Category: Television

Primary Numbers.

“Roger Ailes was right when he predicted at the beginning of the television era that in the future all politicians would have to be performers. But politicians are, for the most part, lousy performers.Their advisers are pretty awful at what they do too. In the absence of inspiration, they have fixed upon the crudest, most negative and robotic forms of communication. They’ve made moments like Robert Kennedy’s in Indianapolis next to impossible.” TIME‘s Joe Klein laments the dawn of the soundbite-heavy, market-tested-within-an-inch-of-its-life consultants’ republic.

Flip you for real.

“Leave it to Justice Antonin Scalia to trigger a nationwide debate about the hermeneutics of chin flips.” From an “empaneled jury” of Sopranos actors to Justice Scalia’s uncharacteristic appeal to foreign precedent, Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick muses on the sideshow surrounding the Justice’s recent Sicilian kiss-off.

Hope you like leftovers.

Dallas (with Jennifer Lopez, Luke Wilson, John Travolta, and Shirley MacLaine)? Welcome Back Kotter (with Ice Cube)? The Dirty Dozen (now with “a personal element to it,” ’cause the original wasn’t a classic or anything)? Yep, it’s looking bleak in Hollywood these days on the new idea front.

Chef Free and Clear.

“There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins.” And that time is when the Church of Scientology comes a-knockin’. Apparently perturbed by last season’s “Trapped in the Closet” episode, Isaac Hayes quits his longtime role of Chef on South Park. Matt Stone responds: “In ten years and over 150 episodes of ‘South Park,’ Isaac never had a problem making fun of Christians, Muslims, Mormons and Jews. He got a sudden case of religious sensitivity when it was his religion featured on the show…Of course we will release Isaac from his contract and we wish him well.” Update: Chefgate gets stranger — was Hayes forced to quit?

Lay Down Your Burdens / Who’s Next.

Those of you who care already know this — but still, the second season of Battlestar Galactica ends tonight with a 90-minute episode that includes cylon Dean Stockwell, a one year flash-forward, and a new Vichy-like storyline for Season 3, which begins airing in October. And The Sopranos Season Six isn’t the only big-ticket TV premiere coming up. March 17 is shaping up to be a doozy for the fanboy nation (particularly we anglophiles), as Guy Fawkes will be muscling in on St. Patrick in V for Vendetta and the Doctor will finally be returning to American television with a two-hour premiere on Sci-Fi.

Fore!

“Is this the right message to be sending to taxpayers in America, Russia, Europe and Japan — that it’s OK to do a stunt like this?” The Russian space agency weighs the financial pros and safety cons of an orbital chip shot from the ISS. “The golf shot is hardly the first commercial venture in space. The cash-strapped Russian space agency has taken three ‘space tourists’ to the orbiting laboratory for a reported $20 million apiece. An Israeli company, Tnuva Food Industries, paid the Russians $450,000 to show two cosmonauts drinking milk, and Pizza Hut paid $1 million to slap a logo on the side of a Proton rocket and have cosmonauts deliver a pizza to the space station. The Russians aren’t alone. Last year, the Japanese space agency arranged for the filming of an instant ramen noodle commercial on the space station.”

The Bled and the Whacked.

“What Chase has heard from actors is lots of special requests: Don’t let me die a snitch; massacre me; spare me so I can spin off the character for another show. The campaigning never works.” With the return of The Sopranos this Sunday, the Post remembers the fallen, and Chris Moltisanti gets a promotion.