Gilmore Girls redux

It is easy to slam Hollywood’s lack of creativity with all the reboots, remakes, and sequels that get churned out.  There is no creativity, so executives endlessly mine their youth for properties to breathe new life into.  Did the world really need a movie version of Car 54 Where are You?

But then something you like gets revived from the dead, and suddenly the lack of creativity doesn’t seem so bad.  I have reservations about the resurrection of The X-Files coming in January, but I think a six-episode run gives them a better shot at success than another two hour movie or a full 22 episode revival.  The latest good news from the cultural abyss that is Hollywood is that Gilmore Girls may live again.

Reports are that Netflix may revive the criminally-never-nominated-for-an-Emmy series (okay, it won once for make-up, big whoop) for four 90 minute movies.  The only two flies in the ointment are the unfortunate passing of Edward Hermann who played the Gilmore patriarch Richard, and the fact that Melissa McCarthy now makes a bazillion dollars an hour as an honest-to-goodness Hollywood superstar.  Who would have picked Sookie as the breakout actor of the show?

I am a big fan of Gilmore Girls, despite the fact that the show never really clicked on all gears.  Because there were so many plots and subplots going on, there was always something annoying.  For starters, Rory’s taste in men was disastrous, hopping from the thick but well-meaning Dean to the bright but hot-headed Jess to the dreamy but vapid billionaire Logan Huntzberger.  I realize that no man could possibly be good enough for little miss perfect, but the ones she ended up with were a far cry from perfect.

Lorelei’s taste in men was somewhat better, but the only boyfriend who “got” her was Digger, who they dropped as a character into one of the biggest black holes in TV history, never to be seen again; Lorelei’s father betrayed him on a business deal, he naturally sued (with good reason), and Lorelei dumped him on the grounds that she couldn’t date anyone suing her parents.  Given her history with them, a law suit against them should have been an aphrodisiac.  Digger and the lawsuit were never heard from again.

I know the world is filled with Luke and Lorelei shippers, but please.  He is an uptight, anal retentive control freak, and she is a free-spirited loose cannon who doesn’t play by the rules (or, if she does, she mocks them).  The two of them together are a murder/suicide waiting to happen.  Plus, the way they split in season 6, with Luke calling off the wedding because they were “rushing in to marriage” after knowing each other nearly two decades, and Lorelei responding by sleeping with, then marrying, her ex-boyfriend/Rory’s father, well, to Luke it would bring new meaning to the term “sloppy seconds.”

Oh, and how many relationships did Lorelei ruin by keeping information about it from her parents? The correct answer is: all of them.

The characters who populated Stars Hollow included two borderline psychotics, mayor Taylor Doose and Lane’s mother Mrs. Kim, and one (Kirk) who unarguably had brain damage.  Toss in the psychological problems of Rory’s friend Paris and the passive-aggressive fixations of Lorelei’s mother Emily and you have a cast of characters that could keep a dozen psychiatrists busy for years.

Throw in the fact that in Season Six the disastrous decision was made to not have Lorelei and Rory speak to each other for most of the season, and that creator Amy Sherman-Palladino was ousted as show running for Season Seven leading to even greater plot mis-steps (*cough*Lorelei and Christopher marriage*cough*), and you have a series that had a lot of problems.  And let’s not even consider that Rory took a semester off from Yale and yet still graduated on time and was class valedictorian.

But all that is forgiven because of the glorious dialog and strong connection between Lorelei and Rory.  One of my favorite bits of trivia is that for a normal hour long TV episode a script is about 40-45 pages, but a typical Gilmore Girl script was 75-80 because they just talked so fast.  Lauren Graham should have won an Emmy, but because the show straddled comedy and drama she never got a nomination (she did get a Golden Globe and Screen Actors’ Guild nomination for Best Actress in a Drama in 2002).  If the show is revived as a series of movies there won’t be any such genre-confusion.

Lorelei Gilmore will always be my favorite female character—smart, funny, gorgeous, and just messed up enough to make it work.  Stars Hollow is one of the most memorable locations in TV history, and if we get to peek in on what has happened since the final episode, it will be a welcome visit.

Movie Review: Bridge of Spies

It’s been a while since there has been a good, cracking Cold War thriller.  The Wikipedia entry on Cold War films lists 189 movies, and none of them strike me as being of recent vintage.  The 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck and the 1993 film Matinee were about Cold War paranoia, but that was on the home front, not the Berlin Wall.  The 1960’s produced classics like The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Funeral in Berlin, but except for the recent remake of John LeCarre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy it has been a long time since we’ve had a film featuring anything close to a clandestine meeting at Checkpoint Charlie.

Steven Spielberg takes us back to the height (or depth) of the Cold War in Bridge of Spies, a far, far too pretentious title for a film that forgoes Cold War posturing in favor of a personal story about one man’s tiny contribution to humanity in the middle of the struggle over the fate of mankind.  As the paragon of decency in a story of covert agencies, Tom Hanks further cements his station as the keeper of Jimmy Stewart’s flame.

The story is a familiar one to anyone over a certain age but is perhaps a dim portion of history to Millennials: in the early 1960’s a US spy plane is shot down over Russia, and the powers decide to execute an exchange between the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, and a convicted Soviet spy in US prison.  The Soviet spy, Rudolph Abel (Mark Rylander) looks more like an accountant than a spy, but maybe that’s what made him effective.  At his trial he is reluctantly but ably defended by insurance attorney James Donovan (Hanks) who is one of those attorneys who believes in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and everything else the FBI and CIA find inconvenient. After Abel is summarily convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison, Donovan is then requested by the US government to negotiate the exchange. 

The negotiations are complicated by a number of factors.  At the time the US Government did not recognize East Germany as a sovereign nation, which is where the negotiations had to take place.  The Berlin Wall was in the process of being built, making travel to East Berlin difficult.  The Soviets refused to acknowledge they had any influence over East Germany, and the East Germans denied that they were under Soviet rule.  And a very stupid US economics student got stuck on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall as it went up, giving the East German authorities an extra pawn in the game.

Hanks portrays Donovan as a man who unflaggingly believes that civility and decency will be of help to him, even as it is repeatedly shown not to be (those qualities were also of no use at Abel’s trial).  Donovan has to be the one honest man in a negotiation where no one even agrees on the rules, much less gives any thought to obeying them.

That Hanks is brilliant goes without saying; he is one of the most reliable actors working, in addition to being one of the best.  The fact that he won back-to-back Oscars for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump probably means he’d have to lose an arm to win another, but few actors can convey what is going on inside their character’s head better than Hanks.  Donovan knows he is being lied to by the Soviets, the East Germans, and the Americans, a fact that is clear to the audience but Donovan plausibly hides from his negotiating partners.

The script, co-credited to Joel and Ethan Coen, displays more subtlety than is usually associated with a Coen Brothers movie.  Seemingly irrelevant dialog from early in the movie later comes back during Donovan’s pleas to consummate a deal.  When his innate decency fails, Donovan resorts to cunning and a well-honed ability to read people, allowing him deftly navigate the mine field he put himself into.

If one wanted to criticize Spielberg’s direction, I suppose one could point out that at this point in his career he seems to have one gear, that he invests Bridge of Spies with the same momentousness that he displayed in a sweeping historical drama like Lincoln.  That film was about the passage of the 14^th amendment and an end to slavery in America; Bridge of Spies is about one American trying to do something just and decent (there is that word again) for three people.  But Spielberg is the greatest living director, possibly the greatest film director ever, and his mastery of the medium is still evident even if it is somewhat familiar at this point.

Bridge of Spies is what you would expect of a Steven Spielberg film starring Tom Hanks about the Cold War: immaculately produced, evocatively acted, and directed with subtlety and grace.  The combination of Spielberg and Hanks is a far more reliable sign of excellence than a comic book imprimatur or the CGI budget of a summer blockbuster.

Don't play the sucker on fantasy sports betting sites

If you had a box that contained 1,000,000 atoms of a radioactive element with a half-life of one year that decayed into lead, it would not be “gambling” to bet that in 12 months’ time the box would contain 500,000 atoms of lead.  But if you were to bet that on a given day more than 2,739 atoms would decay, that would be gambling.  It’s all in the timing.

That is the difference between being in a season long fantasy league and one of those “one day” leagues featured in those ubiquitous FanDuel and Draft Kings advertisements.  Over the course of a season, injuries aside, Bryce Harper will hit more home runs than let’s say Dee Gordon.  But on any given day Harper could go 0-4 and Gordon could get lucky twice.  Putting money down on that is silly.

I wanted to write a stinging rebuke to all those who play fantasy sports, but Charles P. Pierce already did it at Grantland.com.  Seeing all the ads for the two fantasy leviathans, I have the same reaction as when I see all the shiny buildings in Las Vegas—they didn’t build all those buildings in order to give money away.  When Draft Kings, or FanDuel, or a Nigerian prince tell you that they want to give you money, run away fast.

With that much money flowing through a largely unregulated market, it was inevitable that some scandal would break.  The current expressions of concern are over a rather obscure worry about employees at the two fantasy companies leveraging proprietary data for an advantage in betting at the other companies’ site.  The NCAA has prohibited the two companies from advertising during NCAA Championship events (no idea why they decided JUST championship events; I guess they wanted to draw a line but a pretty small one).  A Congressman has sent a letter to the two companies asking for a list of NFL personnel who participate, because heaven forbid that Jay Cutler drop back to pass and wonder how the receiver catching the ball will impact Cutler’s fantasy picks.

My main complaint about fantasy sports, aside from the ads that run more frequently than political ads the night before an election, is that they interfere with me getting scores when I check in on an NFL game Sunday afternoon.  I check the ticker at the bottom of the screen, but all I ever seem to get are the latest fantasy updates naming the current top 5 running backs.  Who won the game is now less important that whether the running back for the Carolina Panthers gained more yards than expected.

So if you dabble in one day fantasy sports leagues, thanks.  Because of you there will be a few more TV spots for Draft Kings, but there will be fewer of the even more annoying Viagara and Cialis ads.  I guess the one thing men like more than sex with gorgeous women (at least all the women in the ads are pretty hot) is pretending to be a general manager of a sports team.

California lawmakers do their best to lower voter turnout

Everyone knows the old axiom about people who like sausage and public policy shouldn’t watch either being made.  It’s actually worse than that, at least for policy.  I suppose the final product of sausage-making looks appealing, but sometimes just looking at the outcome of policy deliberations can make one nauseated.

Take California’s new law, adopted from Assembly Bill 1461.  The stated goal of the bill is to do something about the incredibly low turnout rate in California elections.  Sounds good, right?  Unfortunately, the inevitable result of the bill’s passage will be to drive the turnout rate even lower.

Voter turnout in California has reached epic lows, with 2014 having one of the worst turnouts in history. As an aside, one of the consequences of such a low turnout is that the threshold for signatures collected in order to qualify initiatives for the ballot (which is based on a percentage of the voters in the previous election) is much lower, encouraging groups to try and get their proposals in front of what few voters turn out for the next election. This would probably drive turnout lower.

So what solutions do the sage and wise leaders in Sacramento come up with to get more people to vote?  Move Election Day from Tuesday to Saturday?  Mandate mail-in voting? Offer prizes for randomly selected voters?  No, the California legislators passed a bill that can only reduce turn out in future elections, AB 1461.

AB 1461 is the 1992 Motor-Voter act on steroids.  Motor-Voter was a federal law that required states to allow people to register to vote by filling out a post card at the DMV when they registered their car or got a driver’s license and then mailing it to the California Secretary of State.  AB 1461 now authorizes the DMV to send the information of everyone who applies for a driver’s license or state identification card to the Secretary of State; if the individual meets voting eligibility requirement, they are automatically registered to vote.

Proponents of the bill claim that the reason for low turnout in the present system is the barriers that keep people from registering to vote.  Right.  According to the Senate Committee on Transportation bill analysis, “every individual who applies for or renews a California driver’s license or identification card, or changes his or her address, receives a voter registration card.  The applicant can use the card to register to vote or to re-register after a change in name, address, or party preference. . . .When a voter moves to a new county, DMV instructs him or her to complete a new voter registration card; DMV accepts the completed card and forwards it to [the Secretary of State] or the county in which the voter resides.”

The barrier is that people have to fill out a post card and drop it in a mailbox; oh wait, they don’t even have to find a mailbox, they can turn it in to DMV.  It’s like living in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia.  Imagine—people are being denied the right to vote because they actually have to make an effort to register!

But now all these people will automatically be registered!  Great!  But unfortunately the act of voting still requires them to fill out a ballot and mail it in to the proper office.  If people weren’t willing to do that to register, why would they do it to vote?  The net effect will be a huge increase in the number of registered voters, but a minuscule increase in the number of actual voters.

Anyone familiar with math will tell you that when you have a fraction, and you increase the denominator by a large amount but don’t increase the numerator, you get a smaller number.  The net effect of AB 1461 will be to drive turnout rates even lower. 

Then what?  I suppose voting activists will point to “barriers” to voting, like having to fill out a ballot and mail it in.  So why not eliminate this barrier and allow voters to vote on-line?  Everyone can just go to a website and vote for whoever they want for President.  Of course that means the next president of the United States will be Taylor Swift.  Or maybe Mark Zuckerberg.

If the desire is to increase voter turnout over the record lows in 2014, then look to innovative ideas like voting on weekends, encouraging mail balloting, or offering prizes.  Or here’s an idea—have candidates that aren’t huge buffoons financing their campaigns via wealthy idiots.  Oops, that last one isn’t going to happen anytime soon.  Sorry, didn’t mean to get your hopes up.

Why what Chase Utley did was wrong

Baseball can be a confusing game.  The rule book is very thick; not as thick as football’s, but then baseball doesn’t have to define things like “a football move” in order to make sense.  Frankly, the unwritten rule book is followed more than the written one.  For decades the written rule book said that no fielder could impede the progress of a base runner, yet catchers were routinely praised for their ability to “block the plate.”  Several years ago baseball, responding to a catastrophic injury to a popular player (Buster Posey, or maybe Alex Avila) changed the rules about catchers blocking home plate, but all they really had to do was enforce the existing rule.

If we look at the rule book, evaluating the legality of Chase Utley’s slide in the National League Division Series is simple.  Rule 708(b) says a runner is out when he “hinders a fielder attempting to make a play on a batted ball.”  The comment to the rule is explicit: “If the umpire declares the hindrance intentional, the following penalty shall apply: with less than two out, the umpire shall declare both the runner and batter out.”  So sliding in to second base with the intent of “breaking up the double play” is illegal.

But of course no one believes that.  So let’s toss out the official rule book and just talk about what happened and what should have happened.

People who defend Utley’s actions make the same claim: he was “sliding in to second base.”  There are only two things wrong with that statement; he didn’t slide, and it wasn’t into second base.  But other than that, it’s accurate.

“Sliding” is an essential element if the “take out slide” is legitimate.  First of all, it is call a take-out slide, not a take-out body block, so sliding is required.  Secondly, the sliding slows down the runner’s momentum so he is not running full steam into the defenseless middle infielder. 

Utley did not begin to drag along the dirt in what is commonly known as “a slide” until he was upon Ruben Tejada.  There is no effort by him to decelerate as he approached the base.  His running at full speed is one thing that makes his action inappropriate.

The next is that he did not slide “into second.”  The baseball rule (known as the Hal McRae Rule) acknowledges the basic element that the base must be within the “wingspan” of the runner, that the runner cannot leave the base path to go after a fielder making a pivot away from the base.  Utley is within his wingspan of second base, so what’s the problem?  The problem is he went over the base to impede the fielder; in fact, he was declared safe despite the fact that it was clear he never touched the base at all.

One thing that distinguishes great middle infielders from average ones is their ability to protect themselves from take-out slides by using the base as a shield.  If they can position themselves so the base is between the runner and them, then they are safe from the full onslaught of the baserunner.  The runner slides into second and not into the fielder’s legs.

Utley denied Tejada this protection by going over the base and directly at his legs.  I don’t think Utley intended to break Tejada’s leg, but that is the natural consequence of allowing Utley to run into Tejada at full speed without being obstructed by second base. 

I won’t comment on the appropriateness of the subsequent suspension, or the inability of MLB to hold a hearing in time to determine if Utley should not be allowed to play in the remainder of the series.  The Mets have made that discussion moot.  But the obvious conclusion is that Chase Utley should have been called out, and the batter as well, because of his interference with Ruben Tejada. 

This also ignores the fact that Utley should have been called out because he never touched second and then ran outside the baseline when he returned to the dugout.  If he assumed he was out because he didn’t touch the base, who are the umpires to disagree?  Awarding him second base was indefensible.

Schrodinger's baserunner

Anyone who thinks football is a manlier sport than baseball should contemplate the fact that no football player on Sunday ended the day with a broken leg (I think; as usual I haven't really done any research), while the same can't be said of baseball players who played on Saturday.

In the NLDS between the Mets and the Dodgers, Dodger baserunner Chase Utley was on first and hustled down to second on a ground ball to "break up the double play" as the expression goes.  What Utley broke was shortstop Ruben Tejada's fibula.  The umpires put their collective heads together, consulted replay, and came to a decision that the league repudiated less than 24 hours later.

The umpire's noticed that Tejada's big toe was maybe an inch away from the second base bag, meaning that Utley was safe.  The minor detail the umps missed was that Utley missed touching the bag by several feet.  It's Schrodinger's proverbial cat: Utley isn't out because the second baseman didn't touch the bag, but he's not safe because he didn't touch the bag.

The umpires rules the slide legal and declared Utley as safe, even though he never touched the bag and then ran out of the baseline to the dugout.  On Sunday the league, which presumably had input on the replay, declared the slide illegal and suspended Utley for two games.  Utley will get an immediate appeal and have a decision by game time Monday (if only the NFL handled appeals like MLB; if the NFL were handling this we'd have a decision by next year's All Star Game).

Utley's agent said his client was merely doing what ball players are taught to do, break up the double play with a hard slide.  This excuse overlooks a few things.  First, every player trying to "break up a double play" doesn't break the pivot man's leg. So this is somewhat exceptional.  Second, Utley never "slid," he went in standing up into Tejada's body, hence the broken leg.  Third, player's breaking up a double play are supposedly sliding into second base, but since Utley never touched the base it stands to reason he was doing something else.

MLB's delayed suspension of Utley is belatedly the correct decision.  But why wasn't that communicated to the umpires, who should have called Utley out AND ejected him from the game?  Supposedly the league was in charge of the review on instant replay.  As Adam Sandler said in The Wedding Singer, that was information that should have been brought to their attention YESTERDAY.

No matter how much we improve technology, no matter how much communication there is, no matter how many reviews there are from however many angles, umpires and referees keep getting it wrong.  All teams like the Detroit Lions and New York Mets can do is shrug it off and bemoan the fact that they can't find the same judge that Tom Brady's attorney found.

The Macho He-man Tough Guy Club

This is hardly in the realm of “man bites dog” news, but there seems to have been a breakout of testosterone poisoning among professional athletes.

In the last week of the baseball season noted tough guy Jonathan Papelbon (whose arm is so delicate he can’t pitch more than one inning per game) assaulted Nationals teammate and presumptive 2015 MVP Bryce Harper because Harper wasn’t working hard enough.  I’m sure Papelbon putting a choke-hold on Harper will be all the incentive Harper needs to apply himself next year and improve upon his league-leading 1.109 OPS and 9.9 WAR.

In the one-game National League Wild Card play-in game the benches cleared when Pirates pitcher Tony Watson deliberately hit Cub’s ace Jake Arrieta in retaliation for Arieta hitting two Pirates players by accident.  Because in the single most important game of the season the Pirates put on a base runner in order to punish the Cubs for allowing them to have two base runners.  Anyone watching the game could have told the Pirates they weren’t going to score by hitting the ball.

I’ve gone into it before about how the unwritten rules of beanballs are absurd.  First of all, throwing deliberately at a batter is inexcusable; a baseball is a weapon, and an extremely dangerous one.  People have died from beanballs (admittedly Ray Chapman was a while ago, but helmets have lowered the probability of death significantly) and others have suffered career ending injuries.  Nothing justifies hurling a weapon at an opponent.

Secondly, what purpose is served?  Some talking heads on ESPN dismissed Arrieta getting hit because he was hit on the “fleshy part of the hip” and so damage was unlikely.  But if injury is unlikely, then why do it?  Watson said he was just protecting his teammates, but is an 80 MPH fastball to the fleshy part of the hip going to keep Arrieta from throwing inside? I doubt it.  So why do it?  Why risk injuring him if you aren’t trying to injure him?

The whole mentality behind deliberately throwing at the opposing batters is that you’ll intimidate them at the plate; but the response is always to retaliate to show there is no intimidation.  When my opponent throws at me, I won’t be intimidated; but when I throw at my opponent, he WILL be intimidated. It makes no sense.

Of course if rampaging hormones are a fact of life in baseball, then football has testosterone on steroids (to coin a phrase).  The Miami Dolphins fired their coach and replaced him with Dan Campbell, who said the Dolphins were losing because they weren’t tough, they needed to play more like primates (I suppose they were 1-3 because they played like marsupials), and then ordered them to do an Oklahoma drill, some barbaric ritual that does nothing but increase the likelihood that someone will injure themselves or a teammate.

All this on a team that is just coming out from the shadow of “Bullygate” which was based on the premise that 300 pound linemen needed to be humiliated in order to be tough.  I recall Steve Young’s response to the initial reports of the bullying by Richie Incognito: to paraphrase, he said, “I played on the San Francisco 49ers; we were a pretty good football team; we won a Super Bowl; we never had crap like this going on in our locker room.” 

The problem with the Dolphins isn’t that they aren’t tough enough.  These are all very large men who have spent the past 15-20 years playing football.  They are plenty tough.  The problem is the team spent $114 million on Ndamukong Suh but they still have one of the worst defenses in the NFL.  Do YOU want to tell Suh he isn’t tough enough?  The front office also gave a big contract to Ryan Tannehill, who isn’t exactly Tom Brady (or even Greg Brady).  But the point is that the Dolphins aren’t losing because they aren’t tough, they are losing because they aren’t that talented.

Sports gurus, like coaches and talking heads, always love to point to intangibles.  The Nationals didn’t make the playoffs?  It must be that Matt Williams didn’t develop team “chemistry.”  But you never read a story about a sporting event where the home team was outscored 3 tangible runs to 2 but were given the win because they got two intangible runs for showing a lot of heart.  Baseball players should stop trying to be macho and throwing at opposing batters.  Football players should stop focusing on toughness and start trying to play smarter.  Both should dial down the testosterone.

The new TV season!

My thoughts on the new TV season thus far:

The most eagerly anticipated show (according to the polls I saw) was Blindspot, NBC’s attempt to create a Blacklist-lite action show featuring a naked woman with amnesia covered with tattoos.  It’s probably not a good sign that when I watch it, I can only think of creating a drinking game where viewers must drink alcohol whenever a) Jane Doe yells, “He was the only link to finding out who I am!” b) Jane gets told to stay in the car; or c) a subordinate either questions or blatantly disregards an order given to them by a superior.  After the third episode that second one may be less in play as they’ve made Jane part of the team, which must really cheese off all the actual FBI recruits at Quantico (a show I don’t watch) who are trying to become FBI agents without getting tatted up and losing their memories.

I am getting a definite Flash Forward vibe from the first three episodes.  Flash Forward was, of course, the ill-fated series from a few years ago that started off with an intriguing premise (everyone on Earth passes out at the same moment and sees a vision of themselves in 6 months) and quickly went nowhere.  The creators may have a perfectly plausible explanation for why someone would drug a beautiful woman with amnesia drugs, cover her body with tattoos that feature word game puzzles giving clues to future crimes, and then dump her in a duffle bag in Times Square with a note to call the FBI, but right now I can’t imagine it will turn out to be as plausible as they think it is. 

I also wonder if they will run into the problem Prison Break had, where having a character with intricate tattoos all over his body got to be a little inconvenient down the road because the tattoos had to be replicated whenever the character took off his shirt.

The acting on Blindspot is pedestrian in the extreme, except for Jaimie Alexander who projects the requisite amount of plaintiveness as the central figure.  However, she is teamed with an actor, Sullivan Stapleton, who projects all the charisma of a block of wood, and whose overly earnest following of every obscure lead makes him the most gullible character currently on TV (the fact that the script makes him always right doesn’t mean he isn’t gullible, just that the scriptwriters are accommodating).

I am sticking with Blindspot for now, but my patience is wearing very thin.

Of the new shows I’ve sampled none has really impressed me.  The Muppets sort of captures the goofiness of their syndicated show in the 1970’s, but inserting them in the real world just seems to have imposed real-world constraints upon them.  It was hard enough wrapping my head around a frog dating a pig, but Josh Groban dating Missy Piggy is too much to take; plus the writing hasn’t been that sharp.

Minority Report is a huge misfire.  Of course the very premise of the show contradicts to point of the Tom Cruise movie that the Pre-Crime Project was a BAD IDEA.  But the pilot episode made use of lazy script writing, giving a “pre-cog” visions just hazy enough to be pointless but just accurate enough to provide enough clues for a solution.  The futuristic cop show on FOX Almost Human was uneven but far, far smarter.

The most welcomed comedy return has been Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which has kicked off season three with a pair of inspired plot runs—Jake and Amy are actually making their attempt at a relationship work, and Captain Holt being replaced with Bill Hader for one episode and then Dean Winters (best known as “mayhem” in an insurance commercial).  The Jake/Amy relationship has avoided the obvious sitcom traps and is remarkably sweet (the fact that straight-laced Amy finds Jake’s impersonation of their older, gay, black boss a turn on is inspired and disturbing).  This being a sitcom Captain Holt will eventually return as Captain of the Nine-Nine, but Winters is a nice comic foil for the cast to play off of.

I tried to get back into Gotham but gave up; the show is so busy setting up who is going to be whom in 15 years that it sucks all the entertainment out of what is going on NOW.  Great production design and some inspired acting/casting, but after a season and an episode I am out.

Sleepy Hollow did not impress in its third season premiere.  I find it hard to believe that Abbie could get through FBI training and become a full-fledged agent in only nine months, and I don’t see how working for the Feds makes her partnership with Ichabod any easier.  With Ichabod’s wife and son (and the Horseman?) apparently safely dead the show has gone ahead and created a new Big Bad, a young woman with a box named Pandora.  Yawn.  Plus the addition to the cast of Nikki Reed as an improbably buxom Betsy Ross just looks like a ploy for male viewers (and for an 18^th century love interest for Ichabod now that the ol’ ball and chain is dead in the 21^st century). 

So, no apparent breakout hits like summer’s Mr. Robot, or last season’s Fargo.  Just lots of time-wasting, DVR filling pabulum.  As usual.

Was that referee stupid, or just incompetent?

I impressed the heck out a friend a few years ago during the strike by the NFL referees.  I predicted that the strike would continue, and the NFL would use replacement referees, until the replacement refs made a clear mistake that obviously cost a nationally popular team a victory.  Sure enough, the replacement refs blew the “Fail Mary” pass by the Seahawks and cost the Green Bay Packers the game; the next week the real refs were back in place and the replacement refs were back working at McDonalds or where ever they came from.

But the difference between the “real” refs and the replacement refs is a narrow one.  There were a series of disputed calls in the post-season, and now once again the real zebras have given the Seahawks a win they don’t deserve. On October 5^th the back judge in the Lions/Seahawks game clearly blew calling an illegal “bat” on the Seahawks, giving them the ball instead of giving the Lions the ball on the 6 inch line. 

The NFL has said that the call was clearly incorrect.  I haven’t heard what the official explanation is of the call is, whether the referee was unaware of the bat rule (I thought the only “illegal bat” was the one used by George Brett) or whether he thought the player was not trying to intentionally bat the ball out of bounds but the contact was inadvertent.  If the former, it is an indictment of an overly complicated NFL rule book that is replete with “tuck rules” and definitions of what constitutes a “football move.”

That leaves the latter, but a) the player said he was deliberately knocking the ball out of bounds, so it would be a bad interpretation by the ref, and b) if you watch the tape it is inconceivable that the contact was inadvertent.  The player reached out and pushed the football towards the end line of the end zone with no other possible motive than pushing it out of bounds.

The NFL maintains the play was not reviewable, which raises the question: why? It was the last two minutes of a game; the ruling was likely determinative of the outcome of the game; the ruling was clearly wrong.  Why can’t the referees talk amongst themselves, possibly look at some footage, talk to experts at NFL HQ, and GET THE CALL RIGHT?  Football is unlike baseball in two ways; in baseball, they replayed the rest of the Pine Tar game several weeks later, but you couldn’t replay the end of a football game at a later date; and a blown call costing a baseball team a game only screws up 1/162 of the season, but each football game is 1/16^th of a season.  Given that the marginal cost of an erroneous ruling is high, and the marginal cost of reviewing the call is low, get the call right.

The NFL says the ruling was not reviewable because it was a “judgment call.”  But the NFL agrees that there is clear evidence that the referee’s “judgment” was incorrect, which means it wasn’t a judgment call.  A judgment call means different people could interpret events differently (was a ball two feet over a receiver’s head “catchable”?).  The NFL says that the ball was batted out of bounds intentionally, so there was no “judgment” needed.  No Seahawk fan could credibly argue that the bat was unintentional.

Seahawk’s coach Pete Carroll said he was unaware of the bat rule and it was a smart play.  This reminds me of the mix-up several weeks ago when Eli Manning told running back Rashad Jennings NOT to score a touchdown because the “smart” play was to run out the clock.  The Giants took a field goal instead and then allowed the Cowboys to score the game winning touchdown.  Players are trying to be “too smart” by not scoring when they have the chance, or batting a ball out of bounds instead of recovering it as a fumble.

There may be rare situations where you can run the clock down to 0:00 by not scoring, and if you have a lead then do so and take the W.  But not scoring a touchdown because you are afraid that in under two minutes the other team is going to drive for a touchdown, recover an onside kick, then drive for another touchdown, well that means you have absolutely no confidence in your defense.  If the other team hasn’t been scoring two touchdowns every two minutes during the first 58 minutes of the game, why would they start in the last two?

The complexity of the NFL rule book, which confounds even coaches (except presumably Bill Belichick) is in part due to players trying to game the system.  The “tuck rule” was repealed, but why was it adopted in the first place?  Why did the NFL allow teams to have control over the balls they would use in the game, giving them the opportunity to deflate them (or over inflate them) if a quarterback happened to have a preference (I name no names)?

Why define a catch as being in possession of the ball long enough to make a “football move”?  A catch should be a catch.  What’s a catch?  It’s a judgment call.   Apparently it’s okay to have those.

Firing the coach feels good, but does it help?

After the 2014 baseball season Matt Williams was the toast of baseball.  He led the Washington Nationals to a 96 win season in his first year as manager, winning the Manager of the Year award in the process.  12 months later Matt Williams was an obvious incompetent who single-handedly blew the National’s chance to win a World Series. So he was fired.

That’ll teach him.

Did Matt Williams deserve to be fired?  Probably not, in any rational universe.  The Nationals finished with a winning record, suffered a few significant injuries, and had players underperform for reasons that had nothing to do with Matt Williams’ ability to move Xs and Os.  After only two years one cannot claim he wore out his welcome or lost the clubhouse after years of ineffectiveness.  Logic had nothing to do with his firing.

But sometimes logic takes a backseat to perception.  More than any other baseball position, expectations determine how managers are perceived.  The manager with the best record rarely wins Manager of the Year; it is usually the manager of the team that exceeded expectations.  After all, good teams usually have good players, so anyone could manage the, let’s say 1999 Yankees, to a pennant.  But Ted Williams manages the pathetic Washington Senators to 86 wins (23 games behind the division winning Orioles) and he wins the Manager of the Year award instead of Earl Weaver.

The Nationals were expected to win it all, and featured the incredible year Bryce Harper had, a year so brilliant he is almost assured of winning the MVP award despite playing for a team that didn’t win anything.  They had a pitcher throw two no hitters and just missed a third.  They scored the third most runs in the National League.

They also had a staff ace with a delicate elbow that was always the source of anxiety.  Maybe because of the difficulty of dealing with Stephen Strasburg Williams became rigid in his approach to pitching.  When his set up man blew a 4 run lead in the eighth inning and Williams was asked why he hadn’t brought in his closer, he basically said that in the eighth inning he used his eighth inning man and he only used his closer in the ninth, as if losing the game in the eighth was better than putting his closer in for four outs instead of three.

The team’s season was exemplified by the late season incident in the game after they were eliminated from the playoffs, when closer Jonathan Papelbon physically assaulted Bryce Harper for not showing enough effort.  Of course Papelbon played for 23 innings in 22 games and Harper had played in 153 games, so Papelbon questioning Harper’s work ethic is ludicrous.  But then Williams doubled down on stupid by sending Papelbon out to the mound to pitch in the ninth, instead of immediately sending his to the showers.  When asked why he sent him back out, Williams said he hadn’t noticed his best player being grabbed by the throat by a journeyman reliever, and no one told him about it.  Maybe Williams had been busy pondering where to send his resume, because at that point everyone knew he was a goner at the end of the season.

The old saying goes that teams fire managers because you can’t fire the entire team.  That is probably the case in Miami, where the coach was fired after starting the season 1-3.  Lots of teams have started seasons 1-3, but for some reason Miami decided they were Super Bowl bound and Joe Philbin was in the way.  The new coach says he’ll turn the team around by being tougher, which sounds great for a team just coming off Bully-gate.

The team probably most in need of a coaching change is the 1-3 49ers.  The owner brought in a new coach, first timer Jim Tomsula, and virtually promised a championship in the first year by comparing Tomsula to the NBA’s Steve Kerr.  The owner said he wanted to change the culture of the team.

Mission accomplished; under previous coach Jim Harbaugh the Niners were winners who went to three consecutive NFC Championship games and a Super Bowl, while under Tomsula they are 1-3.  Losing is a different culture than winning.

Of course the problem in San Francisco isn’t the coach; it’s the owner who decided Jim Harbaugh was incompetent and Jim Tomsula was better than Lombardi.  But you can’t fire the owner.