Amy's Run is Over

 Well, Amy Schneider's run on Jeopardy! ended yesterday, after 40 straight wins that put her in second place for all-time streaks, between Ken Jennings and Matt Amodio. I had an inkling she might be at an end when I saw two different on-line pieces about her, both discussing how difficult it is for long-run champions to keep their secret. One of them included the kind of questions I can only imagine she would answer after she had finally lost.

There was also a hint when the contestant who ultimately beat her, Rhone Talsma, a librarian from Chicago, dominated the early play in the first round, hardly letting Schneider get in at all. He also hit two of the three Daily Doubles: he missed the first one, but crucially went all in on the last one, putting him within striking distance of Schneider's total. 

Then, in Final Jeopardy, he was the only one with the correct answer, finishing with a total just $2000 bigger than Schneider's to that point...and Schneider, perhaps over confident, had wagered $8000, putting her about $10,000 behind Talsma.

The Champions tournament later this season should be very interesting, with both the second and third-place all-time winners competing. I expect we'll see them head-to-head in the finals (but not before, if the producers are smart in how they arrange the quarter- and semi-finals).

Weather Non-Events

 One of our local TV stations prides itself on its weather coverage and whenever there's even a chance of a bad storm they issue what they call a "First Alert," and begin talking about it as much as three days or more ahead. Of course, like most TV stations, their signal reaches a wide area--in our case from the Jersey shore to nearly Lancaster, from southern Delaware to the Poconos. That means, in most cases, a wide range of impact for most weather events.

Case in point: Starting early this week, they began talking about a winter storm coming in late Wednesday night into Thursday morning, and predicting rain changing over to snow, with freezing rain or sleet mixed in, and snow totals anywhere from one to six inches. Our particular neighborhood, located on the famed I-95 corridor, was told to expect one to three inches, followed by below-freezing temperatures which would rapidly turn everything to ice.

So, what happened? Well, it started raining around midnight on Wednesday, just as they said, and turned to snow about 10 AM Thursday. But the temperatures stayed above freezing throughout, so the snow never accumulated--not even on unpaved surfaces. It just hit the relatively warm water already on the ground and melted.

Temperatures did plummet--but not until after dark (it's about 16 degrees as I write this), long after any rain water left had either seeped into the ground or run into the storm sewers, so the warnings of "black ice" (at least around us) were false alarms as well.

I think the TV meteorologists have to begin targeting their forecasts more closely.

Boba Not-So-Feckless

 This post is in the way of an apology to the producers and writers of The Book of Boba Fett, A few days ago, I complained that they had apparently ignored the relationship between Fett and the Tuskens in setting up the "current day" portion of their story. This week, they corrected that "error"--which I admit was not one--by showing that the Pikes (the fish-like aliens who ran the train through the Tusken territory) wiped out the Tuskens in revenge, while Fett was away.

In addition, except for that one scene, they avoided flashbacks for the most part this time around, finally telling a story that was predominantly about Fett's struggle to control his domain. A good part of it, though, was simply a Tattooine-based version of a classic urban car chase in any contemporary crime caper--it was fun, but the various tropes they included were just too obvious.

Boba Feckless

 Watched the second episode of The Book of Boba Fett last night. I have a couple of problems with this series, which really began with the first episode and have not been corrected with the second (if anything, they have been exacerbated).

The first is the extreme reliance on flashbacks to give us Boba Fett's backstory--a backstory that, so far, seems to have little relevance to his current situation. Why is he not relying on his close relationship with the Tuskens in his position as the new boss on Tattooine? Why use the apparently unreliable Gamorreans (after all, they turned on their last two employers)?

The second is the content of that backstory. Last night, my first impression was that this was just a new version of the first several chapters of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars, as John Carter is first captured and then ingratiates himself with the Tharks. On second thought, I realized it was really all based on T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and his campaign to assist the Arabs in fighting the motorized forces of the Germans. In either interpretation, it all smacks of the "great white savior" trope, doesn't it?

Anyone else see it all this way?

"Flux" Capacity 2

 Once again, I find myself apparently in the minority among internet commenters on the current season of Doctor Who (but I've been in that position throughout Jodie Whitaker and Chris Chibnall's run). I thought episode 6 of "Flux" was a fine ending to the story, having wrapped up all the many threads from the first five episodes and leaving us with a satisfactory place to move on from.

I was pleased that the Doctor decided she didn't need (or didn't want) to know the information hidden in the watch...but at the same time did not irrevocably destroy it, either. Yes, leave it for another team to explore should they wish to do so.

Yes, Division's and Swarm and Azure's motives remain a bit murky, I'll admit, but villains do not always need clear motives--sometimes they just do bad things because that's the way their minds work. (Does anybody think Charles Manson's motives, as a real-world example, made any sense at all?)

I'm happy with things as they stand and a bit sorry we only get to see three more adventures from this team.

Annie--Not So Live

 First, an admission: I did not watch the entirety of NBC's Annie Live production Thursday night. I caught about an hour of it, from the scene with "Easy Street" through the reprise of "Tomorrow" in the White House. As the title of this post might suggest, I was not impressed.

My major complaints are two. One, it completely destroys the flow of a show that was meant to be seen with only one interruption (at intermission between the acts) when you are interrupting for as much as three minutes every 10 minutes. This is the sort of broadcast that cries out for "limited commercial interruptions." Two: The pacing and tempo of the performance felt like molasses in January. Even numbers that ought to be rousing and enthusiatic like "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile" seemed to be something the cast was just slogging through.

One other thing: Some of the choices made were bad. The production inserted the dance number "We Got Annie" from the movie version, that was included to let Anne Reinking show off her skills. Here, it was obviously chosen to allow Nicole Scherzinger do the same thing. But to fit it in, they had to cut the much better number "You Won't Be an Orphan For Too Long."

Frankly, I've seen high school productions of this show that were livelier.

Lighting It Up

 Jill and I tried to watch the lighting of the tree at Rockefeller Center on NBC last night--but didn't actually make it to the moment when they threw the switch.

The show began locally at 7 PM, with an hour that was obviously prepared for local stations and the network's owned-and-operated stations to run and sell advertising for. Then at 8, they changed over to the nationally broadcast show on the network. We were disappointed that the tree lighting didn't occur by 8, but when the network show began, we figured that they would do it by 9. But, no....the network show ran until 10 and tree didn't finally light until a few minutes before that hour. 

Clearly, like the Thanksgiving parade last week, what was once a local kick-off to the holiday season, scheduled so that New Yorkers could see it and even bring their kids to see a little Christmas wonder in person, is now just a performance put on for the convenience of the TV network that has bought the broadcast rights. As we watched, we realized that the "audience" that was closest to the stage (and thus the tree) were invited guests (perhaps employees of Rock Center and NBC and their families), because they were all armed with the same light sticks and wearing identical Santa hats.

I pity any parent who went to Rock Center with children to see this: First of all, they could never have gotten close enough to really see anything...and they would have been standing in the cold and dark for three hours (actually longer--they probably would have needed to be there by mid-afternoon to get within even two blocks of the site) until well after the kids' bedtime.

Bah, humbug!

"Flux" Capacity

 I am now officially tired of the alleged Doctor Who fans who have been bitching about "Flux," the six-episode story that is tying up much of what show-runner Chris Chibnall has done in his previous two seasons of the show.

Episode 5, "Survivors of the Flux," did, I think, a masterful job of pulling together the various plot strains of this tale and of giving us greater insight to the Timeless Child, Division, and Chibnall's overall plan. Yet still I read complaints. If those complaints are about the very existence of the Timeless Child plot, I can almost understand--some people simply do not like to have long-standing canon toyed with. (And still, DW has done just that numerous times in its nearly six-decade history. For one thing, until the current version, with the glow and the blasts of light from the extremities, every regeneration was depicted differently--from the simple camera dissolves of One to Two, and Three to Four, to the mysterious figure merge of Four to Five).

And if "Flux" is confusing, why did so many of these same fans embrace Game of Thrones--which had enough plot lines and twists to fill four or five six-episode stories...and then clumsily tied them all up in one eight-episode final season?

I have never been confused by anything in "Flux"...perhaps because I've been paying attention and not just looking for things to carp about.

The Jeopardy "Conspiracy"

 No, Matt Amodio did not win 38 straight matches on Jeopardy! because the producers were deliberately feeding him really easy questions. And, no, he did not finally lose last night because they got tired of him and rigged the game so he would (or, in an even more unlikely scenario, that he agreed to throw last night's game).

I watched every single one of Amodio's appearances and here's what I saw: He is very fast on the buzzer, so fast that it often seemed that he was ringing in before he was sure he knew the correct response. Go back and notice how many times he has to wait a bit--clearly thinking his answer through--after being called on. When a Jeopardy! contestant knows the correct answer, he or she is eager to give it, in my experience, often not even waiting for the host to finish acknowledging them before speaking. They only pause when they are still trying to come up with a response.

That speed allowed Amodio to control the board and hence, usually, pick the clues he wanted to see--avoiding categories in which he wasn't as confident--and find the Daily Doubles far more often than his opponents did. But last night, confronted by two opponents more nearly on his level of knowledge and reflexes, he lost that edge. He never got even one of the Daily Doubles, and his challengers correctly answered all of them. 

In addition, I think Amodio got desperate. He began ringing in even more often when he wasn't sure of the answer, and got far more responses wrong than usual....and that resulted in a double penalty: He lost the value of that clue and his challengers had the opportunity to give the correct answer and thus win that same amount. (It can also be said, by giving an incorrect answer, Amodio made their job easier by thus eliminating one of the possible responses.)

And now,  the reason why the producers would not "rig" the game: it's illegal. After the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, Congress amended the Communications Act, in part, to make it illegal

To engage in any artifice or scheme for the purpose of prearranging or predetermining in whole or in part the outcome of a purportedly bona fide contest of intellectual knowledge, intellectual skill, or chance.

And the penalty?

 Whoever violates subsection (a) shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/509

Not to mention undoubtedly losing their job, never to work in the entertainment industry again.

All it would take for such a scheme to come to light is for one contestant, one production assistant, one stage hand, aware of the conspiracy, to step forward and blow the whistle. Would you risk everything on the chance that no one of the scores of people involved in a production like Jeopardy! would spill the beans?  Look how quickly Mike Richards lost his job for something that was in no way against the law.

I know "conspiracy theory" is the new on-line meme, but this one makes even less sense than all the ones about our last presidential election.

 

Streaming Recommendations?

 Jill and I are rapidly reaching the end of all the things we've been streaming since the pandemic and are in need of new suggestions.

Our likes include British mysteries and crime dramas, on the order of Midsomer Mysteries, Vera, and Professor T. Also comedy panel shows such as QI or 9 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. From this side of the pond, we've enjoyed Longmire and the reboot of Leverage. Of course, SF and fantasy are always welcome, but we prefer things that don't get too dystopian, if you know what I mean.

We subscribe to Netflix, Disney+. Paramount+, Acorn, Britbox, HBOMax, IMBDtv, and Amazon Prime.

Any thoughts on what we might start watching?

Facebook and Conspiracy

 Today on MSNBC's Morning Joe, several people talked about friends and relatives who had fallen down the right-wing conspiracy rabbit-hole, blamed it on the things they were reading on Facebook, and yet described these friends and relatives as "educated and intelligent".

My immediate unspoken response was "No, they are not." No "educated, intelligent" person could possibly read the Qanon, Big Lie, anti-vax compendium of "theories" (in quotes because these things do not in any way meet the dictionary definition) and take them seriously. Further, I have to ask, "Why are these things even coming up in their Facebook feed?" I am on FB almost constantly--at least four or five hours every day, probably more--and I only see this nonsense when someone links to it to deride it, to cast scorn on those who believe it, to demonstrate how inane it is. If it's coming up on your feed in any other way, it can only be because you have searched it out, you have "friended" someone who regularly posts it, or you have joined a group dedicated to spreading it around.

Don't blame any of that on FB's algorithms, either. Unless you have expressed an interest in this claptrap, the algorithms will not send it to you. Yes, when I search for information on, say, air conditioners, I get ads for air conditioners on the FB wall for the next several days. But since I do not search for info on right-wing conspiracies, I do not get such material directed to me.

If you do get this stuff and you link to it, and then continue to link to it, and begin to believe it, you're just stupid. And as the old saying goes, "You can't cure stupid."

Jeopardy! News

Sony has announced the new host for Jeopardy! and, as leaked earlier this week, it is Mike Richards, who will also continue in his position of executive producer of both Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. But there was new information as well; Mayim Bialik will serve as host of a series of prime-time special editions of Jeopardy!, beginning with the National Collegiate Championship in the fall.

Apparently, Joe Buck is the last of the guest hosts and the show will go into hiatus (probably rerunning a couple of the tournaments) until the first episode of the new season on September 13.

 I'm pleased with this announcement, for the most part, though I might have preferred to see Bialik as the main host (however, her sitcom on Fox, Call Me Kat, has been renewed for a second season, so that probably made a full-time gig hosting the game show unlikely).

Interesting TV

 I'm going to use this space today to recommend two TV series, both available on streaming services in the US.

The first is Staged, a BBC comedy starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen, playing versions of themselves. The first season takes place during the pandemic lockdown, as Tennant and Sheen attempt to put together a production of Six Characters in Search of an Author. The second season follows as their director, Simon Evans, tries to mount a live production on stage of Staged itself. I've only seen the first few episodes of season one, but it's very funny and largely improvised.  The series is available on Amazon Prime, Hulu, Apple TV, and Youtube.

The second series is Leverage: Redemption, a continuation/reboot of the series that ran on TNT several seasons ago. All of the regular characters are back--Sophie, Hardison, Parker, Eliot--except for leader Nate Ford, who has died since the end of the previous series. (Timothy Hutton, who played Nate, was not invited back after allegations of sexual harassment, apparently.) New characters are Harry Wilson (Noah Wylie), a corrupt attorney trying to earn redemption (hence the title) and Breanna Casey (Aleyse Shannon), Hardison's foster sister, who is almost as good with computers as he is--and more updated with modern social media, etc. The first eight episodes are currently available for streaming on IMdbTV, with another eight planned to be dropped in the fall. If you were a fan of the original, I think you'll be pleased, as the writing is still as sharp and witty as it always was.

TV Deja Vu

 Has this ever happened to you? Jill and I have recently begun watching a New Zealand cop/mystery show, The Brokenwood Mysteries. It's well done, with interesting cases, a terrific lead ensemble, and nice work maintaining a sense of a continuing world around them--the same locals appearing in multiple episodes, the same pub, etc.

But last night, we were watching the first episode of the third season--based around a guy who is running a scam "Lord of the Rings" tour (in an area of NZ that was not part of the trilogy)...and we realized we had, somehow, somewhere, seen it before. Trouble is, we could not for the life of us figure out when or where it was. We both could swear that we ran across the series while scanning through the shows available on the Acorn channel, we had never heard of it before.

Did it briefly run on one of the local PBS stations a few years back and we stumbled upon it? Not that we recall....but the episode began and we both immediately recognized it...and I even recalled the solution to the mystery.

I guess that makes for a new mystery.

Marvel on TV?

 Following up on yesterday's post, I began to think about what Marvel characters, now owned by Disney, of course, I would prefer to see in TV versions as opposed to movie versions--that is, which characters are simply not big enough, popular enough, to need a major motion picture. (Of course, I acknowledge that 20 years ago, no one would have thought Iron Man, Ant-Man, or the Guardians of the Galaxy fit into that mold.)

Anyway, I came up with a few:

The She-Hulk: The major reason I put her in this category is bccause of the way I would want her handled on screen. I firmly believe the only time Jennifer Walters' verdant alter-ego worked as a solo character was during John Byrne's run on the title, when it was treated with a light touch, almost as satire, and with a lot of broken fourth walls. That's an interpretation that I think works best as episodic television.

Luke Cage, Hero for Hire: This should be, essentially, a  private eye show where the detective has super-powers...Shaft with super-strength and invulnerability. I see it as 90-minute episodes, each standing alone, except for underlying plots about Cage's private life.

Werewolf by Night: Sure, it's just a twist on the classic horror theme, but in a movie, there has to be a final resolution to the hero's plight--either he dies or is cured...and then this is just one more version of The Wolf Man. But in an episodic format, especially if we go with the version where Jack Russell can control his wolf form on nights without a full moon.

Tunneling Through Time Again

 

The other day, the FXM Channel (sort of TCM for just 20th-Century Fox films) ran the movie version of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea...and that got me thinking.

Thanks to its acquisition of Fox, Disney now has the rights to all of the Irwin Allen movies and series. And then I pondered, which ones would lend themselves to a series on one of the Disney streaming services? I decided the most likely candidate (after Lost in Space, which has already been done) is The Time Tunnel.

With Disney's bigger budgets and modern SFX, this story of two guys lost in time and the home team trying to retrieve them could be a major success. And it needn't be plopping them down into a big historical event every week. Just a tale of trying to survive and fit in a time period that isn't your own would be intriguing enough and, of course, just as the original series did in its short run, sometimes they could wind up in the future, not the past.

Possibly, it could even be done as more than one new time jump every week. Maybe do it as an eight-episode season, with each story taking two episodes? And with an underlying season-long arc, perhaps one that is linked to the home base and not the time travelers?

Any thoughts?

Binge Thoughts?

 As I do periodically, I ask: what are you watching?

Many of the things Jill and I have been watching are either ending, have ended, or--if they are series that actually stopped production years ago--we have reached the end of what's available. Before I ask for recommendations, let me give you a look at what we have been viewing, so you know our tastes:

Death in Paradise (which just began putting its latest season on Britbox)

Waking the Dead

Hinterland

The Brokenwood Mysteries (New Zealand)

Midsomer Murders

New Tricks

Longmire

Upstart Crow

Wycliffe

Shetland

Vera (completed its most recent season before the pandemic and doesn't seem to have gone back into production)

Murder City

City Homicide (Australia)

Yes, it's a lot of mystery/crime and much of it British. So, can you recommend similar material from the US or  other countries? Or perhaps, to coin a phrase, "something completely different"? FTR, we currently subscribe to Netflix, Britbox, Acorn, Disney, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, and YouTube TV.

Super-Story Telling

 A frequent complaint about Superman is "he's just too powerful, you can't confront him with a credible threat." I think the first four episodes of Superman and Lois put that argument to rest.

How? Well, not by putting him in physical danger...and that shouldn't be the point, anyway. A good superhero story (any superhero, not just Superman) isn't about how he uses his extraordinary abilities to defeat the bad guy (we all know he's going to do that), it's about how he does that and maintains his humanity and his real life. So far, in S&L, the super-powered battles have been a clothesline upon which to hand the far more interesting human conflicts faced by the Man of Steel and his family.\

Spoilers ahead.

Two scenes in the latest episode, "Haywire," demonstrate that. First, there's the confrontation between Clark and Lois over his failure to appear at the town council meeting (because he was summoned to fight Killgrave). Lois knows Clark is right...and Clark knows that doesn't matter, because he broke a promise on something very important to his wife--and maybe to their whole community. 

Second is the confrontation between Clark and Sam Lane over the conflict between parenting and being a hero. Watch as Clark stands his ground and makes Sam back down--not by a physical threat but by the force of his moral argument. Sam put duty before family and was, frankly, a lousy husband and father, whose daughter resents what that choice meant to her growing up. Clark knows he can do better--and will.

And all this comes while still telling a satisfying action-adventure story.

Chasing WandaVision 4 (Spoilers)

 Meh...and even Bah, humbug!

That's my reaction upon seeing the "finale" of WandaVision. I put finale in quotes, because by my lights, it doesn't fit the definition. A "finale" should resolve all the plotlines, bring the story to a satisfying close and not leave loose ends for the audience to contemplate. Because of the post-credit scene, WandaVision episode 9 does none of those things.

Had they left it where it was as the end-credits began to roll (or even with the mid-credits scene--BTW, that was a Skrull who met Monica Rambeau, right?), everything would have been fine. But the post-credit scene, with an obviously obsessed (possessed?) Wanda peering through the Darkhold tome, it remains unclear who, exactly, was responsible for the events in Westview and--if it was Wanda--is she really aware of the damage she did and care about it?

And was there a hint of something more, someone else, in that scene? I'd swear another visage is superimposed on Wanda's in the final split-second, but despite four or five attempts to freeze-frame on the image, I was unable to determine if what I think I saw was real. And that's bad story-telling, too. The ability of the individual audience member to "get" the intent of the creators should not depend on the technology they use. Either show it or don't.

One of the problems with the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been its complete inter-connectivity...to the point that no one movie--or even line of movies--tells a complete story. It's as if, to give an example from a different genre, Rodgers and Hammerstein had decided that all their musicals are somehow connected and you don't get a full story unless you have seen them all, from Oklahoma! to The Sound of Music, including the minor works such as Allegro, Me and Juliet, and Pipe Dream.

"Endings" like this one only make it worse.

TV Superhero Stuff

 FTR, I haven't watched the finale of WandaVision yet...and I've avoided spoilers...so no comments on that until tomorrow at the earliest.

I did, however, catch the second episode of Superman & Lois, which I continue to enjoy for the most part. My reservations are on how long it will take for them to completely reveal the secret of Captain Luthor and whether his prejudice against the Kal-el of his planet will affect Sam Lane's already icy relationship with his son-in-law.

I find I am not as bothered by the storylines involving the sons--they may be the only thing that keeps this from being typical Arrowverse stuff about deep conspiracies and dark views on being a hero.