Hyper Links

There's a new made-for-television golf event called TGL. It's a golf league, though I'm disappointed it doesn't stand for, "The Golf League." I've watched a few times, even though I'm not really a golf fan. I was just curious what it would be like. Strangely, I find it's like looking at an edgy work of art: I'm not entirely sure if I'm enjoying it, but it's so relentlessly weird that I can't look away.

The idea is to repackage golf in a smaller, more viewer-friendly format, with everything taking place in an indoor arena. The courses are all computer-simulated. The golfers tee off, hitting the ball at a big screen showing the virtual fairway. Then the computer figures out from the ball's trajectory where it would have landed. They either hit another drive at the screen, or, if the ball landed on the virtual green, they move to a big putting green, and putt from where the computer said the ball landed. The green can be warped and angled to simulate the lie.

Oh, and it's a team game of match golf.  With fifteen holes for some reason. There's a bunch of other rules that are still a mystery. They sometimes throw a hammer on the green, but I'm still figuring that one out. 

But the basic idea is that it's deconstructed golf: all the parts of golf, but dismantled and crammed into a new form. The shocking part is that I jokingly suggested something similar years ago: I saw a driving range with a mini golf course, and realized it could be a substitute for actual golf. And now, here it is, turned into a televised spectacle.

The whole thing is pretty bizarre. On the one hand, it's like the future we imagined, with people playing simulated sports, surrounded by a wildly enthusiastic audience. Throw in some mortal danger and it would be Rollerball.

But on the other hand, it's lacking in the polish you would expect future sports to have. I can't help thinking there is a weird inconsistency using technology in simulating real golf. Like you have this big mechanical surface that can morph itself into any hypothetical golf green, but it also has sand traps, and they're just plain old sand. Not computer-controlled magnets in the turf increasing the resistance to the golf club to simulate the resistance of sand. No, just a big pit full of sand.

One good thing is that many of the made-up holes are arrangements that would be hard to build in real life, like the tee and the hole are on opposite sides of a canyon. That's fun, but it loses something when it's just simulated, and you're not really watching the heartbreak of the golfer watching the shot come up short and bounce all the way down. Though it might be better if they got even more impossible, like the tee and green are on the roofs of different skyscrapers.

Of course, I'm now wondering what other sports could be deconstructed and remade like this. Auto racing would be an obvious possibility, since it's also a sport that takes up an inconvenient amount of room, and is difficult to watch live. You could have cars on giant treadmills, but that would be dangerous and loud, and even sillier. It would be better if they were just driving simulated cars. But they already have simulated racing; it's been part of eSports for a while now. While it does attract viewers, I don't foresee people packing an arena to watch it. Though it might be fun if — like the simulated golf — they had them drive on crazy, unreal courses. It would also be nice if the drivers could have a casual interaction with one another, like the golfers do in TGL. Maybe people would pay to see live racing simulation if they could hear Verstappen swearing at Hamilton, live and in person. (Lewis Hamilton is an investor in TGL, by the way.)

Of course, that introduces the idea that there would be some sort of interaction through the simulation; a way to get revenge within the sport. Okay, I've just reinvented Mario Kart, haven't I? But seriously, the world's top drivers playing Mario Kart: I would watch that.

Bravo, Encore

Right now, we're seeing ads gleefully telling us that “Bravo is coming to Canada!” Many of us, will then say, “I thought Bravo was already in Canada.” I remember it starting up with a wave of new specialty channels in the nineties.

The explanation is that the original Canadian Bravo that started in the nineties was based on the American Bravo, but with mostly local programming. Each network evolved in its own way in the intervening decades, with the Canadian Bravo eventually rebranded into CTV Drama. This Bravo being advertised now is a new channel, based on the American Bravo as it now exists.

So this is also a good opportunity to observe how cable channels change over time. When the previous Bravo started, it had highbrow content (okay, upper-mid-brow) and targetted as sophisticated audience as TV dares to court. It got a bit watered-down in turning to dramatic series, but in an age of Prestige TV, that didn’t mean much of a shift. That was still my mental picture of Bravo, so imagine my surprise when they attempt to relaunch with ads that are just montages of the trashiest of trashy reality shows. But that’s what Bravo is known for today. So now it all makes sense. In as much as a cable channel starting with the most sophisticated programming and ending up with the most dumbed-down crap available makes any sense.

And that concept turns out to have a name, at least according to Wikipedia. It’s called channel drift. And their article on the concept makes for depressing reading. It’s just one story after another of channels that moved to something less intelligent in search of a big audience. I mean, with so many cable channels, you’d think that there would be a few cases where they moved to programming that was a little smarter. I’m not asking for much, just a channel that switched from live police chases to Law and Order reruns. But no, all of their examples were dumbing down. The closest thing to an intellectual win were some of the failed drifts, like the mass revolt that followed the American Weather Channel’s attempt at showing movies. I suppose you could argue that HBO and AMC became more sophisticated over the years, going from mainstream movies to award-winning TV series, but they seem to have eaten up whatever intellectual demand television has, and there’s nothing left for anyone else.

So it’s time for us in Canada to pay tribute to Moses Znaimer, long-time leader of Toronto’s CityTV, and its stable of cable channels, such as the original Bravo Canada. Yes, their output could be annoying for their look-how-hip-we-are attitude, but at least they had an idea what they wanted to be and delivered that, instead of sacrificing everything to the lowest common denominator. It’s too bad that City was one of the losers in Canada’s media amalgamation Armageddon. Now we’re stuck with no-personality CTV dominating the media landscape instead, and Znaimer is trying to build a new media empire around seniors. But he was a bit unlucky in choosing the name ZoomerMedia, so now he’s struggling to convince people that “Zoomer” is a cool Boomer, not an alternate name for Gen-Z.

The Secret Life Of The Centre Square

 It's kind of depressing how fandom can come and go. I mean, there logically will be a last person alive who still misses Automan, what if it's me? That's why I find it reassuring whenever I see evidence of an old fandom. So if I come across Greatest American Hero fan fiction, I rejoice (but don't read it) because I'm glad to see passion for an older media franchise. And genuine passion too, not just someone name-dropping it to sound eclectic like I just did.

So recently, when I saw a personalized license plate that read "Zsa Zsa G," I found it reassuring. I was never a fan of the actress, Zsa Zsa Gabor, but I'm glad that there's still someone around who misses her. So much so that I'm not going to do the math on the likelihood that it really is a Zsa Zsa Gabor fan, vs just someone named Zsa Zsa G. I don't think there's a big Hungarian community in town, so I'll just go with my initial assumption.

By the way, it's as good a time as any to revisit those 70s-80s pseudo-celebrities. It might seem weird to current generations, but there was a certain type of D-list celebrity that hung around on game shows or did guest spots on sitcoms, or appeared on a talk show in need of a human punchline. Today, we often talk about someone who's "famous for being famous," but that just means they are famous for reality TV or social media. But back then, these people just kept showing up on our TV and we weren't always sure why. 

Of course, those were real people, and in the modern day, we've learned more about them. It’s sort of like  when Dolly Parton was only known for her bustline, and Betty White was just another frequent TV star. It'd be quite a tragedy if society had never seen beyond that. Well, I’ve since learned that Charo was actually quite a good guitarist. Fannie Flagg wrote Fried Green Tomatoes. JM J Bullock lived with HIV for much of his career and co-hosted a talk show with Tammy Faye Bakker. Which reminds me:

Things Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #46:

An actress will win the Best Actor Oscar playing Tammy Faye Bakker.

Anyway, it’s unfortunate timing for that generation of borderline celebrities. Today’s media landscape is just built for such people: Then, they had to make do with guest appearances, but today they’d have reality shows, Hallmark movies, and so many social media followers.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #44

The theme music for Monday Night Football is a cover of “In The Air Tonight” performed by a country star and a rapper.

Rated Xmas

I don't know if you're aware of it, but there's become a whole subculture of TV Christmas movies. Okay, "subculture" isn't really the word for it: in our modern world, we have so many entertainment choices that there can be an entertainment trend that exists on its own and has ardent followers, but much of the public remains oblivious, like Amish Romance. Well that's what has developed here; several specialty channels will be showing nothing but Christmas movies all through November and December. But it's just a few channels, and mostly during the day, so you may not know about them at all. But there are so many - with more being cranked out ever year - that there's apparently a great appetite for them. The Hallmark Channel in the U.S. is making most of them, and here in Canada they've been picked up by several channels with compatible programming. Mainly that's the W Network. Hey, remember when that started and everyone expected it was going to be radical feminism 24/7? Innocent times.

Generally, these are laid-back romantic-comedies, though there isn't even the pretense of going after the bro market, so the stories are very focused on the female character, and not a hint of slap-stick or gross humour. And there's a theme of people finding themselves, finding their love of Christmas, or, a new appreciation for their small town.

Interestingly, they seem to be mostly made in Canada. For one thing, we've become the cheap film capital of the world, and we have snow.  And that leads to something interesting: The stars of these movies are either soap stars, or people who used to be on sitcoms. But most of the supporting cast are Canadian actors. Even if you don't know them, you've seen them in commercials. But the mainly American audience for these movies wouldn't know this, they'd just wonder why the same few people keep popping up in one movie after another, and assume that these folks have somehow decided to specialize in just holiday-related roles.

I've complained in the past about the ubiquity of Christmas, and how long we celebrate it, so you'd think that I'd be really annoyed by these movies. And yet, I'm not. For one thing, I don't hate Christmas, I just hate having it shoved down my throat non-stop. I find that it's quite pleasant having Christmas in nice little parcels that I can take or leave, even if they start early and schmaltzy.

My only complaint is that, as I said, these movies are all variations on a theme, and it would be nice if other networks concentrating on different genres would offer their own Christmas movies. That could be difficult. Like say, there have been only a few Christmas horror movies. And there aren't really any sci-fi Christmas movies beyond Santa Claus Conquers The Martians. And twenty-eight Doctor Who specials. 

Of course, there's a discussion every Christmas about whether Die Hard counts as a Christmas movie, since it doesn't have much in the way of Christmas themes, but does take place on Christmas Eve. I always thought that argument was kind of silly, but perhaps I'm being too harsh. It's just the first of a new wave of Christmas action movies. The next one should be along any time now.

Revenge Is A Dish Best Served A Decade Later

When I was a kid, I was a fan of a sitcom called Silver Spoons. It didn’t make a big pop-cultural impact, so it doesn’t get the nostalgia of a contemporary like, say, Diff’rent Strokes.

It was about a single man-child father trying to raise his estranged son. I should explain that this was when man-child meant a man with a child-like nature, rather than the current definition which would evoke images of Charlie Sheen or President Trump. In today’s terms I’d describe it as a Disney Chanel show back before there was such a thing: aimed at tweens, with a silly but not entirely fantastical premise.

I think one reason I liked it was that it was kind of dorky. I mean, it was a show about a kid trying to survive junior high while also living in a house that had a giant toy train. Somehow I could relate to that better than portrayals of kids happily diving headlong into the world of the teenager.

Of course, dorky doesn’t sell. Well, it didn’t sell in the 80’s. So they introduced a new character. Again, with the wisdom of experience, I can see that they were adding a Scrappy-Doo/Poochie character: someone who had what marketing wanted, but didn’t really fit the show. In this case, it was a cool character that captured the zeitgeist.

And that character was played by Alphonso Ribero. At that time, he was a precocious young teen determined to carve out stardom as a triple-threat, even if no one actually used that term anymore. This was at the height of Michael Jackson’s career, and it really seemed like a he was being promoted as a junior version, a fact underlined in this Pepsi commercial featuring them both.

You’ve probably already figured out the ironic ending to this tale. Silver Spoons and Ribero’s early career faded into obscurity, but then he got another job in another decade. That was on Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, playing the exact opposite character. Fresh Prince would be popular enough to grab a big estate on nostalgia island, and now that’s what he’s remembered for. So now my inner ten-year-old gets some revenge: I was annoyed by Ribero at the time for being shoved in my face as the cool kid, but now he’s remembered for dorkiness. It’s another example of how pop-cultural entities may seem all-powerful and unavoidable at the time, but will end up as fallible as the rest of us in the end.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #40 & 41

#40:

Superhero movies are more popular than ever. That's right, Batman made people forget about Superman IV, and it's been all success from there. Except Batman and Robin, you'll want to skip that one.

Anyway, the point is that now it's not just the biggest names that are getting their own movie franchises, even the more niche characters get big budgets.

#41:

You know Bob Ross, the super laid-back artist with a show on PBS? Sadly, he dies in 1995. But he is still well remembered, and is as much a pop-cultural icon as ever.

Anyway, put those two facts together, and, by 2018, this happens and it doesn't even seem weird:

What The Hell Are You Staring At (On TV)?

Recently we saw a bizarre news story in which fans of the animated series Rick and Morty went crazy over McDonald's Sichuan Sauce (Sichuan? Szechuan? Supposedly "Sichuan" is the new accepted spelling.) The whole thing reached ridiculous proportions when a woman in Michigan traded a packet of the sauce for a 2004 Volkswagen GTI. I mean, I could understand a Golf, but a GTI?

If you haven't seen the whole story, here's what I've pieced together:

• Back in the 90's, McDonald's briefly offered a Sichuan sauce for McNuggets (rumoured to be teriyaki mixed with ketchup) as a tie-in with the movie Mulan.
• Recently, there was an episode of Rick and Morty that focused on an obsession with Sichuan sauce
• McDonalds tried to get on board by offering limited-edition Sichuan sauce for one day
• Perhaps they were trying to set up a Tickle-Me-Elmo style craze, but more likely they just greatly underestimated the popularity of Rick and Morty, and they didn't have nearly enough for the throngs that showed up, some after driving for hours.
• Angry fans vented online. 

I don't want to turn this into a kids-these-days rant, or more precisely, a young-adults-these-days rant. After all, Rick and Morty fits into a longish tradition of cartoons that drop into the sweet spot between children's programming that displays imagination and flexible reality, and the fertile subject matter of the adult world. And I’ve been through that too.

In the past I’ve mentioned Ren & Stimpy being popular in my early years of university. In my later years at school, Teletoon was starting up, and we wasted many hours watching Duckman. Unfortunately, it’s been largely forgotten, but if you've ever wished that Family Guy and South Park had ripped off The Simpsons’ cleverness along with its irreverence, then it was the show for you.

After leaving University and getting my Adulting Licence, I watched a few cartoons in the same vein, such as Undergrads and The Boondocks. But mostly I’ve drifted away from the genre. Recently, I've seen slightly childish adult geeks like myself making references to Archer and Adventure Time, getting that same enjoyment out of it. I do feel a little jealous.

So I actually watched a few episodes of Rick and Morty once it started getting big, and it was indeed a fun show. But it will take a while before I get to the obsessed level. I have no desire for collectable McNugget sauce, though I wouldn't mind a Mr. Meeseeks.

And that's where we get to the kids-these-days part: I can't imagine my generation going this crazy to try to get limited-edition Gritty Kitty brand kitty litter.

So I can't really explain the current obsession. It could be that adult-oriented animation has become a big enough pop-cultural force that it's now attracting a wider swath of society. Where it was once followed by a few bored students, it has now reached a critical mass where it even appeals to a number of extreme fans who will band together to do things others find strange, like swarming a fast-food outlet.

Or it could be that this is just another aspect of society's already crazy priorities. People have long paid ridiculous amounts of money for items of nostalgia. If you don't have money to spend on your obsessions - but you do have time on your hands - then spending a few hours waiting in line at McDonald's for your cultural touchstone makes more sense than spending thousands on a rare lunchbox. Fittingly, some of the more expensive items of pop-cultural nostalgia are old animation cels.

The Fall Of Television

We're seeing ads for this fall's new TV shows. That seems so quaint; it hearkens back to a simpler time when all the shows started at the same time, then half of them were canceled in the first month, like some sort of media Hunger Games. These days it's more complicated, with shows coming out at different times of the year, having breaks mid-year, coming back from the dead, etc.

But we still have some new shows debuting in September the way God intended. It's weird watching them publicized now, because these ads aren't the usual commercials for shows; they have to spell out the premise/catch/novelty of the show. And we watch them knowing that it might be an idea that becomes iconic and gets copied for years to come, or it might be quickly forgotten like some unprepared tribute from district eleven.

The Good Doctor

The ads stress this is the autistic doctor. That's potentially an interesting idea, but it's also derivative of the smart but socially difficult person trend. It was hardly surprising that it was from the makers of House. It could still work, though the ads make it out to be a heavy-handed feel good story, complete with the usual Hollywood intelligence clichés.

Wisdom of the Crowd

Crime dramas are hot; crowdsourcing is hot; let's put them together! Here you have a crowdsourced crime-solving app, and that's the premise. It begs the question: if you have that idea, why would you write a show about it? I'm sure you're there in Los Angeles thinking that it could be a popular show and make you a millionaire, but if you had taken the idea a little ways up the California coast you could have created the thing in real life and become a billionaire.

I'm thinking that the fact that it's only a TV show is kind of an admission that WikiSherlock wouldn't really work. Can you imagine if everyone on the Internet who considers themselves an expert were to try to solve crimes? You'd get false accusations all over the place. If the creators of this show are clever, they'll make that problem part of the show: Rather than your average whodunnit, you also have to wonder if the investigators can be trusted. That could be interesting, though I suspect that this is going to be like watching a CSI episode written by Malcolm Gladwell.

Me, Myself and I

This is a sitcom taking place at three different eras in one man's life. I'm sure I had the same reaction as a lot of people:

• That could be an interesting concept depending on how they execute it, and
• Isn't John Larroquette about a foot taller than Bobby Moynihan? How can they be playing the same person?

Okay, according to IMDB, it's only 9.5 inches. Since that portion of the show is in the future, maybe they'll have cosmetic growth surgery. Really, the whole show comes down to that one question. If they have a wacky/creative explanation, it will probably be an entertaining show, but if they just hope we won't notice, then it's likely just a half-assed hack job.

Young Sheldon

Speaking of time shifting, there's this show about the childhood of Big Bang Theory's Sheldon Cooper. I don't know that there is anything like that before. There could probably be a lot of characters in TV history that could have had the prequel treatment. Speaking of John Larroquette, I would have loved to have seen Night Court's Dan Fielding as a teenager coming of age in the sixties. It just writes itself.

But seriously, I don't see how Young Sheldon can possibly work. Watching a grown up intellectual misfit trying to navigate the world is funny, but watching a child do that is tragic. I know, they probably won't show Sheldon actually getting bullied - except during Very Special Episodes - but that will just be unrealistic even by sitcom standards.

Ripley, Believe It Or Not

So far, here's the reaction I've seen to Doctor Who announcing the first female Doctor:

• 25% people happy about the new casting
• 12% people saying “it’s about time”
• 5% dudebros complaining
• 30% people eagerly anticipating the dudebros complaining
• 20% progressives complaining she isn't also black, Muslim, gay, etc. 
• 5% arguing whether she is now a “Time Lord” or “Time Lady”
• 3% fans trying to correct newcomers ("You call her 'The Doctor,' not  'Doctor Who.'" “Oh,  I get it: it’s only the show that’s called 'Dr. Who’” "No! you have to spell out ‘Doctor!’”)

As you can see, I was pleasantly surprised by how little complaining there was.  Of course, social media is not a representative sample of opinion on anything.  But there are people who were perversely fascinated by especially sexist criticism, and they seemed to be having trouble coming up with particularly extreme examples.  So I’m assuming they didn’t have much to choose from.  Of course, that could be because they’ve been burnt by past campaigns against women in science fiction.

But on the other hand, I’ve been surprised by how many people are acting like this is completely unprecedented. Trekkies are off to the side, waving their arms to get our attention and point out that they did have a female captain for seven years. It’s like when Wonder Woman opened, and people were talking about how this was a new era with a female-led action franchise, there were a number of memes showing Buffy, Xena, and Katniss looking miffed at that. To be clear, I’m not denying that women have been tremendously under-represented as characters in these genres, I’m just curious as to why we keep forgetting the previous steps we’ve taken.

It reminds me of something from the music business. I remember years ago someone pointed out how, at the end of the year, when they’re writing their retrospect stories, they always seem to declare this the Year of the Woman, that this was the year women finally asserted themselves in the music industry because of the success of singer X, singer Y, and Madonna.  And yet, things never seemed to change much, and popular music continued to be male-dominated.

I’d always assumed that was because the music business has women in visible positions, but not powerful positions.  There are lots of women singing songs written by men, being produced and promoted by men, with most of the profits going to men. So we’re constantly overestimating how much real power women have in the industry.

But now I’m not so sure. Maybe we do have a problem with shifting our perspective in response to incremental progress. That’s not too surprising, really, since our ideas about the state of the world are deeply ingrained. And humans are notoriously bad at noticing slow, steady change. So I guess the lesson here is to revisit our assumptions more often.

All Your Life Is Channel 13

There's been a lot of talk about how Sesame Street is introducing a muppet character with autism. That fits the strategy they often use, of demonstrating something from the real world using their characters.

I was thinking that's a pretty good idea; its a concept that kids won't know very well, and this will help them to understand it and learn how to deal with people with autism.  Of course, then I realized, that's actually a lesson most of us in society need to learn.  This isn't a case of teaching kids how to cross the street, which the rest of us learned a long time ago.  In this case, it's something everyone should have learned, but we grew up before they invented empathy.

So perhaps we need a sort of Sesame Street for adults. Okay, that sentence probably took you to a very strange place that I did not intend, and I apologize. What I mean is, we need a show that explains the modern world to us in the same simple way. There could be a trans muppet, a millennial muppet, senior muppet, poor muppet, Trump-voter muppet. We'd learn about everyone in society, and the proper way a mature adult behaves towards them.

Yes, I guess our actual TV shows occasionally do this very thing, usually during A Very Special Episode.  But we need something faster and more direct.  And perhaps teach people other basic things, from balancing a bank account to downloading apps. Hmm, what else to people need help with...learning that the Earth is round?  Okay, maybe we all need to go back to watching the actual Sesame Street instead.

Cashing-In Their Chips

There's a new Chips movie coming out - oh, I'm sorry, I mean CHiPs. It's based on the 70's/80's TV show.  Though really, it's not a movie of the TV series, it's a spoof of the series. Though really, it's not a spoof of the series, it's a generic "dumb guys" movie where the characters are named after the ones in the original.

I don't really like this idea of reviving pop-culture artifacts just to make fun of them.  No, I wasn't a fan of the original show, nor do I believe that anything is above satire.  But we're not talking about an SNL sketch here, we're talking about a movie that probably cost more than the entire series' combined budget, aimed at the children of the people who watched the original.  That really seems like kicking them when they're down.

The thinking behind it is transparent: they get the name recognition of an existing property, but don't have to worry about offending or alienating legions of fans.  Somewhere out there are people who still take the show seriously, and are probably really angry right now, but it doesn't matter to the studios, since they don't make up much of the movie-going population.

I actually feel a little sorry for them.  Sure, they don't have great taste in TV, but they're getting thrown under the bus just because they're aging and few in number.  And the fact is that we're all going to be in their position eventually.  We all have our guilty pleasures in entertainment, and they'll all make for easy fodder for lazy movies.

Fan Of The Fans

Recently, I've written posts on both Stargate and Gilmore Girls. And in the process, I've also mentioned Buffy the Vampire Slayer and fan-fiction. That brings up something interesting I found about ten years ago.

I read an article about the world of fan-fiction; specifically, the sheer size of the subculture, and the fact that pretty much every story in every medium has at least a little fan fiction written about it. Yes, even movies and TV shows you barely remember have fan-fiction. Do you remember MVP, the CBC's short-lived soap about hockey players' wives? Well a couple of people cared enough to write about it.

Having never been exposed to this, I found it fascinating to see a site with reams and reams of fan-authored stories. I didn't read much of the fiction itself, but it was interesting to see what kinds of franchises attracted writers. It wasn't necessarily the most popular things. Also, it wasn't necessarily the worlds that traditionally captured fan imaginations: for instance, both Star Wars and Star Trek were at low ebbs during those early 2000's, so they didn't attract the attention you'd expect. I'm sure that if Internet-spread fan fiction had existed throughout the twentieth century, those two would have built-up story reserves that will never be eclipsed.

Anyway, the aforementioned shows, Stargate SG-1, Gilmore Girls, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were the three TV shows that had the most stories written about them. That made me wonder what the common bond that attracts a fan-fiction writer would be. Witty writing? Smart female characters? I suspected the subculture has female-skewed demographics, and apparently statistics confirm it.

The question stuck in my mind because they also have another thing in common: I was a fan of each of them. So apparently, I look for the same things in TV shows that fan-fiction writers do. That's kind of odd, since I've never really had a desire to write fan-fiction. (Though now that you mention it, I've got some great ideas for a Stargate/Gilmore/Buffy crossover.)

But since I'm revisiting the issue, I though I'd go back and see what the most popular shows are now. Here's the top ten shows that have the most fan-fiction stories written about them:

1. Supernatural
2. Glee
3. Doctor Who
4. Sherlock
5. Buffy: The Vampire Slayer
6. Once Upon a Time
7. NCIS
8. Vampire Diaries
9. Criminal Minds
10. Stargate: SG-1

Again, not a lot in common, other than female viewership. But now I have some future binge-watch targets.

The NeverEnding Story

They're now bringing back Gilmore Girls for a short run on Netflix. Yes, it's been off the air for a decade; this new series is going to take place years later, rather than pick up where the old show left off.  I was a fan of the original show, so this is something I'll probably watch if I ever subscribe to Netflix.  Hopefully that will be before they're ready to do a series with Lorelai and Rory in the Stars Hollow rest home.

Bringing back a show is an interesting concept, continuing a show in a different period in the characters' lives. On the one hand, it sounds like an intriguing premise: you can really explore characters in great depth if you examine how they change in the long run.

And it’s an interesting format that we don’t normally get to see in storytelling media: looking at characters over a long period of time. An epic book (or a long series of books) is the only place we’re likely to see it. Sure, there are movies that try to encompass an entire life, but there usually isn’t enough time to look in depth at the characters in a couple of hours.

But the problem is, we are used to the idea that once a story is over, the characters are free to our imagination. For instance, JK Rowling’s elaborations and extensions to the Harry Potter stories have often been resented by fans. It shouldn’t really matter: she dreamt the whole thing up, so there shouldn’t be anything wrong with telling us more about the world she envisioned when writing. But still, if you’ve imagined that world in a certain way, it feels like interference to be told you’re wrong, even if it’s the author that’s telling you. And even if you aren’t a fan-fiction-writing fanboy, you’ve still probably got some sort of unconscious vision of the story. Imagine that the creators of Cheers suddenly announced that somewhere out there, Sam Malone is having heart bypass surgery right now, that would be strangely disorienting, even if it has no impact on you.

So perhaps there’s something to be said for creating something and leaving it at that. Though I suspect that’s just because we’re accustomed to stories having a finite lifespan. Between reboots, spinoffs, and sporadic streaming programming, we may have to start getting used to open-ended narratives. Perhaps we should start getting used to the idea that characters keep coming back. And hopefully, the lure of unending profitability will urge creators to make deeper characters that have staying power.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #36

In 2016, Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg will co-host a cooking show. And that won't even be one of the top 100 craziest things to happen that year.

It's The History Eraser Button, You Fool!

As a fan of the Stargate franchise, I was delighted to see that new trilogy of Stargate movies probably won't happen.

If you're confused, here's how it happened: Stargate was a 1995 science fiction movie from director Roland Emmerich, a poor man's Michael Bay. It was built around Kurt Russell and the premise that the Egyptian god Ra was an alien enslaving humans. It didn't have a lot going for it other than that, except for some impressive (for the time) visuals and action set-pieces.

A few years later, someone thought it would be a good premise for a TV spinoff. The idea got handed to some new people, and they came up with a complex backstory for all the cool looking stuff in the movie, added and rewrote characters, and injected a lot of humour.

The result was a show that was far superior to its inspiration in every way except special effects. On the list of TV spinoffs that exceeded their movie inspirations, it's a solid number two behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Okay, Westworld has probably pushed it to number three, but you get the picture. It maintained a cult following, and lasted ten seasons, and spun off a further two series.

But in Hollywood's current attitude that absolutely anything with any name recognition must be made and remade as much as possible, Emmerich arranged to restart the movie series. The catch here is that he was going to ignore the TV shows and start over where the original movie left off.

Of course, in today's media landscape, reboots and rewriting are an accepted hazard of fandom. Different franchises have had their own ways of dealing with it:

• Star Trek - we'll start a new timeline, so we can change everything and pretend we're not changing anything. Your beloved characters are safe and sound and unchanged in their own timeline that we're never going to use again.
• Star Wars - we'll drop all the peripheral stuff that only the hard-core fans know about anyway. But the main story from the movies won't change at all. What about the prequels? Well, you know, it's like...look, is that Baba Fett?
• Batman - just accept that each generation the same story gets retold, but darker.
• Doctor Who - People used to think it was silly to have a show that reboots itself every few years, but you're not laughing now, are you?

But in Stargate's case, it seems a little more severe. Rather than change the actors or the tone, this would have rewritten the story, premise, and style. And I know it doesn't really matter; creating a new story with the same name and a superficial resemblance shouldn't take away from my enjoyment of the franchise as it was.

But in today's pop-cultural world fandom is part of the experience. It's expected that there's going to be discussion on the Internet, extra stories in other media, and humourous in-jokes with fellow fans for years to come. Really, that's the most troubling thing about reboots and remakes: the idea that your part of the pop-culturesphere is going to be paved over to make way for someone else's experience.

Lies, Damned Lies, And Satire

Jimmy Fallon is taking a lot of flack for his interview with Donald Trump, in which he ruffled Trump's hair, asked him a bunch of softball questions, and generally made him look like a regular human being.  That might not seem fair, given that he hosts a talk show, and a fairly light-hearted one at that.  But at the same time, in our Post-Stewart world, the lines between satire and news reporting have been blurred, and we're used to the idea that humourists often say the things that reporters are afraid to.

But there's a bigger issue here, and that is that politicians and voters have blurred the lines between entertaining and campaigning.  As this American election keeps proving, most people vote based on feelings rather than anything logical.  An oft-used test is that people are looking for the candidate they'd most like to have a beer with.  When you look at it that way, you realize that even a relaxed talk show appearance is image construction. It's more important to the candidate as any hard-hitting interview with a journalist, because it has more of an impact on what the public cares about.  So really, even entertainers like Fallon have to consider the political impact of politicians on the show, since the candidates are considering the impact of the show on their campaign.

Another campaign media development got people talking, though this was in the more traditional news media.  It was a New York Times report on the now-infamous press conference in which Donald Trump relented on the Birther issue, but then tried to pin it all on Hilary Clinton and take credit for putting an end to the controversy.  As you hopefully know, Clinton has never had anything to do with the Birther concept, so that was a brazen lie, even by Trump's standards.

What was interesting in the Times' coverage was that they just came right out and said, in their coverage on the front page, that it was a lie. That's unusual, because the way journalism has operated recently is that the media reports what both sides say, without any implication as to who is right, except perhaps on the op-ed page or some other in-depth reporting deep within the paper. It was only a small thing, but it represented quite a philosophical shift, so this could be a big turning point for the paper, if not all of journalism.

And now let's put together those two topics of talk shows handling the election and the discarding of journalism's misguided attempt at neutrality. Often is seems as though late night hosts are having the same struggles as journalists: they're trying to be even-handed, joking about both sides equally.  For one thing, that's proving difficult.  For all her imperfections, Hilary Clinton isn't a goldmine of comedy, as David Letterman's interminable pantsuit jokes proved.

But the other problem is the same one journalists face, that it's hard to hit both sides when one is a whole lot crazier than the other. It's interesting to see how they handle it. The venerable Daily Show hasn't always handled it well.  Of course, they've gone after Trump far more often, but they tend to stick to the idea that this is just a weird election.  Compare that to their alumni Samantha Bee and John Oliver, who take an approach that's more like, "I can't believe this is happening, am I the last sane person in America?"

Not to speak ill of the dead, but I was really turned-off of The Nightly Show in its final months as they struggled to find a position on the election.  Their writers and cast were firmly in the Bernie Sanders camp, and it often seemed like they were working harder against Clinton than against Trump. And speaking of Daily Alumni, Stephen Colbert seems a bit undecided about how to approach this election.  At times he seems to be able to put together the clever critiques that made him famous, and you can really feel how he's feeling more comfortable with the material than he is trying to do light chatting with the band leader.  But at other times, Colbert tries to walk the line and appeal to everyone. He tries desperately to channel Jay Leno, but it just isn't him, nor is it what we need right now.

The big pleasant surprise has been Seth Meyers.  For one thing, it's surprising because he's at NBC, which is also the home of the aforementioned Fallon, and fellow Trump pawns, Saturday Night Live.
It's also surprising because I had thought he was a bit of a lightweight contender in this golden age of televised political satire. But he's often the most effective voice when it comes to calling Trump on his antics. That's in terms of both humour and in drawing out precisely what is wrong with that day's controversies.  It makes me sorry about the post last year when I accused him of nerd-self-hatred.

Not Apparent

So the Emmys happened this weekend.  As a Canadian geek, I mostly only cared that Tatiana Mislay won best actress for Orphan Black. But I also saw that Jeffrey Tambor won best actor in a Comedy for Transparent, for the second straight year. That's going to be a bit controversial, since that program, despite being about a trans woman, is not popular with all transgender people.

See, they're kind of ticked that their story is being told by a cismale actor and a cisfemale show runner, rather than hire actual transgender people.  That dislike of the program went into overdrive after Tambor's Emmy win, because he used his acceptance speech to call on Hollywood to hire more trans people.  On the one hand, good on him for calling for that, but on the other hand, he is taking one of those potential jobs, so it comes off as hypocritical.

So I can understand why people would be angry with the show.  But I've been bugged by the complete dismissal that I've seen in online discussion. That is, there's an attitude that because this show is not coming directly from transfolk themselves, that renders the show useless.  Or worse, it's condemned as worse than nothing, because it's seen as the mainstream assimilating a culture.

But I don't buy the idea that it's not doing anything positive.  The fact is that there is a positive effect of helping people get inured to a group of people who are different.  A lot of prejudice comes from fear and uncertainty, and as I've mentioned before, that lack of experience is going to be a problem for transgender people seeking acceptance.  Though Transparent may have problems for other reasons, getting cis people to see a trans character on a popular TV program will go a long way to making them less mysterious and thus less scary. That positive effect doesn't go away just because it's not the oppressed group themselves doing the storytelling.

Smallball

Last night, while I couldn't sleep, I discovered TSN was showing Futsal, the indoor form of soccer. For those of us of a certain age who remember indoor soccer in North America, no, this isn't the same thing. It's played on a something akin to a basketball court, with hard surface, small dimensions and no walls.

Why doesn't this happen more often? After all, TSN has five channels, they don't all have to show endless repeats of SportsCentre all night. I assume the Canadian rights to the Futsal World Cup  didn't cost much.  It was probably less than TSN pays the guy who keeps pressing the button to replay SportsCentre all night. Why not show unusual sports from elsewhere in the world: This particular game was Morocco vs. Azerbaijan, which adds to the sense that I've stepped into a parallel earth.

I have to say, it's a pretty entertaining sport. It's fast-moving, there's a lot of individual skill involved, and the tactics are easier to see than they are in regular soccer. I guess you can think of this as like Arena Football: a concentrated version of the big sport.  If you're willing to stretch the concept a little, there are several other sports that are "mini" versions of other sports:

• volleyball - beach volleyball
• tennis - table tennis
• speed skating - short track speed skating
• Rugby - Rugby Sevens

Looking at what they mostly have in common, it would seem that the general idea is:

• fewer players
• less space
• less time
• faster action and quicker reaction times
• common sense fixes that can't be made in the big sport because of tradition

I wonder if other sports could use a small version. Basketball is already a small indoor sport, so I don't think you could apply the formula there. Mini baseball? You'd have to create a way of preventing the ball from going far; perhaps use a badminton shuttlecock.

As for hockey, it could use a small version. A while back I saw an article about how the TV ratings for hockey in the US were not much better than those of Arena Football. That made me wonder: if you invented a smaller version of hockey, one more easily marketed to Americans, could it get bigger than hockey? If it was, you could pay more than NHL teams, and start drawing players away. And so that's been my fantasy that I go back to whenever the sport's dark side shows up: destroying not just the NHL, but the whole sport, and forcing Canada's beloved hockey heroes to play by my dorky rules for the benefit of Americans.

But putting aside my sports business revenge fantasies, I think you could make a fun alternate version of hockey on a basketball/futsal sized court (so presumably on rollerblades.) I'm thinking:

• three-on-three
• much shorter periods
• smaller rosters
• bigger nets

It'll be like watching the All-Star game all the time.  Fans of physical play won't like it, but it should be entertaining. Any crazy Canadian billionaires out there interested in bankrolling it?

Disaster Area Is On Larry Sanders Tonight

I've always found it interesting when there is some sort of media within media. I mean things like Itchy and Scratchy, which is a fictitious show within the Simpsons universe. It just seems kind of sureal when pop-culture has to look inward and create fake versions of itself. I mean, Itchy and Scratchy is probably better remembered than many actual TV shows, even though it never really existed. It was a great satire of American cartoons, but it's also fascinating when they do a bad job of creating the fictional media, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. That often happens when they need to create a musician that exists within the story. You can read about plenty of them in the Rocklopedia Fakebandica.

I had that experience recently while watching a Frasier rerun. There was a brief scene with Dr. Crane dealing with noise from his upstairs neighbour, who turns out to be a rock star, I believe named Johnny Chainsaw. It's kind of surprising he'd have such problems, since people have speculated about how preposterously expensive his condo must be, given its spaciousness and perfect view of the Space Needle. I assumed that such expensive digs were immune to these mundane troubles.

But there were plenty of unrealistic aspects. For one thing, the music was rock, and it was coming through fairly clearly; as someone who's had troubles with loud neighbours I can tell you that it's really only bass that gets through building materials, particularly with dance and hip hop. But it made me think about how rock was depicted in 80's and 90's sitcoms. It was always shown in a very superficial way, only used for cheap jokes about noise or uncivilized teenagers. To be clear, I wasn't expecting a backstory about the upstairs neighbour. And no, I wasn't expecting a nod to the Seattle Scene, as that wouldn't really fit with the show. Though strangely, that's the first time I've ever realized how weird it is that the city's two claims to 90's pop-cultural fame were so different. Great, now I'm going to be thinking about that all day.

But back to my point: this isn't the first time I've encountered this sort of vague, inaccurate depiction of rock in other media. In particular, there seems to be a specific type of rock that never existed anywhere outside the imaginations of Baby-Boomers. It's a kind of atonal blending of punk, glam, and heavy metal that clearly exists for no reason than to annoy others. Of course, the interesting aspect to this fake rock is that it tells us how older people saw the rock of the 80's and 90's. It was kind of a vague vision of unfocused rebellion, with no notice taken of the variations or nuances.

I don't know if early rock got a similar treatment from the media of the 50's and 60's. I haven't seen many episodes of I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners; did they have references to the music young people were listening to? The impression I get is that in that era people preferred to ignore what they didn't like rather than address it or even ridicule it.

Also, I haven't noticed a similar approach to hip hop in recent decades. I guess that's because traditional sitcoms are fewer and farther between. And because it's harder to work it into shows that are dominated by white casts. Too bad, that would have been fun to watch white writers creating a fake rapper every few seasons.