Hot Off The Press: The Latest TV News and Information - Page 127

I suspect a lot of star-struck critics will agree with your hyperbole, dad.

But I don't.

Top twenty, probably.

Greatest?

We need to let history judge that a bit.

Critic's Notebook
Buh-bye, Burke:
Why Isaiah Washington's departure won't blow "Grey's" chemistry
By Melanie McFarland Seattle Post-Intelligencer TV Critic in her TV blog June 8, 2007

Although the news of Isaiah Washington's firing is still something of a "wow" moment for a Friday in June, can anyone truly claim to be surprised?

OK, I guess I can understand if you were. Following Washington's Golden Globes outburst in January, it certainly seemed as if his dismissal slip was in the mail. It's one thing for goofballs like me to weigh in on such an incident, but once ABC slapped Washington in a press release, his days had to be numbered.

But the Globes disaster did not affect "Grey's Anatomy's" ratings. Plus, Cristina Yang and Preston Burke's dash to the altar constituted a major storyline. Keeping things mum until Burke could jilt the bride and George could fail his intern exam in the finale amounts to well-played cliffhanger strategy. Knowing what was going on behind the scenes, it was smart for show creator Shonda Rhimes to write that uncertainty into each party's story and keep all of us guessing.

Well, for a couple of weeks anyway. As soon as the news emerged that T.R. Knight was getting a hefty pay raise while Washington wasn't getting diddly, you had to know something was up. (The money's not the main thing; rather, it gives us a clue as to who has the power on that set. Knight obviously has more juice than Washington.)

However, as I stated previously, the executive producers might have been a little wary about messing up the show's chemistry in January. But that finale left no doubt in my mind -- the show can go on with Burke out of the picture.

When Cristina came back to the apartment, found it Burke-less and hyperventilated her way through a breakdown, we all should have been sad for her. Instead, I was relieved.

Cristina and Burke had their peak moments, but this season the couple passed their prime. The stagnancy of their relationship was the point, but that only made us look forward to their break-up. That's a terrible spot to be in for a disgraced actor fumbling his way through spin control.

Washington's character was not one that left room for growth. After a point, Burke stopped being one of those "still waters run deep" kind of guys and simply came off as dull and pretentious. He may be a top surgeon, but turn the subject to his personality, and if there was anybody approximating dead weight, it was that guy.

If we cared about Burke, it was because Cristina made him interesting. But then, Sandra Oh is one of the best parts of the series. She could make a relationship with a log seem dynamic and spicy. I look forward to seeing Cristina dance with someone else, or, better yet, by herself for a while.

Bringing in another actor isn't a bad idea, though. "Grey's" has made a number of cast additions without messing things up. Nobody had anything terrible to say about McSteamy when he came on board. We bet Chyler Leigh, reportedly joining the cast for a multi-episode arc as Meredith's half-sister Lexie Grey, will blend in just as well.

When all is said and done, Washington should be thankful that the producers wrote off his character honorably. He nailed the scene in the operating room when Burke recited his wedding vows in front of Addison and Izzie. Observe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TfXd...tryID%3D116409

What "Grey's" really needs now is for the producers to do something about the show's flabby, shallow writing. Can somebody inject some substance into this show? Is that too much to ask? Retrain your focus, people.

But didn't Washington almost have it all. If only the guy had better control over the two most important parts of an actor's anatomy, his brain and his mouth.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/p...entryID=116409

Critic's Notebook
One last shot:
The Sopranos lets us off its hook
By Ed Bark former Dallas Morning News TV critic at his website unclebarky.com

It all began on Jan. 10, 1999, with Tony Soprano ogling a nude woman sculpture in Dr. Melfi's waiting room.

Last seen he was shacked up in a hideaway, taking a King Cobra-sized automatic weapon to bed with him in preparation for a long night's insomnia. And was that in fact his despised mother's house where Tony took his remaining boys? Sure looked like it. Backing back into the womb would be the ultimate U-turn for him.

Another question: Can you believe it? Sunday night's 86th episode of The Sopranos will be its very last. After six seasons spread over eight-and-a-half years, it's goodbye and farewell to the single greatest drama series in television's 60 years on this earth.

Boiled down to the very basics, it's now a question of whether Tony will live or die after directly or indirectly burying so many foes, friends and blood relatives. Does he have it coming? Would the show's afterlife be as vivid if we knew he'd not only been measured for a coffin but finally came to rest in one?

Several years back, creator David Chase openly aspired to make a Sopranos feature film. So at that time at least, he clearly had no intention of offing his meal ticket.

Now those plans are off -- for now at least. Still, would Chase firmly close the door by taking Tony out? There's no Sopranos movie without him, and actor James Gandolfini just wouldn't be believable in any sort of prequel.

Tony's fate is the overriding betting interest on the minds of many as The Sopranos prepares to meet its maker. But it's obviously bigger than that. Here's a show that soared as no other. HBO and The Sopranos are inseparable in that respect.

The network made a no-holds-barred home for Chase, who earlier tried to sell the show to CBS. And The Sopranos in turn elevated HBO in the public's and creative community's mind as the go-to venue for programming of a higher calling.

Over the years, The Sopranos in fact became bigger than HBO, with Chase telling the network how many episodes he'd do, when he'd do them and when he needed to quit. He's made a few false starts in that last respect. But now the deed is done, and suddenly it seems like a screeching halt.

The Sopranos wedded family and "family" better than any previous mob opus. That includes Goodfellas and The Godfather movies, none of which had all this time and space to stretch out.

Tony's hot-and-cold relationship with wife Carmela and their unruly children, A.J. and Meadow, drove The Sopranos as effectively as who'd be the next in line on the show's hit parade. In the first episode, Meadow was the provocateur, with A.J. the relatively docile fat kid who'd just turned 13.

Later it became A.J.'s turn to boil his parents' innards. Now he's suicidally depressed about both the world at large and his bad seed inclinations to be a Big Man cloaked by his father's bigger shadow.

Meanwhile, Tony continued to see Melfi until she brusquely cut him off in last Sunday's next-to-last episode. She finally had judged herself an enabler after a bit too conveniently reading an academic study that said "the criminal uses insight to justify heinous acts."

Chase has brilliantly staged conflict and killing while sprinkling in malaprops that serve to take a bit of the edge off. Tony dropped the first one in Episode 1 after telling Carmela that he'd sought to curb his panic attacks by seeing a therapist and taking Prozac.

Her giddy reaction didn't set too well. "You'd think I was Hannibal 'Lecture' before or somethin'," Tony barked.

If Chase has a weakness -- and likely it's by design -- it's his tendency to bait hooks and then reel them in without any payoffs.

Season 3's "Pine Barrens" episode, considered a classic, has left the "The Russian in the Woods" at large ever since.

Tony's near-fatal shooting at the hands of Uncle Junior made him ripe for a spiritual awakening. Characters were introduced in that vein, but then Chase dropped it all like a hot potato.

Also, will Carmela ever learn that Tony ordered the execution of her best friend, Adriana? And what if she did? Don't hold your breath. With just one episode remaining, that would be a lot of ground to cover.

As we prepare for final burial, it's instructive to look back at those very first sessions between Tony and Melfi. Quite a lot was said.

Tony on what his mother, Livia, did to his dad, who had been a strong man until eventually knuckling under: "My mother wore him down to a little nub. He was a squeakin' little gerbil when he died."

Tony on life as a "waste management consultant": "I find that I have to be the sad clown, laughin' on the outside, cryin' on the inside . . . I feel exhausted just talkin' about it."

Tony on life its ownself: "Lately I'm gettin' the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over."

It was a long time ago. There was even a reference to the Sally Jessy Raphael Show. But the closing music for that first episode couldn't have been better chosen. It was Nick Lowe's rendition of "Beast in Me," and here's how it went down:

"The beast in me
Is caged by frail and fragile bonds.
Restless by day
And by night, rants and rages at the stars.
God help, the beast in me.
The beast in me."

No matter how it all ends, play it again on Sunday night.

http://www.unclebarky.com/reviews.html

TV Notebook
Exec who put Fox on reality's edge may leap
By Phil Rosenthal Chicago Tribune Media Columnist June 10, 2007

As Paris Hilton, that walking, squawking rationale for class warfare, was being dragged back into custody Friday, the man who helped make the careless heiress a TV star was said to be weighing an escape of his own.

Mike Darnell, the wild-haired elfin in charge of reality shows at Fox Broadcasting, is at a career crossroads, weighing a possible departure from the network after 13 years. And you don't have to be smarter than a 5th grader to understand why.

Tryjust tryto imagine Fox without the executive who developed and nurtured such distinctive if not distinguished programs as "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance," "The Littlest Groom," "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?" and Hilton's obnoxious "The Simple Life."

Darnell is the guy who packaged and shepherded "World's Scariest Police Chases," "Busted on the Job," "When Stunts Go Bad," "Temptation Island" and "When Animals Attack!"

And, oh yeah, there's that little annual karaoke contest that debuted on his watch, "American Idol."

While he continued to try to hammer out a new deal with Fox, there were reports out of Hollywood as the work week wound down that Darnell also was listening to other suitors, including newly installed NBC Universal TV honcho Ben Silverman, who is dangling the possibility of Darnell running his own production outfit.

That potentially ultralucrative deal would be modeled along the lines of what Silverman had at Reveille before bolting the other day to join NBC Universal, which had a cozy business relationship with the firm that gave it "The Office" and "The Biggest Loser," while also producing "Ugly Betty" for ABC and "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" for Darnell at Fox.

Darnell may very well just use the interest from others to score a cushier deal and better title at Fox, where his hits such as "Idol" and the first season of "Joe Millionaire" have been accompanied by tone-deaf miscues such as the aborted O.J. Simpson pseudo-confessional "If I Did It" and the second season of "Joe Millionaire."

In seasons when Fox's prime-time lineup had all the appeal of sunburn, his carnival sideshows could almost always generate a crowd. Every now and then, a head programming exec would proclaim Fox intended to rely less on Darnell's fare, but the king of crass' shows always survived. The programming chiefs didn't.

A former child star whose credits include everything from "Welcome Back Kotter" and "Sanford and Son" to "Kojak" and "Gimme a Break," Darnell, 45, first made a name for himself with 1995's popular "Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction."

Supposedly from Roswell, N.M., in 1947, the film proved to be fiction, as Darnell's subsequent "World's Greatest Hoaxes and Secrets Revealed" would gleefully report.

Some Darnell shows one imagines viewers watching through the fingers of one hand, while covering their mouths with the other hand. Or have you forgotten the time "Guinness World Records: Prime Time" showed a woman's 303-pound tumor removed?

Darnell's oeuvre has instigated mild controversies, like the uproar from professional and amateur illusionists over "Breaking the Magicians' Code," to out-and-out outrage, as in the fiasco following his ratings bonanza, "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?"

Then there were the ideas that were too tacky, even for Darnell and Fox, like the abandoned 1999 plan to crash a jet in the desert for a voyeuristic thrill. "I mean, are you going to watch 'Friends' or a jumbo jet crash?" Darnell asked TV Guide at the time.

Never mind paying O.J. to walk through a scenario for the murder of his ex-wife and the poor guy who happened to be with her, which Darnell touted as "an interview that no one thought would ever happen."

That would be because it shouldn't.

That is not to say the O.J. special wouldn't have gotten big ratings. It would have. Plenty of us who were aghast at the idea of it would have found it, on some level, irresistible.

Surely, most of those who have watched Hilton in "The Simple Life" hate themselves for it as much as they hate her for the contempt she shows ordinary Americans in pretending to interact with them. But that is Darnell's great gift and why he's so valuable to Fox or whoever manages to lure him away.

He understands us better than we want to be understood.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...2931042.column

TV Review
John From Cincinnati:
Explores surfing's dark underbelly
By Charlie McCollum San Jose Mercury News

A few scenes into the second episode of HBO's new "John From Cincinnati," one of the characters starts a long, rambling discourse about his life.

After a bit, another character raises his eyebrows and says, "You're getting a little hard to follow."

That may be how many viewers feel about "John" at just about the same point. The series, which debuts this Sunday at 10 after the series finale of "The Sopranos," certainly is unique, not only in its setting but in its tone and ambitions. But it also is maddeningly elusive in its vision, and could be frustrating to anyone seeking a central story line or even sympathetic characters to hang on to.

Set in a seamy Southern California beach world, "John" has been something of a Frankenstein's monster in its evolution. Creator David Milch ("Deadwood," "NYPD Blue") originally intended the show to be set in New York City, far away from the waves.

But HBO thought his concept might fit into an idea brought to the cable channel by Herb and Dibi Fletcher, the patriarch and matriarch of a well-known surfing family in San Clemente who bear something of a resemblance to the Yost family in "John." Along the way, Milch tacked on input from Kem Nunn, whose surf noir novels (such as "Tijuana Straits") have developed a cult following.

The result is a series about surfing that bears absolutely no relationship to the sunny world immortalized by the Beach Boys. Imperial Beach is a town of shuttered motels, dilapidated duplexes, needle-strewn beaches and lost souls. Life is gnarly, as twisted as the driftwood littering the sands.

The three generations of the Yost family, surfing legends who call Imperial Beach home, are awash in self-pity, with the exception of grandson and surf-champion-in-training Shaun (played by Grayson Fletcher, the Fletchers' real-life grandson).

Grandfather Mitch (Bruce Greenwood of "I, Robot") revolutionized the sport but now surfs in the early morning mists to avoid his fans. Grandmother Cissy (Rebecca De Mornay, "Risky Business") struggles to keep the family together with a surf shop and pushes Shaun to compete in surf contests - against Mitch's wishes. Mitch and Cissy's son Butchie (Brad Van Holt, "Black Hawk Down") has degenerated from top pro athlete to a loser who staggers from drug score to drug score.

Swirling around the family is a rogue's gallery of users, abusers and enablers. There's a lawyer (Willie Garson of "Sex and the City") who doesn't exactly serve high-end clients, a motel manager (veteran character actor Luiz Guzman) who gives Butchie a place to live and deal, and the new motel owner (Matt Winston, "Little Miss Sunshine") who is equally fond of his guns and his teddy bear.

A slightly-addled ex-cop who talks to birds (Ed O'Neill of "Married With Children") provides Shaun with something of a father figure. A slimy surfing promoter (Luke Perry, "Beverly Hills, 90210"), who Mitch blames for Butchie's addiction, is trying to get his hooks into Shaun.

About the only adult with a measure of focus in her life is Cissy's assistant at the surf shop (real-life pro surfer Keala Kennelly) - and she's got the hots for Butchie, hardly a winning proposition.

And then there's John (Austin Nichols, who played Morgan Earp on "Deadwood"), who is more likely from Mars than from Cincinnati. His first line - actually, the first line in the series - is "the end is near," before he goes on to offer such pronouncements as "Mitch Yost must get back in the game."

John is less a character (one of the problems with the early episodes of the series) than a symbolic device conjured up by Milch to alter the lives of the Yosts and - perhaps - to redeem them.

He is an emotional sponge who has no feelings (or anything else) of his own, but his presence on the beach gives rise to a series of miracles, including Mitch levitating and one of Bill's birds, a parrot named Zippy, bringing living things back from the dead.

In his past work, particularly on "Deadwood," Milch always has challenged audiences with his ideas and constructs. But "John" is so densely surrealistic and metaphysical, with glancing references to everything from Sept. 11 to German philosophy - and its setting and characters so initially unrelatable - that it's hard to grasp exactly what Milch has in mind.

In a recent interview, the ever-erudite Milch paraphrased the 19th century American philosopher William James in suggesting that the series is all about "lawless intrusions in what we take to be reality."

That's fine as a storytelling concept, but even the finest flights of fantasy need some grounding. My wife - whom I often use as a barometer on new shows - lasted through two episodes of "John" before turning to me and asking, "I care about these people precisely why?" It's a good question, likely to be raised by other viewers.

Still, I found enough mesmerizing moments, bits of character and sharp Milch dialogue in the opening episodes that I'll probably stick around to catch a few more waves.

Certainly, the cast is uniformly good (Greenwood and O'Neill stand out) and the direction by Mark Tinker on two of the first episodes, including Sunday's, is lovely. (Tinker, one of TV's best directors, has worked with Milch on "NYPD Blue" and "Deadwood," so he knows his way around the writer's profanity-laden, often dense passages.)

But at some point fairly quickly, Milch is going to have to give me and other viewers a little more than a quirky, albeit sometimes fascinating, tone poem and engage us with his storytelling. It's one thing to say your series is about something; it's another to convey that in a concrete way to the audience you are trying to reach.

http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/a...759&siteId=568

Critic's Notebook
After 'The Sopranos,' HBO tries something new
By Alan Sepinwall Newark Star-Ledger

Can HBO replace Tony So prano with a levitating surfer? How about a hardware salesman with three wives?

Sunday night shortly after 10 (depending on how much pre-"So pranos" padding we get at 9), the pay cable giant enters Year One A.A. (After Anthony) with the debut of "John from Cincinnati," a new surfing drama from "Deadwood" creator David Milch. The next night, "Big Love" begins its second season, as well as HBO's second attempt to colonize Monday primetime. ("Six Feet Under" tried briefly a few years ago and moved back to Sundays within weeks.) Each show is interesting in its own way, but both illustrate the challenge HBO is going to have filling Tony and Paulie's large white shoes.

"The Sopranos" was the perfect ratings storm for HBO: a blend of highbrow and lowbrow, of equal parts male and female appeal, a market researcher's fan tasy project. Come for the whack ing and vulgar humor, stay for the relationships and dream analysis!

Neither "John from Cincinnati" nor "Big Love" can offer that. In better times for the channel, when "Sopranos" was younger and "Sex and the City" still existed, there wouldn't be pressure on it to be all things to all people. But come Sunday around 10, HBO's going to need a new flagship, and I don't see either of these dramas being it.

"John" carries a double burden. Not only is it following the finale of one of the most revered shows in TV history (will anyone be in the mood for a new drama right after "Sopranos" ends?), but it's been accused, however unfairly, as being responsible for killing another all-time great.

"John from Cincinnati," you see, is The Show That Killed "Deadwood," since HBO claimed producer Milch was so excited to do his new show that he didn't have time for the old one. The truth is closer to "John" being a convenient alibi for the cancellation of the expensive, modestly- rated "Deadwood," but when the legend becomes fact, we print the legend.

"John" would have to be at least the equal of "Deadwood," if not better, to overcome its early reputation, and it's not. It's an odd little show, often more David Lynch than David Milch, and after three episodes I'm still not sure I understand it all.

The short version (relatively): in the town of Imperial Beach, Calif., lives the Yost family, a legendary surfing clan. Mitch Yost (Bruce Greenwood) was a star in the '70s who retired after a knee injury, and now finds himself floating a few inches off the ground at random intervals. Son Butchie (Brian Van Holt) revolutionized the sport -- or so we're told, since the few glimpses we get of him on a board don't make him look substantially different or better than anyone else -- be fore becoming a heroin junkie. That left the care of Butchie's son Shaun (Greyson Fletcher) to Mitch and wife Cissy (Rebecca DeMornay).

Into the middle of the Yosts and their extended circle of friends and family -- which includes retired cop Bill (Ed O'Neill), motel manager Ramon (Luis Guzman), attorney Meyer Dickstein (Willie Garson) and shady surfing promoter Linc (Luke Perry) -- enters the title character (Austin Nichols), a childlike stranger with magic pockets and other unusual abilities who's either supposed to be Jesus Christ or an alien, I'm not sure which. There's also a resurrecting parakeet that has the power to heal others. It's that kind of show.

In the early going, the hints about John's identity lead more to the Christ theory: the series' initials; John introducing himself by saying, "The end is near"; his briefly granting a friend psychic powers by instructing her to "see God," plus the fact that surfing and levitation are two different ways to walk on water. But the character as written seems more like Jeff Bridges in "Starman," a quiet innocent learning how to be human by adopting the speech patterns of those around him. (Almost everything he says is quoting another character.)

As with "Deadwood," the focus is on a community at the edge of civilization (Imperial Beach is the at the extreme southwest corner of the continental U.S.), filled with people incapable of functioning anyplace else. The dialogue is in Milch's familiar curlicue blend of the sacred and the profane -- in one of the more printable moments, Bill exclaims, "I tell you, I don't know anymore if I'm on foot or horseback, or if a bird's alive or dead." -- and many of the actors are members of Milch's traveling repertory company. (O'Neill was the star of the short-lived CBS cop show "Big Apple," Guzman and Garson both had recurring roles on "NYPD Blue," and "Deadwood" regulars Jim Beaver, Dayton Callie and Garret Dillahunt all pop up in small roles.)

But where "Deadwood" had a clear sense of purpose and several indelible characters (notably Ian McShane's ruthless saloon keeper Al Swearengen) right from the jump, "John" takes a laid- back approach to its early episodes, wandering from character to character without bothering to explain what they're about or why you should care. Guzman's and Garson's characters start out as a kind of Greek chorus, then get sucked into what feels like an entirely separate story involving a gay lottery winner and a haunted motel room. (Again, it's that kind of show.)

Six months ago, HBO screened a "John" trailer for critics. Afterwards, a few of us gathered around Milch, and he asked us what we thought of it.

"I'm not sure I understood it," said one.

"That's okay," he assured her. "You're not supposed to."

Milch is a genius, but with genius comes eccentricity, and "John" feels like far too eccentric a show to launch on the heels of the "Sopranos" farewell.

No 'Big' changes

"Big Love" was a more consistent show from the start than "John" is, yet I always feel like I should like it a lot more than I do. There's a great cast -- particularly Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin as Bill Paxton's three wives -- and it's very much in HBO's "Sopranos"/ "Six Feet" suburban dysfunction groove, but the show feels cold, like it's holding the audience at arm's length.

In a way, the polygamist characters -- both the assimilated ones like Paxton's brood and the hardcore cultists represented by Harry Dean Stanton as Roman Grant -- are among the most alien characters to be featured on an HBO series. Yes, Tony So prano is a sociopath killer, and Al Swearengen liked to stab people, and the entire Fisher clan on "Six Feet Under" dabbled in various drugs, but there was something identifiably human about them that often feels lacking on "Big Love."

Maybe if there were a Dr. Melfi, someone who existed completely outside the polygamy cul ture (as opposed to the various characters who disapprove but are more than aware of it), someone who could occasionally make Paxton's Bill Henrickson understand why his lifestyle seems so strange, he might seem more like a person and less like a Stepford husband. Instead, we get the occasional joke, like Bill's business partner trying to comfort him about a temporary separation from one of his wives by saying, "Apparently, this kind of thing happens a lot with regular people."

Tripplehorn's Barb, who mar ried Bill at a time when he had sworn off polygamy, is the closest the show comes to a recognizable perspective, and the scenes where she confronts Bill or her "sister-wives" about their situation tend to be the strongest.

I also wish Roman were sometimes granted a different form of humanity. He's so obviously evil, so set on causing trouble for the Henricksons to further his own ends, that he often comes across like a plot device. (As played by Stanton, he's a well-acted plot device, but still.)

The new season briefly toys with making polygamy into a metaphor for homosexuality, with Roman protesting the Federal Marriage Amendment because it refers to marriage as being "between one man and one woman," and with a scene where the sister- wives and their friends complain that the media's depiction of polygamists always focuses on the freaks because "the good ones are all closeted."

But before the idea can be explored further, we're back to the complicated series of betrayals, cons and poisonings going on between Bill's and Roman's families, a cast of characters that's too big to work all the time. And by the end of the fifth episode, Bill is pondering making the family even bigger.

Again, it's not a bad show, but it's not yet a "Sopranos" succes sor, and it probably never will be. In flusher times, that wouldn't be such a bad thing. Now, though?

http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/sep...450.xml&coll=1

Critic's Notebook
ABC Boots Isaiah Washington Off 'Grey's Anatomy'
By Kevin D. Thompson Palm Beach Post Television Writer in his blog

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

That's what Isaiah Washington said in a statement after learning he got fired from Grey's Anatomy for making not-so-nice comments about co-star's T.R. Knight's sexual orientation and for reportedly causing all sorts of trouble on the set of the hit ABC drama.

So, Washington is now some new age version of Howard Beale, the ranting news anchor Peter Finch made famous in Paddy Chayefsky's brilliant 1976 movie Network?

Hardly.

In Network, Beale was canned because he was old and his show's ratings were in decline. Sure, Beale went loony tunes, but at least he had something important to say about the state of network news and the deep-pocketed corporations running it. ABC fired Washington because he was stupid. And because he said some stupid things -- more than once. Several months ago it was reported that Washington called Knight The F Word -- one of the ugliest words in the English language. Instead of manning-up to making the comment, Washington swore he never said it. But then he used the word again backstage at the Golden Globes in a clumsy attempt at denying ever uttering the word in the first place.

Again, stupid.

Washington's co-stars were furious -- and rightly so. No one was more vocal than Katherine Heigl who came to Knight's defense and called Washington's poor choice of words "boneheaded."

Even before all that mess happened, Washington was involved in an on-set scuffle with fellow pretty boy actor Patrick Dempsey over shooting issues. No real punches were thrown. Reportedly Washington grabbed Dempsey by the throat after McDreamy mouthed off at his co-star.

Recently, Washington said he was in therapy, but it wasn't clear for what. Perhaps for being an insensitive, homophobic jerk. He even filmed a public service announcement for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in which he stressed how words have the power to hurt and heal. After watching that PSA, I silently wondered if Washington was choking on those words as he was saying them.

Clearly, brotha man Washington has some issues. It sounds like he has quite a temper and is also not very tolerant of gay people. Perhaps Washington and former NBA star Tim Hardaway should be in the same therapy session.

I'm not mad at ABC for dumping Washington. If he was a distraction on the set and bringing unwanted attention to a show millions of viewers love, the network had every right not to renew his contract. Grey's is an ensemble show, after all, so losing Washington, who played Dr. Preston Burke, won't hurt the show's ratings. It would've been interesting to see, however, if Washington had starred in a House-like drama in which his character was the star, if ABC would've been more tolerant of Washington's bad boy behavior.

I'm sure they would have. I can't see Fox dumping Hugh Laurie if he had called Omar Epps a dirty name. Omar's a tough guy and Hugh probably wouldn't have lived long enough to get fired if such a thing had ever happened.

So, the bottom line is this: Instead of stealing Howard Beale's famous line (shame on you!), Washington should actually spend more time processing why he was fired and how he could prevent it from happening again.

Isaiah, you could start by keeping your homophobic comments to yourself.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/blogs/c...d_as_hell.html

HDTV Notebook
Wall of confusion: flat-panel choices
By Jordan Rane Lose Angeles Times June 9, 2007

Venture into a home-entertainment store to shop for a new flat-panel TV and very little seems clear beyond those ludicrously sharp, bright, oversized images of sweat beads on some jock's face or taste buds on a grasshopper's tongue. The sales staff, weary of explaining the difference between seemingly identical models - "They're all good. How big's your wall?" - doesn't illuminate much. Still, the reduced prices on the sets are very tempting.

"I think most customers who come in are pretty bewildered right now," says Pam Crane, executive vice president of the Los Angeles area's Ken Crane home-entertainment stores. "Given how drastically the technology has improved and the prices have fallen in so short a time, it's hard for anyone to keep up."

If current trends are any indication, even 52-inch LCD TVs ($3,000 average price) will be cheaper and better by the end of the year. The average $1,877 price for a 42-inch set could drop 35 percent to $1,175 by the winter holidays, the ISuppli industry analyst group said recently. The average plasma price was $5,000 in 2002, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. Now it's $1,500. And they're going for less than that.

"It's what we call a 'profitless prosperity' right now," Crane says. "There's a lot of product, and it's really become a price war. The big winner is the consumer."

As TV sizes keep swelling, resolutions keep improving and technologies keep advancing, new design dilemmas and solutions pop up. Making the best call about a TV should happen before the wrong one ends up weighing down your wall studs.

Big or supersize?

"Generally, people want to have the biggest TV they can afford - at least for their predominant set, the one that they watch the most," says Crane. "I'd say the most common issue our customers deal with after buying one is then deciding that they want to upsize."

The 42-inch sets, once the benchmark flat-panel size, have lately been losing status to 52s and now 63s. Are there downsides to the need to upsize?

Designer Brad Haan says any screen larger than 52 inches "can start to feel like you're on the flight deck of the Enterprise. If you have a separate media room, that's one thing. But bigger is not always better at all - even though it may look that way in the showroom."

The expense of adding a huge screen can turn a great plasma deal into less of a bargain when factoring in the cost of remedial design solutions - but ignore them at your living room's peril.

"The error that people make when shopping for a big television is thinking only about the cost of the TV itself without also considering the kind of architectural treatment or custom build-out necessary to make it a positive addition to a room - whether it's custom cabinetry, a wall of Shoji screens or something else to provide some balance," says interior designer, Deborah J. Davis.

LCD or plasma?

Most non-videophiles will have a tough time distinguishing between these two dominant sandwich-thin technologies. A closer look reveals some differences worth knowing.

Images on plasma sets are created by thousands of tiny, inert, gas-filled pixel cells between two panes of glass. Plasma screen sizes generally begin at around 42 inches (measured diagonally) and get as large as 103 inches.

In contrast, LCDs' (liquid crystal display) images are created by thousands of liquid crystals sandwiched between thin panes of glass. LCDs have traditionally dominated the smaller flat-panel market but are now forging deeper into plasma territory. The 52-inch LCDs and larger models are now common enough, though typically more expensive than plasmas in this upper size range.

Both LCDs and plasmas flaunt the latest HDTV advancements - notably 1080p resolution. But one can't judge a state-of-the-art television by pixel count alone.

"Plasma produces a lot of heat and infrared emission, and LCDs don't," says Alberto Fabiano, chief technology officer at DSI Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based home-theater system company.

"Plasmas also tend to be up to 30 percent heavier, use more energy and remain the only display device on the market that still has a potential problem with burn-in when displaying static images - like video games - for long periods of time."

There's also the glare issue. Plasma glass screens allow more ambient light reflection. LCDs tend to do better in rooms with a lot of windows or natural light.

Self- or full-service?

As a rule, the more sophisticated the system, the more help you may need. Only you'll know how much hand-holding you require. "At least let someone else hang it for you," Fabiano urges. "You don't want something that weighs 120 pounds and costs several thousand dollars crashing on the floor - or on you. That thing falls on your watch, it's your fault."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertai...ck=1&cset=true

Good points, Dave.

It is said that there is not a minute when "I Love Lucy" or "M*A*S*H" is not playing somewhere.

I find it hard to believe "The Sopranos" will have that lasting an impact.

Critic's Notebook
A beautifully ugly ending for The Sopranos
By Mark A. Perigard Boston Herald TV Critic

Tony Soprano cannot be saved.

If there's one thing Sopranos creator David Chase wants you to know about arguably the most memorable character in TV history, it's that the New Jersey Mafia don is beyond redemption.

Whether he survives Sunday's finale - and there is a chance he will meet a bloody end a long time in coming - there's little question Tony (James Gandolfini) ultimately will reap what he deserves.

When we last saw Tony, he was curled on a mattress in some nondescript safe house, cozying up to an AR-10 automatic machine gun, one eye planted on the door.

His closest defender is Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico), a guy he almost whacked several weeks ago for being a screw-up. His wife and children are in hiding.

His psychiatrist, Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), fired him as a patient after realizing he had been playing her for years. Her years of effort merely had taught a sociopath the language of psychotherapy to cover his offenses.

As this brilliant, bloody arc has demonstrated, because of Tony's lifestyle, his children are shells. A.J. (Robert Iler) is crippled by depression and had to be thrown out of bed. Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) seems destined to repeat Carmela's (Edie Falco) life. Tony impulsively snuffed his nephew Christopher (Michael Imperioli), and he so loathes his son, he seems capable of killing him, too.

This final blitz of episodes has been a wake-up call to viewers. Chase doesn't want you to love his creation. He wants you to realize he's a black hole who sucks the life force out of anyone he touches. Tony has brought pain to everyone he claims to have cared about.

Sure, get sentimental over the end of The Sopranos. We will not see a series like it again. No network will ever give any creator the freedom to go away for as long as two years to work on 13 episodes, especially when the payoff for a few of those seasons was so mediocre.

The cable landscape has changed dramatically since the show premiered in January 1999, and a lot of that change came from the success of The Sopranos. The show proved viewers had an appetite for shorter-season dramas. Now viewers can chose from Weeds, Rescue Me, The Closer, The 4400 and the upcoming Damages, among many others.

Chase earned back his credibility with the concluding chapters of his long-running morality play. But don't most morality plays end with the evildoers punished?

For those who think Tony deserves some sort of a happy ending, one can almost hear Tony's late mother, Livia.

Poor you.

http://theedge.bostonherald.com/tvNe...22&format=text

TV Notebook
One Final Whack at That HBO Mob
By Bill Carter The New York Times June 10, 2007

Widely proclaimed as the greatest drama ever created for television, The Sopranos comes to an end Sunday night after 8 years, 86 episodes and 18 Emmy Awards. For fans the finale brings high expectation and deep reluctance. For the actors the predominant emotions are grief and gratitude.

In a series of interviews 10 cast members spoke one last time before the finale. There was plenty of giving thanks, in particular to David Chase, the show's creator, and to James Gandolfini, who gave the world Tony Soprano.

Like all television actors whose on-air personas will live on both in memories and repeats most members of the cast concede they will never have roles to match these. Can Tony Sirico ever be anyone as inimitable as Paulie Walnuts? Will Mr. Gandolfini ever be costumed in anything as fitting as that white bathrobe?

And while no one in the cast was offering any hints of how Sunday night's episode would end, a few smaller questions were answered. Like would there ever be a reference back to the famed Pine Barrens episode, in which Paulie and Christopher flailed around in the snow trying to kill a Russian? What is Bruce Springsteen's favorite fight scene? And when did Christopher know he would be killed?

JAMES GANDOLFINI, 45: TONY SOPRANO

The only person who expressed neither regret nor reservations about walking away from The Sopranos was the man who spoke more of its lines than anyone. Obviously this changed my life, Mr. Gandolfini said. But I've separated. I'm relieved.

Keeping Tony alive, even figuratively, took its toll. Steven R. Schirripa, who played Tony's brother-in-law, said that he had seen Mr. Gandolfini after filming had ended and that he looked like someone who'd had a piano lifted off his back.

Mr. Gandolfini took his leadership on the show seriously, most notably after his fractious salary holdout at the start of the show's fifth season led HBO to shut down production. When he returned to the set, Mr. Gandolfini privately called a list of his colleagues to his trailer and, one by one, presented them with personal checks for tens of thousands of dollars, telling them, in the words of one recipient, Thanks for putting up with me.

Of his television wife, played by Edie Falco, Mr. Gandolfini said: Edie is kind of a force of nature. When we'd have a scene, and she'd get angry, I could feel sheepish.

Despite what he called the most satisfying work I feel I may ever have, Mr. Gandolfini is not looking back. No, I'm very done, he said.

EDIE FALCO, 43: CARMELA SOPRANO

She admits to being in denial. We've taken many breaks, Ms. Falco said. So I can still fool myself that this is just another break.

From the beginning she identified with Carmela, but she never thought she would win the role. It was television, she said. I didn't fit what they thought an Italian wife looked like.

But once in costume she did. She is one of the few actors who wasn't always recognized off the set. I went out once, and some woman said to me, I recognize you even in that disguise.' I said, This is how I really look.'

For Ms. Falco, one moment in particular, involving the actress Nancy Marchand, who played her mother-in-law, set the standard for working on The Sopranos: Carmela threw a party. There was food everywhere, all the stuff. We were shooting the scene at 3 a.m. on a Friday. Everybody was falling down exhausted. I'm doing the scene, and Nancy is off camera and she picks up a slice of salami from one of the trays and, trying to get me to laugh, she starts slapping it on her tongue. I couldn't stop laughing. And I thought: Who on the planet has it better than me?

STEVEN R. SCHIRRIPA, 49: BOBBY BACCALIERI

Mr. Schirripa said the first script threw him because Tony unleashed a string of fat jokes, referring to Bobby as a calzone with legs.

What's this? Mr. Schirripa wondered. I'm not that much fatter than he is.

It all became clear when he was provided with a fat suit that enhanced his natural proportions to the point that he was almost spherical. He was eventually allowed to drop the suit but retained his role as the fat goofy guy, as he put it. Soon the producers were outfitting him in cowboy hats and once even in lederhosen. The character outlived the jokes, however, and took part in one of the season's most memorable scenes, a fistfight with Tony.

Jim and I decided to make the fight as real as we could, Mr. Schirripa said. It was a sloppy fight. It was two fat guys having a sweaty, drunken fight. Jim was choking me, pulling my hair. We didn't use stuntmen until he crashed into the table. At a charity event Bruce Springsteen told me it was the best TV fight he'd ever seen.

MICHAEL IMPERIOLI, 41: CHRISTOPHER MOLTISANTI

In addition to playing Christopher, Mr. Imperioli wrote five scripts for the series, which gave him a certain edge among the actors. There was always a lot of fear, Mr. Imperioli said. People wanted to know about being killed. I kept pretending I didn't know. But he did. I knew I was getting killed a year before, he said.

Mr. Imperioli did not write one of the most talked-about episodes in which he appeared, Pine Barrens. In it he and Paulie got lost in a snow-filled forest after trying, ineptly, to whack a Russian mobster.

That episode was like a little one-act play, Mr. Imperioli said. Like a different version of Waiting for Godot.' Ever since, viewers have been waiting for the mobster to return, ready for revenge. But he has never reappeared. This show was never what people expected, Mr. Imperioli said.

TONY SIRICO, 64: PAULIE GUALTIERI, a k a PAULIE WALNUTS

God put his finger on that one, said Tony Sirico, who shared much of the Pine Barrens episode with Mr. Imperioli. The script never called for snow, but by the time the crew reached the location near West Point, N.Y., three feet had fallen. I kept slipping and falling, Mr. Sirico said. It was 11 degrees. I was freezing my rear off.

Even though Mr. Chase laughed off fans' suggestions that the Russian would reappear, Mr. Sirico said a tease had been in the works. We had a scene this season when Chris and I are talking in the bar about whatever happened to that Russian guy. And in the script we were supposed to go outside and there he was standing on the corner. But when we went to shoot it, they took it out. I think David didn't like it. He wanted the audience just to suffer.

Like every other member of the cast Mr. Sirico said goodbye to anonymity once The Sopranos got rolling. I had no idea how big the show was until the second season, when we're in Italy to shoot, and me and Vincent Pastore, who played Pussy, decided to go to the Isle of Capri you know, because they wrote a song about it. So we're not off the boat 10 minutes before 15 Irish people come over going: Paulie! Pussy!' I couldn't believe it.

Now he can. Tom Cruise has nothing on me in the world of popularity. If I'm with five other Paulies and somebody yells, Hey. Paulie,' I know it's for me.

STEVEN VAN ZANDT, 56: SILVIO DANTE

Mr. Chase happened to be watching television when he caught a ceremony introducing the Rascals to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He thought the guy cracking jokes, Little Steven Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, was funny and might work on his new television series.

I think it was related to Bruce, Mr. Van Zandt said. I'd been playing consiglieri and best friend to Bruce, and this guy was the same thing to Tony Soprano. David could see that.

The challenge of acting was made easier, Mr. Van Zandt said, by the elaborate transformation he had to pull off. When I'd walk out of that trailer, I was Silvio Dante, he said. I'd do the hair and the clothes and slump myself down like I'd added some pounds. Little Steven could never have done it. But I was this other, tougher guy.

Alone among the cast, Mr. Van Zandt had been up close to a cultural phenomenon before. But one thing struck him. I am having the experience two times in my life of doing something that makes New Jersey fashionable. What are the odds on that?

DOMINIC CHIANESE, 76: CORRADO (JUNIOR) SOPRANO

After a long career as both an actor and a musical performer, Mr. Chianese started playing Uncle Junior at the age of 67. In an effort to flesh out his character he initially toyed with the idea of adopting a limp. Then he was given glasses.

The glasses truly helped, he said. It made me have a mask. And you couldn't see five feet in front of you. In a scene with Tony, his head would be twice as big.

But the glasses were never intended to define Junior. Everyone else on the show has very large eyes, Mr. Chianese said. I have deep-set eyes. David wanted a consistent look. He's a visual artist. So he gave me the glasses.

ROBERT ILER, 22: A. J. SOPRANO

Having spent almost half his life as the son of Tony Soprano, Mr. Iler said he could hardly remember a time when he was not a Soprano. His most challenging moment surely came this season with A. J.'s suicide attempt. It was the middle of January, and it was very cold in that water, he said.

Did he think Tony was ultimately a good father? Yeah, Mr. Iler said, but he added, I think sometimes he loved his son, but he hated him a lot more of the time.

JAMIE-LYNN SIGLER, 26: MEADOW SOPRANO

She was 16 when the pilot was shot and 17 in the first episode. It almost feels like a dream, the past nine and a half years, Ms. Sigler said. During the first seasons she didn't have to leave Jericho High School on Long Island, making it to the prom and other school events.

The episode that has stayed with her the most is from Season 1, when Tony takes Meadow college shopping in Maine, only to run into and eliminate a former wise guy turned rat. At the read-through, Mr. Gandolfini, who always sat in a big leather chair that first season, welcomed her as a peer by showing her to the chair.

He told me, This is your episode,' Ms. Sigler said.

LORRAINE BRACCO, 52: DR. JENNIFER MELFI

Dr. Melfi's diagnosis of Tony Soprano as a sociopath was on target, Ms. Bracco said. But she always believed she could really help him, she added. I think if Hitler had come in, she would have tried to make him come around. I do believe she made Tony a better husband.

Dr. Melfi had one brush with Tony's dark side, when she was brutally raped and had a chance at revenge merely by siccing Tony on her attacker. Melfi is the moral through line of the series, Ms. Bracco said. Where would we have gone with that?

For Ms. Bracco the highlights of the Sopranos experience were the scenes she shared with Mr. Gandolfini alone.

I got to play with Muhammad Ali. I really got James at his finest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/ar...gewanted=print

Hopefully few of us here will ever see that particular channel, austin!

(But I, too, have heard it is incredibly funny.)

TV Review
HBO's John From Cincinnati is all wet
Milch wipes out with confusing, sluggish new 'surf noir' drama series
By Chuck Barney Contra Costa Times TV Critic

"They threw over 'Deadwood' for this?"

That was the first thought that sprang to my mind after watching the sluggish and discombobulated pilot of HBO's so-called "surf noir" drama series, "John From Cincinnati."

Oh, how the TV gods mock us. I was so totally stoked for this show because A.) I love surfing, and B.) I'm a huge fan of creator David Milch. But sadly, the results can best be summed up in surfer-dude lingo as "one hell-a gnarly wipeout."

Milch, you may recall, gave us "Deadwood," a spectacularly grubby and handsomely crafted revisionist Western that rode tall in the saddle for three brilliant seasons on HBO. But then came a little back-room ruckus that led to the show's demise.

Milch and network executives couldn't -- or wouldn't -- come to terms on a fourth season and it was decided to let the cerebral screenwriter loose on his latest pet project -- a saga about a troubled family of California surfers whose lives take a very weird turn when a mysterious, seemingly mentally challenged, stranger suddenly shows up.

Big mistake.

Through at least the first three episodes, no one has a handle on who this blank-faced John guy (Austin Nichols) is or where he actually originated (the Great Beyond or even the planet Ork is a better bet than Ohio). All we know is that he spews terse warnings like, "The end is near," and that unexplainable things happen when he's around. Example: A man levitates and a dead parrot pulls a Lazarus. What it all means, we haven't a clue.

Anyway, John, who sports a pompadour and comes off as a cosmically dorky version of James Dean, is quick to attach himself like a barnacle to Butchie Yost (Brian Van Holt), a heroin-addicted slacker who holes up in a seedy Imperial Beach motel that is slated for demolition.

Butchie represents one generation of a family that used to reign as the town's surfing royalty. Like his father, Mitch (Bruce Greenwood), he was a big Kahuna on the pro circuit. But now the glory days for both are long past, thanks to years of bad luck, addiction and hubris.

Unfortunately, that leaves the Yost matriarch (Rebecca De Mornay) having to clean up their personal messes while also serving as guardian to Butchie's surfer-wannabe teen son (Greyson Fletcher). It's hard enough for viewers to put up with these detestable beach bums, so you wonder why she does.

In fairness, there are a few things to like about "John From Cincinnati." The main cast -- especially De Mornay -- is mostly solid, and as he did with "Deadwood," Milch surrounds them with wonderfully vivid and comic supporting players. Ed O'Neill ("Married ... With Children") as a cranky former cop who talks to birds, and Luis Guzman as the world-weary motel manager, stand out in particular.

And I have to admit that by the middle of the third episode, I was becoming more enamored with Milch's quirky world.

Oh, but what a slog it was to get there. The pilot is so convoluted and laden with stiffly rendered exposition that it may provoke a case of vapors. There are cumbersome subplots and the title character is often more irritating than engaging. To top it off, the surfing footage is mediocre at best.

HBO, which loses its No. 1 weapon when "The Sopranos" departs this weekend, desperately hopes subscribers will stick around to catch a wave with "John." But the guess here is that they'll test the waters and immediately get the urge to channel-surf.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/port...552&siteId=571

Critic's Notebook
That's all, gang
After eight years of Tony, Carmela and 'The Sopranos,' it'll be the sounds of silencer after Sunday
By Rick Kushman Sacramento Bee Columnist

There was a moment a few weeks back when Tony Soprano was talking with his psychiatrist, complaining that bad things keep happening around him.

"I'm a good guy," he said. "Basically."

Actually, Tony, no. Not even close.

But aside from his general -- and sometimes epic -- lack of a moral compass, he is a regular guy. Like everyone else, he struggles with work, family and life.

Tony Soprano is a suburbanite with ambitions and doubts. He's in a marriage that's evolved into a bargain of convenience and habit. He's a parent with kids who are turning out like nothing he expected. He's got job stress, nightmares, weight problems, panic attacks, anger issues, depression and a worrying sense that he was meant for something else.

Above all else, above the intricate plotting, the fully drawn characters and the electric acting, above the stellar ironies, the wit, depth and the utter, mesmerizing entertainment values, what has made HBO's "The Sopranos" one of the great, great shows of television is that Tony (the magnificent James Gandolfini), and everyone else in it, feels so compellingly, distressingly real.

It all ends on Sunday (at 9), six seasons spread over eight years, as one of the touchstones of American pop culture and the living definition of appointment television.

It began on Jan. 10, 1999, hardly noticed and when HBO was barely television, let alone a cut above. In less than a decade, it has transformed that network and the entire medium. Now "The Sopranos" -- layered, funny, powerful and unforgettable -- stands as a singular achievement, a true blend of art and entertainment, and maybe TV's best show ever.

There is so much to say about this show, how it allowed other producers and networks to do ever more densely structured drama, lured more great writers and actors to HBO and all of TV, made us root for an anti-hero. How it simply raised the bar.

Creator David Chase's vision of a complicated, shifting world was nothing less than brilliant, but equally brilliant was the way he never forgot he was in the entertainment business. "The Sopranos" was always great entertainment, stuffed full of music, revelation, tension, farce, satire, violence, sex, irony and moments that resonated for days.

Has there been a serious TV series with more moments to talk about the next day? There are the "Godfather" references, the malapropisms -- my favorite was the guy who said Christopher's movie mixed "the sacred and the propane" -- the gleeful pettiness, the universal selfishness, and, of course, the mob hits. Sometimes the moments involved just a look from Tony, sometimes they were the texture of a scene, lately there have been great moments surrounding A.J. (Robert Iler) and his weaselly self-pity.

The tone and pacing have shifted from episode to episode, and Chase has stubbornly and skillfully resisted conventional approaches. He's left stories dangling, like the Russian still wandering the pine barrows. He's killed beloved characters, rest in peace Adriana. He's ignored every feel-good possibility and replaced them with coarse jokes or unsatisfyingly neutral outcomes.

The continuing cast is one of the largest ever on TV, and surely one of the best. They play characters who are complete humans, not just qualities that get trotted out to highlight a point. And they evolve -- some grow, some get bitter, some wobble in lots of directions. But no one walks onto "The Sopranos" stage without depth and fullness, even that Russian in the woods.

Still, at the heart of it all is the rich sense of genuine humanity woven throughout this show. Not necessarily good humanity, but these people resonate with real, believable fears, hurts, hopes and denials.

All of this is more resonant because Tony is a mob boss. The fascination that our culture has with the mob comes, in part, because those guys seem to have no fear. We assume they get a pass on life's small worries.

The rest of us live a little nervously, agonizing over bills and jobs and those two scary-looking dudes hanging around the parking lot. But mob guys, like Tony and his crew, they should be fearless. The world fears them, and they get to live carefree and large. Or so we imagine.

The brilliance of creator Chase is that he twisted all that. Tony and all his boys still have their anxieties, like regular guys. Some of them are too attached to their mothers, or married to petty women, or harboring ambitions to produce movies. Some feel neglected or hunger for the old days, others go home to eat frozen dinners. And they all have job stress.

Most of all, their boss is a guy who wheezes when he walks around the house, often in an open, ratty bathrobe. He's a guy who squabbles with his wife. And he's been seeing a psychiatrist.

The foundation of the "The Sopranos" is the triangle of the mob, Tony's family and the psychiatrist's office. The heart of the show is Tony and Carmela (Edie Falco). So much of the series flows from their domestic lives, and they appear as regular as any neighbor -- with the exception of the caches of bills buried around the backyard.

Tony is bothered that he came in to his world too late, that life got out of control, that maybe he could have been a good guy, selling insurance on the road and calling home every night. He's haunted by "what if," like so many millions who watch the show.

Carmela mostly ignores Tony's wanderings and his profession, and it tears her up. She struggles to forge an identity separate from her husband and his job. Together, they get excited over finding a good sushi restaurant, and they're slowly being battered by the knowledge their marriage is a mess.

And they are like so many millions of couples. One of the show's best and most painful scenes came a few seasons back. Tony was having a rough day -- maybe he had to whack a friend; I forget the details -- and he came home mid-afternoon.

Carmela knew something was wrong, but instead of talking about it, she heated up some food. Tony was sitting at one end of the dining room table, and Carmela came from behind him and put the plate in front of Tony, lightly brushing her hand across his shoulder. That was the only gesture of concern she could muster.

Tony started eating, head down. Carmela went to the far end of that long, expensive table and sat to finish paying bills. She looked up at Tony as he ate, hoping he'd say something. Then she went back to the bills.

Tony paused as he ate, and looked up at her. For a passing moment, his face looked plaintive and a little pleading. He hoped Carmela would ask about him. Then he continued eating, each of them back in their own lonely spheres.

If there has ever been a better mini-essay on the all-American marriage on television, I haven't seen it.

And if there has been a better show about families and American culture and the complex, devilish thing that is human nature, I can't imagine what it was.

If there is any standout message from this multifaceted show, or at least any message rising above the rest, it's that we're all human and humans are a mess.

Tony started therapy because he was a mess. Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) ended it because she's become a mess. A.J., Meadow, Carmela and Tony: all messes. The East Coast mob establishment is one giant, tangled, unruly mess. Just like everything in life.

So as this remarkable, towering series ends -- and Tony appears headed for disaster -- the question of the details are almost irrelevant. Does Tony somehow go on with life, does he die, does he run and land in witness protection? Those are almost minutiae. Does he grow or change? That's more to the point, and not likely. Change is hard for regular guys.

"The Sopranos" ends as landmark television, with a permanent place in our culture's hall of fame for its influence, for its quality and for how it entertained. And when it's over, David Chase, Tony Soprano and the rest of the gang will have left us with the forceful and enduring declaration that both television and life can be complicated, bewildering and surprising, and that, sometimes, they can be great.

http://www.sacbee.com/127/story/208820.html

TV Notebook
The time is right for Bob Barker
Host of 'The Price Is Right' puts down the mike after a record run
By Martin Miller Los Angeles Times Staff Writer June 10, 2007

For Bob Barker, the soon-to-retire host of "The Price Is Right," it hasn't been the years or the miles so much as the contestants.

For more than three decades, the 83-year-old, silver-haired host has been tackled, bear-hugged and smooched by jubilant hysterics. He's witnessed them trip, collapse, faint and even fall out of their tops in the mad rush to contestants' row.

His incredible TV reign, as host of daytime's top-rated and longest-running game show, is in and of itself a virtually unmatched feat in the medium. (By comparison, Johnny Carson logged in a mere 29 1/2 years as a late-night host.) But when adding Barker's earlier, 18-year stint as host of the quiz show "Truth or Consequences," that means his familiar tan-and-smiling face has been a daily presence on the tube for a half-century a record that's unlikely to be broken.

Barker's astonishing small-screen career has done more than just transform him into an "entertainment icon," as CBS President of Entertainment Nina Tassler recently put it. It's also paved the way for him to become an unlikely national advocate for animal rights and, on a less serious note, to achieve almost cult-like status among college-aged males that lasts to this day if for no other reason than his bit role in Adam Sandler's "Happy Gilmore." (If you've seen it, you know the line.)

But TV's Iron Man has been accumulating rust. Heart ailments, prostate surgery, a torn rotator cuff, a bad knee, a tilted back disc have slowed his famous gait across Stage 33 at CBS' Television City.

Last week, after 6,586 episodes, Barker taped his final show: He laid down his trademark long-stem microphone, oversaw his last twirl of the wheel, congratulated his last showcase winner and bid television a fond farewell. (The final show will air Friday in its regular morning time period and then be repeated in prime time that night just before the broadcast of the 34th annual Daytime Entertainment Emmy Awards, where Barker is up for his possible 18th and 19th statues.)

His departure means the loss of one of the last active national links to a long-gone media era. During the span of Barker's career not without its controversies, including a spat of lawsuits claiming sexual harassment and discrimination the medium has evolved from a vacuum-tubed "Leave It to Beaver" mentality that ran test patterns in the early morning hours to a voracious YouTube universe that churns out 24-hour-a-day HD programming.

"When I wake up that first morning that I would normally go to the studios and I realize there is no show for me," quipped Barker in his CBS dressing room after a recent afternoon taping, "I'm not sure, I may have to have help psychiatric help."

Grief counseling may be avoided, however, should the 17-time Daytime Emmy Award winner recall the parade of tributes and specials staged on his behalf during the countdown to his retirement. The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, even cable's Game Show Network have recently spotlighted Barker's 50 years in television with honorary dinners, awards and programming.

But CBS, which can thank the game show host for clobbering the morning competition in the ratings for decades, threw the biggest Barker bash back-to-back prime-time specials last month that drew a hefty combined audience of 28 million viewers. Both prime-time programs won their time slot for total viewers with Barker's night career retrospective even beating out the season finale of ABC's hit show "Ugly Betty."

As host of "The Price Is Right," Barker, the former Midwesterner who lost his father at age 6 and struggled through the Great Depression with his mother, said he has handed out more than $300 million in cash and prizes to Middle America.

"Bob brought a lot of much-needed class and humor to the genre," said Jerry Katzman, the former vice chairman of the William Morris Agency who now teaches at UCLA's School of Theater, Film & Television. "It's really a miracle with all the changes in game shows over the past several decades, he's made it this long. I don't think we'll ever see that again."

One call did it all

As with the whole of his career, Barker's first major break reads like a Hollywood fable. In 1950, he headed west with no job, no agent, no contacts, just a dream to become an entertainment star. After struggling for a half-dozen years in L.A. radio jobs, Barker finally landed an audience-participation radio program that showcased his talent for making people laugh.

By chance, game show producer Ralph Edwards tuned into the show while driving the Los Angeles freeways and soon after offered Barker a television job hosting "Truth or Consequences." The year was 1956.

"That was, that is and that will always be the most important call of my professional life," said Barker, who joined Edwards for a toast every Dec. 21 at 12:05 p.m. the time of the offer until his death in 2005. "All the wonderful things that have happened to me since started with that phone call from Ralph."

Barker has always demonstrated a knack for dates. He can rattle them off as if they were yesterday, not yesteryear. In an interview after a recent show, Nov. 17, 1939, came to mind his first date with Dorothy Jo, the young woman who would become his high school sweetheart and later his wife. They saw Ella Fitzgerald at the Shrine Mosque Auditorium in Springfield, Mo.

Nurturing his career and even serving as a producer on several of his early radio shows, Dorothy Jo's larger effect on her husband before her death in 1981 would be in fostering a lifelong dedication to animal rights. She was the first Barker in the house to denounce fur coats and helped convert her one-time steak-eating spouse into a vegetarian and passionate spokesman for the humane treatment of animals.

"My wife was ahead of her time," said Barker, who never remarried, and had "The Price Is Right" stop awarding fur coats as prizes by the mid-1980s.

In 1987, Barker's activism took the national stage when he quit as the longtime host of the Miss USA and Miss Universe beauty pageants over the use of animal furs. He'd been urging them to stop for years, but the final straw came when he learned the swimsuit contestants were making their entrances in fur coats.

"I'd been speaking out at every opportunity about fur, and I would have been a complete hypocrite if I'd walked out on that stage," said Barker, who hosted the pageants for some two decades.

Around this time, fur coat sales went into steady decline. "I'm not for a moment taking all the credit; there were many, many people working to make everyone aware of the cruelty to animals," he said. "But the fur flap sure helped."

In 1995, Barker started the DJ&T Foundation, which subsidizes the spaying and neutering of animals across the U.S. (The DJ is for his wife and the T is for Matilda, a.k.a. "Tilly," his mother.) Retirement will mean he'll devote more than his usual couple of mornings a week to the nonprofit organization, which has awarded $40 million to help control the animal population. He'll also have more time with his Hollywood housemates Jessie, his dog, and Mr. Rabbit and Honey, his rabbits.

"I keep Jessie away from the rabbits," said Barker, who ends his game show with a reminder to viewers to spay or neuter their pets. "Because she pictures them as something very delicious."

Trouble in the TV family

Barker's good works were clouded in 1994 when a former "Price Is Right" model sued him for sexual harassment. Over the next several years, about a half-dozen more suits were filed alleging sexual harassment, racial discrimination and wrongful termination.

The suits have all either been dropped or settled the latter being a legal move Barker said he opposed. "I wanted to go to court," said Barker, who denounced the suits as distortions, exaggerations or outright falsehoods. "But it's good business to settle when you can settle for far less than the lawsuit would cost."

But lawsuits are of no concern to Barker's legions, who put the "fan" into "fanatic." They literally tremble, shake and scream at his approach and often are dressed in specially made T-shirts that say things such as "Barker's Beauties," "Bobalicious," or "Got Bob?"

In addition to their outpouring of letters, e-mails and YouTube tributes to Barker since he announced his retirement last October, his followers are famous for enduring long waits in line to see the show. Ronald and Sharon Goodman flew in from the Midwest late last month to attend a taping and celebrate their 31st wedding anniversary. They camped out on the sidewalk overnight to secure a coveted seat.

"My friends at work think I'm nuts," said Sharon Goodman, 46, a postal carrier from Osceola, Mo., who ended up at tapings three days in a row. "They say, 'You're sleeping on the streets of Hollywood? Are you crazy?' I say I'm just crazy to meet Bob."

"My mother watched 'Truth or Consequences' before I was born," she added. "So actually I was watching Bob Barker while she was pregnant, so I've been listening to him longer than I've been walking around. Beat that!"

One of the more entertaining parts of the show never makes the broadcast. Between commercial breaks, Barker fields questions all of which he's heard before. His responses are delivered with a comedian's precise timing.

"Can I kiss you?" asks an audience member.

"No, I'm working," he snaps. Then, a beat. "Meet me in the parking lot later."

Huge laughs.

But nothing jolts the studio laugh meter like Barker repeating his famous bit from Adam Sandler's adolescent-male cult classic "Happy Gilmore." In the 1996 film, golfing partners played by Sandler and Barker duke it out with the game show host delivering a slapstick knockout to the words, "The price is right, bitch!"

It's a great line to serve up moments before the return from commercial break.

At the last break before show's end, the inevitable question at least since Barker announced his retirement arises: "What's going to happen to the show?"

As of last week, CBS was still keeping mum. Barker, though, wasn't about to pass up a good punch line.

"The show is going to end when I leave," replied Barker wryly. "In fact, the top executives decided that they are going to stop all television. So when I retire you can put potted plants in all those sets at home."

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/la-ca...?coll=cl-tvent

Critic's Notebook
'The Sopranos' greatest hits
By Melanie McFarland Seattle Post-Intelligencer TV Critic

To love "The Sopranos" is to accept that anyone in this glorified New Jersey crew could get his (or hers) at any time. What follows is our top five most significant murders during the series' 8 1/2-year run. (That automatically disqualifies the Pine Barrens guy. For all we know, he's probably living under an alias somewhere in the Northwest.)

1. Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli)

"Whatever happened to stop and smell the roses?" Chris asks Tony during a nighttime drive, later adding, "Life's too short." As if that wasn't enough foreshadowing, the musical cues were impossible to ignore. A stoned Chris, obsessively fiddling with Van Morrison's cover of "Comfortably Numb" playing on his SUV's stereo swerves off the road to avoid an oncoming vehicle and sends the truck rolling down a hill.

But confessing to Tony that he won't pass a drug test became the death of him. Tony moves to pull him out of the car at first but, after a short pause, pinches Christopher's nose shut to make him smother in his own blood.

Chris stares into Tony's eyes as he slips away, and Tony wears an expression of chilling nothingness. The child is grown. The dream is gone.

But the greater surprise was what that murder revealed about Tony's character. Disregarding everything Christopher and Tony went through together, offing Christopher boiled down to a business move. Tony was paranoid about difficulties with New York, and Christopher was a weak link.

Thus, three episodes before the end, we witness Tony's first perfect murder. Only he knows the truth of what happened on that dark stretch of road. What's truly chilling is that Tony appears to be managing his guilt without much difficulty.

2. Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero (Vincent Pastore)

Undone by Tony's fever dream, Big Puss was the show's lovable lug and its first rat. How heartbreaking it was to watch him board a boat with Tony, Sil and Paulie and sail out to sea, knowing he wouldn't come back. He downed shots of tequila, and asked his best friends not to mess up his face before they shot him down in a blaze. Though he sleeps with the fishes he returns every so often to remind Tone of his lost innocence and many betrayals.

3. Adriana La Cerva (Drea de Matteo)

The saddest gangster girl that ever was got flipped by the feds when they caught her with drugs, but put them off for as long as she could. When she confessed what she'd done to her Chris-ta-fuh, he contemplated running away with her. For a hot second. An eyeful of a raggedy sap at a convenience store made Chrissie realize he liked his nice black truck more than his fiancee. Silvio drove her off to the woods and put two in Ade's back, while Chris shot up to deal with the pain -- putting him on the road to comfortable numbness.

4. Richie Aprile (David Proval)

Nobody was sad to see Richie go -- he was one of the earliest threats to Tony's burgeoning empire -- but his exit sure was a punch in the mouth. Or should we say, Janice's lip? He socked her in the face, she calmly left the room, returned with a gun and plugged him. Tony sent Janice back to Seattle, and that day's special at Satriale's was ground Richie.

5. Pie-O-My

Yeah, we know what you're thinking. Even Dr. Melfi pointed out to Tony, "It's sad that you lost something you loved. That being said, it is a horse."

But Pie-O-My was more than that. Tony's love for that filly was overwhelming. In the same way Tony connected with the family of ducks living in his pool, nearly falling apart when they flew away, his affinity for Pie-O-My brought out the part of him that made the bear cuddly. Remember what that psychiatric study stated? "The criminal's sentimentality reveals itself in compassion for babies and pets."

As such, when Tony accused Ralphie Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano) of burning down Pie-O-My's stable for the insurance money, it was a colossal mistake for Ralphie to deny it before dismissively adding, "It's an animal! This is a hundred grand apiece!" In the ensuing rage Tony beat Ralphie to death, then calling Chris to come help him deal with Ralphie's corpse and bloody toupee.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/printe...sonline08.html

Critic's Notebook
High notes
As 'The Sopranos' performs its swan song, we celebrate 10 of the series' best episodes
By David Zurawik Baltimore Sun Television Critic June 10, 2007

In the beginning, there sat Tony Soprano in Dr. Jennifer Melfi's waiting room, quizzically staring at the sculpture of a nude female.

Seconds later, the psychiatrist opened the door to her office, and so began one of the most compelling conversations and resonant series in TV history.

In the wake of last week's penultimate episode of The Sopranos, which featured Dr. Melfi angrily ending her doctor-patient relationship with Tony, the symmetry of those two office images eight years apart frames the series. There's Dr. Melfi striking the exact same pose in the doorway to her inner sanctum - inviting him in and offering hope of a cure at the start of the 1999 pilot, and then casting him out last Sunday, any chance of salvation lost.

Great television series, like works of art in any medium, are distinguished by such continuity of vision and narrative. Themes are sounded and then amplified consistently throughout.

In the best works, the themes address and echo moods and feelings pulsing through the veins of the larger culture. No TV series has so eloquently spoken to and for its era as has the one that ends tonight after six seasons on HBO.

"PILOT" - SEASON 1

Was Tony (James Gandolfini) ever happier than in that first backyard scene, happily splashing after a family of ducks swimming in his pool? The panic attack that sends the mobster into therapy occurs when the ducks take flight from his pool and life.

Thus is the grand overture of angst first sounded. The theme is extended later when Tony recounts a dream to Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) in which part of his anatomy falls off and is carried away by a sea gull.

That's separation and loss linked to middle-aged masculinity. And no TV series has ever explored the notion of what it means to be an American-made man as relentlessly and as astutely as The Sopranos.

"COLLEGE" - Season 1

Tony takes his daughter, Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), on a road trip to Maine to visit colleges. But while she's talking to an admissions officer, he sneaks off to garrote a mob informer now living in the witness protection program in a nearby town.

The pilot ended with Nick Lowe's haunting ballad, "The Beast in Me," playing as the credits rolled. In "College," viewers get to see the beast in Tony bare its horrid zombie teeth as he chokes the life out of the turncoat. And all this while he is otherwise playing suburban dad.

The strange, dispassionate look on Tony's face as his victim gasps for breath is seen again during the run of the series - particularly this season at the death of Tony's nephew and crew member, Christopher.

"UNIVERSITY" - Season 3

Ralph Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano) brutally beats girlfriend Tracee to death in the parking lot of the Bada Bing Club, where she works. Meadow, meanwhile, becomes involved with a fellow student at Columbia University who is half African-American and half Jewish - much to Tony's discomfort.

Multiculturalism, tribalism and differences in gender, race, class and opportunity are powerfully explored in the parallel story lines featuring women of the same age.

In committing to a narcissist, Meadow makes a mistake of the heart and winds up with emotional pain. In committing to a sociopath, Tracee makes a mistake and winds up dead.

A note about the graphic violence: It's impossible to recall a scene on television as depressing as watching Ralph bludgeon Tracee to death with his fists. But we don't want a sanitized TV landscape in which such depictions are excluded. And premium cable, which can be accessed only through extra effort and payment, is the place for them.

"THE PINE BARRENS" - Season 3

All Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico) has to do is make a routine collection from a Russian thug named Valery. But before this snow-capped comedy of errors is over, Paulie and Christopher are all but frozen to death - while the Russian they tried to kill and bury escapes through the woods known as the South Jersey Pine Barrens.

Beyond a further exploration of tribalism and ethnic rivalries, "The Pine Barrens" introduces the wild-card narrative device of a gangster on the loose with a score to settle against Tony and his crew.

Fans will have to wait until tonight to find out whether Valery is a thread left hanging or a brilliant bit of serialized storytelling.

Either way, it's impossible not to smile at the memory of Christopher and Paulie (his hair frozen into surreal angel wings) surviving the night in the Barrens on packets of ketchup and endless curses hurled at each other.

"FOR ALL DEBTS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE" - Season 4

While Tony once described himself to Dr. Melfi as a "captain of industry," he has wall-to-wall money problems in this episode at the start of Season 4. Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese) wants help with mounting legal bills, while Tony's wife, Carmela (Edie Falco), wants a full accounting of their net worth.

As for Tony himself, he's tapping into his rainy day account - bundles of cash hidden in a barrel of birdseed in a shed alongside his pool.

"I want to know why there's zero growth in this family's assets," the angry capo demands during a stormy meeting with his crew.

The theme: the toll that the cutthroat competition of advanced capitalism takes even on the so-called captains of industry like Tony. Think David Mamet's 1984 stage play Glengarry Glen Ross.

"PIE-O-MY" - Season 4

Ralph buys a racehorse named Pie-O-My and then neglects the animal even as Tony falls in love with it.

Sentimental? Maybe. But the final scene is visual poetry.

It is late at night at the stables where Pie-O-My is housed. A heavy rain pounds down. The animal is sick and lies on its side - unable to stand after being treated by a veterinarian at Tony's expense.

The weary gangster sits down on an overturned bucket, reaches out to stroke the animal's neck and promises that things will be "all right."

The hour ends on that tableau of Tony sitting vigil with the horse in a tiny circle of light set against the vast existential darkness of the night and the rain. Tony's monster of a mother, Olivia (Nancy Marchand), might have raised him to believe that man dies alone, but he's determined to bring comfort to Pie-O-My on this lonely night.

"WHOEVER DID THIS" - Season 4

But things don't turn out all right for the horse, who later perishes in a fire at the stable - one possibly set by Ralph.

Tony starts to question the out-of-control crew leader about the arson, and suddenly the two are engaged in a ferocious life-and-death struggle. Tony wins.

In a final insult, the victor severs Ralph's head and sticks it in a bowling-ball bag for disposal.

In "University," Ralph proclaimed his love for the 2000 feature film Gladiator as he menaced underlings and women at the Bada Bing by wildly swinging a heavy chain in the manner of Gen. Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe). But in the end, he's no general - and no match for Tony in their blood-drenched dance of male rivalry.

"LONG TERM PARKING" - Season 5

Christopher goes out for cigarettes, and girlfriend Adriana (Drea de Matteo) goes for a car ride from which she will never return.

While the hour will rightly be remembered for Adriana's harrowing journey into the woods with Silvio (Steve Van Zandt), this was also the episode in which Tony and Carmela reconciled - a high or low point (depending on one's point of view) in this painfully realistic chronicle of a modern-day, baby-boom marriage.

"I swear to you on our children," Tony tells his wife in an effort to regain entrance to the family home, "that my midlife crisis problems will no longer intrude on you any more."

Right.

"LUXURY LOUNGE" - Season 6

Christopher, the aspiring filmmaker, gets rejected by Ben Kingsley and mugs Lauren Bacall - all in one, wacky Hollywood trip. But the quieter story line here is the one that ultimately matters: the midlife crisis of chef Artie Bucco (John Ventimiglia).

Throughout the episode, Artie tries to prove his manhood by being sexually aggressive, violent and profane. For all his frenzied effort, the owner of Vesuvio's suffers rejection, humiliation and the harsh punishment of having his hand forced into a caldron of boiling spaghetti sauce.

At the end of the hour, however, alone in his restaurant save for two late-arriving diners, Artie finds his manhood at the stove cooking a recipe handed down from his grandfather in Italy. It is a serene moment of redemption - and one of the wisest commentaries on masculinity that TV has ever offered.

"KENNEDY AND HEIDI" - Season 6

Christopher dies, and Tony goes on a classic Hero Quest. With the help of peyote and a gorgeous guide, he experiences a moment of transcendence in the desert outside Las Vegas.

"I get it," he shouts to the rising sun.

Fans will have to wait until tonight to find out what it is exactly that Tony gets. But what an epic journey it has been with the series that proved once and for all that TV - not literature or film - is the principal storyteller of American life.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertai...ck=2&cset=true

TV Review
HBO's John From Cincinnati is all wet
Pretensions sink surfers in 'John From Cincinnati'
By Matthew Gilbert Boston Globe June 8, 2007

Watching HBO's surfing drama "John From Cincinnati" is like sitting through a bad play at a tiny experimental theater. The dialogue is loud pretentious nonsense signifying nothing but the creative dangers of mimicking Sam Shepard , Edward Albee , and Samuel Beckett . And the acting is a psychic traffic jam, because the actors don't understand their characters, because their characters are no more than vague symbols of -- what? -- being, nothingness, and the fury of being nothing.

And as the actors grimace and squeeze out Existential Rage Against the Machine, using the f-word with much forced casualness, you, too, want to rage against a machine -- the clock, which is defining your waste of time.

In short, if Gary Busey were a TV series, he would be "John From Cincinnati." A few viewers may rationalize this anger opera from "Deadwood" creator David Milch and surf novelist Kem Nunn as a crypto-religious masterpiece that's challengingly mysterious. Others, myself included, will only feel assaulted by the bombast. Sitting through three episodes made me feel sad for HBO, which has slotted the "John" premiere after the "Sopranos" finale hoping it will persuade subscribers to keep the pay channel. The show, Sunday at 10, is more likely to send viewers running for Excedrin PM and a pair of foam ear plugs. Good thing "Entourage" and "Big Love" return next week.

The bottom line for me was not the self-importance and auto-eroticism of the writing, but the emptiness of the characters. Burdened with mannered Milchian lines such as "You don't hold onto a bird once it's passed," and "Some things I know and some things I don't," the show's Southern Californians are merely mouthpieces and constructs. I didn't care about a single one of them, not even the pet bird Zippy, who dies and then is reborn to turd madly in his owner's pocket -- as a reminder, no doubt, of being, and nothingness, and re-being, and re-despoiling of beingness, or something.

The focus of the show, and of the border town of Imperial Beach, is the Yost family, three generations of expert surfers. And by surfers, of course, I mean riders on the storm of time and space that is now -- and now -- and now. Anyway, Mitch (Bruce Greenwood) is the grandfather, the legendary surfer whose knee injury has doomed him to a life of profanity. Now he pouts and argues with his wife, Cissy (Rebecca De Mornay ), with whom he has loveless sex. He also thinks he has cancer "right here in my brain" because he feels himself levitating -- I mean, rising above the dirt of this cruddy, damaged world in some kind of holy grace.

Mitch -- not to be confused with Milch? -- also spews at his son, and you can't blame him. Butchie Yost (Brian Van Holt ) is an explosive wastrel who threw away his surfing career on drugs. Now Butchie squats in a dilapidated motel -- er, I mean, a dark shelter from pain -- and mixes with drug pushers and the motel staff, including the doting Meyer Dickstein (Willie Garson ). Aware of his uselessness, Butchie has put his gentle teen son, Shaun (Greyson Fletcher ), also a surfer, into his parents' custody. Does sweet Shaun have a mother, or . . . is . . . he . . . everyone's . . . child?

And who is John from Cincinnati (Austin Nichols ), who appears among the Yosts one day and triggers magical events? He is Us, as You are We, as They are Me and we are all together. John has no identity of his own; he mostly repeats what others say, like a mirror -- excuse me, I mean a Mirror. His last name is Monad, a word that, in my dictionary, means "an elementary individual substance which reflects the order of the world and from which material properties are derived." So he's one of those, robotically reciting "Mitch Yost should get back in the game" or "See God" and sounding like a parking-lot ticket machine. While the show has a leftover-1960s feel, with an old VW bus and a crazed war veteran named Vietnam Joe, John looks much more like a 1950s teen idol.

The actors do try, and they try hard, perhaps no one more than Ed O'Neill , who plays Bill Jacks, a former cop and current Yost friend. O'Neill gets wildly Theatre-y as he rants about nothing to no one in particular, or to his parrots and cockatoos, or to all of humankind, it's hard to tell.

Luke Perry is on "John," too, but he's easy to overlook. Since his Linc Stark is an agent who represents Commercialism and Greed, he is not given the kind of big, elevated lines that require lots of spit and wind. And on "John From Cincinnati," my friends, all the answers -- if there are answers to be found -- are blowing in the wind.

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles...innati?mode=PF

Critic's Notebook
The Sopranos Finale
Tony's Safe House and Flashing Forward
By Roger Catlin Hartford Courant TV Critic in his TV Eye blog

He's not technically backed into a corner. But Tony Soprano, who makes his last stand tonight on the series finale of The Sopranos, was last seen seven days ago sitting atop a stripped down bed in a Jersey safe house cradling an automatic weapon, staring at the closed bedroom door in front of him and imagining what it might bring.

A spray of bullets? A burst of fiery vengeance? Hallucination? Hellfire?

It's all happened one time or another these past eight years on The Sopranos, one of the great all time dramas on TV, that set the bar high for episodic television even as it inspired a richer, more layered approach to TV drama all across the broadcast spectrum, from broadcast network to premium cable.

The old Jersey bedroom provides some resonance for the series end, as well. It's reminiscent at first of the bed of his monstrous mother, Livia, who seemed attempted to exert an evil power over Tony as the series began in 1999 and continued to haunt him after she died (Later, Tony's sister Janice moved in the family homestead, where she memorably pushed Ralf Cifaretto down the stairs).

The stairs in this safe house, though, are also reminiscent of the ones in Junior Soprano's house, from which the addled old bird shot Tony at the first half of the sixth season a year ago, mistaking him for Little Pussy Malenga. But all these little Jersey homes look alike.

Sitting in the safe house, which features an odd cardboard cutout of Silvio Dante on the first floor, the stage certainly seems for tonight's finale. At long last, there will be some sort of determination in the recently enflamed mob war between Tony and the New York family now run by Phil Leotardo that has already resulted in a pile of bodies, some of them the most beloved characters of the series.

Creator David Chase seems to know exactly where he's headed with all this. He's the one, after all, who requested the nine dark additional episodes that have been airing this spring as a way to suitably wrap up his rich story, as peopled as a Dickens novel and just as rewarding.

Chase, who will be writing and directing the finale titled Made in America, supposedly shot three different endings. But that was only a ploy to throw off those who'd spoil his dénouement by early disclosure.

And though the inevitability at the moment seems some sort of bloody final confrontation, there have been a number of other theories flying for how it could all end - a common thing to happen for a show that has attracted such a devoted audience.

Throughout its run The Sopranos has shown flights of fancy - dream sequences, the dead seeming to return and in the longest spell, which began the interrupted sixth season, a coma-induced parallel life that had Tony out in California as a salesman.

Clearly, Chase has been willing to suspend the rules of conventional storytelling with such departures.

So it's possible he may also dabble in the latest trend in series endings: the flash forward.

It first became popular in film - as a final, cheap gag - to update the lives of the characters immediately before the credits rolled, especially after George Lucas' American Graffiti did so in 1973.

Then comedies began slowly to actually show future glimpses of their characters as a way to help provide closure.

It happened at the end of Mad About You in 1999 when the baby girl of Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt suddenly becomes a teenager. They zipped forward two years ago in the series finale of Will & Grace, too - first two years ahead and then 20, when the titular characters, barely aged, each had kids who meet in college.

Things didn't go quite as far forward when King of Queens jumped ahead in its own series finale last month - only far enough to show the babies they spoke of in the episode would grow to become toddlers.

Because time travel is a common notion in science fiction, substantial time travel was involved in the series finales of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Enterprise in 1994 and 2005 respectively. To cap its fourth season, Babylon 5 beat them all by flashing forward a million years (but a season finale wouldn't come until a year later).

On HBO, Six Feet Under kicked the notion of finale flash forward into overdrive, with 15 minutes tacked onto the final hour of the series about a family of mortuary operators to show the moment each of them died -- some a few years later, others at an old age far into the future.

And it's been used in the series finale of other dramas as well, including last year on Alias, where agent Sydney Bristow is seen far enough in the future to have a baby.

When Lost strayed from its usual format of flashbacks and present day action on the island to a flash forward to Jack and Kate off the island and Jack wishing he could go back, it caused a commotion among fans. This was not only the first glimpse into the future on a series pretty much snagged with mysteries, it also seemed to prove that, unlike Gilligan's Island, some of these castaways make it out after all.

Its producers had been lobbying this year for an end date for the series so it could do just that: flash forward and backward and fill in the stories in between so the tale will be complete when Lost presents its own series finale in 2010. Still, fans of Battlestar Galactica say Lost was doing little more than aping the sci-fi tale's own flash-forward in its second season finale.

Despite all of this, it seems the way things are going for Tony Soprano, the last thing we can expect to see in tonight's finale is an elder white-haired mob boss, bouncing A.J.'s grandchild on his knee like Don Corleone in The Godfather.

Something about that bare mattress, that gun and the ominous door makes me think there's much less future for him to flash forward to.

http://blogs.courant.com/roger_catli...hous.html#more

Critic's Notebook
The Sopranos Finale
10 great shows and how they ended
By Mike Duffy Detroit Free Press TV Critic June 10, 2007

There are no sure things on Planet Series Finale.Great shows sometimes stumble badly right at the finish line.

Got that, "Seinfeld"?

Others come through in the creative clutch with memorable farewells.

This Sunday the pressure's on "The Sopranos" to deliver a series finale worthy of the show's high-quality essence.

Now here's a quick Captain Video rundown of series finales past:

Five Really Good Ones

1. "Newhart" (1990). The hilarious surreal deal when Bob Newhart's Vermont innkeeper woke up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette, his 1970s sitcom wife on "The Bob Newhart Show," babbling about a really wacky dream.

2. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" (1977). Always keep them wanting Moore. Mary Richards and the funny news gang at WJM-TV went out on top after seven superlative seasons with an unforgettable group hug.

3. "The Fugitive" (1967). On the run for four years after being falsely accused of killing his wife, Dr. Richard Kimble (David Janssen) finally confronts the one-armed man (who really murdered her) atop a tower. Lt. Gerard (Barry Morse), who'd been doggedly pursuing Kimble, comes to the rescue, saving Kimble and shooting the one-armed man, who falls to his death in TV's highest-rated series episode to that time.

4. "Cheers" (1993). Turn out the lights, the saloon party's over. Shelley Long's Diane Chambers returned for the sweet, wistful and very witty last call at the bar "where everybody knows your name." And Ted Danson's Sam Malone said it all for the taproom that was shutting its doors forever when he informed a straggling late arrival, "We're closed."

5. "Six Feet Under" (2005). The dark and amusing funeral home drama of dysfunctional L.A. mortuary life with the Fisher family put a mesmerizing spell on devoted viewers with a flash-forward montage into the future to see how the various characters would eventually die. It was a bittersweet emotional knockout.

The Disappointing Jive Five

1. "Seinfeld" (1998). One of the smartest and best sitcoms of all time suddenly turned dumb and lost its amusing mojo with a fumbling courtroom farewell that put Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer on trial for their various misdeeds. Sorry, no thanks, we don't need your stinking sourball sendoff.

2. "St. Elsewhere" (1988). This funny, touching and generally wonderful hospital drama played a cruel and unusual prank on longtime fans with a truly misbegotten finale that revealed that the entire world of St. Eligius existed inside a snow globe and the imagination of Dr. Westfall's autistic son. Aaaargh!

3. "The X-Files" (2002). The conspiratorial paranormal thrill was long gone by the time Mulder (a returning David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) finally wrapped it up with a labored, two-hour finale that didn't really wrap anything up, just in case another "X-Files" movie might be made. Nine seasons of the once-great "X-Files" was at least two too many.

4. "Roseanne" (1997). Speaking of staying too long at the prime-time party, Roseanne Barr's blue collar sitcom classic from the late '80s and early '90s did a really bizarre final season belly flop with the Connors having won $108 million in the state lottery. And by the soggy carnival of a silly series finale, it's revealed in a long voiceover by Barr that the whole ludicrous final season as well as everything that went before it was part of a novel ... written by Roseanne, of course. Cheap trick!

5. "M*A*S*H" (1983). The 2 1/2 -hour series finale still stands as the highest-rated single program ever, attracting 106 million viewers. Many loved it and thought it was brilliant. Sorry, but the formerly sharp comic "M*A*S*H" had meandered badly into sentimentality in its later seasons. And the maudlin, melodramatic series finale -- which included a nervous breakdown by Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) -- always felt overwrought and overrated. A clunker.

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