By Scott Buckner

Is the TV theme song really a lost art? Or is it simply more a case of the television industry turning its back on them so more commercials can be shoehorned into a 30-minute slot? A 30-second TV theme song doesn’t sell more car insurance and fatten a network’s bank account; 30-second car insurance commercials do.
Either way, I too believe the TV theme is more than just an audio marker in time that says if you intend to see the whole show, you’d better pee faster. If you want to truly understand – and appreciate – the purpose and value of the TV show theme song, a good place to start is the bargain bin of your local big-box retailer who sells cut-rate DVDs for five bucks or so, like Best Buy. That’s where I found multi-episode discs from the rural power trio The Beverly Hillbillies, The Andy Griffith Show and Petticoat Junction from Madacy Entertainment Group, Inc. and Ovation Home Video. My consternation lies not in the less-than-pristine quality of the video (complete with little squiggly hairs and black specks in every frame) but in the fact that the original theme songs are missing – replaced instead with loopy, limp bluegrass or loopy, limp elevator music.

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Posted on October 29, 2007

By Scott Buckner

Life’s tough when you’re an amnesiac. Your family and friends are complete strangers, you have no idea whether you’re one of those people who get along well with a bottle of Goldschlager, or even if you like to top off a good meal with a nut log from Stuckey’s. It’s even tougher, though, when you’re an amnesiac who begins to discover you’re a shallow, vain, pitiful excuse for a human being. But you’re pretty hot, so that kind of takes the edge off people not liking you behind your back.
That was the situation in Monday night’s premiere of Samantha Who? on ABC. It’s one of those sitcoms that’s smarter than a sitcom reasonably should be, which is why critics or viewers more accustomed to getting a pie in the face might find this show troublesome, or not even funny. In fact, I’m not sure Samantha sven ought to be called a sitcom. A fitting alternate title might be Amnesiac In The City because it shares essentially the same mood and atmosphere as a once-popular show about four women who end up spending more time talking about sex in the city than actually getting any.

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Posted on October 17, 2007

By Scott Buckner

As any happily married couple or unhappily divorced single will tell you – if we actually bothered to listen anyone’s advice – the most fulfilling relationships are those where two people enjoy doing things together. Men, if you’re looking for a way to get your woman to watch Man TV with you, you may find this interesting, if not useful. Women, if you’re looking for a way to get your man to cut down on at least a half-hour of ESPN once a week, you may find this interesting, too.
Or maybe not. As Confucius might say, “Advice: Wise men don’t need it and fools don’t heed it.” Although I forgot who said it, that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
I’m not much on televised sports. So why in the world did I end up spending three hours of my Wednesday night at Coach’s Corner Tavern and Grill – indisputably the best drinking/sports-watching establishment along the Kennedy Avenue alcohol corridor in Hammond, Indiana’s Hessville neighborhood – to come up with material for this column instead of staying home and being bored shitless with rancid programs like Life and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares?

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Posted on October 11, 2007

By Kathryn Ware

Our tribute to the 35th anniversary of the debut of Maude continues.
*
Season 1, Episode 8
Episode Title: Flashback
Original airdate: 31 Oct 1972
Plot: Maude and Walter are watching the early presidential returns come in. Maude is hysterical with worry that Nixon will defeat her candidate, George McGovern. This triggers a flashback to the last presidential election, when Maude and Walter were dating. Arguing about Nixon vs. Humphrey and Walter’s decision not to vote, Maude realized she loved Walter, which sent the thrice-married Maude into a tailspin.
First she panicked and kicked Walter out. There’s no way she’d get married again! But then a conversation with hipster daughter Carol gave Maude the idea that she and Walter could just live together. After all, it was1968! This idea didn’t go over well with Walter – who’s ready to make a commitment – and they broke up following a blowout argument.

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Posted on October 10, 2007

By The Beachwood Cubs & Cormorants Affairs Desk

Apparently a slew of Cub fans are upset with the so-called bias of the TBS broadcast crew. I have one word for them: Waaaaaaaaaah! Stop crying. What you are experiencing is an actual objective call of the game, not the hometown boosterism that hides the ugly truth from your virgin ears. Isn’t that what we all used to love about Steve Stone? Not just his prescience, but his truth-telling? And you know what, even he didn’t tell you everything he knew because he was employed by the Cubs. Would you like your sportswriters to be employed by the team as well? This is an ethical farce.

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Posted on October 5, 2007

By Scott Buckner

Typically, my love of televised sports doesn’t go much further than rooting for the underdog on ESPN’s The Ocho if it had an Ocho (“Yo! Last call for the “World’s Strongest Man” competition! Ten-to-one and a free bag of chips on the Eastern European with the least amount of consonants in his last name!”). However, like any other city native with an employer fairly tolerant of employees working on 45 minutes of sleep as long as they’re not in charge of heavy machinery beyond pressing an elevator button, I watched the Cubs get outclassed by the Arizona Diamondbacks last night because all in all, it was just the right thing to do.

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Posted on October 4, 2007

By Julia Gray

Time was when TV theme songs were musically competent enough to actually serve the narrative of show and even make it onto the radio. “Welcome Back, Kotter” anyone? But what are the best known theme songs of this generation? The Friends song? How annoying was that? Or the Seinfeld theme – effective, but so about nothing there weren’t any words? Maybe it’s because reality shows have taken over and reality shows don’t really have theme songs, they just kind of have melodramatic musical set pieces like CNN uses when a Russian president dies or something. Although we do have the Simpsons song – but again no words. The Family Guy song kind of rules – but ironically, it’s an homage to the theme from All in the Family and really all songs from sitcoms yore.

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Posted on October 2, 2007

By Scott Buckner

Reality TV as conceived by our writer. First in an occasional series.
The Concept
Losers and Bartenders compete against each other in a last-man-standing contest to Get Laid and win $1 million to be split between the winning hook-up couple. Contestants on both sides of The Bar try to sabotage– while trying to appeal to – each other in a challenge larger than even the creators of Survivor could possibly dream up because real life is even more disappointing than this.

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Posted on October 1, 2007

By Kathryn Ware

Our tribute to the 35th anniversary of the debut of Maude continues.
*
Season 1, Episode 7
Episode Title: Love and Marriage
Original airdate: 24 Oct 1972
Plot: Four days into a marital fight, Walter comes home from work to find Maude is still angry. In the middle of their argument about their argument, Carol comes home after an unsuccessful day of job hunting. It seems her only employment opportunities are with married businessmen looking for a good “personal” assistant. After four weeks of unemployment and who knows how long living under the same roof as her mother and step-father, Carol has reached her limit. There’s only one thing for her to do – get married. Right on Carol!

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Posted on September 27, 2007

By Scott Buckner

How do you throw an intervention for a guy who disappears for days because he’s off time traveling instead of losing track of time at the local crack house like everyone else? That was one of the conundrums posed by NBC’s Journeyman, an interesting but at times confusing series which premiered Monday night.
It’s like another NBC series, Quantum Leap, in that San Francisco reporter Dan Vassar (Kevin McKidd, looking somewhat similar to Anthony Michael Hall of USA Network’s The Dead Zone) leaps around time within his own lifetime righting past wrongs of complete strangers. It’s not like Quantum Leap in that 1) Reporter Dan doesn’t go leaping into the bodies of complete strangers, and 2) it takes far more effort on our part than is probably necessary to figure out what’s going on. When Sam Beckett went time traveling, you rarely sat there thinking, “What the fuck is this now?”

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Posted on September 26, 2007