The Chris Moeller Archives

The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #s 35-31

The Top 50 list continues. This portion of the countdown is sponsored by the 2009 Ford Focus Sedan. Ford. See where we are. Be a part of where we're going.

#50- "Just Shoot Me"
#49- "L.A. Law"
#48- "The Carol Burnett Show"
#47- "That 70s Show"
#46- "The Rockford Files"
#45- "The Big Bang Theory"
#44- "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour"
#43- "Night Court"
#42- "The Dick Van Dyke Show"
#41- "NYPD Blue"
#40- "Barney Miller"
#39- "Frank's Place"
#38- "The King of Queens"
#37- "The Phil Silvers Show"
#36- "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"


#35- "FRASIER" NBC 1993-2004
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"Frasier," Kelsey Grammer's star-turn on NBC in the years that followed "Cheers," won a record-breaking 37 Emmys during its 11 years on the air, and it did so by never playing down to its audience. The jokes on "Frasier" were smart and exercised with the skill of precision, a blend of high-brow and low-brow gags that would make British artists green with envy. Perhaps that's why officials working in the British TV industry voted it the greatest sitcom of all time. The appeal for me in "Frasier" was watching the evolution of two of the greatest characters ever to appear on television-- Grammer's title character and his younger brother, Niles, portrayed by David Hyde Pierce. The character of Frasier was born of a rib from Diane Chambers on "Cheers," first introduced as the snobby barmaid's psychiatrist and love interest, an elitist intellectual who wound up staying around the bar long enough to become a well-rounded character of endearment, a husband and father. That fully-formed entity then gave birth to Pierce's Niles on the spin-off "Frasier," and Niles was an even more snobbish and fastidious head-shrinker, what Pierce has described as "Frasier, if he had never gone to Boston."

Here are the two men together in one of the series' low-brow scenes.


#34- "GET A LIFE" FOX 1990-1992
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When the FOX television network was a little tiny baby, an imaginative late-night comic blessed it with a surreal and brilliant sitcom that nobody watched. Pulitzer Prize-winning TV critic Tom Shales called "Get a Life" "a television classic unlike any other." Creator and star Chris Elliott played Chris Peterson, a 30-year-old "yammering halfwit," as one character described him, who lived in his parents' basement and delivered newspapers by bicycle, the same job he'd had since he was a kid. Peterson was smirky, arrogant, and very dim, and he was one of the few characters on the show who even bothered to change out of his pajamas. The show hung on long enough to produce 35 episodes before cancellation with the Peterson character dying in 12 of the 35 episodes. With only a limited DVD release and its reruns absent from TV today, the show has most often been viewed recently at Moeller Television Festivals. A snippet of the show is essential at this point.


#33- "ST. ELSEWHERE" NBC 1982-1988
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You've got to hand it to Brandon Tartikoff. They don't make network television executives like him anymore. The head of NBC Programming for most of the 1980s kept this quality hospital drama on the air for six seasons despite the fact that it never finished higher than #49 for the year in the Nielsen Ratings. Unlike previous medical dramas on television, the doctors at fictional St. Eligius in Boston enjoyed few happy endings at the "dumping ground" hospital or in their personal lives. Many "St. Elsewhere" cast members went on to even greater fame, most notably Denzel Washington, Howie Mandel, Mark Harmon, Alfre Woodard, Helen Hunt, and Ed Begley, Jr., and behind-the-scenes, TV giants-to-be Joshua Brand, John Falsey, Tom Fontana, and Bruce Paltrow wrote "St. Elsewhere" episodes and/or produced. In the series' memorable finale, the show's happenings were revealed to have been a figment of the imagination of the autistic son of one of the principal characters, then over the closing credits, producers killed off the iconic mascot of the MTM Enterprises production company. Evidently all "meow-ed" out, "Mimsie the cat" flatlines in this clip.


#32- "EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND" CBS 1996-2005
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"Everybody Loves Raymond" was a comedy about discomfort- about awkward family situations, intrusive and manipulative parents and resentful children. In truth, it often wasn't very easy to watch. Ray's brother was a grouch. His parents were alternately coarse (in the case of his father) or viciously passive-aggressive (his mother). His wife was rather shrewish, and Ray himself was certainly the most petulant of them all. And despite the somewhat wholesome reputation that survives today, the show was really obsessed with sex. (Va-va-va-voom!) I've already described several other shows of brilliance in the countdown that feature generally unlikable characters-- "Just Shoot Me" or "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," to name two-- but what made "Raymond" seem even more appalling in its characterizations is that the suburban living room setting could have otherwise been "Ozzie and Harriet." Twenty- and thirty-something wise guys, like me and my friends, groove to the beat of a David Spade or "Always Sunny's" Charlie Kelly, but Ray and Debra Barone have kids. They're supposed to be better than that. Unlike these other hopeless misfits, they need to be about more than just trying to manipulate a family member into doing what you want him or her to do in the next five minutes. How can I trick him into taking out the trash? How can I get her to leave me alone while I watch the game? They're in the car pool, for Christ's sake! This is why "Raymond" just might be the most anti-social and subversive comedy of them all.


#31- "HILL STREET BLUES" NBC 1981-1987
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Mix "Barney Miller" with "St. Elsewhere" and you have "Hill Street Blues." "Hill Street" followed the former, and preceded the latter, but it's the one of the three that became the benchmark. The crime series featured several dramatic stories transpiring at the same time (around an ensemble cast) and stretching sometimes across four or five episodes. It popularized "documentary-style" hand-held camera operation, featured realistic plots and a racially-mixed cast, and was typically presented as a "day-in-the-life" narrative of an urban police station, with a typical episode opening at morning "roll call" and wrapping up at the end of the day shift. Hill Street's heroes were hardened and imperfect (Sgt. Belker to an arrestee: "Do you want to sit down or would you prefer internal injuries?") and the show was Emmy's Outstanding Drama for four straight years beginning in 1982. It's a difficult TV show to get over.

posted by CM @ 9:38 AM 4 comments

Vote for Manny

Suspended Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Manny Ramirez is fourth among outfielders in the early results of the All-Star Game voting released this week. The top three outfielders when the online and ballpark voting closes in July will start for the National League in the Mid-Summer Classic to held in St. Louis July 14th.

I'm encouraging everyone to vote for Manny this year to send a message to baseball that we've had it with ballplayers being scapegoated for simply trying to help their teams win and for trying to heal their battered bodies with medically- and legally-prescribed drugs after getting hurt on the field of play. Let's send a message that it's preposterous to penalize Ramirez for such a "crime" after he single-handedly revived baseball in a town where all the celebrities are performance-enhanced, including the state's governor. Commissioner Bud Selig has been the man at the forefront of baseball's collective failure to rid the game of steroids, and he'll be at the game.

In 2006, NFL linebacker Shawne Merriman was voted to the Pro Bowl even though he had served a four-game suspension during the season for steroid use. Nobody batted an eye. That's because that sport has perspective and they don't eat their own in an effort to settle age-old labor disputes. The fact that Ramirez is in the top four already, with nearly all of the voting having taken place since the suspension, proves already that baseball fans care as little about steroid use as football fans.

The league office confirmed this week that Manny would be eligible to play if selected by the fans so check out voteformanny.blogspot.com and cast your official vote(s) today on the link provided. If you were planning to vote for all Cardinals in an effort to fill the National League roster with Redbirds during the year that they're hosting the game, give Manny your Chris Duncan spot.

But vote! Show Major League Baseball you don't care about steroids. Show Commissioner Selig you're smart enough to understand that it's excellence of reflex, spatial processing, and vision-- not muscle mass-- that makes for a great baseball slugger, and that you don't believe in "miracle" performance drugs. Show him you're tired of his underlings' attempts to embarrass ballplayers with their cowardly and shameful press leaks, and that you're tired of the needless suspensions.

Or, if you prefer a more traditional angle, simply show him you want to see baseball's best players playing in the All-Star Game.

posted by CM @ 5:55 PM 4 comments

Exploring the twisted mind of a Cubs fan

The Chicago Cubs' current 8-game losing streak provides as good a time as any to tell you about the book I'm reading: "Your Brain On Cubs," a 2008 collection of essays pertaining to the neuroscience of the game of baseball, and a study of how and why fans and players behave the way they do. (The book was edited by a Cubs rooter, incidentally.) There are chapters in the book on topics as varied as hitting, talent evaluation, and fan loyalty, but the one that piqued my curiosity the most is the one by Tom Valeo and Lindsay Beyerstein that tackled superstitions and so-called "curses" that many people believe influence the game.

The Cubs' most famous curse is the one supposedly cast on them by tavern owner Billy Sianis in 1945 when his pet goat was refused admission to Wrigley Field for the World Series. The Cubs have not advanced to the Fall Classic since, and today, both the club and its fans seemed to have bought into the popular myth almost entirely. The team's front office invited a priest into the clubhouse to perform an exorcism before last year's playoff series against the Dodgers, and the head of a dead goat is now discarded semi-annually upon the Harry Caray statue that stands guard over the entrance of Cubs Park.

Baseball superstitions are as old and as widespread as the game itself. Anthropologist George Gmelch believes this is because the players and fans have such little control over their fates. Players are looking for any edge they can get in the practice of a trade that is such an inexact science, and fans look on even more helplessly from the grandstand or from in front of their television sets at home.

Baseball superstitions are not unlike a religion, viewed as a form of superstition by psychologist Pascal Boyer. He has suggested four explanations for the existence of religion, each filling a basic human need: 1) The human mind demands explanations. 2) The human heart seeks comfort. 3) Human society requires order, and 4) The human intellect is illusion-prone.

Human beings, and other animals, for that matter, often have a difficult time accepting that sequential events are not causally related. Our brains are designed to learn from experience, and when no simple explanation for an outcome exists, we're capable of conjuring up some pretty elaborate fantasies to explain. Peering through this lens, it becomes easy to believe that an anomaly like a team failing to appear in a World Series for 63 years, and failing to win one for an entire century, might be caused by a goat having been ejected from a baseball stadium.

I consider myself a rationalist in respect to both life and baseball. In fact, being a fan of the rival St. Louis Cardinals, rather than the Cubs, helped me to man up a while back and confront my own superstitions. I started to tell myself that perhaps it's that burdening belief itself in such a large, insidious superstition that has actually acted as part-culprit to the Cubs' championship drought. I don't want my team to be like that.

Every baseball fan has heard now of that sad sack Cubs fan who reached for the foul ball during the 2003 National League Championship Series and possibly prevented his team from recording a pivotal, late-game out, but fewer recall, or have even heard about, the ball booted by the Cubs' shortstop later that same inning. Which play had a greater impact? And was the infielder, in the wake of the dropped foul fly previous, then playing under the implausible notion that the team was now predestined to fail? Of course, there's a science to the notion that the failure to record an important out may have a negative impact on the outcome of a game. We just have to always remember not to blame it on a goat that's surely been dead since before Truman left office.

Some popular superstitions have become so absurdly vague that they help to damage the credibility of superstitions at large. Take the "Ex-Cubs Factor," for example. Is having former Cubs players on your post-season roster supposed to help or hinder the team's chances? Ex-Cub Bill Buckner infamously damaged Boston's chances of winning the 1986 World Series with his defensive boner, former Cub Dennis Eckersley gave up Kirk Gibson's unforgettable home run in the '88 Series, and ex-Small Bears' reliever Mitch Williams gave up a legendary walkoff home run in Game 7 of the '93 Series. But the slugger who hit the Williams pitch over the wall was Joe Carter, another ex-Cub, and former Cubs Ken Holtzman, Bill Madlock, Rick Monday, Bruce Sutter, Luis Gonzalez, Mark Bellhorn, and Mark Grace not only became World Champions on other teams, but were postseason heroes. Lou Brock, traded by the Cubs to the Cardinals in 1964 in what's considered one of the most-lopsided trades in baseball history, owns the highest World Series batting average of all-time. In other words, the "Ex-Cubs Factor" is neither good nor bad for your team, just a product of the angst and self-absorption of many Cubs fans.

I've made a conscious effort to think about the game more scientifically, and less reflexively, in recent years, but it's a challenge to abandon the routine of "positivity" that had been built up over time. (I still have the bottle cap twisted off the bottle of "Bud" Light I drank the night "Bud" Smith tossed a no-hitter in 2001.) As a fan, there's simply no pleasure to be mined from the game if you don't believe that you're somehow an important cog in the mechanations of the game. My cheering and my positive thoughts, reserved for the Cardinals only, must be helping somehow, no? Without even thinking about it, I talk back to the action on my television. I exclaim "Let's go Yadi," or "Let's go Albert" as those players come to bat, even though the hitters likely can't make out what the secondbaseman might be saying, let alone what I'm mumbling to them in my apartment 300-some miles away. I'm booing Chris Duncan this week, but only because it makes me feel better.

And that's the crux of what all of it is about: Feeling better. As Hood writes, "A belief in the supernatural can give people a deep sense of connection with the past and with each other. Such beliefs impart a consideration that the mind will outlive the body." Athletes, their bosses, and we, as fans, feel a united sense of purpose when we possess a mutual desire for success and we're each doing our part (once Duncan stops holding us all back, of course). Donating my positive vibes to the cause is the least I can do-- for the team and for me.

posted by CM @ 7:13 PM 0 comments

Sugar

An intriguing film continues to play at Des Moines' Fleur Cinema through this holiday weekend, and perhaps in your town as well. "Sugar" is the latest offering from husband-and-wife filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, who previously gave us "Half Nelson," winner of the 2006 CMFA (Chris Moeller Film Award) for Best Picture/Director. In a marvelous twist of fate, Boden and Fleck have now taken on the subject of baseball, one of my personal favorites, and they came to our state to film part of the feature.

"Sugar" tells the story of a teenage pitcher from the Dominican Republic transplanted to the minor league baseball environment of an Iowa river town. Modern Woodmen Park in Davenport was used as the principal backdrop for the baseball action in the film. A meditation on ambition and the immigrant experience, "Sugar" promises to be one of those (rare) great baseball films that is about something much larger than just the favored game of the Americas, the same way that "Eight Men Out" was about the collapse of the public trust in civic and social institutions, and "Bull Durham" was about gettin' it on with your lady.

"Sugar," in theaters now. Rated R.

posted by CM @ 12:22 PM 2 comments

Dave got played

The carmakers still don't get it. Last night, General Motors sent some guy on "The Late Show with David Letterman" to talk about the state of the auto industry. It wasn't the president or CEO of the company. It was Bob Lutz, who's listed as a Vice Chairman. Lutz is 77 years old, retiring later this year, and, based on his conversation with Dave, spends much of his life already piloting airplanes. He came across to me as more of a Vice Chairman-Emeritus sent on national television by his boss to play the role of the rugged Korean War vet able to communicate to the American consumer some marketing department-manufactured "straight talk."

During the interview, Lutz conceded that the auto industry had made mistakes-- this fact would have been hard for him to dispute-- but he pinned most of the blame for the industry's woes on government regulators. (According to his Wikipedia entry online, Lutz once called global warming "a total crock of shit.") After powwowing with Dave over a mutual interest in classic American muscle cars (Lutz spearheaded the development of the Dodge Viper back when), the guest claimed that Americans have always desired a vehicle with the powerful V-8 engine. This, he says, is because the U.S. has traditionally enjoyed $1.50 to $2/gallon gasoline, compared with $6 or $7 per gallon in Europe. Then he implied that that was still the case today now that last year's record-high gas prices have come back down.

Do the stock-price assassins in the GM boardroom really still believe that Americans are looking for a V-8, high-performance engine under the hood? Are the American people really the ones to blame? This is how I connected the dots of what Lutz was saying. But this idea is laughable. If it were true, General Motors wouldn't be broke. Detroit has given us plenty of big engines to choose from over the last three decades, and Americans have treated these cars like the ugly kid at the prom.

American automakers like Lutz still have their heads in the sand, and continuing to keep their companies solvent with your taxes and mine is a fool's errand. For decades, they've rejected calls for more fuel-efficient vehicles. They've fought-- and quite astonishingly, still continue to fight-- legislation that would raise the national efficiency standards for the road (or that would allow individual states to do the same). Then, despite having eliminated nearly all of their domestic manufacturing jobs over the years, they continue to insist they're too economically-vital to the nation to be allowed to fail.

If you'll permit me to make myself unambiguous: Let 'em fail. If their executives still think that it's only government regulators and not consumers that want greener engines, their hubris is off-the-charts dangerous. As taxpayers, we can force restructuring of the industry-- with the laborers taking over ownership of significant portions of the new companies-- and start building the efficient cars Americans want to own and drive. We're not getting any of this now in return for our bailout payments.

Unfortunately, the restructuring that will take place will look nothing like this. Congress ceded restructuring authority and oversight to the Executive branch, then the Executive delegated it to an unelected and largely unaccountable task force comprised of cabinet officials and high-level appointees. The people are being shut out as we're once again asked to simultaneously trust the new president's best intentions and foot the bill.

posted by CM @ 8:44 PM 2 comments

The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #s 40-36

Down to only the magical 40. Hold on to the handrails...

#50- "Just Shoot Me"
#49- "L.A. Law"
#48- "The Carol Burnett Show"
#47- "That 70s Show"
#46- "The Rockford Files"
#45- "The Big Bang Theory"
#44- "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour"
#43- "Night Court"
#42- "The Dick Van Dyke Show"
#41- "NYPD Blue"


#40- "BARNEY MILLER" ABC 1975-1982
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I count 4 of what one could classify as "cop show" on the CM Top 50 list, and "Barney Miller" was on the air during a period in TV history when you couldn't swing a dead cat on the prime-time schedule without hitting one, but Danny Arnold's situation comedy didn't feature any car chases, and-- true to real life-- guns were rarely drawn. What it did have was human stories and comedy grounded in everyday foibles. It ushered in a golden era for a certain type of atmospheric, realistic, occasionally heavy-themed urban sitcom, and it did its thing so well, it wound up impacting television's evolution of drama series as well. ("Hill Street Blues" was pitched to network executives as "Barney Miller- Outdoors.") Today, the series, which took place in New York City's Greenwich Village, is a time machine back to an era in that city before everything was sanitized, that is "Disney-fied," or "Giuliani'd." Consider the theme song the steering column on the time machine.


#39- "FRANK'S PLACE" CBS 1987-1988
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Television producer Hugh Wilson's second-greatest series was cancelled due to low ratings before it had a chance to stretch its legs, but its presence on a list like this has to be assured. "Frank's Place," co-driven by and starring Tim Reid, was filming with a single camera, and without a laugh track, almost two decades before it became almost universal on television. Set in a fictional fine-dining restaurant, Chez Louisiane, in New Orleans' French Quarter, the show tackled the issues of race and class in a way that hadn't been done before, or really since. From viewing during my childhood, I recall one of the series' 22 episodes dealing drolly with the distrust that still exists in pockets of that unique region of the country between light-skin blacks-- descendents of French Creole settlers and their black mistresses, usually free women of color-- and the dark-skin descendents of black slaves. American TV viewers would have to wait another 14 years for another series to present such a diversity in African-American life, and even that one displayed it through the well-worn prism of the criminal justice system. Sadly, we may never have "Frank's Place" to relive on DVD exactly the way we remember it. "Cost-prohibitive" music licensing rights, we're told, make that almost assured (a depressing and recurring theme for Hugh Wilson-helmed series). Reid has said, quite heroically, that there will be efforts made to "recreate the mood of the music" on any forthcoming DVD release, but how can you measure up if you're missing this?


#38- "THE KING OF QUEENS" CBS 1998-2007
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This show was often categorized as "a staple"-- considered solid, if not somehow unspectacular, but I find this series to be knee-breakingly funny. A modern-day update on "The Honeymooners" formula-- well-meaning, work-a-day schmoe marries pretty, sarcastic wife-- gives creedence instead to the proposition "If it ain't broke...". The series boasted a virtuoso performance by supporting player Jerry Stiller, who had departed the blockbuster "Seinfeld" for pastures greener than they would wind up being for anybody else from the series, save Larry David. Typical line-reading by Jerry Stiller's "Arthur" character: (Staring intently at the television) "I'm watching this very interesting program. Seems this young fellow Screech has painted himself into quite a corner."

Here's more "Arthur."


#37- "THE PHIL SILVERS SHOW" CBS 1955-1959
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TV scribe and superblogger Ken Levine calls "The Phil Silvers Show" his second-favorite of all-time (behind only "The Honeymooners.") The series perhaps more commonly known as "Sgt. Bilko," the name of Silvers' character, fit its generation of TV viewers perfectly. Times were flush in post-war middle-class America, and Bilko was a conniving Master Sergeant of a platoon at a peacetime Kansas Army base more concerned with poker games and money-making schemes than with military discipline. The comedic plot usually involved Bilko hustling an innocent victim out of some sort of financial windfall, then burdened by conscience, manuevering in his fast-talking style to right his wrongs. The show won the Emmy for Best Comedy Series three of its four years on the air, provided first national exposure to-- among others, Alan Alda, Dick Van Dyke, Fred Gwynne, and Charlotte Rae, and featured one of television's first thought-provoking send-offs. On the final episode, Bilko's superior had cameras installed in every corner of the base to police Bilko's hijinks (the floating crap games). The sergeant looked into the lens of the security camera and said, "It's a wonderful show, and as long as I'm the sponsor, it will never be cancelled."

This is a scene from the episode featuring Dick Van Dyke as a Southern-fried soldier. Several other guest stars also appear.


#36- "IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA" FX 2005-PRESENT
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This cult-favorite cable comedy series has the infectious anarchy of a Marx Brothers film combined with the "bad boy" energy of a Richard Pryor concert performance. "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is that good. The show has it all-- serial killers, sex offenders, man-whores, bang-maids, dumpster babies, and Danny DeVito. The series that appear on this Top 50 list, as a rule, have a singular, uncompromising creative vision, and "It's Always Sunny's" presence on the schedule of the flying-under-the-radar FX network surely helps give its creative team their almost unprecented free reign. The makers claim that the pilot, shot on a digital camcorder, cost them only $85 to produce. The characters, inhabitants of a not-particularly-successful Irish bar in South Philly (the show is shot on location), are self-absorbed and almost morally-void. I would be willing to concede that they're even an acquired taste. But the show never commits the only impardonable sin of television, which is being boring, and veteran improv performer, Kaitlyn Olson, as "Dee," is the most electric comedic actor to come along on television for some time.

"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"-- television's anti-"Friends"-- cut this promo in tribute to the hit NBC series before the start of their 3rd season.

posted by CM @ 12:36 PM 0 comments

House of Cards

posted by CM @ 4:09 PM 2 comments

Craigslist changes

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark shut down the website's Erotic Services boards yesterday in response to mounting legal pressure upon the high-profile arrest of the suspected and so-called "Craigslist Killer" late last month. Do you know who's thrilled about this news? Street pimps.

Since prostitution will always be a fact of life, what sense does it make to shut down a service that actually made safer the transaction of sex for money? Booking clients online, dictating the terms of a meeting, and having a way to track down clients is much safer for sex trade workers than standing on a street corner and making yourself available to anyone capable of rolling down a car window.

The step in the opposite direction should be taken, of course, and that is to legalize prostitution-- bringing it up from underground, weakening the black market dominated by pimps and thugs, putting an end to some ethically-dubious law enforcement techniques, and giving public health officials a fighting chance against the pandemics of sexually-transmitted disease and violence against women. The criminalization of prostitution should have gone out long ago, along with the concept of abstinence-only sex education. (Oops, my bad.)

Sex-for-hire offers will naturally still exist on Craigslist and websites similar, only in a modified, subtler form. The dangerous charade of "protecting" women (and men) by prosecuting them will continue unabated.

posted by CM @ 5:24 PM 2 comments

Paying to auction

The New York Yankees already fleeced taxpayers in that city for more than $400 million in tax subsidies, plus the transfer of public park space in the Bronx into private hands and the planned demolition of one of the city's most historic, publicly-owned landmarks. Now they've done it again.

Yesterday, city leaders agreed to give the Yankees the right to gut the old stadium, built originally by taxpayers in the 1920s, of everything from its seats to the foul poles to portions of the outfield fence to clumps of freeze-dried sod. In return, the Yankees gave the city $11.5 million.

Why in the world would the city willingly cap its profit potential with this type of sell-off? The Yankees wouldn't have paid the $11.5 million if they didn't think they could top it at auction, and no appraisal was done before the deal was struck. As just one example of the outrageous money to be had in auction, the old stadium's blue cylinder trash cans with "NY" printed on the sides are being offered for a minimum of $200 a piece.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the deal, "The city's agreement with the Yankees will generate much-needed revenue for the city and offer fans a chance to own some of the famed Yankee Stadium history." Sigh.

---

We had an unusual request in the last comment thread for me to explain to my brother the EFCA. That's the Employee Free Choice Act, pending legislation in the Congress. Here goes: Aaron, we're for it.

---

The Des Moines Register went straight into the toilet when Washington columnist Donald Kaul left the paper. He's writing these days at Minutemanmedia.org

posted by CM @ 10:27 AM 1 comments

'Lost' spoiler

It's not my intent to ruin the big surprise for all of you regarding the popular ABC television show "Lost," but I have a feeling that it's all going to be revealed on this week's episode, and I can't help but to have to prove to you that I got there first.

Keep in mind that I have no inside information about the show. I didn't go to college with one of the set designers. I don't have a cousin living in Hawaii that witnessed show creator J.J. Abrams purchasing a distinctly revealing prop item at the Oahu Home Depot a couple months ago. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend did not hear from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw the actor who plays Hugo pass out at 31 Flavors last night. All I have to go on is my instinct and keen intellect.

So stop reading here if you want to be surprised during the penultimate season finale on Wednesday night-- or further down the road if there's an unexpected (by me) delay in the reveal. But you just as well know now... that Jack is Jacob. There are many clues that make this fact quite obvious. #1- Their names are similar. #2- Jack's father, and his sister, Claire, have been seen hanging out at the spooky cabin where Jacob's "spirit" resides. #3- John Locke announced at the end of last week's episode that he's on the way into the jungle to kill Jacob, and Jack and Locke have been on separate sides on every philosophical debate on the series since it began. #4- Kate has really been paired off with Sawyer narrative-ly at this point in the series so its obvious that they'll wind up together, leaving Jack free to pursue a fate more aligned with "the island." And #5- He's the star of the show.

You can resume reading again. I derive no pleasure from having to ruin the surprise for all of you, but you see, I'm what's often (derisively) labeled a "know-it-all," and I can't help myself. I'm hard-wired to be possessed with the answers to some very important questions and then to have to let you know about it prematurely when I do, regardless of impact.

Check back to the blog later in the week when I reveal whether socialite Claus von Bulow really injected his wife with a lethal dose of insulin in 1980. I recently watched the film "Reversal of Fortune" for the first time and I figured it out.

posted by CM @ 5:57 PM 6 comments

The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: #s 45-41

Here's the next installment. How are you coping so far?


#50- "Just Shoot Me"
#49- "L.A. Law"
#48- "The Carol Burnett Show"
#47- "That 70's Show"
#46- "The Rockford Files"


#45- "THE BIG BANG THEORY" CBS 2007-PRESENT
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Geek is chic! Socially-inept physicists Sheldon and Leonard-- their names combine to form a tribute to the legendary producer behind "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "The Andy Griffith Show"-- have their worlds turned upside down when a beautiful young woman moves in across the hall. "The Big Bang Theory" is one of the few multi-camera sitcoms currently in production, but while the show's structure is largely traditional, its jokes are anything but. A program that could easily slip into slapstick or overly-familiar character types instead focuses on the clash of disparate cultures. Producers claim that their references to physics are specific and able to withstand the harshest academic scrutiny, and each character is drawn lovingly regardless of social stature. Actor Jim Parsons should have a shelf full of Emmys when his run as Sheldon has finished. Here's just a taste of the youngest show on the top 50 list.


#44- "THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR" CBS 1967-1969
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To this day, Tommy and Dick Smothers are careful to correct anyone who says that they were canceled by the CBS television network in the spring of 1969. They were not canceled. They were fired. The Smothers Brothers sparred with CBS censors during the full three seasons they were on the air. They welcomed controversial performers on their stage, did expert political commentary on racism, religion, and the Johnson Administration, and they loudly opposed the Vietnam War when no one else on network television was doing it. Rob Reiner, Steve Martin, Bob Einstein, Albert Brooks, Don Novello, Peter Bonerz, and Howard Hesseman all cut their teeth writing or performing on the "Comedy Hour," and it was one hell of a music show too, with Ray Charles, the Doors, Joan Baez, Donovan, the Who, Ike and Tina Turner, and Pete Seeger all appearing during the show's all-too-brief run.

Here's a copy of a somewhat typical network memo regarding the show circulated during the brothers' last season on the air early in '69. The extras contained on "The Smothers Brothers: Best of Season 3" DVD set released last year include many more.


#43- "NIGHT COURT" NBC 1984-1992
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"...but I'm feeling much better now."

I don't think a single video clip could be any more representative of the heart and soul of a TV series than this one.


#42- "THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW" CBS 1961-1966
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During television's weakest decade, creator Carl Reiner's TV show-within-a-TV show served as sort of a programming Everest upon the American television landscape. The Van Dyke show still has to be considered one of the funniest and most well-rounded shows in the medium's history. Mary Tyler Moore was cast as Laura, the wife of Van Dyke's "Rob Petrie" at home with young son Ritchie, and characters Buddy, Sally, Mel, and Alan Brady (the latter played by Reiner himself) tickled our funny bones at Rob's workplace, where he served as head writer for a popular variety show. "The Dick Van Dyke Show" was stylish and sophisticated, and because few current events or fads were referenced on the show, a popular school of thought proposes that the show would still be a hit if it premiered today, if they only added color and had Rob and Laura sleeping in a queen-size bed.

I know that TV audiences today would still go for this: Mary Tyler Moore in capri pants.


#41- "NYPD BLUE" ABC 1993-2005
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American nanny L. Brent Bozell III claims that "NYPD Blue" was the show that inspired him to begin organizing the Parents Television Council, one of the highest-profile media advocacy groups committed to combating what it deems as "indecent" TV programming. But I watched "Blue" consistently for each of its 12 seasons, and I already knew all those words. Many of the words on the series were written by David Milch, one of the most distinctive and formidable writing voices that has ever worked in television, and with this show, Milch proved that he could write jaw-dropping stories and dialogue even while juggling addictions to heroin, Vicodin, and alcohol. (Working for Milch, however, might be something else altogether.) "NYPD Blue" will always be remembered as the Dennis Franz show, though. Franz's character, Andy Sipowicz, tried to steer clear of his haunting demons (some that overlapped Milch's, incidentally) and to sustain his fragile grip on his humanity while surviving "on the job." Here's a sampling of "Sipowicz" at his best-- working it, as always, in the interrogation room, but this time against one of his own. Sorry, no bare buttocks in this particular scene, but I'm sure you can find your own. Don't let the hand-held camera make you woozy.



Bonus "Night Court" clip from YouTube! "Christine Sullivan" and "Dan Fielding" highlights. No dialogue necessary for this one-- it's all sight gags and Huey Lewis.

posted by CM @ 11:58 AM 0 comments

The dangerous lives of athlete boys

Following Major League Baseball through the media during the so-called "steroid" era is getting a little exhausting. If you let it get to you, it's easy to pin blame on the sport and begin weighing the prospect of running for the hills of respite and alternative pastimes.

I've successfully passed through this phase of exhaustion now-- mentally and emotionally freed by that article in Salon that I linked last week. The article, which, for me, finally turned all of the empty steroid hypocrisy in the media back on itself, was published to coincide with the release of the "tell-all" Alex Rodriguez biography. This week, the first challenge to my newly-found sanity was the Manny Ramirez suspension.

The harsh media and public reaction to the discovery that Ramirez used a banned substance while under a doctor's care has been swift and merciless. ESPN's Buster Olney called for the installation of a new zero-tolerance drug policy, forgetting I guess that the enormous business of baseball operates under the confines of a collective bargaining agreement designed to protect the interests and civil liberties of its employees. Fox's Mark Kriegel chided Manny's manager for pointing out the fact that the ballplayer is "a human being." In the LA Times today, Bill Plaschke is practically foaming at the mouth. All semblance of perspective seems to be gone. In baseball, we're left with the same climate of intolerance and inconsistency that's all-but-wrecked the sports of cycling and track-and-field.

As the Alva Noe article in Salon pointed out, sports are bad for your body. People need to finally come to grips with this fact. Our top athletes are going above and beyond what's good for the long term health of their bodies. They do this in exchange for a shot at a public glory they hope will be much more enduring, and I'm not only talking about the violent "contact" sports that seem to get a free pass on steroids because people already see them as inherently dangerous.

For example, it's unhealthy to run 20+ miles at a time. If life longevity is your goal, a brisk walk in comfortable shoes is a much better way to go. Likewise, it's bad for your heart to bulk up digesting the choice body parts of a cow for dinner every night. It's bad for your knees and ankles to jump up and down for a living on a hardwood floor, while your body twists and contorts itself around the flying limbs of others. It's unsanitary to piss on your hands. And it's rough on one's body to endure a series of elective surgeries on shoulders and elbows. (A high school friend of mine has lived with a torn rotator cuff since he was 16, but since he works in an insurance office for a living, instead of throwing baseballs, he's been able to avoid having to go under the knife.)

In terms of competitive fairness, do Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez have physical and medical advantages today that Babe Ruth didn't have in the 1920s? Not only are you right that they do, but you're fortunate as well, in terms of your own existence on this planet. It's called progress, and you can take that element into the equation if you want (and you should) when you debate who's the greatest slugger of all-time, but lets stop labeling PED usage "cheating" unless we're also going to label as such-- collateral ligament reconstruction (Tommy John surgery), laser-eye enhancement, or even polio shots. The sluggers coming up behind Rodriguez, Ramirez, Bonds, Howard, and Pujols will have advantages today's stars never dreamed about.

I'm satisfied with anything Manny Ramirez has to tell us about what he's put in his body through the years (and it's worth noting anyway that he's been passing MLB drug tests for six years.) With all the shit that's gone down in baseball for over a century and a half, from the racial exclusion of players to gambling to collusion, reporters and fans lamenting the disappearance of some sort of lost era of innocence and purity in the sport frankly deserve to be lied to.

Can we get back to the game already?

posted by CM @ 12:47 PM 1 comments

The Top 50 TV Shows of All-Time: Intro & #s 50-46

Welcome to the most ambitious project this blog has ever undertaken.

As part of the year-long 5th Anniversary celebration of the Chris Moeller Archives (studies have found that more than 90% of blogs fail in their first two months), we have ventured to begin counting down, over the course of this summer, the 50 greatest American television shows of all-time. This is similar to the list we did in late 2004 and early '05 of the top 50 American films, except that this time, we have the audacity to not only chronicle the top 50, but rank them as well.

What makes this project all that more remarkable is the preparation that went into it. To insure that the countdown carries adequate historical weight and context, I set out and succeeded, over the course of five months, to watch every episode of every television show ever made. Only one episode has been missed, and that was due to a malfunctioning NBC master tape-- episode #76 of "ALF", best known as "the black-and-white one" during which ALF imagines that he and the Tanners are silent movie stars.

Only prime-time shows were considered for this list, and news programs were excluded. So-called "reality" programs were considered eligible, but they all suck so you'll find none of them on this list. Eight of the 50 shows on the list are still in production, no surprise for such a young medium, but this means that the rankings of these eight shows, in particular, are in flux.

Your top 50 list, if you were to compile it, might include some very different shows. Yours might overlap many of these same shows, but in a radically-different order. Your list is wrong. Mine is definitive. (Definitive and in flux, what an amazing list!)

We'll be publishing the countdown five shows at a time, at least until the very end, and we're "going all the way to number one" as Casey Kasem would say and has. The countdown will culminate with the 8th Annual Moeller TV Festival, to be held this fall, although the countdown will surely wrap up long before that. If I had other blog topics to fill space until the fall, I wouldn't be doing this.

The ranking of the top 50 TV shows hereby commences-- in heart-stopping inverted fashion!


#50- "JUST SHOOT ME" NBC 1997-2003
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Yes, that's how strong this list is. An ensemble comedy starring the versatile George Segal, the sultry Laura San Giacomo, the acidic David Spade, and the limber comedienne Wendie Malick checks in at only 50. In the wake of America's warm acceptance of the narcissistic, backstabbing "Seinfeld" characters of the 1990s, NBC turned over roughly half of its prime-time schedule to similarly-inspired ensembles like this one, created by Steven Levitan. But no TV characters were more narcissistic or backstabbing than those on "Just Shoot Me." Jibes on the show were often mean-spirited and hurtful, but almost always hilarious because they were balanced by the complicated, yet loving father/daughter relationship being portrayed by Segal and San Giacomo. In this memorable workplace comedy, fictitious Blush Magazine was presented as a well-respected and successful magazine of high fashion, and often, a fun place to work. But wear a cup.


#49- "L.A. LAW" NBC 1986-1994
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This show was, for a time, the dramatic anchor of one of the great nights of television in network television history. When Mike Post's theme song (Sound warning!) for the series belted out after the show's cold open at 10pm, 9 o'clock central, each Thursday night, I used to enjoy cranking up the volume on the television, especially during the part when the camera tilts up the side of the office building in downtown Los Angeles. "L.A. Law" was one of Steven Bochco's enduring comedy-tinged dramatic treasures. For my money, it's the least self-conscious, as well as the funniest. It stretched the boundaries of ensemble dramatic television and obsessed over sex in a way that hadn't been seen before in prime-time, but I never believed for a second that a stone fox like Jill Eikenberry would ever marry Michael Tucker.


#48- "THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW" CBS 1967-1978
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When "Carol Burnett" premiered, the variety format ruled prime-time. When the show bowed 286 episodes and 25 Emmys later, it was the last one still standing. Also the first major variety program hosted by a woman, "The Carol Burnett Show" was freewheeling and spontaneous, and it popularized the concept of "parody" sketches that make late-night shows like "Saturday Night Live" and "MadTV" its true descendants. It not only introduced Harvey Korman and Tim Conway to the world as sketch comedians, but it introduced the Harvey Korman/Tim Conway comedy team. Here's a clip of the pair's famous "Dentist" sketch, heavy on the Conway.


#47- "THAT 70'S SHOW" Fox 1998-2006
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This period sitcom goofed simultaneously on modern teen relationships, generational patterns of behavior, and the cultural power of nostalgia. Show creators Bonnie and Terry Turner found a fresh take on today's youth driven marketplace (i.e., a show that television executives find demographically-acceptable) by setting their series chronologically during the bell-bottomed era of their teen experiences, making the show funny and universal enough in its themes to appeal to audiences of every age, even while they were expertly endorsing such wayward social and political concepts as drug legalization. Yes, Eric, Donna, Hyde, Jackie, Fez, and Kelso were actually making a political statement by making their basement pot smoking look like so much fun. May "The Circle" remain unbroken.

Bonus theme song clip!


#46- "THE ROCKFORD FILES" NBC 1974-1980
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The second-greatest private detective series ever, "Rockford" was always more about character than about crimes. James Garner was "Jim Rockford," charming and hard-boiled in the romantic fantasy tradition of Raymond Chandler's "Philip Marlowe," the 1940s-era literary PI upon which Rockford was most closely based, but he was also a "reluctant hero," in step with more contemporary times, and quicker with a wisecrack than with a gun. In fact, Rockford rarely carried a gun. "Because I don't want to shoot anybody," he once explained. He was revolutionary on television in that his private life meshed with his work as a private dick. He enjoyed fishing. He coped with a retired father who disdained the son's profession. He made monthly payments on his beachfront mobile home-slash-office. In April 2008, the Chris Moeller Archives designated Jim Rockford one of the 5 coolest guys in television history.

Here's a network promo for the series from 1978.

posted by CM @ 10:08 AM 4 comments

Poetic Justice: Caught on tape!

posted by CM @ 8:53 PM 0 comments

Steroids in context

posted by CM @ 8:15 AM 0 comments