Somehow, even though it happened weeks ago, I was scooped on my story about the Jeopardy! taping I went to last month. Benjamin Freed at DCist has a writeup of his own personal struggles with the Jeopardy! machine, which was interesting. I definitely agree with him that having Jimmy from the stupid Clue Crew host the practice round sucked.
What follows is my account of the evening. Let me set the scene: Jeopardy! is filming a “Power Players” tournament for some reason. I guess all the real celebrities were on Dancing With the Stars? We shuffle in, watch Clue Crew Jimmy and the practice round, and definitely keep our cell phones in our pockets. The contestants that night are Chuck Todd, Clarence Page, and Lewis Black. I don’t remember the outcome, and don’t care too much, but the episode airs Thursday night if you’re interested.
Alex Trebek took questions from the audience, and I took notes:
He predicted someone like Ken Jennings won’t happen again, calling the contestant’s streak “a perfect storm”
And that the show’s producers haven’t had a new idea in years
Claimed never to have done drugs — also claimed to have a sense of humor
Could not name a single comic strip
Said he cries a lot (probably because of a lack of comics in his life)
For the record, listed his favorite sports teams: Lakers, Angels, Redskins and Canadiens.
What I found most remarkable is that Alex Trebek is not standing behind that lectern. He sits on a stool and uses good posture, the bastard. He may fool the camera, but now you all know the truth.
Finally, I was hoping that seeing Trebek off-camera would humanize him a bit, show a funny side, perhaps. But no. He wouldn’t even pretend to like a comic strip to answer a little boy’s question. However, his riveting performance in that Wheat Thins ad (not the Family Guy one) is making me wonder if he has a heart after all:
Wow, 100 posts already? It seems like only yesterday we were copying our first Simpsons jokes and trying to start Twitter wars with celebrities.
It’s been over a year of blogging, vlogging, and generally clogging the Internet like with the most intimate details of my viewing habits in my photo diary and on Twitter. See if you can guess what show I was watching at the time of these obscure tweets!
Because compulsory reminiscence isn’t just for TV, here’s a list of other self-congratulatory 100th episodes:
“100” (30 Rock) I actually wrote a limerick about this very episode when it aired last year. This was the one with Michael Keaton and the gas leak that was an hour too long, where some of the extra time was taken up by a clip-show-type deal.
Fun fact: While the idea behind the episode that it was the 100th episode of TGS, the show within a show, I’m pretty sure that doesn’t make any sense with the show’s timeline. Prove me wrong!
“100 A.D.” (American Dad) started with Roger’s humorous announcement that to celebrate the show’s 100th episode, they will kill off 100 characters “you’ve come to know and love.”
No, tonight we're gonna find out who shot Mr. Burns! What? 15 years ago? Who was it? Really, the baby? (sigh) I want a baby.
99 out of 100 turned out to be random throwaway characters and a dog. This episode showcases American Dad’s amusing tendency to bring back characters you assumed were one-timers, as well as its amusing tendency to kill characters without prejudice. Remember when they killed Stan at the end of “Hot Water”?
Fun Fact: this actually aired as the 97th episode, making a liar out of my TV yet again!
“Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Baadasssss Song” (The Simpsons) gave us the chalkboard gag above, from a show that has gone on to celebrate so many more, increasingly depressing, milestones, with the latest being 500. The plot of “Baadasssss Song” was refreshingly non-reflective, instead chosen as the 100th because it focused on Bart. And Principal Skinner, everyone’s other favorite character.
Update: Mere hours after this post was published, Saturday Night Live celebrated their 100th web whatever with, yes, a retrospective (explored through the metaphor of autofellatio … at least I think it was a metaphor).
Well, that wraps up this history lesson. It’s really true — we’ve reached 100 installments. And you know what that means: syndication! Without the profitability.
P.S. What’s on the horizon for 5 Hours A Day, the TV blog? Controversy. Increased use of multimedia. Fewer typos. Journalistic enterprise, including a series on the storied relationship between TV and naptime. Graphs!
P.P.S. In the interest of history, here is a list of names considered and rejected for this blog:
OnUrTV*
Channel
Channelz
(They Ought To Call It A) Remote Out Of Control
Hot 99.5 “The Blogg”
That’s So TV
OnUrTV was actually the original name of this blog before it was abandoned because it was too clear. Channelz, unrelatedly, is now the name of an unpopular nightclub in Providence, Rhode Island.
I would also like to send a special thanks to my friends whose published work here represents 23 percent of this milestone. Your support, edits, co-watching, ideas I swiped for posts including this one, and other such enabling probably merit a larger number than 23, but I prefer to stick to the hard data.
Hedonistic, witty, and named Roger: Roger Smith from “American Dad!” and Roger Sterling from “Mad Men” have exactly 3 things in common. Let’s not get carried away here.
But, they do both get all the best lines in their respective shows. Watch:
Warning: the preceding video contained images of binge drinking, vomiting, and a fire extinguisher full of tequila.
Bonus
Drinks inspired by these two drunks:
The Roger Sterling: Fill a highball glass 3/4 full with milk and an ice cube. Top with vodka. (As seen in the video.) “Like a drop of strawberry jam in a glass of milk,” but with vodka in place of the jam. Man, this guy talks about milk a lot.
The Roger Smith: Cola and grenadine, AKA a Roy Rogers. Roger’s love for this drink inspired one of his more memorable personas — Roy Rogers McFreely, from the episode “Roy Rogers McFreely.” Per that episode, there are two acceptable temperatures for the cola: cold, or warmed for 3 weeks in the crotch of an alien’s cowboy pants.
Going with a non-alcoholic drink for the king of substance abuse was an odd choice, but it was a good episode.
“The Office” had been getting bad for a few years, but wow, have they given up since Michael Scott left. The show itself seems to comment on its obsolescence regularly this season, so we compiled all the commentary into a video for you. Watch out for Robert California’s head.
“What’s on FOX tonight? Something ribald, no doubt.”
The 2-hour special Sunday night commemorating 25 years of the FOX network was basically a giant version of one of those cast reunion specials, but with most of the time taken up by random clips of shows without a lot of context. A history lesson it wasn’t.
Although, what history was shared was welcome. I had forgotten about William Hung and “Ally McBeal.” They also re-aired the pilot of “Married With Children” and the first-aired episode of “The Simpsons,” I guess as a thank-you to the shows that launched the network, which was great (even though they were really pretty bad). I would like to see more classic programming like this, at least if the alternative remains crappic programming — like this special. Boom, roasted.
And while the special promised to be refreshingly honest — FOX overlord Ryan Seacrest said at the beginning that failed shows would be covered — that wasn’t delivered at all. It was just a flat-out lie. The segment showing FOX shows making fun of FOX definitely doesn’t count. So shame on them.
The main point of this special seemed to be to stick it to critics, with Seacrest constantly pointing out that critics originally panned various popular shows. In the case of “Married With Children,” they were obviously right to do so. In the case of “The Simpsons,” I doubt the claim. But, based on the first-aired “Simpsons” episode, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire,” which played right before the special, I wouldn’t necessarily blame the critics for doubting.
Nevertheless, the message seemed to be: nuts to critics, we’ll air what’s popular no matter how terrible it is. But I’m pretty sure that has been TV’s message all along. At least that’s what I’ve been getting.
The only original content Sunday night were the “interviews,” which appeared to center around two questions: how come FOX is so great? and what’s your favorite episode of the show you were in? Needless to say, the responses were less than groundbreaking.
Many interviewees praised the network for embracing unconventional programming, which is true. Only a hungry young fox could have supported a show like “The Simpsons,” and I am also grateful to them for airing more recent successes like “Malcolm in the Middle” and “American Dad!”
But I don’t think adding a million animated shows to Sunday nights and airing drama/”reality performance competition” (Seacrest) the rest of the week counts as unconventional anymore. The fresh stuff these days seems to be mostly on AMC. So thanks for the special, FOX network. What have you done for us lately?
To clarify, he said in that interview that Springfield was named after Springfield, Oregon, not that “The Simpsons” takes place in Oregon. But don’t tell that to everybody on the Internet, or Homer Simpson’s Twitter feed, which have embraced the idea that “The Simpsons” has a location based in reality. For that to work, you would have to ignore all the Simpson DNA evidence — and that would be downright nutty! The geographical impossibilities and knowing winks about Springfield’s location were never a mystery, they were just jokes. But it looks like nobody told Matt Groening.
I think Groening must be unprecedented in terms of creating such a popular series while remaining firmly unaware of what makes made it popular. He’s so out of touch I wouldn’t be surprised if he personally writes that Homer Simpson Twitter, which pooped out 8 non-jokes about Oregon in a single hour, after over a month of dormancy.
Springfield’s in Oregon, I am the walrus, and Maggie killed J.F.K.Now you know.
Why must TV show creators keep trying to impress us with tidbits that show they know more about their fictional worlds than we do? If it’s not in an episode, who cares? Somebody needs to tell these guys about the death of the author.
Matt Groening talking about “The Simpsons” is like Marge Simpson talking about potatoes: nobody wants to hear it.
If you needed proof the Emmys are a joke, I want to remind you that “The Daily Show” has won the variety show/late-night award every year since 2003, even after it spent the last few years getting worse — daily — while “The Colbert Report” has steadily stepped up its game.
Notes for the Academy:
1. You know that awful final 8 minutes of every “Daily Show” when he does the interview? When he spends the whole time feeling very smart — or just giggling if it’s a comedy guest — and helpfully puts the overflow up on the Web in case we really just didn’t get enough? Well, “Report” interviews are usually better.
2. Whereas Jon Stewart seems to interpret satire as merely “preachy,” Stephen Colbert has taken the idea and run with it, from his famous Correspondents’ Dinner address, to his congressional testimony, to — especially to — his awesome Super PAC stunt, which won him his newest Peabody today. Suck it, Emmys. At least the Peabodys know what’s up.
3. None of those awful puns. The worst part of these isn’t that the writing staff apparently spends so much time coming up with examples this bad …
… nor is it that they often don’t make any sense. It’s when Jonny Stew sees fit to share the rejects as well — and still criticize the real news media for their own wordplay:
“Do we put puns on this show? Yes. Yes!” he admits. “Always up in the corner, never out loud! … And we hate ourselves when we do them.” Well, good. The rest of us hate it, too.
4. Not so preachy all the time. Did I already mention the preachiness? Here’s a sermon for you: stop being so goddamn preachy. Walter Cronkite you ain’t.
It’s telling that my favorite part of “Daily” is usually the Moment of Zen, which is the the part they just leave alone.
Like “The Simpsons” and other examples, perhaps “The Daily Show” these days is just a legacy show, a talent farm which all the best crops have left — such delicious specimens of Tomacco as Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, and Stephen Colbert & Steve Carell.
The question on everyone’s mind last night as we watched episode 2 of “Frozen Planet”: can television take yet another BBC-produced nature documentary with stunning visuals and superstar narration?
Not too difficult a question to answer. For now, yes, television can. You’ve seen all the crap on TV, right?
This iteration in the HD nature porn franchise that started with “Planet Earth” and “Life,” “Frozen Planet” focuses entirely on the icy environments touched on in the other miniseries. I guess they could keep this thing going for a while with this strategy.
Like with “Downton Abbey,” BBC customers got to see this one before it started on Discovery last week. But while they had to listen to boring old legend David Attenborough again, we get a narrator who sets this miniseries apart.
Alec Baldwin may have been the perfect choice. What better character than Jack Donaghy to narrate the tactics wolves and bears use to hunt? OK, maybe Dwight Schrute.
Baldwin’s voice pairs naturally with the writing, which is the kind of just-the-facts commentary Sergeant Joe Friday could be proud of.
Example: The opener, which follows the troubled courtship of two polar bears, didn’t try making false comparisons between humans and the animal subjects — looking at you, “Meerkat Manor” — and instead let the bear-meets-bear story speak for itself. That story, which ends with the male bear bloodied and stumbling, but successful in keeping rival bears at bay for a few days, was pretty cool and perfect to start the miniseries.
Though there are still moments Baldwin makes comments about animals “celebrating” spring or polar bear foreplay. “Even polar bears seem to go in for a little foreplay before the main event,” he opines. But really, if you don’t like the idea of Alec Baldwin narrating some arctic nookie, maybe it’s not the show for you.
Because Mr. Baldwin declines to take a side in the conflicts, I am free to feel both pity for the watery-eyed Weddell seal and awe at its predators, a team of killer whales who impressively destroy its ice raft with a coordinated wave attack. It was arresting to watch the seal panic while its world shook, eventually escape to another floe, but finally, spent by the effort, gaze blankly ahead as the whale, almost gently, tugs it backwards and below the surface.
Watching that helpless, empty stare disappear into the bubbles was one of the more haunting things I saw on TV this week.
And I watched the terrible “Simpsons” parody of “Mad Men” this week!
The occasionally light-hearted narration is a welcome counterpoint to this mildly harrowing nature documentary fare. But it’s at its best when it strays just over the line from the enthusiastic into the stupid: “For a glacier, that’s pretty fast!” “And what an ocean.”"The females [penguins] can’t resist a good beak-thrust, and join the dance.”
Even the unadorned prose is somehow enlivened by the delivery:
“A predatory sea slug swims like an angel with translucent wings. It’s on the trail of a weird, swimming snail.”
This only hints at the visual poetry in this show, which remains the selling point.
While you’ll stay for the Baldwin, we all came for the footage, and it doesn’t disappoint. There are ice falls, time lapse season changes, a neat view of arctic tree line with its fuzzy white forest full of stunted, sleepy Lot’s wives. All the animals are here, too, from the precious, like wolf cubs, to the vaguely sympathetic, like the ducks they “devoured in a flash,” and even the alien.
I can probably elaborate more, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that it must be true that suffering creates great art, because they won’t let us forget how much suffering goes into getting these shots, and the result is really great. Not just the unlikely catches, but also the simple humor that goes into vignettes like penguins marching. Even watching some giant dumbass bird struggle in the mud has a certain pathos.
What does worry me is that the second episode wasn’t as good as the first. The polar bears are a little overexposed. Still, this scene is still to come, and it is the coolest I’ve seen:
On the occasion of The Simpsons’s 500th episode, there isn’t much I can write that hasn’t been written, but there is one thing.
As I’ve grown from a young Kenny Brockelstein into a Kent Brockman, I have often reflected on how “The Simpsons” has informed my existence. It’s as old as I am – 8 months younger – and so extricating my life from its is difficult.
For example: In the episode “The PTA disbands!”, an unintentional game of telephone among striking teachers yields the phrase “purple monkey dishwasher” (it’s funny, I swear). Re-watching the episode recently, I found this deeply amusing, because it so accurately reflects the 2 or 3 games of telephone I remember, which all included the words “purple” and “monkey.”
Then I realized, the episode was from 1995. It might have been reflecting my experience, or — more likely — it was giving us 6-year-olds the idea in the first place. The show was teaching us that words could be inherently funny, especially if they only sound dirty, like “mukluk.”
If separating life from Simpsons is hard, separating TV from “Simpsons” is impossible. Every show I have watched and enjoyed since then seems to owe it everything.
On Tuesday, Jon Stewart joked that his audience wasn’t booing, they were saying Bruce — a reference to the “Daily Show” traditional pre-taping “Born to Run” and, intentional or not, to season 6′s “A Star is Burns.”
Like the appropriately named Randy Marsh at the end of “Over Logging,” “The Simpsons” has its DNA on everything. (That’s Simpson DNA, not Bouvier.) South Park even acknowledges/laments this debt in the episode “The Simpsons Already Did It.”
As for me, I owe my relationship with “The Simpsons” to my father with whom I watched it on Sunday nights, and to Mom, who allowed me to stay up (until 8:30!) to watch it, provided I was ready for bed.
Thanks to syndication, I was able to expand my viewing into the extracurricular hour with two re-runs a day at 6 o’clock, adding up to 11 episodes a week. Also thanks to syndication, I missed precious moments which I am only now seeing for the first time on DVD.
“The Simpsons” taught me much, fulfilling its own prophecy about the educational power of television. What I learned from just one episode: Who Tito Puente is. The word “crapulence.” That the sidewalk’s not for fancy walkin’ and the drive thru’s definitely not for the parkin’. That a boy loves his dog.
I also learned that true love feels just like a stroke, and money can be exchanged for goods and services. The series is the only reason I know about the songs “Jazzman” and “Pick Up the Pieces” and the English language.
Do I know what rhetorical means!
At the same time, I have been disappointed to find the world less than what “The Simpsons” promised it could be. Millionaires are simultaneously less cruel and less affable than Mr. Burns. It turns out there was no “Rocky VII: Adrian’s Revenge.” And remember in “Bart the Lover” when there was an awesome assembly about yo-yos and the kids all bought one? They did that at my elementary school, but the assembly was much less spectacular.
Most upsettingly, TV shows in general have failed to match the quality I learned to expect.
A long time ago, “The Simpsons” itself proved the inevitably of TV decay. We can take heart in the fact that 6 or 8 good seasons is more than most series get, and during that time, it had more total laughs than any good comedy before or since.
Still, it’s long past time to “air out the classroom and give Super Dude a proper burial.” I will choose to remember it as it was and watch “American Dad!” instead.
To people who don’t like “The Simpsons,” or think it’s still good, I have only this to say: “No, you can’t play with it. You won’t enjoy it on as many levels as I do.”
