Some TV Observations

First, probably the dumbest, most offensive commercial any company has ever put before us is the Sanderson Farm bit in which they sing a song about all their happy chickens and then show us thousands and thousands of their happy chickens just before they kill them and then cut them up for our consumption, all of them bunched together in their happy happy barns. It’s a little like saying all those calves on too many farms are twinkly-toe happy to be living in those tiny little boxes until they can be killed and cut up for veal parmigiana.

The Carol Burnett 50^th Anniversary Special was fun to watch but painful to see how all those people we remember from the past now look so old. And we all missed the two funniest guys from that old show, Harvey Korman and Tim Conway, who must have been too old and ill to make it to the reunion. I guess Vicki Lawrence’s presence made up for their absence. We got to see some of the truly funny bits from the past, Carol’s Mrs. Wiggins to Tim’s boss with the funny dialect, the parodies of soap operas (“As the Stomach Turns”), the takeoffs on famous movies like The African Queen and Gone with the Wind, and the weekly fights between Carol, Harvey, and Vicki as Carol’s “mamma.” They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

Quick comparison between the two twin military thrillers The Seal Team and The Brave. Odd that CBS and NBC would both come out with such similar shows. Both have lookalike hunks playing the team leaders (David Boreanaz and Mike Vogel), both have similar-sized teams, both include one really capable, attractive woman on the team (Toni Trucks and Natacha Karam), and both rely heavily on new surveillance technology for resolving their plot issues. The Seal Team splits into two divergent plot elements, a practice that makes me weary; The Brave has only one. Both are good. The Brave is better.

And last but possibly best, Seth McFarlane’s oddball Star Trek parody, The Orville. Most of the comic jabs at Star Trek and Kirk and company are belly-laugh funny.  I love science fiction and I, like Sheldon and his nerdy friends on The Big Bang Theory, loved the tv Star Trek and all the filmed Star Treks that spun off the original series. How could anyone not love Capt. Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley)? The technological premises forty years ago (teleportation, warp speed, other intelligent species, instantaneous medical cures, and wildly divergent life forms—Isaac, an R2-D2 spinoff from Star Wars, and, wildest of all, Yaphit, a gelatinous blob of green stuff) may have seemed unlikely back then but now seem not only possible but probable. Oddly, though, the weekly plots are also quite exciting and surprising. Both my wife and I really enjoy this show. Apparently, the same is true for enough viewers that Fox is renewing a second season. Good. Too bad each season is so short, only eleven shows.