Is this any way to cancel a TV show?

We sort of think of television programs as friends we meet with once a week to catch up on events and happenings.  If we get really attached to a show, the notice of its cancellation can seem like a death sentence. Sometimes it comes before the show is over, allowing us some final moments with our friend before they slip away into syndication or streaming distribution rights.  Other times the news comes after the show has completed its season order and suddenly it is gone from our lives like a friend who was hit by a bus.

Recently networks have developed a new way to cancel shows that strikes me as a bit . . . weird.  It was just announced by NBC that the upcoming season of Grimm will be its last. The announcement was snuck into a press release about the premiere date of NBC’s scheduled shows.  The order is for only 13 episodes, not the usual 22.

I have watched Grimm since its first episode, but I won’t miss it or be buying the complete DVD set on Amazon.  It has been an imaginative show, something rare on network television, one that made some brilliant choices and some dumb ones.  The two leads, actors David Giuntoli as Nick Burkhart and Bitsie Tulloch as Juliette She-Has-A-Last-Name?, were both fairly wooden actors and generated no chemistry.  Nick’s partner Hank, played by Russell Hornsby, was never given any meaningful role in the plots.  The show made a daring decision to kill off Juliette, and then inexcusably resurrected her as a super-powered entity who called herself “Eve.”

However, the show was tremendously creative as refashioning old fairy tales into modern day horror tales, made plausible by the show’s distinctive make-up effects for the fairy tale beasts known as “Wessen.”  Two secondary characters, Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell) and police Sgt. Drew Wu (Reggie Lee) developed into first rate second bananas, and the addition of a girlfriend for Monroe (Bree Turner as Rosealee) provided the romance that Nick and Juliette sorely lacked.  The decision to veer away from a “case of the week” format and develop an on-going story line involving a growing conflict between Wessen “Royals” and humans helped raise the stakes and made the plotting more intricate.

What I find odd about the announcement is that NBC renewed the show only to then cancel it.  If they wanted to end the show, why order an additional 13 episodes?  Are they really counting on an increase in viewership to bring in greater ad revenue with the news that the show is ending?  If you want to renew the show, why not make a full order of 22 episodes?

CBS did something similar with Person of Interest, renewing the show and then announcing it would be a mid-season replacement with a final run of 13 episodes.  CBS even hastened the end by burning off two episodes a week. Before that, in 2010, Better Off Ted, a low rated ABC sitcom that was quietly brilliant, was inexplicably renewed despite low ratings; the network then ran two episodes a week in the doldrums of January (if I recall, they even more inexplicably alternated episodes of this and the NBC cast off Scrubs in its final season; instead of a Better Off Ted hour and a Scrubs hour, you got one, then the other, then the other, and then the other).

And then there is the seemingly growing phenomenon of networks not cancelling shows, but simply letting them run out, or worse shortening their episode order.  In 2015 the watch for the first show to be cancelled took a strange turn when the abysmally rated Minority Report wasn't cancelled but had its order reduced to 10 episodes.  The show was doomed, but Fox wouldn’t issue a death certificate.

I understand that network TV is a corporate culture where it is always best to hedge your bets, but what is to be gained by renewing a show and then cancelling it before it gets back on the air?  Why not just axe it?  Was Fox really hoping that several million TV watchers would suddenly wake up and make Minority Report a hit if they just didn’t say it was cancelled?  If, like Grimm, a show has an on-going storyline, why not make the cancellation decision in time to wrap up the plot at the end of season 5, instead of producing a 13 episode season 6? 

Of course this strategy has its pitfalls. Josh Whedon supposedly demanded to know if Angel was going to be renewed for a 6^th season because, if not, he wanted to do a series finale; when the WB network wouldn’t give him an early renewal, he ended the show.  Another season of Angel would have been nice.

The logic used by network executives escapes me.  I suppose that’s why I don’t earn a 7 figure income, have a trophy wife, and live in a mansion with bathrooms bigger than my current house.  Lucky me.

Gene Wilder: Actor

After the sad news of the passing of Gene Wilder, I am re-posting a previous blog from several years ago about what a fine actor he was.  Wilder had great success early in his career in breakout roles in Bonnie and Clyde, The Producers, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex, and of course Willy Wonka.  He then wrote and directed a number of mediocre to bad comedies and faded away in the 1990’s with health problems.  He won an Emmy for Will & Grace in 2005, but his best work was in the early 1970’s.  That’s a long time ago, but people still remember his Willy Wonka.

All reports are that he was a sincerely nice man who endured several tragedies but left a legacy of insanity and laughter.  RIP Gene Wilder.

Gene Wilder, Actor

By pure coincidence two films were released in 2005 that were remakes of films starring Gene Wilder; Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory from this summer, and the more recent release of The Producers.  So we have not one but two opportunities to compare Wilder’s work with another actor.  In both cases Gene Wilder comes out on top.

Johnny Depp had big shoes to fill when stepping into Willie Wonka’s--the role was arguably Wilder’s greatest achievement and might have been worthy of Oscar consideration had it not been in a “children’s film” (he did snag a Golden Globe nomination for best actor in a comedy/musical).  The role of Willie Wonka was a challenging one, and Wilder made the character multi-dimensional.  He veered from avuncular to sinister and back again, with temporary stops at whimsical and malicious.

Wilder set the tone for the character with his entrance; it was his idea to have Wonka initially limp before breaking into a somersault.  It established the character as completely unpredictable.  In other hands this could have seemed erratic, but somehow Wilder was able to imbue Wonka with an underlying veneer of goodness even when he seemed angry or malevolent.

Depp, by contrast, created a one dimensional Wonka, a character stuck in perpetual childhood (much like Michael Jackson, whom some have speculated Depp was impersonating).  The film itself seemed to focus more on Wonka’s emotional development, undermining the sense in the original that Wonka was a master manipulator sure of himself in all situations.

The Producers is another Wilder triumph, the role for which he received his only Oscar nomination for acting (he also got one as co-author of Young Frankenstein).  Wilder’s Leo Bloom was a true basket case, lost in times of stress without his “blue blankey.”  Wilder’s frantic hysteria in the opening scene made Zero Mostel’s girth seem reasonably intimidating despite his not being THAT much smaller.  The character then credibly developed into a self-confident con man under Mostel’s character’s tutelage.

The role of Leo Bloom was assumed, first on Broadway and then on film, by Matthew Broderick.  He is, quite frankly, terrible.  Broderick also demonstrated a complete lack of charisma in another musical, the TV version of The Music Man.  Broderick seems to feel that musicals are realistic anyway, so there’s no reason to act realistically.  In the famous “I’m hysterical” scene Broderick says the words, “I’m hysterical,” but there is no conviction in his voice of demeanor.  The same was true in The Music Man; it was as if he believed he had a good product that would sell itself instead of having to finagle every sale.

Maybe it works on Broadway, where there are no close-ups, but in the film version Broderick appears stiff as a board.  He isn’t credible when he is hysterical at the beginning, and he isn’t credible when he is self-confident at the end.  He also towers over the smaller Nathan Lane, making his, “You’re going to squish me like a bug” line completely inexplicable.

Looking up Gene Wilder’s entry at IMDB.com, I was surprised at how sparse the listing was.  TV movies aside, he hasn’t made a movie since 1991, and he hasn’t had a hit since . . . I suppose 1984’s The Woman in Red (and he hasn’t made a good movie since Silver Streak in 1976, although in the 1990’s he wrote and starred in two excellent TV movies featuring Jewish detective “Cash“ Carter).  In addition to The Producers and Wonka he also did excellent work in Young Frankenstein, Start the Revolution Without Me, and Silver Streak.  Seeing actors such as Depp and Broderick attempt to fill his shoes and come up wanting made me appreciate his films that much more.

Olympic blahs--same ol' same ol'

Despite the trepidations leading up to the Rio Olympics, so far there have been few disasters.  Sure, the green water was a little off-putting, and now Brazilian officials want to arrest Americans who claimed they were robbed at gunpoint for good reason, it turns out) but there hasn’t been an incident like the entire velodrome collapsing during the final heat of the Keirin, so let’s count our lucky stars.

But despite all the winning by American athletes, generally speaking the ratings are trending behind those of London four years ago.  There are a number of reasons for this; people are watching events by streaming on-line instead of accepting whatever sport NBC deigns to televise; the time-shifting of events means results are not seen live; if you watch NBC you are five times more likely to see a touching profile of a courageous athlete rather than actual competition.

But I think there is another reason.  The Olympics have become a rerun.  You remember reruns?  They are what TV networks used to show when they let shows take a break from production over the summer.  In the 1950’s TV shows would produce 40 weekly episodes, and then take 12 weeks off in the summer.  Networks would dutifully show re-broadcasts of the better episodes so viewers wouldn’t get out of the habit of sitting in front of their TV sets from 8PM to 11PM every night.

The 2016 Rio Olympics are a rerun.  Michael Phelps wins medals in swimming?  Seen it.  Usain Bolt wins the 100 and 200 meter races?  Seen it twice.  Kerri Walsh Jennings doesn’t win the Gold?  Okay, that’s new because she won Gold the previous three times.  Sure there are lots of new faces in events dominated by the young, like gymnastics (exactly how many “women” compete in “women’s gymnastics”?).  But by and large most of the stars of the London Olympics are back for more.

It used to be the Olympics were one-shot opportunities for athletes, and if you had the bad fortune to be injured, or your country decided to boycott the Games, when you were at your athletic peak, you were out of luck.  There were some multiple Olympians in obscure events, like discus thrower Al Oeter, or in events where age didn’t diminish your ability to compete, like shooting events and equestrian events, but basically every four years it was a new crop of fresh faces to root for.

This was mainly because the Olympics were committed to an ideal called “amateurism.”  It’s a strange concept these days when it is absurd to refer to college football players as “amateur athletes” but at one time it was the Olympic ideal.  If you don’t believe me, watch the movie Chariots of Fire (if you can stay awake; it is one of the dullest Best Picture Oscar winners ever).  At the start of the 20^th century, not only were the athletes amateurs, but even having a professional COACH was forbidden.  These were amateur athletes who trained, competed in one Olympics, and then went on to be milkmen, accountants, or mothers.

The wall was chipped away at and the dam burst in 1992 when the Olympics allowed professional basketball players to compete.  Once athletes could earn money at their sport, they could train year round and stay in shape longer.  Thanks to ESPN the concept of what could be called a “sport” exploded to where you could not only be a professional skateboarder, but you could be a rich one.  Usain Bolt’s job is to run in the Olympics every four years (although I am sure he runs other places in the interim).  So much for amateurism.

But as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt.  Sure watching Michael Phelps win his 20^th medal is exciting, but less exciting than watching him win his first.  And where is the immediacy?  Did you miss Usain Bolt winning the 100 meter dash in London?  Don’t worry; you can see him in four years in Rio.

There is much to be said for the switch to professionalism.  Economic incentive does motivate performance.  For years the “amateur” system was exploited by a Soviet system that simply drafted their best athletes into the military, making them amateur athletes and professional soldiers.  Money means better training, more focus, and better results.  But we aren’t rooting for ordinary people doing extraordinary things; we are root for people who are not like us.

In the 31 seasons between 1980 and 2010, 5 teams won 28 of 31 NBA titles—the Lakers, Bulls, Celtics, Spurs, and Pistons.  There were some great teams during that run, but if you rooted for the Sacramento Kings, or the San Diego/LA Clippers, or any other the 25 franchises in the league, you couldn’t “Wait ‘til next year” because next year never came.  I think the NBA is more exciting now that places like Oakland and Dallas can compete for a title.  Usain Bolt winning the 100 three years in a row is an amazing accomplishment, but not one afforded previous Olympians.

Bob Hayes had to convert his win in the 1964 Olympic 100 meter dash into a football career.  Usain Bolt will never have to be hit by a 275 pound lineman to cash in on his Olympic glory.  Good for him, but boring for the rest of us.

Baseball Hope Springs Eternal

I hate this time of the baseball season.  It is early enough in the season where few teams have been mathematically eliminated, yet far enough in that most teams should know better about their chances but delude themselves with false optimism.

For example, let’s take the New York Yankees.  At the trade deadline they uncharacteristically became sellers, unloading two All-Star relief pitchers, Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman, to contenders in exchange for prospects, and for good measure they unloaded their best hitter, Carlos Beltran. Yet, even after all this activity, I heard an ESPN talking head (maybe a former Yankee, but I don’t recall) say the old cliché, “The Yanks aren’t out of it!”

Speaking mathematically, that is technically correct.  At the time the Yanks were 58-56, only 3 ½ games out of the second wild card position.  With 50 games to go, why couldn’t they make up 3 ½ games?

The answer is because they are a .500 team after 70% of the season.  That is a pretty good sample size.  Baseball Reference gives them a Simple Rating System rating of -0.1, meaning that factoring in strength of schedule they are actually a below average team (an average team has a SRS of 0).  To get to a reasonably good number of wins to make the playoffs, like 87, they’d have to go 29-19 or play .600 the rest of the way.  Is there any reason for thinking a .500 will become a .600 team after giving away their two best closers and best hitter?  It isn’t impossible, but I estimate the odds of it happening are less than 3% NOT factoring in the loss of talent.

The Yankees are only 3 ½ games out of the second wild card spot, but they are behind the Tigers, Mariners and Astros.  This means that the Yankees would have to play 3 ½ games better than three teams ahead of them (who obviously have a better record than them right now), plus hope no team behind them passes them.  Add in the fact that the Yankees have a losing record against the other teams in the AL East, and their prospects of inning diminish even further.

Manager Joe Girardi said the reason why he refused the play A-Rod at third base in his final game was because he was trying to win ballgames.  I guess he didn’t get the memo from Yankee management that by trading for prospects the Yankees are now playing for the future, not to win.

And even the above argument is all about getting to the second wild card spot.  In the four post seasons since the implementation of the second wild card spot, the team eking its way into the playoffs by that method has only won in the next series twice out of eight times (St. Louis in 2012, Chicago in 2015), but none went any further.  So winning the second wild card slot is hardy a road to the World Series (granted this is a small sample size, plus in 2014 both San Francisco and Kansas City made it to the World Series as first wild card teams).

I’ve always lived by the rule of thumb that if your team is at or below .500 on August first, don’t get your hopes up.  Even a returning superstar would be hard pressed to drive a team to the playoffs that had as many losses as wins that late in the season.  As the old saying goes, wait ‘til next year.

RIP David Huddleston

RIP David Huddleston

Memory is weird.  Has there ever been an actor or actress you were familiar with who appeared in dozens, maybe hundreds of TV and movie roles, yet your best memory of them is in something that time has completely forgotten?  That is my experience upon hearing about the death of David Huddleston.

According to IMDB Huddleston had 145 acting credits, including iconic roles in The Big Lebowski (as the title character) and Blazing Saddles.  He received an Emmy nomination for playing Kevin’s grandfather on The Wonder Years.  He played the title character in the movie Santa Claus.  He was one of those character actors who seemingly popped up on every major (or minor) TV series in the 1970’s, ‘80’s and ‘90’s, from Star Trek: The Next Generation to The West Wing to Blansky’s Beauties. 

Yet I remember him from what I have long described as the single worst television show ever committed to the airwaves, a short-lived (7 episodes) NBC comedy from 1979 called Hizzonner.  The IMDB page is woefully absent of details, but if I recall correctly the show featured not only Huddleston’s acting ability, but also his writing, singing and dancing chops.  If I am correct, this information is sorely lacking from both the IMDB synopsis and the show’s Wikipedia entry.

The show was about a genial small town mayor, played by Huddleston.  Again, my recollection is that Huddleston had a hand in creating the show and writing for it (IMDB has no writing credits for Huddleston, so I could be wrong).  I recall in one episode Huddleston broke into a song and dance as if it were a musical (a very small, low budget musical).

The IMDB entry says it co-starred Diana Muldaur (a veteran TV actress from the original Star Trek and LA Law) and Gina Hecht (later on Mork & Mindy).  I remember nothing of them.  I do recall Huddleston’s co-star Don Galloway, hot off his supporting turn on Ironside.  All I remember of Galloway was that, as a comedic actor, he was stiffer than a block of wood.

I don’t mean any of this as denigrating Huddleston’s talent.  He had a long, successful career as a character actor, and even if Hizzoner was a bad show, it was good enough to get on the air at a time when there were only 3 networks.  You have to be really good to make the worst show on television.

So while everyone fondly recalls David Huddleston from The Big Lebowski (I love the Coen Brothers, but I don’t get that movie), I think of an all-but-forgotten sitcom that he put his unique stamp on.  I won’t be lobbying for a release of the complete Hizzoner on DVD (assuming the tapes of the show were preserved somewhere), but if it was on Netflix I’d check it out.

Alas, it seems like the only surviving traces of Hizzoner exist in my fading memories.

Movie review: Beyond

Movie Review: Star Trek Beyond

There’s an old vaudeville joke about the fourth wife of a gentlemen and the honeymoon; she may know what’s expected of her, but she’s not sure how to make it interesting.  That sums up the problem with the Star Trek movies in a nutshell.  After 50 years (50!) we want our Star Trek movies to meet our expectations and also surprise us.  That may be too much to ask.

The latest incarnation in the Star Trek saga is Beyond, although “Yawn” might be a more apt title.  It hits all the familiar Trek tropes—Spock and McCoy bicker, Scotty does magic in engineering, a seemingly invincible foe is overcome by Kirk’s ingenuity and daring.  The movie is light on Kirk’s womanizing, as the main female in the film seems more interested in Scotty than Kirk, but then the actor playing Scotty (Simon Pegg) co-wrote the screenplay, so that explains that.

The plot is more straightforward than the plot to Into Darkness, thank goodness.  An unknown alien arrives at the Starbase Yorktown with a story about how her ship was attacked on the other side of some space cloud, and of course Kirk, who is contemplating transfer to a desk assignment, naturally volunteers to investigate.  Upon arrival the Enterprise is set upon by the same entity that attacked the alien.  The Enterprise is overcome by a swarm of seemingly tens of thousands of small one-or-two man ships that easily slice through defenses designed to stop Romulan Birds of Prey and other large destroyers.  The crew evacuates and find themselves on different parts of the planet below.

Of course Spock (Zachary Quinto) and McCoy (Karl Urban) end up together so they can carry on like an old married couple.  Kirk (Chris Pine, once again doing an admirable job of filling William Shatner’s shoes) ends up with Checkov (the late Anton Yelchin) on the wreckage of the saucer section.  Scotty lucks out and is rescued by an attractive alien (Sophia Boutella) who wields a mean quarterstaff.  It is debatable which Scotty finds more attractive, her physique or the fact that she jury rigged a derelict star fleet vessel into working as her home.

The plotting is sloppy and slipshod, not surprising given that this was Pegg’s first experience with a science fiction screenplay.  For example, I was convinced that the make-up department had done a bad job on the main villain, Krall (Idris Elba), because his alien make-up seemed inconsistent.  Very late in the film it is revealed that he somehow has the power to alter his appearance; this is information that should have been clarified and explained earlier.

Also unexplained is the main big bad, some device that somehow could kill everyone on Starbase Yorktown, or any planet.  It serves the same purpose as the red goop in the first Star Trek reboot in 2009, when a small drop destroyed the planet Vulcan (or for that matter the Infinity Stone in Guardians of the Galaxy).  What is it?  We don’t know.  How does it work? If the screenwriters told us, then someone might nitpick the science and tell the internet.  So just accept that it can kill lots of people.

Of course since we don’t know how it works, that makes Kirk’s plan to stop it equally arbitrary.  And man, is it arbitrary.  It reminded me of what I perceive to be the difference between the original Trek in the 1960’s and the Next Gen version—in the original Trek, a problem would be posed in the first 10 minutes, and Kirk spent the next 45 minutes looking for a solution; on Next Gen, Picard took 45 minutes to figure out what the problem was, then ordered Giordi to push a button to fix it.  It is impossible to feel ANY tension in the ending because we know Kirk isn’t going to fail, the seemingly invincible enemy has a flaw, and Starbase Yorktown won’t have piles of corpses lining its nice shiny streets at the end.

How can you make a dramatic movie if there are no stakes?  The original movies solved the problem brilliantly by killing Spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  After that there was no assurance that Sulu or Uhuru might survive the next movie.  At least for a while.

This is the problem with the recent spate of superhero movies.  Who’s going to die at the end of Captain America 3: Civil War?  Will Superman kill Batman, or vice versa?  And who cares if the endings are predictable, when Superman v. Batman: Dawn of Justice gets universally panned and still makes “only” $875 million worldwide?  Or Suicide Squad gets mediocre reviews and still laps up $135 million domestic on its opening weekend?  Filmmakers keep giving us unsatisfying screenplays because a) they are demanded by the studios and b) they make money anyway (except of course the Fantastic Four reboot; nothing could save that).

I can’t fault director Justin Lin, taking over directing duties from J. J. Abrams.  Lin is a fantastic director, as proven by his contributions to the Fast and Furious franchise (not to mention the Community paintball episode; yes, that was his last credit before Fast Five).  No one could make this oatmeal into a five course meal.

I’ve wondered about Abrams’ contribution since the Star Trek reboot.  That film had some great tweaks on the Trek-verse, from Uhuru being with Spock instead of Kirk to Spock meeting Spock Prime.  However, the central plot had numerous holes that were filled by simple good will towards the franchise. Then in Into Darkness, Abrams’ doubled back and tried to remaking Star Trek II with similar tweaks; as Scotty once said, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” 

What made the original Star Trek great was NOT Gene Roddenberry’s “optimism” but the fact that they hired honest to goodness science fiction writers like Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon because there were no sci-fi writers in TV at the time.  Now we get a movie script co-written by non-SF writer Simon Pegg, who is gifted at comedy but doesn’t think in science fiction terms. 

Star Trek 4 has been green-lit; here is hoping they bring in a better writer because after Into Darkness and Beyond the move franchise is on life support.