By The Beachwood Warm Holiday Feelings Affairs Desk
1. The Lost Ending
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Posted on December 24, 2008
Ironside: The Man Who Believed
By Kathryn Ware
Our look back on the debut season of Ironside continues.
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Episode: The Man Who Believed
Airdate: 23 November 1967
Plot: A Twiggy-esque folk singer’s body is found floating under the Golden Gate Bridge and her death is quickly ruled a suicide. Ironside refuses to believe that world-famous songbird Samantha Dain would take her own life. He insists on increasing the San Francisco homicide rate by one when he overrules the coroner and cracks opens a murder investigation. His reasoning? One heartfelt anti-suicide get well card sent to him by said victim when he was recovering from the gunshot wound that landed him in his wheelchair. Nope, Ironside is certain his pen pal didn’t take a “200-hundred-foot shortcut into the bay” – she must have been pushed! And Iron-tuition is never wrong.
Posted on December 19, 2008
What I Watched Last Night: Lisa Madigan’s Press Conference
By Scott Buckner
I had a few things on my plate just before lunchtime Friday morning, but I ended up putting them aside when – like I was able to put them aside early Monday morning – I was drawn to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s expansive news conference surrounding her decision to ask the state’s supreme court to keep Gov. Rod Blagojevich from doing state business out of the back seat of his SUV until his lawyers prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Sunshine didn’t wake up all pissy one morning and decide to fuck a children’s hospital out of $8 million.
I have no doubt the governor needs to have his loose screws tightened if he thinks he can run a state when his phone has become as useful as a banana in his ear. At this point, I don’t care whether Lisa Madigan or Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn might be capitalizing on Mr. Sunshine’s misfortune to further their own public service careers. Given the governor’s conduct and job performance even before this pay-to-play business arose, there are less reliable coat racks than those two to hang our hats on.
Posted on December 15, 2008
What I Watched Last Night: Svengoolie
By Scott Buckner
All in all, there are worse ways to spend a Saturday night than watching Svengoolie on WCIU-TV/Channel 26. Being pinned under a car that’s fallen off a bumper jack is one. Having your legs chewed off by a shark is another. Last Saturday night’s feature presentation of the 1960 film Brides of Dracula came pretty close though, because as it turns out, Brides of Dracula is perhaps one of the most boring, plodding horror movies ever invented. Movies like this might have inspired ABC to create the afternoon goth/vampire soap opera Dark Shadows in 1966, but as feature films go, this is the sort of horror-movie mess you get when you let the British go wild with sophisticated movie-making equipment.
Posted on December 12, 2008
What I Watched Last Night: Cutlery Corner
By Scott Buckner
I can’t think of anyone who looks forward to being awake during that early morning purgatory that bridges Friday night and Saturday morning – or Saturday night and Sunday morning – unless there’s some sort activity that calls for a bunch of clothing to be strewn recklessly about someone’s bedroom floor. However, occasions do arise when you end up spending Purgatory Time by yourself with whatever home shopping program WCPX-TV/Channel 38 likes to air in the wee weekend hours for the benefit of insomniacs and drunks with a hankering to buy stuff.
Posted on December 11, 2008
Blago TV
By The Beachwood Blago TV Affairs Desk
1. Is Everything A Lie Down Here?
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Posted on December 9, 2008
What I Watched Last Night: The Secret Millionaire / Part 2
By Scott Buckner
(Part 1.)
Over the years, we’ve learned to expect certain things from reality-based TV. That’s why I kept waiting for the uber-rich in the two-part premiere of Fox-TV’s The Secret Millionaire to turn out to be the love spawn of Leona Helmsley and Ebeneezer Scrooge. The TV landscape is loaded with enough people transformed by wealth and privilege into spoiled, insufferable pricks that you’d expect this show’s secret millionaires to wake up on Day Three yelling, “Screw the poor! I’m not going to spend one more goddamn night feeling things scurry across my legs in my sleep!”
Posted on December 8, 2008
What I Watched Last Night: The Secret Millionaire / Part 1
By Scott Buckner
There’s a point in the Christmas-time film Trading Places where Billy Ray Valentine turns to Louis Winthorp III and says, “You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people.” That’s sort of the idea behind each hour-long episode of Fox-TV’s new reality-based program, The Secret Millionaire, which premiered this week with back-to-back episodes
I say it’s sort of the idea because here the rich people get turned into poor people on purpose. And after a week, they get turned back into rich people.
Posted on December 5, 2008
What I Watched Last Night
By Scott Buckner
I’m not sure what anyone might say about a local TV station that promotes a music awards show that already happened a month ago. But those folks might say WPWR-TV/Channel 50’s Wednesday night presentation of the World Magic Awards came as close to bitchin’ entertainment as bitchin’ entertainment gets since Lawrence Welk isn’t around to kick it out anymore.
Posted on December 1, 2008