Cybill vs. Christine Baranski

It’s Friday question day. What’s yours?

Mike from Atlanta asks:

What do you do when the supporting character begins to overshadow the main character? Examples: the Barney character on How I Met Your Mother, Christine Baranski's character on Cybill, Dr. Johhny Fever in WKRP and even the Steve Urkel character in Family Matters (he wasn't a regular until later in the season).

It depends on the show and the star. Most of the time the stars accept it because they realize that with this breakout character (a la the Fonz) the show is a big hit. Otherwise, it's thirteen and out. In the case of Cybill though, Christine Baranski’s popularity caused much drama and acrimony on the set. Think the queen and Snow White. I am so glad I wasn’t one of the dwarves who worked on that show. Yikes!

Not to tell tales out of school but I understand Alex Karras and Susan Clarke really resented Emmanual Lewis who played Webster. But Jesus, the show was called WEBSTER.

I will say this, from day one everybody on FRASIER embraced David Hyde Pierce and recognized how supremely talented he was. And no one was more supportive than Kelsey Grammer.

Since most comedies are ensembles, egos tend to be in check. But there’s always that chance, especially when you have gifted thespians like Alex Karras and Susan Clarke.

Bob Summers wants to know:

What are your thoughts on turning movies (theatrical releases) into a series? "M*A*S*H" and "Alice" work, but I'm frustrated watching the first season of "The Paper Chase" on DVD. It was a great movie. The series just doesn't come close.

Usually they don’t work because the TV adaptation feels like a dinner theater version of the original movie. Big stars are replaced with faint carbon TV actors. MASH made the jump, in my opinion, because the writing was so stylized and great, they went against type with Hawkeye and Trapper, they were lucky enough to snare Alan Alda, and CBS stuck with the show. People forget that MASH was nearly cancelled in its first year.

PAPER CHASE was actually a pretty successful series in its initial run. And it had the advantage of having the star of the movie, John Houseman, star in the TV version as well. Maybe the exclusion of Lindsay Wagner was why the show wasn’t a smash. However, getting the film star to also star in the series is not always a guarantee for success. Nia Vardalos did little to rescue MY BIG FAT GREEK LIFE. Of course, in that case I don't think divine intervention would have helped either.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER worked better as a TV show than movie and I credit Joss Whedon for that.

Other misses include NINE TO FIVE, PRIVATE BENJAMIN, DIRTY DANCING, and CLERKS.

That said, I still think VOLUNTEERS would make a great TV series. Think of it, every week blowing up another bridge in the village.

Ironically, I bet there are now more movies from TV shows than the other way around.

Leave your questions in the comment section. As always, many thanks.

Fingers Crossed For "Glee"

As someone who has a habit of liking critically-acclaimed shows that get canceled, I'm wary of getting too attached to "Glee." It's a funny, quirky show about geeks, one that assumes (correctly) that high school mostly blows. And when has that ever panned out?

But if the pilot episode is indicative of what's to come, I hope "Glee" makes it. Maybe it doesn't achieve the greatness of "Freaks and Geeks," but it's got loads of potential.

When a high school glee club loses its director in a scandal, teacher Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) steps in to keep it going and to reconnect with his passion for song. But even the principal thinks glee club is for losers, refusing to pony up the $40 a month required to run it. But Schuester isn't dissuaded, and once word gets out, the school's aspiring songbirds come forward.

These kids are my people — ambitious nerds who have that "One day you losers will know how awesome I am" gleam in their eye. Rachel (Lea Michele), who is talented but delusional, uploads new performance video daily on her MySpace page. Diva-in-training Mercedes (Amber Riley) declares that she shouldn't be singing backup because "I'm Beyonce, not Kelly Rowland." The only member with any social standing is quarterback Finn (Cory Monteith), a Troy Bolton type who wants to throw footballs and sing show tunes.

But my favorite glee club member, by far, is Kurt (Chris Colfer), who is clearly a friend of Dorothy. He begs the jocks to remove his Marc Jacobs jacket before they toss him into the dumpster, and when he belts out "Cellophane Man" during his audition, he does so with a hand on his hip and an I-do-this-in-my-sleep stroke of his bangs.

Perhaps best of all, "Glee" has the wonderful Jane Lynch, playing a ball-busting cheerleading coach who sees the new club as a threat. No one delivers a put-down quite like Lynch, who, upon seeing one of her cheerleaders flub a move, says, "You think this is hard? Being water-boarded is hard."

My only quibble is that Schuester's Pottery Barn-obsessed wife is a shade too unlikable to be believed. Otherwise, "Glee" has captured my attention in a way network television hasn't for years. When it returns in the fall, I'll be there with my jazz hands ready.

Gundam Gouf

Gundam Gouf, another popular mecha from Gundam Series. First appeared in the 80ś Gundam Series and reappeared again in Gundam Seed Destiny . One of the coolest featured of Gouf is the "Jet Stream Attack" whereby three Goud align together and attacked in "stream" line

Neat detail but no posing


Come with a Cannon and a sword

LED Eye

AMERICAN IDOL -- If I'm being honest...

Wow! What an upset! Kris Allen won. The All-American fresh-faced boy next door beat a theatrical guy who wore leather and eyeliner. Who knew??? This country is not yet ready to crown a young man who looks like Liza Minelli their next American Idol. Not that Kris didn't deserve it but clearly Adam was the more interesting, original choice. And I suspect will have the greater career (whatever that means). They could both be stars or in five years one could open for the other at Magic Mountain.

Still, it was Adam who jump-started the series. He's the one everybody was talking about, he's the reason you watched every week. My guess is all those tweenage girls who were so shattered last year when David Archeletta lost vowed they would never let that happen again. Hell hath no fury like a middle schooler with a Twitter account!

Of course the real winner here is AMERICAN IDOL. People will be talking about this for days.

I felt bad for both of them on the final performance night having to sing that insipid song co-written by Kara DioGuardi.

Go farther and deeper and don’t give up your dreams, there are no boundaries, climb every mountain, spread your wings, reach for the stars.

Those lyrics might inspire Mike Tyson to bite someone's ear off but otherwise they’re nothing but a string of tired clichés. And the person who co-wrote that drivel is telling other people they’re not artists?? Mark my words: after this week you’ll hear “Letter to my Teenage Son” by Victor Lundberg on the radio before you ever hear “No Boundaries”. More on Kara later.

Here are my overall thoughts on this season. And please understand that I’m a fan of the show. At one time I loved it. It was the perfect blend of music, controversy, and stupidity all wrapped into one highly entertaining hour of live cheese. I just think they’ve gotten off the track.

AMERICAN IDOL has become American Airlines. You get far less for your money and it takes much longer to get to your destination.

In a Fox effort to get as much as they can out of their one cash cow (SIT DOWN, SHUT UP never panned out as the national phenomenon they expected) I’m sure they put pressure on IDOL to expand as much as they could. Y’know, a half hour here, fourteen hours there. But with no real new program content what we were left with was cocaine cut so thin it would pass a Major League Baseball drug test.

All of the “improvements” this season were designed to pump more air into the already stretched balloon. Adding a fourth judge. Good God, why? Two of the ones they already had were as useless as highway signs in Braille. Then, to compound matters, they hire a woman so annoying, so whiney that I find myself preferring the sound of a car alarm. And she’s still a better judge than songwriter.

Another “improvement” was to expand Hollywood week. They took 300 hours of Hollywood auditions and edited them down to 298 hours of airtime. Topped off by an entire night of kids stepping into an elevator that led to their doom. So much for follow your dreams, reach for the sky, etc. There may be no boundaries for Kris, but for the other 99,999 there definitely are and the sign at the border read KEEP OUT.

Once the live broadcasts began the show started to show some life. We were treated to actual performances. 90 second snippets that passed for songs but still! Of course we were now two months into the season already. (Compare that to 24 where by week eight more people had died than in World War I.)

This is the “psychopaths and opportunists on parade” portion of the festivities. Topping this year’s crop of loons was Tatiana Del Toro who was so off-the-charts obnoxious that Kara was tolerable. It’s like when your face is on fire you tend to forget that your tooth aches.

Here again, the producers’ “improvements” allowed whackjobs like Tatiana to just keep coming back, much like the Terminator or floods. The problem is after eight seasons we’ve become so conditioned to the freaks and losers that there’s nothing surprising or even entertaining about them anymore. So Tatiana on her knees wailing and groveling for one more chance is now as heart wrenching as the TV Guide program crawl.

Finally the Top 13 was selected (in previous years it was the Top 10). This gave producers the opportunity to stretch the show to two hours or more for weeks. Mentors were once again enlisted. Vocal advice from such noted singers as guitarist Slash, film director Quentin Tarentino, and actor (with a movie conveniently just opening) Jaime Foxx. Were fellow crooners Dick Cheney and Roseanne unavailable?

When they finally had to limit the performance shows to an hour it was like squeezing a Minnesota Viking into Nicole Richie’s leotards. First the judges had to team up and that was a disaster. Silence Simon so Kara could question everyone’s “artistry”. The cardinal rule of show business: You never replace Curly with Shemp if Curly is still alive.

Results shows that used to be a half hour swelled to sixty minutes. So there were now 58 minutes of shoe leather rather than 28. The rest of these hours were filled with former American Idols hawking their new singles (a Taylor Hicks pity booking), Ford commercials (they're zany these kids!), recaps of recaps, Up With People production numbers that transformed the tattooed contestants into Osmonds, and plugs for iTunes, tours, video downloads, their website -- pretty much everything short of Paula’s jewelry line and bottles of Mighty Mendit.

But unlike past years, the caliber of contestants (once you weeded out “Bikini Girl” and the future Mickey Rourkes) was much higher this season. Adam, Danny, or Allison could have easily beaten the "Soul Patrol", Jordin Sparks, or "the Velvet Teddy Bear (Ruben Studdard -- see how fast we forget?). All the more reason to be frustrated when performances were truncated so Randy had time to say “mad vocals” fifteen times a show instead of nine.

So congratulations to Kris. And Adam, who will probably get even more notoriety for losing. Most of the others from this year's crop will fade into the mist although Tatiana will surely resurface if they ever do a remake of SYBIL.

There’s a rumor that next year Fox plans to expand the show even more. This ranks up there in hubris with ticket prices at the new Yankee Stadium. I hope it's not true and I'll just conclude by reminding you of that one great truism of Broadway.

“Cut out twenty minutes and the show will run for two more years”.

Tryouts for next season begin soon. Eagle scouts only need apply. See you in January.

Oranges Need To Get Over Themselves

With apologies to the genius blog that is F*ck You, Penguin

I'm over you, orange. You're clinging to your glory days as Florida's official fruit and a semi-exotic foodstuff, but I know what you really are. Common. Cheap. At $1.99 a bag, you aren't fooling anyone.

So the fact that you're so freaking difficult to peel pisses me off. Do you think playing hard to get makes me value you more highly? Look, you're just the pit stop between breakfast and lunch, not some carefully considered purchase from the farmer's market or New Leaf. You're not even organic.

I only bought you because I got bored with apples and grapes, and tangerines weren't available. Tangerines are sweet and easy. They don't put on airs or act like they're too good to be sectioned. You, on the other hand, expect to be labored over and earned. Please. You're not a lychee.

If you think I'm going to waste my time delicately peeling away your layers of so-called complexity, you are sadly mistaken. Say hello to my little friend the sharp knife.

Jerk.

I Knew Craig Ferguson Was Awesome ...

But not THIS awesome!

Double dating with Frank Sinatra

Here's another excerpt from the book I'm writing about growing up in the 60s. Note: After the AMERICAN IDOL finale I will post a review of the entire season.

But for now, let's stagger back to September, 1965... ...Meanwhile, willowy 19 year old actress Mia Farrow began dating a “real” senior – Frank Sinatra. He was 49 at the time. It would have been great to double date with them. Maybe go to the Friday night Taft football game, and grab a pizza at Shakey’s. You know what else Frank would like? A popular activity among popular kids was TP'ing someone’s home. That meant showering the house in streams of toilet paper. I can just imagine Frank tossing a roll, saying this house looked vaguely familiar and then realizing, “Hey, this is where the kidnappers held my son!”

School rivalries were big in the San Fernando Valley, especially in the fall when football reined supreme. Taft had two rivals – Canoga Park High and Birmingham High. Canoga was our nearest competitor. They had an older stucco campus and a much rougher crowd. The rivalry would have been bigger had we not been afraid to go to the Canoga games.

So we needed another rival more our socio-economic level. Birmingham High in Encino fit the bill. Good football programs and instead of knife fights you just had Jews taunting each other that their temples had inferior lecture series.

The fall semester was also basketball season. Having suffered through basketball boot camp in the spring I intended to get my just rewards and actually “play” the damn game. I was assigned to the “B” team, which is essentially junior varsity. And I was terrible. Only if there was twelve seconds to go in the game and we were leading by at least 65 points would the coach send me into the game, and usually with instructions to just stand underneath the basket and let myself get fouled. After maybe three games I was cut from the team. But the coach had a proposition. How would I like to become the varsity manager? I would collect the balls after practice. That seemed very demeaning to me, insulting even. Until I learned it would satisfy my P.E. requirement. Sold. I was team manager for three years. And for the next two springs I was manager of the varsity gymnastics team (same coach) where my chief responsibility was to hand out chalk. Not many people can say they lettered in two varsity sports and never once took a shower.

One very big perk of being a manager during basketball season was that I got to be the P.A. announcer at home games. Since I always wanted to be a sportscaster this was just my dish. But I was fired from that too when I caused a major incident during the big Taft-Chatsworth game. I thought I saw a Chatsworth player signal a ref so I said, “And Chatsworth wants a time out.” The ref heard that and charged a time out to them. Well, the signal was apparently for something else (Ooops. My bad.) and the Chatsworth coach went ballistic. This resulted in a technical for our team. Now our coach was livid. In short order everyone was screaming at everyone else. Chatsworth made the technical and eventually won the game… by one point. (Ooops. Reeeeeally my bad.) I spent the rest of the games icing ankles.

Thus concludes the section on my vaunted athletic career in high school. Or any other time in my life .

AMERICAN IDOL season finale review tomorrow. Hint: I hate Kara's songwriting almost as much as I hate her judging.