Kiss's "Phantom" Menace

At this point I would like to return to the unpleasant subject of Kiss one last time before the ball drops in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday night, if only to drive the point home once and for all that honoring them at the Kennedy Center (now the Trump-Kennedy Center?) was a waste of everyone's time (including that of Cheap Trick), as well as respond to the inevitable complaint that Sylvester Stallone was the only actor to receive a Kennedy Center honor this year (unless you count Michael Crawford, who starred in How I Won the War, still a criminally underrated movie).  The guys in Kiss are also actors (which warrants another aside in parentheses . . . that was it!).  Kiss, it seems, made a movie together.  Some context:

The year 1978 was a bonanza year for the record business.  It was more profitable that year than at any year before in its history thanks to two soundtracks of pop movies produced by Robert Stigwood, the Rolling Stones' Some Girls, and a slew of Donna Summer releases.  What did Kiss do at this time? They put out those laughable solo albums and a greatest-hits compilation that offered a more contemporary remake of their song "Strutter" as a bonus track.  But it was not like Kiss had completely stayed out of the spotlight in 1978 as a single (allegedly) functioning unit, for it was in 1978 that Kiss made their first (and only) feature movie, Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. Anthony Zerbe starred as the phantom opposite the Mehron face paint of Kiss, with its wearers in supporting role.

The movie sort of went like this: A Dr. Doom-like mad inventor is out to . . . take over the world? Well, I'm not sure, but I know it was some sort of (Professor) nefarious or (Dr.) sinister scheme. He works from his lair under the Magic Mountain amusement park in California, the movie having been set there because Coney Island, in Kiss's hometown, was too disco-roller-skate/Studio 54/salsa at the time for Kiss's whitebread Middle American audience.

Anyway, the Fantastic Four are needed to stop the phantom mad inventor, but they're not available, as they find the plot ridiculous, so Kiss, who have their own superpowers embedded in talismans, battle the phantom and his Kiss doppelganger robots . . .

 
WHAT??????????????????

 

. . . to try to stop them from . . . doing whatever it is they do.

An example of this movie's dialogue:   When the Gene Simmons doppelganger robot wrecks havoc in the amusement park and the security officers think the real Simmons is the culprit, "or his twin!"  Peter Criss then says, "Gene's brother was an only child!"

That don't even make good nonsense.

Why did Kiss do this movie? Maybe they wanted to make their own equivalent of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night. Maybe Gene Simmons, a Dave Clark Five fan, wanted Kiss to make their own equivalent of Catch Us If You Can. Maybe they wanted to make their own equivalent of the Monkees' Head  but forgot to drop acid before filming. Maybe they were misled into thinking that Martin Scorsese would direct it. Maybe they decided to go the Elvis Presley route by making movies instead of touring. Maybe they wanted to one-up Alice Cooper, who had starred opposite a horribly aged Mae West in Sextette.  Maybe they saw that Hanna-Barbera was the production company and thought they'd be contributing songs to an animated movie like The Man Called Flintstone. Maybe they saw the 1970 Bee Gees movie Cucumber Castle and thought they could do something even cheesier. Maybe Simmons was jealous of the Kansas City R&B group Bloodstone, whose 1975 movie Train Ride to Hollywood featured Roberta Collins and Phyllis Davis, and Simmons hoped they could be in Kiss's movie so he could shag at least one of them.  Maybe doing a movie was in their contract with Casablanca Records.  Maybe Paul Stanley bet Casablanca boss Neil Bogart $100,000 that he couldn't get Kiss a movie deal and lost the bet.

I could make such conjectures all day (and would if I had more bandwidth), but even the Medved brothers couldn't explain all of the silliness in this movie, which was apparently made when Gene Simmons had an apparent illness that made him talk like a robot with an echo effect. The producers promised a movie that would be a cross between A Hard Day's Night and Star Wars, but anyone who's ever eaten an oatmeal raisin cookie will tell you that two things that are great on their own can be terrible when blended together (although vanilla cola is excellent). Unlike A Hard Day's Night and Star Wars, however, Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park was not theatrically released in the United States. It was instead aired on NBC on Saturday, October 28, 1978, for people who had nothing better to do on a Saturday night than watch something on TV other than "The Love Boat."  Alas, that includes me.  I was a week or so away from my thirteenth birthday, the folks were out and I was home by myself, and . . . well, it was something to do, wasn't it?

Airing it was the idea of NBC CEO Fred Silverman, who at roughly the same time also put a sitcom starring McLean Stevenson on the air in the wake of a CBS McLean Stevenson sitcom that failed (like Stevenson's NBC sitcom eventually did).  Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park was just sort of crap that ABC and CBS wouldn't even consider airing on their own stations - and this was at a time when ABC aired sports competitions in which the athletes were stars of then-current TV shows, and CBS aired the infamous "The Star Wars Holiday Special."  On NBC, at a time when its programming sucked beyond recognition, it was one of the highlights of  Silverman's leadership.  (Aside: In 1981, Fred Silverman was fired as the head of NBC and Grant Tinker succeeded him.  Tinker's first directive order, rumor has it, was this - no more Kiss movies. And his second directive order was - no more McLean Stevenson sitcoms. 😄)

Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (it makes sense that the title referred to Kiss in the singular person, since the group had become a singularly monolithic money-making entity) featured one "new" song - "Rip and Destroy," a call by the fake Kiss doppelgangers performing a Kiss concert at the amusement park to tear down the park for . . . well, I don't remember, probably to turn it into a nature preserve or something. Or maybe it was a call to stop another McLean Stevenson sitcom.  😄

 "Rip and Destroy" was only a "new" song in the sense that the lyrics were new. The melody was from their earlier song "Hotter Than Hell."

Needless to say, all four members of the original Kiss lineup would go on to disavow the movie, which serves as a cautionary flick for future bands to watch before agreeing to making a movie, and Paul Stanley can't even remember how the movie ended, even though he was integral to the final scene.  But - well, give them credit for trying something new, as they clearly hoped to make a rock and roll movie that harkened back to the days when rock and roll bands played themselves in broad comedic rock movies, like the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five, and even Herman's Hermits had done,  but the rise of documentaries and concert films in the aftermath of psychedelia and the advent of more "serious" and musicianly bands in the late sixties and the early seventies had pretty much rendered that sort of rock film antiquated.  (The best and most successful rock movie of 1978 was the Band's The Last Waltz, a Martin Scorsese documentary of their final concert in San Francisco in 1976.)  Besides, how could anyone take Kiss's movie seriously when it got outclassed by another pop caper comedy which premiered that same month (October 1978) in the theaters?  Starring Donny and Marie Osmond?

Goin' Coconuts was better received by the critics and by the public.  Not well-received - just better received.

Maybe they should have cast McLean Stevenson instead of Herbert Edelman. 😁

Note: When Paul Stanley sang the line "Break it down and seal your fate!" when Kiss performed "Rip and Destroy" in their movie, I thought he was singing, "You got to see yo' face!"  Ah, Dada. 😄

"This Is Us": This Is It

The series finale of the NBC family drama "This Is Us" airs tomorrow after six seasons of compelling stories with wild flashbacks and flash-forwards and all of the trials and tribulations of the incredibly complex Pearson family.  They're not a typical family - there aren't that many families whose two sons become a Hollywood actor and a U.S. Senator, least of all when one is transracially adopted, nor are there a lot of families where a transracially adopted son has two fraternal twin siblings and was born on the exact same date as they were - but they do have a lot of typical family issues that they have to deal with.  The time shifts in the storylines have always been used very effectively.  By the end of each episode, you're surprised to learn what has happened, but you have to wait awhile to learn how it happened. 

All through the run of "This Is Us," the heart of the series has been Mandy Moore, who played Rebecca Pearson, the family matriarch.

When Mandy Moore first arrived at the turn of the millennium, she was a teenage pop singer in the style of Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson.  This is not a lineage any chanteuse worth her salt would want to be associated with, and I groaned at the prospect of yet another teen-pop sensation.  But something funny happened - Mandy Moore turned out to be talented,  Not only is she a fine singer, she piqued my interest as an actress as the starry-eyed but conniving talent-show contestant Sally Kendoo in the 2006 satirical film American Dreamz.  Her performance as Rebecca in "This Is Us" has been nothing short of outstanding. As a mother and wife who gives up her (big surprise) singing career to raise her children, she ends up being the rock of her family, the constant in changing situations that become more and more frequent after her husband dies from inhaling to much smoke in a house fire that displaces the family. Moore played the role with the right mix of spunk, humor and pathos.  She was the biggest reason to watch the show.  (The very close second biggest reason to watch was Sterling K. Brown, who played adopted son Randall; he could give a great performance just by reciting the phone book . . . if you can find a phone book these days.  Thanks for nothing, Whitepages.com.)

I'll certainly be watching the series finale of "This Is Us" tomorrow, but I wonder what producer Dan Fogelman could possibly have left to surprise us with.  After the tearjerking penultimate episode last week, which showed Rebecca dreaming of the people in her life gone by aboard a luxurious passenger train as she fights to stay alive before she ultimately succumbs to her terminal Alzheimer's disease,  I can only wonder.

Ordinary Show

After the TV drama series Parenthood" ended its run on NBC in 2015, "This Is Us," about to end its own run on NBC after six satisfying seasons - pretty much became the new "Parenthood."  When "Ordinary Joe," an NBC drama series showing a character named Joe Kimbreau and how his life can take three different paths based on the choice he makes after he graduates from college, debuted in the fall of 2021, some critics said it might become the next This Is Us."

The series premiere episode shows Joe at his college graduation and how his decision on how to celebrate leads to different outcomes . He can go with his family to dinner, which leads him to become a police officer like his father before him, go with his girlfriend Jenny, which leads to Joe marrying her and becoming a nurse, or go out with Amy, a fellow graduating classmate, which leads to Joe marrying her instead and becoming a successful singer-songwriter.   named Amy, which results in the two marrying and Joe becoming a successful musician. The series showed how each of these parallel lives worked out.

I used past tense in the last sentence of that paragraph for a reason; "Ordinary Joe" has been canceled.  I think I know why.  There was little drama in this drama series.   I really couldn't get into it.  It just seemed so clichéd.  One thing I noticed about this series is that, no matter which path he chose, Joe still ran into the same people he hadn't met before graduating from college.  The first episode shows Joe encountering Bobby Diaz, a New York City congressman, in all three timelines.  How is it that Joe was fated to meet the same guy no matter which life path he chose?  I'm sure that's not how fate works.  Fate brought me to meet top models from the 1980s like Nancy Donahue, but if I hadn't started a blog devoted to beautiful women like Nancy, which is how all of those women discovered me, or if I did something on the Internet other than blogging - gaming, for example - would I have still met any of those women?  I don't think so.

Anyway, enough viewers apparently agreed with me, and "Ordinary Joe" is no more.  And I'm not going to miss it, because it was nothing special. Mike Hale of the New York Times said it best: "Once you've figured out the plots . . ., you see that they're all generic dramedy setups . . .  and the triple plotting doesn't give the actors time to build real characters." 

A TV series has to have a special, unique quality to make it a success, like "This Is Us."  As for that show's impending finale, I'll cover that later.

I hope NBC at least renews "American Auto."

Pandemonium In Detroit

 I finally found a current sitcom worth watching, and it's "American Auto."

"American Auto," which airs on NBC, is set in the fictional Payne Motors, a Detroit automaker having to deal with the foibles of the American car business at large with an impetuous new CEO from the pharmaceutical industry - Katherine Hastings, played by "Saturday Night Live" alumnus" Ana Gasteyer - who knows next to nothing about cars.  Payne has a motley crew of characters trying to steer the company in the right direction with hilarious consequences.  They include the chief commercial officer, Sadie (played by Harriet Dyer) who needs to figure out how to market dubious products, the insecure engineer designer Cyrus (played by Michael Benjamin Washington), the company's British chief lawyer Elliot (played by Humphrey Ker) and - this might be my favorite character - Wesley Payne (played by Jon Barinholtz), the family scion of Payne Motors whose only qualification for being at the company is having lived through birth.  Among other characters.

The storylines involve a botched car rollout, dealing with sudden expensive recalls, labor relations, and the general stupidity of car companies who think they know their customers.  As a car buff, I probably find it more laugh-out-loud funny than many people would, especially the occasional references to the, uh, special relationship between Detroit and any car-testing magazine not named Consumer Reports.  Series creator Justin Spitzer says that "American Auto" is not based on any one company, but Katherine Hastings is clearly based on a hybrid of General Motors CEO Mary Barra (the first female CEO of a major American automaker) and former Ford CEO Jim Hackett, who came to Ford from the furniture business (and got rid of Ford's sedans and hatchbacks and put the company on a course to make mostly SUVs and pickup trucks for North America, a goal achieved just in time for Russia to cause gas prices to skyrocket with its invasion of Ukraine).  Wesley Payne is clearly based on the more useless members of the Ford family, of which I'm sure there are many, as well as any other VIPs in Fortune 500 companies who are VIPs because their names are on the product.  I find "American Auto" delightfully amusing for all of these reasons - and because of Ana Gasteyer.

The season finale of "American Auto" airs this Tuesday on NBC  at 8:00 PM Eastern, and I hope its not the series finale.  You can watch all of the episodes of "American Auto" on Peacock.

"Elvis" - Fifty Years

Fifty years ago this month, Elvis Presley's comeback TV special aired on NBC in the United States, a year after the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour TV film did not. :-D (The anniversary date is December 3; sorry for talking about this so late, I was caught up in current events at the time.)

The TV special showed Elvis at the top of his game, with four distinct production numbers displaying his love for rock and roll, country and western, the blues, and gospel, with help from singer Darlene Love in the gospel number.  For many viewers, the most memorable segments were the performances with a backing group that included members of his old band, guitarist Scotty Moore and drummer D.J. Fontana, and his rousing closing number, "If I Can Dream," a song about hope for a brighter future after the tough year the U.S. had endured.

It could have been different.  Colonel Tom Parker, his manager, wanted Presley to appear in a tuxedo and sing Christmas carols.  Steve Binder, the show's producer, wanted nothing to do with that, and neither did Presley, who wanted to return to live performances after making so many horrible jukebox movies.  Binder, who began working with Elvis on the special in May 1968 at the NBC studios in Burbank, California, was able to win Elvis's trust in a most peculiar way; he got Presley and his buddy Joe Esposito to join him on a walk down Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, without bodyguards.  On a nice late-spring day, the trio walked down the street and blended in with the other pedestrians.  In other words, no one recognized Elvis.  Thereafter, Elvis only pretended to respect Parker's wishes but allowed Binder to gain the upper hand in the show's production.  

My favorite part of the special was the rock and roll performance in the round, where Elvis, clad in a black leather suit, played some old rock and roll favorites along with Moore, Fontana and two other musicians - all dressed in beet-colored Nehru jackets.  It was inspired by impromptu jamming during rehearsals. Though Binder would keep some of the standard production numbers in the special, the idea of having Elvis just play music for his and his audience's pleasure was too good too pass up.   

The special was a huge success, and it marked the beginning of the end of Elvis's movie career - and by the beginning of the 1970s, Presley was back on the stage performing for live audiences.  Unfortunately, Colonel Parker was able to resume control over his career, and Elvis turned into a parody of himself once again, leading to the drug dependency and health problems that in turn led to his fatal heart attack in 1977.  But the 1968 TV special remains solid evidence of how great Elvis was and how greater he could have been with the Colonel getting in the way.            

Smashed

I was thumbing through the latest issue of TV Guide and saw that the Nielsen ratings for the previous week showed that only one NBC show - the talent contest show "The Voice" - was in the top ten. "Smash," the new drama about staging a musical, was the highest-rated NBC scripted show, coming in at . . . number 38. Even the AMC scripted drama "The Walking Dead," a cable show, came in higher, at number 35.

This is embarrassing. NBC is probably promoting "Smash" as a series that lives up to its name, but saying that it's the most-watched scripted show on NBC is like being the hippest avant-garde electronic musician in Tulsa. Even original programming on basic cable is outperforming NBC's lineup. The only thing that's probably keeping the formerly proud Peacock Network from sinking any further is a bunch of viewers like a friend of mine, who loves "Parenthood" and doesn't have cable. Because if there's one thing rarer than someone who loves an NBC show these days, it's someone who doesn't have cable.

I've been fascinated of late by NBC's utter failure to turn things around in the past eight years. This season is especially jaw-dropping. One would think that an Americanized version of "Prime Suspect," the British police drama starring Helen Mirren that was a PBS favorite, would be a huge hit. On any other network, maybe, but not on NBC - no one noticed, no one watched and no one cared. It was canceled in short order. Even an offbeat sitcom like "Community," which has developed a loyal following, was unexpectedly placed on hiatus in the middle of the season and only returned last week - but its subsequent ratings numbers have been encouraging enough to possibly gain it a fourth season. Possibly. As a cult favorite and critics' darling, it's prospered, but as a vehicle to rebuild NBC's former dominance of Thursday nights . . . ehh, not so much.

As I've noted before, Comcast is now thoroughly at the helm of NBC for the 2012-13 season, with its choices of executives to run the NBC network and oversee its programming firmly entrenched. The cancellations of current NBC fare will be many, and the schedule that emerges in September should be so unrecognizable from the current one, it'll seem like NBC is a completely different network. Whether or not that new NBC will prove to be a ratings juggernaut and get the network out of the biggest hole it's been in since the Fred Silverman era is unknown. The geniuses who ran NBC in the late nineties and early two thousand zeroes made many of the disastrous business and programming decisions that led to the current slump, which began with the 2004-05 season. The network more or less ran on the fumes of "Friends" and "Frasier" for so long, with nothing to fill the voids created when both shows ended their runs in 2004. NBC didn't get into this mess overnight; it's not going to get out of it as quickly, either.

Happy "Parenthood" Endings

I was surprised to learn that the TV series "Parenthood" was ending its season three months early. Yet, I was eager to watch the season finale this past Tuesday. And, with so many continuing storylines loaded with drama in this season, I expected an even balance of happy and sad endings - especially given the storyline about Julia and Joel prepared to adopt the baby boy of Zoe, the former barista girl at Julia's law firm, only for Zoe to change her mind at the last nanosecond and keep her baby once it was born.

Not too surprisingly, it all turned out very differently. I haven't seen so many happy endings since "The Wonderful World of Disney."

As everyone already knew, Crosby and Jasmine finally got married. (A black gospel group performing a Bob Dylan song at this interracial wedding was a nice touch.) The only losers were the people they dumped for each other, although Jasmine's boyfriend, Doctor Joe, took it much better than Crosby's girlfriend, the cute cellist working at Crosby and Adam's recording studio. Speaking of which, a persistent recording company representative offered more than two million dollars to buy the studio, with Adam ready to sell but Crosby refusing to. Ultimately, Crosby relented, and the sale was tentatively made pending paperwork and forms to be processed . . . until Adam announced at the wedding reception that he changed his mind - also at the last nanosecond - and decided that working with his brother and having a beautiful wife and three children were more important than money.

Sarah broke up with her boyfriend, a teacher about twenty years her junior, when she realized she didn't want a baby and he did. But they reconciled at the wedding reception, and now they're engaged. They're going to worry about starting a family later, if it ever comes to that. While this was going on, Sarah's daughter Amber returned to work on Berkeley city council candidate Bob Little's campaign after almost having an affair with him, and Sarah's son Drew consummated his relationship with his girlfriend Amy. There might be a poison pill there in the form of an unintended pregnancy; ironically, Sarah could become a grandmother first, then still have a child of her own. That would strengthen the parallel between Sarah and her counterpart in the movie Parenthood, Helen Buckman (played by Dianne Wiest), who went through the same thing.

Incredible. Apart from the prospect of Drew becoming a teenage dad, there wasn't one hint of a sad or shocking ending or plot twist to keep us guessing until September. Certainly, Julia and Joel's unsuccessful adoption efforts had to be the one sad coda in this season finale. (Ironically, a similar storyline on ABC's "Modern Family" - gay couple Mitchell and Cam's unsuccessful efforts to adopt a son - is being played up not for drama but for laughs, as their efforts increasingly resemble those of Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy's football.)

In fact, the 2011-12 season finale of "Parenthood" ended with Julia and Joel bringing in a foster son older than their own biological daughter.

I don't like this - numerous storylines neatly tied up with little to build up anticipation for the next season. Some of the resolutions were more appropriate for a series finale rather than a season finale, which makes me wonder if "Parenthood" will be back in the fall. It is an NBC series, and that alone is enough reason to doubt its fate. A big shakeup at fourth-place NBC for the 2012-13 season has been promised by its Comcast overlords; it will be a miracle if even only a handful of the shows currently in NBC's lineup survive it.

What "Parenthood" Looks Like

It looked like Crosby and Jasmine got back together on "Parenthood" after sleeping with each other in last week's episode (guess that settles the question of the timidity of the producers in showing interracial romance on American television!). But since Jasmine has a boyfriend, Crosby declared that it was a mistake and chose to quietly carry on without her.

It looked like Adam was in hot water indefinitely after failing to fire a secretary who kissed him as if he were her own boyfriend and catching flak over it from Kristina, whom he shouldn't have shared the news of the incident with in the first place. Kristina, having just born a daughter, returned to work after feeling betrayed. But Kristina's anger subsided - after what happened with Max.

It looked like Max, Adam and Kristina's Asperger's-affected son, would get kidnapped or beaten up after he tried to go to a natural history museum in San Francisco on his own when his parents couldn't take him and ended up in Oakland. But he made it home to Berkeley safely, and he, his sisters and his parents all went to the museum together.

It looked like Julia wouldn't adopt the unborn baby of Zoe, the barista girl who works in Julia's law firm, after all, when it turned out that the father of the baby wouldn't sign the adoption release papers without financial compensation. Such a deal is actually illegal in California. But when Zoe's boyfriend (the father) kicked her out, she had nowhere to go . . . but to Julia, who took her in.

It looked like a cash-crunched Amber was moving back in with Sarah, until her aunt Kristina gave her a job at the political campaign she just started working for.

It looks like "Parenthood" is going on another December hiatus. There were no previews for the next episode following the one that aired last night. In an earlier episode, Julia admits to not being raised in any particular tradition, so it looks like the Bravermans don't celebrate Christmas.

So it looks like there will never be a Christmas episode of "Parenthood" even if the show lasts a decade. It's on NBC, so it looks like that won't happen.

The Biggest Loser

When the 2011-12 television season began, NBC, having been in last place seven years, realistically expected its ratings in the new season to suck.  Unfortunately, they haven't been doing that well.  Ratings for its overall lineup for the first four weeks of the season is down 9.3 percent compared to the first four weeks of the 2010-11 season.  While a couple of the network's new sitcoms, like comedian Whitney Cummings's new show, have generated some buzz, they haven't generated much in the way of ratings.  The lineup includes yet another sitcom starring Christina Applegate ("Up All Night"), who hasn't been able to make people forget her many years as Kelly Bundy.  And "The Playboy Club" generated a lot of buzz and controversy - for all the wrong reasons.  NBC's  bosses have made people aware of the once-proud Peacock Network, all right, but awareness doesn't determine relevance.  If it did, people would still be taking Nancy Pelosi seriously.  

Most of the shows that debuted on NBC this fall were developed just as Robert Greenblatt was brought in by new owner Comcast to take over.  Comcast sees this as a golden opportunity to take a struggling media commodity and turn it around, and Greenblatt will likely make radical changes to the lineup for the 2012-13 season to shake things up.  That could mean cancellations of over ninety percent of everything NBC airs right now. 

For now, "Parenthood" - the only show I watch on NBC anymore - is actually holding its own respectably, steadily gaining viewers.   So there's some good news.  But it's probably not wise for the few viewers NBC has to become too attached to much of the network's fare right now.  Even "The Biggest Loser," a once-reliable reality show, is slipping in the Nielsens.  When a company is as bad off as NBC is now, a major housecleaning is more than necessary, and no one is safe.      

Playboy Clubbed

NBC, having spent seven seasons at the bottom of the broadcast television food chain, has tried to shake things up with a controversial show that, true to form, has generated more controversy for NBC than ratings.  "The Playboy Club," a "Mad Men"-style ripoff set in the original Playboy men's club that opened in Chicago in the early sixties, has drawn fire from an unlikely (until you consider their arguments) alliance of feminists and cultural conservatives for its exploitation of women.  The show's cast members have defended it for celebrating those females who worked as "Playboy bunny" waitresses in these clubs as self-empowering pre-feminist types who found a way to command respect in a male-dominated society.

Good grief, even the Tea Party offers up more believable Orwellianisms than that. 

Anyway, Gloria Steinem, who once worked undercover as a Playboy bunny in the New York club, presented a much more persuasive argument against it than the anyone involved with the series have to able to produce in its favor. The series, Steinem says, "normalizes a passive dominant idea of gender. So it normalizes prostitution and male dominance."

Meanwhile, the politically arch-conservative Parents Television Council - no supporter of feminist theory - has panned "The Playboy Club," joining Steinem in advocating a boycott and calling  it "a blatant attempt to obliterate any remaining standards of broadcast decency." Meanwhile, KSL-TV, NBC's affiliate in Salt Lake City, has refused to air the series.  KSL-TV pretty much serves the entire state of Utah, whose largely Mormon population frowns on anything sexually explicit. 

Calls for a boycott may have helped the show's detractors before it was even aired.  A mere five million viewers tuned into watch "The Playboy Club" when it debuted on September 19, and more than 20 percent of that audience didn't bother to see it again the following week.  Astonishingly, NBC is keeping it on for now, thinking it just needs time to find an audience.

Dude, this isn't exactly "Hill Street Blues." 

It's fine by me if "The Playboy Club" stays on for awhile, because that will make sure that Gloria Steinem and Brent Bozell, normally ideological opponents, work side by side.  And that, in and of itself, is more entertaining.

Meanwhile, ABC has tried to capture the formula of "Mad Men" and put it in its own bottle, and the Disney network's effort seems to have paid off.  "Pan Am," a series about stewardesses for the now-defunct airline of that name and starring Christina Ricci, has gotten much better reviews and much better ratings in depicting women in the early 1960s in the way "The Playboy Club" insists it does -  it depicts them as finding empowerment in the limited career opportunities offered them.  But then wearing a WAC-style uniform and serving drinks to male customers on a plane is always classier than wearing a bunny uniform and serving drinks to male customers in a club - or TV show - that never gets off the ground.

Unfinished Braverman Tales

Last week's episode of "Parenthood" left a lot of unanswered questions involving the Braverman family that are not going to be resolved immediately. For all I know, they won't be resolved this season, and of course it's already April.

Here's where the writers left us last week: Sarah interests a theatrical director and producer (played by Richard Dreyfuss) that her father served with in Vietnam into producing her unfinished play, despite the fact that he hasn't produced or directed anything in years. Sarah's daughter Amber learns she won't be going to UC Berkeley or anywhere else for college. Julia finds out her chances of having the second child she and her husband Joel wanted are slim to none. The chances of Crosby and Jasmine reconciling after he slept with another woman, despite his eternal shame, are even worse, as she won't forgive him or reconsider renewing their now-broken engagement.

How many of these issues will be developed further in tomorrow's episode? Likely zero. Based on the previews at the end of last week's show, it seems that this week's show will be devoted entirely to Adam's daughter Haddie's relationship with her boyfriend Alex - which did not get any attention last week. This week, Alex and Haddie are off the the prom. Meanwhile, I'm left wondering if Amber will go to college, or if her mother's play will get off the ground. Or if Julia and Joel will consider adoption. As for Crosby and Jasmine, stick a fork into that affair; it's done. In fact, Crosby's life is so screwed up - the woman he slept with was his nephew Max's educational therapist, which Adam (Max's father) is still ticked off at Crosby for - I suspect that the trajectory of his future is that of a long decline.

And, as always, let's hope the ratings don't follow a similar path.

At least "Parenthood" isn't going up against the CBS Monday night juggernaut, at least not for now. Rumors of a move to Monday nights in March, obviously, proved to be greatly exaggerated.

TV Guide

I've been meaning to comment on the new 2010-11 American television season since as the schedules from the four major networks were announced last month, but I haven't had the opportunity. With everything going on in the world today, I'd keep putting off such commentary if I didn't give myself time to do it, so why don't I do it now?

Please be aware that I'm only focusing on highlights, not a comprehensive overview of the network schedules.

CBS is going retro in its upcoming schedule, ordering a new version of "Hawaii Five-O" But contrary to what you might think, "The Defenders," another new show, is not a remake of the E.G. Marshall-Robert Reed drama of the same name. Jim Belushi and Jerry O'Connell play two Las Vegas lawyers with a passion for life and the law. Also, Tom Selleck stars in the police drama "Blue Bloods." Although it's been thirty years since "Magnum P.I." first debuted, I wouldn't count Selleck out; he's a very underrated actor, maybe in part for his good looks and conservative politics. You might disagree with me, but I saw him in a TV movie about D-Day as Dwight D. Eisenhower, and I thought he was very good in it, especially in his approach to the role, so I know better.

CBS's new comedies include "Mike and Molly," a new series about two unattractive people developed by "Two and a Half Men" creator Chuck Lorre, which I consider to be a red flag. Lorre has done more than anyone else of late to damage the genre of situation comedy; "Two and a Half Men" is sexist, moronic, largely prurient, and thoroughly unlikable. I was elated to hear that Charlie Sheen was asking for more money, because I thought it might lead to the show's early demise - it had been renewed through May 2012 - but they gave Martin Sheen's less talented son what he wanted, and so we're subjected to this witless continuing story of a hedonistic jingle writer, his nerdy brother, and his ill-mannered dim-bulb nephew for at least two more years.

On the other hand, I'm neither surprised nor sorry that Jenna Elfman's "Accidentally On Purpose" was cancelled, though I regret that the Julia Louis-Dreyfus show "The New Adventures of Old Christine" is gone. The former "Seinfeld" star had a respectable run with her own show, picking up an Emmy along the way, and the show may not be defunct; ABC might pick it up.

As for NBC, whose ratings have been in the toilet for six years . . . well, let's see. "Chuck," one of those shows I keep meaning to see, has been renewed, and new shows include "The Event," about an average guy who stumbles on a government conspiracy, and the somewhat more promising "Love Bites," a romantic comedy-drama anthology. "Parenthood" is back (yay!) after two hours of the reality show "The Biggest Loser," but the biggest loser may be Amy Poehler, whose "Parks and Recreation" sitcom has been relegated to a mid-season placement just as it was starting to get funnier. "Trauma" and "Mercy," shows that attempted to fill the 10 PM ET block left by Jay Leno's return to "The Tonight Show," are done. So is "Heroes." Hopefully Ali Larter still has a brilliant future ahead of her.

ABC has a few interesting shows up its sleeve. Dana Delany of "China Beach" fame returns to the network as a medical examiner in "Body of Proof," and in "Mr. Sunshine," Matthew Perry stars as the self-involved manager of a second-rate San Diego sports arena who begins to re-evaluate his life when he turns forty. I assume Perry won't have to do a lot of acting.

His former co-star Courteney Cox returns with "Cougar Town," and that show will still be called that, apparently, despite the sexism in the title. "The Middle" stays on Wednesdays but moves to the 8 PM ET time slot and frees up space for "Better Together," a marriage comedy that stars "Reba" alumna JoAnna Garcia. Oh, and "Modern Family" is back too.

Not back are "Flash Forward" or "Happy Town." One other new series, "Detroit 1-8-7," about the Motor City police's homicide unit, is a series I give only a couple of weeks because I feel that the last thing people want to watch is a series about murder in a dead city. How much do you want to bet that WXYZ-TV, ABC's Detroit affiliate (yes, those are the actual call letters, and there's even a radio station in nearby Ann Arbor with the call letters WWWW) won't show it? (You must see murder and mayhem on their local newscast every night. :-O)

And Fox? "American Idol" and "The Simpsons" continue, likely until the end of time, and they have two or three new shows that will likely be forgotten in two months. If they can't find a replacement for Simon Cowell on "American Idol" who can't measure up to his standard of nastiness, then that show (like most of its winners) might be quickly forgotten as well, and that's when I'll know the two thousand zeroes are really over.

Right, I'll comment more on current events - the news you need to know, the songs you like to hear, yada yada yada - tomorrow.

Parents In the 'Hood

I don't know if this means that NBC is finally regaining its relevance, but its comedy-drama "Parenthood" is easily one of the best series of the 2009-10 season, and one that we can expect to stick around for awhile. Although it's co-produced by Ron Howard and is reported to be based on his 1989 movie of the same name, and although there's a slight similarity in some of the characters and ongoing story lines, the only thing "Parenthood" the TV series really has in common with Parenthood the film, apart from Ron Howard's association, is its title.

Instead of following the Buckmans of Kirkwood, Missouri, the extended family featured in the movie, "Parenthood" follows the Bravermans of Berkeley, California. The family is headed by patriarch Zeek Braverman (played by veteran actor Craig T. Nelson), a free spirit who has tried his hand at many careers and professions and distinguished himself at none of them, his wife Camille (played by the always wonderful Bonnie Bedelia) and their grown children, all of whom have their own immediate families.

The sons, Adam (Peter Krause) and Crosby (Dax Shepard) are as alike as night and day. Adam is a corporate professional who strives to keep his family happy but has to deal with his rebellious teenage daughter, and he and his wife Kristina (Monica Potter) find their lives becoming more complicated when their son is diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. "Parenthood" has already gotten plaudits for this step by bringing to light a condition not normally talked about or depicted in any way. Crosby, a recording engineer with a Peter Pan complex, suddenly has to grow up and be responsible when his former lover, a dancer named Jasmine, returns to Berkeley and informs him that their fling from five years earlier produced a son, whom he now races (gladly, it turns out) to catch up with and be a father to.

Oh yeah, Jasmine is black - she's played by Joy Bryant - and of course Crosby is white, and so NBC has brought to prime time a subplot involving a child who's both biracial and illegitimate. More reently, Crosby and Jasmine have renewed interest in each other and ended up in bed together, breaking another TV taboo - that of depicting interracial sex.

Zeek and Camille's daughters are no less interesting. Julia (Erika Christensen) is a successful lawyer and her husband Joel (Sam Jaeger) plays "househusband" by raising their precocious daughter. Sarah (played by the always wonderful Lauren Graham) can only dream of having her sister's success. A single mom, divorced from a man who pays no attention to their children (leaving their son withdrawn), Sarah has to move in with her parents and work at bartending jobs to keep her family going even as she deals with a daughter who has trouble with school as well as her bitter son. Sarah's economic plight is displayed best by her car - a Chevrolet Chevette, which she drives in the first couple of episodes. The Chevette, for the record, hasn't been produced since 1986; when I started watching the show, I thought it was set at an earlier time than the present. But, given that an old Chevette is all Sarah can afford, it seems appropriate that her car soon dies on her completely and she suddenly has to worry about how she's going to replace it.

NBC has already announced the renewal of "Parenthood" for a second season. That's good news, not only because it marks the return of Lauren Graham to series television, and this time on a real network. (A low-rated, emaciated, directionless, humiliated NBC is still preferable to a CW at the height of its broadcasting abilities.) It's good news because it deals with touchy subjects and personal issues- career choices, race, and, as noted, Asperger syndrome - and deals with them in an intelligent, touching way. "Parenthood" is able to explore these issues more deeply as an ongoing TV series than the movie could have, and the movie, released in 1989, only glossed over less controversial topics while only acknowledging more controversial subjects in passing. (In the movie, Tom Hulce plays an irresponsible dad with a biracial son, but his black girlfriend is never depicted.) There was an earlier attempt at making a TV series out of the movie in the early nineties, but that didn't go anywhere. Now co-producing a series anyone can relate to, because the issues dealt with are as diverse as this extended family, Ron Howard can count on this "Parenthood" being around in the long term, unlike Sarah's Chevette.

Late-Night Musical Chairs

The dust has settled, and everyone is ready to move forward in the interest of the general public.

No, I'm not talking about health care reform, I'm referring to the deal struck over at NBC. Jay Leno is moving back to "The Tonight Show" after the Winter Olympics are over. The once-proud Peacock Network gave Conan O'Brien and his staff severance pay totalling $45 million, $33 million of which is going to O'Brien.

There are no winners in this sorry affair. NBC first forced Leno into early retirement when his ratings began to slip, and he happily agreed to step aside. Then he used his capital to stay in violation of the agreement inked in 2004 when his ratings began to go back up, creating a sense of contentiousness not seen since Johnny Carson retired and Leno went up against David Letterman for the right to succeed him. Meanwhile, as noted before, O'Brien has been denied the chance to develop "The Tonight Show" in his own persona. As it evolved, a Conan O'Brien-hosted "Tonight Show" would have been different from the Leno version as the Leno version was different from the show in Carson's day.

Ironies abound here. Leno was forced to give up "The Tonight Show" in the interest of NBC's long-term planning for late night, and now his return to that program is a quick fix. The lack of long-term planning on NBC's part involving drama series in the 10 PM Eastern hour forces the network to quickly fill the time slot Leno has just vacated before they can think of planning for the long term. And the quick fixes Jeffrey Zucker was trying to keep NBC afloat in the ratings for prime time a decade ago have created long-term problems for NBC to address, now that the Leno experiment has failed even as NBC's prime time lineup features some of the least impressive shows of recent memory. Is "Parks and Recreation" really that funny?

Leno may have returned to late night in triumph like Napoleon returning from Elba, but Napoleon at least was able to convince enough French soldiers to stand by him at Waterloo. It remains to be seen whether Leno can win back fans who got bored with him during his ill-fated prime time show. As for O'Brien, whose similarly short-lived "Tonight Show" stint ends tonight with his last show, he'll be a free agent this September. And there at least two other networks (CBS isn't one of them, of course) who may be interested in him. Look for Fox, whose efforts to establish a late-night presence have been as unsuccessful as CBS's were during the Pat Sajak era, to come calling for Conan.

Follow The Money

A lot of stories involving money have been floating around the water cooler. Well, the water cooler in my mind, anyway.

First, the NBC late-night fiasco. Late word is that the 11:35 PM -12:35 AM Eastern time slot will not be halved to accommodate Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. Rather, "The Tonight Show" would be pushed back to 12:05 AM, with Jimmy Fallon at "Late Night" starting at 1:05. NBC had clearly hoped to maximize ratings - and, of course, profits - by re-arranging the late-night schedule to accommodate and retain all three comedians while appeasing affiliates with traditional prime time programming at 10 PM Eastern for lead-ins to local late night news. The network has had its plans thwarted by O'Brien, who has refused to go along with the idea, dismissing it as impugning the integrity of "The Tonight Show" and being unfair to Fallon by pushing his show so deep into the wee small hours of the morning. O'Brien laments that he has not been given enough time to build up an audience because of the network's troubles. But hey, it's all about the money these days, isn't it?

Meanwhile, in Washington, the Obama administration is considering taxes on commercial banks and investment banks that have received federal bailout money from the government - even from those that have paid back their loans - in an effort to recoup the government's infusion of cash at the beginning of the fiscal crisis and compensate for the money the banks lost in the recklessness that led to the events of 9/15. The bank taxes and fees proposed would target bonuses and executive pay and address incurred by the Troubled Assets Recovery Program. The banks don't like this, of course, but President Obama certainly believes it could pay down the deficit, restore fairness in the Wall Street-Main Street paradigm, and, not so coincidentally, improve his standing with voters on economic issues and avoid serious Democratic losses in the midterms.

The attempt to avoid a serious Democratic loss in Massachusetts, meanwhile, continues with leading Democrats sending e-mail after e-mail urging emergency contributions for Martha Coakley's campaign against Republican Scott Brown as she fights for her political life leading up to the special Senate election for Ted Kennedy's seat next Tuesday. I've gotten several such e-mails. Please, if I were interested in spending money on a woman I may not hear from again in a week, I'd go back to dating! :-O

Jay Xed

Late word from NBC is that Jay Leno's prime time talk show has been canceled, and it will air its last show next month. Its time slot will be temporarily filled by Winter Olympics coverage from Vancouver, which will likely result in lower ratings for that slot.

Perhaps they have have some dramas to fill the 10 PM Eastern time slot after the Vancouver Games are done, but NBC still has the aftermath of this failed late-night talk show experiment to sort out. With Leno out of prime time and O'Brien in worse shape by actually still being on the air, and with everyone having acknowledging that Leno should have been left on "The Tonight Show," how does NBC right itself without doing more short-term damage?

Simple - it can't. NBC's troubles with late-night talk began, interestingly enough, with an emphasis at short-term ratings and the expense of long-term thinking. They were in a rush to drop Jay Leno in 2004 when his ratings slipped against Letterman at CBS, but when his ratings improved as it came time for him to relinquish "The Tonight Show" to O'Brien, the network bent over backwards to keep Leno from moving to ABC. They still hoped to keep Conan O'Brien and somehow thought that late-night talk overkill would be the way out of last place in the overall ratings. The damage has been so great from this experiment that, if either comedian chose to leave NBC now, he would re-enter the job market with less heat than before. How is it that ABC is owned by Disney, yet NBC is acting like a Mickey Mouse operation?

Oh yeah, the bottom line. That was actually the best part of Leno's prime time show; it was actually making money for the network, despite its low ratings, because it was so cheap to produce and air. But its poor performance with Mr. Nielsen and company affected the local news reports of the affiliates that followed Jay Leno in numerous regional markets. I'm no media economist, but, if I'm not mistaken, that makes advertising time on NBC in the 10 PM Eastern slot less valuable. in fact, some affiliates had threatened to air the local news at 10 PM Eastern / 9 PM Central and then air Leno's show afterwards, which would have made selling advertising time really difficult for the network.

The idea now is to move Leno to 11:35 Eastern for a half-hour show, followed by O'Brien at 12:05 AM Eastern, with Jimmy Fallon remaining at "Late Night." This is supposedly to keep both Leno and O'Brien and avoid bruised egos, but does NBC do that when they're halving the running times of both the Leno and O'Brien shows? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the television equivalent of "troubled assets."

On the Tube

So what's on TV these days?

It's been awhile since I commented on television, and I thought I'd take a break from commentary on current events (pretty boring, huh? ;-)), partly because there hasn't been that much to talk about for so long. But a few new shows in the 2009-10 season and of a couple of veteran ones are worth noting. Or not.

First, CBS's "How I met Your Mother." I've always liked this show, particularly because its characters are so likable - even Neil Patrick Harris's Barney - and they've had several unorthodox ideas and plot twists. But none of their far-out storylines have reached the improbable idea of Barney and Robin (Cobie Smulders) getting together. Gee whizbangers, this is more fun than the time Hawkeye and Hot Lips shacked up in a two-part "M*A*S*H" episode.

We still don't know who becomes the "mother" - the lady love of Ted (Josh Radnor) yet, but who cares? I'm having too much fun watching how everything else plays out. And Cobie Smulders remains the most beautiful brunette on American television. (Not bad for a Canadian.)

The most beautiful blonde on American television, Julie Bowen, landed a plum role on "Modern Family," an ABC sitcom about an extended family comprised of three separate units. Bowen plays Claire, the mother in a traditional nuclear family with a homosexual brother in his own relationship and their father married to a Hispanic trophy wife with her own son. This is probably the best new sitcom to appear in four years, and the intricate plot lines tying the three situations together offer plenty of enjoyable moments. Ed O'Neill, as the patriarch, is funnier than playing Al Bundy on "Married . . . With Children" ever allowed him to be. The pseudo-documentary format modeled after "The Office" (more of which later) adds to "Modern Family"'s freshness.

"Community," on NBC, is another keeper, starring Joel McHale as a conceited lawyer who's learned that his bachelor's degree is illegitimate and has to go to community college, where he thinks he's superior to his fellow students. He finds himself in a study group full of eccentrics, including one character played by Chevy Chase. Chase, as an entrepreneurial type with crazy ideas, performs with understatement but remains as funny as ever. This is a big comeback for Chase, whose movie career has long since stalled - although I'll go to my grave insisting that Foul Play is one of the greatest screwball comedies of all time, or at least the seventies. He's ready to take a chance again.

Sadly, NBC can't do much better. Still in fourth place, the network once known for groundbreaking dramas has moved their veteran drama series to the 9 PM ET hour, where they have to compete with lighter fare in the same time slot. Jay Leno owns every weekday 10 PM ET slot, hampering NBC's ability to produce new drama shows and shore up old ones. Well, what old ones they still have - they lost "Medium" to CBS. Leno himself has proven himself unable to compete with the traditional ten o'clock programming on ABC or CBS. Fox, as always, continues to eschew the 10 PM ET time slot, preferring to let its affiliates air local newscasts in that slot.

Speaking of local news, NBC's affiliates, whose own local newscasts are between Leno and Conan O'Brien, are losing viewers even as O'Brien struggles in vain to go up against David Letterman, a man O'Brien reveres and chooses not to lampoon for his sex scandal blackmail issues. O'Brien has been unable to adapt his after-midnight style of smart-aleck humor to "The Tonight Show" the way Letterman did when he began doing late-night talk an hour earlier.

Who would have thought that Jimmy Fallon, the insufferable nimrod who took over for O'Brien at "Late Night" and has enjoyed good ratings, would be the one NBC late-night comedian smelling like a rose?

Meanwhile, "The Office" is beginning to stink. Yeah, I saw the one-hour episode of Jim and Pam's wedding, but the humor was so lame and in some cases rather sick - Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) hurting his scrotum on his car keys while dancing - I have a feeling that, if it hasn't jumped the shark, it's swimming close to it. The British sitcom of the same name that it was based on didn't run as long, as Ricky Gervais (who played the boss) and his castmates knew when to quit.

This is NBC at the end of the two thousand zeroes, folks. Devoid of any coherent programming plan, unable to pull out of fourth place after half a decade, it's in such dire straits it may qualify for a taxpayer-supported federal bailout. Well, that's one way to get a BBC-style national television network; heck, it already has the proper name (NBC stands for National Broadcasting Company). It's easily the weakest link in the NBC/Universal media empire, its sister cable networks MSNBC and CNBC probably drawing more viewers. But gee whiz, look at its great successes of the past - "Ed," Friends," Frasier." As of today, Julie Bowen, Courteney Cox (star of the new series "Cougar Town," a sitcom I don't get) and Kelsey Grammer, who respectively starred in those shows, have all gone to ABC and Patricia Arquette took her entire show to CBS with her.

One thing about Kelsey Grammer's new ABC series, "Hank." Grammer has said that he would reprise his most famous character, Dr. Frasier Crane, in a new sitcom if he thought it was good enough. He apparently thought a show like "Hank," about a humbled man returning to his hometown to take a dead-end job, wasn't good enough to bring Frasier back in - his character is, after all, named Hank - and neither do critics and viewers. It's only one midseason replacement away from cancellation, and Grammer's chances of pulling off the impossible - enjoying three hit sitcoms in a single career - seem to have evaporated. NBC is probably glad it did not at least get stuck with this one.

Conan the Comedian

Conan O'Brien became the fifth host of "The Tonight Show" on NBC Monday, and he hopes to put a more youthful, more hip spin on the program. I haven't seen him yet, but I hope to find the time.

The big issue is how O'Brien's only living predecessor is going to fare this fall. Jay Leno is preparing to do another talk show, an weeknightly show at 10 PM Eastern Time on NBC, given to him in part to keep Leno from jumping to another network (now that he's been getting better ratings than he got when Conan O'Brien was announced as the new "Tonight Show" host five years ago) and in part to fill the one-hour 10 PM ET time slot.

All of NBC's drama shows in that slot have failed, and its one reliable drama, "ER," finally sang its swan song after fifteen years this April. Their general programming isn't any better; all but one of the shows premiered on the so-called Peacock Network that premiered in September 2008 are gone.) NBC needs to cut costs, and talk shows are cheaper and easier to produce. NBC still hasn't climbed out of its ratings slump since going from first to worst in 2004.

Their best hope of making that time slot work with a new talk show for Leno is to give it a distinctive image that separates it from just being a prime-time version of "The Tonight Show," otherwise O'Brien will seem redundant. Because if Leno does what he's been doing for the past seventeen years, O'Brien might be the one jumping to another network.

And if Leno doesn't make it the second time around, NBC might want to go the way of Fox and surrender that time slot to one-hour newscasts from local affiliates.

Meanwhile, Jimmy Fallon is getting impressive ratings as the host of "Late Night." I couldn't believe it either.