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.