Dead woman's dancer

The show: American Dad!
The episode: "Moon Over Isla Island"
What happened: Stan tricks Roger into impersonating the brutal dictator of a small island nation near Cuba. Before the citizens can fulfill their wish to assassinate their dictator, Roger and Stan escape, and a skilled dancer takes over as dictator. A title card at the end tells us that he became the country's most brutal dictator ever, known as "el bailarin de la muerta."
What's wrong with that: My Spanish is rusty, but I can tell there is something is off about that phrase "el bailarin de la muerta." I put that into Babelfish and it gave "the dancer of the dead." Hmm. Did the writers mean to translate "the dancer of Death" to Spanish? Turns out that they were off by one vowel: "el bailarin de la muerte." Put that into Babelfish and you will get "the dancer of the death." Not quite, but a little closer than before.

Are you sure you want to take credit for failure?

It's not a good sign that I'm nitpicking the news a lot more often than I intended to.

ABC News, CNN, NBC News, etc., are reporting that al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the failed plane bombing this past Christmas. I'm skeptical: why would a terrorist organization claim responsibility for a terror plot that failed? As you probably know by know, Umar what's his name brought explosives aboard a plane headed for Detroit and burned himself trying to detonate. The plan wasn't foiled by the Air Marshall aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253, or anyone armed. It was foiled by the other passengers!

By claiming responsibility for such a failure, al-Qaeda would be saying "Hey, watch out, we can put our idiots on planes to embarrass themselves!" Ooh, I'm scared.

Brittany Murphy, im memoriam

It's hard to believe that the young Brittany Murphy has been dead for a week now. But the news comes from reputable sources, many of which then go on to list her most memorable rôles, namely Tai on Clueless, Luanne Platter on several episodes of King of the Hill, Alex on 8 Mile, Sarah on Just Married, Daisy on Girl, Interrupted.

She was a very good actress, and there are many other films to remember her in besides the obvious ones mentioned in the various news stories. The one I would like to draw your attention to is The Ramen Girl, directed by Robert Allan Ackerman. Murphy is Abby, a spoiled American who is magically drawn to a ramen shop, taking her on a journey that turns her into a master ramen chef. The film is in English and Japanese, but don't let the presence of subtitles put you off from it. It's a very nice film.

Early in her career, Murphy had guest rôles in several TV shows: Murphy Brown, Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Blossom, Frasier, Party of Five, Sister, Sister, SeaQuest DSV to name just a few. And let's not forget that on King of the Hill she also voiced Joseph Gribble before the boy's voice changed.

Soap opera pace: interspersing glacial and warp speed

There's a small handful of soap operas I occasionally tune in to, and this past week they have all had various Christmas decorations in the background and allusions to Christmas. And I'm pretty sure they also exhibited that Christmas theme around this same time last year. But in between, the pace has been so glacial that I have a hard time believing that taken at face value the plots of these soap operas have really progressed a full year. Some soap operas, like Days of Our Lives, give me the impression that the plot of each 45-minute episode (not counting commercials) advances the story a lot less than 45 minutes. "What is it you were going to tell me?" asks one character in one scene. Zoom in on the worried person being asked that question. Cut to another scene, which probably also ends with an unanswered question. Then we cut back to the first scene. "Oh, I was just going to remind you about this thing, but it's not important anymore." Can you honestly believe those two characters spent two minutes just staring at each other?

How to name fictional towns in Iraq

Those of you who write JAG or NCIS fanfiction will sooner or later have to name fictional towns in Iraq. There's Baghdad, that's the capital, and even despite our bombing the bejesus out of it, it still lacks that truly rural flavor some of you may want for your fanfics. The problem with picking a real town out of a map is that a soldier or Marine who's actually been there could nitpick your fanfic to death.

So what you do is invent a town in Iraq with the necessary parameters. It has one well, a few camels, whatever you need for your story. What do you call your fictional town? They've had that problem on JAG, and here's their solution: put the letters A, F, I, K, T into a hat. (You can put I in twice if you want). Shake the hat a little, then draw out the letters. In whatever order the letters come out, that's your town. What if you get the three consonants in a row? Just shift one of them out of the way. That's how JAG's writers came up with Tikifa for the episode in which the SecNav is tried in an international court, and Tifka for the episode in which Pfc. Smithfield gets killed and Harm fails at making Bush's "stay the course" doctrine sound any less stupid.

Blue Harvest

With "Something, Something, Something Dark Side" due out next week, I think it would be appropriate to review the previous installment of Family Guy's homages to the classic Star Wars trilogy.

The title of that first installment already gives cause for a nit: based on the first episode to be released, Episode IV, A New Hope, the Family Guy homage is titled "Blue Harvest," which was the code-name for Return of the Jedi, not A New Hope. Do you buy Seth MacFarlane's explanation that they didn't know if their homage would be successful and if then they would have to make the other two installments? Heck, they'll probably even have to make installments for the prequel trilogy. But at this point, the only previous material unquestionably suitable for reference in nitpicking is the film A New Hope itself.

After that there is the matter of assigning Family Guy characters to Star Wars characters. The most obvious choice for Luke and Leia are Chris and Meg. However, the Family Guy writers are so dead set on using Meg for a punching bag, that Meg couldn't be Leia, she had to be a monster in the trash compactor. Instead, Lois is Leia. So family correspondence does not matter for the choice, fine. Still, I was troubled by the choice of the pedophile Herbert for the noble Obi-Wan Kenobi. And I think a fat Darth Vader (Peter) would've been funnier than a short one (Stewie), but I have to concede that Peter makes an excellent Han Solo.

There is also the matter of which version of the movies to use as the source text: the classic edition of 1977 or the Special Edition of 1997? The decisive question of who shot first in the cantina provides the answer: Han/Peter shoots at Greedo first, as in the classic edition, which makes more sense to a nitpicker anyway. Greedo must be a real retard to shoot first and miss! How can such a lousy shot make it as bounty hunter worthy of being hired by Jabba? (To refresh my memory on Greedo's background, I went to starwars.com; I wouldn't trust Wikipedia or even the Wookiepedia—ugh! But note that starwars.com emphasizes that Greedo shot first and missed.)

The following are from the IMDb, at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0888817/goofs. I will give my running commentary as I go along.

"Continuity: A cloud appears in front of one of Tatooine's twin suns too quickly (possibly a deliberate error since the same thing happens in the actual movie.)" OK, whatever. I've never noticed that and it probably wouldn't bother me if I did.

"Revealing mistakes: When Peter [Han] and Chris [Luke] are getting the couch out of the trash compactor, Brian [Chewbacca] and Lois [Leia] are standing on top surface of the garbage water." Didn't notice that either but that's a worthier nit.

"Continuity: At the Cantina bar, Han Solo is the last character to leave for the Millennium Falcon, but somehow manages to get there before everyone else." Whatever.

"Continuity: When Peter (Han Solo) and Chris (Luke Skywalker) attempt to get the couch out of the trash compactor, somehow Chris gets his end of the couch out but Peter can't get his." I'm willing to give a pass on this one.

"Continuity: During a light saber duel between Obi Wan (Herbert) and Darth Vader (Stewie), Darth Vader uses a red light saber. After killing Obi Wan, Darth Vader is seen with a blue light saber as stormtroopers fire on the Millennium Falcon as it departs. In the next shot that shows Darth Vader, he is again holding a red light saber." That's a good one.

"Continuity: After the light saber duel between Herbert (Obi Wan) and Stewie (Darth Vader), Brian (Chewbacca) and Peter Griffin (Han Solo) run out with the couch. When they are arguing with each other on how to get the couch into the Millennium Falcon, the laser blasts are actually going the wrong way. The Storm Troopers are on the right of them firing to the left, but the the laser blasts are coming from the left of them and going right. You can clearly see there wasn't any Storm Troopers on the left of them as they were running to the ship." Fine, I'll accept this one.

Nitpicker-proofing the Tonight Show

As of last week, Cody Deveraux, the brooding vampire on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, has committed suicide nine times (or ten times, I don't know, I lost count somewhere). And I laugh every time, even though he meets his death in exactly the same way, exposed to the same sun in the same cloudless sky.

He appeared again last night, and once again ran out of the stage to meet his death in the sun. But as Conan had remarked earlier in the show, it had rained in Los Angeles that day, and the temperature had dropped to a frosty 61 degrees. This prompted Andy Richter to nitpick the bit right on the show, mentioning not only the rain but also the fact that Cody has died nine times prior. Actually, he said ten, but the point is that Cody has died before multiple times. In response, Conan wondered that this is the point at which the bit lost credibility for Andy.

Conan makes a lot of predictable jokes. Yes, Larry King is old, Kristie Alley is fat, New Jersey stinks, big whoop, move on. But I still laugh about the vampire and the wolf boy. And for what it's worth, I'd go crazy for the wolf boy but not the vampire.

Nitpickers wanted for new Oprah's recommendations

As America's new Oprah, Conan O'Brien has recommended Killdozer and three movies from the Leprechaun series, including the two sequels with the confidence-inspiring titles Leprechaun: Back 2 the Hood and Leprechaun 4: Leprechaun in Space. I am slightly inclined to watch Killdozer. But I have no interest whatsoever in watching any of the Leprechaun movies. Leonard Maltin's guide actually rates the first movie "BOMB" but gives the second a star and a half (and doesn't even dignify the rest with a mention). Interestingly, Jennifer Aniston was in the first Leprechaun movie but not the second. I wonder if she was asked to come back to the second one?

My collaborator, Bill Thomas, has no interest in watching any of the Leprechaun movies, nor Killdozer. Bill Berg is not returning my e-mails. So if anyone out there has seen those movies and is willing to nitpick them (which of course requires accepting their basic premise, no matter how preposterous), they're welcome to join my team.

Punchingbaggis personae

Since very early on in Family Guy, Meg Griffin (Mila Kunis) has been a punching bag. But this tendency, which was latent from close to the beginning, became excessively pronounced when the show returned after being canceled.

Now it seems that every single character on the show will become a punching bag. The next one to receive this treatment, of a character beating as relentless as it is predictable, is Brian. The pre-cancelation episode "Brian Does Hollywood" planted the seed for this new attitude to Brian: instead of a straight man foil to Peter's lunacy, now Brian is continuously hounded for his mediocre writing and general pretentiousness.

In "Jerome is the New Black," aired a couple of Sundays ago, we find Brian inexplicably concerned that Quagmire doesn't like him. The episode culminates in an unfunnily long speech from Quagmire listing all of Brian's faults, which of course includes a dig at Brian's pretense of being a great writer. Brian comes home devastated, and Stewie soon comes to regret asking Brian to sleep in his room. Then, in "Dog Gone," as if it wasn't bad enough that Brian's novel Faster Than the Speed of Love supposedly didn't sell a single copy even with the endorsement of Oprah's Book Club, we now find that a book club for retards actually loves the book.

I can only speculate which character will be the next target of the punching treatment. But I predict that it will not be funny or at least entertaining.

Trying to verify Stewie's confirmed kills

In last night's new episode of Family Guy, trying to make Brian not feel so bad about having killed a dog while drunk behind the wheel of his Prius, Stewie claims he has killed seven babies. That should have nitpickers everywhere trying to figure out who these seven babies are. Is Stewie counting himself? (He killed his future self at the end of Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story). Let's not forget that Stewie has also killed adults, such as the "man in white" and adolescents like Jeremy, Liddane's boyfriend. At the moment, any ideas on who the seven babies could be escapes me, as well as whether that count is supported or even exceeded by prior episodes.

G. I. Joe: A Ridiculous American Hero

Before watching this year's G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, I decided to at least glance at a few episodes of the old TV series. So I watched the first episode of G. I. Joe: A Real American Hero, titled "The Cobra Strikes." It was hilarious. Next time I complain about military inauthenticity in JAG, I will remember G. I. Joe. One thing I remembered about G. I. Joe is that for some reason the elite Joe unit did not care for having some sort of uniform or uniform item unique to them; instead, like superheroes, each Joe indulges his or her own unique fashion.

In that first episode of G. I. Joe, Duke, the leader of the Joes, is talking to one of his colleagues in the middle of an active runway. Yet he complains when a fighter jet passes by and almost smears his guts all over the place. Supposedly all of the Joes are well versed in how to fly jets, and they can take off at the drop of a hat, without a preflight checklist or anything.

Later, Duke goes to a military installation where a three-star General is worried that the place could be infiltrated prior to the launch of the Army's most powerful satellite. For some reason, the General has his cover on. Then there's the bean-counting Major Juanita Hooper, who is also wearing her cover even though at that point we're supposed to understand she's not armed. The General introduces her to Duke, who, without a cover on his head (I don't think he's ever worn one in the show), salutes Major Hooper. (Hooper soon reveals herself as being the Baroness, a member of Cobra).

This show, apparently meant for children, has many scenes of practically raining gunfire, yet hardly anyone tries to obtain cover behind a rock or something, but instead just stand their ground as if the bullets were pellets. I was thinking that maybe in the world portrayed in G. I. Joe, gunfire doesn't kill. But then when Duke shows up at Cobra headquarters and every foot soldier starts shooting at him, the Cobra Commander orders them to stop because he wants Duke alive for his gladiatorial arena.

In a later scene, the animators seem to think that a helicopter maneuvers the same as a fighter jet. Enough. I could go on and on.

No word shall be impossible with God

It does not make me feel like a big man to criticize a show meant for children, but I have to wonder if the educational value of a children's show is undermined by allowing opportunities for nits.

I've only seen one episode of Word World. The premise of the show, as I understand it, is that almost everything in the world of the show is constructed out of letters. If you need a house, all you need is get an H, an O, a U, an S, and an E, and put them together in the right order. With the letters in the right order, the desired object is magically constructed. In the episode that I watched, they made beds, with the letters B, E and D, and the Duck made himself a nest, with the letters N, E, etc. (you get the idea).

But what about the word "DOG" spelled in the window of the House? Inside, in the scene in which the animals make their beds, you can see that the glass of the window makes an O, while the two wooden window covers make, when opened to expose the glass, respectively a D and a G. So why doesn't the window turn into a dog? Or, to take the show into blasphemous territory, God?

The roommate situation

In the JAG episode "A Girl's Best Friend," Chegwidden gets to beat up a shady jeweler while Harm tries to get Coates to move in to a recently vacated apartment in his building so that Matty can move in there, too. Coates at first refuses, even though she's supposedly living with three other female Petty Officers in one cramped place.

I'm not sure there's a nit here, but the situation Coates is in certainly raises some plot credibility questions. Besides a ship (women couldn't serve on a submarine), where else would the Navy cram four women to a room? In the Marine Corps in real life I know that putting four female Lance Corporals in one room is infrequent but not unheard of. At that pay grade, to live at the barracks, you have to have a roommate, unless you wind up being the last odd one (e.g., the 25th woman in a unit with 25 enlisted women living on base). But generally Marines get put two to a room. If you make Sergeant, you most likely get your own room. It would probably take some kind of construction emergency for them to have to put you with a roommate. I don't know much about the Navy base housing situation, but I would imagine that a Petty Officer 2nd Class would have at most one roommate.

But this is all with the assumption that Coates is living on a base. I suppose it's possible that four female Petty Officers would rent a civilian apartment. Since I know next to nothing about real estate prices in Virginia, I'm not sure if that scenario is realistic. It could be. In the show, Coates is convinced to accept Harm's offer when he assures her that he will only pay Matty's half of the rent.

More Star Trek nits

Now that the new Star Trek movie is out on DVD and BluRay, it's possible to nitpick it in greater detail. Now follow some nits that I didn't catch in my theater viewing, and some that I were on my mind but which I forgot to mention in my previous posts.

First of all, the USS Kelvin is NCC-0514. Why the leading zero? The Enterprise is not NCC-01701. Nor is Voyager NCC-074656. Or, most forcefully of all, the USS Horizon (whose crew was responsible for the cultural contamination of Sigma Iotia), was not NCC-0176. While we're on the subject of the USS Kelvin, shouldn't the crew wear an insignia other than the Enterprise's arrow? After all, that arrow was not supposed to become the official insignia for all Starfleet until after the time of the original series. Furthermore, the Kelvin crew started their service prior to Nero's temporal incursion, so the alternate timeline excuse doesn't hold water here.

I had been wondering about General Order 13, and it seems to have been made up specifically for this film. But at least it doesn't conflict with previously invented General Orders.

Why are Earth letters used at the Vulcan school for children? One would think that the Vulcans, supposed to be so far ahead of humans in mathematics and science, would have their own symbol for the mathematical constant 3.14159... Same goes for the elements of the periodic table: helium, hydrogen, lithium, etc.

Dr. McCoy's line that his ex-wife took the whole planet in the divorce is mildly amusing, but it does make me wonder about the economics of divorce in the 23rd Century. If money is supposed to be a thing of the past, along with the need to acquire material things, would there be any need for alimony in the future? Or perhaps it can be explained away as that all their friends sided with her, and thus he still had a roof and daily bread but was socially isolated because of the divorce.

In my first post I had talked about Nero's inexplicable stupidity in the face of the fact that he's smart enough to know he's in the past and that Spock exists in the past. But in viewing the film at home, it is now painfully clear that Nero is even smart enough to calculate when Spock will show up in the past!

So Uhura speaks all three dialects of the Romulan language. How exactly did she accomplish this feat, given that the mere act of a Federation ship wandering into Romulan space is an act of war? Or does Spock somehow know Romulan and taught Uhura?

I had also talked about the importance of coincidences in the film in my first post. A coincidence I had missed is that Sulu started the ship late when the cadet-manned ships went off to Vulcan's rescue. If Sulu hadn't made the amateurish mistake that caused the Enterprise to be late to Vulcan, the Enterprise would've been destroyed like the others.

But why doesn't Spock beam closer to entrance of the temple when he beams down to rescue the elders? He knows time is of the essence, yet has himself beamed down to a point where he has to run up the side of a mountain to enter the temple.

Apparently the pooch Porthos from Star Trek: Enterprise has his own fan club, and that club hoped that Scotty's reference to "Admiral Archer's prize beagle" referred to the NX-01 skipper's best friend. As for me, I'm more willing to believe that another Starfleet officer named Archer, related or not to Jonathan Archer, would also have a dog, specifically a beagle, than I am to believe that both Jonathan and Porthos were still alive and active in Starfleet in Kirk's time.

And speaking of Scotty, I'm wondering about the way he falls down with a bunch of water out of a pipe after a slight miscalculation beaming into the Enterprise at warp. The Enterprise apparently has artificial gravity similar in strength to that of Earth. On Earth, wouldn't falling out of a pipe with so much water kill you by breaking all your bones, if not by drowning?

Restricted to quarters means what exactly?

The show: JAG
The episode: "Back in the Saddle," from Season 9, in which Harm's return to JAG is prepared with the arrest of Commander Imes (Dana Sparks), who was supposed to replace him.
What happened: Imes has just begun with her opening statements in the case of some enlisted sailor when military policemen burst into the courtroom and arrest her. Turns out that she exploited a loophole in the law in order to practice law without having passed the bar exam. Chegwidden assigns Mac to defend Imes, who Chegwidden says is "restricted to quarters" at the Anacostia barracks. Mac goes to Anacostia to discuss the case with Imes as they take a scenic walk through the barracks. Meanwhile, Harm is fired from the CIA because in the previous episode he was filmed by a news crew completing a CIA mission. He takes up crop dusting until getting an offer from Chegwidden to have his commission reinstated.
What's wrong with that: If Imes can freely walk the base, then Chegwidden was mistaken in saying that she was restricted to quarters. I don't know if I need to tell you that "quarters" is Navy lingo for someone's room on base or aboard a ship. In the case of an officer ranking high enough, I suppose "quarters" could be used to refer to an entire house on the base.
Now, if Mac ranked higher than Imes (which she doesn't, in this episode), she could tell Imes to take a walk with her. But then, which officer restricted Imes to quarters in the first place? If that was Chegwidden, then Mac unrestricting Imes would mean that Mac is overriding an order from an Admiral. If we're to understand that Imes went straight back to her quarters after her talk with Mac, some laid-back officer might say no harm done. But does Mac strike you as a laid-back officer? Or as more of a by-the-book hard-nosed type? The talk should have taken place in Imes's quarters. Maybe the director was worrying that setting the scene in someone's quarters would make the episode feel too claustrophobic (or at least Mac's plot strand, because Harm's plot strand involves flying a biplane over wide open fields). Or maybe he didn't want to go through the trouble of dressing a set for use as an officer's quarters, given that Imes will be out of the Navy, and presumably the show, after this episode (but such a set could easily been reused for another officer's quarters with some clever redressing). Whatever the reason, the fix is simple: they could've just had Chegwidden say Imes is restricted to barracks rather than to quarters.
And another thing: Doesn't Harm seem just a tiny bit paranoid in assuming that his getting fired from the CIA was Webb's idea? Surely Harm knows how important secrecy is to the CIA, given that he participated in the Angelshark inquiry (in Season 8), and he understands that being plastered all over the news is not conducive to secrecy.

Do action safe nits count?

In the early Ally McBeal episode "One Hundred Tears Away" (oh please, cry me a river), Ally is arrested for tripping up a woman at the supermarket in an argument over potato chips. The woman supposedly does not like ridged potato chips, yet she puts the last remaining can of Pringles back on the shelf. Ally takes the Pringles and the other woman then grabs it from her, claiming that she still intended to buy them despite putting them down on the shelf.

I watched this episode when it first aired, but it wasn't until watching it yesterday that I noticed that there's another can of Pringles visible in the shot. Just look at the right edge of your screen. This did not get past the staff at IMDb, for they also noticed this and listed it under "Goofs" for that episode.

But that's not the reason I hesitated to make a blog post about it. The thing is that the second can of Pringles falls outside of what editors of a decade ago call the "action safe." There is also an area called the "title safe," within which you must place your titles, actor credits, etc., if you want everyone who views you video to see them. The action safe area is slightly larger than the title safe area, but a similar principle applies: don't put action outside the action safe if you want all viewers to see it. For example, if you have someone waiting in ambush on the left edge of the frame, to the left of the action safe, his popping out will be as much a surprise to the viewer as it is to the ambushed character on the screen.

At least that's the case for viewers using old analog 4:3 televisions. The screens on those televisions were almost never straight-edge rectangles, but rather rounded edge rectangles. Nor was the exact shape of the rounded rectangle standardized, though generally TVs from the 1950s clipped a lot more of the edges than TVs from the 1990s.

Now, when I watch a DVD of a show like Ally McBeal on my 16:9 digital TV, with black bars on the left and right of the frame, I will see things that the show's editors probably thought no one else but them would ever see. For that reason I'm not sure that nits for things outside the action safe, or even the title safe for that matter, ought to count or not.

What do you think? Do such nits count? And where do they fit on the hierarchy of nits? Above or below freeze-frame or zoom nits?

More Star Trek nits forthcoming

The newest Star Trek movie comes out on DVD tomorrow. I wrote a fairly extensive blog post about it back in May, based on one theater viewing. But when I watch it again on DVD, I expect to come up with even more nits than I was able to glean from the theater viewing. Stay tuned.

Remember Pearl Burton

In last night's first episode of Family Guy (the one preceeding the Almost Live special), Brian dates a significantly older woman. Peter's reaction is completely understandable (he's a tactless idiot). But the way Lois reacts has me wondering. She laughs in much the same way she did when Brian introduced Gilliam. Indeed, the whole family objects to Brian dating an old woman. But it's not the first time Brian dates an old woman. What about Pearl Burton? Pearl Burton had completely white hair. Lois even said "She's beautiful." Granted that Lois said that of Pearl's picture from decades prior, but she certainly must've realized that Pearl would look much older. Though this doesn't quite rise to the level of a nit because it appears Lois never met Pearl in person.

In last night's second episode of Family Guy, Stewie gets to meet Miley Cyrus while Chris becomes friends with the Evil Monkey. The Evil Monkey tells the Griffins his life story, which immediately made me wonder: "How did Chris know the Evil Monkey's back story if this is his first time talking to him?" But then I remembered that in the episode in which Chris told the monkey's back story, he just said "He wasn't always evil" and then we see a cutaway to the day the monkey made partner at his firm and caught his wife in bed with another monkey; I had just assumed that Chris had actually spoken this back story. In this new episode, the Evil Monkey says what happened, rather than just introduce the clip.

Vicissitudes of rank in Los Angeles

The show: NCIS: Los Angeles
The episode: "Keepin' It Real," first aired last night.
What happened: The crooked Marine Gunnery Sergeant Jerrold Mulhearn (Mark Rolston) attempts to switch $20 million in newly minted U. S. currency destined for shipment to Afghanistan with counterfeit money printed on paper he obtained from Agent Callen (Chris O'Donnell). The Gunny is assigned to a supply depot at Camp Pendleton. Agent Vail (Adam Jamal Craig) puts on a Marine uniform and goes to Pendleton to get Mulhearn's signature on a form, addressing him as "Sergeant." Mulhearn signs the form and gets back to barking orders at his men.
What doesn't quite add up: So Gunny Mulhearn is putting on a Drill Instructor act and he doesn't chew Agent Vail out for calling him just a Sergeant (E-5) when he's a Gunnery Sergeant (E-7)? In fact, that slip-up should've alerted Mulhearn to the fact that someone was on to him. Though I admit I didn't notice what rank insignia Agent Vail was wearing on his Marine uniform. Maybe a Marine won't complain about being called the wrong rank by a higher ranking Marine, but in the case of a Gunnery Sergeant, at the enlisted rank structure that leaves just E-8 and E-9, and someone Vail's age shouldn't attain those ranks. So if Vail was posing as a Marine officer, Mulhearn neglected to call him "sir." Hey, Bellisario: just because JAG is over doesn't mean you don't need military consultants anymore.
And another thing: I don't know how Marine SNCOICs of supply depots run their operation nowadays, but when I served as a supply clerk, I never knew of a supply chief pretending to be a Drill Instructor.

Finally you believe Allison

It was nice to see on last night's Halloween episode of Medium Detective Scanlon (David Cubitt) regard Allison with a little more credulity. In this blog, Lisa has often complained about how Scanlon and the others keep acting as if Allison hasn't proven her clairvoyance time and time again. Not so in last night's episode: Allison screams upon seeing a junkie coughing up blood like a zombie, and Scanlon, instead of dismissing Allison's screams, gets to work at finding the connection between the junkie and the funeral home owner who was murdered.

Spell check your English subtitles!

Most of JAG's viewers are not going to know both Spanish and Farsi in addition to English. But when your English subtitles contain spelling errors, you have to start wondering what else might be wrong language-wise with the show. That's what happens in the eighth season JAG episode "Pas de Deux." Around time index 16:40, the Arab terrorists in Paraguay are subtitled saying something about "missles" (I'm guessing that's how the subtitler pronounces the word "missiles"). They're speaking Farsi.

Just a tiny bit earlier, they speak Spanish with Gunny Galindez (Randy Vasquez). The conversation concerns some drugs he just delivered on behalf of a local bad guy. The terrorists don't want to pay Galindez just yet, and they reassure him "You'll be dealt with," according to the subtitles. Actually, that doesn't sound terribly reassuring. With my limited understanding of Spanish, what the terrorists actually tell Galindez is "Te vamos ha cuidar," which translates better to "We'll take care of you." I guess that with the budget the producers couldn't spring for a Spanish consultant. I have to wonder what mistakes there might be in the subtitles for the Farsi dialogue.

Yet more vicissitudes of rank

The show: JAG
The episode: "Second Acts," first aired April 1, 2003, now on Disc 3 of the Season 8 boxed set.
What happened: Stuart Dunston of ZNN shows up at Camp Stronghold Freedom to do a story on the Seabees when a bunch of terrorists show up and start shooting up the place. With little hesitation, Petty Officer Steven Wilson uses his tractor to defend his unit and thwart the terrorists, saving the lives of Stuart and his news crew. Jennifer Bruder recognizes Steven Wilson as Matthew Divine, a man who supposedly died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, together with her husband. At first Wilson refuses to tell Jenny what happened to her husband. It takes an administrative separation hearing for Wilson/Divine to admit the truth: With Jenny's husband, he had run a dishonest business operation. On September 11, he promised not to tell Jenny what had happened. He bought a new identity and joined the Navy Seabees.
What doesn't quite add up: Assuming that the events of this episode take place on or around the original airdate of April 1, 2003, this barely gives Steven Wilson 18 months to go from recruit to Petty Officer Third Class. Even if Matthew Divine had prior military experience, as Steven Wilson he couldn't use it to skip E-1. It's my understanding that in the Navy, you need 9 months of service at E-1 and the unit commander's approval to get promoted to E-2 (in the Marine Corps, six months at E-1 with a clean nose are sufficient for promotion). To get to E-3, the Navy requires 9 months at E-2, a couple other qualification and again the unit commander's approval. That's 18 months right there. At that point, if the Navy is hurting for people to do your job at the E-4 level, you might get promoted to E-4. (Doing something heroic like Wilson does at the beginning of the episode might also help). But in the Marine Corps, you'd need still 6 more months of service to attain E-4, and yet another 18 in the Air Force. It's in the Army where you have the best chance to climb up to E-4 in less than 18 months. I don't know if the Navy's rules apply equally to the Seabees, but it seems to me that it would have been much more realistic for Wilson to start the episode at E-3 and then be promoted to Petty Officer in recognition of his actions at Camp Stronghold Freedom.
And another thing: One of the datelines identify Divine's administrative separation hearing as an "Ad Sep Hearing." The Navy likes to abbreviate things, but "administrative separation" is usually shortened to "admin sep."

Something Sheldon should know

The show: The Big Bang Theory
The episode: "The Creepy Candy Coating Corollary," first aired on CBS last night.
What happened: Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Raj (Kunal Nayyar) sign up as a team for a card game tournament. I don't remember what Raj's reason was for joining the tournament, but Sheldon's was the opportunity to defeat Wil Wheaton (Wil Wheaton) in revenge for failing to show up at a Star Trek convention in 1995. Sheldon and Raj easily make it to the finals, facing off against Wil Wheaton and Stuart (Kevin Sussman). Sheldon is close to defeating Wil when he discloses the reason for his animosity. In response, Wil says he failed to show up to the convention because his grandmother died. Sheldon immediately changes his tone and throws the game. Wil makes the winning move and then claims his grandmother did not really die, and gives a frivolous reason for not showing up at the convention.
Why it doesn't quite make sense: While it's true that there are gaps in Sheldon's knowledge (he doesn't know about Radiohead, for example), I find it quite surprising that he knows Wil's nickname for his grandmother, yet doesn't know whether or not she's still alive. The real life status of Wil Wheaton's grandmother is irrelevant for this nit (though I must admit I'm curious). Whatever it is in the semi-fictional world of The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon should know. If in 1995 Sheldon was really so distraught over Wil's no-show, wouldn't he have endeavored to find out what happened? In the process, wouldn't he have learned something about the Wheaton family? Even if he didn't, the episode establishes that Sheldon has a photographic memory. (Eidetic memory, whatever). Doesn't Sheldon subscribe to at least one Star Trek fan publication? Surely one of them would have explained why Wil failed to show up at the 1995 convention.
Lastly, I find Sheldon's decision to throw the game somewhat out of character. Sheldon is not generally known to agree to conciliatory gestures suggested by others, much less come up with a conciliatory gesture on his own. Wouldn't Sheldon instead have won the game anyway, if not for revenge then at least to show his superiority?

Al Roker's dereliction of duty

How many times on the Today show does Al Roker ask some guest or audience member a couple of questions and then says "That's what's going on around the country, here's what's happening in your neck of the woods." Often at that point, he has said absolutely nothing pertaining to the weather around the country! Thus, he's depriving the local weatherman from making a smooth transition or at least elaborating on some generality of national weather. For example, if Al Roker were to say something like "It's snowing across much of the Midwest," the weatherman from Green Bay, Wisconsin could say something like "That snow won't get here until tomorrow" and go from there. Instead, local weathermen must resist the temptation to say "I will actually tell you something weather-related now."

This morning the true scope of Al Roker's dereliction of duty was brought into sharp relief when Natalie Morales tried to do Al Roker's job! She tried to cue him to say something about the rain across most of the nation, but he instead just said his catchphrase to turn it over to local weathermen.

They need to fire Al Roker. Or maybe give him a job that's better suited to his temperament. The job of national weatherman isn't that hard. You don't even have to get the national weather right. It's up to the local weathermen to go from the national picture to the local picture. No one holds the national weatherman accountable if his map has rain or snow over a larger area than it should. Give the job to someone who's not too lazy to paint some broad strokes of the national weather picture.

Everyone had motive, predictably

The sixth and final season of The L-Word begins with Jenny Schecter found dead. The usual 3-minute "Previously on The L-Word" segment to catch up viewers on the previous season's events is here dispensed with. That's because the episode then flashes back to three months ago, to roughly the time frame of the fifth season's last few episodes. But the sixth season premiere does not return to the crime scene in the 'present.' Having watched the first three episodes of this season on DVD, it looks like most of the rest of the season will be spent in the three months leading up to Jenny's death. So now we're going to be treated to predictably dull moments in which each important character on the show promises to kill Jenny. Hell, even Jenny herself might get such a moment.

When did Cleveland Brown become a dumb stoner?

As you probably know, Cleveland Brown is a fictional character who existed prior to The Cleveland Show as a secondary character on Family Guy. Cleveland was somewhat of a slow talker and his mood was extremely sedate. These characteristics were so defining of his character that the writers apparently thought it necessary to explain them in a cutaway gag in "Blind Ambition" in which Cleveland is an accomplished auctioneer, fast and animated in his speech, until a totem pole falls on him and immediately slows down his speech and body movements.

Now on The Cleveland Show, Cleveland's speech, while slightly faster, is still recognizable as the character originated on Family Guy. But now he's constantly giggling like a dumb stoner. In fact, he even giggles on the opening credits. What happened to this character on the move from Quahog, Rhode Island, to Stoolbend, Virginia, to obliterate his sedateness, a fundamental trait of his character?

A bit short of a nit

In the teaser of the JAG episode "Fortunate Son," Marine Lt. Bao Hien (Dustin Nguyen) is apprehended by the INS at a sweat shop exploiting Vietnamese immigrants. Hien shows his military ID card to the arresting INS agent (James Denton, before he hit it big on Desperate Housewives). The ID card Hien carries looks nothing like the one I had when I served (though my service predates this particular JAG episode by a few years). In any case, it's easy for me to accept that in this fictional world, military IDs are very different from those used in real life. What I'm having trouble with is the rank insignia shown on the ID card. It looks like O-3 Captain's bars, but in gold. (Actual military IDs, as I knew them, have the letter dash number rank designation but not a picture of the rank insignia). I paused the DVD and zoomed in, but then I only became more confused. At 4x, it looked like a silver First Lieutenant's bar on a gold field. But even if I was sure of this one way or the other, nits relying on freeze-frame, and worse, freeze-frame with zoom, are inadmissible in this forum.

My driver's license is in your bank statement

The show: Family Guy
The episode: "Family Goy," first aired last Sunday on FOX.
What happened: Peter falls in love with a cardboard cutout of Kathy Ireland and neglects his wife. When he comes to his senses, he tries to have make-up sex with Lois but instead discovers a lump in her breast. Lois goes to the hospital, where Dr. Hartmann gives her a clean bill of health and announces that her mother is a Holocaust survivor. The doctor knows this because that's what the birth certificate in Lois' medical record says. Peter then becomes obsessed with Judaism, even converting. Peter drops Judaism as soon as the ghost of his deceased father Francis shows up to threaten him with eternal damnation if he doesn't return to the Catholic faith.
Why it makes no sense: Now it isn't enough to make absurd revelations about Peter's relatives, the way those revelations come about don't even have to make any sense. I still think that the idea that Peter is a Mexican immigrant (in "Padre de Familia") is pretty damn ridiculous, but at least the way Peter comes to that revelation was more organic than what happens in that episode. Since when is a mother's birth certificate kept in the medical record of one of her daughters? What's next? Will we learn that Chris is actually an ordained Anglican bishop when Peter goes get a lube change at Wal-Mart?
Also, I'm having a real tough time believing that a blueblood like Barbara Pewterschmidt could actually be Jewish, and a Holocaust survivor at that. The problem is not chronology, but characterization. I would think that a woman who's gone through something as horrific as the Holocaust would choose someone of more substance to marry than Carter Pewterschmidt.

You forgot your wife used to be Jeffrey Tambor, Joe!

The show: Medium
The episode: "Who's That Girl," first aired this past Friday on CBS.
What happened: Ariel (Sofia Vassilieva) begins acting strangely, and Allison (Patricia Arquette) is convinced that her daughter has been taken over by the spirit of the recently deceased Elena who is hell-bent on exacting revenge on her killer. Allison tells her husband Joe (Jake Weber) about this. His response: "Knock it off!" Joe doesn't take Allison's claim about Ariel seriously until after finding some money missing from his sock drawer (which Ariel/Elena used to buy a gun with) and getting a strange response from Ariel regarding her birthday.
Why it makes no sense: You would probably react with the same incredulity the first time you're confronted with the idea of someone close to you being taken over by the spirit of a stranger. But for Joe DuBois, this is not exactly the first time body/soul transference affects his family. In the episode titled "The Man in the Mirror," first aired this past May on NBC, Allison's soul found its way into the body of a man named Todd Emory (Jeffrey Tambor). Joe was understandably incredulous at first, but eventually he was able to let Todd/Allison stay in his house. So why is it such a big leap for Joe to accept that some other soul could occupy Ariel's body? And did the writers think no one who watched the show on NBC would watch it on CBS? I don't recall the first new episode aired on CBS making any effort to re-establish the basic premise of the show as if it was something new to the viewers.

About nitpicking Cleveland's show

Well, last Sunday the long-awaited Cleveland Show premiered. It seems that of all the secondary characters on Family Guy, Cleveland Brown was the worthiest for his own show. But in all fairness to the Family Guy, Cleveland sometimes rose above the level of token black guy. There's plenty of grist for debate here, but for now it would be best to wait for a few more episodes of the new show before further expounding on this particular issue. Another issue to debate is whether the show is any good.

But what matters to us as nitpickers right now about The Cleveland Show is to what extent old Family Guy episodes can be used to nitpick the old show. I would say that quite a bit of the old show can be used for this purpose. The Cleveland Show starts out with Cleveland and his son Cleveland Jr. leaving Spooner Street behind, clearly establishing that Cleveland's history as established on Family Guy is perfectly valid for The Cleveland Show. Maybe the writers will occasionally forget, but we nitpickers won't. We have practically all the old episodes on DVD and won't hesitate to refer to them.

Peter Griffin has many ancestors invented for purely comedic purposes (as well as for jokes that don't really lift off), while Cleveland has hardly any. So almost everything about Cleveland's past shown on Family Guy can be used to nitpick the new show. Still, I would caution about using anything from the Family Guy episodes "Untitled Griffin Family History" and the Star Wars homage episodes.

The perils of multiverse travel

The show: Family Guy
The episode: "Road to the Multiverse," first aired on FOX this past Sunday.
What happened: Stewie takes Brian to see a parallel universe in which religion never existed on Earth, allowing technology to develop at a much faster rate. When Stewie tries to return them to their home universe, the device instead sends them to another parallel universe. Thus, Brian and Stewie spend a great part of the episode going through several random universes, such as a universe drawn by Disney, a universe in which everyone has two heads, etc. When they arrive in a universe in which dogs own humans as pets, Brian smashes the device because he wants to stay in that universe. The dog Stewie from that universe recognizes his parallel Stewie, and, in a plot twist redolent of Sliders, he explains that he has created a better version of multiverse sliding and can return to his proper universe with precision.
What doesn't quite make sense: Alright, we accept the premise that you can slide between parallel worlds. (Note that the episode was careful not to use the word "world"). But why is it that in some worlds, Brian and Stewie were reconstituted to match that universe, but not in others? When Brian and Stewie go to the universe that is Washington Post political cartoon, their appearance changes to match, with Brian getting a button with "LIBERAL" written on it and Stewie a New Year baby sash; and when they go to the universe drawn by Disney, Stewie's head shape is normalized to Disney standards and Brian becomes less anthropomorphic. But when Brian and Stewie go to the universe in which everyone has two heads, one happy, one sad, neither Brian nor Stewie sprout a second head; nor do they get redrawn in the Flintstones style when they visit the Flintstones universe. Is there some rule besides script necessity for reconstitution or lack thereof?

Dalton inspires teacher not to quit?

Normally I don't like to nitpick news. But anytime anyone named Bush appears on the a news show, there usually are nits that just can't be ignored. Yesterday on the Today show, Jenna Bush talked about Dalton Sherman, a gifted young black boy with a talent for public speaking. Bush said that young Dalton inspired a teacher who was thinking about quitting her job not to quit. Really? Are you sure?

Don't get me wrong, Dalton's story is uplifting. In a country in which people would rather be in the casket than give the eulogy (Jerry Seinfeld's joke), and black men don't usually appear on game shows as contestants, it is inspiring to see a young little black boy front and center speaking to hundreds of people live and thousands on the Internet. But I'm having a hard time believing that one teacher decided to stay a teacher because of Dalton's speech. Did that teacher have a job lined up if she quit teaching? I seriously doubt it. If that teacher had quit her job, she would be faced with trouble at the unemployment office and serious difficulties paying her bills. Of course it's easier to sleep at night saying that her quitting was averted by something a young student said.

Kirk, the eternal captain

I was not the first to complain about how quickly Kirk goes from cadet to captain in the new Star Trek film. In general I have trouble with how the film rushes to put every Enterprise crewmember in their "right" place. The original Star Trek series suggests a much more realistic history for the Enterprise roster, such as having Spock served under Captain Pike for some time before serving under Kirk.

But I was thinking, after watching the rerelease of the Genesis trilogy, that given that Kirk is demoted from Admiral to Captain in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and remained at that rank at least until Star Trek: Generations, and the Federation President's remarks that Kirk is best-suited to be a starship captain, that perhaps it's not such a bad thing that Kirk rises to that rank so quickly in the new film. I don't know if Orci and Kurtzmann were thinking about these things when they wrote their screenplay. I know they have an audio commentary on Voyage Home, but I haven't gotten around to listening to it.

More vicissitudes of rank

The show: JAG
The episode: "Family Business," first aired October 8, 2002, now on Disc 1 of the Season 8 set.
What happened: Gunnery Sergeant Joe Akers (Tyler Christopher) is accused of killing his wife. He claims it was self-defense and he was the victim of spousal abuse. Harm (David James Elliott), assigned to defend Akers, is frustrated that Akers won't let his son testify. Meanwhile, Bud (Patrick Labyorteaux) almost gives up on his physical therapy because his father won't come visit him in the hospital.
What the writers neglected, again: In Season 6 I complained about a Pfc. being constantly referred to as just "Private." Now, in this episode, both Lieutenant Colonel Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie (Catherine Bell) and Harm refer to Gunnery Sergeant Akers as just "Sergeant," or worse, "the Sergeant."
I can kind of understand Harm making that mistake, and I can understand Akers not complaining: in real life, a Gunnery Sergeant wouldn't be afraid to tell an officer not to call him just "Sergeant," but given that the officer in this case is his defense attorney, whose hand he is figuratively tying behind his back by not allowing him to talk to his son, being called two ranks lower just isn't his most pressing problem. But why does Mac also make that same mistake? She's a Marine and she ought to know the Marine enlisted ranks thoroughly. Besides, even though she has not trouble with everyone calling her "Colonel," she certainly wouldn't enjoy being called just "Lieutenant."

Y3K

First off, let me say that I love the music of the "Year 3000" sketches on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien and the cinematography of it, but I have never found it funny. I'm told that in the 1990s the skit was "In the year 2000..." but now that 2000 has come and gone, it had to be moved up. I can only imagine that La Bamba's song had the same melody, and the year 3000 is futuristic enough without requiring a significant change to his song. But the humor hasn't been adjusted to match that far-off time frame. Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter frequently mention in the context of the skit present-day celebrities who will certainly be dead by the year 3000. For me at least, that's enough to distract my funny bone.

Starfleet's obsession with constantly changing uniforms

The new Star Trek film (J. J. Abrams, 2009) messes with the timeline, pissing fans off with such insults as destroying planet Vulcan and having a Nokia phone in a car driven by the child Kirk, but it also shows one thing as constant: Starfleet's obsession with changing uniforms.

The familiar Starfleet uniforms from the original series are practically the same in the new film. There is a significant difference in the texture of the tunic's fabric, but given the vastly superior resolution of modern film compared to television of the 1960s, there is nothing wrong with believing that the uniforms in the original series and those in the new film are the same, just that in the original series we couldn't appreciate all the detail. (I might have to revise this theory once I spring for a Blu-ray player).

However, at the time of James T. Kirk's birth, Starfleet was apparently using uniforms similar to those in TNG "Future Imperfect" that is, with the deparment color (e.g., "blue" = medical/science) over most of the uniform, as shown in the earliest scenes of the new Star Trek film. Then, by the time James T. Kirk becomes captain of the Enterprise (way too quickly in the new film), Starfleet has switched over to the department color tunic with black pants for the starship service uniform, but apparently cadets wear a red uniform. Then, for barely five years, Starfleet switched to dull-looking white and gray uniforms (for Star Trek: The Motion Picture). And then another change, to brighter red uniforms! The real-life explanation is of course since the 1979 film was not quite the success the producers had hoped for, there was no incentive to keep the uniforms.

And since no films or TV shows have been set in the time between the decommissioning of the Enterprise-A and Captain Picard taking command of the Enterprise-D, there was no need to change the uniforms during that time frame. Early in his Starfleet career, Picard wore the same kind of uniform officers aboard the USS Excelsior wore during Sulu's command. But the next twenty years of Starfleet show a renewed manic pace for uniform changes: mild adjustments from Season 1 to Season 7 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, then a 'reversal' of colors (e.g., doctors like Dr. Bashir now had teal on the shoulders and black below, instead of black on the shoulders and teal below). Star Trek: Deep Space Nine began during Season 6 of TNG, but apparently the Enterprise crew didn't have to change over to the new uniforms until the crash of the Enterprise-D on Veridian in the seventh film, Star Trek Generations. For the next film, Star Trek: First Contact, new, more 'cinematic' uniforms were once again called for. The dress uniform versions introduced in Star Trek: Insurrection are actually quite nice; if I ever did Star Trek cosplay, that would be my costume.

But before I bore you any further with the whole history of Starfleet uniforms, consider that U. S. Navy uniforms barely changed in the 20th Century. Star Trek: Enterprise suggests Starfleet uniforms in the early days of the Federation are closely modeled on those of our present day U. S. Navy. The Admirals on Earth wear a uniform with a black jacket and a black tie. The uniform worn by Captain Archer aboard the Enterprise NX-01 would not look terribly out of place aboard a present day submarine. Let's also consider the uniforms of U. S. Marines: up to the Vietnam era, the combat uniform was plain green. To improve stealth, the woodland pattern was introduced later. And most recently, 'digital' cammies have been adopted by the Marines and the Army because studies show a significant improvement in camouflage over the earlier woodland pattern, and they just plain blow the old all-green uniforms out of the water in that department. But in space, where Starfleet will operate, what possible advantage could there be to constantly changing the uniforms?

Advice for DVD commentators

It seems every movie on DVD today has to have some kind of audio commentary on it, as if it was a requirement. Some of these commentaries are quite enlightening, while others are just plain boring as hell.

So here's some advice for commentators:

1. If it's something you haven't seen in years, watch it once before going to the recording session. It's not a lot to ask. Maybe it will kill a little bit of the spontaneity, but that's so much more preferable to minutes of silence punctuated by the commentator saying something like "It's been so long since I've watched this, I didn't even remember that scene."
2. It's OK to laugh at your own jokes. But don't assume the viewer hasn't heard the joke before, so don't be afraid to retell the joke in your own words, or laugh before the punchline is uttered on the principal audio track. No one I know first watches with the commentary on and then goes back to watch again without the commentary. And if they do that, they've already seen the film in the theater or the show on TV.
3. Enunciate! Your witty commentary is useless if no one can understand what you're saying. Some DVDs have subtitles for the commentary track, but you'd do well to assume that your DVD won't.
3a. But if English isn't your native language, you should still try to do an audio commentary, and not go for a text commentary. You can probably spell better than any native speaker, but do you have any idea how distracting it is to read subtitles that don't match up with the audio track?
4. A commentary is not the place the vent about your frustrations with specific individual actors, directors, writers. Especially if you plan to work with them again in the future. It's another thing to complain about censors, or even to bite the hand that feeds you. But to badmouth your equals and your subordinates is just plain unprofessional.

Aw come on, Denise, you can do better

So Lisa's got me watching Army Wives on DVD. New episodes air on Lifetime, derided by Family Guy as "television for idiots." But I'm really liking Army Wives. There is just enough action adventure elements in it to keep me interested long enough to start to care about what happens to the characters.

I've seen all of Season 1 and now I'm almost done watching Season 2. Throughout Season 1, I was almost wanting to say to the television screen: "Denise, why don't you just dump Frank? He treats you more like his personal property than like his wife." Sure he's an Army officer, but does he have anything else going for him that would justify staying with him? Oh, and he's the father of Denise's son, Jeremy. But Jeremy's grown up now, old enough to join the Army (which he did). I know this is on the level of psychology, and the human heart, which doesn't always make sense, so this doesn't yet rise to the level of a nit. Still, I feel like I have to say something.

Now, I do understand Denise Sherwood is a much different character from Major Sarah MacKenzie on JAG. But I haven't watched as many episodes of JAG as Lisa has, so I can separate Catherine Bell as Denise Sherwood, wife of an Army major, from Catherine Bell as Sarah MacKenzie, a Marine major. And even so, it seemed to me in Season 1 that Denise is strong-willed enough to divorce Frank. So, as I watch Season 2, I'm happy to see Denise taking steps towards being a strong, independent woman. Keep that motorcycle, if that's what you want to do! Keep seeing that young doctor! Etc.

Are you sure an electric car can get 230 mpg?

Maybe I shouldn't be nitpicking late night comedy, but here goes: yesterday, in his monologue in the Tonight Show, Conan O'Brien incredulously quoted the news that GM says the electric Chevy Volt can get 230 miles per gallon. He contacted a GM spokesman "by satellite" who said the Volt can achieve that mpg if going downhill, with a sail, on a car transport truck which in turn is on a conveyor belt. Funny ha ha. But my question is: if the Volt is an electric car, what is the substance of which a gallon makes it go for 230 miles?

Daytime in New York, daytime in China

The film: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, starring Christopher Reeve and Gene Hackman. It's another one of those lousy Golan-Globus productions, so I almost feel like a bully for nitpicking it. We must let go any nit that arises solely from lack of a budget for special effects, it's not worth it. The film's message of peace activism is a good one, but with the production being so flawed, not many people will hear the message, much less take it to heart.
What happened: Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) steals a strand of Superman's hair from a museum and uses it to create a powerful adversary for Superman, Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow). Nuclear Man's Achilles' heel is that he needs sunlight to feed his powers. Luthor summons Superman (Christopher Reeve) to his lair to meet Nuclear Man, and soon the two start fighting. It's daytime in Metropolis (New York) when Superman and Nuclear Man go way above the Earth's atmosphere and fight in outer space. Then they drop back down to Earth, where Nuclear Man endangers tourists by smashing a section of the Great Wall.
Why it makes no sense whatsoever: You don't need a big special effects budget to know certain basic science facts. For one, that the Earth is round and that New York and China are almost on opposite sides: New York is in time zone UTC -5 (give or take one for daylight savings time, I forget which) and China is UTC +8. Superman and Nuclear Man can get to China in a matter of minutes, but it still takes the Earth about twelve hours to bring into sunlight what is now in darkness. Or do you mean to tell me that Superman and Nuclear Man fought in outer space for about twelve hours? Well, maybe I can believe that.
But later in the film, Nuclear Man kidnaps Lacy Warfield (Mariel Hemingway) and takes her into outer space. Superman moves the Moon to block the sunlight empowering Nuclear Man (we can only hope he puts the Moon back in its right place afterwards, and that the change in tides that must've resulted from that move had no major negative consequences). Nuclear Man lets go of Lacy. Lacy then FALLS DOWNWARD IN OUTER SPACE!!! Superman rescues her, and she's apparently OK from the lack of oxygen. Was Nuclear Man somehow generating an atmosphere for her to breathe, and did Superman take over that duty once he picker her up?
Look, if you can't afford to hire a science consultant, at least go to the used book store and pick up any high school science textbook written within the last hundred years.

You can control the weather with a satellite? Really?

The film: Superman III, starring Christopher Reeve and Richard Pryor.
What happened: Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor), is a computer whiz tasked by his boss with ruining Colombia's coffee crop with excessive rain. Gus commandeers a satellite and causes a hurricane to pour down on Colombia's coffee fields. Superman shows up in time to dissipate the hurricane and dry out the crops.
Why it makes no sense: What exactly is it that the satellite does to cause rain? Does it shoot lasers at the clouds? Does it drop moisture on the clouds? The science on this particular fiction makes about as much sense as that in Weird Science, but at least Weird Science doesn't pretend to give plausible scientific explanations for its fantastic events. But the Superman films try to sometimes: for example, the "dense molecular structure" of Kryptonians such as Kal-El and Zod which give them superhuman strength when they are on a planet illuminated by a yellow sun. Therefore, in Superman III, it's not too much to ask for some halfway plausible explanation of how a satellite orbiting the Earth far above its atmosphere could have any influence on its weather.
And even if we accept the notion that a satellite can change the weather in a controllable way in a specific part of the world, doesn't Colombia have other crops which the United States would want destroyed by any means available?

Oppressing American women in Saudi Arabia

The writers of the JAG episode "Head to Toe" had their hearts in the right place, but I wonder how aware they are of the excessive power Saudis wield on the United States. Tough the episode, which first aired in 2002, has a disclaimer at the beginning that it's about fictional events, it deals with a real-life Department of Defense regulation which requires female servicemembers to cover themselves almost completely in accordance with Islamic principles when off base. In the story, Harm and Mac defend Lt. Stefanie Donato (Lana Parrilla), who had the temerity to drive a car and show up at a restaurant in Riyadh with her face exposed. Her point that her uniform would be acceptable attire in Brooklyn is countered with the fact that she's in Saudi Arabia. In the end, she is spared from court martial but ordered not to complain any further on the issue. The episode ends with text stating that in January 2002 the DoD rescinded the requirement that women cover themselves up when off base in Saudi Arabia, but kept the requirement that they be escorted by men and they don't drive.

But why did women have to put up with that regulation, in place since 1995? It is mentioned in the episode that Saudi Arabia is an important U. S. ally in the Middle East. What the episode does not mention at all is how powerful Saudi interests have affected America on American soil. When Michael Moore showed up with cameras at the Saudi embassy in Washington, he was shooshed away by the Secret Service. George W. Bush, an honorary Saudi, must have been an excellent choice of U. S. President as far as the Saudis were concerned. So, if a Saudi eccentric were to recruit a bunch of Saudis to destroy an American landmark, he'd be quite safe from American retaliation. Hopefully that will never happen.

Will real Russians talk like that?

In a new special feature for the Star Trek Genesis trilogy, actor Walter Koenig complains that the self-proclaimed experts on the Internet consider the accent for his character (Pavel Chekhov) to be not only overdone but also unrealistic. (See "Pavel Chekhov's Screen Moments" in Disc 3 of the new set, the one for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home). Those nitpickers claim to have Russian friends who don't talk one bit like Chekhov. The problem is that those nitpickers have temporarily forgotten that Star Trek takes place in the future. A lot can happen to a language in forty years, not to mention 300 years. However, we're not going to let Walter Koenig off that easy. After we identify and distance ourselves from our attachment to the present, you'll see that there are still many nits to be had with this topic.

Let's stay in the present for a while, though. Where does a Russian learn English? There are classes in Moscow, I'm sure, but the disadvantage would be that there's little use for English beyond the classroom. London is perhaps the closest option for immersion learning of the English language. (Alaska is almost twice as far from Moscow as London is, though it is possible for our Russian to come from a place that is much closer to Alaska). Much of Canada and the lower 48 States are also present viable options for a Russian to learn English by immersion.

And let's face it, English is a difficult language to learn after childhood, it really requires immersion in a place where it is spoken for all every day necessities. Those of us who were born to an English-speaking family take for granted our skill making sense of all those letter combinations that sound one way in one context and a completely different way in a context that's only slightly different! Of course we also find learning other languages difficult. Russian uses a completely different alphabet, and Japanese uses four different sets of characters, one of which contains over 4,000 characters! If only there was a way we could just talk to anyone regardless of their language, with some magical device automatically taking care of translating what we say and what is said to us so that everyone understands the whole conversation.

As it happens, precisely such a device exists in the fictional universe inhabited by the Star Trek characters! It's called the universal translator. You don't have to believe that such a device could possibly be constructed in real life to accept it while watching Star Trek. So why exactly does Chekhov have to learn English to serve in Starfleet? I don't suppose they made Spock learn English either. Well, maybe Chekhov wanted to. By the time Chekhov joined Starfleet, the universal translator was true and tested technology. The very first episode of Star Trek: Enterprise shows an universal translator quickly getting up to speed in its understanding of the Klingon language. One would think that Earth's known languages would be piece of cake for the device. Since Leonard Nimoy does not put on a Vulcan accent for Spock, Walter Koenig seems to have very little reason to put on a Russian accent, even if it turns out that in the 23rd Century Russians who learn English really do talk like that.

There is one Chekhov moment in the new Star Trek film that still rings false for me, even though the rest of the audience laughed: Chekhov (now played by Anton Yelchin, supposedly a "real Russian") enters his voice authorization code for the Enterprise but the computer is confused because he says "Weektor" instead of "Victor." Maybe the authorization code is in English. But if the computer knows enough to recognize Chekhov's voice as that belonging to an authorized user, shouldn't it also know about Chekhov's linguistic oddities?

(A little side note on Koenig and Yelchin: according to the IMDb, both actors have spent the vast majority of their lives in America).

Star Trek money nits

I had previously expressed my strong objections to the Nokia product placement in the latest Star Trek film and wondered if Kirk's legal guardians would be getting a bill in the mail. Going to see the film again, more issues about money in the future were raised in my mind. The first time I saw the film, Uhura's mention of a drink called a "Cardassian sunrise" raised my eyebrows. But what do you make of the dialogue after Uhura (Zoe Saldana) places her order, when Kirk (Chris Pine) is trying to get with her?

KIRK: Her drinks are on me.
UHURA: Her drinks are on her.

How much do you think a "Budweiser Classic" costs in the 23rd Century? But more importantly, where is Uhura's purse? Or does she just put her thumbprint on some kind of pad to cause a debit to her account? Money is not supposed to exist. If Gillian (Catherine Hicks) saying "Don't tell me you don't use money in the 23rd Century" and Kirk (William Shatner) replying "Well, we don't" in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is not sufficient confirmation (given the much-hyped "alternate reality" of this new film), consider Tom Paris (Robert McNeil) telling Tuvok (Tim Russ) that Fort Knox was turned into a museum in the 22nd Century (in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Dark Frontier"). Even if Paris and Tuvok don't wind up serving aboard Voyager in the 24th Century because of Nero's incursion into the 23rd Century, money should still have ceased to exist on Earth by Kirk's time. (And by the way, does Tuvok still exist in the new "alternate reality"? I didn't see Spock saving any black Vulcans from the temple before it was destroyed.)

When Kirk shows up in a motorcycle to take the shuttle to Starfleet Academy, a man compliments Kirk's wheels, to which Kirk says "It's yours" and tosses him the keys. Is bravado enough to transfer vehicle property in the 23rd Century, or will Kirk need to follow up later with some kind of deed transfer? Have replicators been invented yet? When Kirk went to the motorcycle showroom, did he just say, "Hey, give me a bike"? Well, maybe. Someone who enjoys building motorcycles would probably make more than he or she needs for his or her own transportation. At least it does seem that a starship requires so much time and labor to build that not just anyone can have one.

Earlier in the movie, what do you make of Kirk's uncle or stepfather yelling at him on the phone to not scratch the car up because it's an antique? If humans aren't consumed by the acquisition of things, shouldn't Kirk's uncle have had the decency to turn the car over to a museum?

Dissing the SecDef

The movie: Superman II, in either the Lester or the Donner cut. Both cuts are available on DVD, but as far as I can tell, only the Donner cut is available on Blu-Ray. On VHS, probably only the Lester cut is available. The following nit applies to both cuts.
What happened: There is an explosion in space which frees three Krypton criminals from the "phantom zone." The leader of the three, General Zod (Terence Stamp) realizes that as they get closer to Earth, their powers increase. The three of them go to East Houston, where they're confronted by the U. S. Army. All of the Army's weapons prove useless against them, and the news reporter realizes that the three newcomers are as strong as Superman. General Zod confronts the squadron's Commanding General (Don Fellows): "So you too are a general," Zod says, tearing off the four stars on the Army General's left shoulder. "Who is your leader?" Zod asks. The General says "I answer only to the President."
What the problem is: First of all, if the General only answers to the President, why is he standing at attention for Zod? Shouldn't a four-star general have more swagger than a small-town sheriff (such as the one Zod encounters earlier in the film)? Also, why did Lester choose the fruitiest possible line reading from Don Fellows? Donner's choice is not much better, as the angry line reading gives the subtext of "But I'm afraid of you."
Printed on the script, the line is the same. And it has another problem: the writers neglected to look at a real chain of command. There are two layers of civilian leadership between the President and a four-star general: the Secretary of the Army and the Secretary of Defense. When the General says he answers only to the President, he's in fact dissing the two Secretaries. A Sergeant may pray to God directly, but he had better talk to a few officers before talking to the General. Likewise, the General should talk to the Secretary of the Army before going to the President. Also, at the time the film was made, there was still the theoretical possibility of a five-star General, which would be yet another layer of leadership between a four-star general and the President.
You might be saying "Well, maybe in the world the movie takes place in, generals really do answer directly to the President." Let's say the Army in the movie has ten four-star generals. There would also be at least two four-stars in the Marine Corps and maybe another ten from the Air Force, plus ten four-star admirals in the Navy. That would mean at more than thirty four-star officers for the President to supervise directly, not to mention the Directors of the CIA, NSA, FBI, INS, etc. The President would be a much busier man. So it makes much more sense for all the four-star officers to report to one of three Secretaries (Marine four-star generals answer to the Secretary of the Navy), and those three Secretaries answer to the Secretary of Defense. The President, instead of getting reports from thirty different subordinates, just gets a report from the Secretary of Defense.
Also, how does Zod know that four stars on the shoulder means "General"? There are so many trinkets and baubles on an Army uniform that an alien can be forgiven if he doesn't know which one signifies rank. I suppose that if we accept that Kal-el's diamond-enclosed "S" is a pre-existing symbol from Krypton, we should let this one go.

Cartoon Cavalcade of Loosely-Related Jokes

If there's still anyone out there who thinks Family Guy doesn't have stories, they need to see Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy: Uncensored. Basically it's an hour of unrelated jokes with seemingly no organization. Though perhaps "jokes" is putting it too kindly: there are far more misses than hits in this collection, if by "hit" we mean something that's both funny and disgusting and not just disgusting.

If my DVD player had some kind of chapter shuffle mode and I was deaf to the sound of the disc spinning in the drive, I would have been perfect unable to tell whether shuffle was on or off. There is a little bit of organization, to be fair: some of the "Sex With _____" segments are clustered together. But still, the whole thing feels like a bunch of scenes that were proposed as digressions for an episode of Family Guy but were all rejected. I can easily imagine Stewie saying "Ugh, that would be more painful than sex with Optimus Prime!" and a cut to the "Sex With Optimus Prime" clip from the Cavalcade. Or Stewie saying "I'd rather be stuck on a lifeboat with Matthew McConaughey!" and a cut to the "Stuck on a Life Raft With Matthew McConaughey" clip from the Cavalcade.

However, these would supposedly have been censored out even if they had survived the initial pitch. The McConaughey clip, for example, would only have been cut from a Family Guy episode for time; the censors seem to be perfectly fine with cartoon deadly force but seriously uptight about cartoon sex. Or what about the already-infamous "Fred Flintstone Takes a [expletive]"? Other than the title card, this too could have been put on TV: we see little besides the dividers for the bathroom stalls for the duration of the clip, and while the sound effects are disgusting (some in and of themselves, and some due to the context), they have all appeared on TV before. Considering the semiotics of this clip on an intellectual level, it could actually be funny. But it goes on for way too long, the static shot makes the clip feel much longer than it actually is.

Though most of these clips go on for way too long, there's still something missing: A story! The clips that I've mentioned in this blog post, couldn't they be integrated into a Brian/Stewie "Road to" episode? And what happens in a Brian/Stewie "Road to" episode? Brian and Stewie go somewhere, and then they come home. They usually learn something from the journey. That's a story.

Still not impressed by Orci & Kurtzman

So I was reading in Creative Screenwriting magazine how Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman are patting themselves on the back for making the new Star Trek film both depend on almost everything that has happened to Spock's character from the original series through Star Trek: The Next Generation but at the same time not be restricted by having to respect previously established continuity.

I'm still not impressed. All that effort to create a story that is not particularly memorable. Once audiences leave the theater, if they're not too worn out by the non-stop noise, they'll reflect upon what they've just seen and realize that there's no depth to the story, no philosophical meat whatsoever. The villain, Nero, is such cardboard, that he doesn't live up to the hype Eric Bana has tried to create with talk show appearances. For some reason Orci & Kurtzman seem to think that Star Trek requires clear-cut villains. Well, I do know the reason: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. But Eric Bana can't begin to compare to Ricardo Montalban. And in any case, they are wrongly giving short shrift to the best Star Trek movie so far, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Sure you can say the villains are the whale hunters, but you can also say that the villains are 20th Century humans. Food for thought is what the best Star Trek is. Constant explosions and cliffhangers I can get from any run-of-the-mill thriller.

And really, is established Star Trek canon really that restrictive? In fact, Orci and Kurtzman use some of it in their screenplay, like the tidbit about the Kobayashi Maru mentioned in Wrath of Khan. Let's say each of the original series episodes spans two weeks. That would barely account for two years of the original 5-year mission, and there's plenty of time between Kirk graduating from Starfleet Academy and getting command of the Enterprise. In fact, it was rather silly to put Kirk in the captain's chair so quickly.

But most of all, at the risk of Leonard Nimoy calling me a d---head, I really disliked the Nokia product placement in the film. Are Kirk's guardians going to get a Nokia bill in the mail? I don't care how many Romulans from the future you send, Nokia phones should be museum pieces by Kirk's time. This is what you chucked Star Trek canon by the wayside for? Nokia product placements? Really!!??

Uniform inspection hit for JAG

The show: JAG
The episode: "Measure of Men," first aired October 9, 2001, now available on Disc 1 of the Season 7 set.
What happened: A Marine dies during an amphibious landing exercise, and the Captain Huddleston (CO of the USS Guadalcanal, played by Sam Hennings) blames Major Lasley (Jim Fitzpatrick). Lt. Colonel MacKenzie and Gunny Galindez question the Marines. After talking it over with Galindez, Mac goes see the captain to recommend an Article 32 hearing. Huddleston instead decides to hold a special court martial aboard the ship and asks Mac to prosecute. Mac goes to inform Lasley, when Harm makes a surprising entrance.
The uniform inspection hit: Normally JAG can't be faulted for the military uniform costumes its actors wear. The show's military consultants make sure the uniforms are worn correctly. And when an uniform is worn incorrectly, there generally is an explanation in the plot (e.g., the careless Hollywood actor in the "Field of Gold" episode, Mac in the next episode, "Guilt," in which she gives a Marine emblem off her cover to a little girl). But in this episode, for no good reason, Mac goes see the captain without wearing her Lt. Colonel rank insignia on her uniform.
For most of this episode, the Marines wear their camouflage uniforms (the old ones, prior to the introduction of the "digital" uniforms). Back then, Marine officers were not authorized to use black cloth rank insignia on their camouflage uniforms, like the Army, but instead had to wear the kind of shiny insignia that would benefit an enemy sniper. So Marine officers would just take their insignia off in combat situations. Going to talk to a fellow officer would hardly qualify as a combat situation, trusting that the enlisted men would not confuse them for Privates. Look at the previous scene, the one Mac's talking to Galindez: she's wearing her rank insignia. Look at the next scene, the one she's talking to Lasley: she's also wearing her insignia. So she took off the silver oak leaf to talk to the captain, then put it back on to talk to Lasley?
Of course these scenes were most likely not shot in chronological order. But I'm not quite sure the unusual setup of the scene in question here is enough to justify the military consultants failing to see the lack of silver on Catherine Bell's collar.

You couldn't move your camera, NBC News?

I hate to nitpick the news, but I just had to say something about the way NBC News covered President Obama's announcement of Sonia Sotomayor as his pick to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court. This is the sort of thing Phil Farrand would call a "production problem": For most of the time Obama talked about Sotomayor, with her standing to his left (our right), NBC allowed this stand with a square at the top to block our view of the lady. True, it was a semi-opaque square rather than a fully opaque square, but would it have been that hard to move your camera so there wasn't that distracting square over her face? Well, maybe it was, for after all, there must've been every major news organization in that room. CBS News had a boring two-shot with Obama and Sotomayor head on, but at least her face wasn't covered by some distracting square. What NBC News could've done is zoom in on Obama a little bit for his remarks. There was a lot of range between the shot with Biden, Obama and Sotomayor and the close-up of Sotomayor when she took the podium. Was it really that important for NBC to have a partially obstructed view of Sotomayor? Didn't they know in advance that she's say a few words?

Unverified Griffin Family History

The show: Family Guy
The episode: "Peter's Progress," first aired on FOX this past Sunday.
What happened: Cleveland introduces his cousin Claude, who claims to be a psychic. Claude tells Peter Griffin that his ancestor Griffin Peterson is the true founder of the Quahog colony, way back in either 1670 or 1760, contradicting the myth of chatty Miles Musket and the Clam (which Quagmire cites). Claude tells the story of how Griffin Peterson fell in love with Lady Redbush (who looks a lot like Lois) and asked her to marry him. Lady Redbush said yes, but King Stewart III (who looks like Stewie) decided he wanted Redbush for himself and sent Peterson off to the British colonies in America. His shipmates include versions of Joe Swanson and Quagmire. They land in what would become Rhode Island.
Why it makes no sense: Since when are psychics historians? Watch an episode of Medium: Allison Dubois tells fairly recent history, such as someone having been killed a couple of years ago, and not pre-Revolutionary War history. A psychic is supposed to read what is in someone's mind, and apparently this whole story of Griffin Peterson and the true founding of Quahog was news to Peter. If Claude really was reading Peter's mind, shouldn't she have come up with a story much like the one Peter told in "Untitled Griffin Family History"?
I'm perfectly OK with the Miles Musket story (from "Fifteen Minutes of Shame") being either a complete fabrication of Adam West's, or a commonly accepted myth (like Benjamin Franklin flying a kite in a thunderstorm). But it's not OK to rewrite Peter's genealogy because there is so much material already, a lot of it a lot more reliable than some random new character. This latest rewrite of Quahog history can't be taken seriously because it makes no sense and it can't be taken humorously because it's not funny. I watched the whole episode and laughed only once, at Brian announcing new shows on FOX, and even that must've been me being generous.
In fact, the Griffin history given in "Untitled Griffin Family History" is a thousand times better: it can be taken seriously, because it builds on previously established continuity, namely the story of Nate Griffin, the slave owned by the Pewterschmidts and given credence by historical records Peter found at the library and which were convincing enough for Carter Pewterschmidt to pay Peter reparations (in the episode "Peter; and it can be taken humorously because it actually was funny (at least to me).
In conclusion, this was a boring episode with little laughs and no usable continuity.

Pregnant in the 23rd Century

The new Star Trek film begins with the USS Kelvin losing a showdown with a massive Romulan ship from the future, and George Kirk, Sr. having to go down with the ship while his pregnant wife escapes in Shuttle 37. I think Bill has gotten most of the nits (see his May 15 post) and this is the only one I could find which he didn't already catch:

Why does Winona Kirk give birth sitting up on a bed? One would think that by the 23rd Century doctors and women would have realized that the 20th Century hospital childbirth method is woefully inadequate in many ways. I realize that they were under rather exigent circumstances, what with the ship about to blow up and the shuttle being at risk for the same fate, but one would think the medical staff would try to assist in the childbirth in a way that is closer to ideal circumstances. When you want something to come out of your body, which way do you point the aperture? Down.

And if the medical staff has to tell Winona to push, doesn't that mean that the baby can wait at least a few minutes, say, until the shuttle is at a safe distance from the warring ships? There doesn't seem to be a good medical reason to hurry the baby out. In fact, it may very well be just a script contrivance to get the baby boy out in time for George to hear him in the last few minutes of his life. And why did they wait until the kid was born to discuss what to name him? So that the screenwriters could put on screen the "official Star Trek moment" of how James Tiberius Kirk got his name, and fit it into the frenetic pace of the movie. (And did Winona keep her maiden name at all? Or does tradition win out over feminism in the future?)

Their discussion makes it sound as if they had never discussed it before. In the 17th Century it may have made sense not to name children until they were actually born, because of the high rate of stillbirths. In the 20th Century, at least in the developed world, babies stood a much better chance of being born, in spite of all the unnatural interventions of doctors (painkillers for the woman, slapping the newborn, and so on). By the 23rd Century I would hope that good prenatal care and diagnosis would be available to all women, whether she's some unknown woman or the wife of a starship captain (or a starship captain herself).

Lynette needs to learn a few things about 中国

The show: Desperate Housewives
The episode: "Everybody Says Don't," first aired on ABC this past Sunday.
What happened: Lynette's husband Tom (Doug Savant), while trying to convince his son to go to college, decides to go back to college himself in order to major in the Chinese language. Lynette (Felicity Huffman) thinks this is a silly idea and decides to sabotage Tom's college admission test by getting him drunk. After the test, Tom tells Lynette he thinks he bombed the Chinese test. Lynette suggests he buy a book, to which Tom says he can't learn Chinese from a book and explains that China is an emerging market and that he'd be more valuable to employers knowing Chinese. Lynette is surprised at all this, realizing that wanting to learn Chinese was not some kind of midlife crisis.
Why it doesn't make sense: So, Joey Murphy and John Pardee, you mean to tell me that Lynette, an executive in an advertising agency, didn't already know that China has a fast-growing economy? That she didn't know that in this age of globalization, American workers would be well-advised to learn Chinese?
Now, I have no trouble believing that Lynette would sabotage her husband. But I would think she'd choose her battles a little better. How about thwarting him from buying any more vehicles?

Star Trek

Because the NitCentral webmaster is asleep at the wheel, Lisa has granted us an exception to nitpick the new Star Trek film (2009, directed by J. J. Abrams). Haven't you heard? It's the #1 movie in America (this week). Those of you who haven't seen it yet, read a review instead. Then go see it and come back to read this. Or don't go see it, but don't base your decision to go see it or not on this blog post, it's not meant as a review of the film.

Before getting underway, let me tell you a few things I accept without explanation in any Trek film: First, I accept it without explanation that the computers on this new film will look a heck of a lot better than those on the original series. Second, I accept it without explanation that any alien language dialogue will be conveniently translated to English so we don't have to read any subtitles. And thirdly, I would accept it without explanation if Klingons appeared with or without ridges on their foreheads, but alas, a ridiculously tortured explanation has already been given in a Star Trek: Enterprise episode.

So, on to Star Trek (2009). The director, the writers, and even a couple of the actors (Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto on Saturday Night Live) have assured hardcore fans that the new film respects the canon. But it does so with all the integrity of Jew eating turkey bacon. In the year 2387, Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy) fails to prevent a star in the Romulan Empire from going supernova. Aboard a mining vessel, Captain Nero (Eric Bana) witnesses the destruction of Romulus and chases Spock into the black hole, which takes them to the past. Nero destroys the USS Kelvin and later the Vulcan homeworld. These two events, and possibly others, inevitably alter all that follows, and the writers made sure to put this into the dialogue: Uhura realizes that now they're in an "alternate reality" and young Spock (Zachary Quinto) hammers the point home by declaring that their destinies have now changed. The writers have written themselves a license to write anything into the Trek universe. But is it really necessary? Would it have been that hard to write an exciting movie without discarding everything that had been written before?

The death of George Samuel Kirk Sr. (Chris Hemsworth) undoubtedly alters the destiny of James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), while the destruction of Vulcan makes many storylines of the various Trek series and earlier films untenable. What will happen when Spock gets the pon farr? Will Kirk know well enough to not to strand Khan on Tau Ceti Alpha V? And if he still does, will Spock have the sense to come up with an alternative to transfering his katra to McCoy and killing his body in the hopes of being restored on Vulcan? And how exactly can the Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter "Unification" play out now that a Romulan is responsible for the destruction of Vulcan? In short, the original series is now invalid for nitpicking the new film. In fact, the only valid prior series or film valid for nitpicking might be Star Trek: Enterprise. Ugh. But there are still plenty of nits to be had using the film by itself.

When Uhura goes to the bar in Iowa, she orders several drinks, including a Cardassian sunrise. I seriously doubt that Nero's incursion to the past would have caused the xenophobic Cardassians to share their mixology with the Federation.

The child Kirk drives an antique car with a Nokia phone. Really!? If money is obsolete on Earth, why would a company feel the need to stamp their brand on every product? And don't talk to me about the Picard Dom Perignon champagne bottle, that's a matter of tradition, not commerce. And why would the police be patrolling the desolate Iowa highways? Maybe the policeman beamed in with his hover bike from some central police headquarters.

When Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) talks to Kirk, he gets the Federation and Starfleet mixed up. He explains to Kirk that "The Federation is an armada..."? Let me stop you right there. That's like confusing the United States for the United States Armed Forces (Army, Navy, Air Force). One is a political entity with civilian leadership, the other one is a defense organization that answers to the civilian leadership of the political entity. It would be understandable for an alien to make a mistake of this sort, but a captain in the defense organization? That would be like General Shinseki saying "The United States is the most powerful army on Earth."

So much of this film depends on coincidences. Isn't it a coincidence that Kirk tried to have sex with Uhura's roommate the same night Uhura intercepted a strange Romulan message and told her roommate about it? Isn't it a coincidence that after being grounded for cheating on the Kobayashi Maru test, Kirk went straight to the one person who could figure out an unorthodox way to get Kirk on the Enterprise anyway? Isn't it a coincidence that when young Spock orders Kirk off the ship, Kirk's pod lands close to both the Starfleet facility where Scotty is currently on duty at and the cave where Ambassador Spock was hiding out? Maybe not, given that the Enterprise was just coming from where Vulcan used to be, and young Spock would not strand Kirk on a planet with no Starfleet presence, thus narrowing down the choices, and also given that Nero wanted to place Spock someplace from where he could watch the destruction of Vulcan. But Nero wouldn't feel any obligation to place Spock close to a Starfleet facility; the only consideration would be placing Spock on the hemisphere of the planet that would give the view of Vulcan during its destruction. How differently would the story have turned out if Spock had been placed 2,000 miles away from the Starfleet facility! Earth would be added to the list of destroyed planets.

But what is Nero's motivation? Is he a blithering idiot? He's smart enough to know he's in the past, and that Spock exists in the past. But in 25 years of cruising around Federation space, it doesn't once occur to him or to his crew that maybe they can get back to the future at just the right time and kill Spock before he destroys Romulus. Or maybe kill both Spocks, to make sure. Or maybe realize that it wasn't really Spock's fault. Or how about just warning Romulus to evacuate the planet a year before the catastrophe? The shallowness of his character is made clear at the end when Kirk offers to help Nero escape the latest red matter-induced black hole. Nero says he would rather suffer the destruction of Romulus a thousand times than accept Kirk's help! And maybe offering help was just bravado on Kirk's part (which Spock understandably failed to realize), because how can the little Enterprise pull that huge ship out of the black hole when the Enterprise herself has trouble breaking free? But Nero's response only shows his rabidness.

There's more to nitpick in this movie, I'm sure, and hopefully the comments will have nits I've overlooked. But now I'm going to turn to nitpicking some of the reviews. Scott Mantz of Access Hollywood says this film is "the first 'Star Trek' for everyone!" That means that what everyone wants in a movie is non-stop action, with no time for reflection whatsoever. I can just picture the writers worrying that the audience would fall asleep during Kirk's conversations with Ambassador Spock, which is why Kirk couldn't just walk to Spock's cave and why Scotty had to beam into a water tube aboard the Enterprise. No, the first 'Star Trek' for everyone is Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. An argument could be made for Wrath of Khan. I respect Roger Ebert's opinion, but in his review he gets confused about which planet it is that Kirk, Sulu and the red-shirt dive into: Vulcan, not Earth. As for his comments on the science of Star Trek, it has been established in the canon that black holes can lead to other times and places and deliver materials intact; to what extent this is true in real life is of little concern to most viewers.