What has Pete Carroll been smoking?

Let’s face it, the two week break between the NFL championship games and the Super Bowl is a complete waste of time.  Nothing interesting has happened at Media Day since MTV sent Downtown Julie Brown to cover the event wearing a miniskirt.  The fear of providing bulletin board material reduces even a player like Richard Sherman to platitudes like “both teams are real competitors.” 

So the media leaped to attention when Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll responded to a question from a reporter by opining that the NFL should look into the use of medical marijuana in treating player concussions.

The problem here is not the message but the messenger.  Washington, home of the Seattle Seahawks, is one of two states in the country to legalize recreational marijuana use (the other is Colorado, home of the Denver Broncos; coincidence?), and Pete Carroll’s team has (allegedly) lost more notable players to suspensions over marijuana use than any other team.  So naturally he is going to endorse any policy that would undermine the league’s potential penalties against his players’ off field drug usage.  He is, after all, often described as a players’ coach.

Roger Goodell, in full legal advice mode, has also said that the NFL should look into anything that could improve player safety, because the League is all about player safety.  At least it will until it turns into the National Flag Football League.  But maybe Goodell should think a bit about the ramifications of approving the use of medical marijuana to treat concussions.  The first consequence is that the number of concussions is going to rise dramatically.

Imagine the first play of the first game of the season.  The kicker kicks off, the ball tumbles through the air and is caught by the return man, who dashes out of the end zone and is brought down at the 25 yard line.  Immediately half the players on the field grab their heads.  “Ow, my head!  My head!  I’ve got a . . . a . . . I can’t remember the word!  I need help!  Who’s got a joint?”

The incidence of players claiming to have concussions would rise exponentially.  There is a precedent, namely the uptick in NFL players claiming they were found in violation of the NFL’s anti-amphetamine policy because they took Adderall to treat ADHD.  Richard Sherman was once quoted as saying "about half" the league took Adderall, but there’s no way of knowing how accurate he intended that statement to be; if he is right, then the 50% or so of NFL players taking Adderall would slightly exceed the 5% rate of ADHD among adults.  Of course there is no way to be sure about anything because of the secrecy behind the league’s drug testing policies, and the number of players who have formally asked for an exemption to testing because of a prescription for Adderall is still low (and undisclosed), but the NFL has acknowledged that positive tests for amphetamine use has increased significantly in recent years.

Should we be surprised that the coach of a football team that resides in a state where marijuana is legal, and who has had players suspended supposedly for marijuana use, would endorse the use of medical marijuana to treat concussions, the biggest hot button issue facing the league?  The league has a problem with concussions; Carroll has a problem with players being suspended for getting high.  He just wants to solve both problems by having the league undermine its drug testing policy by approving of medical marijuana, which would make testing for recreational marijuana impossible.

Pete Carroll is smart.  Pete Carroll is a players’ coach.  Pete Carroll is just trying to gain an edge for Pete Carroll’s team.  But if he thinks the NFL is going to jump on the medical marijuana bandwagon, then you have to ask, “What’s he been smoking?”

Movie review: Nebraska

I don’t know if this is linguistically accurate, but I've often thought of melancholy as being in the shallow end of the tragedy pool.  Tragedy is looking back on your life and seeing children dying, businesses failing or ambitions thwarted; melancholy is looking back and realizing that you were given lousy options and you still chose poorly.  You married the slightly less unattractive girl but she turned out to be mean and corrosive; you left the family farm for something better and ended up working yourself to death in the city with nothing to show for it; you see relatives at a family reunion that you haven’t seen in years and you wonder what you have in common with these jerks other than DNA.

Alexander Payne’s latest film, Nebraska, drips with melancholy but never wallows in it.  It is peopled with characters from small towns who have small minds and small ambitions, and great regrets about how little progress they made in achieving those dreams.  This isn't the stuff of Shakespeare; no kings, no princes, no dynasties up for grabs, but as the line from Death of a Salesman goes, attention must be paid.

The plot of Nebraska comes from what I believe was a real incident a few years ago when an elderly man made his way to the headquarters of Publishers Clearinghouse because he believed he was the “winner” of a one million dollar prize.  In the movie an aged tippler named Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) is determined to walk from Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska because he is convinced he won a million dollars in a sweepstakes and no one will drive him there because they all realize it’s a con.  His younger son, Davy (Will Forte) agrees to drive him to Lincoln, partly to spend some time with his Dad, partly to get him to shut up about the million dollars.

As with much literature (see, The Odyssey) the trip does not go smoothly and father and son end up spending several days in the father’s hometown of Hawthorne, Nebraska.  During the extended stay old friendships are renewed, old scars are re-opened, and Davy makes the uncomfortable realization, that many middle-aged children have, that his elderly parents were once horny teenagers.

The mood of melancholy is enhanced by the cinematography, which is in black and white.  To be more accurate, it is filmed not in black and white but in grey; sometimes the sky is so washed out it looks as if scenes were filmed in front of a white sheet. The film may have been shot on the most glorious spring day in Nebraska history, but every scene looks like it was filmed by Ingmar Bergman during a Scandinavian winter.

Nebraska has received 6 Oscar nominations, all deserved (as if the Academy would nominate someone undeserving): Best Picture, Best Director (Alexander Payne), Best Actor (Bruce Dern), Best Supporting Actress (June Squibb), Best Screenplay (Bob Nelson), Best Cinematography (Phedon Papamichael).  It’s always tough evaluating older actors; you can never be sure how much is acting and how much is just them being, well, old.  Dern is an old pro and a previous nominee, and the Academy has been known to give Oscars to older actors who have knocked around a lot (Christopher Plummer, Alan Arkin, Nick Nolte, James Coburn) so he may have a shot. 

Nebraska is a film that can be appreciated by anyone with an elderly parent who resists all attempts to convince them of anything; or has carried on a feud with a relative so long that neither can recall the details; or by any child who has visited their parents’ hometown and been amazed that they made it out of there alive.  It makes you happy, but also a little melancholy.

The war on piracy: can't we just take away their rum and eye patches?

There is a war going on in this country.  No, not the war on poverty.  Or drugs.  Or terrorism.  Or Christmas.  Or the designated hitter.  I mean the War on Piracy, and I don’t mean the kind depicted in Captain Phillips.  The entertainment industry has decided that the reason for lousy profits isn’t creative bankruptcy, multi-million dollar production deals with talentless stars, or everybody hopping on the latest perceived trend until it is milked drier than Justin Bieber after rehab (not my best metaphor).  It’s those darned kids using computers to steal content instead of buying it like they should.

Hollywood has tried a number of tactics in this war, from stern warning from Humphrey Bogart about the immorality of intellectual property theft (showing a clip from Casablanca, where Bogart’s character sleeps with another man’s wife, kills a man trying to alert the authorities that a wanted man is escaping, then stiffs his friend on a bet they made by saying it’s for “expenses”) to developing anti-theft technology that takes the average teenager about 30 seconds to circumvent.  But now they mean business.

Now when you rent a DVD from Netflix or Redbox, odds are that when you click on “special features” you’ll get a screen saying that the disc is intended for rental only and to access the special features you will need to purchase the DVD.  That’ll teach those punks to copy movies for free, they won’t get access to the director’s commentary!

This shows a complete lack of understanding about why people buy movies as oppose to rent them.  You don’t buy a movie to hear the director’s commentary or watch the “making of” video about how they blew stuff up so realistically.  You buy the DVD because you love the film and want to watch it over and over, and watch it with the commentary over and over, and watch the making of videos over and over.  You buy the DVD because you are obsessive about wanting to own the film. 

If you don’t want to own the film, not gaining access to the director’s commentary is not going to make you shell out the bucks needed to obtain the DVD.  However, if you are on the fence, a good Special Features collection might tip the balance.  But since rental DVDs don’t let you see the special features, then you will remain on the side of the fence where you are happy being able to get the DVD from Netflix in a couple of days, or from Redbox as long as they carry it.

Netflix has significantly reduced my impetus to buy DVDs.  But if I know the disc has quality commentaries by the director, the actor, the cinematographer, and the caterer, then just maybe I’ll want to own it rather than spend the two days it will take to get it from Netflix.  Hollywood’s anti-piracy policy makes me less likely, not more likely, to buy a DVD.

Hollywood’s lack of profitability has more to do with the endless stream of remakes, reboots, and sequels (Paranormal Activity 9: There’s Something Behind the Couch!  Boo!) than piracy.  Studio executives who are out of touch with what audiences want (if they were ever in touch) find it easier to blame piracy than to take a chances on new creative people who have wacky ideas about what audiences want.  So they can pat themselves on the back by creating “rental use only” DVDs, but it won’t result in any increase in sales or reduce the number of illegal downloads.

A girlfriend once told me that her mother told her that a man doesn’t buy a cow if he can get the milk for free; I replied that the best way to sell a high quality product is to give out free samples.  Okay, that encounter didn't end the way I’d hoped.  But I stand by the idea that if you want people to buy a product, they need to know how good the product is, and telling people that they can only access Special Features by buying a DVD doesn't do the trick.

The End of Celluloid?

Several years ago a war was underway, one for the hearts and minds of home movie watchers.  On the one side was the media giant Blockbuster Videos, who didn't want its employees to have to explain to customers why the videos they rented didn't fill up their TV screens; they wanted videos to be in full screen format.  On the other side were cinema artistes who wanted their films seen as they intended, in wide-screen format with an aspect ratio that required blank spaces at the top and bottom of a square-shaped TV screen.  Even before the advent of wide-screen TVs the artistes won the day, and the inevitable decline of Blockbuster had begun.

A slightly different war is going on now, and I’m not so sure the good guys are winning.  On January 17^th the Los Angeles Times reported that Paramount Pictures announced it would be the first studio to distribute all of its films digitally instead of on 35 mm film.  This could very well be the tipping point for the end of celluloid distribution of movies.

A 2012 documentary called Side by Side recounted the evolution of the use of digital technology in movie making (if it is all digital can it still be called “film” making?  I guess people still use the term “album” in an era of digital downloads).  The film contained interviews with old school filmmakers who preferred celluloid (Christopher Nolan) and new-era technocrats who embraced digital (George Lucas, Robert Rodriquez).  I’ll deal with production issues in another blog, but for now I want to talk about the projection issue.

When you watch a movie on celluloid in a theater, you are not watching moving images; you are watching 24 still photos per second flickering through a projector.  The illusion of motion is due to a phenomenon called “persistence of vision.”  Your brain is actively engaged in creating what seem to be moving images on a screen.  As editor Walter Murch points out in a deleted scene from Side by Side, when you are in a theater half of the time the theater was completely dark when the projector shutter was closed between frames, but your brain had to actively “edit out” that darkness to create seamless movement.

Digital projection creates no such illusion, as what you are watching is literal movement.  The brain is not engaged and the visual experience is more passive.  Roger Ebert wrote that studies have shown that watching a celluloid movie causes the brain to produce alpha waves, indicating interaction, while watching a digital image produces passive beta waves.  Celluloid draws you in, digital projection puts you to sleep.  I've noticed that films I found fascinating in a theater are less than captivating when I re-watch them on my TV at home.

Those touting digital projection makes points about how it is cheaper than producing hundreds of reels for movie distribution, how digital presentations have less variability or degradation, and how the images are crisper and sharper.  Most of the pro-digital proponents are more interested in how many spaceships they can put into a scene rather than whether they are engaging the audience (face it, if George Lucas cared at all about narrative he would have had someone else re-write Star Wars Episodes 1-3).

One of the interesting counter-arguments comes from James Cameron, who in an additional interview says that he believes digital three-D actually tricks the brain into thinking it is watching a “real” image causing more neurons to fire, and thus is more engaging.  First, anyone who thought the 3-D images from Avatar were realistic needs to find an alternate reality to live in; second, Cameron complained that he couldn't get scientists to investigate his claim unless they could get a $2 million grant.  How much did Cameron earn on Titanic and Avatar?  I think he could afford to shell out a couple of mill to prove his point.

Filmmakers with a noted knack for anticipating audience psychology, such as Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan, have endorsed celluloid, claiming it has an ineffable influence on theater audiences.  Technology-driven directors such as George Lucas and Stephen Soderbergh advocate for digital distribution, citing cost and clarity.  While several people interviewed for Side by Side maintained that film would never go away (mainly as a storage medium), the cost factors are swinging the contest toward digital projection.  Will some intangible connection between audiences and the films they love be lost?  Only time will tell.

Can Serena Get the GOAT?

Numbers don’t mean as much as they used to in sports.  In baseball, 714 once was a hallowed number every fan could recite; ask most fans now what the all-time home run record is and many would still say 714.  Either 500 home runs or 3,000 hits used to be a ticket to Cooperstown; Rafael Palmiero had both and he was just eliminated from the Hall of Fame ballot because he got less than 5% of the possible votes.  The debate over who is the greatest quarterback in NFL history comes down not to numbers, but on how much post-season success should count.

But numbers still mean something, and we could be watching an historic trek over the next few years.  Serena Williams has, as I write this, 17 Grand Slam championships.  By the time you read this she may have tied Chris Evert and Martina Natratilova, who have 18.  Once she catches them, her sights will be set on Helen Wills Moody (19), Steffi Graf (22) and Margaret Court (24).  The question is, can Serena catch Margaret Court and become the Greatest Of All Time?

Let’s concede one thing right away: if Margaret Court in her prime were transported to 2014 to play a match with Serena, Serena would win 6-0, 6-0 in 30 minutes and all Margaret Court would have to show for it would be a lot of wooden tennis rackets broken by Serena’s 120 MPH serves (Helen Wills Moody would probably see one serve and run back to her time machine).  Serena does not need to win 24 Grand Slams to be considered the Greatest of All Time.

The argument against Serena getting to 24 championships would be that unbeaten adversary, Father Time.  Serena is at an age when most women’s tennis players are retired, not winning championships.  Roger Federer is about the same age and he is tinkering with his racket to try and gain an edge in a probably futile attempt to add to his title record.  Winning seven more championships would probably take too long, given the time she has left.

The problem with the above analysis is that it is completely wrong.  Federer is fading, but Serena is more dominant now than she was a decade ago.  How long it will take her to win seven more slams depends on how many she can win per year, and right now it’s hard to see who can stop her.  Serena is probably more dominant in her sport than any individual athlete ever, except possibly for Tiger Woods at his peak.

Serena’s record against her four closest rivals (Azarenka, Sharapova, Li and Radwanska) is 47-6, or Serena wins 88.7% of the time.  The only woman in the top ten who has beaten Serena four times is Jelena Jankovic, against whom Serena’s record is 8-4.  Serena’s worst record against a currently active player is her 14-10 record against her sister Venus, but given Venus’ health problems it doesn’t look like the two of them will be meeting in any more Slam finals.

Will surfaces factor in to how many Slams she can win per year?  It appears not.  Serena has a career Grand Slam, and the only thing stopping Serena from holding all four major titles at one time in 2013 was her loss to Sloane Stevens in the 2013 Aussie Open; before that she had won the 2012 Wimbledon and US Opens, and then won the 2013 French Open.  She is capable of winning all four majors in a year, which would get her to 24 wins by 2015.  She should be the favorite on the grass at Wimbledon for several more years.  So all four surfaces are in play, although the red clay of Roland Garros is the hardest surface for her to win on (only two of her 17 titles).

Of course the big wild card is health.  Serena has played in all four majors only six times since 1999.  But two of those years were 2012 and 2013, and she won two slams in both of those years.  At that pace (two per year) she could win six more majors in three years and be only one shy of Court’s record of 24, and she could easily pick up that additional title at some point.  Given her head-to-head record against her closest rivals, I’d take that action.

I think that even with minor health issues Serena could continue to win at least two major titles per year for another three years, and can easily pick up an additional slam to reach Margaret Court’s total of 24.  I can’t see her playing much longer than that before the inevitable decline kicks in, but if I were Serena Williams I’d start building some more shelves for my trophy case.

The magic century mark

F. Scott Fitzgerald said “There are no second acts in American lives.”  I don’t know if that’s true anymore; it seems like the American public is consumed by tearing down public lives just to “forgive” the person and raise them up again.  After all, Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer both ran (albeit unsuccessfully) for office in New York City after being publicly humiliated by their own hubris.  It’s almost as if the public believes someone who got caught transgressing once before is more trustworthy now because he or she knows not to make the same mistake again.  Which isn't to say they won’t make new ones (heads up all you Bobby Petrino fans in Louisville!).

One place where there are very few second acts is on television.  Let me give two examples.  Michael Lerned was an actress with a man’s first name who starred on The Waltons back in the 1970’s.  To call her one of the best actresses at the time is an understatement; she was nominated for six Emmys for Best Actress and won three.  How did she follow this success up?  She starred in a show called Nurse that lasted two seasons (and netted her another Emmy) but after that she pops up in TV movies and guest star spots on shows such as Scrubs.  She did not star in another successful series.  The same goes for Daniel J. Travanti, the star of the show Hill Street Blues.  Travanti received five Best Actor nominations and two Emmys, but he never starred in another successful TV drama.

Let’s set an arbitrary measure of a “successful” series at 100 episodes, the point at which most series can go into syndication and last seemingly forever.  How many actors or actresses have starred in one hour-long dramatic series that lasted 100 episodes, and then starred in another?  The answer is very few.

Raymond Burr logged 271 episodes as Perry Mason in the 1950’s and 60’s, then followed that with 195 episodes of Ironside.  Michael Landon was the lead in 187 episodes of Little House on the Prairie, then produced 111 episodes of Highway to Heaven (add that to 426 episodes of Bonanza and that’s a lot of screen time; I am reluctant to include Bonanza as he technically wasn’t the lead in that show, Lorne Greene was).  Rob Morrow just squeaks in, starring in 102 episodes of Northern Exposure and 111 of Numbers.

Perhaps the most surprising member of this group is David Boreanaz, who starred in 111 episodes of Angel and is currently on Bones, which is rapidly approaching 200 episodes.  Maybe the stupidest thing I ever said was that his career would be over 10 minutes after Angel was cancelled.  In my defense, I then said in a blog on a previous website that Boreanaz had done something really difficult--he did something he didn’t have to do: get better.  Most actors who get acting roles thanks to their looks don’t feel the need to improve, but Boreanaz has developed from the callow youth cast by Joss Whedon on Buffy the Vampire Slayer into a solid light comedic actor who can play drama without losing any credibility. 

That’s the list.  Oh, there are a couple of names that bear mentioning, but I exclude them on technicalities.  Richard Dean Anderson was in 139 episodes of the legendary MacGyver and then was in 175 episodes of Stargate SG-1.  I prefer to keep the list solely focused on network shows and not include syndicated fare such as Stargate; the point of getting to 100 episodes is to get to syndication, so it seems like cheating to start in syndication (technically Stargate started on Showtime, but it was immediately put into syndication).  Dule Hill was in more than 100 episodes of West Wing and just recently passed that mark on Psych, but as with Michael Landon in Bonanza he wasn’t the lead actor in West Wing.

Tom Selleck will join the group next year assuming Blue Bloods is renewed; of course he was in 185 episodes of Magnum, PI and has now finished 80 episodes of Blue Bloods.  But I have been racking my brain for a while now and I cannot come up with any more examples of an actor or actress who played the lead in a one-hour network drama that lasted 100 episodes and then managed to do it again.  If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know.

Repeat success is more likely in comedy, but just barely.  Mary Tyler Moore followed up The Dick Van Dyke Show with her own eponymous show (Dick van Dyke was less fortunate with his subsequent ventures).  Bob Newhart followed one classic sitcom with another classic sitcom.  But Kelsey Grammer’s follow ups to Frasier, Back to You and Hank, both sank ignominiously.  And the less said about Michael Richard’s post-Seinfeld career, the better.

So my advice to anyone who is starring in a network TV show is: enjoy it now.  The odds of you being able to enjoy more success once your show goes off the air are very, very small.

I'm adding an addendum with two more names that have been pointed out to me.  The one I wouldn't have guessed is Joshua Jackson, who logged more than 100 episodes on both Dawson's Creek and Fringe (I watched neither of those shows so I forgive myself).  The one I should have gotten was Lee Majors, but NOT for the Six Million Dollar Man, which aired 99 episodes.  He was in more than 100 episodes of The Big Valley and The Fall Guy.  He wasn't quite the "star" of The Big Valley, but he got third billing and if I give Michael Landon credit for Bonanza I guess I have to give Majors credit as well.

The best TV show . . . ever.

People through superlatives around today like confetti.  How many times have you seen a film advertised as “The #1 comedy in America” when the film in fact came in eighth at the box office behind seven dramas?  Or a TV show is hyped as “the most watched new comedy on Wednesdays” when it is the only new comedy on Wednesday? 

So I can forgive anyone who is skeptical when I tell him or her that the Greatest Television Series Ever Made is from those long ago times before DVRs, DVDs or even VCRs.  No, I’m not talking about What’s Happening!!, Full House, or even Knight Rider.  Hill Street Blues was the best, most influential, most innovative, best written, best acted, best directed series ever to appear on a TV screen.  In the twenty five years since its departure from the airwaves there have only been imitators, never equals.  NYPD Blue, an excellent show in its own right, was a pale imitation (little known fact: early episodes of Hill Street Blues feature an almost unrecognizable David Caruso as a gang leader).  Hill Street Blues did what The Wire did, but with broadcast network content controls and for twenty two episodes a season over seven seasons, not twelve episodes a year over five years.

People remember the flamboyant characters--snarling Mick Belker, gorgeous Public Defender Joyce Davenport, and hulking but gentle Sgt. Esterhaus, with his trademark, “Let’s be careful out there.”  But the tenth or eleventh tier characters were just as interesting--buttoned down hostage negotiator Henry Goldblume, sleaze ball screw-up J.D. LaRue, the Mutt and Jeff team of street-wise Bobby Hill and cowboy Andy Renko, and Captain Frank Furillo’s ex-wife from Hell, Faye (she wasn’t excessively mean or vindictive, just really, really annoying).  In charge of it all was Daniel J. Tavanti’s Frank Furillo, an island of sanity and morality sweeping back the ocean every week.

Hill Street pretty much established the multiple storyline format for episodic dramas.  It featured a multi-ethnic cast, had continuing plotlines, dealt frankly with racial issues, and the good guys didn’t always win (breaking even was a good day).  A ratings train wreck in its first season, it none the less received 21 Emmy nominations and became the lowest rated show ever renewed for a second season.  One can’t imagine today’s TV executives giving such a show a green light, much less having the patience to wait for the audience catch up with it.

The show wasn’t perfect; James B. Sikking’s portrayal of right wing cop Howard Hunter was overly broad, the large cast prevented many of the talented cast from shining as much as they might, and there was a reason why Barbara Bosson, who played Fay Furillo, only worked in TV series created by her husband Steven Bochco (I suppose the show could also be blamed for two lame spin-off, Beverly Hills Buntz and Bay City Blues, as well as Steven Bochco‘s later series Cop Rock).

But the quality of the show was undeniable from its first episode.  It received a total of 98 Emmy nominations, which among dramas places it only behind ER (technically Saturday Night Live has the most Primetime Emmy nominations, but since the show isn’t in Prime Time I’ve never understood why it was eligible).

For those too young to remember the show, check out the DVDs.  Or at least what is available; only seasons one and two were released on DVD, and season three is available via streaming.  This is an outrage; in a world where you can buy season eight of Full House, how can there not be a market for such an influential television show?

For the record, in my opinion the three best TV dramas of all-time are Hill Street Blues, The Wire, and Mad Men.  I confess that I never “got” The Sopranos; I watched season one on DVD but they just seemed like Italian-American stereotypes who solved every problem by whacking someone.  I also gave up on Breaking Bad in season three, when Walter White made yet another really stupid decision for the billionth time.  If forced to round out a top five I would probably add two more broadcast era shows, The West Wing and The Twilight Zone.

Of course anyone’s list of “Best” TV shows is highly subjective, and no one could possibly watch every show in existence.  For all I know Duck Dynasty is a brilliant show with scintillating dialog, but I’m never going to find out.  And how much do you discount shows that are great but have a couple of bad seasons towards the end, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The X-Files?  That’s an argument for another day.

Characters you love to hate

It is always difficult to know at the time when things are about to change.  After how many days of rain did Noah’s neighbors start to say, “Uh-oh”?  How many cars were sold before buggy whip manufacturers noticed a drop in sales?  How many televisions were sold before our collective IQ began to decline?

A sea change occurred in American culture in 1999 but most of us were too worried about the Millennium Bug to notice at the time.  HBO debuted a new series unlike any that had come before, mainly because the protagonist occasionally killed people, or ordered them killed.  I am of course referring to The Sopranos.

It was the first successful show to feature an anti-hero as the main character.  I have to add the caveat “successful” because in 1996 Fox showed a little seen program called Profit which starred Adrian Pasdar as Jim Profit, a sociopath who would do anything (including blackmail, treason and murder) to rise to the top of a multinational corporation.  The show was breathtaking, but audiences weren’t ready for it and Fox canceled the show after five episodes were aired.  Three years later times had changed.

Or had they?  The success of The Sopranos is probably due to several changes in the TV landscape that weren't apparent in 1996.  One was the fact that the show’s home network, HBO, did not have to worry about offending advertisers as it was a subscriber-based network.  It also did not have to appeal to advertisers by reaching a tremendously large audience; an audience share that would spell death on a broadcast network was welcomed by HBO (provided the show had “buzz”).  Lastly, the Balkanization of television by myriads of basic cable networks and premium networks meant that audience sizes were shrinking all around.  David Greenawalt, the co-creator of Profit, noted on that show’s DVDs that the audience size that got Profit cancelled in five episodes was far greater than what a “successful” show now pulled in on a weekly basis (he says this in a way that makes me think he may have been hinting that if a subscriber network wanted to resurrect Profit it would be a good idea).

The Sopranos ushered in a new era of television drama that transcended much of what had come before.  Suddenly TV could have cop shows where the police were far less competent than the bad guys (The Wire, on HBO).  The main character could be a serial killer (Dexter, on Showtime), or be a dying high school chemistry teacher providing for his family by cooking crystal meth (AMC’s Breaking Bad).  This new era has been explored in recent books such as Difficult Men by Brett Martin (which deals solely with cable shows) and The Revolution Was Televised by Alan Sepinwall (which also discusses broadcast shows such as 24 and Lost). 

One problem with this shifting landscape is that it has become increasingly difficult to tell a good idea from a bad one.  HBO incredibly took a pass on Mad Men, despite the fact that it was pitched by Sopranos writer Matthew Weiner.  Entertainment Weekly would include this (with other famous network passes) as the 16^th biggest blunder in TV history.  David Milch chose to leave Deadwood in order to create a series called John From Cincinnati, which was about a guy named John who was from . . . no, wait, what was it about?  No one knew and it lasted ten episodes.  Vince Gillian, the creator of Breaking Bad, jokingly said that Breaking Bad was probably the worst idea for a TV series ever.

The recent developments in TV drama are probably significant enough to call this the Third Golden Age of TV drama, the first being the live dramas of the 1950’s and the second being the development of serious dramas in the late 70’s and 80’s.  But does this mean that current dramas are superior to earlier efforts?  Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter called Breaking Bad one of the five best series ever, comparing it only to cable shows that aired post-2000.  But are things THAT much different?

The book Difficult Men points out that the evolution of TV dramas into the current crop of excellence began in the Second Golden Age with the rise of Grant Tinker at MTM Productions.  The book delineates the family tree of current show runners traces their lineage back in a variety of ways; for example, David Milch, creator of Deadwood and John From Cincinnati, won his first writing Emmy for an episode of Hill Street Blues. 

So the success of current dramas is created not by giants but by people standing on the shoulders of others, as the saying goes.  Does that entitle them to claim the crown of best drama of all-time, with no consideration of any broadcast series that came before?  I will address that question in my next post.

Forget it Jake; it’s Cooperstown (Hall of Fame part 2)

Forget it Jake; it’s Cooperstown (Hall of Fame part 2)

The Baseball Hall of Fame is possibly the greatest source of sports debates ever.  Who deserves to be in?  Who shouldn’t get it?  Who should be kicked out (as if they’d do that)?  Why did anybody vote against admitting Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle in their first year of eligibility?  Why did they put the darn thing in the middle of nowhere?  Seriously, I only made it there because I lived in Albany, New York for a while; I can’t imagine traveling there from some place further away.

Last time I quibbled with some of the choices that had been made over the years regarding the HoF.  One problem is, even when they get it right, they get it wrong.  The most egregious case of bad timing was the sad case of Chicago Cub Ron Santo.  Santo was a fan favorite at Wrigley Field, going from a great player to a beloved radio announcer.  The Hall of Fame case for Santo was not clear cut but was substantial: he was an excellent third baseman (five Gold Gloves) but no Brooks Robinson; he was a very good hitter but he played in the dead-ball 1960’s (plus his stats were padded somewhat by playing in hitter-friendly Wrigley Field).  In his excellent book Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame baseball guru Bill James said (in 1994) that Santo would be his first choice of who deserved inclusion, but his stats were those of someone neither fish nor fowl, good at a lot of things but not great at any one. 

After being passed over for induction for the final time in 1998, Santo’s candidacy seemed doomed.  He lost his legs to diabetes (which he struggled with during his playing career) and his health declined, and he eventually died in December of 2010.  Then, a year after his death, the Hall of Fame “Golden Era committee” resurrected Santo’s candidacy.  The 16 man committee contained Santo’s teammate Billy Williams, as well as fellow third baseman (and contemporary of Santo) Brooks Robinson.  The committee voted 15-1 to admit Santo a year after he passed away.  Nice timing, guys. 

At least Santo got in after his death.  The late Marvin Miller, the labor leader that transformed the Players’ Association from a lapdog for the owners into the most successful labor union in history, is still not in.  As Keith Olbermann said, the three most influential people in baseball history are Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, and Marvin Miller.  Buck O’Neil, one of the great ambassadors of the game, is also on the outside looking in, or he would be if he wasn’t dead. 

On the other hand, a post-death induction might be appropriate for one Hall aspirant.  A great many people have been agitating for the induction of Pete Rose, the all-time “hit king” in Major League Baseball.  I have a slight problem with that description as Rose only accumulated that many hits because his manager kept him in the lineup despite the fact that he was the weakest hitting first baseman in the league; that manager’s name was Pete Rose.  Be that as it may, a lot of people are outraged that the all-time hit leader is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame, regardless of his admitted gambling indiscretions.  I am not one of these people; Rose is ineligible for the Hall of Fame because of a piece of paper that was signed by Pete Rose agreeing to a lifetime ban.  Ah, but there is the solution—Rose was given a lifetime ban, so Rose should be eligible eventually.  All he has to do is die.

With Santo’s induction, the old-timer whose exclusion I remain the most animated over is pitcher Jim Kaat.  Kaat has 283 wins, short of the magic 300 but very, very close but more than anyone may have for a while (and way more than Dizzy Dean or Sandy Koufax).  He never won a Cy Young award, but as Bill James pointed out he had his best years when only one award was given out and there was a guy in the National League named Sandy Koufax.  Let’s say his qualifications as a pitcher are marginal.  Fine.  He also won 16 Gold Gloves.  The only player with more Gold Gloves at any position is Greg Maddux, who will almost certainly be inducted in 2014.  Brooks Robinson was voted into the Hall with 16 Gold Gloves and a below-average offensive resume; if a mediocre hitter with 16 Gold Gloves gets in, shouldn’t an excellent pitcher with 16 Gold Gloves make it?

With so many voters refusing to vote, at least on a first ballot, for suspected steroids users, a backlog is going to develop very quickly.  Some have speculated that only Greg Maddux will be voted in this year, leaving such obviously eligible candidates as Frank Thomas and Tom Glavine to wait along with previous non-inductees who should eventually get in like Piazza, Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio.  But with a limit for each voter of only ten names per ballot, and with new candidates popping up every year, many candidates worthy of at least consideration will not find room on enough ballots to avoid the 5% cut off rule and be excluded permanently.

The rules for Hall of Fame voting need to be changed.  The limit of ten votes per year should be eliminated.  And curmudgeonly voters who refuse to vote for anybody in their first year of eligibility on the grounds that no one deserves 100% of the vote should be penalized; anyone voting against someone who gets more than 90% of the vote should lose their voting privileges for five years.  And no more “special committees” stacked to get a desired result.

But the Hall of Fame is supposed to be for “the immortals.”  Doesn’t that include Barry Bonds and Roger Clemons despite their supposed transgressions?  How will fathers in the future explain to their children that the Hall of Fame contains the best players of all-time, except the home run leader and the hits leader?  Cooperstown itself is a lie; baseball was not invented there by Abner Doubleday, so let’s let it go.  Maybe Keith Olbermann is right, it is time to start the Baseball Hall of Fame over again.

The Baseball Hall of Fame, or Here We Go Again, part 1

One of the most pleasing developments on television this year was the return of Keith Olbermann to ESPN.  Occasionally he does give the air of someone who has bought “a roll of stamps to mail it in” to use his oft-repeated highlight quote, but Olbermann is a rare commodity: a deep thinker who can also be astonishingly flip.  When he and Dan Patrick anchored ESPN’s SportsCenter, they inspired books (“The Big Show” by Olbermann and Patrick) and a TV series (SportsNight by Aaron Sorkin).  The current crew at ESPN are competent, but they have trouble inspiring a good promotional ad.

A few weeks ago Olbermann made one of his vintage rants on the topic of the Baseball Hall of Fame.  In his opinion, the place should be (figuratively) blown up and the whole thing should be started over.  Past mistakes of the Hall have piled up over the years (Jesse Haines?  Johnny Evers?) and have the effect of influencing future mistakes—after all, if Johnny Evers is good enough to get in, why not Jose Offerman (similarity score of 892)?  But the recent difficulties in dealing with the Steroid Era have severed all ties between the Hall of Fame voters and reality.

Mike Piazza, the best hitting catcher in major league history, a man who hit more home runs as a catcher than anyone else and once batted .362 despite being slower than a tortoise on Quaaludes, only got 58% of the vote last year mostly because of his “backne.”  One voter said he was sure Piazza used steroids because how else could you explain his going from such a low draft pick to being such a good player?  The answer, for anyone who saw the movie Moneyball, is that most baseball scouts are idiots.  Tom Brady was a low draft pick and became a star; is he on steroids too?  HoF voters are so steroid-phobic that even players never implicated with steroids, such as Craig Biggio, are irrevocably tarred by association.  (Note—I confess that Piazza is my all-time favorite baseball player, so I am a little bitter about him not getting in on the first ballot). 

Of course another factor with Piazza is his less than stellar defensive skills.  Yes, he lacked a cannon for an arm like Johnny Bench or Ivan Rodriquez.  But at the catcher position, defense also includes handling pitchers, and if you take into account the excellent pitching staffs he caught in LA and New York, it makes this liability less glaring.  He also played in an era when the inability to throw out base stealers was less critical than when Rickey Henderson and Tim Raines were running amok on the base paths.

Speaking of defensive skills, almost-career designated hitter Edgar Martinez only polled at 36% last year in his fourth year of eligibility (his 35.9% was actually less than the 36.2% he got in his first year).  The supposed reason for this is, as a DH, he did not contribute to his team with his defense.  Very well, but is Harmon Killebrew in the Hall of Fame for his defense?  Is Bill Mazerowski in for his offense?  Martinez ranks 34^th all-time in OPS and is in the same ballpark in several other Sabremetic measures like WAR and WPA.  As a DH he was not a defensive liability, which is something you can’t say about some other players in the Hall of Fame who played before the invention of the DH.

There is one player not polling well in the HoF voting that I am glad to see being kept out, but for different reasons.  Before he wagged his finger at Congress, Rafael Palmiero was considered a lock for the Hall of Fame due to his 3,000 hits and 500 home runs.  After testing positive for steroids he is now in danger of polling below 5% and being taken off the ballot permanently (or until voted in by the Veteran’s Committee in 2053).  I just have one question—what did he ever do?  Ok, he put up some impressive counting stats, but that just proves he had a long, injury-free career playing in a high-offense era and in hitter-friendly ballparks.  He only started one All Star game in his 20 year career.  He was a back-up in three others, so in 16 of his 20 seasons he wasn’t considered one of the three best players in his league at his position.  He was on a team that made the playoffs in only three seasons, posting a post-season batting average of .244 with four home runs in 22 games, and he never played in a World Series.  He finished in the top five of MVP voting only once (in 1999, finishing 5^th).  He led the league in doubles once, but that’s about the only major category he ever led the league in (okay, he also led the league in singles and hits in one year, and in runs scored in another).   So how does this add up to being one of the all-time greats but for a finger-wagging incident while testifying in Congress? 

I have more to say about the Baseball Hall of Fame, but I will leave something for my next post.  

Welcome to Minerva’s Consort!  I've been absent from the blogosphere for some time but it is good to be back.

I used to have a blog several years ago on a nationally known media website.  It was very successful and the number of people reading it was truly frightening, but the website was hacked and went down for over a year, and when it got back up I was otherwise engaged.

Let me explain what I do.  The blog is called Minerva’s Consort because Minerva was the Roman goddess of wisdom and reason.  Since Minerva was a virgin goddess she is not thought to have had any consorts, which is where I come in.  What I like to do is apply the qualities of wisdom and reason to areas where most people are passionate and irrational.  Mostly I mean entertainment and sports, but also broad areas of public policy.  Do you think your favorite last place team will win next season because they signed a big free agent?  I’ll explain why you’re wrong.  Are you outraged that a network cancelled your favorite show despite the fact that it was awesome?  I’ll look at the ratings and explain how networks aren't in the business of cancelling good shows (OK, there have been exceptions). 

Everything won’t be argumentative, however.  I will also post movie and TV reviews, historical notes on what I consider to be forgotten TV shows and movies, and random analyses that occur to me like discussing the best actor to play Perry White in any of the Superman incarnations.

Why do I do this?  I am a contrarian by nature and an analyst by training.  If I am in a room full of people saying “Yes” I have to ask if we should at least consider “No.”  I believe the greatest mistakes ever made in the history of the world were all made unanimously (Watergate, anyone?).  This has not endeared me to some of my bosses, but I always remember the words of the character of Isaac Jaffe from Sports Night: “If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people; if you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people that disagree with you.”

So in the future I will be talking about stuff you care about passionately.  And most of the time I’ll be telling you that you are wrong.  They say one problem with America is that everyone now gets their news from sources that reinforce their beliefs; conservatives believe everything spoken on Fox News despite all evidence to the contrary, and liberals keep on listening to Kermit the Frog and other people on PBS.  I am hoping that some people are willing to seek out a well written blog that just may challenge what they believe in.  Just keep the hate mail clean and as lucid as your medication permits.

D. W. O’Dell