WEEKLY ROUNDUP

THE YADA-YADA

Don't try to get in my head.

You won't like the mess.

Alan Shore

'Boston Legal'

The Crossover of the Week is between the CBS soap opera 'As The World Turns' and a commercial for Tyson chicken products. We wrote about it yesterday and gave it its own entry in the blog.



This way, we can devote more space to a TV event that's helping to flesh out the TV Universe......



THE GREAT LINK

As part of a plan to link UPN's 'Star Trek: Enterprise' more closely with the original 'Trek' series -- 'Enterprise' is prequel to the 1960s cult favorite -- the current series launched a mini-arc that features characters and actors from across the whole history of the science-fiction franchise.



"Borderland," was the first of three episodes guest-starring Brent Spiner. He played the android Data on the first 'Trek' sequel series, 'Star Trek: The Next Generation,' and in several 'Star Trek' feature films, most recently 'Nemesis' in 2002.



From TV Guide:

“Brent Spinder begins a three-episode stint as an unsavory geneticist with ties to Data, his Star Trek The Next Generation character. In keeping with Trek continuity, Spiner’s Arik Soong is an ancestor of Data’s inventor, Noonien Soong.



But Arik is a far more menacing figure. He’s in prison for creating “augments,” physically and intellectually enhanced humanoids first developed during the Eugenics Wars (remember Khan?). Here, Archer tries to avert bloodshed by enlisting Arik’s aid in locating the mutant-eers (led by Alec Newman), who have seized a Klingon vessel."



Soong created Khan-like superhumans 20 years prior to the events of this episode by defrosting a bunch of genetically engineered embryos from the late 20th century and raising them as his own. Ten years later, Soong was captured, tried and imprisoned - but they never found his “kids” until now.



Obviously, the Soong family is particularly enamored of Khan Noonien Singh, as Arik Soong's grandson will name his own child after the genetically enhanced dictator - Noonian Soong.

('Enterprise' & 'Star Trek' & 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' & 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine')



HISTORY, CHANNELLED

The show is sticking to the continuity of the orginal Kirk-Spock-McCoy series, which established that Khan ruled and enslaved a good chunk of Earth between 1992 and 1996.



In our world, the alternate version was that of the ethnic cleansing in the Baltic states and the horrors of Somalia.

('Enterprise' & 'Star Trek')



MISSING LINK

There are three new ads for the California Milk Advisory Board, which continue the "Happy Cows" storyline.



This time around, the cows play a prank on a farmer, try to avoid the shade cast by the single cloud in the sky, and lose interest halfway through a hotly contested foot race.



They are no ordinary cows, but bovines with brains. And although they do not walk upright and wear clothes like humans, they may still be related to the cows that were given an evolutionary boost by a meteor's radiation in 'Cows'.



'Cows' was the failed pilot for a comedy series in the UK, created by comedian and actor Eddie Izzard. If it could be compared to anything, I'd have to use 'Dinosaurs!' as the example since it would have shown the foibles of the human race as seen through the lives of these intelligent, humanoid, happy cows.

('Happy Cows' & 'Cows')



ZONK

From The West Wing Continuity Guide:

"If Bartlet's granddaughter, Annie was 12 six years ago during the pilot of the series, how can she be starting high school the week before The Birnam Wood takes place?"



Tristan Weir emailed us to point this out. We do not have an explanation. Are we to think she has been held back in school or has she been so sick she couldn't keep up with her grade level or is she and or us in some kind of time warp?



Maybe he was so concentrated on getting these people together that Bartlet misspoke and meant to say, "Annie started her last year of high school last week" and he just left out the words "her last year of".



The West Wing Continuity Guide is at:

http://westwing.bewarne.com/default.html



SPLAININ TO DO

Edwin Poole of Crane, Poole, and Schmidt grew up watching Perry Mason. In fact, Perry came to him in a dream to tell him that he should take a murder case pro bono.



Edwin Poole may have been fried mentally (He came to work one morning wearing no pants, no underwear.), but his craziness wasn't presenting him with visions of a TV show that should have been part of the reality in the same universe where he resided.



Poole said he grew up watching Perry Mason. Mason was a very famous lawyer; his exploits in the criminal justice system in Los Angeles were the stuff of legend. He probably appeared often in the newspapers and on early local TV out there.



Nothing so far suggests that Edwin Poole could not have been raised in Los Angeles; maybe he moved to Boston after law school. [He wouldn't have been the first - several of the lawyers in the firm of Cage & Fish were not originally from Beantown. ('Ally McBeal')] So that's probably what he meant when he said he grew up watching Perry Mason. It had nothing to do with any television show.



As to him saying that Perry came to him in a dream..... Well, the guy is nuts, remember.

('Boston Legal' & 'Perry Mason')



THE LEAGUE OF THEMSELVES

Ford’s retro-hip 2005 Mustang debuted in a new commercial this past week. And it resurrected the late icon Steve McQueen in a fashion that's reminiscent of "Field Of Dreams".



“If you build it, he will come,” whispers the voice from Beyond to a corn farmer in Chilliwack, British Columbia. He then carves a racetrack into the crops and pulls the Mustang up to the starting line.



And then McQueen, who famously drove a Mustang in 1968’s "Bullitt", swaggers onto the racetrack to take a spin. The blipvert concludes with a tagline that fits both man and machine; “The legend lives.”

('2005 Mustang')



Apparently, in the TV Universe this would actually be the ghost of the late actor. But it should not be linked with the appearance of a TV character he once played back in the fifties. When Ranger Walker was visited by the ghost of bounty hunter Josh Randall a few years back in celebration of CBS TV's fiftieth anniversary, we were able to splain it away rather than let it become a Zonk.



Walker had been dreaming the encounter with the ghost of the real Josh Randall, not with the actor who portrayed him on TV. Walker must have been reading something on Randall's life and then nodded off at his desk.



So even if Josh Randall and Steve McQueen are two separate people in the TV Landscape, Randall was only the stuff dreams are made of. But McQueen? He's the boogieman, baby!

('Walker, Texas Ranger' & 'Wanted: Dead Or Alive') Plus:



The Donnas performed in San Francisco.

('Charmed')



The Black-Eyed Peas did Ed a favor in 'Las Vegas'.



Stephanie Beacham (ex-Sable, "Dynasty" and "The Colbys") will appear as herself on 'The Bold and the Beautiful' in November.



LA TRIVIATA

An empty city street is steadily filled with a procession of characters from film and real life, beginning with an armor-clad gladiator. He is joined by a cast of thousands including Little Orphan Annie, a father recording his son's first bike ride, and a fearsome but well-behaved creature from Alien. All and sundry, of course, converge on a leafy street and ultimately in the living room of a media-savvy family.

('Digital Joy' - Intel's Pentium 4 technology and Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center)



Dr. Gregory House practices medicine at the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in Trenton, New Jersey.

('House')



The song that Charlie Pace wrote, and which became a big hit for the band Driveshaft, - "You All Everybody" - was inspired by a comment by made by an audience member on an episode of Maury Povich's "talk" show.

('Lost')



REALI-TV

Just in case you're still not sure of 'Jack & Bobby' 's political sympathies, each episode begins with a montage of 20th-century presidents in their youth: [Franklin] Roosevelt, JFK, etc., but it all stops at Clinton.



This being Hollywood, evidently that's the last president the producers can bear to think about. The argument could be made that in an election year, they didn't want to influence the race. But I'll bet that if Kerry wins, his adolescent mug will be added to the lineup. Don't count on Bush's making it, though, if he's reelected.

— Catherine Seipp is a writer in California who publishes the weblog Cathy's World. She is an NRO contributor.



UNSTUCK IN PRIME TIME

The forensics team in Boston worked under deadline to prove that a man being held in custody for a possible drug bust might in fact be a long-sought serial killer.



They figured out that he struck only during the phases of a "Blue Moon", the second full moon in a month's period, which only happens every couple of years.



But the readout on Nigel's computer placed the date as November 1st of this year, and there was no "Blue Moon" at that time. The last "Blue Moon" was back in July, and the last full moon before that episode was on the 27th of October. There wouldn't be another one until the end of November.



But it's just another example that Toobworld is NOT the Real World, and we shouldn't be expecting events that transpire on TV to accurately reflect what happens here at home.

('Crossing Jordan')



Full Moons in 2004

January 7th Full Wolf Moon 10:40 am

February 6th Full Snow Moon 3:47 am

March 6th Full Worm Moon 6:14 pm

April 5th Full Pink Moon 6:03 am

May 4th Full Flower Moon 3:33 pm

June 2nd Full Strawberry Moon 11:20 pm

July 2nd Full Buck Moon 6:09 am

July 31st Full Sturgeon Moon 1:05 pm

August 29th Full Fruit/Barley Moon 9:23 pm

September 28th Full Harvest Moon 8:09 am

October 27th Full Hunter's Moon 10:07 pm

November 26th Full Beaver Moon 3:07 pm

December 26th Full Cold Moon 10:06 am



CRITIC'S CORNER

From the TV Chat in the Washington Post:

West Coaster: I'm shocked there isn't more outrage that we on the West Coast got an edited (no lip-synch) version of the Ashlee snafu. One of the biggest TV moments of the year, and we missed out -- thank God for the Internet. So I'm wondering if SNL snips skits for the West Coast when other things go awry, and isn't part of being "live" showing everything, warts and all?



Lisa de Moraes: Yes, there are SO many questions for Lorne Michaels, who has been very very quiet. It's outrageous that they edited out the vocal track for the West Coast feed of last week's 'SNL' so that it would look to viewers as if Simpson had become flustered because her "band" started to play the wrong song, instead of the truth, which is that she came unglued because she'd been caught in the act of lip syncing. Shame on 'SNL' and Michaels for doing that...



HALL OF FAME

Hall member Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, added to his roster on the last Friday before the presidential election, by appearing on CNN and debating with Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. The two debate antagonists had already been caught off-guard once earlier in the month by Jon Stewart of 'The Daily Show' who took them to task for the way they conducted their program, so they might have figured that they would fare better against a puppet.



Boy, were they wrong! Triumph got off the best line: "Jon Stewart made you hees beetch!"

('Crossfire')



In case anyone was interested in who the other 'Trek' inductees have been up to this point, here's the rundown of the year so far:

January - Captain James T. Kirk

February - Lt. Uhura

March - Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy

April - Commander Montgomery Scott

May - Yeoman Janice Rand

June - Zephraim Cochrane

Birthday Honors - The Cast Of The Original 'Star Trek':

William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichole, Walter Koenig, Majel Barrett, Grace Lee Whitney

July - Ensign Pavel Chekov

August - Helmsman Hikaru Sulu

September - Gene Roddenberry

October - The Tribbles

November - Ambassador Sarek



Well, that's it for another week. Please stay tuned!



BCnU!

Tele-Toby