Anatomy

The FCC issued a $1.43M fine against ABC for a 2003 episode of NYPD Blue. The episode contained shots of a woman's backside as she was getting into the shower.

Yes. The episode aired almost 5 years ago. It's like we live in a highly inefficient Iran. If you're going to have a committee for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, you might wanna try to get that work done within the half-decade.

Also interesting, only ABC affiliates in the Central and Mountain time zones have to pay the fine. I had hoped this was because the FCC had determined the coasts were too indecent to worry about. Unfortunately, it's because the episode showed after 10p out here. In Civics class, we never covered the "Butts are ok after 10p" clause of the first amendment.

Finally, my favorite thing about this story is that the FCC determined the broadcast was indecent because "it depicts sexual organs and excretory organs — specifically an adult woman's buttocks."

ABC tried to argue that the buttocks are not, definitionally, a sexual or excretory organ. The FCC responded by saying "Although ABC argues, without citing any authority, that the buttocks are not a sexual organ, we reject this argument, which runs counter to both case law and common sense."

Aren't you dying to see the case law on this?

Just to be clear

The Golden Globes announced that there will be no awards show, a result of the ongoing Writers Guild strike. The Screen Actors Guild had also convinced its members not to attend.

Instead of the regular show, they'll have a news conference and "millions of viewers worldwide will be deprived of seeing many of their favorite stars" as stated by Foreign Press Association president Jorge Camara.

The stars. They are going out!

Of course, they could have had the show just not with writing. Which would mean losing those scripted intro bits that everyone ... loves?

Another solution: the Writers Guild was unwilling to budge because NBC/Universal/Sheinhardt Wig Co. owns the broadcast rights. According to the NYT, folks like Jeff Katzenberg urged NBC to let go of the broadcast so that there could still be a live ceremony (for radio?). But NBC took the "if I can't have her, no man shall" approach.

My big hope is that the Jew-on-Jew violence that is the writers strike continues through February so we can see what happens when the Oscars roll around. At this point I want nothing less than the complete collapse of everything TV.

Run it twice

I've watched a lot of televised poker and most of it is not very good.

Almost every show either contrives or covers a tournament. The tournament format would seem to be a good choice because it has a built-in conclusion; a single winner. And the escalating blinds make for ever-increasing pot sizes.

But those million dollar pots are made up of tournament chips, not real dollars. So even though there's big prize money at stake, a player only loses his original buy-in if he busts out (and sometimes this is as small as a couple hundred bucks thanks to smaller, qualifying tournaments).

The Game Show Network's High Stakes Poker is now in its fourth season and takes a different approach. They televise a cash game; no-limit hold'em with $300/$600 blinds and $100 antes. The minimum buy-in for the game is $100,000 and the money is real.

Seeing players compete over six figure pots is part of the fun. Because it's a cash game, it also means that the producers can invite the best players. In tournaments, especially large ones, you usually end up with half a table of marginally skilled nobodies. GSN pays the best around to show up for their game. (The appearance fee of $1250/hour is a sweetener but not enough to significantly offset the large stakes).

Also, you get to see a lot of things that would never happen in a tournament. All-in bets are far less common in deep stack cash games. And when they happen, the players will often "run it twice" meaning that they'll deal out the remaining cards two times. The effect is to mitigate the variance on these big bet pots and it's interesting to see stuff like this get worked out.

You also get a sense of how addicted to action these pro players are. They will gamble on everything. They bet on what cards will come out on the flop, they bet on how much weight someone will gain in a lifetime. There was nearly a $500,000 bet about whether someone could work 40 hours a week in a furniture store for a year.

High Stakes also does a great job on the commentary. Most poker shows have amazingly bad voice-over filled with faux-folksy poker nonsense. But Gabe Kaplan is savvy enough to work out the players' thought process and is funny enough to beat-up goomba co-host AJ Benza.

There's really only two things bad about the show. The first is that you have to have GSN to watch it (I don't). You can download it off of Veoh (skip season 1, they didn't quite have it together yet) but it's not a great experience. If only they would sell the episodes online.

The other thing is the High Stakes Poker theme song. It may be the worst poker song ever written and this is not a particularly distinguished genre. A sample of the lyrics:

Man I'm gonna kick it / Pocket nines is the ticket
Ladies ain't ladies / unless they your ladies
Get your hand on a monster / if that's what it takes
And if you got what it takes / You can play High Stakes.

Despite that, I recommend it.

Yee haw

Found out from the Daily Show that Operation: Centaur Rodeo was actually a thing back in Spring 2004 of the Iraq War.

Centaur Rodeo is a righteous name. I can only hope that somewhere a deserving band is considering it as their handle.

Unfortunately, Operation: Centaur Rodeo's track record doesn't look that good on paper: "As of March 30, 2004, coalition forces had seized 3 people and numerous weapons."

I'm no cowboy, but three ponies makes for a pretty sad rodeo.

Music Supervision

Spoilers: this post talks about the Season 3 finale of BSG and Jason Sutter's wrinkly bits.

So, yeah. They need to finish this whole series up. Not that it's completely unenjoyable - in fact, there were a number of solid moments last night. But at this point it wouldn't be surprising to find out the whole thing is some Matrix-like simulated reality.

And, increasingly, they're making some questionable artistic choices.

Regarding the finale, I actually started shouting 'No' at the screen when Tigh muttered "Said the joker to the thief." The idea that the Final Five Cylons are picking up on transmissions from modern-day Earth is a perfectly serviceable sci-fi concept. I just can't believe they went with such a hokey, overused song.

Heather Havrilesky's reaction in Salon is pretty accurate:

"Oh my God! My stoner boyfriend from high school wrote the season finale of 'Battlestar Galactica'! Why did Ronald D. Moore take a break and hand over responsibility for the finale to a guy who spent most of his time doing shots of Bacardi 151 Rum and noodling Hendrix on his guitar? Was that wise, really?"

No, it wasn't wise. By using this hackneyed tune, it makes the underlying concept seem weak ... which is a shame. Just as a for instance, what if that scene had been written like this:

Chief: I can’t seem to face up to the facts.
Tigh: I’m tense and nervous and I can’t relax.
Anders: I can’t sleep because my bed’s on fire.
Tory: Don’t touch me I’m a real live wire.

It works better on basically every level.

Obviously, I'm picking on one detail. But this was the sort of thing that used to just work in BSG. Starbuck returns to her apartment, turns on the radio and Philip Glass pours out. Or, you know, the first time Apollo defied his father and renounced his military obligations.

At this point, I think we're either revisiting old territory (cancer!) or paying off new story arcs in a hacky way (Starbuck lives!). Time to wrap it up.

(Regarding Sutter's balls: Like BSG this season, I hinted at a compelling story arc but failed to deliver. Unsatisfying, isn't it.)

Making it Up

Salon has an interview with BSG creator, Ron Moore. There are a couple questions they ask him that I find interesting.

First, they ask about the difficulty in keeping an audience for a serialized drama. How can you pick up new viewers when it's essentially impossible for someone to start watching from the middle.

When asked how they deal with this challenge on BSG, Moore says "I don't. It's a genuine problem I have no solution for ... It's certainly not something [the network is] in love with." And he goes on to say "We've done a few stand-alone episodes here and there, and they're almost never very successful."

True that.

Second, they ask about how planned out the season arcs are and how much is changed on the fly. While the major story arcs are planned "as you do it you find that there's this other more interesting path." When asked for an example of something that resulted from this organic approach, he says "In this season's finale, I decided on the fly to give Laura her cancer back."

Boo! Just slapping someone with the cancer stick at the last minute is some weak-ass soap opera bullshit.

But more importantly, HBO's The Wire has shown there's a better way to deal with serialized drama. You treat the whole season as a single piece and tell one, 12-hour story. No one gets cancer at the last minute and you don't have stand alone episodes.

Yes, this is probably only sustainable for the shorter seasons that premium TV allows. But I'd be so much more happy with BSG if they'd kept to the momentum they had back at the end of season 1/beginning of season 2.

In short, the way in which to make serialized drama work is to not treat it as a serial. Consider the whole thing long-form fiction and make a complete (if slightly shorter) story out of a single season.

Move the chains

The folks behind Battlestar Galactica have long been trying out some smart stuff in terms of engaging their audience via the web. For example, the director's commentary podcast for each episode (I listened to a bunch of them, but gave up at some point). Also, the pre-season three webisodes (great idea, turned out they weren't that compelling).

I'm pretty excited about their latest venture, the Videomaker Toolkit. They've released a whole bunch of digital assets (video clips, audio, graphics) and have encouraged folks to make 4 minute battlestar videos of their very own.

I love this. Television and movies have long been these monolithic forms of media that are only meant for the masses to receive, not participate in. Battlestar know which side its dorky bread is buttered on and is putting some of its IP in the hands of the fans. Hot.

My quick read of the TOS suggests they've got the right idea in that they stress that the fan-creators retain ownership over the videos they create ... altho' you grant SciFi the right to make money off of what you produce.

The only truly bonehead move is that they don't want you posting your video on YouTube. Given that you're obliged to include a promo clip at the end of your video (which seems reasonable to me) why wouldn't SciFi want these videos distributed as widely as possible. What benefit do they get by keeping them all on scifi.com where, I'm guessing, approximately 95% of visitors are already fans of their flagship show.

But still, progress. It's only a matter of time until Baltar starts blogging.

Cut my son's bonds

The actress Alice Krige was born in South Africa which is why she has the kind of diamond dust commonwealth accent that drives me crazy. This made her a great Jessica Atreides in the kickass Children of Dune mini-series. Other iceblood matriarchs include the madam Maddie in Deadwood and the fricking Borg Queen in Star Trek, for god sakes.

But her finest role is as Alma in the second season of Six Feet Under. She plays the instructor of the Landmark Forum-style self-help group, The Plan. The complete ridiculousness of The Plan's idea of personal transformation by architectural metaphor (which I also take to be a dig on Ayn Rand) is played off some really genuine moments of Ruth becoming a stronger person. That ambiguity is one of my favorite parts of the show.

And Alice Krige totally sells this. She's so strong as the instructor that even the weird "rebuild your life plank by plank" jargon comes off as momentarily believable to me.

She and Tilda Swinton should do some kinda of two-woman show together.

Departure Lounging

My plane to Chicago is a half hour delayed so I'm cooling my heels in the departure lounge and sucking down the for-pay wireless:

• Every time I use the wireless at SFO I'm amazed at how poorly T-Mobile implemented it. You need an account to use the WiFi and naturally I don't remember my credentials as I use them once every 6 months (at least give me a clue if it's email address or username, people). Creating an account is stunningly painful and doesn't even log you in after you finish. All of this for $6 and hour.
  


• I was up until 4:30a finishing the booking for my trip to England with my brother, David. The trip is going to kick ass. I'm particularly looking forward to Exmoor National Park - (there are wild ponies) and our stay at the Covent Garden Hotel. And I get to drive on the left side of the road again which pleases me in places I like to be pleased (my left-hand side).


• Ok, I wasn't up until 4:30a just because of the trip. I've also been on a Battlestar Gallactica bender and have rewatched the mini-series, season 1 and the first 12 episodes of season 2 in about 72 hours. This is actually why I have my laptop with me - to finish the rest of the second season on the 4 hour flight. Battlestar has a similar multi-narrative, season-long arc style that makes Lost compelling. But unlike Lost, the show actually goes somewhere and you have the belief that there's a real idea of how things should evolve (I'm pretty sure Lost is making it up as it goes along). Plus, it does deliberately paced montage like nobody's business.


• I saw "The Protector" - Tony Jaa's new martial arts movie. The story is porno-quality and allegedly about some elephants that get stolen and need protecting ... or something. I was pretty sure that the main villian was actually an transvestite (woulda been if the movie was Japanese and not Thai) but I think she was just the victim of some husky overdubbing. In any case, there's some decent fighting and you get to hear a character earnestly say, "You killed my father. Now where are my elephants!!"
  

Tabula Rasa

It's not that I want there to be new episodes of Six Feet Under. It's just that I wish I could relive the experience of watching the whole series for the first time.

Future

The cable package I had back in college included the NASA channel - a big favorite among my peers. What's not to like about around-the-clock, mostly silent footage of the Earth as seen from space.

It turns out that NASA has brought their ambient broadcast to the Internet. You can watch live coverage of the current space shuttle mission. Which is pretty amazing. Right now I'm listening to the evening briefing of the ISS crew. "Spanky says there are no sardines aboard ISS" ... I think that's code about aliens.

The point is, there's people talking to me live from space! Amazing.