Recently in Television and Video Category

Today, April 28, 2012, is the fiftieth anniversary of a rather important event in my life. It was 50 years ago today that the television series The Defenders broadcast the episode entitled "The Benefactor".

I was 13 at the time and The Defenders was one of my favorite shows. As best as I can tell, it was the first television program that I encountered that dealt with moral ambiguities rather than simplistic notions of good and bad, moral and immoral.

E.G Marshall and Robert Reed played a father and son defense team that each week defended an accused who may or may not have been guilty and who, if guilty, was often as much a victim as a perpetrator.

The Defenders aired on Saturday nights (from 8:30pm to 9:30 if I recall correctly), and I tried never to miss it. In those days Saturday night was bowling night for my parents, and at 13 I was old enough to no longer have to accompany them everywhere they went. So I had the house to myself on Saturday evenings.

From the promos I knew that this Saturday night's episode was going to be especially controversial, as parents were warned about not letting impressionable children watch; plus, I had read that the sponsors were staying away in droves. CBS ended up selling air time at cut rate prices.

But what I wasn't clear on was just what the controversy was about. Something to do with abortion, whatever that was.

Because up to that point in my 13 years in April 1962, I had never heard of the concept of abortion; I had no idea what it was.

I can still vividly remember parts of that episode as it dramatized a Doctor Montgomery who specialized in performing abortions, which in those days were illegal in every state. It didn't take me long to figure out just what an abortion was and therefore why it was such a hot button issue for the network.

The doctor's activities became known to law enforcement, he was arrested, and Marshall and Reed were engaged to defend him.

The show presented all sides of the issue, but there are a couple things that still stand out for me. During the trial, the defenders made no effort to deny that Dr. Montgomery had been performing abortions. In fact, part of their defense was to put former patients on the stand to tell their stories of desperation about why an abortion had become their only viable option and how Dr. Montgomery had helped them through their problems.

In each case, the DA rose and asked exactly two questions: "Was an abortion performed?" which elicited a "yes" response, followed by "Did Dr. Montgomery perform it?" which also received a "yes".

Then the defense called a young black woman to the stand. It's probably worth pointing out how rare it was to see a black actor on television in those days. She testified as to how she, as a single woman, had gotten pregnant and felt she had no options but to consult Dr. Montgomery.

Then the DA started his cross-examination: "Was an abortion performed?"

"No," replied the witness.

The DA was flustered. "No? What do you mean, no?"

"When I went to see Dr. Montgomery, he convinced me to have the baby. My three-year-old daughter and I are very happy."

"No more questions."

The verdict was pretty much a given in those days. CBS might very well broadcast a program about abortion, but they damn well weren't going to let the abortionist get away with it, no matter how sympathetically he was portrayed.

"Guilty," proclaimed the jury.

As the episode drew to a close the defenders finally came upon a piece of information that revealed Dr. Montgomery's motivations. His only daughter had died during a botched abortion. Her tombstone made a reference to her being cut down by butchers. 

I was a Republican in those days, in fact I went on to become a Barry Goldwater Republican, but from that day forward I remained committed to the idea that an abortion is a medical procedure, and the only people who should have a say in it are the woman and her doctor.

I've been watching episodes of "Thriller", the early 1960s anthology series hosted by Boris Karloff.

When the show originally aired, it came on at 9PM on Tuesday nights, which was past my bedtime for a school night in those days. That's probably why I don't remember it too well. In fact the episode that I remember best is the one entitled "The Cheaters", a truly chilling (at least I thought so then) story about a pair of spectacles that let the wearer see through the lies that most people tell. Since that show was first broadcast on December 27, 1960, I was probably able to see its first airing.

Anyway, last night I watched "The Fatal Impulse", in which a thwarted assassin drops his miniature bomb into the bag of one of the "girls" in a crowded elevator.

This is one of the better episodes of those that I've seen, although its leisurely pace seems strangely at odds with the ticking bomb nature of its story. But that pace is just a reflection of its time.

Also a reflection of its time is its use of "girls" for women and the casual depiction of cigarette smoking.

Anyway, what really struck me about the show was its cast, which featured many actors who would go on to star in some notable series in the 1960s and beyond, as well as one of those ubiquitous character actors whose face everyone recognized but whose name no one knew in the days before imdb.com, Elisha Cooke Jr.

Whitney Blake, of course, achieved fame as Don Defore's wife in "Hazel", and Ed Nelson went on to star in television's first prime time soap opera, "Peyton Place".

Robert Lansing made many television and movie appearances, but I don't think any one stands out.

And then there's that "girl" in the glasses. What did she ever do?

In 1993 as our parents' 50th wedding anniversary approached, my sister Donna and I decided to throw them a surprise celebration.

Working long distance, I in Philadelphia and she in Dover, PA, we made arrangements for a hall in Wernersville, PA. Well, actually Jane and Allen (our aunt and uncle) found the hall and were helpful in so many ways.

Although we planned for months and had a guest list of over 40, somehow our parents never caught on. They were really surprised, as you can see in the video.

In fact, for years afterward they kept marveling at how we kept it from them.

Reed and Lou recorded a lot of the event on their camcorders, and in 2003 I took their raw videos and edited them into a 15 minute presentation. Which is embedded here.

The video is in two parts, to meet Youtube's 10 minute limit.

In 2003 our parents insisted they didn't want another party, so we took them to New York, New York to see The Producers and the Bernadette Peters version of Gypsy. By then I had my own digital camcorder, but I wasn't very adept at using it. Consequently, although I shot more than Reed and Lou did, I had much less usable footage.

So the resulting video is much shorter.

BTW, one of the fun things about watching these videos together is seeing how much their grandson (and my nephew) Kevin grew in the intervening years.

I usually get these wrong, but here goes.

I used to think that the Flash Sideways were the destination point for the series. That in the original timeline Desmond would do something that would shift the space/time continuum to create the timeline where the crash didn't happen, i.e. the Flash Sideways timeline.

But that would destroy all the character development of the past six years, making it meaningless.

Now what I think is that the Flash Sideways are the original timeline and that Sideways Desmond is going to work his magic mojo to rearrange the space/time continuum to bring about the timeline that we all know and love--the one where the crash happened.

So in other words in the crash timeline, what happened happened. Those who have died, really did die.

Wolf Blitzer is a pedophile.

At least, that's what I've heard.

Keeping in mind that nearly every time I've tried to predict a plot twist in Lost, I've been wrong, here is what I expect will be the result of the explosion that ended the Fifth Season. I'm only attempting to predict what will happen in the first five minutes, but if you don't want to read it now, save it for tomorrow to see if I was right!

The Losties were trying to change the future (or present) by setting off a bomb back in 1977, hoping to change the events that led to their plane crashing on Sep 22, 2004. According to The Rules, what has happened, happened. It can't be changed. That's according to Daniel Faraday.

Now Ben has been going around whining that someone changed The Rules, but he seemed to be talking about a different set of Rules.

And then there is Desmond, who is a "magical exception" to The Rules regarding time. He has the ability to change the past. But he wasn't on The Island in 1977 at the time of The Incident (i.e., the explosion).

Meanwhile the producers of the show (remember Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are going to be on Jimmy Kimmel tonight; set your DVRs!) have been doing everything they can to hint that the past was changed and thus the plane crash never happened.

Here is how I think tonight's episode will start. It will appear for a while that the explosion succeeded in changing the past; you will see the Losties on the plane enduring some turbulence, the turbulence will subside, and everyone will breathe a sigh of relief. No plane crash!

And then the viewers will realize that they've been conned yet again! The turbulence they've just shown occurred at an earlier point in the flight; the real turbulence (i.e., that caused by Desmond's being late in pressing the button in the hatch) is yet to come.

So the explosion didn't change the past; the explosion caused the need for the hatch to be built as a way to control The Island's energy and thus the need to keep pressing the button to diffuse that energy.

So the explosion will be shown to be the cause (27 years in the future) of their plane crash. The Losties will have set in motion the events that will cause their plane to crash.

So I'm watching David Letterman introduce Simon Baker, star of The Mentalist, and suddenly Paul Shaffer's band plays him on with an up-tempo number that is so familiar.

Except I can't quite identify it.

But it sounds like an R&B song from the 60's or 70's. Probably originally introduced by a black singer. Dionne Warwick? The Supremes?

Is it a Burt Bacharach and Hal David song?

Duh-DAH-duh-Dah-Dah-Dah...

I know the song must have something to do with Simon Baker or his show.

So I Google "Simon Baker play on song David Letterman" to no avail.

I even downloaded some software that purports to identify songs.

No luck.

It's driving me crazy.

So I call my sister and play it for her. It's a bit frustrating because the band doesn't get to play a full refrain; it's cut off in the release.

It doesn't ring any bells with my sister.

So I try humming it to her. [Sorry about that, Donna!]

Still nothing. So we talk for a few minutes, and I ask if she'd listen once more.

This time she hears something. Play it again.

Yes, she definitely recognizes the tune. Some lyrics pop into her head. "Just like a paperback novel..."

OK, now we've got something to Google.

And sure enough, it was just as I suspected.

Except it was Gordon Lightfoot.

And it wasn't originally an R&B song. Well, Paul Shaffer's version confused me.

But it certainly did have a connection to Baker's show.

On Craig Ferguson's show the other night, he featured the old rock band Chicago performing their hit "Saturday in the Park".

Was it just me, or did they look like a bunch of over the hill has-beens trying to recapture their long lost youth?

And I got to thinking, how many times must they have performed that little ditty over the years? And what was that silly looking keyboard the lead vocalist had hanging around his neck?

Out of curiosity, I searched the Google and found this performance of the same song from a few years ago:

They don't look anywhere nearly as desperate or ridiculous in that clip. So maybe on the Ferguson show they were overcompensating for a non-responsive audience. Maybe?

Today apparently is the day for the series finale of Battlestar Galactica. [yawn]

I do not understand the popularity of that show. I'm not talking about its overall ratings, but about the vast number of intelligent people, whose opinions I normally respect, who seem to love the series.

People like Pamela Gay, Phil Plait, Joss Whedon.

Anyway I forced myself to watch for awhile, and by forced, I mean it was sometimes excruciating having to sit through some of the episodes, which seemed to consist mostly of lingering close-ups of Edward James Olmos's face.

Do we have a picture of Olmos?

I'm told that that is not actually a photo of Olmos, but I digress.

The show is written by apparently ignorant people, which is evident from the first few minutes of the pilot which 1) depicts people smoking cigarettes on board a space vehicle and 2) doesn't realize that there are no sounds in space because it is a virtual vacuum. Yes, the show is that frakking stupid.

Normally those idiocies alone would have stopped me from watching it, but as I said, a lot of highly intelligent folks have praised the show.

So I kept at it, until the first episode of its final season, when I couldn't take it any longer.

So to those who enjoy the show, I hope the finale surpasses your expectations.

BTW, one of the few things I actually liked about the show was its invention of the curse word "frak". You instantly knew what it meant by its context. Alas, even that they ended up abusing, by frakking it to death.

As I said, a stupid and boring show.

Last week The Daily Show with Jon Stewart took aim at CNBC and showed how its analysts don't know what they are talking about.

Well, Jim Cramer pushed back, and now Jon Stewart shows just how foolish Cramer really is. Here's the clip: