but he doesn’t believe it.  They meet a never-before-seen enemy known as the “Weeping Angels” in one of the most famous episodes in the new series, “Blink” written by none other than Steven Moffat.  We also learn Time Lords can turn human by putting their Time Lord-ness into a pocket watch, but it makes them lose all their memories.  One day, the Doctor and Martha are in Cardiff, charging the TARDIS when a familiar face comes running up to the TARDIS yelling, “Doctor!”  He grabs onto the TARDIS as it takes off and is dragged through the vortex.  The Doctor and Martha step out into the End of the Universe to find a man the Doctor recognizes, but sadly appears to be dead.  The Doctor ignores him, apparently unconcerned, while Martha tries to give him CPR.  Soon after, he wakes up and introduces himself as Captain Jack Harkness.  The three see a man being chased by a large group of people.  They follow him to a refugee camp for humans trying to reach “Utopia”.  The Doctor volunteers to help “Professor Yana” build the rocket to Utopia.  While the Doctor and Jack discuss his immortality, Martha notices that Professor Yana has a pocket watch just like the Doctor’s when he turned human.  She goes to tell the Doctor, but it’s too late.  Yana has opened the watch and remembered that he is the Master, the Doctor’s old foe.

The Master steals the Doctor’s TARDIS, but the Doctor locks it, so it can only go between present-day Britain and the End of the Universe.  They use Jack’s Vortex Manipulator to go to present-day Britain and find that the Master has regenerated and become the Prime Minister by hypnotizing everyone.  Also, he has turned the TARDIS into a paradox machine and used it to make the humans from the End of the Universe kill the past humans.  The Doctor, Jack, and Martha are captured, but the Doctor sends Martha away with the Vortex Manipulator after giving her instructions.  She spends a year walking around the Earth, apparently gathering the parts of a gun that permanently kills Time Lords.  The Master captures her and learns that she wasn't building a gun at all.  Instead, she actually told everybody to think the Doctor’s name at the same time so the Doctor could free himself and beat the Master.  This works, and the Doctor beats the Master by . . . forgiving him?  It somehow works, and the Doctor plans to travel with the Master.  Sadly, this will never happen because the Master is shot and refuses to regenerate.  At the end, Martha realizes that the Doctor will never fall in love with her, and decides to leave. 

My Opinion:  I liked this season, but not any more than the last season.  I started out liking Martha, because she was smart, but as the season went on, her crush got more and more annoying.  I especially hated the two-parter “Human Nature/Family of Blood” where the Doctor turned into a human named “John Smith”.  John Smith was extremely annoying, and it didn’t help when he fell in love with a human.  I spent the whole time waiting for the Doctor to come back.  I also disliked the Dalek episode, because I had a hard time the Daleks would ever even consider melding with humans.  Their shtick is that Daleks are supreme.  They’re based on the Nazis for crying out loud!  Racial purity is kind of their thing.   However, I loved “Blink”, mostly because of Sally Sparrow, an amazing character.  And, as usual, the Tenth Doctor was awesome.

James Gandolfini, 1961-2013

On January 10, 1999, the Minnesota Vikings beat the Arizona Cardinals 41-21 behind another strong performance to Randall Cunningham to roar into the NFC Title game, which they would host the next week.  Given that their opponent was to be the usually-hapless Atlanta Falcons, I was pretty certain Minnesota was going to the Super Bowl.  And that's about all I can remember from that day.  I didn't subscribe to HBO back then, so I know I didn't watch the first episode of The Sopranos, which aired that night.

But that would change.  Within just a few years, I wouldn't think of missing the first episode of a season involving The Sopranos.  Months before each season began, speculation would start in magazines and message boards.  And by the time the familiar theme music started to play, anticipation among Sopranos fans reached a fever pitch.

Of course, we were never all that numerous.  At the height of its fame, in late 2002, The Sopranos averaged about 11 million viewers per episode.  To put that in perspective, NCIS came on the air in 2003, and its lowest-rated season averaged 11.84 million viewers per episode.  (Last year, NCIS was the number-one show on television, with over 21 million viewers per episode.)

These numbers are important, I think, when we realize what The Sopranos did to the world of television.  For years, we've all been told the story of how The Sopranos ended up on HBO because all of the networks turned it down.  But the network executives were not necessarily wrong.  The networks are designed to appeal to a broad audience -- in that sense, they are literally broadcasters.  The Sopranos, with its artsy experimentation, its extraordinary levels of violence, and its moral ambiguity, probably never could have been sufficiently popular to air on network television.

Instead, The Sopranos represented the dawn of an era in which television would follow the rest of American culture, in which the divisions among Americans become more obvious with every decade.  When I was a kid, the United States was dominated by a broad middle class that shopped at Sears and Penney's, and got its entertainment from the major networks.  Over time, that class has shrunk, and we Americans have divided ourselves in different ways.  We have niche magazines, niche restaurants, niche books, and niche shopping.

Television came relatively late to this party.  By the late 1990's, it was obvious that the booming stock market and the growing effects of globalization were creating a new "overclass" that had less and less in common with its neighbors.  But when The Sopranos came on the air, TV was still dominated by the old networks.  In 1998, the nominees for the Emmy Award for Best Drama included two shows from ABC (The Practice and NYPD Blue), two shows form NBC (ER and Law & Order), and one show from FOX (The X-Files).

Even after The Sopranos burst on the scene, and was regularly being lauded by critics as the best show on TV, the Establishment was slow to recognize what had happened.  The Sopranos was nominated for the Emmy Award for Best Drama in 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2003 -- but it lost every time.  Not until 2004 did it finally win.

But even then, the greatness of James Gandolfini was recognized.  He won the Emmy Award for Best Actor in Dramatic Series in 2000, 2001, and 2003.  And he deserved them, because he was magnificent.  David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, had enormous ambitions for his show.  He wanted the viewer to be drawn into the story of Tony Soprano, a New Jersey mobster with a troubled family life.  But he never wanted Tony to be a good guy, or even a sympathetic guy.  Time and time again, the audience would start rooting for Tony -- only to watch him commit a particularly brutal murder, or mistreat his wife in a particularly cruel way.  It was a very difficult balancing act to pull off, and the writing -- while outstanding -- was only half the solution.  For the show to work at all, the actor playing Tony had to be able to both charm and horrify the audience.  We had to be repelled by his behavior, or the show would lose its moral force.  But we also had to remain interested, or the show would grow stale.

James Gandolfini accomplished the almost impossible tasks associated with his role.  In any episode, he could be funny, poignant, and murderous -- all with total credibility, and all within a few minutes of each other.  And he did it year after year, from the very first episode to the last.  You never felt that he was just mailing it in, or that he had lost interest in the role.  For its viewers, The Sopranos became the gold standard of television, and James Gandolfini deserves much of the credit.  His performance as Tony Soprano is, for me, perhaps the greatest acting accomplishment in television history.

These days, of course, the revolution started by The Sopranos is complete.  Last year's nominees for the Emmy Award for Best Drama included two shows from HBO (Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones), two from AMC (Breaking Bad and Mad Men), one from PBS (Downton Abbey), and one from Showtime (Homeland).  No show on the broadcast networks has won the Award since 2006, when 24 did so.  High-end television is now dominated by shows that, in one way or another, seek to emulate The Sopranos.

 We can talk about whether this has all been good for culture, just as we can talk about what the decline of department stores says about our country.  But I am certain that under the new regime, a lot of great and entertaining television has been made that never would have been seen in the old days.  And this would not have happened -- or wouldn't have happened so quickly -- without the brilliance of James Gandolfini's performance.  I am very, very sorry he has died, but his work will live for years to come.  Very few people can say as much.

McMillan and Wife -- Continued

Now that I'm back from Philly, I'm continuing my coverage of "Death Is a Seven-Point Favorite."  Additional comments will be posted at the original link.

McMillan and Wife: "Death Is a Seven-Point Favorite"

One of the best things about Netflix is that you can try out shows that you've never seen before.  I have only seen one or two episodes of "McMillan and Wife," a hit show from the 1970's that starred Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James.  According to Wikipedia, Rock Hudson plays Stewart "Mac" McMillan, who is the Police Commissioner of San Francisco.  (This was during the San Francisco craze in American culture -- there are a ton of movies and TV shows set in San Francisco from the mid-1950's to the mid-1970's).

Anyway, I've decided to give this show a chance.  In the spirit of Eric, I have picked "Death Is a Seven-Point Favorite," the fourth episode from the first season.  This episode aired on December 8, 1971, and has something to do with professional football.

Oh, they only made about 7-8 episodes of this show per year.  It rotated with Columbo and McCloud as part of a series called the NBC Mystery Movie.  I like the idea of rotating shows, and it seems to have been pretty successful.  I wonder why it hasn't been tried more.

In December 1971, Rock Hudson had just turned 46 years old.  Susan Saint James was 25.  I don't think they make shows any more in which 46-year-old men are married to 25-year-old women -- but they didn't make many back then, either.

OK, on with the show!  (Further thoughts in the comments. And here's a photo from RockHudsonProject.com)

NCAA Baseball Tournament, Day Three

ESPN's newly expanded coverage of the NCAA Baseball Tournament has made this one of my new favorite events of the year.  Yesterday was simply spectacular, as you could have watched baseball from about noon Central Time until almost 3 A.M. Central Time -- the last game of the day, Cal-State Fullerton against Arizona State -- didn't get started until 11:45 P.M. Central Time because the first game in Fullerton (Columbia's 6-5 win over New Mexico) ran 13 innings.  A rain delay in Nashville pushed back the start time of ESPNU's scheduled broadcast of Vandy v. Illinois from 6 PM Central to 7:35 PM.  So the U had a big programming hole for about three-and-a-half hours between the finish of the Arkansas/Wichita game and the beginning of the Vandy game.  That time was filled brilliantly, as ESPN jumped all over the country from game to game taking us wherever the action was most exciting.  They pulled out all the stops, sometimes even going to a split screen that showed three games simultaneously, and at other times switching back and forth between two games on a pitch-by-pitch basis.

The result was one of the most entertaining afternoons I can remember, and the best thing I've seen on ESPN for years.  We saw Mercer make up a 5-1 deficit after 7 innings to send its game with Central Arkansas into extra innings -- only to blow it in the 11th with a terrible outfield throw that gave Central Arkansas its game-winning run.  We saw Louisville break open its game with Miami (Fla.) with a 6-run seventh inning that featured a suicide squeeze and two bases-loaded walks -- and then watched the Cardinals hold off a Hurricane comeback for a 6-4 win.  We saw San Francisco score in the top of the 10th to take a 3-2 lead over South Dakota State -- and then saw a San Francisco error give the Jackrabbits the run they needed in the bottom of the 10th to regain the lead.  We saw the battle of San Diego, as the San Diego Toreros (wearing camouflage-type uniforms) came from behind to eliminate the San Diego State Aztecs 6-3.  And that was only a small part of the action.  If this continues, the first weekend of the NCAA Baseball tournament will become must-see television for a lot of fans.

There were many close and thrilling contests yesterday.  But when it was all said and done, fourteen of the sixteen number-one seeds were in the driver's seat as the only remaining undefeated team in their region.  In games of particular interest to us, Indiana hammered Austin Peay 15-6 to take control of the Bloomington Region.  NCSU used a complete game two-hit shutout to beat William & Mary 1-0 and take control of the Raleigh Region.  And Vanderbilt came from behind to beat Illinois 10-4 and remain undefeated in the Nashville Region.

Today we will again have 32 games (assuming no rainouts).  In each region, the first game will feature the two 1-1 teams.  The losers of those games will be eliminated, and the winner will move on to play the 2-0 team in the region.  If the undefeated team wins that game, it will win the region and advance to one of the eight Super-Regionals to be played next weekend.  If not, the two teams will meet in a winner-take-all game on Monday.

Here are the current standings (the number next to each team is its seed; teams with two losses have been eliminated):

Chapel Hill Region (winner will play the winner of the Columbia Region):
1.  N. Carolina:  2-0
2.  Fla. Atlantic:  1-1
3.  Towson:  1-1
4.  Canisius:  0-2

Columbia Region:
1.  S. Carolina:  2-0
2.  Clemson:  1-1
3.  Liberty:  1-1
4.  Saint Louis:  0-2

Raleigh Region (winner will play the winner of the Eugene Region):
1.  N. Carolina St:  2-0
2.  Mississippi:  1-1
3.  William & Mary:  1-1
4.  Binghamton:  0-2

Eugene Region:
2.  Rice:  2-0
1.  Oregon:  1-1
3.  San Francisco:  1-1
4.  South Dakota St:  0-2

Fullerton Region (winner will play the winner of the Los Angeles Region):
1.  Cal-State Fullerton:  2-0
2.  Arizona St:  1-1
4.  Columbia:  1-1
3.  New Mexico:  0-2

Los Angeles Region:
1.  UCLA:  2-0
2.  Cal Poly:  1-1
3.  San Diego:  1-1
4.  San Diego St:  0-2

Blacksburg Region (winner will play the winner of the Baton Rouge Region):
2.  Oklahoma:  2-0
1.  Virginia Tech:  1-1
4.  Connecticut:  1-1
3.  Coastal Carolina:  0-2

Baton Rouge Region:
1.  Louisiana St:  2-0
2.  La-Lafayette:  1-1
3.  Sam Houston St:  1-1
4.  Jackson St:  0-2

Nashville Region (winner will play the winner of the Louisville Region):
1.  Vanderbilt:  2-0
2.  Georgia Tech:  1-1
3.  Illinois:  1-1
4.  E. Tennessee St:  0-2

Louisville Region:
1.  Louisville:  2-0
2.  Miami (Fla.):  1-1
3.  Oklahoma St:  1-1
4.  Bowling Green:  0-2

Bloomington Region (winner will play the winner of the Tallahassee Region):
1.  Indiana:  2-0
2.  Austin Peay:  1-1
4.  Valparaiso:  1-1
3.  Florida:  0-2

Tallahassee Region:
1.  Florida St:  2-0
2.  Alabama:  1-1
3.  Troy:  1-1
4.  Savannah St:  0-2

Charlottesville Region (winner will play the winner of the Starkville Region):
1.  Virginia:  2-0
2.  UNC-Wilmington:  1-1
3.  Elon:  1-1
4.  Army:  0-2

Manhattan (Kan.) Region (winner will play the winner of the Corvallis Region):
1.  Kansas St:  2-0
2.  Arkansas:  1-1
3.  Bryant:  1-1
4.  Wichita St:  0-2

Corvallis Region:
1.  Oregon St:  2-0
2.  Texas A & M:  1-1
3.  Cal-Santa Barbara:  1-1
4.  Tex-San Antonio:  0-2

Ken Venturi, 1931-2013

Very few athletes have had a career that was more dramatic -- or more frustrating -- than Ken Venturi.  Venturi came very, very close to being one of the greatest golfers of all time.  In 1956, when he was a 24-year-old amateur, he led the Masters after the first round, the second round, and the third round.  With 18 holes to play, he led the tournament by four shots.  With nine holes to go, he could have shot 40 on the back nine and won the title.  Instead, he shot a 42, giving him an 80 for his last round.  He lost the title by one shot to Jack Burke, Jr.  No other amateur has ever come so close to winning the Masters.

A few months later, still an amateur, he finished 8th in the U.S. Open.

At the end of 1956, he turned pro and was an immediate success, winning 10 tournaments from 1957 to 1960.  But he couldn't quite break through in the majors.  In 1958, he was in a very good position to win the Masters, but bogeyed 14, 15, and 16 in the last round to fall back, finishing two shots behind Arnold Palmer.  In 1960, he was the clubhouse leader by one shot over Palmer, who only had two holes left to play.  Palmer birdied both holes to beat Venturi by one shot.  Venturi also had top-10 finishes in the 1957 U.S. Open, the 1959 PGA, and the 1960 PGA.  Still, he was regularly described as a leading player, and it was surely just a matter of time before he added some major titles to his many PGA victories.

But in 1961, minor injuries resulting from an automobile accident affected his swing, and he stopped winning.  For three years, from 1961 to 1963, he did not win a single tournament.  In 1964, however, he suddenly returned to his old form.  After three rounds at the U.S. Open, Venturi was near the top of the leaderboard.  Unfortunately, his body was breaking down.  Back then, the U.S. Open was played over three days, with the players having to play 36 holes on the last day.  The 1964 Open was at Congressional Country Club, near Washington, D.C., and the temperatures were in the 100's.  Venturi was suffering dehydration, and doctors warned him that he might not survive the last round.  Venturi played on anyway.  Stumbling from hole to hole, in a mental fog that made it difficult for him to add up his own score, he played the round of his life -- shooting a 70 to win the U.S. Open by four shots.

Venturi's dramatic victory galvanized the country, and became one of the legendary stories of gold history.  Venturi won two other tournaments in 1964, and finished 5th at the PGA, proving that his win was no fluke.  Sports Illustrated named him Sportsman of the Year.  At the age of 33, he should have had at least 10 more good years ahead of him.

In fact, his career was effectively over -- he had developed carpal tunnel syndrome in both wrists.  Surgeries eventually reversed the condition, but he never again played at a high level.  It was a heartbreaking conclusion for a golfer who had already suffered so much heartbreak.

Remarkably, however, Venturi was on the verge of a new and even greater career.  In 1967, he began working as a golf commentator for CBS Sports.  He kept it up for 35 years, retiring in June 2002.  For most of this period, CBS really was the Tiffany Network when it came to sports.  CBS's camera work and direction were always first-rate, and CBS had a remarkable ability to develop announcers who were accurate and enthused without being maudlin or intrusive.  These days, we live in a world in which sports fans are alienated and frustrated by the announcers we are forced to endure.  In fact, one of the most popular sports blogs these days is called simply awfulannouncing.com.  But for decades, CBS gave us announcers who were not only respected, but loved.  Pat Summerall and John Madden are the two most obvious examples of this phenomenon, but for golf fans, Venturi rivaled even those two legends in popularity.

Venturi's ability to describe the technical challenges facing a golfer were unmatched, but it was his emotional connection to the sport that made him so beloved.  As a player, Venturi always wore a white cap in honor of Ben Hogan.  But unlike Hogan, Venturi wore his heart on his sleeve.  Despite -- or perhaps because of -- all the traumas and disappointments of his golfing career, Venturi had a wondrous sympathy for his fellow players.  He was always very professional in his coverage, but you could tell he was rooting for all the golfers, even the ones like Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods who had enjoyed successes that he had been denied.  And Venturi was never better than at the Masters, the one place where he had suffered so much heartache.  He never won a green jacket, but for all of us fans, Venturi's voice became one of the great symbols of Augusta National.

As the years went by, his legend grew, and Ken Venturi achieved a popularity among golf fans that is very difficult to overstate.  He was a hero to all of us who knew how he had suffered, and who admired his ability to reinvent himself and succeed without regretting what might have been.  Only a few weeks ago, he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.  And this weekend, we fans are remembering him with joy.

Who would have thought that a life with so much sadness could have had such a happy ending?

Note:  A special video was made to honor Venturi at the Hall of Fame ceremony.  You can see it here.

Liveblogging "Survive and Advance"

I'm watching "Survive and Advance," the ESPN documentary on N.C State's run to the basketball title in 1983.  Any observations will go into the comments.

Live-blogging the Oscars

Not many web pages live-blog the Daytona 500 and the Oscars, but the HP is not just any other web page.

The only Oscar-nominated movie I saw this year was Lincoln, but I still love Oscar night.  If you want to read some British snark on the Academy Awards, the Guardian's live-blog is here.  Smart Girl is watching with me as the stars enter on the red carpet.  If we have any observations, they'll go in the comments.