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The Saddest Show on TV

Last week, I wrote this article about the return of the ABC show Pushing Daisies. In it, I quoted a poster from the DVD Talk forums who said: “I consider myself a highly cynical, pessimistic person, but there’s just something about this show that is able to give me the warm fuzzies. Every week I get to feel like the Grinch when he rediscovers he has a heart.”

It’s true! Pushing Daisies is like a comfy sweater or favorite pillow. You know the “cuteness” factor in the movie Amelie? Ratchet that up several notches and bring it into your living room ever week, and that’s Pushing Daisies. But it wasn’t until this week that I realized how totally, incredibly, and profoundly sad this show is, too. It makes me downright weepy! Yes, weepy!

This week, Chuck’s aunt Vivian stopped by The Pie Hole to pick up a pie. Since Olive is away at a convent, she hasn’t been able to deliver the pies that Chuck has been making for her aunts these past few months. And with Olive away and Ned and Emerson solving a case, that leaves only Chuck to man The Pie Hole. Vivian, missing the pies that Olive used to deliver, stopped by the restaurant to pick up a pie. But only Chuck is there, and she’s supposed to be dead. Vivian gives a little speech about her loneliness while Chuck hides from her. Chuck can only cry as the woman that reared her talks sadly.

Everyone in this show is terribly hurt in some way. Ned is lonely – not just because he cannot touch Chuck, but also because he misses his family. Chuck… well, Chuck is sad because she’s supposed to be dead and cannot tell her aunts that she is, in fact, alive. Olive is deeply in love with Ned, but Ned is deeply in love with Chuck. Olive also has many secrets she’s forced to bear. Emerson’s daughter is missing, so he makes a series of pop-up books in her honor, perhaps hoping she’ll read them and come home. Vivian is lonely because she misses Lilly. And because she’s nuts. And Lilly apparently has a closet full of secrets. Whew!

Thankfully, the show still brings the laughs, though. This week’s joke with the clown car was completely predicable… but freakin’ hilarious nevertheless!

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Life On Mars: What’d ya think?

So – last night was the debut of the American version of Life On Mars. For those of you that watched it: what did you think?

I myself was fairly pleased. Let me say this straight away: no remake of the show can be as good as the original. Full stop, period dot. Keeping that in mind, the American version is pretty faithful to the original.

Lisa Bonet plays Maya, Sam’s girlfriend. Changing her from Asian (Indian) to black makes sense, I suppose.

Unlike that godawful pilot episode leaked earlier this year, the “new and improved” Life On Mars US features Michael Imperioli as Ray Carling and Jonathan Murphy as Chris Skelton – two characters completely absent from the first pilot. I’m not sure that I’m digging either character at this moment – for some reason, Imperioli’s sarcastic Carling just rubs me the wrong way, but not in the same way that the original Ray did.

Annie Cartwright’s character was played by Rachelle Lefèvre in the failed pilot. Her version of Annie was an already street-smart detective that got a fair amount of acclaim from her co-workers. Lefèvre was dumped for Gretchen Mol, who plays Annie Norris (no idea about the name change), a meek character far closer to the “original” Annie. You know – a smart girl trapped in the “Womens Police Force”, busy making coffee and cleaning the station houses than doing actual police work. While Mol’s acting is fine, I’m not sure I buy her as Annie Cartwright. She’s too pretty. Liz White is the type of girl that really isn’t immediately pretty, but after watching several episodes, she sort of slowly “gets pretty”. At any rate, at least they’ve brought back the “suffering Annie” plotline. The whole basis of Sam and Annie’s relationship is that she’s smart as a whip, but trapped in a “housekeeping” job, and that Sam is the only one that appreciates her intellect. With that dynamic gone in the original pilot, the plot suffered terribly. I’m glad it’s back.

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Life On Mars debuts tonight!

Holy crap! I almost forgot to remind you guys: the series premiere of Life On Mars is tonight at 10pm eastern on ABC. I can’t speak for the new American version, but the British original was one of my all-time favorite TV shows… ever! So set that TiVo and check it out!

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Mad Men: “The Inheritance”

This episode kicks off with Pete reading a list of companies that will have a presence at an aerospace convention in Los Angeles. Sterling Cooper will have a presence there, too. Don says that “every engineer, scientist, and general will be there trying to figure out how to put a man on the moon… or blow up Moscow, whichever one costs more.” Don appoints Pete to be the Talker and Paul to be the Listener. They are not only to look for “traditional” advertising business, but also to look for Congressmen trying to get funding for projects. Sterling Cooper will gladly help members of Congress in “selling” their plans to the public. Awesome. He then blasts Paul and Pete for not reading the material that Peggy had put together. “Maybe I should send her”, Don laments.

Later that night, Trudy begs Pete to take her to Los Angeles with him. Pete declines, to which Trudy says that she will go to her parent’s home in Rehoboth (Delaware?) while he is away. Pete asks why, and Trudy says that her parents are concerned… thus, bringing up the whole “baby thing” again. If I were Pete, I guess I’d be ticked off, too. I mean, sure… Trudy is pretty hot, in an “Emmy Rossum is hot” kind of way… but the constant nagging about having a baby would drive me crazy too! Trudy brings up adoption, while Pete decries as “unnatural”.

At around the same time, Betty calls Don at his hotel. Betty’s father has had a stroke. He’s “up and around and talking”, but Betty’s relatives refused to put him on the phone. Don says that he’ll come get her that moment. Betty refuses, saying that she doesn’t want to wake the kids. Don says that everything will be OK, and that he’ll pick her up at 8am the next morning.

The next morning, the Drapers arrive at her father’s house a few minutes ahead of her brother William. Betty’s father Gene initially recognizes Betty and Don. In fact, he seems almost completely normal. That is, until Betty mentions that they should have called her (Betty) earlier, as Don knows some great doctors in New York. This causes William to roll his eyes and talk about “oh yes, the great doctors in New York, where everything’s better”. It also causes Gene to mistake Betty for Ruthie, his deceased wife (and Betty’s mother). Betty then asks Gene what the doctors said, to which her dad says “ah, it’s just like last time”. Betty, who had no idea that he’d had one before, freaks. Gene tells her that it’s just “a couple of little strokes” and that it’s not a big deal.

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Jim Cofer: Now on Facebook

I was talking to my friend Holly last week when she mentioned that she’s on Facebook.

I have always been on MySpace, mainly because that’s what all my Charlotte friends use. Honestly, I don’t care about either that much, since this site is what occupies my time. Sure, I have a MySpace page, but I usually spend around 10 minutes a week on MySpace.

However, I did think it was kind of bizarre that I didn’t have any sort of presence on Facebook, so as of this past Saturday night, I am a member of Facebook! I only posted this now because my profile was empty for the first couple of days. Earlier this week I cut and pasted all my MySpace profile stuff into my Facebook one, so now there’s actually stuff there worth seeing.

My profile is here.

Hit me up sometime, peeps!

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The Riches: Canceled

The Riches, FX’s dark comedy starring Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver as grifters who assume the identity of a rich family after being involved in their accidental deaths, has been canceled.

This news is not completely surprising. The show never pulled in the numbers FX wanted, especially given the show’s hefty price tag. Although I’ll miss the show, I’m not too broken up about it: there are far too many other great shows on TV these days.

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Slimming Down iTunes

Many Windows users hate Apple’s iTunes with a passion. Windows users come from a world of choice, where there are dozens of media players out there, and it’s easy to choose which one you prefer. Don’t like Windows Media Player? Use WinAMP, foobar, RealJukebox, MusicMatch, or whatever floats your boat. Windows users are also used to having options available. Most Windows users I know prefer having complete control over an install. We get pissed when a program installs something without our approval. And iTunes is really guilty of doing just this.

iTunes used to be software that you used to rip and play CDs, buy songs from iTMS, and transfer music to your iPod. Now, however, Apple thinks you want to do everything with your Apple product, especially the touchscreen devices. Whether you want it to or not, iTunes installs lots of software on your system that not only is pointless for many users, it even leaves possible security holes open and unnecessary services running!

To slim down an installation of iTunes, download the latest full installer from Apple (as of this writing, that would be iTunes801Setup.exe). Unzip the installer using WinZIP, WinRAR or your favorite compression program. Inside the unzipped folder, you will see the following files:

iTunes.msi
Quick Time.msi
AppleSoftwareUpdate.msi
AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi
Bonjour.msi
MobileMe.msi
Setupadmin.exe

Note: for 64-bit versions of iTunes, most of the above programs have “64” appended to their names, such as “iTunes64.msi”.

Here’s what each one does:

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The Smoot, Defined

You’ve heard of feet and meters… but have you ever heard of the Smoot?

Back in 1958, Oliver Smoot began attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was also pledging for the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. At 5′ 7″, Smoot was the shortest pledge by far, so his future frat brothers came up with a personalized initiation for him: they took him to the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge and used his body to measure the length of the bridge, with an exhausted Smoot standing up and lying down every time the frat members marked off another “Smoot”. The bridge was eventually found to be 364.4 Smoots long.

The prank became something of a local legend in the Boston area. In the years following the prank, whenever the city of Boston painted over the “Smoot Markers”, the fraternity members would surreptitiously sneak back onto the bridge and paint them back. After a few years of back and forth between the city and the fraternity, the city of Boston eventually gave up and announced that they would no longer paint over the markers. In the past few years, the city has even warmed up to the markers by providing an off-duty motorcycle officer to warn traffic as the fraternity members repaint the markers. I believe that the city even uses “Smoots” as their official measurement of the bridge!

Over the years, Smoots have taken off as something of a “geek joke”. You can even convert between feet and Smoots with Google calculator: open a Google window and type “8.5 feet in Smoots” into the search box. On the next page, Google will have your answer (1.52238806 Smoots).

Smoot eventually became chairman of the American National Standards Institute, was in the news lately because of Smoot Celebration Day at MIT, where he received a plaque which will be installed on the bridge later this year.