TV Review: Elseworlds

TV Review: Elseworlds

Welcome to the third annual CW crossover event, where all (or some) of the shows in the Arrow-verse (shouldn’t it be called the Berlanti-verse, sort of like Shondaland?) get to meet each other and hijinks ensue.  The firs crossover event had definite problems; they siloed each show’s episode, so it seemed like a party game where The Flash got to produce an hour of television and then Arrow had to take over and make the next hour.  The Flash episode was definitely a Flash episode, the Arrow episode was incomprehensible to those who didn’t watch Arrow, and the Supergirl contribution was literally just the last 2 minutes of a Supergirl episode.  But the whole thing was entertaining and a nice way to package shows that maybe not everyone was watching.

Last year’s crossover event, Crisis on Earth X, solved almost all of the problems that the first crossover had.  It ran like a 4-hour mini-series, with supporting characters from each show popping up in any of the four episodes, and it was magnificent.  The fight scene in episode 1, where Nazis from Earth X attacked the wedding of Barry Allen and Iris West, was beautifully fight choreographed (it helped that Guest Star William Katt, from The Greatest American Hero, was the first person to get zapped by the invading horde).  The bad guys were a real threat, the episodes had both gravitas and humor, and Alex Danvers from Supergirl and Sara Lance from Legends of Tomorrow had the greatest drunken hookup in superhero TV history (punctuated by Mick Rory asking Sara Lance, “So . . . you hit that?” at the end).

This year’s crossover event, Elseworlds, is a step backwards.  It has some fun moments, but the plot never manages to make any sense what so ever, even by the loose logical standards of the Berlanti-verse.  What saves it is the acting; all of the participants seem to get a kick out of stretching their characters and interacting with different actors.  But man does this not make sense.

Let’s start with the premise: geeky psychiatrist Dr. John Deegan (played by Jeremy Davies, so you know he’s not mentally all there) is given a book by a character we subsequently learn is called The Monitor, that allows him to rewrite all of reality.  Does he use this power to sleep with any woman he wants?  Does he make himself the richest man in the world?  Does he burn off his unsightly body fat without diet or exercise?  No, he has The Flash (Grant Gustin) and Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) switch places.

What?  Yeah, I don’t get it.  Since it turns out he’s from Gotham City, why would he even care about the Central City speedster and Star City’s Green Arrow?  If there was an explanation, I missed it.  That said, it never failed to be hilarious to see Steven Amell in The Flash’s bright red superhero costume; it is hard to be broody when dressed in a candy apple red onesie.  Anyway, the two heroes are upset by the arrangement (Barry Allen is Oliver’s friend, but the prospect of his wife waking up next to Oliver Queen freaks him out), so they travel to Earth 38 to consult with Supergirl (Melissa Benoist).  The investigation leads then to Gotham City where Batman is MIA but Batgirl is alive and well and kicking ass.  They go back to Central City, Deegan rewrites the universe again and this time he makes himself Superman, which makes way more sense.

Okay, let’s get to the biggest problem with Elseworlds: the ending.  In order to stop Deegan from rewriting the universe, the good guys decide they have to stop time.  How?  The Flash will one run direction at Mach 7, Supergirl will fly in the other at the same speed, and the Earth’s rotation will stop, freezing time.  Right.  The biggest sin the original Superman movie committed was that nonsense about reversing the Earth’s rotation reversing time.  Ain’t gonna happen.  Then there’s the methodology; how would two superheroes moving rapidly in opposite directions affect the Earth’s rotation?  And given their small mass compared to the Earth, how could they possibly affect the Earth’s rotational momentum, even if they weren’t cancelling out the other’s effect?

Let’s focus on the positive though.  The cast seems to be having a ball, especially Amell who gets to lighten up for a change.  Elseworlds also makes good use of Supergirl’s Superman, Tyler Hoechin, who is criminally underused on that show.  It also introduces two additions to the Berlanti-verse, Ruby Rose’s Kate Kana, aka Batgirl, and Elizabeth Tullock’s Lois Lane.  Batgirl, for whom a new show is being considered, has apparently taken up Batman’s mantle while he is missing and makes an impressive appearance.  Tulloch, who was as interesting as water on Grimm, made a good impression as Lois Lane; lively, smart, fearless and connected to Clark/Superman on an emotional level.  She was a definite improvement over Erica Durance’s overly aggressive portrayal on Smallville.  The show came up for a reason for them to be away for a while (while visiting the Kryptonian outpost Argo City Lois somehow got pregnant, so they will have to go back to Argo City lest the baby’s kicking results in Lois’ death), which takes some pressure off of Supergirl as it always struggled to explain the absence of Superman when crises occurred.  When (not if) they come back, I would welcome a new Superman series with the in the leads (although they won’t top Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain in Lois and Clark).

One other neat thing about Elseworlds is that it maintains The Flash’s almost fanboyish enthusiasm for the 1990 version of The Flash that probably few people remember.  It once again features John Wesley Shipp, the star of that show, as the Flash from an alternate universe (I think Earth 3, but I can’t keep the alternate universes straight).  Shipp has been featured as Barry Allen’s father on the modern version of The Flash, while his 1990 co-stars Amanda Pays and Mark Hamill have reprised their roles as Tina McGee and The Trickster.  Such enthusiasm and attention to detail are no doubt part of the success of the modern version of The Flash.

Elseworlds was a fun way to spend three hours (unlike the past two years, Legends of Tomorrow wasn’t included this time, something they snarkily commented on during this week’s episode), but after the spectacular success of Crisis on Earth X it has to feel like a letdown.  It is still an improvement over the first crossover event.  The final episode of this year’s event ended with a promo for next year’s crossover event, Crisis on Infinite Earths, so let the fanboy speculation start now!

Harold Baines isn't quite a Hall of Famer

So this is what it’s come to, Harold Baines is in the Hall of Fame.

It’s too bad there isn’t a Hall of Pretty Good, because that’s where Baines belongs.  He hit 384 home runs, which sounds like a lot (although far less than 500) until you realize he played for 21 seasons, so it adds up to about 18 per year.  Right . . . Ruth, Mantle, McGuire, Bonds and Baines; peas in a pod.  His 2,866 hits averages out to 136 per year, which isn’t Pete Rose territory.  He once finished in the top ten in homers, and twice finished in the top ten in RBIs.

If anything, there is an argument that players like Baines are traditionally undervalued by Hall of Fame voters.  What do I mean by “players like Baines”?  Basically, jacks of all trades, good average hitters with some pop, good fielders, guys who played a long time because as their skills diminished their leadership and coaching abilities still made them valuable.  Maybe Baines should have to buy a ticket to get into the Hall of Fame, but a guy with 384 home runs should also have done better than maxing out at 6.1% of the votes.

The problem comes in when you have players who played a long time and how it affects counting stats, like home runs and runs batted in.  Because of better conditioning and higher salaries, players now stay in the majors for much longer careers than in past eras.  If you get a mediocre number of some counting stat (say 18 home runs per year) and combine it with an extraordinarily long career (say 21 seasons), you get totals that look more impressive than they actually are.

I’ve made the argument before regarding Rafael Palmiero, whose 3,000+ hits and 500+ home runs would have made him a lock for the hall but for his failed steroid test.  Those were impressive markers when careers lasted 12-15 seasons but spread over 20 they aren’t that impressive.  Baines’ 384 home runs put him at 65^th all time, behind Jim Edmonds, Craig Nettles and Aramis Ramierez, all of who are NOT in the Hall (Edmonds, arguably one of the greatest fielding center fielders of all time, should be, but few players get into the Hall for fielding).  He is 34^th in RBIs, which is bordering on impressive.

I put more stock in how a player was judged by his contemporaries when he was playing.  Palmiero played for 19 seasons and started exactly ONE All-Star game, and only went to a total of five (once as a DH).  So for the bulk of his career he wasn’t considered one of the best at his position.  The same thing is true for Baines, who went to only six All-Star games in a 21-season career.  MVP voting is another key indicator of respect during a career, but Baines came in the top ten in voting only twice, and then it was 9^th once and 10^th once.

The biggest mistakes in the history of the Hall have been made by these Veterans Committees.  In the 1960’s Frankie Frisch was the chair and as a result people like his former teammate Jesse Haines got in despite being woefully unqualified.  It is absurd that Baines can get no more than 6.1% of the votes from the 400-500 or so voters in the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA), but then gets 12 of 16 votes from the Veterans’ Committee and he’s in.

I could also rip the other person to be voted in, Lee Smith, but my objection to him is that closers are vastly overrated, and I am not impressed by guys who only pitch one inning per game (except for Mariano Rivera, Dennis Eckersly and Goose Gossage).  The save is a stupid stat, but Smith did hold the record for most saves when he retired which is one more record than Harold Baines held when he called it quits.

Obviously, the HoF voting needs to be reformed.  How can a player who got 6% of the vote from over 400 voters not get in, then be admitted after getting 12 votes from a committee of 16 (several of whom were former owners and teammates of his)?  Who are we going to believe, the collected wisdom of 500 baseball writers, or a bunch of old baseball guys voting for a buddy?

Doctor Who's season thus far--I am not thrilled

We are four episodes in to the reign of the 13^th Doctor on Doctor Who, which isn’t a large enough sample size for a definitive evaluation, but it is about one-third of the way through the season, so some criticism can be justified.  On the whole . . . I am not sanguine about where new showrunner Chris Chibnall is taking the series.

This is in no way a complaint about the new Doctor, played for the first time by a female actor, Jodie Whittaker.  I have the same complaint I had about the prior Doctor, peter Capaldi, which is that I occasionally find her accent impenetrable, but other than that she has been fun, quirky, smart, and in command of most situations she finds herself in.  Casting a new Doctor is always tricky, and they’ve had an excellent track record (in the 50-plus year history of the show, the only major casting mis-step for a Doctor was Colin Baker as the 6^th Doctor, and that was probably a failure of concept, not acting). 

As for what doesn’t work, let me start with a couple of minor things that really irritate me.  The first is the new opening credit sequence, which looks like someone just started messing around with some computer program that makes psychedelic swirls.  Prior credit sequences referred either to the Doctor’s capacity to travel in space or (for the previous credit sequence) in time, but this looks like a throwback to the 1970’s when they discovered they could do neat psychedelic effects on a computer and just went nuts.

I also hate the design of the interior of the TARDIS, which is dark, confusing, and not at all comfy looking.  I thought prior designs of the control room made it look bigger than necessary (if for no other reason than to get the standard reaction, “It’s bigger on the inside!” when someone enters), but the new set looks positively claustrophobic.  They haven’t spent too much time in the TARDIS in the first four episodes, since the Doctor didn’t reclaim the TARDIS until the end of episode number two, but I hope they make it look more habitable if they do spend more time there.

New showrunner Chris Chibnall has been checking off the episodes types as he begins his stint as the head of the Who-niverse, with an Earth invasion show, a show set on a foreign planet, an historical show, and then another Earth (well, Sheffield) in peril adventure.  Overall, I think Chibnall has picked up former showrunner Peter Moffat’s most annoying habit of creating preposterous premises but without Moffat’s ability to justify them eventually.  The second episode was supposed to be the last leg of a massive marathon race to find something, but the two finalists in no way gave any indication of why they were successful where all their competitors failed.  How either survived without the Doctor’s assistance in prior legs of the rally is a mystery, as is the reason for the elaborate rally in the first place.  The appearance of the TARDIS at the end is a deus ex machina and not an ending earned by the script.

The third episode, Rosa, was a noble effort to humanize an historical feature known almost solely for her name, but I thought it came across as heavy-handed and overly earnest.  The whole idea that the Doctor and her companions were fighting to keep the historical record on track when another time traveler was trying to disrupt history seemed too derivative of other TV shows like DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, or Timeless, or Quantum Leap.  Also, the whole scenario of Rosa Parks being arrested for not giving up her seat on a Montgomery bus was orchestrated, so if she had missed that particular bus it would not have been the end of the Civil Rights movement; someone else would have done it.  So the Doctor’s efforts to restore history weren’t really needed.

I also have major issues with the way the fourth episode, Arachnids in the U.K., was resolved.  So, there are these giant spiders in England, and they are killing people (not because they are evil but because, well, they’re hungry).  The 13^th Doctor has a strict “no killing” policy, but her method of solving the giant spider infestation is to lock them in a room and . . . let them starve to death.  She gets angry with an American businessman (played by Chris Noth, whose face is a little too familiar to be a credible guest actor) who shoots a giant spider near the end, but she had just said the spider was dying from suffocating because it was too large to be supported by the spider’s lungs, so it was sort of a mercy killing.  I appreciate her anti-gun stance, but whether the spider died by bullets or suffocation isn’t really a distinction with a difference and letting them starve to death isn’t a humane alternative.

She also maintained an anti-gun stance in the second episode when one of her companions used a weapon to incapacitate a number of hostile robots, which someone pointed out to her weren’t alive so it’s not killing. I do applaud the anti-gun stance in theory, but let’s be reasonable.

I do like the three companions, and hopefully they will be fleshed out more as the series unwinds.  Having one companion seemed to lead the creators of the shows into making the companion almost as “special” as the Doctor (I’m thinking of Clara, Donna, and Rose).  I can’t believe I am saying this, but Amy Pond became a better companion after she and the Doctor were joined by her husband Rory.  For now, I like the group interactions of a crowded TARDIS.

I was glad that Steven Moffat decided to step down as showrunner, not because he hadn’t done a good job but because he had developed a “swing for the fences” approach that made overall seasons interesting but precluded any single episode being great.  New blood is good, change is good, and the show Doctor Who is still good despite my many reservations based on the first four episodes.

But seriously, lighten up the interior of the TARDIS!

Let's stop with the reboots, okay?

Let me say something that we’ve known for some time: the world is going to hell.  I’m not talking politics, the environment, or the composition of the US Supreme Court (although any of those would provide excellent evidence).  I’m talking about the complete and utter bankruptcy of the creative people we rely on for our entertainment.

I understand the desire to reboot TV shows from the 1960’s, or turn series from the 1980’s into movies.  But this week it was announced that Disney is considering rebooting the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.  This follows hot on the news last week that NBC is developing a spin-off of that long lost show Grimm.  

The AV Club article linked to above says, with what I can only assume is tongue planted in cheek, that the Grimm spin-off might “satisfy TV viewers’ unquenchable thirst for nostalgia.”  At least I hope this is sarcasm because how can audiences feel nostalgic for a show that ended last year?

Rebooting the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise would be making the same mistake so many reboots make, namely taking a property whose popularity is based primarily on the star power of the actors, and then remaking it with a new actor.  Rebooting Hawaii Five-O is one thing, because the original show wasn’t popular because of the charisma of Jack Lord; but remaking Magnum PI without Tom Selleck is just an exercise in futility.

When I (correctly) predicted that Johnny Depp would get an Oscar nomination for the first Pirates movie, a friend said I was nuts, that films like that didn’t get acting nominations.  I replied that a) Depp was a respected actor among his peers, and b) the film made $300 million domestically, and it wasn’t because of the script, or the direction, or Orlando Bloom or Keira Knightly.  Probably $200 million of that $300 million gross was due to Johnny Depp’s performance, and while Hollywood does not generally reward high grossing films with Oscars, they do acknowledge when a performer brings in the dough.

I’ve written before about Grimm, a show I find fascinating because of its flaws.  It was a clever concept, but the show runners would set up serialized plot lines then go back to a “Monster of the Week” format, leaving plot lines dangling.  The supporting actors were generally great, especially Silas Weir Mitchell, Sasha Roiz, Reggie Lee, and Bree Turner, but the lead actor (David Giuntoli) was fairly wooden.  On top of that, there was NO chemistry between Giuntoli and his on-screen girlfriend (Elizabeth “Bitsie” Tulloch), which is the embodiment of the cliché that off-screen couples usually have no on-screen chemistry since Giuntoli and Tulloch were an item off-screen and eventually married. 

So maybe a rebooted Grimm could work with a slightly more charismatic lead.  Certainly the concept appears flexible enough to be expanded upon. 

But just starting a series over from scratch because the producers want to keep the franchise going with younger actors is creatively hollow.  The only memorable thing about Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (I bet you forgot about the part after the colon) was Depp’s performance, and Disney managed to wring 4 sequels out of it (one of the “blink and you miss it” jokes in the TV Show the Good Place was a poster in Hell that advertised “Pirates of the Caribbean 6, The Haunted Crow's Nest, or Something, Who Gives a Crap, Now Playing Everywhere Forever").

Disney caught lightning in a bottle once with Depp’s performance in the original Pirates movie, but it is unlikely to happen again with a reboot.  Given that Pirates is just about the only Disney movie based on a ride at Disneyland that was successful (personally, I loved Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland, but the box office [$93 million domestic gross on a $190 million budget] shows I am not in the majority), creating a new franchise on that concept seems to me to be a risky proposition.

Reboots occasionally work (the Addams Family movies are a vast improvement over the original).  But I’d be willing to bet that for every successful reboot there are a dozen flops (remember the movie based on Car 54 Where Are You? The Beverly Hillbillies?  Bewitched?  The Flintstones?  McHale’s Navy?  I thought not).  Note: for purposes of this discussion, the Mission Impossible films are NOT in any way, shape or form related to the TV series; they appropriated the name as a brand identifier, but they only use the words “Mission Impossible” because they are easier to market than films called “The Ethan Hunt Adventures.”

Dredging up properties from the 1960s or 1970s is bad enough, but rebooting properties that began in the 21^st century is simply robbing too fresh of a grave. Surely Disney can come up with another ride at Disneyland to base a movie on.  Autopia: The Movie anyone?

Luke Cage est mort

In this era of “Too Much Television” it is hard to make too much out of the cancellation of a TV series.  No matter how good or how unique a series may be (after any TV show gets filtered through network notes, censorship limits, and budgetary limitations), there will always be another show coming along.  Between broadcast networks, basic cable, premium cable, streaming services, and so on, it’s almost impossible for any television show to offer a form of entertainment so individual that its passing makes an impact on the universe.

Still, the news that Luke Cage was cancelled after season 2 makes me a little sad.  It had a perspective unlike pretty much any other show other than Black Lightning, another show that dealt with issues of humanity in general and the African-America experience in America specifically through the prism of the superhero genre.  Here was a superhero as physically imposing as anyone imaginable, but he often agonized over how he used force. Despite all the machinations about control of Harlem and the drug trade therein, the show had an acute sense of humor.  Luke Cage generally avoided slipping into clichés when creating characters, giving the bad guys multiple dimensions and conflicted motivations.

The show was about an ex-cop/ex-con who was subjected to medical experiments in prison that rendered him invulnerable to bullets, explosions, or any other implement, as well as giving him super-strength.  Instead of running around in some lame costume with a mask, he openly performed acts of superhero-dom (sometimes with footage going viral) while trying to be a role model for the African-American community in Harlem.

The series lead, Mike Colter, had the physical heft to make Luke Cage imposing, as well as a genial, “aw shucks” persona that made the character more human than other superhero types.  He had a nice chemistry with Rosario Dawson’s Claire Temple, the character that crossed over between the Netflix Marvel shows and provided some cohesive quality.  In fact, Colter also had chemistry with Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) when his character was introduced in that series, as well as Detective Misty Knight (Simone Missick) at the start of the eponymous series.  If Peter Parker knew how much action Luke Cage got, maybe he’d re-think the costume.

The odd thing about Luke Cage was that the show made the same mistake in each of its two seasons.  In season one, Luke’s primary antagonist was Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes, the head of the criminal underworld in Harlem.  As played by future Oscar winner Mahershala Ali, Cottonmouth was a smart, calculating, charismatic rival who posed a real threat to Luke’s physical prowess.  But then (spoiler!) half-way through the season he is dispatched and replaced by his sister, Mariah, played by Alfre Woodard.  Woodard is a great actress, but her character was never smart enough to pose a real threat to Luke Cage.

In season two Luke faced another worthy opponent, a Jamaican named “Bushmaster” who used special Jamaican pharmacology to give him enough strength to match Luke Cage in a one-on-one fight, although his main beef was with Woodard’s character.  Luke spent the season alternating between battling Mariah’s efforts at consolidating power in Harlem and protecting her from Bushmaster.  I believe at one point Luke Cage says he should just let Bushmaster kill her just before he saved her life yet again.  As with season one, the worthy rival petered out mid-way through the season and at the end he is battling Mariah.

It’s frustrating when a series creates a number of characters who you like spending time with, then has them do stupid things.  Luke Cage was great at character building, not so great at understanding what characters wanted and what they would do to get it.  The show often got lost in its own convoluted plotting, which is maybe why the character of Luke Cage came across better when he was in the Jessica Jones series, or in the crossover series The Defenders.

Season two of Luke Cage ended on an interesting note, with Mariah willing ownership of her nightclub to Luke Cage (presumably to ensnare him in the underworld activity necessary to keep the place afloat), while Luke rebuffed the attempt of Claire to renew their relationship after being apart for most of the season (I don’t know if this was scripted or due to Dawson’s unavailability, but it definitely hampered the second half of the season).  Given that Claire’s role was often that of an angel perched on Luke’s shoulder urging him to do the right thing, the situation was set up for Luke Cage to go down a dark path.

But there will be no season three of Luke Cage.  I hope the character will appear in more crossover events like The Defenders, which (while somewhat erratic) was greater than the sum of its parts.  With Iron Fist and Luke Cage cancelled, Netflix has only 50% of its Marvel properties on-going.  I haven’t gotten through Daredevil season 3 yet, but early reviews are promising; on the other hand, I felt Jessica Jones season two was a significant let down.  Will Marvel maintain its Master of the Universe status with two of its four Netflix series cancelled and after the resolution of the Infinity Wars motion picture?  Only time will tell.

Mis-managing relief pitchers

I’ve watched a lot of baseball in my life, and I’ve heard a lot of announcers say a lot of stupid things.  But by far the topper was uttered during the 7^th game of the NLCS between the Dodgers and the Brewers, when one f the announcers (I can’t recall which) said, “The Dodgers have only scored four runs off Brewer starters in this series.”

Normally that would not be an insanely stupid concept but given how Brewers manager Craig Counsell was using his pitching staff, it provoked a loud guffaw from me.  Counsell, showing that he had zero faith in his rotation, was pulling his starting pitchers before the Dodgers had any chance to score off them. His game one starter, Gio Gonzales, was pulled after two innings and eight batters.  His game four starter, Gonzales again, was pulled after one inning and seven batters.  He yanked his game five starter, Wade Miley, after he failed to get the first batter out.  The Brewer starters faced, on average, 12.67 batters during the first six NCLS games.  No wonder the Dodgers weren’t scoring on them.

I don’t want to come down too hard on Counsell’s handling of his pitching staff, although I do believe it cost his team a trip to the World Series.  The Brewers were the winningest team in the National League, and part of that was a starting rotation that allowed the 8^th fewest runs per game, 4.04, a figure only slightly behind the Red Sox’s 3.99.  So the Brewers had a quality starting rotation.  But despite this Counsell felt the need to resort to gimmicks like pulling Gonzales after two innings in Game 1 for no reason and pulling Miley after pitching to one batter in Game 5.

The deal with Game 5, trying to get the Dodgers to platoon one way and then flip the pitcher, has been tried before, as mentioned in this article at ESPN on "bullpenning."  It’s not entirely insane, but it does betray a lack of confidence in your pitching corps.  Yes, the playoffs are different than the regular season, but the post-season is hardly the time to start experimenting like you are playing a game of Strat-O-Matic in your parent’s basement.

In seems like in the past few seasons mangers have gone relief happy in the post season.  Dave Roberts, the Dodger manager, was too eager to pull the hook in the 2017 World Series and possibly cost the Dodgers the crown.  Even Joe Maddon, for my money the best manager alive today, nearly cost the Cubs the title in 2016 by over-using Aroldis Chapman against the Cleveland Indians in the World Series.  I get the temptation; you have a lights-out closer who is effective for one inning; it’s the end of the season, so let’s get two innings out of him.  Instead of waiting until the ninth, let’s put him in in the 7^th.   There are three reason why this may not work.

The first is that baseball players are successful if they do what they are accustomed to doing.  If a relief pitcher is used to facing three batters in the ninth and recording a save, then it might upset his equilibrium if he is asked to pitch for two innings.  The Dodgers brought closer Kenley Jansen in for the ninth inning against the Rockies in the 163^rd game for the NL West title with a 5-run lead, and he gave up two home runs; was that because he was unaccustomed to such a large lead and couldn’t focus as well as he usually did?

Secondly, relief pitchers are effective because they are seen so rarely.  If Josh Hader is effective pitching to three batters a night, then no one on the other team gets a good look at his motion.  But if he goes two innings a couple of times during a short series, then the other team can pick up on any vulnerability that might be there.  Familiarity breeds contempt and, in this case, it may breed extra base hits.

Lastly, there is the psychological factor.  If you have Josh Hader in the bullpen, the other team knows it is an 8-inning game.  The prospect of facing a lights-out closer in the ninth adds urgency to a team’s need to score runs, which might make them do foolish things in early innings and take risks that needn’t be taken.

But if you bring Hader in at the third inning, you’ve lost that edge.  Suddenly it is a nine-inning game again, and there is no reason to improvidently try and take an extra base or pull a pitcher for a pinch hitter while the pitcher is on cruise control.  There may be an edge to using your closer earlier in the game than the ninth inning, but you lose something as well.

Post-season managers seem to want to drop the strategies that got them to the playoffs and start relying on their relief pitchers even if their starting pitching is one of the team’s strengths.  I’ve heard several announcers mention that managers pull starters to avoid them being seen a third time through the line-up; while it is true that, on average, pitchers are less effective when the batters are seeing them for a third time, what is true of an “average” pitcher is not necessarily true for Justin Verlander or Clayton Kershaw.  There is an old axiom in statistics: a man with his head in an oven and his feet in a block of ice is, on average, comfortable.  Average doesn’t apply to everyone.

So, will Dave Roberts learn from his foibles last year and manage his bullpen better in the World Series this year?  Frankly, after seeing Red Sox batters destroy the best starting rotation in baseball during the ALCS, I have a feeling Roberts may be going to his bullpen sooner in games rather than later, but out of necessity.  But we shall see; that’s why they play the games.

Newsflash: Tiger Woods is NOT back

For the past five years, the talking heads at ESPN have talked about the same thing over and over and over: when is Tiger Woods coming back?  Five years ago they said it would be the next year; four years ago they said it would be the next year; three years ago they said . . . you get the idea.

As the saying goes, a broken clock is right twice a day.  After five years of predicting that Tiger Woods was about to win a golf tournament, he finally won a golf tournament, winning the Tour Championship in Atlanta.

According to the talking heads, this means Tiger is back.  He’s BACK, baby!  One of the talking heads said that Tiger Woods is now the prohibitive favorite to win the Masters’ next year, an opinion reflected in the wagering.  Frankly, I’d love to get a piece of that action; anyone who wants to put money on Tiger, give me the field.

Tiger went from being a player who hadn’t won a tournament in five years, to a player who has won one tournament in five years.  It’s an improvement, but unless he does parlay this win into a winning streak it doesn’t improve his winning percentage by that much.

Plus, Tiger is still 42 years old and, unless he has made a deal of some sort with Beelzebub, he will continue to age.  Barring injury, players don’t suddenly flip a switch at some age and go from great to hopeless; their skills gradually diminish as they age.  People generally remember Willie Mays’ tenure with the Mets as a disaster, but in fact he posted one of the 20 best seasons for a player over 35 in MLB history.  The fact that Willie Mays could still hit a home run at age 41 did not mean he could hit 50; the fact that Tiger CAN win a golf tournament does not mean he is going to start winning multiple majors for the foreseeable future.

There is also the fact that Tiger entered the Sunday of the Tour Championship with a three-stroke lead.  This is important as Tiger has never won a tournament in his career by coming from behind (and, conversely, he had never squandered a three-stroke lead on a Sunday).  That means he has to be a front-runner; one bad round (even one bad hole) on Thursday, Friday or Saturday and his chances of finishing first diminish dramatically.  He has a narrow window, and the chances of making that window get smaller and smaller as time does its inexorable thing.

And I haven’t even mentioned the knee surgeries, back surgeries, and other physical ailments that have plagued him.  He has pronounced himself to be physically fit before only to have his body break down soon after.  Things that are surgically repaired tend to break down again and need re-fixing, and they never come back better than before.

Bottom line: Tiger woods won a golf tournament.  Good for him!  Will he make a habit of it?  I doubt it.  He’s played in 18 tour events in 2018 and finished outside the top ten in 11 of them, which does not sound like someone dominating the circuit.  Tiger is JAG: Just Another Guy.  He isn’t back to being Tiger, despite what every talking head on ESPN will tell you.  He’s an over-the-hill duffer with a spate of physical ailments, and once in a while his body will cooperate and give him a taste of past glory. 

But it’s not going to happen on a regular basis.

The Emmys are Broken

So, the 70^th annual Emmy Awards are in the books and I couldn’t care less.

It’s finally gotten to the point where there is so much TV out there, from so many different platforms, that putting shows into the existing Emmy categories is not just comparing apples to oranges; it’s comparing apples to salamanders to meteorites.

On the one hand you’ve got shows like Game of Thrones on a premium channel like HBO.  The show has been derisively referred to as “dragons and tits” because a large amount of the appeal of the show (particularly for young men) is the fact that they show CGI dragons and comely young women who regularly find themselves disrobing for reasons that are often (but not always) compelled by the plot (it’s always young women; if Diana Rigg ever does a topless scene, let me know).  It is hardly fair to put a show like Game of Thrones in the “best drama” category with a broadcast network show like This is Us.  Being a show on one of the financially strapped broadcast networks, it can’t afford the CGI to create dragons; being on broadcast TV it can’t show tits. 

For those of you interested in trivia, the last broadcast network show to win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama was 24 way back in 2006.  For the past 12 years the winner for best drama has either been on basic cable (Mad Men, Breaking Bad) or premium cable (Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Homeland).   Since 2011, the two nominations for This is Us have been the only nominations for Outstanding Drama by a show on a broadcast network (not counting Downton Abbey on PBS).

It gets more confusing the deeper you dive into the award categories.  The 2018 winner for Outstanding TV Movie was “USS Callister,” which was not a TV movie but an episode of an anthology show, Black Mirror.  The same thing happened in 2017 with a previous episode of Black Mirror, “San Junipero,” and in 2016 an episode of the BBC series Sherlock, “The Abominable Bride,” won for best TV movie.  So, it’s been four years since a TV movie has won the Emmy for Outstanding TV Movie.

The category for “Outstanding Limited Series” is equally confusing, as many “limited series” (which originally referred to a single production over multiple episodes, like Roots or The Winds of War) now play out as regular series.  In 2017 the third season of Fargo was nominated for Outstanding Limited Series, despite the fact that after three seasons it is hard to see what is so ‘limited” about it.

The entry of streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon into television production further confounds analysis.  Mini-series, or “limited series,” used to play out over several nights, and sometimes produced the biggest audiences in TV history (such as the final episode of the original Roots).  Now Netflix will dump a new “series” out all at once, and no one has any idea what the “ratings” are because Netflix doesn’t release that information.  If enough people watch it, like Stranger Things, then it comes back and it is a dramatic series; if not enough people watch it, then it ends after one “season” and becomes a limited series after the fact.

The most recent development that annoys me no end is that now shows are taking the lead from Mad Men (I believe they were the first to do it) and dividing their final season of 13 episodes into two 6- or 7-episode seasons, which they then break up to compete in the award periods of two different seasons.  The result is that actors may win an Emmy in 2018 for acting they did in 2016 for a show that was scheduled to be shown in 2017. 

Calling six or seven episodes a “season” borders on ridiculous, especially when looking back and realizing that TV shows used to be expected to produce 28-30 shows per season.  The present standard for broadcast network television is 22.  This is another disadvantage broadcast network dramas have competing against premium cable shows; it is much easier to maintain high quality over 8 episodes rather than 22.  But broadcast networks must fill 3 hours a day, seven days a week with programming; HBO can simply rerun the same episodes of Game of Thrones over and over and over. 

With the vast ocean of programming out there, the process of choosing five, or six, or even ten nominees in each category becomes futile.  How can those responsible for selecting the nominees possibly watch even a small percentage of those eligible, even looking at screeners submitted by the actors?  Netflix alone produced 50 new series last year.  With such a cacophony of various shows vying for attention, how do you pick out the five or six or even ten “best” performances by a supporting actor in a comedy? 

What is an Emmy “snub” anymore?  How can you get upset over the failure of Aya Cash to be nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy for You’re the Worst, or likewise Kristen Bell for The Good Place?  And those are just some examples I know about—maybe there is a show streaming on Hulu, or on some small cable channel that I’ve never heard of, that has the best actress in a comedy but the show got no buzz so I (and almost no one else) even knows about it.

And don’t even get me started on people from Saturday Night Live winning Emmys as supporting “actors” when all they do is perform in sketches.  That’s not acting, that’s doing comedy.  It may be funny (usually it’s not), but it isn’t creating a three-dimensional character from a script.

At the Westminster Dog Show you have Labradors competing against poodles competing against sheepdogs, but at least they all have four legs and bark.  The current Emmys are like a literal Miss Universe pageant where you are evaluating the attractiveness of humans, Venusians, and Alpha Centaurans.  It almost makes me want to go back to the good old days when only broadcast network shows competed for Emmys and shows on cable had to be content with the Cable ACE Awards. 

The Emmys have always had a plethora of difficulties.  Unlike the Oscars and the Tonys, shows continue on for years and actors can get “automatic” re-nominations for the same role long after they’ve started phoning it in.  The development of hour-long comedies such as Northern Exposure and Ally McBeal blurred the distinction between comedy and drama, something pushed to extremes with “dramedies” like Gilmore Girls.  The ability of premium cable shows to do grittier material with no content controls on nudity and profanity put network shows at a disadvantage.  And now the glut of shows produced by streaming services threatens to overrun the entire industry.

Can the Emmys be fixed?  I don’t see how.  They’ll continue on, because the entertainment industry loves giving out awards.  But their relevance will fade until the show itself becomes a Netflix special.

Who Will Miss the Hall of Famers?

There’s an old expression, “Don’t shoot the messenger.”  Usually it is good advice.  But sometimes the messenger is responsible for creating the impulse to shoot in the first place.

There is a legitimate message to be disseminated about ex-football players and their post-career health and financial problems.  Many players played in the NFL for only one or two seasons, incurred minor to serious injuries, and then had to struggle with finding work in occupations that didn’t pay as well as “pro football player.”  The NFL teaches incoming rookies about financial prudence, but it’s hard to be prudent when you go from an unpaid college player to a pro making 6 or 7 figures a year and then after only one or two seasons you have to enter the mundane workforce.  Few of them can leverage a short and mediocre football career into a seat in the analyst’s booth or secure a high-paying gig as an assistant coach in the NFL or in college.

That said, the demand issued by certain football Hall of Famers that they be provided with health insurance coverage and paid a salary or else they will boycott future HoF induction ceremonies creates the impulse to start firing away with both barrels. 

Those making the demands, led by Eric Dickerson and including superstars such as Joe Nameth and Lawrence Taylor, sent a letter to Roger Goodell contending that they are suffering from health issues related to their playing time, and financial problems, and that the cost to the NFL of providing health care for all living Hall of Famers would be around a mere $4 million per year (if the cost isn't that much, why don't they buy it for themselves?).  I don’t know if they provided an estimate for the cost of the “salaries.”

These players are in the Football Hall of Fame, meaning they are the best of the best; these are elite players who had long careers in the NFL and, at some point, signed lucrative contracts after their rookie deals had expired.  These players certainly earned more money than those rank and file players who, well, AREN’T in the Hall of Fame.  Yet they contend that they, and not the rank and file players, need financial support and health care after they retire.

Okay, maybe there are a good number of Hall of Famers who played the bulk of their careers before television money made the NFL what it is today, basically a license to print money.  In baseball, it is always mind-boggling to go back to when the Dodgers refused to negotiate with Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale simply because they had an agent (and they demanded $100,000), or when the Pirates told the league’s top home run hitter Ralph Kiner that he was getting a pay cut and that if he didn’t report to camp they’d lose just as many games without him as they had won with him.  Many of these older Hall of Famers may be in financial distress because they played when even great players were exploited by the owners and weren’t paid what they were worth.

But still these are, by definition, the most successful football players of all time.  If anyone should have been able to save their money and buy some post-career health insurance, even for people with pre-existing conditions such as former football players, it should have been these people.  These are also the players who could leverage their former celebrity and make money by doing endorsements, making public appearances, and signing autographs.  But instead of doing any of those not-very-taxing jobs, they want the NFL to cut them a check, which would basically an appearance fee for them showing up at the HoF induction ceremony each year.

You could make the argument that what the Hall of Famers are demanding is the tip of the camel’s nose in the tent, that once they get these benefits they can start lobbying to make them universal.  But it’s not the right messenger for this particular message.  Don’t start with the players who shouldn’t need help, start with the ones who do. 

The NFL is immensely wealthy, and legalized sports betting is only going to make them wealthier.  Providing post-career health care and financial support for those players not lucky enough to play for a decade and who didn’t earn huge paychecks would cost million, but the NFL is making billions, and it is making that money on the backs of the rank and file players.  Eric Dickinson was a great player, but he had no-name linesmen blocking for him and unknown linebackers chasing him, and his success is in part due to those other players.

In any context, providing support for former players makes sense.  In the context of ailments like CTE, not to mention the lesser physical traumas suffered by players when 280-pound linemen fall on them, the moral obligation becomes even greater.  Throw in the fact that contracts in the NFL (save for elite quarterbacks) are not guaranteed and that players can be (and are) cut at any time, and the necessity for the NFL to take care of its own is overwhelming.

As for the Hall of Famers?  Let ‘em walk.  Terrell Owens skipped his own induction ceremony, and no one really minded.  Go ahead and let Joe Nameth clear up one weekend on his calendar.  Maybe he can use the time to make some money at an autograph show.

Urban Meyer is who he is

There is a story I recall (I’m not sure it happened; memory’s funny that way) that in 2006 Nick Saban repeatedly denied that he was going to quit as head coach of the Miami Dolphins to take the head coaching job at Alabama.  Then, he did quit and took the job at Alabama.  When he was asked why he lied, he said, “I didn’t lie; I said something that, in retrospect, turned out to be inaccurate.”

Urban Meyer (and the panel that investigated the situation) is exhibiting the same ability at semantics regarding his 3-game suspension at Ohio State.  He released a statement concerning his suspension over his handling of an assistant coach’s domestic abuse allegations, and in it he says that he didn’t lie at media day.  Indeed, the report says he didn’t “deliberately lie” but that he did make false statements.  Lie, false statement, potato, po-tah-to.  The report states that Meyer said things at the media day that were “plainly not accurate,” and Meyer cited this as proof he didn’t “lie.”  Meyer also claimed to have ongoing memory issues, which I would think would be a liability for a head football coach making millions of dollars for leading one f the highest-profile programs in America.

I guess my biggest take away is this—why would anyone expect Urban Meyer to care about a battered woman, any battered woman?  He’s a college football coach, all he cares about is winning football games.  Oh, I guess for a few weeks each year after the season ends he checks in and makes sure that his wife and kids are still alive, but the rest of the year it’s football.  When he was coaching at Bowling Green in 2001 I’m sure his first thought upon hearing about the World Trade Center attack was, “I hope this won’t distract the team . . . .”

There is an old saying, “Never try and teach a pig to sing; you’ll frustrate yourself and annoy the pig.”  Trying to teach Urban Meyer to tell the truth, care about other people, and not hire people who beat their wives is trying to teach a pig to sing.  The bottom line he’ll do whatever he has to (within the parameters of what he perceives to be “the rules”) to win as many football games as possible.

Monomania is often the key to success for some people.  I knew Tiger Woods was done as a dominant force in golf when I heard him say that before his little accident, if he had a choice between hitting a bucket of balls or having dinner with his kids he’d hit the balls, but now he’d stop and have dinner with his kids.  Hitting those extra balls was one thing that gave him an edge over those less devoted parents who went home to read to their kids before tucking them in.  You know, the losers.

Urban Meyer wants to win; so does Nick Saban, Bill Belichick, and for that matter Hue Jackson of the Browns (he’s just not as good as them).  I am not saying Meyer should be absolved of responsibility for not taking the situation of his assistant coach’s wife more seriously; I am saying that people should not be shocked that he doesn’t and shouldn’t expect him to behave differently.  If Urban Meyer ever made looking into domestic abuse allegations regarding his staff a priority, Ohio State would fall out of the Top 25 on the NCAA rankings.

So stop being outraged about Urban Meyer’s three game suspension and his lack of contrition over the events that occurred.  Even if he was forced to go through some sort of “sensitivity training” he’d come out the other end as the same man he was went he went in, namely a highly successful football coach whose main priority is to win games this year and recruit excellent players for next year.  Nothing else will ever matter to him, not global warming, not the plight of indigenous peoples in Southeast Asia, not the prevalence of domestic abuse in America. 

That pig will never belt out a chorus of American Pie no matter how much you try to teach it.

They Give Oscars for this Stuff?

I hate to pile on; in these blog posts I like to take iconoclastic positions that defy the Convention Wisdom (tm John Kenneth Galbraith).  But sometimes something happens that is so stupid, so idiotic, so completely meshugenah that I can’t help myself.

The Academy of Motion picture Arts & Sciences has announced that in the future there will be a category called "Best Popular Film."

God help us.

Here is the problem they are trying to address: several years ago (2008) a couple of really popular films that had some artistic merit, The Dark Knight and Wall-E, failed to get a best picture nomination.  Ratings for the Oscar ceremony were sagging, and the theory was that there was a direct link between TV ratings for the Oscar broadcast and the popularity of the nominees.  The academy then increased the number of nominees to a maximum of ten, expecting the additional five nominees to be what the press would call “popcorn movies.”

Alas, the Oscar voters, in their infinite wisdom, responded by nominating even more artsy-fartsy art house movies.  Don’t get me wrong, I love the Coen Brothers, but A Serious Man (2009) getting a Best picture nomination is just silly. 

Things didn’t improve, and big budget films of reasonably high quality kept missing a Best Picture nomination while artsy stuff like Moonlight and The Shape of Water kept winning.  So, if you can’t make the Academy voters nominate an action film for Best Picture, you create a new category that will force them to.

I recall reading somewhere that once J.D. Power and Associates did a survey expecting a certain make of car to win, and when it didn’t it created a category like “Best new American 4-door SUV with 8 cup holders” that was so narrowly defined that the car they wanted to honor was the only entrant.

Why is this a stupid idea?  First of all, there already is an award for Best Popular Film: it’s called M-O-N-E-Y.  I was amused when, in 2009, people predicted Avatar (a rare money-maker that did get a Best Picture nomination) would win Best Picture over The Hurt Locker because it made more money.  I predicted The Hurt Locker would win BECAUSE it made less money.  Except for Titanic (which is an outlier of epic dimensions), the biggest money-making film of the year rarely wins Best Picture.  It’s like the attitude in Hollywood is, “You made all that money, AND you want awards too?”

Secondly, what is a “popular” film?  Do you base it on total domestic gross?  Then what about films released late in the year that have only a few weeks before the nominations close?  Do you HAVE to nominate the five biggest blockbusters even if one is an Adam Sandler animated film that made $300 million despite being drek?  Does the artistic merit of the film still matter, or are we only comparing box office?  Is there a threshold below which films aren’t considered “popular”?  $100 million box office used to be the sign of a hit; Solo made that its opening weekend and was considered a bust.

Thirdly, what is the aesthetic criterion for judging “Best Popular Picture”?  Does the Oscar automatically go to the biggest money-maker?  If not, isn’t that subverting the point of the category?  Generally speaking, most of a year’s top box office champs are sequels, especially for children’s movies (Star Wars, Marvel, Hotel Transylvania 3, etc.).  What happens if a money-making sequel to a good film is not as good; does it still get consideration just because it made money?

Won’t this hurt the chances of a well-made blockbuster wining Best picture if it is considered a shoo-in for “Best Popular Film”?  Isn’t this creating a “ghetto” for money-making films that will mean they won’t be considered seriously in the “real” Oscar categories, including Best Actor or Actress as well as Best picture?

It’s times like this I recall the words of H.L. Mencken, who once said that “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”  If you think lower ratings of the Oscar telecast is a problem which is understandably ABC's position, and you think obscure (“unpopular”) films being nominated and winning Best Picture is a contributing factor, then come up with a more subtle way of fiddling with the voting then just giving “popular” films their own category. 

You people in the Academy are supposed to be creative; come up with something more imaginative!

The Doctor Is a Woman

We are about to enter a new era, boys and girls:  we can watch movies on our phones, we can watch Ant Man and The Wasp without having seen any prior Marvel movie (other than Ant Man) except for the last two minutes, and The Doctor doesn’t have a penis.  Oh what an age we live in.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that the new Doctor Who debuting this Fall will have actress Jodie Whittaker portraying the venerable Gallifreyan.  A lot of people are making a big deal about this, but I’m sort of meh.

Don’t get me wrong, it clearly is a breakthrough in gender equality casting.  I think the only argument for making The Doctor a man for the past 55 years is that The Doctor frequently fin ds himself in situations where he has to take command and bark orders, and until recently a woman doing that would have had to carry some extra baggage.  It’s the age-old conundrum for women; men are commanding, but women are shrill.  However, we are well past the Margaret Thatcher era, and a woman won the popular election for President in the United States in 2016.  So yay us, we may now accept a woman as a leader.

The reason I am loath to treat a female Doctor with wild abandon is that I always considered The Doctor a rather asexual character to begin with.  Given that the show was originally conceived as a children’s educational program, he’d almost have to be.  During the entire run of the “Classic” Doctor Who series, there was never any discussion, speculation, or recognition of The Doctor’s love life.  He traveled with mini-skirted Jo Grant with nary a leer.  Sarah Jane Smith was nothing more than a good buddy.  Peter Davison’s Doctor traveled with an attractive Australian stewardess and a teenaged girl without any speculation about hanky-panky.  Colin Baker showed no interest in Peri’s, um, attributes, and Sylvester McCoy was nothing but avuncular with Ace.

This changed in the revived series, when Rose Tyler, an attractive London teenager, joined the Doctor and clearly had a thing for older men (much older, since he was over 900 years old at that point).  The Doctor physically changing into David Tenant only increased the attraction, and eventually it became mutual (there was also the episode where The Doctor became trapped in France with Madame Du Pompadour and the first thing she did was offer to show him her bedroom).  The Doctor’s next companion, Martha Jones, was even more overt in her finding The Doctor to be physically appealing, but he was rebounding from Rose and never reciprocated (personal aside: what an idiot!).  Amy Pond indicated several times that she thought the eleventh Doctor was sexy, and at her wedding she enthusiastically told The Doctor that he could “absolutely, definitely kiss the bride,” but he demurred. 

The only time the Doctor did seem to have some interest in someone of the opposite sex was when Peter Capaldi’s Doctor spent one night with River Song, but they’d been previously married and it was on a planet where the nights lasted twenty-four years, so presumably they found some way to pass the time.

So, to sum up, over the course of 55 years the Doctor has travelled with a number of extremely attractive young women, and until recently there was never any hint that he had much of a libido (to quote the lyric of the song One Night in Bangkok, “I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine”).  Since the character was never defined by his masculinity, the gender switch shouldn’t engender (sorry) much of a change.

The switch is obviously partly motivated by the successful transition (sorry again) of The Master to Missy.  It’s all about the casting; personally, I thought John Simm made a HORRIBLE Master, so anything was bound to be an improvement.   Michelle Gomez was able to embody the qualities of the old Master, a sort of restrained but cheerful sociopathy, that Simm took over the top and then some.  Part of what I disliked about Simm’s portrayal was that his Master had a sexy trophy wife, something no previous incarnation of The Master ever gave a second thought to.  The Master didn’t care about sex; he just wanted to rule the universe.  What’s sex compared to that?

If new Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall is smart, then the scripts for the next season of Doctor Who should treat the new Doctor exactly as the old one was treated. That’s why the show has lasted since the early 60’s; The Doctor, however different each incarnation is, is essentially fungible.  Their MOs may vary somewhat, their senses of humor get tweaked, their physical skills range from klutzy to expert at Venusian aikido, but in the end the Doctor is The Doctor.

Gender doesn’t enter into the Doctor’s persona, nor should it; unless the show wants to get into the nitty gritty of where little Time Lords and Ladies come from, and frankly that is TMI.

Retro Review: Warehouse 13

Retro-review: Warehouse 13

One of the benefits of the all-on-demand all-the-time access to media is that you can revisit beloved shows from your childhood, with the possibility that you’ll realize that your 10-year-old self had lousy taste in television.  Or you can revisit recently departed shows you sort of liked and try and figure out why you only liked them as opposed to loving them.

I recently finished binge-watching the recently departed (2009-2014) fantasy series Warehouse 13.  I liked the series well enough to remain a loyal viewer through its run, but it never was the appointment TV destination I thought it might be.  Re-watching all 64 episodes over a couple of months provides some perspective.  The show was about a team of agents that sought out and captured “artifacts” or common items (usually used by famous people) that gained supernatural powers through the emotions of people who used them.  So the bell used by Ivan Pavlov would make dogs come running (and make the user drool a lot), Lizzie Borden’s compact would force anyone using it to murder someone they loved, and Marilyn Monroe’s hairbrush would turn any woman’s hair blonde.  Warehouse 1 had been created by Alexander the Great, Egypt had hosted Warehouse 2, and subsequent Warehouses were hosted by the dominant world power and eventually America claimed Warehouse 13, which was set in the South Dakota town of Univille.

The commentary track on the pilot episode provided a key insight on a fact that perhaps shaded my perception of the show: one of the main draws was the credit line that the show was co-created by Jane Espenson, the brilliant writer of such Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel episodes as Band Candy, Guise Will be Guise and (my personal favorite Buffy episode) Earshot.  She also took her distinctive comedic touch to other non-Joss Whedon TV series such as The Gilmore Girls and Once Upon a Time.  But she was never mentioned once in the commentary, and I suddenly realized that she seems to have had no creative input into the show during its production, where Jack Kenny was the showrunner.  That certainly explains why the show never matched my expectations in the humor department.

Let me begin with the shows problems, which can start with the casting of the two leads.  The duo of Secret Service Agents tasked with “snagging, bagging, and tagging” mystical artifacts were played by Eddie McClintock and Joanne Kelly, two physically attractive actors who had proven to be more or less competent in other roles.  The main problem here is that they have no chemistry what so ever.  It’s like they are the anti-Mulder and Scully.  The show realized this early and decided to steer into the skid, so to speak, making a plot point of the fact that they had no chemistry.  In one episode an artifact affects them so they will pass out and lose their memories, so they take off their clothes and get into bed together because they knew that when they woke up, they would be certain it was impossible that they slept together so they would seek an alternate explanation.  Spoiler Alert: this entire plot line is abandoned in the final 6 episodes and at the end of the series they realize they love each other.

McClintock and Kelly were both problematic in their roles.  McClintock played Pete Latimer, an ex-alcoholic ex-Marine who worked for the Secret Service, but McClintock’s broad comic skills made him seem like an undisciplined, semi-literate, overgrown child.  Kelly, as Pete’s partner Myka Bering, is a stunningly gorgeous actress who seems embarrassed by her looks and awkwardly tried to hide her light under a bushel.  I swear that during season 4 she told the producers of Warehouse 13, “You know what, I’m just going to come in an hour later, so don’t worry about my hair or make-up, and I’ll just wear an oversized t-shirt for my costume.”

As I said, the plot of the show was that everyday objects gained the ability to affect people’s behavior in ways related to their origins.  Sometimes this was overly-literal, like the mirror used by Alice Liddel (the model for Alice in Wonderland) would suck people into an alternate dimension; sometimes the effect was rather random, like Harriet Tubman’s thimble giving people the ability to assume the appearance of other people (huh?).  Towards the end of the show’s run the artifacts became deus ex machinas, doing whatever was convenient to resolve the plot.

What was good about Warehouse 13?  Let me start with two words: Allison Scagliotti.  She joined the show early in its first season and quickly became the emotional fulcrum for the remainder of the series.  Also, unlike the principal pair of actors on the show, she had great platonic chemistry with her partner, played by Aaron Ashmore (they made the relationship platonic by establishing that Ashmore’s character was gay early on).  I stuck with the dismal show Stitchers primarily because of Scagliotti (and her co-star, Salli Richardson-Whitfield from Eureka).

Saul Rubinek did great work on Warehouse 13 as the curmudgeonly Artie, boss to everyone but a father figure to Scagliotti’s character.  The show did display a lot of imagination in its plotting, and did an excellent job of working out intricate seasonal arcs that were resolved reasonably well.  The show got some good guest performances from the likes of Anthony Stewart Head, Roger Rees, and especially Jamie Murray as the female H.G. Wells (she had the ideas, her brother wrote the books).  The show generally had good special effects given the small budget they had to work with.

Warehouse 13 is a minor entry in the history of science fiction on television, pleasantly diverting but mostly just empty calories.  I don’t mean to sound too disapproving; it is difficult to do mediocre science fiction on TV and Warehouse 13 was far better than mediocre.  But I can’t help wonder what the show might have become had creator Jane Espenson stayed on as the showrunner.  Warehouse 13 is another example of the importance of casting in the creative process of television production; Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, conceded that David Duchovney and Gillian Anderson’s chemistry was a gift he couldn’t have manufactured. When it came to chemistry, Warehouse 13 was not visited by Santa Clause.

Let's shift again

In one of the best scenes in the movie Moneyball, a crusty old scout tells A’s GM Billy Beane, “You can’t build a baseball team with a computer.”  Beane thinks for a moment and then replies, “Adapt or die.”

A lot of GM’s and other baseball people have adapted to Beane’s use of analytics, mostly because you can’t argue with a team having a microscopic payroll winning division titles.  But the anti-analytics people have dug their heels in again, refusing to adapt to one of the more recent uses of Big Data.  They refuse to adapt, so they want the use of defensive shifts to die.

I've talked about this before, but there continues to be a push for eliminating defensive shifts in baseball. The logic goes that fans like offense, defensive shifts reduce offense, therefore they should be eliminated.  Of course, the managers advocating for this usually are those who rely on left handed power hitters for offense, and they are the ones most disadvantaged by the shift.  Hey, I’m losing, so the rules that have stood for 150 years must be changed!

Players have always been free to position themselves where ever they want on the diamond; only the pitcher and catcher are restricted to designated spots.  The defensive shift started back in 1948 as a way of negating the impact of Ted Williams, possibly the greatest hitter of all time (if he hadn’t lost 5 seasons to military service it wouldn’t be debatable).  The shift started 70 years ago, so why is it being debated now?

Because now it’s not just the greatest hitter of all time that pulls everything, it is every left-handed hitter.  Of course, any logical, rational person would simply start hitting the ball in the other direction, and after a while teams would stop putting on a shift.  But these are baseball players and managers, so logic is a rare quality.  They don’t want to hit the ball the other way because a) it’s kinda hard, and b) it isn’t manly.  So they try to beat the shift by hitting the ball “over” the shift for a home run.  Yet, even though they have accepted the shift and don’t take steps to combat it, they still maintain it is hurting offense, which is bad for baseball.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat myself—the shift isn’t hurting offense, failing to adapt to the shift is hurting offense.

Baseball is a little schizophrenic at the present time.  People in the Commissioner’s Office will likely tell you that the two biggest problems in baseball are a) games take too long, and b) there isn’t enough offense.  If there was more offense, games would take longer, so the whole thing is a catch-22.  But anti-shift people are betting that the desire to increase offense will get a perfectly reasonable adjustment based on data banned simply because it is bad for offense.

The fact that defensive shifts diminish offense (something the stats aren’t exactly clear on, but let’s not quibble) is not, by itself, a reason to ban the shift.  Lots of things diminish offense: fielding gloves, the slider, 105 MPH fastballs, declaring a batter out when he gets three strikes.  MLB did fiddle with the offense/defense equilibrium in the late 1960’s when ERAs plummeted, Carl Yazstremski won a batting title hitting .301, and 21% of the games played ended in shutouts.  But MLB didn’t outlaw wholesale defensive strategies, they just tweaked the strike zone and lowered the mound by 5 inches.

If baseball has a problem, it is the mentality that calls for the elimination of defensive shifts; that is the mindset behind all of the “all or nothing” swings batters take even when they have two strikes.  The philosophy of modern baseball was exemplified by the 2018 all-star game, in which 13 of the 14 runs were scored via a record setting 10 home runs.  An increasing percentage of at bats are resolved via “three true outcomes,” namely strikeouts, walks, and home runs. 

To quote another great baseball movie, in Bull Durham catcher Crash Davis told his pitcher, “Strikeouts are boring.  Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls, it’s more democratic.”  Walks are also not terribly interesting, and home runs are only interesting for about five seconds.  What baseball needs is more offense, meaning singles and doubles, long multi-hit rallies leading to crooked numbers on the scoreboard, not more guys taking home run trots.  Other than moving the fences back to match the dimensions of center field in the legendary Polo Grounds (which was nearly 500 feet away from home after 1963) I’m not sure how you fight all the modern swingers who upper cut everything and who find no shame in striking out (Joe DiMaggio once struck out 14 times in a season; Aaron Judge once struck out 8 times in one day). 

Maybe if we made players do something humiliating after striking out, they’d concentrate more on making contact.  Thanks to defensive shifts all they have to do is make contact for a sure base hit, yet they prefer to swing for the fences.  People have been predicting the downfall of baseball for over 100 years, but a game that focuses entirely on strikeouts and homers might just be what is needed to kill the sport.

Oh no, they're rebooting Buffy

In this blog, I usually try and find a position that is new, and not just a drumbeat with others in the blogosphere.  Sometimes I try and take the exact opposite opinion than the “conventional wisdom” if for no other reason than to challenge the accepted operating paradigm.  But sometimes the accepted operating paradigm is so right that I can only add my assent.

Reboots suck.

Reboots are lazy, unimaginative ways that “creators” who are bereft of inspiration continue to cash a paycheck in Hollywood.  If the original was good, why make it again?  If the original sucked, why make it again?  With the lone exception of Battlestar Gallactica no reboot has ever even moderately improved upon the original (remember the reboot of The Prisoner?), and only a washed-up has-been would stoop to creating a reboot of their own creation.

What’s that?  Joss Whedon is rebooting Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a Black actress? Crap.

Okay, maybe a creative genius like Whedon has a few tricks up his sleeve that he never got to try out on the original Buffy.  Maybe he wants to do an episode with no dialogue for 30 minutes, or kill off the main character’s beloved mother for no reason.  No, wait, been there, killed that.   But still, he could have some good ideas.

But count me skeptical.  The main reason is this; for ANY show or movie too succeed, there have to be about 5,000 decisions that ALL have t be made correctly.  Plot structures, tone, casting, should this character be gay, should that character have blonde hair or dark hair, should the comic relief come from a single-parent family, and so on and so on and scooby dooby do on (as Sly and the Family Stone once said).  The odds of doing it once are astronomical.  Twice?  That’s like winning the lottery five times in a row.

Here are two specific things about the original Buffy that will be hard to replicate (I am going to assume that Joss will be too busy with his other projects  to have the writing input he had on the original Buffy (in one DVD extra writer Jane Espenson said the most frustrating thing about working for Joss Whedon is that fans come up to you and say, “I loved that episode you wrote!  My favorite line was . . . .” and they invariably name a line Whedon added).  One is the writing room, which Uproxx included as one of the 10 most influential writers; rooms in modern TV drama.

First, there was Joss Whedon, who was Emmy-nominated for the show’s episode Hush, which famously did without any of his trademark pithy dialogue for half its run time (he also got an Oscar nomination for Toy Story).  The show’s writers include Drew Goddard (Oscar winner for The Martian), David Fury (Emmy nominee for the Lost episode that revealed Locke had been a paraplegic), Jane Espenson (Warehouse 13, Gilmore Girls), and Marti Noxon (Dietland, UnREAL) to name just a few.  To think you can replicate an amalgamation of writing talent like that a second time is an act of unmitigated hubris.

Second, there was the cast.  Casting is a notoriously unscientific process; you have to find good actors, good actors who are right for their roles, and good actors who are right for their roles who have chemistry with the other actors.  That’s a tall order.  Buffy lucked out in spades (of course it wasn’t all luck, as luck is the residue of design).  Sarah Michelle Geller brought a gravitas to Buffy that few photogenic actresses her age could match.  After Cruel Intentions came out during her stint on Buffy, there was anticipation about her film career once she was off the show, but after marrying Freddie Prinze Jr. she seemed content to make bad Scooby-Doo movies and mediocre remakes of Japanese horror films.

The supporting cast included Allyson Hannigan, who went on to a successful post-Buffy career on How I Met Your Mother, and David Boreanaz who went from being a professional dog-walker pre-Buffy to now being a TV mainstay for the last 20 years thanks to Angel and Bones.  Even the cast who didn’t go on to major success were excellent, evidence to the proposition that it isn’t enough to succeed in Hollywood if you have looks, talent and luck.  Charisma Carpenter did the cliché move of posing for Playboy post-Angel, not that it helped her career (it never does); Emma Caufield was gorgeous and great at comedy, but that is such a rare combination there are no roles for actresses like that; and Nicholas Brendon had some personal problems and no other roles showcasing his great comedic timing (the episode he starred in, The Zeppo, is one of my favorites).

The idea that a writing team can be assembled that is as talented as the original one, and that the casting process hits as many home runs as the last one did, is not impossible but is inconceivable.  I wrote a post a while back about Whedon’s career blues since he got some unfortunate publicity, and I had thought to suggest he go back to TV where he had success but then I realized something: he never had that much TV success.  Buffy had abysmal ratings and only survived for 7 seasons because it was on weblets; Angel had unspectacular ratings and was killed off because The WB got mad at Whedon for taking Buffy to UPN; Firefly, despite the legendary post-run success, was cancelled after a few episodes, and Dollhouse’s best episode was the season one finale that was never broadcast. 

The word is that Whedon will have input on the writing of the new Buffy but the voice of the show will be that of showrunner Monica Owusu-Breen, who wrote for Alias, Lost and Agents of SHIELD.  Buffy was so much Joss Whedon’s baby that I can’t imagine anyone capturing what he gave to Buffy.  Heck, they had some incredible writers and producers working on Buffy after Whedon turned over showrunning duties in seasons 6 and 7 and the show was a disaster (compared to seasons 1-5). 

Rebooting Buffy the Vampire Slayer is yet another attempt of someone trying to improve perfection.  If Joss Whedon wasn’t on-board, I’d write it off, but then lots of critics wrote a show with a stupid title like Buffy the Vampire Slayer off 22 years ago and yet it survives.