An Editorial By Sam the Eagle.

“When you think about the Great Society and this dream for a better country, Sesame Street fits so neatly into that because it was created for children who weren’t getting read to at night, who didn’t have little record players at home and weren’t listening to music. It was created for those children who didn’t have the preparation at home that other children in other circumstances were getting,” said Michael Davis, the author of ‘Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street.'”

Like Sesame Street? Thank LBJ. The WP’s Katie Zezima looks at the show’s debt to the Great Society. “Sesame Street…was looked at as an opportunity to bring together people who worked in fields including social science, children’s literature, psychology, art and other places to build a learning curriculum disguised as a television show.”

When the Last Light Warms the Rocks.

“Wilderness is a constant threat to order in True Detective. Neglected weeds grow between the cracks, along deserted freeways and in the broken pavement of abandoned parking lots. Orphaned bikes rust away in indeterminate piles of litter as the whole rottenpost-hurricane mess melts into a lush overgrowth that swallows up traces of a civilization that once was. As if to flaunt the victory of chaos over order, the weeds show America as a forgotten afterimage of itself and reveals it for the ‘jungle’ it has become and was before.”

By way of Matt Zoller Seitz’s Twitter feed, “America as Afterimage in True Detective”. Alas, this article is totally overwritten, in the usual style of po-mo-infused semioticians. Still, some intriguing ideas and connections amid the thicket of verbiage.

Tolkien Geek Makes Good | Sayonara Davey.

“‘I learned more from watching Dave than I did from going to my classes — especially the ones I did not go to because I had stayed up until 1:30 watching Dave,’ Colbert said.” Old news by now, but worth noting for posterity nonetheless: The inimitable Stephen Colbert — not “Stephen Colbert” — will be replacing David Letterman as the host of Late Show, and while I’ll be sad to see “Colbert” go, I can’t think of a better choice. Onward and upward.

“Letterman’s deconstructionist, at times borderline Cubist style made you laugh by mocking the very idea of a stranger needing to make you laugh…[his] sensibility had its roots in a post-World War II school of university-educated smartass comedy, which also birthed such institutions as Mad magazine, Monty Python, Second City, National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live, the 1970s meta-comedy movement that gave us Andy Kaufman and Albert Brooks, and pretty much every moment of Bill Murray’s early career.”

In very related news, Matt Zoller Seitz looks over Letterman’s long and storied late-night tenure. I don’t watch talk shows much anymore, but I’m just old enough to remember how formative Letterman’s NBC run was for the rest of late-night television back in the day. (It helped that I had a well-worn copy of Late Night with David Letterman: The Book as a kid, which re-printed classic gags like Dave’s Voyagers after-school special.)

Also, an excellent point made in the comments of Seitz’s article: “One thing I’ve always respected Dave for is the fact that he really loves music, and when the show is presenting a variety of lesser-known bands, he honestly seems to enjoy them. It kind of offsets the ‘grumpy curmudgeon’ vibe at which he excels, and it feels genuine and enthusiastic to me.” True, that: Take, for example, his many visits with Tom Waits, who’s given some amazing and indelible performances on Dave’s show over the years.

A-Hole With a Heart of Gold.

“Jim was fortunate enough to earn his living doing what he loved. He was a professional actor. His unions were always there for him, and he will remain forever grateful for the benefits he gained as a result of the union struggle…He was a lucky man in every way.”

Character actor James Rebhorn, well-known for playing doctors, lawyers, and other sinister/officious/aggravated bureaucratic types, 1948–2014.

Just One More Thing.

“No dour, cocaine-addled super-brain is he; no arch and upwardly mobile cocktail-swiller, no Belgian. He is as American as American can be in the best possible sense. There is — unlike almost every other detective in the canon, from Marlowe onward — a moral lightness and an untroubled heart at the core of him, an innate goodness that resonates outward and either puts people at ease or deeply unsettles them, as their own consciences dictate.”

By way of Cryptonaut-in-Exile and LinkMachineGo, why Columbo should be the American Doctor Who. “[D]o not allow yourself to believe for even one second that there are not deeply classist, capitalist reasons Sherlock abounds in this day and age of ours, while Columbo does not. Sherlock is more often than not nowadays played as relatively young and good-looking, self-aggrandizing and mercurial and aristocratic, a troubled genius too good for the idiotic plebes that surround him; Columbo is blue-collar and humble.”

Tell Us Something Pretty.

“Even though the show was cancelled in 2006 after just three seasons, it lingers at the forefront of fans’ minds. Any devotee of Milch’s drama will tell you that once you’ve responded to its magic, it’ll sink roots into your imagination and flower there.”

“You cannot f**k the future, sir. The future f**ks you.” Ten years after its premiere and seven years after the hoopleheads of HBO wrought its untimely demise, Matt Zoller Seitz pays homage to Deadwood, the original bookend to The Wire: Whereas The Wire dramatizes the interminable decay of a city’s municipal institutions, Deadwood showed why they were needed in the first place, especially when a Great Man of means and no small ambition, like George Randolph Hearst, comes a-knockin’.

Of course, Deadwood also remains one of the most highly quotable television hour-longs around. The one I tend to use most these days: “And you, Mr. Wolcott, I find you the most severe disappointment of all.” “Often to myself as well.”

At Canaan’s Edge.

“‘Eric Overmyer and I have taken on a project that was already in HBO’s development stable,’ he wrote. ‘We have agreed to go into a room with Taylor Branch and others and see what can be done for a six-hour miniseries.'”

The Baltimore Sun reports that David Simon is working on a MLK mini-series for HBO, “based on the celebrated book trilogy by Pulitzer Prize-winner Taylor Branch…But as per Blown Deadline’s development projects, this is behind another miniseries project for HBO that is closer to production and that we hope to be announcing shortly.”

The Bayou of Madness, Pt. II.

“Much has been made of the connections between True Detective and the cosmic-horror tradition…and rightly so. But what’s largely been missed is that the cosmic-horror genre — rooted, as it is, in humankind’s subprime position in the pecking order of the universe — is deeply entwined with the character of Louisiana’s physical and cultural landscape.”

In Slate, Adrian Van Young delineates True Detective — and Lovecraft’s — debt to Louisiana, one of the cultural crossroads and borderlands where shadows linger and tricksters thrive. “Lost cities, liminal realms, and cosmic fear come more or less naturally to Louisiana…The chief-most horrors of the show are not voodoo curses or tentacled monsters or consciousness-destroying plays, but environmental slippage, religious perversion, badly mangled family trees. True Detective wears the cosmic-horror genre and its lineage, in other words, not unlike the Mardi Gras masks being worn today all over its native state. The mask is scary, sure enough, but what’s underneath can be even more frightening: one place in the U.S. where anything, it seems, can happen.'”

Also, for a more prosaic take on HBO’s current hit, see the credits for Law & Order: True Detective, below.

Doc What Now?

“Gene Wilder’s weird and wonderful comedic talents made the Doctor both more alien and more popular than ever before, making the show a surprise break-out hit even with UK Audiences. Wilder still holds the record for longest tenure in the role and still occasionally refers to himself as The Doctor.” What if Doctor Who was American?

Scorpy, Get Your Drums | Doctor & Danny.

“[T]he film would follow John and Aeryn’s son, D’Argo (or Little D, as we will always refer to him). Because their baby was exhibiting a set of interesting powers that made him a magnet for galactic villains, we find that John and Aeryn hide their son on Earth to grow up. Now the kid is 19 and ready to go into space with his parents.”

I’ll believe it when I see it. Nonetheless, word comes that a possible Farscape movie is in the works. “Monjo is [also] said to be writing a show that would star Dinklage as a dwarf detective for HBO.” Er…wouldn’t “detective for HBO” get the point across?

Also in Sci-Fi TV news, Peter Capaldi’s forthcoming Doctor gains an additional companion in Samuel Anderson. “Anderson will play Danny Pink, a teacher at Coal Hill School where companion Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman) also teaches.” — Coal Hill also being the school the Doctor’s granddaughter attended way back in 1963. (Also not surprising that, to compensate for the lack of a “good boyfriend” doctor, they’d add an age-appropriate foil for Clara.)