Are you sure they would have lost anyway?

By now you've heard of Gabe Okoye and Brittany Mayti, the contestants on Million Dollar Money Drop who correctly answered a question about Post-It notes and still lost $800,000 anyway. Now the host Kevin Pollak is saying that the couple would have lost on the next question anyway. It seems that Pollak has doctorate degrees in causal quantum mechanics, game theory and behavioral neurochemistry.

Seriously, though, as sensible as Pollak's premise sounds, it is quite flawed. For one thing, even if Pollak has himself experienced losing $800,000 in the blink of an eye (such as at the casino), he does not exactly understand the demoralizing effect such a loss can have on an ordinary person.

If the contestants had had $800,000 to bet on the next question instead of just $80,000, perhaps they might have had a more intelligent discussion as to whether Brian Williams or Jon Stewart was "the most trusted broadcaster of 2009." Maybe they knew the right answer was Jon Stewart in the back of their minds, but with the horrendous loss of 800 grand fresh in their minds, they would surely have second-guessed themselves, thinking something like "If we were wrong about Post-Its, we might also be wrong about Jon Stewart."

And let's not forget that on Million Dollar Money Drop contestants get a choice of two categories on each question. If Okoye and Mayti had gone on to the next question with the 800 thou, would they have made the same choice for the next category?

In the end, however, despite my disagreeing with Pollak's premise, I must admit that I agree with his conclusion. The fact is that Million Dollar Money Drop is designed to make sure contestants go home with nothing. Even Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? allowed contestants to bow out of the game at certain points and go home with a decent amount of money. On Drop, whatever few thousands you might have left on the final question (if you even get that far) must be placed on only one answer, you can't hedge, it's all-or-nothing. Who knows, you might actually have a better chance of winning a million on your state lottery.

The magical sleigh

Last night's full hour Family Guy episode, "Road to the North Pole," was brilliant, especially in comparison to the other episodes so far this season. Nitpicking Family Guy had gotten to be very unpleasant, because it was practically beating up on a lousy show.

But this latest episode was a pleasure to watch. I don't feel like a bully when I point out that Stewie didn't have time to make those modifications to Santa's sleigh that get Brian and Stewie out of a rough spot just in the nick of time. One minute Brian is declaring that he will take care of Santa's deliveries, the next Brian and Stewie are off on the sleigh, up in the air. And if Stewie really did make modifications to Santa's sleigh, where was Brian at? So here we have a deus ex machina, with Stewie being the deus and the sleigh being the machina.

The episode takes a very serious turn for its last few minutes, almost bordering on preachy. This was the point at which I remembered my reason for sitting down to watch this episode at all (after the very obnoxious episode "Brian Writes a Bestseller" I thought I was done watching Family Guy): I wanted to see how it meshes with the pre-cancellation episode "A Very Freakin' Special Family Guy Christmas": for the most part, pretty well. The only thing is that the earlier episode leads us to believe that Lois would have taken care of getting the presents, and not relied on Santa Claus completely. Recall that in that episode, Stewie is disappointed by the first gift he opens, but then Chris prompts him to open the other present, which has that strong green glow that stands for nuclear materials; presumably the first gift Lois bought and the second is from Santa.

It feels good for Family Guy to once again be worthy of nitpicking.

So glad Quagmire's not Japanese

As Family Guy nears the shark, the writers sometimes seem to think that the way to spice up the show is with sudden left-field revelations about established characters. And so it turns out that not only is Peter's biological father not Francis Griffin, but Peter was born in Mexico and is not a U. S. citizen. Yawn.

So it filled me with dread when in last night's episode, "Halloween on Spooner Street," Quagmire tells Peter that he's part Japanese. "Here we go: now it's not enough to have these left-field revelations about the main characters, we also need to do it for secondary characters," I thought.

But it turns out that Quagmire's not actually Japanese, he was just saying that to set up a prank in which he frightens Peter aboard an old Japanese plane. That doesn't, however, lessen the extreme unfunniness of the whole storyline.

Only my opponent lets violent criminals out early

Depending on which political attack ads you believe, Judge Denise Langford Morris is either tough on crime, or a bleeding heart softy who lets violent criminals out early, or even off the hook altogether. For some reason, "I never sent an innocent man to jail" just isn't a selling point for elected judges (as is the case with Michigan Supreme Court judges).

Personally, and this is just me talking, I'm more concerned about how a potential top state law enforcement officer would handle big insurance and product liability cases. For at least one of these points, there is an attack ad: Bill Schuette, a Court of Appeals judge running for Attorney General, supposedly sided with an insurance company in a case involving a quadriplegic victim of an accident because he took money from the insurance company in the case.

According to LegalNews.com, Schuette did receive a $200 contribution from an individual associated with an insurance company years prior to the case being heard in appellate court. That would be like some random guy giving me a dollar today and then two years later when I'm on jury duty on a case involving that person I vote not guilty. I probably wouldn't even remember the dollar I received from the accused at that point. (Schuette probably had to ask his campaign manager to look it up in the database in order to figure out what exactly his opponents were blowing out of proportion).

Maybe this year we'll get more nuanced voting in the Attorney General and Supreme Court slots. But I'm not using the word "nuanced" here to mean "better informed," just "not all straight down party lines."

Tough nerd gets ahead of himself

"Michigan chooses Rick Snyder," or so claims Snyder's latest spot. Apparently, the Snyder camp is such that present and future are the same tense. Even an unconfirmed potential future. November 2 is still almost two weeks away. Let's say that voters do indeed choose Rick Snyder by a landslide. With a low enough voter turnout, that would still not represent the will of Michigan, mute to say "None of the above."

And supposedly Virg Bernero is a "career politician" and not a "job creator" like Rick Snyder. With both candidates claiming to have created jobs but with neither one actually refuting the other's claims with solid evidence, one has to wonder what kinds of jobs they're talking about. If I pick up a couple of illegal immigrants at Home Depot to fix my gazebo today, does that count as job creation? What if I give my neighbor's kid a buck to mow my grass?

I created a thousand jobs, he lost a thousand jobs

No one disputes that jobs are a very important issue in Michigan for this coming election. Understandably, each gubernatorial candidates will try to present himself as the magic bullet cure for unemployment.

Virg Bernero has made his message about job creation a little clearer but its factuality remains open to dispute. Not surprisingly, one Bernero ad on TV claims that Rick Snyder, while at Gateway, allowed major downsizing to happen at that company. Instead of countering that with some kind of explanation, the Snyder camp has responded with an ad claiming that the unemployment in Lansing (the city Bernero has been mayor of) has skyrocketed to 88%.

Now, in one of Snyder's own ads, the "tough nerd" also lays claim to creating jobs, though avoiding the political pitfall of saying exactly how many. The point of this newer ad is to explain that Michigan lost so many jobs because the business tax is just so gosh darn high. For an outsider, Snyder sure sounds like an inside Republican: the answer to any question is always to cut taxes for businesses and the wealthy. I remain unconvinced that cutting business taxes guarantees that businesses won't cut jobs.

Brian the conservative

Stewie is not the only Family Guy character getting dumbed down. Brian is becoming quite the moron as well. I have a hard time believing that the Brian from Season 2 is a character who could be brainwashed into blindly and idiotically accepting Republican rhetoric after reading Rush Limbaugh's book. From this episode, we're to accept that Brian's liberalism was so shallow it could be easily transmuted and restored. This is perhaps an even sadder transgression against this character than having him eat Stewie's crap.

What is a "terminological inexactitude" exactly?

I'm guessing that the writers of Easy A are patting themselves on the back for their use of the term "terminological inexactitude." The 2-word, 11-syllable term most likely comes across to the audience as puffed up synonym for "lie." Most of the audience anyway. Some nitpickers will however pick apart the use of this term in the film.

The story concerns Olive (Emma Stone), a high school student who quickly gains a reputation for being a slut despite the fact that she is in fact a virgin. On her webcast, Olive talks about the "velocity" with which her "terminological inexactitude" travels through the entire school. Olive invents a college guy and lets her best friend, Rhiannon (Aly Michalka), jump to the conclusion that Olive lost her virginity to that guy during the weekend that just passed. The reality is that Olive stayed at home by herself the entire weekend.

I have no quibble with the first part of the term. My first thought would have been to use "verbal" instead, but it seems like the rumors spread as much through text messages as through phone calls and face-to-face conversations, perhaps more.

It's the second part of the term that gives me pause. The thesaurus defines "inexact" as "imprecise" or "inaccurate" or "vague," etc. I don't see anything like "totally false" in there. It seems to me that most people make a distinction between "imprecise" and "false." For example, it is imprecise to say that π is 3.1, but it is completely false to say that is negative 78 trillion.

Thus, going back to the film, it would have been inexact for Olive to say that she had sex with the guy if she had made out with him on his bed. But the guy doesn't even exist in the first place! Olive actually comes closer to sex with Brandon (Dan Byrd), artlessly described as a "homo," at Melody Bostick's house party. But it seems like she never actually says "I had sex with Brandon," because it is much easier to just let people think that after the weird performance they put in behind closed doors.

On the other hand, even nitpickers must acknowledge that the normal person cuts herself more slack for imprecisions than she does others, that is, if I say something false then it is an inexactitude, but if you say something false it is a lie.

Maybe in another installment we will take a look at what could be the most famous imprecision slash lie in the entire filmic canon: the idea that Darth Vader killed Anakin Skywalker.

Stewie will never kill Lois

With Family Guy finally switching to 16:9, the show remains mired on many of its familiar tropes of more or less recent vintage, such as Quagmire's weird out-of-left-field hatred for Brian or James Woods' obsession with Quahog. But one old trope dusted off for last night's episode "And Then There Were Fewer" was Stewie's supposedly matricidal intentions towards his mother Lois, declared from the very first episode and examined in the episodes "Stewie Kills Lois" and "Lois Kills Stewie."

But let's not forget "Death is a Bitch," in which, with Death incapacitated, Stewie throws Lois down the stairs, followed by an armoire and a grenade. Lois is none the worse for wear, because Death's broken ankle has not healed. Various nitpickers have pointed out that if Stewie really intends to kill his mother, he could've done any of the things he does in that episode when Death was infirm.

In last night's episode we get more evidence that Stewie's matricidal rants are just talk: before Diane Simmons can kill Lois, Stewie uses a long-distance rifle to kill Diane, then declares that if anyone will "drop" Lois, it will be him. Well, Stewie, you missed your chance: why couldn't you kill both Lois and Diane? Did you only have one bullet with you?

Quick note to Ann Curry on the Fifth Amendment

In a quick check of the headlines on the Today show today, Ann Curry said that one egg company exec "took the Fifth Amendement." The popular expression is just "took the Fifth." The appropriate legal expression would be "invoked his Fifth Amendment rights." It's OK for a journalist to use either expression, but to mix them the way Ann Curry did today sounds a little weird.

The mysterious forces of money

The film: Bruce Almighty (2003)
What happened: God (Morgan Freeman) gives Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey) all His powers and responsibilities (though mostly limited to Buffalo, New York). However, like God Himself, Bruce can't "mess with free will." Bruce uses his new powers for his own personal gain. After failing to propose to Grace (Jennifer Aniston) at the restaurant where they had their first date years ago, Bruce starts hearing thousands upon thousands of prayers, which he had so far ignored. God tells him he must do something about the prayers before they pile up further. So Bruce puts them on a computer as e-mail and spends the rest of night trying to answer many of them. The next day, having barely made a dent, Bruce decides to grant all requests. At the next lottery drawing, some 400,000 players, all of them from Buffalo, win, reducing each individual's prize money to $17.
What doesn't quite make sense: If God created the universe, surely He has the power to let a few thousand people win the lottery simultaneously. But how would this particular 'miracle' be accomplished, exactly? Especially given the respect for free will explicitly stated in the movie: Bruce can pull down the Moon and give his girlfriend a remote orgasm, but he can't make her love him. Can we even assume that those who pray asking to win lottery actually play the lottery?
The thing is that playing the lottery involves quite a bit of free will, even after making the decision to play the game. In the State of New York, according to the New York Lottery website, there are a number of different lottery games people can play: Mega Millions, Powerball, Sweet Million, etc. The film does not specify which of these games the simultaneous winners played, but it does seem clear that they won the grand prize, which is usually shared by all those lucky enough to hit on the right numbers (splitting a few million with two or three other players still leaves you a heck of a lot of money).
And after you choose your game, what numbers do you play? Maybe after Bruce decided to let everyone win the lottery, God whispered into the prayers' ears the numbers to play. If they are not as resistant to God's messages as Bruce is, they could be convinced to play something other than their usual numbers. Or maybe God told them to let the computer pick the numbers, and then He made the computer give them all the same set of numbers? After that it would have been a simple matter of guiding the number balls accordingly at the drawing. And yet this explanation seems somewhat unsatisfactory.
There is another detail: the matter of the suddenly rising tech stocks. The stock market may seem even more mysterious and capricious than the lottery. But free will is also involved there. After you buy shares of a stock, you are free to sell them at any time afterwards (as long as they don't go all the way down to $0).
A quick note: I've been tempted to refer to God as "She" or "Her." In a Kevin Smith film, I could do that. In this film, and its sort-of sequel Evan Almighty, I can't do that.

Tacky cattiness at the expense of plot

The show: Family Guy, once a paragon of animated freshness compared to the stale Simpsons, now degenerated to a platform for offensive jokes for the sake of being offensive, simultaneously tacky and catty attacks on celebrities, and a complete disregard for both inter- and intra-episode continuity.
The episode: "Big Man on Hippocampus," first aired back in January and rerun recently.
What happened: Taking a page from The Simpsons, the writers set up the main story of Peter's amnesia with a seemingly unrelated first act in which the Griffins go on Family Feud. During taping, Peter has an accident and loses his memory. The family tries to restore his memory with some old family videos, but Peter is more interested in watching Pretty Woman. That night, Peter spies on Lois undressing, and Lois re-introduces Peter to sex. The next day, Peter decides that despite how much he enjoyed sex with Lois, he'd rather have sex with other women. That night he brings Tiffani-Amber Thiessen home with every intention of having sex with her. Lois leaves in a huff. Peter asks Tiffani about her necklace. "Is that how you spend your Saved by the Bell money?" Peter asks.
What doesn't make sense: So when did Peter relearn what Saved by the Bell is? And why would he know about that teen comedy but not remember how to drive? So basically, Peter's amnesia is suspended just long enough for him to make a tacky, catty remark to a celebrity. Do the writers feel proud of themselves here? Worse, this is one of those nits that could've been prevented with a simple line of dialogue inserted earlier: besides Pretty Woman, the box of videotapes could have also have had a Saved by the Bell tape. It wouldn't have been necessary to actually show Peter watching that show, but just to mention it eliminates this nit free and clear.
One more thing: Yes, I'm still watching this on FOX. Supposedly the jokes are funnier on Adult Swim. Why? Because they can use all the swear words and racial slurs they want? Hey, look at me, I find humor in the prevalence of racism in this country! Give me a break. Besides, bleeps can be exploited for humor much funnier than any catty stereotype that could air on Adult Swim; this is something which this show has actually done in the past. In my opinion, this bit from "PTV" is the funniest in all of post-cancellation Family Guy:

"You know, you're lucky you're good at (bleep) my (bleep) or I'd never put up with you. You know what I'm talking about, when you (bleep) a lubed up (bleep) of toothpaste in my (bleep) while you (bleep) on a cherry (bleep) Episcopalian (bleep) extension cord (bleep) wetness (bleep) with a parking ticket. That is the best." — Peter Griffin

No soap writer watches legal dramas

I don't know what crime Hope Brady (Kristian Alfonso) plead guilty to on today's episode of Days of Our Lives, but the ensuing sentencing hearing served to confirm that the soap's writers have no more than a vague clue of how a courtroom actually runs.

Several of the show's main characters got on the witness stand at random to essentially give closing statements rather than to actually testify. Anyone can raise her hand and say "Can I say something, Judge?" and the judge will let her get on the stand.

The extras tasked with the rôles of lawyers were mostly deprived of lines because the episode's writer seems to be completely unaware that in a sentencing hearing, the defense lawyer is supposed to gather witnesses to present evidence in favor of mitigating the sentence, while the prosecutor is supposed to gather witnesses to present evidence in favor of aggravating the sentence.

How do I know all this? Do I have a fancy law degree framed in my office? No. I watch shows like Law & Order (and its various spin-offs), The Practice, Ally McBeal, Boston Legal, JAG, The Deep End, Judging Amy, The Defenders, Perry Mason, Matlock, Crossing Jordan, Family Law, etc. It wouldn't hurt the soap writers to watch an episode of any legal drama they can catch on TV these days.

Closed captioning spoils joke, sort of

The first time I watched the Scrubs episode "My Fault," in which J. D.'s girlfriend Danni (Tara Reid) screams her own name during sex, I'm fairly sure I was watching it at medium volume on prime time NBC. (J. D. and the Janitor drop coy references to popular past NBC shows like Seinfeld and Friends). The joke is that Danni has been cheating on J. D. with a guy named Danny.

Just a short while ago I got done watching it on MyTV 20 Detroit at low volume with closed captions. I already know the joke that Danni did not scream her own name during sex. But if I didn't, perhaps the impact of the joke would have been lessened. Before the sex scene, J. D. tells Danni "Nobody cares, Danni." The captioning shows that her name is Danni with an I. Then, in the sex scene, Danni yells "Oh, Danny," with a Y. The joke is perhaps spoiled.

Although I suppose nitpickers would be complaining if the closed captioners had tried to preserve the joke by captioning Danni's scream with an I instead of a Y, or if instead they spelled her name with a Y instead of an I for the entire episode.

Sketchy on Bernero's record for job creation

In advance of tomorrow's primary, Virg Bernero has been airing ads claiming he "created/saved 6,000 jobs." I guess he's hoping voters don't start wondering as to what exactly that means, since creating a job is not the same as saving a job.

It's a very obvious difference, but let me spell it out anyway: to create a job means to cause to come into existence a position with a salary or wages that did not exist before; to save a job means to ensure that a position with a salary or wages that already exists continues to exist.

So, how many jobs did Bernero create and how many did he save? Maybe he only created about a hundred jobs (his campaign staff) and saved about 5,900. You can argue that even if he only created 1 job and saved 5,999 that's still a good thing. But then you have to ask yourself: what exactly does one have to do in order to be able to claim that you saved a job? If I tip my barber, does that mean that I saved his job?

However, note that I'm nitpicking his ad; I'm not saying that you shouldn't vote for Bernero just because I find a nit in his ad. After all, I'm not voting for Pete Hoekstra, even though I believe what he says about cutting taxes and spending—how do I know he's not gonna cut spending on the things I like to use, like roads and libraries?

You vote for whom you want to vote tomorrow. Just vote.

Wrong, Paul Gross!

I never thought I would be nitpicking a weather forecast. But this morning's forecast for metro Detroit from Channel 4's Paul Gross flew in the face of commonsense. He said cloud cover would increaase but that it would not rain at all. Well, around 5 PM, it was clear that he was wrong. It was not a major downpour, but enough to prove the point that where there are dark gray clouds in the sky, rain is usually not far behind. Luckily I did not get too wet on the way between the building and my car.

Thanks for the confusing message, Huntington

Huntington Bank has a new ad on TV to boast that they're the number one SBA lender. In the ad, a manager happily informs his employees of this fact, and that he's had T-shirts made to commemorate their ranking. The employees cheer, but the smile disappears from their faces as one of them points out that the shirt actually says "#1 ABS Lender."

So what you're telling me, Huntington, is that you're the top-ranking lender as measured by the Small Business Administration, but some of your employees don't know how to spell the acronym for "Small Business Administration"? Maybe it was the shirt company that screwed up and switched the letters around. But why didn't the guy take a look at one of the shirts to make sure it said what he wanted it to say?

I do understand that commercials nowadays, with their ambitions to be micro-movies, must present some kind of problem in their narrative. But at least make the problem a problem that your company can solve by the use of your product or service. It makes little sense to introduce a problem that has to be solved by another company. Anyway you slice it, the ad is too distracting from the message. If I was a small business owner in need of a loan, Huntington would not be my first choice.

Tired of Family Guy crap yet?

Maybe we were all too grossed out by the idea of Brian actually eating Stewie's crap to notice something Brian should have realized long before putting his nose to the diaper:

Remember how in "Breaking Out Is Hard to Do" the Griffin household degenerated into a pigsty when Lois went to jail? Peter, Brian, Meg and Chris are sitting on the couch, looking all dirty, when Stewie comes in, pleading for someone to change his diaper. "I can't fit any more in there," the poor baby says and then just falls down face flat on the floor.

Let's not forget that Brian has a long memory. There was an episode in Season 4 or 5 in which Brian got back at Peter for something that happened in Season 3. And if Stewie really is still 1-year-old, shouldn't Brian remember that Stewie survived the ordeal of Lois's incarceration despite so few diaper changes?

It was painful to watch that scene when Brian actually eats Stewie's crap. It felt very wrong. Now that I remembered these scenes from previous episodes, I understand why it felt so wrong for the character.

Just another tame Severe Weather Alert Day

So Channel 4 this morning declared today a "Severe Weather Alert Day" with escalated coverage. Just before noon, there was a brief, light shower, and a tiny rumble of thunder. Then it was just cloudy for a couple of hours and then the sky brightened up. With the day almost over now, it doesn't look like there's gonna be any more rain today, let alone severe thunderstorms and the like.

Rewriting the Simpson family tree over and over again

So the Simpsons are 1/64th Black, according to a recent episode reran last night. Yawn. I see what Bill keeps saying about The Simpsons having become a thoroughly boring show. The problem isn't just that Family Guy did it first (remember Nate Griffin?), but also that in two decades the show has managed to write a lot of the tree.

I remember Grampa Simpson reminiscing that the Simpson family came from "the old country" (he didn't remember which) as immigrants to Ellis Island, and lived on the Statue of Liberty for a brief period. Granted, Grampa Simpson is as reliable a narrator as Peter Griffin, and the immigrant story even if true does not rule out American, Civil War-era ancestors for Bart and Lisa.

There's something else. I can buy Grampa forgetting stuff, but not Lisa. Wasn't there a much earlier episode in which Lisa examined the Simpson family tree looking for an ancestor to be proud of? And wasn't the conclusion of that episode that the Simpson men are boozehounds at best, while the Simpson women are doctors, scientists, activists, etc.? I don't remember the title of that episode, but I would think Lisa Simpson would remember what happened in that episode.

Not so bad Sunday

Animation Domination on FOX Sunday nights had fallen into a pattern: bore us to death with The Simpsons, then fill up The Cleveland Show with disgusting, unfunny bathroom humor, then all the offensive, catty racial jokes into Family Guy, and then delve in Roger's eccentricities on American Dad.

This division of labor was not in evidence last night. I caught the last few minutes of The Simpsons; then followed The Cleveland Show with some cliched story about the paterfamilias spending money necessary for the children on something frivolous, in this case casino gambling; and then on Family Guy the drinking buddies are reunited with Cleveland on a quest to find the source of the world's dirty jokes. None of these shows are now anywhere near the heights reached in their golden pasts, but these breaks from the usual rut they had fallen into lately was a pleasant break.

Lois not in GLBTA

Is it just me or is Lois on Family Guy getting more and more ignorant? Her attitudes to Brian's various girlfriends are but one indicator. Another is her attitudes towards gays: in "You May Now Kiss the... uh... Guy Who Receives," Lois's initial refusal to allow Jasper's wedding to a Filipino man was not exactly exemplary of tolerance but at least it showed a woman intelligently willing to amend her views.

Last night, in one of the unfunniest Family Guy episodes to date, "Quagmire's Dad," the writers introduce Quagmire's father, a commissioned officer in the Navy, only to have him get a sex change operation. It is not at all surprising that Peter comes to the unmindful conclusion that Quagmire's father feeling like a woman trapped in a man's body is exactly equal to his being gay. But it is surprising—and disappointing—that Lois would come to that same conclusion.

And just for the record, this is the difference, which both Peter and certainly Lois ought to be aware of: a gay man is attracted to other men but has no desire to change his body in any radical way (even if he's usually a "bottom"); a transgendered man may be attracted to either men or women but regardless has a strong compulsion to change his body into a woman's body. Lois apparently learned nothing in "You May Now Kiss the... uh... Guy Who Receives."

Oh, and how could Brian not tell Ida is a post-op transsexual if he's so damn disgusted by the concept?

On another note, it was good to see the animators not putting Private chevrons on every single Navy officer shown (as they have done with police officers in prior episodes), and in fact giving appropriate Navy officer rank insignia to the officers shown. Though there was this one guy whose rank fluctuated between Lieutenant and Commander (two and three solid stripes on the shoulderboard, respectively) but maybe we can chalk that up to the exigencies of animation.

Not laughing on the way to the bank

You can forgive the writers of Family Guy all the inconsistencies about Brian and Stewie IF those inconsistencies result in very funny jokes. The latest episode really brought to the forefront how the writers are in a constant state of remembering and forgetting that Brian is a dog and Stewie a baby. So Stewie can go clothes shopping at DSW yet is completely clueless as to how to unfasten his diaper? What do you make of all the suggestions that Stewie engages in a lot of gay sex—does he take his diaper off for that (and what kind of sicko...)? Or is it just some weird kind of bravado? And don't get me started on Brian the sometimes dog.

There were few laughs in the episode, made far more worse by a pretension to profundity. It's one thing setting a live action piece all in one room, but animation frees one to go to any place. I know some of you are going to say something like "But they do go to a different place emotionally." Save it. This episode has nothing on the "Road to" episodes. Nor does it illuminate Brian and Stewie's complicated relationship any better.

(Oh, and great job Wikipedia linking "love" in their article about this episode to "platonic love." Even with just this episode alone you have to realize that Brian and Stewie are way beyond "platonic love" despite Brian's unwillingness. That's how Wikipedia is: slander real people but tread lightly with fictional characters.)

About time

It's about time: The Early Show has finally gone to a 16:9 aspect ratio and abandoned its constricted layout employing the extreme close-up on the CBS eye to frame introductory segments. The show had been broadcasting in HD at 4:3 for at least two years now. They're still using a 4:3 title safe, but that's very understandable.

Comments in English, please

It's one of those things one would think goes without saying: one should post comments to an English language blog in English. I'm tired of spam in Chinese. Any comment I see in a language other than English I will delete. Oh, and I doubt I would like spam in English either.

That's what's going on around the world

Al Roker of the Today show is notorious for doing human interest soundbites and then turning it over to local weathermen with his trademarked catchphrase "That's what's going on around the country, here's what's happening in your neck of the woods," having said nothing whatsoever about the national weather.

For all his quick wit, Al Roker is perfectly incapable of changing his catchphrase. Lately he has actually been talking about weather in his weather segment. With the Iceland volcano Eyjafjallajokull continuing to spew ash into the air, it makes sense that Roker talks about how the jet stream is taking the ash over to Europe. Sometimes he then says something about weather in America, sometimes not. Either way, his segue to local weather is exactly the same.

Attempted suicide at the laundromat

The show: Medium
The episode: "There Will Be Blood... Type B," aired last Friday on CBS.
What happened: Allison lets Jennifer (Vanessa Marano), a homeless teenager haunted by dreams of a cold-blooded killer, stay in her house, despite objections from her husband and daughters. After a few nights, Jennifer steals money from the house and goes sleep at a laundromat. There, she dreams of the killer calmly killing a cop. She wakes up in such despair from that dream that she tries to drink an entire bottle of Clorox (or some other brand of bleach). Luckily, Allison dreams of Jennifer's suicide attempt and is able to get her to the Hospital in time to save her life.
What has me wondering: Most laundromats I've been to are practically run by Ferengi. Want two drier sheets? Pay a dollar. I seriously doubt that a laundromat owner would leave an entire bottle of Clorox just lying around for anyone to use. However, this doesn't rule out that the bottle of Clorox belonged to another customer. Also, the editing gives the impression that if Allison hadn't dreamt Jennifer chugging the Clorox, Jennifer would have died. Even if we accept there were no customers in the laundromat at the time (one of whom forgot her bottle of Clorox), where was the laundromat employee at?

Treat every weapon as if it were loaded

I've been hesitant to nitpick Army Wives because I don't know much about the Army, specifically, how it differs from the Navy in the small details, where the nits live. As I begin to watch Season 3 on DVD, I need to remind myself again that in the Army, you can salute indoors under certain circumstances. But I'm not sure Colonel Burton saying goodbye to General Holden before he went to command NATO in Brussels counts as one of those circumstances.

There might be a bigger nit in Trevor's storyline in which a soldier under his charge accidentally fires his rifle to the deck after returning from a training exercise. After finding out who the soldier is, Colonel Connors asks who the team leader is, and throws the book at him in NJP (non-judicial punishment) for failing to make sure his soldiers' rifles were cleared at the end of the exercise. Trevor explains to his wife Roxy that the Army is strict, even about negligent discharges in which no one gets hurt. However, it seems to me as if the soldier whose "gun" went off actually gets off scot-free.

I wasn't an Infantryman in the Marines (couldn't have been even if I had wanted to), but even I got it drilled into my head to "treat every weapon as if it were loaded." So even if I was completely certain my rifle was cleared, I would still have put the 'dial' in the "safe" position and I still WOULD HAVE KEPT MY FINGER OFF THE @#$%ING TRIGGER! This is not to say that no Marine has ever accidentally shot his rifle. But something tells me that the Marine whose rifle went off would bear the brunt of the punishment.

Of course Army Infantry is different from Marine combat support, but one would think they too would be trained to treat every weapon as if it were loaded. I suppose such an incident is the only reason the writers could think of for getting Trevor in trouble and making Burton jump to the conclusion that Connors was coming down hard on LeBlanc to indirectly get back at her.

The cabbage

The show: JAG
The episode: "Bridging the Gulf," from Season 10.
What happened: Harm investigates an aviator from the USS Kennedy who authorized his gunner to immobilize an Iraqi fisherman's boat that was approaching an oil terminal. Harm concludes Lt. Gutierrez (Randy Lewis Hernandez) was correct to stop the boat, but he soon himself finds himself having to make a similar decision: while getting his F-18 quals, he's diverted to the oil terminal and shoots a Cessna out of the sky before that plane can strike the oil terminal. The plane Harm shot down then turns out to have had an Iraqi dignitary on board. Turner comes aboard to investigate and Harm is grounded but continues his investigation ashore, aided by Col. Najjar (Andrew Divoff) of the Iraqi Army, leading to a climactic shoot-out in which the Iraqi fisherman (Ahmed Ahmed) seems to die and the body of the real Iraqi minister is found in the terrorists' lair. Now cleared, Harm resumes his carrier quals, while Turner escorts the Iraqi fisherman to America to rejoin his family, who were taken over there to put them out of the terrorists' reach.
What doesn't quite make sense: As Turner gets ready to board the COD back to America, the fisherman feels compelled to explain to Turner why he's alive: in order to make sure that the terrorists wouldn't menace the man's family as they made their way out of Iraq, the terrorists had to be made to think that he had died and that therefore there was no reason to go after his family. However, this explanation is really intended for the viewers. I mean, why would Turner care if the fisherman was dead or alive? Turner's investigation was on Harm for blowing up the Cessna, not on Gutierrez for incapacitating the fishing boat. Did the fisherman come aboard the Kennedy prior to the wire operation, or did Turner go ashore at some point that we were not apprised of?
If there is a character who needed that explanation is Col. Najjar, who saw the apparent death of the fisherman and almost avenged him by killing a terrorist he irately described as "the son of a syphalitic whore" (with such badly spelled subtitles, we can only assume the spoken Arabic is not much better). Harm, who seems to have been aware of the strategy, has to make Najjar back down.
While we're on the subject of onscreen text, in the end credits, the actor Nabeel is identified as an "Iraqi soldienr." Actually, there is a character that looks like a lowercase "m" with part of the rightmost line erased to make it look like an "r." In fact that would have worked if you started out with an "n" rather than an "m." To make a mistake like that in Final Cut Pro would actually be an accomplishment, because, as far as I can tell, there is no such character in Unicode.
And another thing: According to the IMDb, an FA-18 can't fly at the same speed as a Cessna, at least not the way they're shown in this episode: Although a Cessna's maximum speed is close to an FA-18's stall speed, "the FA-18 is not flying nose high with flaps extended (to maintain minimum airspeed)." Assuming that's correct, shooting down the Cessna may have been the only thing Harm could possibly have done under the circumstances.
The IMDb also says that Turner's theory "that the Cessna was on autopilot and returned to it programmed destination after Harm tipped it off course" is invalidated by the fact that a Cessna's autopilot function is for a course, not a destination, and thus if it was possible for Harm to nudge the Cessna away from its destination, the Cessna should not have snapped back on course for the oil terminal.
On that last point I'm willing to be a little more forgiving, for after all, Turner is a submariner, not an aviator. It is understandable that he would not know the specifics of the Cessna autopilot, and it is also understandable that Harm, sullen over his career being in Turner's hands, would not volunteer to explain during the preliminary investigation that just the Cessna snapping back on target for the oil terminal was proof enough that it was intended to hit the terminal.
Lastly, if I recall correctly, there was one scene that the USS Kennedy was 47 and another that it was 72. If I'm right, this would mean that those establishing shots are of the real life USS Philippine Sea, CV-47 (decommissioned in 1958) and the real life USS Abraham Lincoln, CVN-72 (which is still in service). Don't worry, I didn't go to Wikipedia for those bits of information, I went to www.navy.mil.

I've got swine fever

Last year, when it was declared that swine flu should be called "H1N1" instead, cynics were ready to say that the CDC had capitulated to the meat industry. I'll admit that I was among those cynics. However, a seemingly prescient Season 4 (2004 - 2005) episode of Scrubs reminded me that swine flu is nothing new and that technically it's more correct to say "2009 H1N1" than "swine flu."

When Clay Aiken guest-starred on the episode titled "My Life in Four Cameras" as a hospital cafeteria worker on the brink of getting a pink slip, the most recent health panic was over SARS. The episode begins with J. D., Turk and Carla at home, when they catch on TV the announcement of an E. coli outbreak, causing them to groan as they correctly foresee Sacred Heart Hospital will be overrun with TV-susceptible hypochondriacs. Dr. Cox asserts that many animal-named flus can only be obtained by fornicating with the animal the flu is named after. Swine flu is one of the flus Dr. Cox gives in his list.

No gray on gay

Maybe the coming out odyssey of Betty's nephew on Ugly Betty is entirely realistic, for after all, given the still rather sparse presence of gay portrayals in our media (including even Broadway musicals written by gay librettists and set to music by gay composers), a young gay boy would first think that he's straight and even have crushes on girls. I know because I dated one such boy in high school.

And yet it seems to me like the writers are beating us over the head with excessively obvious hints that Justin Suarez (Mark Indelicato) is gay. In last week's episode, Marc (Michael Urie), playing a ridiculous pronoun game, got Justin to reveal the name of his acting class crush: Lily, a she. In this week's episode, however, we saw happen what the writers apparently think we couldn't see coming from a mile away: that the real object of Justin's desire in the love triangle is Austin (Ryan McGinniss), who didn't get to kiss Lily onstage but did backstage, and made sure Justin saw them. In the jealous confrontation between the boys that starts out heteronormatively enough, they kiss. It is as obvious to the viewers as it is surprising to the two characters, who had not even admitted to themselves their true orientation.

But let's not forget that straight and gay is not black and white. Whatever gay inclinations all of us have remain for most of us unacted upon to our deaths. However, prior to the new guidelines on homosexuality for the military, bisexuality was just as damning as homosexuality. With this in mind I watched on DVD an episode from JAG's tenth season, "Heart of Darkness." The main plot of that episode concerns the trial in an Islamic court of the "American warlord." In the subplot, Big Bud (Jeff MacKay) is recalled to active duty, something which he wants to avoid at all costs so that he may continue to run his bar and referee women's wrestling.

So Big Bud, after talking to his son the JAG lawyer, gets the idea of faking an addiction to meth. The female corpsman examining him medically sees right through this pretense. Frustrated, Bud claims he's gay and that he finds men attractive. So the woman gets the idea of whispering either sweet nothings or dirty talk in the man's ear (I wonder if female medical professionals in the military in real life would do that), and seeing the, ahem, tent, in the man's hospital gown, is convinced that she has completely foiled his attempt to avoid the recall by manipulating the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

For those of us who watched the show regularly, we know that Big Bud is very much straight, fitting some of the very worst stereotypes of the salty sailor. Therefore, it doesn't occur to us that Bud could be bisexual; whether out of necessity or legitimate desire doesn't actually matter under the military's policy. But it should occur to someone evaluating the fitness for duty of a given patient. All that the female corpsman proved with her performance is that Bud finds her attractive, it doesn't rule out that some man could arouse the same reaction from the subject. Though I suppose we could argue that it is the expression on Bud's face after the corpsman points out his 'tent' that really proves that he's in fact neither gay nor bi, an expression that says "Okay, you caught me in a lie."

Meet the Stewie who loves funky fruit hats!

In last night's new episode of Family Guy, Brian's questioning of Stewie that the old baby still watches Jolly Farm deserved a better answer, for after all, at the end of "Road to Europe" (a pre-cancellation episode), Stewie declared: "The Stewie who loved Jolly Farm is dead." I wonder if the writers felt any need to explain why Stewie is watching Jolly Farm again in order to set up the story of the American version of the show, or if they simply assumed that no one watching last night would remember "Road to Europe."

However, the writers did feel the need to pre-emptively nitpick the contrivance of Karina revealing herself to really be Stewie on a live broadcast of the show, by having Brian ask why that is and having Stewie respond: "Convenience." And this is not a nit, but let me just say that Stewie's falsetto voice as Karina was one of the most grating and unpleasant things on Family Guy in recent memory.

There's flan on my computer

On last night's episode of Ugly Betty, Betty's family is temporarily living in her apartment on account of the house having burned down one or two episodes ago. For some reason, Betty's father sticks a sandwich bag filled with custard on Betty's laptop. Thus, when Betty arrives at Mode late to give a presentation regarding an upcoming photo shoot with Lady Gaga and she opens her laptop, she's horrified to find the custard on it.

Notice that shot. It looks like some of the contents of the bag have spilled onto the computer's keyboard. Betty removes the bag but on the next shot of the keyboard, it is completely and magically clean, and Betty proceeds to open a file called "Lady Gaga" which has somehow been overwritten with a video of her nephew singing along to a Lady Gaga song. I don't know if I have ever had authentic flan, but something tells me it would be much worse news for a computer it fell on than what we see here.

Lasso that shuttle!

I've been watching G. I. Joe very slowly (which is to mean that the individual discs of the series are spaced very far apart on my Netflix queue). And yet each episode that I watch provides me enough material I could write a whole Nitpicker's Guide to G. I. Joe, as each episode is jam-packed with scientific absurdities and military inaccuracies. But I'm disinclined to do that, as it would be so easy as to be boring, like shooting fish in a barrel.

However, in the first two episodes of the "Pyramid of Darkness" subseries (Season 1, Part 1, Disc 3, to use the Netflix designation) there are two nits that I feel compelled to comment on. In that first episode in which Cobra begins assembling the Pyramid of Darkness, the Joes launch a space shuttle to go over to their space station. A whole bunch of Cobra soldiers show up and assemble a net with which to capture the shuttle. So, a shuttle strapped to rockets with enough kick to escape Earth's gravity can be held up by a net? Positively absurd. Even if the net is strong enough to deal with an upgoing spacecraft, what would happen in real life is that the people on the ground throwing up the net would get taken up into the air, and out into space if they manage to hold on. Naturally Cobra fails to capture the shuttle, not because of the utter idiocy of the idea, but because the Joes cut the net.

In the next episode, the Joes show up at an aircraft carrier and talk to Admiral Ledger (Hal Rayle), who emphasizes that the Joes' use of the carrier is strictly "temporary." Never mind that the Admiral, who we're to believe is the skipper of the vessel, isn't wearing a baseball cap identifying said vessel (as we've seen so often illustrated on JAG). Why is the G. I. Joe logo painted on an aircraft carrier that is only for their temporary use!!??

A "safe" bet

Yesterday, Channel 4 news in Detroit broke the story of the three Michigan tracks fixing races. See http://www.clickondetroit.com/sports/22745239/detail.html if you didn't catch it on TV. Though on the website they don't the quote from the suit saying it's still "safe" to bet at Michigan tracks, which made me laugh. I think that if I lost a lot of money at the track, I wouldn't really care who I lost it to. The investigation is still going on, but I seriously doubt any refunds will be issued to the poor suckers who lost in the fixed races.

Changed premises on convening authorities testifying

In the JAG episode "This Just in From Baghdad," they make a big deal about General Watson (William Russ), the convening authority, testifying in the penalty phase of a court-martial for a Marine blamed for the death of civilian leader in Iraq. Watson explains that he's turned over the duty to a "backup convening authority."

Yet just two episodes later, in "Camp Delta" we have General Spinoza (Julius Carry) convening a court-martial for Army MPs who mistreat a pretend prisoner and testifying at that court-martial without any problem. The explanation that the Army is different doesn't hold any water here, since both the Army and the Navy are subject to the UCMJ (and the episode does bother to explain why a Navy Commander is defending, a Marine Colonel prosecuting and a Navy Captain judging). The only explanation I can think of is that Spinoza did defer to a "backup convening authority" but that part of the episode was cut for time. But even that explanation is lacking, since in the court-martial convened by Watson, the turning over of duties is explained with just two lines of dialogue.

And another thing: what is the point of General Spinoza wearing black stars on the collar of his camouflage jacket but silver stars on his camouflage hat? If he's not worried about snipers taking aim, why not also wear silver stars on his collar?

Just saying

It would just be Sheldon's luck that the one time he drives an actual car, he incurs a traffic violation. In last night's new Big Bang Theory episode, "The Excelsior Acquisition," Sheldon (Jim Parsons) is summoned to court on account of having crossed a red light in the earlier episode "The Adhesive Duck Defficiency" (in which Penny's emergency in the shower forced him to drive her to the Hospital, and it had been well established that Sheldon can't learn how to drive from the even earlier episode "The Euclid Alternative").

I can completely believe that Sheldon, despite his knowledge of the law and his being a stickler to its letter, would still lack enough sense to insult the very judge who has the power to decide his case. Just as Howard predicted, Sheldon is thrown in jail. However, I have a hard time believing that Sheldon would be so stupid as to claim a spot on a jail cell bench. Just saying.

The conveniently talkative doctor

One thing I find so fascinating about Medium is how often Allison's dreams are exactly correct, yet she misunderstands them in one crucial detail. Over the course of the episode, she obtains clarification on the exact meaning of the episode's first dream. There are a few stand-alone episodes (not Part I of a two-parter) that have a dream at the end. In those cases, the dream has to be perfectly clear to Allison and to the viewers.

A good example of this is the episode that was rerun last Friday, "You Give Me Fever." With the episode's running time almost up, Allison goes to bed fretting that the bad guy has gotten away scot-free. Then she has a dream in which the bad guy is in a hospital bed with a fever, unable to speak, shaking. A doctor explains to him (and to Allison, and, by extension, to the viewers) that the bad guy has a high fever, and that there is hope that he could recover. Then, when the doctor leaves, the bad guy's ex-boyfriend, who was lurking in the shadows, approaches the patient and explains how the bad guy's attempt to infect him with the virus actually backfired on him. Allison wakes up, pleasantly surprised to have learned that the bad guy does get his comeuppance after all.

It is the doctor's monologue that strikes me as unrealistic here. I get the feeling that if (Heaven forbid) I was ever in such a medical condition that I couldn't talk, my doctor wouldn't bother talking to me. My doctor would perhaps talk to my family. But this doesn't rise to the level of a nit because there isn't something in the episode to indicate that the doctor would have no reason to talk to the patient; the doctor might even think that by talking to the patient, he might be able to keep up the patient's spirits and perhaps effect a recovery. Still, the two monologues seem like a major plot contrivance in a rush to wrap everything with a neat little bow within the hour.

Thank you, Elizabeth Vargas

On This Week, ABC's national political pundit show for Sunday mornings, there is this segment called "Im Memoriam," in which those who died in the past week are remembered (this includes both celebrities, famous or infamous, as well as American servicemembers). There has been a strange attitude to this segment, sandwiched between "the Roundtable" and "the Sunday Funnies;" the host generally seems to feel that viewers need to be tricked into watching "Im Memoriam" by promising "the Sunday funnies" when "the Roundtable" is over, just before cutting to commercial (regular viewers are of course aware that this is the normal order, contrary to what the host says). This was the case when George Stephanopoulos hosted the show, and it was also the case two Sundays ago when another male ABC anchor hosted.

But yesterday, when Elizabeth Vargas hosted the show, she didn't feel that same need to try to trick viewers into staying tuned for "Im Memoriam." Though she still mentioned "the Sunday Funnies," she clearly stated that after the commercial followed remembrance of a high-ranking female Air Force officer. Admittedly this is a small detail, but on the theory that he who can't be trusted with the small can't be trusted with the large, it is refreshing to see news anchors be honest about small details like program order.

Quick, what's the number for 911?

The show: Boston Legal
The episode: "Oral Contracts," the eighth episode of Season 4.
What happened: Denny gets arrested for soliciting a gay prostitute in a courthouse restroom, and asks Alan Shore to represent him. Naturally, Denny considers his predicament an "emergency," and says so in a conversation with Alan and Lorraine (Saffron Burrows), who is running to an elevator, and who concludes the conversation casually suggesting they should call 999. Katie (Tara Summers) happens to overhear the conversation, and the mention of 999, the emergency phone number in England, reinforces her sneaking suspicion that Lorraine is in fact British and has worked to disguise her provenance.
Katie encounters Lorraine at the firm's library and confronts her about her past. Lorraine reveals that in England she was married to a Pakistani man, whom she cheated on. Her "co-adulterer" died in an 'accident,' prompting Lorraine to move to America to escape the 'honor' killing. Lorraine asks Katie to keep her confidence, but Katie tells her colleague Whitney, who has dug up some information on Lorraine.
Meanwhile, Shirley represents a shock jock fired from his station for making fun of old people.
What doesn't make sense: Ignoring for now the idea that male adulterers are ever the subject of 'honor' killings (after all, the 'accident' could have been meant only for Lorraine, or it could be the case that the "co-adulterer" is in fact a woman), does it make sense that Lorraine would continue to think of the emergency phone number as 999 rather than 911? This sort of mistake would be understandable from almost any other Brit expatriate, but given what we just learned of Lorraine's background, it's ridiculous. Think about it: this woman goes to the trouble of learning to speak with an American accent, yet she doesn't bother to fix it on her mind that the emergency phone number is 911 here. When she sees some Pakistanis closing in on her house (a distinct possibility given that she chastised Katie for putting her life in danger with her disclosure to Whitney), can Lorraine afford the delay of fumbling with the wrong number?
Or it could be that Lorraine has programmed the emergency button on her phone to 911, but then doesn't it occur to her that she could ever have to call the police from some other phone? Or maybe she just said 999 because she knew Katie was listening and wanted to tip her off. But why?

Not as funny in the recycling

The show: Boston Legal
The episode: "Do Tell," the fourth episode of Season 4.
What happened: Miguel Obispo (Rolando Molina) wants to take his son to Mexico so that the child may participate in more bullfighting matches, but the mother refuses out of concern that their son could die in the arena, so Miguel goes to Crane, Poole & Schmidt for legal representation. Since Miguel can't speak English even though he understands it, a nun translates for him in court.
Meanwhile, Shirley represents General Mark Fitzgerald (Sam McMurray), a gay soldier, closeted for most of his career, who now wants to sue the Army over its "don't ask don't tell policy."
What doesn't quite make sense: The character of Miguel Obispo had been introduced in the previous episode, "The Chicken and the Leg," which established that Miguel understands English but can only speak Spanish. Even if we buy the idea that such people exist (most native Spanish speakers I know have made at least some effort to speak English), didn't it occur to the writers that the translating nun might be getting tiresome to the viewers? This time, we even see that Miguel realizes that the nun has gotten off track into sexual double entendre, and the joke is much less satisfying because the double entendre is at a somewhat farther remove from what Miguel said. Though I'm basing that assessment on my limited knowledge of Spanish; regardless, using the translating nun again is contrived and unfunny.
And another thing: Judge Brown's ruling at the end is a nice bit of fantasy. On the other hand, it does leave some bit of ambiguity for the Army: to leave that fine soldier "alone" could very well mean to punish him in other ways, like giving him some very crappy non-command duty.

Roger: alien about town

In last night's episode of American Dad!, we learn that Roger was part of the 1980 U. S. Olympic hockey team as "Chex Lemeneux," and that he has been going to a reunion party with the team for the past thirty years. Also, a fat woman has sex with Roger.

What's the problem with those revelations? Maybe nothing. However, I seem to vaguely remember something about Roger not being allowed to leave the Smith house in the first season of the show, something about people realizing he's an extraterrestrial. As for the sex, I remember Roger being very surprised (and underwhelmed) at seeing a human penis for the first time in "Stan of Arabia" (whether Part I or II, I can't remember at the moment). I would think any woman would realize there is something odd about where Roger's region for reproduction would be expected to be.

Does any of this add up to one workable nit? I'm not sure, you tell me.

Which is the official school closing station?

Another "Severe Weather Alert Day" in the metro Detroit viewing area, at least that's what WDIV, the NBC affiliate here, calls snow days. They also call themselves "the official school closing station." That title might be more appropriate for WXYZ, the ABC affiliate. They reduce the Good Morning America display significantly to show the school closings, but much more than WDIV reduced the display of the Today show. More importantly, however, WXYZ kept up the display of school closings through the commercials. Not so WDIV, which promptly removed the school closing display well in advance of commercials.

Thank goodness it was only a fantasy

The show: Scrubs
The episode: "My Porcelain God," from Season 3.
What happened: Dr. Reed (Sarah Chalke) is suddenly having trouble with intubation, a medical procedure she had no trouble with when she was starting out at Sacred Heart three years ago. (Don't ask me what intubation is, I'm no doctor and the extent of my knowledge is derived from this show: it involves sticking a metal tube into a patient and attaching that to a semi-rigid balloon). She goes to Dr. Kevin Casey (Michael J. Fox) for advice, but he's way more concerned with his contradictory impulses for a toilet the Janitor (Neil Flynn) has installed on the roof: he wants to touch it because of his OCD, but he doesn't want to touch it because of his germophobia.
Both doctors' problems are tied together at the end of the episode when Dr. Reed finds a Polaroid picture of Dr. Casey using the roof toilet. Reed then uses the roof toilet and a medical emergency helicopter brings a patient needing intubation. Reed finds the confidence to intubate the patient, and is rewarded with a kiss from Casey. But that was just a fantasy. Nevertheless, Reed has regained the confidence to do intubations again.
What doesn't quite make sense: It worries me that if I ever have to heloed into a hospital and the only available doctor has been using the facilities installed on said roof, there might be no soap and water for the good doctor, or at least an antibacterial cream. It doesn't take years of medical training to see the potential for contamination and infection in such a scenario.
I know that bit about the patient being heloed in was a fantasy (indeed the whole show is a fantasy), but the rarity of hand-washing on a medical show is troubling. In almost a decade of watching this show, I can count on the fingers of one hand how often we see the doctors washing their hands prior to a medical procedure. Now, in the other episode with Michael J. Fox guest-starring as the troubled Dr. Casey, we saw the poor man washing his hands repeatedly after a procedure, but that was clearly because of the OCD rather than health concerns.
Maybe the intubation apparatus was designed to somehow compensate for the fact that it might not always be used under the most hygienic condictions. In fact, the whole intubation procedure seems to be an emergency procedure. Here we get to the detail that doesn't quite make sense: If I'm right about intubation being an emergency procedure, with no time for doctors to carefully and methodically consider all alternatives, but instead being required to act quickly, why exactly is it that the procedure requires a doctor to do it, and that emergency medical technicians aren't trained in it?

The crushed flusher

The show: Ally McBeal
The episode: "World's Without Love," from Season 2, now on Disc 2 for that season.
What happened: Georgia (Courtney Thorne-Smith) is sitting on a toilet in the unisex, reading National Law Review, when she hears a weird gurgling noise. She gets up from the toilet when Stephan (John's pet frog, presumed dead in the previous episode) jumps out of the toilet bowl and onto Georgia's face. Horrified, she gets out of the stall and throws the frog over to Nelle (Portia de Rossi) who tosses the animal back to Georgia and Georgia throws him back to Nelle but Richard (Greg Germann) opens the door to his stall and Stephan hits the door and falls to the floor. Soon there are a lot of people around the frog, when they hear the sound of a toilet being remotely flushed. Nelle stalls John (Peter MacNicol), who likes "a fresh bowl," from the entering the unisex bathroom to give Elaine (Jane Krakowski) time to sneak the frog out and over to a vet.
Why it doesn't quite make sense: Putting aside for a minute that we're supposed to believe that a frog could survive in septic plumbing for at least a couple of days, didn't John destroy his remote flusher in the previous episode?
Let's remember how Stephan came to be presumed dead in the previous episode, "Story of Love:" The frog was on the toilet seat of John's preferred stall, but when Richard tried to pick him up, he instead jumped into the bowl. At that very moment, John, about to enter the unisex, pushed the button on his remote flusher, causing Stephan to be flushed away. Later in the episode, Elaine collects the pieces of the remote flusher. It seems that John, angry at himself for pushing the button and causing Stephan's death, took his anger out on the device. Makes sense, given how much he loved that frog.
Now, in this episode, John is using the remote flusher again. I find it a little hard to believe that he'd go back to using it so casually. Even if he had a spare, wouldn't he be a little more judicious in its use, such as checking that the bowl contains only things he wants flushed? This also raises an issue of courtesy: if we're to believe that the most famous restroom in television history is the only restroom at the offices of Cage & Fish, where at least two dozen people are employed, wouldn't John be extremely rude in remotely flushing a toilet that might be in use by someone else?

Sad state of the Animation Domination

Yesterday I happened to catch a snippet of The Simpsons in the middle. Agnes was reminiscing how she participated in the Olympics long, long ago, while pregnant (weirdly paralleled in real life in Vancouver today), and baby Seymour's kick within her belly cost her the gold. Back in the present, Seymour says he remembers that. As big a grain of salt recollections from the womb would normally require, this one requires a huge monolith of salt. For one thing, "Seymour Skinner" is really Armin Tamzarian, who usurped the real Seymour's name and life after Vietnam. It's as if the show is begging to be nitpicked. One thing it's not begging for is laughs. Which reminded me why I had stopped watching the show. I turned off the TV, not to turn it on again until just before The Cleveland Show, in time to catch Homer dancing with a half-section of his face. Huh? Who cares.

On The Cleveland Show, Cleveland Jr. gets "pregnant" with Rollo's fish. You can just see the miscarriage coming from miles away. At least on TV they had to decency to describe it (likening it to Louisiana cuisine) rather than showing it; any sickos who would've actually liked to see that will probably be satisfied by the DVD. This is one episode I don't care to ever watch again, on any medium. Come to think of it, I should perhaps stop watching this show altogether.

Then on Family Guy, Chris is inexplicably enamored of a retarded girl who turns out to be Sarah Palin's daughter (Palin is not explicitly mentioned in that regard, but it's quite obvious that's who they were thinking of). Coming at the end of such a dreadful evening, American Dad! did not look so bad, and even had a few chuckles.

What's in a title?

I think this is a first for this blog: I'm going to nitpick a title. The tenth season of JAG begins with an episode titled "Hail and Farewell, Part II." That makes sense given that the ninth season ended with an episode titled "Hail and Farewell," which felt a little bit like a cliffhanger, at least in that we were left not knowing who'd replace Admiral Chegwidden nor what Mac told Harm about her medical condition. (Notice that "Part 1" was not labeled "Part I" nor was there a "To Be Continued" title card at the end).

In the so-called "Part 2," we are told that Sturgis is the Acting JAG and that Captain Krennick is being considered as the permanent replacement. But most of the rest of the episode is occupied with a bunch of cloak-and-dagger stuff about Clayton Webb not really being dead. It seems that the writers ran out of cute puns on the spook's name (like "Webb of Lies" and "A Tangled Webb"). But would it have been that hard to come up with something more appropriate to the episode's plot than "Hail and Farewell, Part II," like "Laying Low" or "Mercenary" or "The Hawk"? It's a worse rip-off than the Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter in which Part 2 completely ignored the Data dreaming storyline presented in Part 1 to focus completely on some boring Klingons.

Call me Vucelich, Chip Vucelich

It's almost not worth mentioning, but in the end credits for "Retrial," the third episode of JAG's tenth season, co-producer Chip Vucelich's name is misspelled as "Chip Veucelich." He's also a unit production manager, and his name is correctly spelled a few screens later for his credit for that job. The IMDb does not notice this, but onscreen-credits.com does (see http://www.onscreen-credits.com/JAG/20041015g.html).

I don't think I noticed this the first time I saw the episode, when it aired, as the end credits were probably crunched to the left or the bottom of the screen to make room for a commercial. On the DVD (which came out just a couple of days ago), with the old-fashioned credits, the misspelled name sticks out like a sore thumb. But don't shed any tears for Chip, he gets plenty of correctly spelled credits on other JAG episodes, as well as Martial Law, Without a Trace and others.

Of course Daddy's your Valentine

I'm already sick and tired of Hallmark's Valentine's Day commercial, I sure hope not to see it on any channel come February 15. The idea that children, who have some vague awareness that their existing owes something to Mom and Dad doing some thing or other, would think that Daddy is not Mommy's Valentine is quite ridiculous. Children are due more credit in the knowledge department than they're normally given.

Senior partner does HR stuff

In "Beauty and the Beast," the Season 4 opener for Boston Legal, Shirley Schmidt (Candice Bergen) sticks the new associate Katie Lloyd (Tara Summers) in Jerry Espenson's office, explaining that Jerry (Christian Clemenson) had volunteered to share his office with the newest hire on account of office space being in short supply. From the start it seemed to me like a plot contrivance to put these two characters in the same office, given that lawyers at big firms typically get their own offices all to themselves, even associates fresh out of law school.

Well, that being a contrivance was confirmed in the next episode, "The Innocent Man," in which Shirley hires Lorraine Weller (Saffron Burrows), the very lawyer who had opposed Alan Shore (James Spader) in the previous episode, trying to get Shirley to pay up the money she had pledged to Stanford University. Carl Sack (John Larroquette) goes to Lorraine's new office to drool at her as she works on her new office's decor. Maybe another lawyer got fired in between the two episodes and for some reason Shirley didn't want to mention it in telling Alan that Lorraine had been hired. Still, it seems to me like an important little detail got past the story editor and the producers.

The judge stepped out for a minute

Here's one that Phil Farrand would probably file under "Continuity & Production Problems:" in the early Matlock episode "The Author," Ben Matlock (Andy Griffith) questions Mary Ann Newton (Audra Lindley), the author of the steamy, semi-fictional novel Secret Confessions, hated by everyone in the small town of Hastings and presumed to be the intended target of a murder that claimed the life of the town preacher.

Matlock has come to believe that the preacher, himself an aspiring author rejected by several publishing houses, is the true author of Secret Confessions, and that Mary Ann wanted him dead so the truth of the book's authorship never came out. Since the preacher was killed in Mary Ann's house, it was natural for everyone to assume that the killer meant the bullet for Mary Ann. However, Mary Ann is much more concerned with asserting her authorship of the book than with asserting her innocence (or guilt) in the murder of the preacher.

As Margaret repeats her claim to authorship of Secret Confessions over and over again, the camera pulls back to emphasize her smallness and aloneness in the vast courtroom. But where did the judge go? For that matter, where did Ben go? Ben's absence from the shot is easier to justify; we can just say he went back to his chair next to his client. I suppose we could chalk the judge's absence from the shot to artistic license: Mary Ann is suddenly as literally alone as she was figuratively. But I have to seriously wonder if anyone thought about calling the actor playing the judge back to the set for that shot.

A little snow is falling: Help, the world is ending!

I live in the metro Detroit area, I won't be any more specific than that. In this part of Michigan, the NBC affiliate is WDIV, whose news division has introduced "Severe Weather Alert Days" with "escalated coverage" on those days designated as "Severe Weather Alert Days" by that station's weather forecasters.

They had been advertising the "Severe Weather Alert Days" for at least a couple of weeks ago now, but I think today is the first such day. About three inches of snow are expected today, with a much more massive snowfall predicted for tomorrow. Supposedly, the point of "Severe Weather Alert Days" isn't to scare viewers; they say so. But really, given how warm yesterday was, I'd be scared if it wasn't snowing today.

Low to medium computer literacy

The show: Medium
The episode: "Will the Real Fred Rovick Please Stand Up?" First aired last Friday on CBS.
What happened: For some reason, almost every man looks like Diedrich Bader to Allison. (On the IMDb, the actor Diedrich Bader is identified as playing the character of Fred Rovick, but in a very real sense, Bader also plays Joe Dubois and Detective Lee Scanlon in this episode, as well as quite a few other characters). This complicates Allison's work on a murder case, because even though she dreams the murder, both the murderer and the victim look the same to Allison (both are played by Diedrich Bader). Allison is still able to give sufficient information to the police to catch the killer. Eventually, Allison figures out that the reason that the reason so many people show the same face to her is that they're the people who've fallen pray to an identity fraud scam perpetrated by the man who actually has that face, the real Fred Rovick. Near the end of the episode, Lee and Allison figure out that the scam was perpetrated by sending out e-mails spoofing the city, claiming that the recipient's voting district had changed. People who opened the e-mails allowed a program into their systems which stole their private financial information, allowing Fred Rovick to clean out their bank accounts.
What doesn't quite make sense: Just reading an e-mail is not enough to inadvertently install Trojan malware on your computer. You have to take the step of downloading the infected attachment. For what plausible reason could an e-mail titled "Your voting district has changed" have an attachment? If such an e-mail is legitimate, all that it needs to tell you is what your new district is and where the polling location is; both these things can be accomplished with plain text. Maybe a legitimate sender would include a JPEG with a map of the new district and polling location; you can't put Trojan viruses in a JPEG.
Now, a video is starting to stretch it, but it is plausible and videos can contain Trojan viruses. However, the episode doesn't say that a video was attached to the fraudulent e-mail, and in fact makes it sound like the mere act of reading the e-mail infects the recipient's computer. But consider also the human factor: if you get an e-mail telling you your voting district has changed, how likely are you to delete it without even reading it? I doubt many people would fall for it. In the episode, Allison deletes the e-mail without reading it because she knows the city's computer systems have recently experienced some malfunctions. But even without that knowledge, Allison's reaction to the message seems perfectly realistic to me.

Racism for its own sake

I had commented before that Family Guy now seems to be more about being offensive than about being funny. After watching the newest episode last night, in which Meg becomes a hardened criminal, it becomes clearer to me that the brand of offensiveness the Family Guy writers are most interested in is racial.

When the maid Consuela goes to visit her grown son in jail, she actually Windexes the glass separating them. Oh my God, oh please. Much worse near the end: Meg decides not to rob Mort Goldman's pharmacy and leaves with Brian, causing Mort to express relief at not being robbed and then greet "four fine Black gentlemen" who are not even seen onscreen. Nothing good can possibly be inferred from that, either for Blacks or Jews. I hope Black people are faring better in The Cleveland Show.

I, killer robot

The film: I, Robot, made in 2004, supposedly an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's classic I, Robot anthology of short stories.
What happened: Detective Spooner (Will Smith) has a strong distrust of robots, so when renowned robot scientist Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell) turns up dead in the lobby of U. S. Robotics, the lawman immediately suspects a robot is the killer. Everyone else considers Spooner irrational in his dislike of robots, because the Three Laws of Robotics form "a perfect circle of protection" against robots killing or harming their human masters. But Spooner stays on the case and discovers that the newest robots have the ability to temporarily disregard the Three Laws. With the help of Susan Calvin (Bridget Moynahan), Spooner destroys the misguided VIKI robot and discovers the mitigating circumstances behind the Sonny robot's murder of Lanning.
What bothers me about this film: Before we can proceedd any further with this, it is necessary to review the Three Laws of Robotics, which, in the stories of Isaac Asimov, all robots must follow:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The First Law is meant to calm fears that a robot would decide to kill a human for the pure hell of it. But the inaction clause is troublesome, as this film shows, though well-intentioned, as it is meant to insure that a robot will actually do something if it sees a human in danger. The Second Law insures the subservience of robots to humans. And the Third Law insures that the robot will be around to take orders from humans in most cases.
Most of Asimov's stories derive their tension from the robots' black-and-white application of these rules to an essentially gray world. So it feels like a huge cheat in this film to have robots that can disregard the Three Laws even though the justification ultimately turns out to come from the Three Laws (namely, from VIKI's misunderstanding of the inaction clause of the First Law).
From the very first trailers I feared that this 'adaptation' would be completely unfaithful to the spirit of Asimov's stories. On the one hand I understand the need to make one feature-length film as opposed to a miniseries of episodes taking one short story at a time. But on the other hand, I find it insulting to Asimov's memory that none of his stories, nor the screenplay he actually co-wrote a long time ago, were considered worthy of putting on the big screen.
Something that doesn't quite make sense: I can't recall if this phrase occurred at all in the book, but in the film the three Laws of Robotics are referred to as a "perfect circle of protection." To me, that phrase makes sense only as a marketing slogan, yet in the film it is uttered by both Lanning and Spooner. The way I understand the three laws, a column would be a much more appropriate metaphor than a circle. The First Law is the base without which the Second Law could not stand, and the Second Law is in turn a base for the Third Law. The circle metaphor implies that the First Law is as dependent on the Third Law as the Third Law is on the Second Law, and perhaps also that the dependencies apply in both directions with equal force.
To further examine the circle metaphor, and test the idea that the dependencies apply in both directions, let's go the opposite of the usual order and start with the Third Law. The point of the Third Law is the self-preservation of a robot. A robot will not deliberately step on an exposed land mine just for the fun of it. However, a human could order the robot to step on the land mine and the robot would have to do it; thus, the Second Law can be seen as a check or balance on the Third Law. A human could order a robot to hurt other humans, but the robot would have to refuse to obey that order; thus, the First Law is definitely a check or balance on the Second Law. So, how is the Third Law a check or balance on the First Law? The only thing I can think of is that the Third Law ensures that the robot exists so that it may obey the First Law. But since the robot's self-preservation may be overridden by danger to humans or even humans' orders, there is no guarantee that the robot will always be around. Let's say that the only robot in a large area sacrifices himself to save humans from a fire. But then some wild animals show up to menace the humans. The robot is no longer around to protect the humans from the wild animals. Therefore, the Three Laws hardly make a perfect circle.
Tacky product placement: Detective Spooner (Will Smith) laces up vintage 2004 Converse shoes. It makes sense for Spooner to prefer old-fashioned (e.g., early 2000s) music playback devices over the newer voice-activated players, but the Converse shoes serve practically no purpose in the story. Do trendier shoes in the movie's time frame incorporate robotic components? I even looked in the deleted scenes and couldn't find any such story justification.

You have a face for radio

The show: Ally McBeal
The episode: "They Eat Horses, Don't They?" First aired in 1998 and now available on DVD (second season, first disc).
What happened: Ling (Lucy Liu) sues on-air personality Harold Wick (Wayne Newton as a thinly veiled Howard Stern) for contributing to sexual harrassment at a plant she manages. After a judge refuses to dismiss the case, Nelle (Portia de Rossi) convinces Ling to drop the charge and issue a statement at a press conference explaining that she's dropping the case because she's just become aware of an unspecified physical or psychological deficiency Harold Wick has. Soon after, Harold invites Ally to appear on his show. To everyone's surprise, Ally agrees. As she's being made up, Ally expresses surprise at that the show is not just on the radio.
Meanwhile, John defends a restaurateur sued for serving horse to a diner who enjoyed the meat before knowing what it was.
Why it doesn't quite make sense: So Ally is sometimes quite disconnected from reality. But even she should know that Harold Wick's show is not just a radio show. She was watching it on TV with Renee in their apartment earlier in the episode! It's probably the director who's to blame for this one; the script probably did not call for any image of Harold Wick as Ally and Renee listened to his show. Or maybe Ally was just making small talk.

Jumping Jiminy

The show: The Big Bang Theory
The episode: "The Jiminy Conjecture," first aired September of last year and reran this past Monday.
What happened: While eating dinner in Sheldon's apartment, Sheldon, Howard and Raj hear a chirping cricket, which Sheldon immediately identifies as a snowy tree cricket. Howard is convinced that it's a common field cricket that they're hearing. Sheldon and Howard wager special items in their respective comic book collections and proceed to trap the cricket. However, visual inspection of the specimen fails to resolve the issue. They take the cricket to Prof. Crawley (Lewis Black), the university's appropriately named bug expert. Unbeknownst to the three friends, the university funding to Crawley's lab has been cut and now the old professor is more interested in venting about his personal and professional frustrations than in identifying the cricket that has been brought in. Crawley snaps that the specimen is just a common field cricket. Dejected, Sheldon goes to the bank to retrieve the comic book he put up for the wager from his safe deposit box.
Meanwhile, Leonard and Penny deal with their lackluster sexual encounter. Penny actually takes Sheldon's advice in the matter.
What doesn't quite make sense: Given how obnoxious Sheldon is about always being right (amply demonstrated in the episode's first scene, in which Sheldon proves Wolverine once had retractable bone claws), I think he gives up rather easily at Crawley's identification. For one thing, the cricket did not chirp at all while in Crawley's lab, and an earlier scene suggests that visual inspection is insufficient to distinguish the snowy tree cricket from the common field cricket (whether or not that's the case in real life I don't care to find out). Sheldon doesn't bring this up. Nor does he protest that Crawley is way too emotionally distraught to be able to render his expertise with the necessary due consideration.
Granted that there's little time left in the half hour episode to allow Sheldon to fully cross-examine Crawley, much less find another bug expert to bug about the cricket, but the nit could have been avoided altogether by just putting in some chirps into that scene and having Crawley say something to the effect of "Those chirps don't fit Dauber's correlation." (Sheldon mentioned Dauber's correlation earlier in the episode, so no time would be needed to explain it again, and if time is short, Raj's unfunny parting remark to Crawley could have been deleted with no problem whatsoever).

The invisible secretaries

In the real world, much of what happens in the business world wouldn't occur without the hard work of the secretaries. In the legal profession, for example, it is sometimes joked that it is the clerks, couriers and secretaries who actually make justice happen. Yet, in the legal dramas on television, secretaries are conspicuously absent.

Sure, on Ally McBeal there is Elaine Vassal (Jane Krakowski), but from my understanding of the pilot episode, she's a secretary only for the title character, who is a new associate at the firm. Since she's a busybody, it is easy to get the impression that she's the secretary for all the lawyers in the firm. But with all the different people milling about the offices of Cage & Fish, surely John and Richard each have their own secretaries, too.

On The Practice it made sense for Donnell & Associates to only have one secretary in the first season: Rebecca Washington (Lisa Gay Hamilton), who later turned out to be a law student going to school at night who then gets to try cases, and whose secretarial duties are taken over by Lucy Hatcher (Marla Sokoloff). Perhaps it is Boston Legal which has come closest to showing how vital legal secretaries are to the success of the lawyers they work for. For Alan Shore (James Spader), his secretary's desk practically had a revolving door through which went several people, including a young woman who accused him of sexual harassment, golden girl Catherine Piper (Betty White) and Clarence (Gary Anthony Williams), a cross-dressing black man. The latter turned out to also become a lawyer, as if perhaps to suggest that only as attorneys do legal professionals reach their fullest potential.

JAG is not a David E. Kelley production, but even there we see only one true secretary: Lt. Harriet Sims (Karri Turner). I know about Chegwidden's yeoman (first the Smithersly Tiner, then Coates), but that was more like a receptionist than a secretary; it was Sims who had the real secretarial duties.

It is understandable that we don't see secretaries much on the various incarnations of Law & Order. Maybe New York's court system can afford secretaries for the district attorneys, but likely not for the public defenders. When the cops barge in on private defense attorneys, the writers and/or directors choose not to show us the cops bypassing the receptionists and secretaries. In the episode in which former Will & Grace star Eric McCormack appeared as a 'sugar daddy' suspected of killing his 'sugar baby,' however, we did see the rich man's secretary running interference between the cops and her boss.

Disappointing choice for Yoda, Carl is

I was very disappointed by the choice of Carl as Yoda in "Something, Something, Something, Dark Side," the Family Guy parody/homage to Empire Strikes Back. Even with the choice of many characters fixed by "Blue Harvest" (the parody/homage of A New Hope), there was still plenty of Family Guy characters left to choose from (contrary to what Seth MacFarlane says on the DVD commentary). Now, if the characters have to be fixed in relation to Chris as Luke, then Darth Vader should be Peter and not Stewie. Besides, some of the mappings were chosen in relation to Peter rather than Chris: Lois as Leia and the Giant Chicken as Boba Fett, rather than Meg as Leia and perhaps the Evil Monkey as Boba Fett. Heck, they even felt free to remap some characters, most notably Meg went from being the trash compactor monster to being the asteroid monster.

What do I have against Carl anyway? I can believe the character as a convenience store manager, but as a sage old Jedi master, the mapping is incongruous, but not enough to be funny.

Another time I will go over nits in this installment uncovered by the IMDb staff, and maybe some of my own.

A note about spoilers in this blog

Just in case anyone is wondering, this blog has no policy on spoilers. Nits may occur at the end of a movie or episode, and in such cases nitpickers need not walk on eggshells. If they want to give a spoiler alert for such nits, it's entirely up to them how exactly to do it and what level of prominence to give to the alert. But for the most part, contributors here will assume that readers who recognize the movie or episode under discussion is one they have not seen and want to see will stop reading at that point, but will hopefully come back after they've seen it for themselves and then there is thus nothing to spoil.

Our valued friendship

The show: The Big Bang Theory
The episode: "The Bozeman Reaction," first aired on CBS a couple of days ago.
What happened: I can pretty much repeat what Bill said in a post yesterday: "Thieves break into the apartment where Sheldon and Leonard live and steal computers, external hard drives, some video game consoles and several video games. Predictably, Sheldon and Leonard get a ridiculously elaborate security system installed in their apartment." After "getting trapped and electrocuted by the security system he had [Howard] Wolowitz install," Sheldon gets the "idea to move to Bozeman, Montana," where his bags are stolen immediately upon arrival, quickly convincing him to return to Pasadena.
What has me wondering: After deciding on Bozeman, Montana as his new home, Sheldon records a farewell video message for his four friends, or, to be exact, three friends and one acquaintance. Upon returning, his friends are actually happy to see him, and all jokes about wanting Sheldon gone or killed are duly forgotten. Howard is the first to greet Sheldon, prompting Sheldon to tactlessly remark that "the acquaintance" was the first to greet him.
This made me laugh, as that line sounds like vintage Sheldon. But now it gets me to wondering if Sheldon forgot how differently he valued his friends in the episode "The Friendship Algorithm." In that episode, eager to have Barry Kripke as a friend so he can have more time on a supercomputer, Sheldon decided that having five friends would be too much for him, so he decided to 'defriend' Raj. He carefully explained his decision, and even though Howard does not have a PhD, his "cologne is an assault on the senses," and he's "not available for video games during the Jewish high holidays," Sheldon decides to keep Howard as a friend.
At some point between "The Friendship Algorithm" and this episode, Howard was demoted from "friend" to "acquaintance" while Raj was promoted from expendable friend to valued friend. Apparently Penny was also promoted in Sheldon's estimation. I do remember I spent a whole blog post on Monday reminding nitpickers that humans often behave illogically. But that caveat almost seems to not apply to Sheldon. Could Sheldon's friendship revaluation have taken place as he lay twitching on the floor on account of Howard's security system?

They had to do the episode in which they get robbed

With last night's episode titled "The Bozeman Reaction," the shark gets ever closer to The Big Bang Theory. Thieves break into the apartment where Sheldon and Leonard live and steal computers, external hard drives, some video game consoles and several video games. Predictably, Sheldon and Leonard get a ridiculously elaborate security system installed in their apartment. When I read the episode description on TV Guide, I immediately thought, "Oh, they're doing one of those."

In theory, there is a small, finite amount of basic plots writers can draw upon for their stories. This means that the best that writers can hope for is that they've put enough ornaments on the basic plot so that the story's familiarity does not bother readers too much. But when a sitcom starts falling back on overused plots like the overreaction to a home robbery, it is a clear sign of trouble for the show's quality.

To be fair, Sheldon's idea to move to Bozeman, Montana, is a fresh idea, at least compared to his getting trapped and electrocuted by the security system he had Wolowitz install. After the interview with the policeman, Leonard seems somewhat nonchalant about the fact that his apartment was just broken into. Though I suppose that getting regular sex with an attractive blonde is for a guy like Leonard a much greater priority than worrying that the thieves might return for a second helping. And of course, as a character, Leonard has to act as a balance to Sheldon and his hysteria.