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.