A "10" For All Time

I've been thinking about how much I am going to miss the summer lineup of shows that I have been enjoying over the last few seasons: Warehouse 13, White Collar, Royal Pains, Burn Notice, In Plain Sight, Cake Boss, Haven, and others.

So much so, that I am indifferent to the return of shows that I was crazy about when the season ended.

I wrote earlier this year about being sad about the demise of Law and Order, and yet I am completely indifferent to the return of L&O:Criminal Intent, and L&O: SVU, both previously real favorites.  House? Who cares? 

Wait, what?  House has been one of my favorite shows of all time. What's going on here?

I think USA is on to something that was picked up by the producers of Fringe, and the folks at SyFy:  people would rather see a mini-season of all-new episodes than a whole season of new shows interspersed with repeats.  I have been enjoying a batch of USA summer shows this year, and am looking forward to their winter seasons more than I am the fall crop of  "regular" shows.

Matthew Bomer, who plays ex-con Neil Caffrey in USA's White Collar, is one of the best reasons to watch television since George Clooney left ER.  He is certainly a "10" by anyone's standard.  Many of the other characters in the other USA shows are also attractive.

It is true that eye candy is not enough to keep you watching a show that stinks on every other level, but these shows are smart and funny, and their casts work well together. The "family" dynamic among Mark Feuerstein, Paulo Costanzo, and the incomparable Henry Winker of Royal Pains is priceless.  The episode of Burn Notice that reunited Cagney (Sharon Gless, a series regular) and Lacey (Tyne Daly) was delightful.

Networks, are you listening?  There is a reason your viewership is dropping off. If you continue in your present format, network television will be deader than the proverbial doornail in just a couple of years.

This all got me to thinking about TV, and so I revisited a place I have not been in quite a while: TV.com. I was a regular there in 2006, and wrote a number of reviews of shows and episodes, and some blog posts about generically TV-related things.

One of those posts focused on the ratings that they ask you to give to your favorite shows. Entitled, "What is a 10, Anyway?" I talked about the difference between shows that may be your super fave right now, versus shows that were so outstanding for whatever reason that they deserve to be a "10" for all time.

Read the article here: "What is a 10, Anyway?"  What makes a show a "10" to you? Or are any of them good enough for that coveted designation?


 

Utterly Off Topic Wednesday - You Escaped, Number 6

While surfing around on yet another blog surfing site called Condron.us. I was saddened today to learn of the death of Patrick McGoohan. He was 80 years old. Same age as my father-in-law would have been had he not smoked himself to death in 1993.

Patrick McGoohan's Number Six was one of my favorite characters in all of television. It has been 40 years since he captivated me for seventeen episodes of "The Prisoner", a bizarre and mysterious show about a man who was kidnapped from his home in London and finds himself in a creepy Stepford village where nobody has an identity, and he is known only as Number Six.

According to TV.com member mac-a-licious, The Prisoner was a

Kafkaesque drama of a man with acess to his nation's intelligence secrets who, after resigning his post in anger is kidnapped and taken to a mysterious village where he is repeatedly asked to give information, particularly the reason for his resignation.

A show of unusually high technical quality for its time, particularly for British independent television. Created by it's starring actor, Patrick McGoohan, who had previously starred in the series Secret Agent/Danger Man as the morally responsible intelligence officer John Drake, The Prisoner was a close-ended series each episode dealing with a moral or ethical quandary while detailing the protagonists latest attempt to escape or to beat his nemesis du jour. One of the pleasures of the show was its use of gimmicks and inside jokes, some of which could not be appreciated until the introduction of home video more than a decade after the show aired. Among these are that almost no characters were referred to by name but by number (the central charactor was "Number 6"), a takeoff on the hokey theme song for Secret Agent with its refrain "They've given you a number, and taken 'way your name." Others include a regular change of the actors who portrayed the arch nemesis, Number 2, as each number 2 was defeated by number 6. And veiwers were soon to love "Rover", a monstrous security robot that sometimes killed escapees. A remake of the series is underway: as usual with such I simply ask why?

Ugh. Until I read this review I didn't know they were going to do a remake. Even with Jim Caviezel as Number 6, and the quantum leap in techanical wizardry which will make the Village even more surreal and mysterious, there is no way to recreate the campy '60s atmosphere and acting. Neither is there any way to recreate the precise persona Patrick McGoohan brought to the character of Number 6.

Well, I shall miss you. Time to drag out the DVDs and pay tribute to one of the most original television series ever aired.

A little Homeschool Humor

Seen at the home school conference at Sandy Cove this year. Our Speaker was Todd Wilson of Familyman Ministries and the author of "Help! I'm married to a Homeschooling Mom!" and several books of cartoons that had me wetting my pants.

This is a lot funnier when you are a homeschooler, and you have experienced the pressure not only from the skeptics outside the homeschool community but from the people inside our wonderful community I once heard Mike Farris describe as "homier-than-thou."

You know the ones. Their seven children all have matching perfectly sewn clothes, they make their own bread and they don't own a TV. They may even buy 50 lb. bags of wheat berries from a wholefoods coop and grind their own grain. If they have girls, they are wearing matching jumpers and their hair is perfectly combed.

Compared to these people, my life is more like Everybody Loves Raymond...

Hmm. I have to be careful which show I pick. If I say, "The Simpsons", everyone will think my kids are wild and undisciplined and my husband is a doofus. They might even think I actually WATCH "The Simpsons."

And I certainly can't let anyone know I let my son watch **BLIPPED OUT** (Sorry, I was going to write the name and then changed my mind - the stakes are too high). For that matter, maybe I shouldn't mention any show. Someone might be offended that I watch TV at all.

Then there are those on the Other Side. You know, the ones who think the public schools are too conservative. The Homeschoolers for Obama. (What planet are they on, again?) They will think it is ridiculous that I care whether someone is offended. Oh, wait. Maybe they were offended because they thought I said Obama is on another planet...or maybe...