Battlestar Galactica: The end is near

I'm going to be otherwise occupied for most of Friday thourgh Sunday, so I may not get a chance to blog right away on "Studio 60," "Pirate Masters" or anything else. But in the meantime, I figure I'd pass on this bit of sad-and-yet-not news: the next season of "Battlestar Galactica" will be the last.

Quoth Moore and Eick:

"This show was always meant to have a beginning, a middle and, finally, an end," producers said. "Over the course of the last year, the story and the characters have been moving strongly toward that end, and we've decided to listen to those internal voices and conclude the show on our own terms."

I think most of the hardcore fanboys and girls knew this was coming. Moore's been talking about finality a lot lately, and when the fourth season order was originally 13 episodes, there were reports saying that if it expanded to 22 -- which it eventually did -- that would be a sign that the Sci Fi people were giving the production team a chance to wrap things up.

So go create a kick-ass final season, guys. Better to tell the story you wanted, in the way you wanted, and give it a proper ending, then to drag things out forever and ever.

Because I would feel totally left out if I didn't...

... may I be the latest (and definitely late in the day) blogger to remind you that "Grey's Anatomy" creator Shonda Rhimes is once again blogging about the National Spelling Bee over at A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago. I find Shonda far more appealing when she's crushing on pre-pubescent spellers than when she's doing the same for her own fictional creations, for some reason.

Kidnapped: A look back

One of the requests made during the What Do You Want? thread was a second look at some shows that dropped off my radar as the season went along. I'll try to catch up on some of "Ugly Betty," "Brothers & Sisters" and the like when I can, but thanks to the joy of Netflix, I was able to finish up with "Kidnapped" (which was too much of a pain in the ass to follow on NBC's website), and I really liked what I saw -- while at the same time feeling totally satisfied with the show's cancellation.

Spoiler-y thoughts to follow, though I'll save the really spoiler-y stuff for the very end, so if you haven't watched the remaining episodes but are still thinking about it, I can give you adequate warning before it's too late to turn back.

Of all the complicated serial mystery dramas that tanked this fall, "Kidnapped" was the one I missed the most. ("The Nine" had a better pilot but fell apart almost immediately.) Tremendous cast (especially if you add in recurring players like Doug Hutchison, Anthony Rapp, James Urbaniak and Robert John Burke, or even one-shot guest stars like Tom Noonan), great look and use of New York locations, fairly snappy dialogue (even if, as Fienberg likes to say, Jason Smilovic is, at best, Mamet-Lite), solid action set pieces (including several that had me believing Madchen Amick could be a bad-ass assassin) and, best of all, a format designed to bring closure at the end of a season. Had the show continued, we would've moved on to a new case, with Jeremy Sisto, Delroy Lindo and Carmen Ejogo sticking around and everyone else being replaced. That spared Smilovic and the other writers the hassle of contriving a reason to keep Dana Delany and Timothy Hutton around, and the ability to treat the format as a series of self-contained mysteries instead of one sprawling narrative spared it a lot of the "How do we keep this going?" convolutions that helped sink the likes of "Vanished."

At the same time, I'm glad the show got cut down to only 13 episodes -- or, rather, that NBC didn't order a back nine, while giving Smilovic enough warning that he could write a conclusion -- as I don't think there was 22 episodes worth of story here. There are several episodes in the middle, obviously written before the "wrap it up" marching orders, that are clearly just there as time-fillers, notably an episode where Sisto holds Amick captive while a mystery sniper threatens to kill Lindo's otherwise-inconsequential adult daughter. And you can practically time stamp the moment when Smilovic realized the end was near, as the plot moves into warp speed to get all the players in place for the planned climax in Mexico, followed by a final episode in which the mastermind behind the kidnapping has to give longer-than-usual Fallacy of the Talking Killer speeches to explain exactly how and why all of this happened. Had everyone known from the jump that this would be 13 episodes and out, I imagine the pacing would have been vastly better and we would have been left with a really tight little miniseries thriller.

Still, even with the start-and-stop nature of the storytelling, I was extremely satisfied by how things shook out, which I'll get into in more explicit detail in the next paragraph (so start preparing to bail, unspoiled folk). In a perfect world, "Kidnapped" would have been exhibit A for why American network television could stand to adopt the British model, where a show runs for a limited amount of episodes, finishes its story, then immediately gives way to something else, and only returns if the creators have something more to say. At the very least, it's more evidence that the 13-episode model is a huge part of why your average cable drama is better than your average network drama. When you're only doing 13 instead of 22, especially on a show with serial elements, you're not stuck with that inevitable drag in the middle of the season when nothing interesting can happen because the finale's too far away, and you can spend more time making each episode as good as it can be. With "Kidnapped," nobody showed up for even the first episode; maybe if people had been promised closure in only 13 episodes, that might have been different, or maybe the original "Why should I want to watch them stretch out a story Without a Trace could do in an hour?" complaint would have still applied, I don't know. All I know is that, creatively, a lot of shows would be better at this length.

Some specific spoilers to follow, bullet point-style...

• By far the highlight of the post-NBC episodes was Mykelti Williamson's work as Virgil the bodyguard. Outside of the thrilling shootout in the pilot, he spent most of the network run either absent or lying in a hospital bed, but once you get to the unaired episodes, he's a violent forcre of nature, giving up all traces of humanity in an attempt to save the life of his abducted charge. It's a rip on the Denzel character from "Man on Fire," but as played by Williamson -- an actor at his best when you strip his amount of dialogue to the bone -- it's a good rip. The moment when Virgil and Leopold finally reunite on that Mexican beach was the series' emotional peak, and because there was no need to keep Virgil around for future stories (even before cancellation), the writers were able to treat his injuries with gravity; he basically holds his body together through sheer willpower until he completes his mission, then lets go and dies.
• Some nice stuff from Hutton, who made me believe he could be an ex-thug, when he usually comes across as somewhat effete. For that matter, Sisto's another guy who never screamed action hero before but did a convincing Jack Bauer impression here, particularly during the Tom Noonan episode. And speaking of which...
• The episode where Noonan has Sisto strapped to a chair for some torture and, eventually, execution, was another highlight. When you bring in The Tooth Fairy, you're not messing around. And if I'm not blurring some of the episodes together, this was also the one where we really got into Knapp's backstory as a kid who escaped from the religious cult his mother had joined by climbing barefoot down a rocky mountain. A very creepy, compelling monologue that was.
• As I alluded to above, the revelation that Lindo's buddy Linus Roache was the bad guy required a lot of finessing at the end, not because it contradicted anything that came before, but just because there had barely been any time to drop any hints.

So, did anybody else stick with it to the end? And would you have wanted to watch a second season with Sisto chasing after Anthony Rapp, or did you feel one season was enough for this character and format?

Things You Didn't Want to Know

From the New York Daily News comes word that Alex Rodriguez likes his chicks buff like Chyna.

A petite stripper at the Hustler Club said A-Rod "likes the she-male, muscular type. They brought me up to the champagne room one time. I spun around once and that was it. I'm not his type."

Coincidentally, Tom Cruise likes his strippers muscular and with a little bit more penis. Hey, whatever turns you on. The story also goes on to state that A-Rod is the king of strip clubs, as he often shows up there with his wife.

She said A-Rod often brought his wife to the club "and she's very pretty. I'd rather dance for her any day."

And you know what? Who cares? A-Rod is doing nothing illegal. Besides, when you make that much money, you have to find a way to spend it. Even if it's only $20 at a time. People are offended that A-Rod is cheating on his wife, yet never stop to consider that his wife might be a horrible person. You don't know what is going on behind closed doors.

And as Chris Rock once said, a man is only as faithful as his options. Bloggers hanging around their homes blasting athletes probably don't have the same options as the best player in baseball. But that's just a guess.

Thanks to Titan Tim for the tip.

Letters link

Mailbag column today, focusing on the matter of Jack's father in the "Lost" finale and the "Idol" finale time overrun.

Kobe Bryant Implicated in Dog Fighting

That seems to be the only reason why Kobe would come out and demand a trade. Either that, or he's doing his boss, Old Doc Buss, a solid by taking the heat off his recent DUI. Whatever the case, this Kobe trade business is nonsense because Kobe won�t be traded. As T.J. Simers noted on Sunday, the Lakers need a superstar to fill Staples Center, and Kwame Brown and Lamar Odom won't quite cut it.

But Kobe needs to stand up and be accountable for the mess that he has created. Kobe didn't orchestrate the Shaq trade, and he is owed an apology from those (us included) that insinuated that he did. It's not like he signed his deal the very next day after Shaq was traded to Miami. Oh wait, that is exactly what happened. Must have been a coincidence. But let's play along and pretend that Kobe didn�t demand that trade. He could have made his own free-agent signing contingent on the team keeping Shaq. But it's clear he didn't want to be on the same team, and that's cool.

Don't cry about the team not having enough of a supporting class. Kobe could have signed with the Clippers who had much more talent than the Lakers at that point. And really, the deal for Shaq was actually good for the Lakers in that the team received Odom and Caron Butler who averaged nearly 20 points last season. The only problem is that he did it for Washington because Kobe insisted the team get Brown.

Kobe wanted to be the man on his own team. He might not have sent Shaq out the door, but he held it open for him to leave. Kobe created this mess and he�s not going to be traded. But hey, anything to get that Mike Vick dog-fighting scandal off the radio is alright by us.

Attack of the Apatow

Between the impending release of "Knocked Up," the fascinating New York Times Magazine profile (registration required), and then this brilliant (but NSFW) fake FunnyOrDie clip of Michael "George Michael Bluth" Cera getting fired from the lead role of "Knocked Up," I've had Judd Apatow on the brain the last few days.

Of course, I've often felt like Judd had me -- or someone just like me -- on the brain, as so much of the humor in "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared" felt painfully true to my own life. After the Adam Sandler episode of "Undeclared" -- where Ron's attempts to make Sandler want to be friends with them reminded me of my some of my own inept early celebrity encounters -- I even sent Judd an e-mail complaining that he had built some kind of mind-reading machine and was using it on me. Not surprisingly, a restraining order soon followed, along with him getting a new e-mail address.

So since I'm no longer allowed within a thousand yards of the man (Judd, you know I love you! Call me!), I have to show my love in other ways, like a quick run through YouTube for some of Apatow's greatest hits. You really oughta start with the Cera thing, which is brilliant whether or not you've seen the infamous David O. Russell/Lily Tomlin "I Heart Huckabee's" screaming match that inspired it. But here are some other fine moments of genius from Apatow and his associates -- or, at least, the best that I could find on the YouTubes:

• "The Last Stand of Yakov Smirnoff" remains both my most-quoted sketch from "The Ben Stiller Show" ("I am cold. I am frightened. What will the new world order bring for Yakov?") and the only one Stiller felt the need to apologize for later.
  
• "Die Hard 12: Die Hungry" and "A Few Good Scouts" were probably the Stiller show's two best pure spoofs. I particularly love Taylor Negron's work in the former as the terrorist of unknown ethnic origin.
  
• Not a lot of "Freaks and Geeks" footage to be found (aside from a lot of music video tributes, like this ode to Bill Haverchuck), but this clip about the phrase "You have a beautiful body" does a good job of capturing both the hilarity and the squirminess of one of my favorite shows ever.
  
• "Undeclared" clips are almost as scanty, but enjoy a game of Truth or Dare gone awry and the perils of the Freshman 15.
  
• After the chest-waxing, the finest moment of "40-Year-Old Virgin" is probably the famously-improvised "You know how I know you're gay?" game between Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen.

Enjoy.

The Mid Week Malaise

Hello, Haters. My name is Ted, and I'm the primary author of the sub-par, no-need-to-read blog A Price Above Bip Roberts, but on Wednesdays I stop by Hater Nation to do a little thing called The Mid Week Malaise.

Here's the basic principle: it's Wednesday (duh), and if you have a "normal" work week, that means you're done with 2 days (yay!) but still have 2 days left (boo!), including the seemingly-drags-on-forever Friday afternoon block. And then honestly - what the hell do you have going on this weekend? Maybe a Pirates of the Carribean viewing? Maybe some porn downloading? Maybe watching the Yankees dynasty crumble before our very eyes? Whatever it is, it's probably not THAT exciting.

Face it: your life sucks. However, these 10 people's lives suck WORSE:

The Pistons Brass

Tidbit to Feast On No. 1: if the Pistons manage to lose this series, they will have served as fodder for the coronation of D-Wade and LeBron. Meanwhile, in '03 they took Darko (at least they got to beat his ass in a meaningless first round series!). What if Dumars suddenly starts looking like the new Isiah? That'd be hot.

David Stern and his arsenal of refs

Tidbit to Feast On, No. 2: if the Cavaliers manage to lose this series, does "The No-Call" (the end of Game 2) enter Cleveland lore with "The Drive" and "The Fumble" and "The Shot" and "The Hit?" OK, so no one calls Renteria's base knock in the 11th "The Hit," but it fit my needs for this section. The point is, Cleveland is utterly cursed.

Chauncey Billups

Note to "Big Shot Billups" - when in pursuit of a max contract, do a few different things. Take drugs (Gary Matthews Jr) or nail Alyssa Milano (Carl Pavano). Do NOT, under any circumstances, start playing like yourself circa 1999, when you were basketball's cross between Kenny Lofton and BJ Surhoff.

Danny Ainge

(This happened last Wednesday after I wrote Mid Week Malaise, so it still counts). Alright, so the Corey Brewer Era can begin in Boston. Sigh. Meanwhile, a team you helped make famous in the early 1990s - and who you assumed you had "hoodwinked" for Telfair - is about to start regularly beating your ass.

First Year Managers in Baseball

If the Nationals ever appeared as a tomato can for someone else on FOX's "Game of the Week," I think Manny Acta is at a point with his pitching staff where he'd go up to the booth and ask Thom Brennaman to warm up for the sixth. Meanwhile, Ron Washington has managed to make the Rangers the absolute least relevant team in baseball - an impressive feat, considering the amount of (theoretical) talent on that roster.

Carlos Boozer

It was a lot easier against Shane Battier and a rotating cast of Warriors, wasn't it Dookie?

Michael Vick

A few summers ago, I was chillin' with my friend from Richmond in DC. His brother showed up at the house. Began a sentence, "Man, I was at this dog fight last week..." No doubt that stuff happens in certain corridors of Virginia. No doubt Vick was involved, either. Now he's got this on his plate in addition to yet another new coaching system and having to anchor a team with absolutely nothing on defense. He'll be the NFL's answer to Darius Miles within 18 months.

Kobe Bryant

You want Jerry West back, huh? Do ya? You gon' cry about it? Why don't you go elbow another white player in the grill to make yourself feel better, Employee No. 24.

The NHL Brass

So, let me get this straight. You disappear for an entire season. You sign a TV deal with a network that pre-empts you for a bunch of guys standing in front of manure filing reports on non-humans. You put your championship round on a network that a few people in central Minnesota might know where to find on their TV set. And then - in the midst of all this irrelevance - you wait about six days to actually start the Cup Finals, despite the fact there was NO NBA playoff game last Friday night? Sheesh, Betts. Can I call you Betts? It'll make me feel better about pantsing you later.

Lindsay Lohan

No doubt she needed to make it. The only question of athletic relevance for her: how long until we find out she blew Doc Gooden for drugs? I'd put the over/under at four months.

House: A man stands alone

Spoilers for the "House" third season finale coming up just as soon as I figure out whether I have the power to fire anybody I work with...

From the people who brought you "Tell Cuddy I want Ketamine" comes a different kind of "shocking" cliffhanger: House alone after all his subordinates have either quit or been fired.

Unfortunately, the Ketamine bit -- and the entire season that followed it -- has sapped a lot of the tension from this cliffhanger, because it showed us that the "House" writers aren't interested in actual change, just the illusion of it. House's leg healed for a few episodes, and then he went right back to the same limping pill-popper he was before. Tritter came in and threatened to rip House's world apart, and after a few episodes, all was status quo. Cuddy felt betrayed by how House manipulated her at the end of the Tritter thing, but within a few weeks, their relationship was same as it ever was (same as it ever was). House's sidekicks were all horrified by him faking cancer to get high, and House in turn realized he had hit rock bottom and had to be more human with them, and the following week it was like none of that ever happened.

I really like "House." It's a lot of fun, Hugh Laurie is doing brilliant work every week, the supporting players have adjusted well to his rhythms over the years, and it's one of the few network procedural dramas where the actual cases don't feel like afterthoughts. (Most of the fall procedural pilots I've watched could learn a thing or 20 from this show.) But it's one of the most formulaic Great Dramas on television, present or past, which means there need to be periodic resets to the status quo. There can be changes on the fringes -- Cameron and Chase dating, Cuddy trying to have a baby, Foreman maturing -- but the key elements of House the socially abrasive genius and his fractured relationships with his colleagues have to remain relatively stable.

So you'll forgive me if I don't spend my summer chewing my fingernails over the prospect of Omar Epps, Jennifer Morrison and Jesse Spencer leaving the show. I expect we'll come back in the fall with House working solo, or having recruited some new subordinates to bully (maybe he can bring back the trio of chatty med students from "Three Stories"), and over the course of the first half-dozen episodes, Foreman, Chase and Cameron will find themselves drawn back into House's orbit.

Now, I don't know anything about the contract details for Epps, Morrison and Spencer (though actors traditionally sign contracts that run four years or more when they agree to do a series), and for all I know Ausiello or Kristin or somebody will have a story up later today where one of the "House" producers explains that one or all of those actors are leaving. But right now, this one smells to me like another false cliffhanger, a twist to shake things up for a few episodes in the fall before everything goes right back to normal.

Which isn't to say it was a bad episode. Hugh Laurie did a great job depicting House's complete inability to diagnosis a cure for his Foreman problem, Cameron developing real feelings for Chase was sweet (if predictable), and I liked the patient and her husband's handling of House. (Though their grasp of the English language made a quantum leap from the opening scene to the end of the episode.) I'm just feeling blase about the cliffhanger stuff.

What did everybody else think? Does anybody believe the show is done with one or more of those characters?

The Shield: The man with no brain

Spoilers for "The Shield" coming up just as soon as I go peek in that window...

So much is going on right now that almost all of it will have to carry over to next season, I expect. But for now, I feel like I have to take note of the following: Shane, you unbelievable idiot! Billings, you magnificent bastard! Cruz, you... wait, who are you again?

On a dumbness scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being Corrinne accepting Kavanaugh's stick of gum and 10 being Aceveda staying alone in that house where he got raped, Shane voluntarily giving up the money train robbery to Franka -- even in such a way that allegedly keeps his own name out of it -- is a 97. He's dealt with the Armenians before. How can he not recognize that this knowledge will lead to the deaths of Vic and Ronnie -- and maybe more people? And yet it's the same sort of move that Shane always makes when he's left to operate without Vic. The man constantly overestimates his own cleverness and vastly underestimates just how ruthless his new criminal buddies can be. (See also Antwon.)

Meanwhile, Billings gets his spectacular vengeance on the Dutchman, nudging Tina and Hiatt together and then turning Dutch into a peeping Tom forced to watch them make the beast with two backs. Vicious, hilarious and brilliant. David Marciano has been such a great addition to this show, and while I miss the Dutch/Claudette team, Dutch/Billings has its own pleasures.

Finally, we have Aceveda's buddy (or so Aceveda thinks) Cruz stepping in as Vic's white knight after the comptroller calls Vic's bluff on the blackmail scheme. This guy has been hovering in the background all season, but we knew he was trouble after Aceveda was moronic enough to tell him about Hernan. (Who's up, by the way, for Walton Goggins and Benito Martinez to star, in character, in "Dumb and Dumber 3"? Come on, who's with me?)

So, lot of balls in the air, very few likely to come down next week, but I'm intrigued. What did everybody else think?

Reilly out, Silverman in

Today's column looks at the Kevin Reilly-for-Ben Silverman executive shuffle at NBC, which was sad but inevitable. (A lot of us assumed that Reilly would be fired much sooner than this, as a fall guy for Zucker's sins.) There are also some brief thoughts at the end on Lifetime's "Army Wives," which I didn't hate. (Probably wouldn't watch it again voluntarily, though.)

Clemens to Return Against Sox

Too bad it will be against the Chicago White Sox, and not the Red Sox. Manager Joe Torre does not want Roger Clemens to pitch against the Red Sox because that would fly in the face of the skipper's strategy to fall behind the Sox by more than 20 games before June 1.

Now, some might want to pin this on Roger, but don't be that guy. Clemens is many things, chicken is not one of them. Remember, Roger took his beaning like a man when he went to Shea Stadium in the year following his head-hunting of Mike Piazza. So the dude isn't afraid of anything. And hey, maybe Torre's strategy is sound, considering he doesn't want to upset his murderer's row of front-line starters.

But how pissed are executives from ESPN right now, who would want nothing more than for Clemens to return to Fenway Sunday night? So close chumps. Maybe Roger can pitch in one of the networks other numerous showings of this rivalry during the summer.

Pilot Watch 2007: CBS

You should be able to recite my pilot disclaimer in your sleep by now: these are just first impressions, not reviews, because too many things can and will change between now and September.

CBS has five new series, but only sent out full pilots for the three below. The vampire detective show "Moonlight" is being retooled, and they say there was never a full pilot made anyway, and all I have of that and "Kid Nation" is the cut-down from the upfront, which I don't want to watch because the cut-downs inevitably give away stuff that I'd rather find out about in context.

Fienberg beat me to the punch for once on the CBS pilots, and once again our thoughts are going to be eerily similar (he even claims that he made a note of the Gary Cole point I make below, but didn't remember to include it in the final version), once again doing little to disprove the theory that we're the same person.

"The Big Bang Theory"
Who's in it: Kaley Cuoco, Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons
What it's about: "Beauty and the Geek: The Sitcom," in which two Cal Tech nerds befriend the blonde hottie who moves in across the hall.
Pluses: The traditional setup-joke paradigm is on its last legs, but co-creator Chuck Lorre (of "Two and a Half Men" and "Dharma & Greg" fame) is one of the few working sitcom writers who can occasionally breathe a little life into it. I laughed a few times, particularly at the odd line readings of Parsons.
Minuses: A major plot point of the pilot: the hot blonde's shower breaks, so she has to shower (and parade around in a towel) in the nerds' apartment. This is an actual plot in a sitcom being made in 2007. In general, the show threatens to make "Two and a Half Men" seem like a model of subtlety.

"Cane"
Who's in it: Jimmy Smits, Hector Elizondo, Nestor Carbonell, Rita Moreno, Polly Walker and more.
What it's about: "Godfather"-style soap about a Cuban-American family trying to protect their sugar and rum empire.
Pluses: Some good performances, especially by Smits and Carbonell, a venue that will give a lot of talented but underemployed Latin-American actors a chance to show their stuff (as regulars or guest stars), and a world that doesn't feel like one I've seen a million times before.
Minuses: The CBS house style gives this a flat, cheap TV look that ruins a lot of attempts to create a "Godfather" vibe (an outdoor party scene that's clearly meant to evoke all those Corleone shindigs seems to have 7 guests). The subplots about the younger generation of the family feel like nothing more than what they are: a futile attempt to get kids to watch an '80s-style CBS soap opera. If this show succeeds, Carbonell may not be able to go back to "Lost," meaning we won't find out whether Richard's immortal or the "Lost" makeup team just had a bad day at the office.

"Viva Laughlin"
Who's in it: Lloyd Owen, Madchen Amick and, in a semi-recurring role, Hugh Jackman
What it's about: Remake of BBC's "Viva Blackpool" miniseries, a crime/romance/musical hybrid about an aspiring casino owner in a small gambling town.
Pluses: Jackman (who's also a producer) is sensational in his few minutes of screen time, particularly an entrance that has him singing along to "Sympathy for the Devil." (As with the original, the music numbers aren't quite singing and aren't quite lip-synching.)
Minuses: Jackman's future availability is unclear, and the show suffers badly without him. Owen comes across like Gary Cole playing Mike Brady (albeit without the perm, I guess), not nearly charismatic enough to carry such an odd genre mash-up, and Eric Winter seems far too generic to be playing the quirky homicide cop (a role originated by David Tennant). There are only four or five musical numbers in the whole hour. That's probably a fair representation of what production will be able to do on a weekly basis, but the long gaps between songs only serve to remind you that they're by far the most interesting thing about the show.

Bombs and 'Palms'

Been a while since I've had two column links in the same day, especially out-of-season, but today there be two: a review of CBS News' special about the IED that killed four people and nearly killed reporter Kimberly Dozier a year ago today, and a brief review of the CW's long-delayed "Hidden Palms," which CW folk insist is not Summer Burn-Off Theatre.

The Post Mortem

John Miller is obviously still smarting from the Angels defeat of the San Francisco Giants in the 2002 World Series. Especially if the Giants broadcaster called the Angels sweep of the Yankees a �shock.�

Really, a shock?

The Angels have won 18 of their last 26 games against the Bronx Bummers, hardly a "shock." The Angels, much like the rest of the rest of the AL this season, own the Yankees. Nothing shocking.

Will the Yankees ever consider dealing some of its aging players as they continue to tumble further out of the race? The Angels could make a play for Alex Rodriguez for merely prospects at this point because the Yankees have no need for Major Leaguers. This season is over for New York. They have no prayer of catching Boston, but the Indians, Tigers and A�s are better teams. (And the A�s have that 25-4 August coming.) But hey, Roger Clemens is only going to make, what, $30M this season?

Orlando Cabrera took his shots at the Yankees fans in the LA Times on Sunday.

"They don't appreciate good baseball," he said. "They just appreciate the Yankees beating up on everybody." "In Boston, they admire baseball," Cabrera said. "In Anaheim, those fans are some of the best in baseball. They know you care there. They know you can't do it every day. I appreciate that. These people here, they're mean. And they're really mean to the other team."

Word.

SHUT UP KOBE

Kobe Bryant's tenure as General Manager of the Los Angeles Lakers has been brutal. The guy gets Shaq shipped to South Beach, and now he is complaining that he doesn't have enough help? Trading Shaq was the right thing to do. But the Lakers hands have been tied in recent years because, let's face it, nobody is interested in helping the Lakers out in a trade. Now, callers to sports-talk radio have put together numerous packages that include Smush Parker, Brian Cook and a draft pick for Kevin Garnett, but that's not going to happen.

The team's only bargaining chip, Andrew Bynum, has become valuable considering that Greg Oden is in the division, so you can�t trade him. And remember, Bynum is only a year older than Oden, but he already has a couple of years of NBA experience under his belt. Jermaine O�Neal needed some time to develop, so be patient.

And that goes for Kobe, too. This is the team that you wanted.

• Wow, hope you didn�t blink and miss that UFC main event title fight on Saturday night. How does that feel when you marquee personality is knocked out in less than two minutes, probably ending his career? Yes, human cockfighting mixed martial arts is the next big thing. At least this shows that UFC guys aren�t smart enough to fix its matches. Enjoy your next UFC title fight on the Vs. Network next year.

• Maybe the UFC should look to groom one of Mike Vick's dogs as its next champion. The dog would be more articulate than Frank Trigg.

• Peyton Manning wins a Super Bowl in the rain. Now the Indy 500, where Manning served as starter, was called early because of the rain. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing.

• Did you notice that the Indy 500 coverage went overboard on the Ashley Judd front? Like the ABC execs said, "Listen, we are going to show one famous broad celebrating today." And Judd is with some Indy racing dude? Was this news to anybody else? Kind of figured she was the kind of girl who would end up with Richie Farmer or John Pelphrey.

• Alright, how long has Cleveland had a dude who looks like Sideshow Bob? This obviously isn't news to anybody who follows the NBA (all six of you), but damn it, that won�t stop THN from making stupid jokes about it.

• Justin Guarini. Yeah, that works, too. Sorry, this is a whole new window that was opened up. Kind of like somebody who just started watching Entourage for the first time back in March and won�t shut up about it now? And that becomes extremely annoying because, you know, the guy has still only seen the first season.

• Wait a minute, Ottawa has a black goalie? Who else thought that was just some rapper in a Senators jersey? Hey, if the Suns can win with Steve Nash, then anything is possible.

• There was a certain electricity in Anaheim on Monday night. Hockey is not dead in Southern California. Not enough to make a few of us refrain from going to the Angels game instead of watching the Stanley Cup finals at The National, but at least we cheered like hell when it was announced that the Ducks won. Hey, that�s progress.

• ASU's Pat Murphy, as a member of the NCAA selection committee, didn�t put Fullerton into the Sun Devils� regional, obviously still quivering from the shadow of the Titans. Good luck to the West Coast teams.

AND FINALLY

Thankfully the Duke lacrosse team lost its bid for a national championship on Monday. Now, those kids might have been innocent of sexually assaulting that exotic dancer, but looking at those kids, you know they were guilty of something. Seriously, those kids looked like the poster boys for Rohypnol Monthly. If they weren't guilty of this crime, they were guilty of something. It's only a matter of time before one of those punks are lobbying the president to go to war with some defenseless country in order to make a profit.

A Hater Nation Mourns

Dumb Donald was so dumb. (How dumb was he?) Dumb Donald was so dumb, he didn't realize that Charles Nelson Reilly was dead because his (blank) was always stiff.

It is with great regret that The Hater Nation must announce that Charles Nelson Reilly has passed away. Hang tough, friends. He has now moved on to that great big Match Game in the sky.

Sharapova: Potty Mouth

The Post Mortem will come to live Tuesday because of the holiday weekend. Or maybe late Monday depending on how many Miller High Life's are consumed. So check out Maria Sharapova cursing out an umpire. Don't be ashamed for liking this.



Thanks for the link, Deadspin.

The Weak Ender

Sorry for the delay, but Josh Hancock�s father is suing THN and the Gridiron Apocalypse for offering a six-pack of Hamms, which might or might not have been one of the contributing factors of the pitcher�s death.

Speaking of people who should meet the business end of a tow truck, Rosie O�Donnell is in the news again for picking a fight with our girl, Elisabeth Filarski, on The View. Has it dawned on anybody the way the producers have stacked that show with the lady on the right side of the isle being significantly more attractive than the gal on the other side of the isle? That�s the kind of stuff you would expect from FOX News.

Donald Trump, of course, had to weigh in claiming that Filarski is the dumbest person on television, oblivious that Keyshawn Johnson has signed a deal with ESPN.

Yep, that was quite a build-up for a Keyshawn joke.

• There are rumors swirling that Donovan McNabb could be headed for Chicago. That is one of those deals that looks good on paper, but probably won�t happen. NFL teams just don�t seem to make many blockbuster trades. But how pissed would Trent Green be if this trade happened before he was traded? Still, don�t you�re your breath on this one.

• Anybody else prepared for a Jason Giambi for Ervin Santana trade? Honestly, it�s coming. When you wake up and see a score like 12-0, do you even have to ask who was starting? But we aren�t covering any new ground here. But here�s a quick jeer for Columbia Sussex, the new owners of the Tropicana who do not have FOX Sports on its dish package. And if you look at the new plans, Columbia Sussex seems intent on ruining the Tropicana. Ask the former owners of the Aladdin how aping its casino and keep its name worked out for it. This is just depressing. Columbia Sussex also has a bad reputation for mismanaging casinos. Maybe they can get Rick Tocchet to run its joints, seeing that he needs work.

• Kellie Pickler is the latest hockey groupie. This sport may live in oblivion on some obscure cable network, but these guys certainly score some attractive women.

• The John Smoltz thing would be more impressive if the saves stat was more meaningful. Yeah, getting three outs against a National League lineup is quite a challenge. Well, for people other than Brad Lidge. But what is admirable is that Smoltz was willing to take any role for the Braves to win, and that is something you don�t see from baseball players every day. And hey, he shows up for the entire season.

THE LINKS

• Alright, the link for Bucs Stats was incorrect on Wednesday. Scott has been a Comment Monkey almost from the beginning, so please excuse the error.

• Blog Cabins discusses Armageddon v. Deep Impact. Brilliant.

• Mark Cuban weighs in the draft lottery. But he drinks Bud Light? Seriously, he doesn�t want those gay rumors to go away.

• Rumors and Rants laments when the Indy 500 used to be cool. Now it�s just a couple of chicks driving while talking on cell phones. How that is any different than your typical driver on the 405?

• LA Seitz really hates Santana. Better be careful rolling through Chicago.

• Insomniac's Lounge longs for football season.

• Looking for a way to get linked here? Mention Ric Flair.

AND FINALLY

The Steroid Nation notes that Mike Vick could make a good deal of money franchising Pit Bull fighting here in the U.S. As disturbing as it is, that might not be far off. At least if the current direction with UFC is any indication. The only difference between a UFC fighter and a Pit Bull fighter is that the dog is probably a little bit smarter, and people actually care if the dog lives.

Obviously, the dogs are forced into fighting and the whole notion of raising dogs to fight is clearly despicable. But the point is that if America is embracing, as the Hatriot called it, �Human Cock Fighting,� how long before the bloodlust turns to dog fighting? Maybe Vick should be seen as a visionary and a step ahead of the curve.

What do you want? (2007)

Summer is an unusual time for this blog. The great majority of shows I track are network sitcoms and dramas, all of which will be gone for the next few months (or in the case of a "Lost," an entire pregnancy). Obviously, there are some new and returning cable shows I'm gonna cover (the first three "Rescue Me"s arrived in the mail today, and I'd like to be more diligent with my "Weeds" and "Big Love" commentary this year than last), but there's going to be a lot of playing by ear.

A year ago at this time, I asked you all what summer shows -- new or returning, scripted or reality -- you'd like to see me write about. In going back over your requests, I see that I didn't take up a single one of them on a regular basis (how's that for customer service?), but I remain open to suggestions. Fire away, and we'll see what happens.

Lost & Heroes: The ol' switcheroo

For today's column, I returned one last time to the "Lost" / "Heroes" compare/contrast that I'd been doing frequently this year in print and here on the blog:

On Wednesday at 11 p.m., we came to the end of another network TV season, which means it's time for another one of my season-ending mea culpas:

To the producers of "Lost," I've been too hard on you this year.

To the producers of "Heroes," I may have been far too easy.

That I came to these twin realizations only after watching the shows' respective season finales may seem unfair. After all, you're not supposed to judge a season on a single episode, right? Yet what happened -- or, in some cases, didn't happen -- in each of the finales made me reconsider much of what I've said and written about these shows.

To read the full column, click here.

Studio 60: Addition by subtraction

Ahhh, Summer Burn-Off Theatre, the lifeblood of a TV blogger in that otherwise deathly period between the end of the network season and the premieres of all the summer cable shows. "Studio 60" spoilers coming up just as soon as I locate my blood squibs...

I wrestled with whether to write anything about the burn-off run of "Studio 60." I was such an early and fervent basher of the show that it led me to have words with Aaron Sorkin, and the idea of continuing to trash the show after it's already been canceled feels like overkill.

And yet I felt the need to tune in tonight for the same reason I kept watching all fall, well after I had realized how much I disliked the show, when readers of this blog and my column know how quick I am to give up on series that just aren't doing it for me. "Studio 60" was awful, but it was compellingly awful. Maybe, I thought, the final episodes would continue to provide object lessons in how not to do a weekly drama series.

Instead, oddly, the first post-cancellation episode turned out to be kinda decent -- not least because Matt, Danny and Jordan were absent from the entire hour. (At least from final cut, anyway; all four episode-specific photos on NBC's media site feature Whitford and/or Perry, suggesting they were in the episode at an early stage and got cut at the end.) I know I wrote often that Matthew Perry was the best thing about the show (or maybe second best, after Steven Weber), but the Matt character was insufferable most of the time, and the Danny/Jordan relationship was the second-biggest miscalculation of the entire series -- after only Sorkin's belief that anyone would like or be interested in the Matt/Harriet relationship.

So keeping the three alleged stars out of the picture all night allowed the show to breathe instead of drowning in the usual fumbled attempts at romantic comedy involving actors and characters with zero on-screen chemistry. Instead, Sorkin got to focus on something he does well: farce. This was no "Thespis," but it was light, it moved, and it put most of the load on three actors with excellent comedy chops: Tim Busfield, Weber (amusingly drunk for the whole show), and Allison Janney. I suppose it should be confusing that Janney was playing herself as an ex-"West Wing" star and sharing scenes with the actor who had played her love interest on that show but was playing a different character here, but the two played so well off each other -- just as Busfield and Weber did -- that I didn't much care.

The hour still had some of the usual "Studio 60" problems. After being briefly appealing in the early going (especially when she was imitating Janney's spaz-out during the gangster sketch), Harriet went right back to being insufferable and pathetic as she once again let the rest of the world lecture her on what to do with her romantic life. When Dylan said, "I'm not sure why the two of you aren't just together," I wanted to scream, "BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO CHEMISTRY AND ARE EMOTIONALLY ABUSIVE TO EACH OTHER AT EVERY TURN!" (I didn't, but only because that would have woken up my daughter, who needs her sleep to beat the flu.) And Simon's two-dates-for-one-trip subplot was, like Jordan and Danny getting locked on the roof, another example of Sorkin ripping off the kind of incredibly low-brow TV he tries to act above. (And with the roof story, at least he had the semi-decency to have Danny complain about what a hackneyed situation it was, where nobody bothered to comment on how Simon had suddenly turned into Jack Tripper or Peter Brady.)

Overall, though, I didn't hate this one. The previews for the next episode prominently feature Perry, Whitford and Peet, so I imagine I'll be writing a screed a week from now. (Assuming, of course, that the ratings aren't so terrible that NBC doesn't just pull the plug on this experiment and go back to "ER" reruns.) But for one night, I'm glad I don't have to kick the sick puppy.

What did everybody else think?

Pilot Watch 2007: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Wrapping up my look at the Fox pilots with one of the season's more anticipated shows, albeit one that won't be airing until mid-season.

Repeat after me: This is not a review, just a first impression. I understand that many things can and will change between now and when the show actually airs.

"The Sarah Connor Chronicles"
Who's in it: Lena Headey, Thomas Dekker, Summer Glau
What it's about: Spin-off of the "Terminator" movies, picking up a few years after "Terminator 2," with Sarah and John Connor on the run, until the arrival of some more machines from the future convinces them to change their plan.
Pluses: Headey's very good, and while she doesn't live up to the intensity (not to mention the biceps) of Linda Hamilton in "T2," the character as written and performed in that movie wouldn't be sustainable for a series. This is a happy medium. "Firefly" fans will be very pleased with Glau's role in the story. Owain Yeoman, of all people (late of "Kitchen Confidential" and the never-seen "Commando Nanny," but also of "The Nine"), makes a more-than-passable old-school Terminator. Several exciting action sequences.
Minuses: Not sold on Dekker as the future messiah, even though the character spends much of the pilot complaining that he doesn't fit the part, either. The action's good but not superlative, and with very rare exceptions (essentially "Alias," "24" and "Lost"), series TV action tends to get worse, not better, as the production grind goes along. Doesn't necessarily feel like a long-term concept. The script relies a lot on people's memory of a 16-year-old movie (there's a lot of Miles Dyson talk), yet it monkeys enough with the continuity of the movies ("T3" essentially can't co-exist with this story) that the hardcore fanboys are going to complain.

Pilot Watch 2007: Fox dramas (mostly)

Okay, so I had intended to watch all four of Fox's drama pilots yesterday, saving the presumed best ("Sarah Connor Chronicles") for last, but other work issues kept getting in the way and I only saw three of them. And since I don't know that I'll have time to watch "Sarah Connor" today, I figured I'd just post what I'd already done.

You should be able to recite the usual disclaimer from memory by now: These aren't reviews, just first impressions of shows that can and/or will make significant changes between now and September.

"Canterbury's Law"
Who's in it: Julianna Margulies, Linus Roache, Ben Shenkman, Jocko Sims and Trieste Dunn
What it's about: A defense lawyer still trying to reassemble her personal life after a tragedy gets a reputation for taking on unpopular cases, like a mentally ill man accused of killing a little boy.
Pluses: Denis Leary and company have managed to create a show with a female heroine that isn't dripping with the misogyny that too often infects "Rescue Me." Margulies character is deeply-flawed, but in a sympathetic way, and well-played by her. Nice to see Shenkman (from "Angels in America") in a semi-weasely role as an ex-DA who now works for Margulies but still behaves like a prosecutor.
Minuses: I feel like I've seen all of this before on old episodes of "The Practice," though Margulies is a vastly better actor than Dylan McDermott.

"K-Ville"
Who's in it: Anthony Anderson, Cole Hauser, John Carroll Lynch, Tawny Cypress
What it's about: A New Orleans cop (Anderson) whose partner deserted him during the Katrina flooding has to break in a new partner (Hauser) while patrolling the devastated streets of the city.
Pluses: As anyone who watches "The Shield" knows, Anderson is a fine dramatic actor with great presence, and he's given the kind of complicated, verge of a nervous breakdown type character that usually goes to middle-aged white guys like Dennis Franz and Denis Leary. Hauser's a solid strong-but-silent type. The setting and location filming are tremendous; I got choked up just watching some of the B-roll footage of devastated houses scrawled with anti-government graffiti ("Fix Everything My Ass" being a highlight).
Minuses: The setting threatens to overwhelm the fairly stock mystery plot at the center of the pilot. A twist involving Hauser's backstory has the potential to be very dumb if not handled correctly down the line.

"New Amsterdam"
Who's in it: Nicolaj Coster Waldau, Alexie Gilmore, Stephen Henderson and Zuleikha Robinson
What it's about: After saving the life of a Native American woman, a Dutch colonial soldier is made immortal -- at least until he meets his one true love, at which point he's supposed to turn back into one of us -- and in the present day works as a homicide detective in the NYPD.
Pluses: Novel twist on a lot of old cop show tropes -- our hero is in AA, where he boasts of having something like 16,000 days sober -- and Waldau's an interesting leading man. I want to give this one a long look just to see what he does next.
Minuses: Waldau's American accent is far more inconsistent than, say, Damian Lewis on "Life," and while there's a built-in excuse for it (is 400 years enough time to shake off all those glottal stops?), nobody ever mentions it, not even the new partner who's suspicious about everything else he says and does. The one true love aspect feels like something that would lend itself far better to a movie than an ongoing series, especially since we're allegedly introduced to her in the pilot. (Maybe they could subtitle this "Have you met Nicolaj Coster Waldau?") As with "K-Ville" and "Life," the actual murder mystery stories are going to need punching up.

Lost: Beware of the beard

Wow. After Monday night and this, I really feel like I'm going to have to take back a lot of those "'Lost' could learn a lesson or two from 'Heroes'" columns, you know. Season finale spoilers coming up just as soon as I pick up some good vibrations... Oh, and if you're visiting this blog via an RSS or XML reader (which doesn't have spoiler-protection, since I publish entries in their entirety), I'm warning you right now that I'm getting into some hardcore wackiness right from the jump.

Obvious first question: when did you figure out that the flashback was not, in fact, a flashback, and why? The beard alone had me raising an eyebrow, and once Jack's ex-wife turned up alive and well, my wheels started spinning about whose death in the newspaper story could have Jack this upset (we know how Jack found out about Christian's death, and his mom was still alive when he went to Sydney, and I don't think Bai Ling was a candidate), but the tipping point was the cell phone, which looked far too sleek for Jack to be using pre-2003. By the time the car pulled up at the airport, I knew it would be Kate.

Which isn't to say I was unsatisfied with that portion of the episode, or the episode as a whole, which was packed with the kind of bing-bang-boom payoffs to elements from earlier in the season that the "Heroes" finale was sorely lacking. (And I'm going to stop making the comparisons right now. Or not. I'm writing as I go, a little too keyed-up for bed just yet.)

Hurley's magic bus turned out to be there for more than comic relief and a piece of Ben's biography. Charlie sacrificed himself as Desmond predicted. (And how frikking scary was it to see Bakunin smiling in the porthole as he pulled the grenade pin? Was he blowing himself up because Desmond's spear shot had already killed him, or will he return next season to continue his role as the island's Rasputin?) Alex found out that Rousseau was her mother -- from Ben, of all people, who occasionally does the decent thing, even if it's for a manipulative reason -- and Sawyer finally got his revenge for Walt's abduction on his watch.

(Speaking of which, Malcolm David Kelley's appearance was a good reminder of why Cuselof had to get him the hell off the island. What was he, eight feet tall? On the downside, boo to ABC or Cuselof or whoever for putting his name, and Sonya Walger's, in the guest credits, the same way that the big surprise of the "Veronica Mars" finale got spoiled by that. As "Battlestar Galactica" proved this season, you can shock people a hell of a lot more if you save a name or two to run after the episode's over, contractual obligations be damned.)

But while it's fun to dwell on all the big action beats of the finale (also including a trussed-up Sayid letting his feet do the talking to that dude's neck), what we obviously have to spend the next eight months analyzing is where the hell the show goes next season. Does the flashforward come true -- and, if so, does rescue happen immediately, or is there somehow a way to stall it? Or is this something like the "Five Years Gone" scenario from "Heroes" (there I go with the comparisons again), where someone with time-altering powers (oh, I dunno, Desmond?) prevents it from happening? Or, to get back to "Galactica," is this a legitimate time-jump, one that will eventually have Bearded Jack gathering all the survivors together to return to the island and some kind of premise reboot?

In the here and now, is Ben right about Naomi's people, or is this just more of his paranoid ravings designed to keep anyone from leaving the island? (Naomi did, after all, know who Desmond was, and who Penny was; Penny's "I'm not on a boat" confusion doesn't automatically mean Naomi's people aren't working for her; it could just be that she thought it would be adequately conveyed to Desmond that she wasn't there.) Who's the person in the coffin? Is the "he" waiting for Kate at home Sawyer, or was he the one in the box?

I have pissed and moaned about this show an awful lot this season, and I still feel like a lot of the complaints were justified -- especially about the six fall episodes, and Jack's idiotic behavior throughout -- but I have to give Damon and Carlton credit for pulling things together in the home stretch. They gave us an original castmember flashback episode that didn't feel redundant ("D.O.C."); a great showdown between the two Sawyers'; Locke returning to crazy, when-in-doubt-blow-stuff-up form; some superb action and confrontations throughout the finale, and the massive mind(bleep) of Bearded Jack back on the mainland.

Back at the start of the season, before I had gotten burned out on The Others' torture and manipulations, I said I didn't honestly care if I ever got real answers to the show's mysteries, so long as the series kept me entertained on an episode-by-episode, or even moment-by-moment, basis, and this last batch of shows has sure done that. I refuse to waver from my "they're making it up as they go along" theory until proven otherwise, but at the moment, I don't much care. That was a lot of fun, and this hiatus is going to feel awfully long.

What did everybody else think? I'm sure everybody has their theories and analysis, so fire away.

The talk about the American Idol winner thread

I was asked not to write a liveblog style story on the finale this year and instead do a straight news story on who won, but feel free to comment on the unsurprising result or anything else that happened on the finale -- like the way the show threw Antonella and, to a lesser extent, Sanjaya under the bus by giving them the freakshow treatment.

The spoiler policy. Again.

The number of comments I'm being forced to delete because they contain future spoilers has reached a point where I feel like I'm going to have to repost the following every single day until it stops. So here goes:

This site is a spoiler-free zone. Obviously, there are spoilers about things that have already aired -- and warnings to protect people who watch TV on their own schedule in these days, but my posts and the comments that follow are not meant to spoil anything that hasn't aired yet.

I don't care what kind of juicy rumor you heard on the radio, or read on another site, or heard from you best friend's cousin who works for craft services at Silvercup Studios or whatever. DO NOT POST ANY KIND OF SPOILER, OR EVEN RUMOR ABOUT A SPOILER, HERE. I'm just going to delete it as soon as I see it, so there won't be any discussion of what you wrote, and you'll just be annoying me, your normally friendly host.

We all clear on this?

The Mid-Week Malaise

Hello, Haters. My name is Ted, and predominantly you can find me over at A Price Above Bip Roberts, although for the foreseeable future, I'll be doing a little Wednesday gig here at Hater Nation.

The name of the gig is "Mid-Week Malaise," and here's the essential premise: it's only Wednesday. If you have a normal work schedule, you got 2 days BEHIND you, sure - but also 2 days in front of you. And what are you gonna do this weekend, anyway? Go to Home Depot with wifey? Sit around and pretend to read something off a national best-seller list? My ass. You're gonna feel sorry for yourself.

In the process of doing THAT - and in the process of thinking to yourself hourly, "Man, another 2 days of this crap?" - The Mid Week Malaise is going to provide you with a list of people whose lives are worse than yours at present. Don't we all need to bask in the reflected sorrows of others from time to time to feel better about ourselves?

Hell yes, we do. And here we go now:

Danny Ainge

Alright, let me get this straight. You could have had Greg Oden (arguably the best big man in two decades) or Kevin Durant (maybe the best combo forward since Garnett) to lead your proud franchise out of misery alongside some other good young players. Instead, you're probably going to get Corey Brewer, Joakim Noah, or - if you're the idiot everyone wants to believe you are - that Chinese dude, Yi Jianlian. Sigh. What is it with good players from the 1980s having such a crappy run of luck as executives? What water is Joe Dumars drinking that the rest of you aren't? Oh yea. The fire water.

Marc Iavaroni

You were a favorite, according to some reports, to be the next head coach of the Sonics. Now, though, things might be different. They have the No. 2 pick, which means either Durant or Oden - pending a trade - is going to the Emerald City. That player, coupled with Ray Allen shooting healthy three balls, could be enough to keep the team there. I don't think Lenny Wilkens is about to hand the reins of this bus to a lifelong assistant with a few quick stints here and there doing more. He'll probably take the job himself, or give it to Rick Carlisle or (gasp!) Dwayne Casey or someone. So, Mr. Iavaroni, get ready for another season where you win 60 games out-gunning everyone and then lose in the Western Finals to a rejuvenated-by-their-loss-to-the-Warriors Mavericks team.

Joe Torre

Two wins in a row (Sunday and Monday) was nice and all, but it comes down to this: if you bite it to the Red Sox today, that means you'll have lost back-to-back series against your two biggest rivals - the one across the city, and the one up I-95. We realize it's not necessarily Joe's fault (have you seriously sat down and looked at this pitching staff?), but it might be time for things to change in YankeeLand eventually. Cashman should bite it, Torre should bite it, and they should just start over with the same philosophy they had in the mid-1990s: build through the farm, not through the drug-addled dollar.

The city of Denver

Let's summarize, shall we? The Nuggets win Game 1 against the Spurs. Guess what? The Spurs are en route to another Finals appearance, and the Nuggs didn't win another game. The Avalanche missed the playoffs for the first time in forever. The Rockies are in dead last in the NL West. The Broncos missed the playoffs on the final day of the regular season last year, and now there's a restraining order out on one of their tight ends. Sheesh. Mile Low is more like it.

Dominik Hasek

Hasek, arguably the best goalie of the past two decades, has a scant one Stanley Cup title (2002) to his name. He had a legitimate shot to add another this year, or so it seemed: after the hit on Tomas Holmstrom in Game 3, Chris Pronger was sat down (i.e. suspended) for Game 4. If the Wings had won that puppy, Game 5 would have been back at the Joe with a chance to take it home; instead, Detroit dropped that game, and in the deciding Game 6, Hasek let that red light behind him go off a bit too much early on as the Ducks made their second Cup Finals appearance in the past four years. This might have been Hasek's last best chance to reach the ice's promised land.

The good people of Buffalo

We won't belabor the point - Music City Miracle, Norwood, skate in the crease - but Buffalo has had some bad ass luck when it comes to sports. Perhaps more importantly, the city itself blows. I was out there once on a Sunday night back in 2003, and while I'm not claiming any city has a truly bustling social dynamic on a Sunday, Buffalo was just utterly depressing to be in. This year, the absolute best team in the NHL (theoretically) bit it in five games to a good Senators team made good by basically just their first line. And let's be honest here: the Bills, who lost almost everyone this off-season and gained a few rookies and also-rans, aren't going to contend in a pretty solid AFC East. Cry, cry Buffalo.

Jerry Sloan

Maybe if this was 1998, things would be different. You could take out the Spurs - heck, you did that year in the Western Semis, 4-1 - and there'd be no Michael Jordan awaiting you on the next step of the bracket, and maybe you'd win your first ever NBA Championship as a coach. As it stands, you've got a really solid roster that has no idea how to win in San Antonio or even to compete against the Spurs' Big Three in general. You might get the broom taken to you, Jerry, in the same year you were called by a former player, "... the absolute worst person..." he's ever met.

Barry Bonds

When you do this, the man you're doing it over (Aaron) won't be there, and there's a high probability the man who presides over the whole spectacle of your life (Selig) won't either. Not to mention, if you don't start sending some balls into orbit right about now, you're not going to be close enough to do it in Boston off of Schilling, which is a home run that would literally redefine the entire baseball world. Let's get cracking, B-Squared.

Michael Vick and Clinton Portis

One of you may have dogs beaten on your property; the other condones it. Both are you are idiots. Here's a bigger issue: both of you, on the field, are capable of so much more than you actually provide. Mr. Vick, you won a playoff game at Lambeau a few years ago, for chrissakes. What have you done for me lately? Mr. Portis, stop talking about your Mississippi roots and go out and run for a relevant 1,400 yards, lead the Skins to the NFC East title and the NFC Championship Game, and try not to get hurt in the process, and maybe then - and only then - I'll listen to you about your take on animal cruelty.

Roger Goodell

Sure, you make a lot of money, and run the most powerful sports entertainment product in the world. But do you really want all these clowns parading through your office? You need a couple of minutes to idly download porn with the screen aligned just so that no one can see, right? I mean, every busy man needs a chance to detox once in a while. "Oh, Marvin Lewis is in the lobby? Just tell him to hold on a second..."

Pilot Watch 2007: Fox comedies

Because Fox has so many new shows, I'm splitting them up into gendre. The three sitcoms right now, the dramas to follow at some point.

Usual disclaimer applies: these are not reviews, just initial impressions. Too many things can and will change between now and September to make any kind of final judgments on any of these shows at this early stage.

"Back to You"
Who's in it: Kelsey Grammer, Patricia Heaton, Fred Willard and that one guy from "Out of Practice" who wasn't a showkiller
What it's about: A successful anchorman loses his job for an on-air flub and has to return to his old gig in Pittsburgh, where the female partner he left behind a decade earlier resents his return.
Pluses: Grammer, Heaton and Willard (as a sexist sportscaster) are all comedy veterans who know their way around a punchline.
Minuses: The punchlines aren't very good. I wrote about "'Til Death" last year that Brad Garrett was able to sell some lousy jokes, and either he's a better salesman than Frasier and his ex-sister-in-law, or the jokes are even lousier here. I laughed a handful of times, but I cringed far more often.

"The Return of Jezebel James"
Who's in it: Parker Posey, Lauren Ambrose and Scott Cohen
What it's about: Long-estranged sisters -- one a Type-A book editor unable to conceive, the other a slovenly 20something -- reunite when the older one asks the younger one to carry her baby.
Pluses: Posey and Ambrose have great chemistry, and the pilot picks up significantly when the two of them get to work together.
Minuses: Amy Sherman-Palladino's writing does not work with a laugh track, which makes jokes I might have otherwise smiled or even laughed at feel like hackery.

"The Rules for Starting Over"
Who's in it: Craig Bierko, Rashida Jones, Shaun Majumder and Johnny Sneed
What it's about: Four friends in their 30s struggle to re-enter the dating world at the end of long relationships.
Pluses: Umm... it's nice to know Rashida Jones will have another job lined up once "The Office" sends Karen on her way.
Minuses: This is produced by the Farrelly brothers, but it feels like bad imitation Farrelly, with token gags about a human being sexually assaulted by an animal, a disabled character who tells jokes about his condition but won't tolerate them from others, etc. Bierko can be interesting when he gets to play manic (see his ADD musician on "Sex and the City," or him on "Boston Legal" this year), but he makes a poor straight man.

The Shield: Franka goes to Farmington

Spoilers for "The Shield" coming up just as soon as I sign some autographs...

I'm going to be brief, because this is yet another episode about moving the pieces forward. In a way, it feels like this season and the Lem/Guardo storyline ended with episode six, and what we're in now is a prologue for the final season, especially Shane's involvement with the Armenians.

And that group is now represented by the awesome Franka Potente, of "Run Lola Run" and the first two Jason Bourne movies. This is a very different character for her, quieter and more calculating. When I first heard about the casting, I tried to talk Shawn Ryan into having her say "Scheisse" at some point, but I don't know that it would feel right coming out of her mouth. Still, Shane is in way over his head (as usual) dealing with this young woman, who seems so sweet and in need of protection, yet can casually order the castration of men who have crossed her.

The highlight of the episode for me, though, were the scenes with Ronnie and Shane, and Ronnie and Vic. Last year, one of the commenters suggested that David Rees Snell never got much to do because he wasn't a good actor. I think this season has shown that it was just a lack of opportunity, not talent. Ronnie's made a very interesting number two for Vic, smarter and cooler-headed than Shane -- and, as we discovered last night, maybe even more ruthless. Either he figured out the Terry thing a long time ago and made his peace with it, or he was able to make a quick moral calculation, but I got chills when he told Vic that he could have helped him cover it up better than Shane.

The counterfeit purse subplot was a decent throw-away, there mostly to show some thawing between Dani and Corrinne and between Dani and Tina, and I liked Hiatt winning brownie points with Vic at the same time he's losing them with Claudette.

As I've been saying for the last few weeks, this is NOT the place to discuss, even obliquely, the final two episodes, which have been available online since they aired in France. No hinting, no questions, no responding to other people's questions with "You'll see in episode 9." Got it?

What did everybody else think?

Veronica Mars: Rob Thomas is a whore

Hey, Piz said it, not me. Far as I'm concerned, Rob Thomas is a good guy.

Spoilers for the "Veronica Mars" series finale -- and thank you very much, CW promo guys, for that taunting "season finale" ad right before it started, as if there's any value in pretending it's not dead -- coming up just as soon as I seal up our doggie door...

Sigh... Rob said he was very happy with how they ended the season, and he was right. These two episodes were easily the highlight of this self-contained bloc, and the finale was by far the best episode of the season -- probably up in my top 5 "Veronica" episodes ever. I still can't blame Dawn Ostroff and Moonves for pulling the plug -- the audience had very clearly rejected this show -- but I feel a lot sadder about it now than I would have if we had ended after, say, the Uganda episode, or even the Paul Rudd episode.

Or maybe I'm just feeling sad because of what Veronica did to Keith. My wife felt that was a lousy ending for the show, but it felt right to me. This began as a noir show, and while those influences waned in the later seasons (especially after Lamb died and Keith became sheriff), I was glad to have it back for the finale. Veronica's always had this bull in a china shop approach, and she's gotten away with it with few repercussions for herself or the people she cared about. Not this time. Great work by Enrico Colantoni as Keith began realizing he was investigating his daughter, and equally great work by Kristen when she finally came home after Jake Kane told her there was no fixing this for Keith. Veronica casting a futile vote for Keith and walking off into the rain is a bleak ending, but strangely appropriate. We're left dangling a bit on what will happen to Keith -- He'll almost certainly lose the election, but will he do jail time? Lose his PI license, too? -- but as series-ending danglers go, I've seen far, far worse ("Now And Again" being the one that messed with me the most).

And it also felt appropriate to return, at the end, to the show's other core elements: Veronica taking on the rich and powerful (both the fraud ring and, especially, The Castle), Veronica as a school outcast (and having an undeserved reputation as a whore), Veronica squaring off with Jake Kane and Clarence Wiedman, Veronica being at odds with law-enforcement, etc.

It was great -- and, since I either didn't notice his name in the guest credits or they kept it until the end, surprising -- to have Kyle Secor back. His delivery of "Veronica Mars? VERONICA MARS?!?!?!" was a thing of beauty, and the huge portraits of Duncan and Lilly in the mansion were both a callback to the show's origins and a reminder of how much Jake has lost. His daughter's dead. His son is going to be a fugitive for the rest of his life. His wife seems gone. Now he's just a cranky rich man with only his stupid secret society to take care of. I'd feel a little sorry for him if he wasn't, you know, such a bastard.

Along the way, we had characters who had either been too absent or too uninteresting returning to prominence and form: Weevil is planting a foot (probably on the injured leg) back on the wrong side of the criminal line, Wallace is flying model planes and making sacrifices for Veronica, Logan has violence issues, and Mac is using her mad computer skills to help Veronica (I can't remember the last time she did this on a case). After a season in which the supporting cast felt adrift and too often absent, it was nice to have them all back and all acting like I remembered them, and none of it felt like a reset button was being hit.

Some briefer, more specific thoughts on the episodes to follow:

• I didn't see the point of the answering machine payoff in the first episode. If Veronica had the whole thing recorded on her Sidekick, what does it matter if the machine at the office did or didn't get it? (Also, one of my few nitpicks of the episodes: How do these techno-savvy fraudsters not recognize that Veronica could be screwing them one of 17 different ways with that Sidekick?)
• Wallace wearing the electro-shock collar was massively creepy -- and made me even more invested in Veronica taking them down -- only to be surpassed in the creepy factor by Gory's confession about his dad and uncle and the woodshop.
  
• And speaking of Gory, I suppose Logan's fate is also something of a dangler, but he's always had a death wish, so it fit.
• One other complaint: Dick wallowing in guilt over how he treated Cassidy didn't really work (the character's been too shallow for far too long to make me care about his feelings now) and was abruptly dropped as soon as he found the Veronica/Piz sex video.
• The sound on my DVR dropped out for almost the entire scene in the first hour where Wallace was told about The Castle. Was anything useful said? And did anyone not assume that the sex tape came from a Castle camera planted to keep an eye on Wallace?
• Kristen sings one last time! Too bad it wasn't something more interesting than "Bad Day," even if that was appropriate (and funny) for the situation.
  

What did everybody else think?

Raiders Dedicate Season to the Executed

Thanks to Mark from West Side Slant and Scott from Bucs Stats, whho tipped this story of a prisoner, whose last words were Go Raiders.

Does this even surprise anybody? Like you have to decide if this is even news at this point. What else is this guy going to say other than maybe "Go Dodgers?"

The best part was this statement released by the Raiders today.

The Raiders organization would like to say that we are saddened by the sudden passing of Robert Charles Comer. He was a true Raiders fan. By that, we mean that he spent a lot of time in jail, like most of our great fans. Prison walls cannot contain the excitement over Raiders football.

The Raiders are pleased that Comer's last words were "Go Raiders" which shows the greatness of the Raiders organization. To our knowledge nobody has ever been put to death uttering the words, "Go Seahawks" or "Go Lions." That's because the Raiders are the most fearsome organization in the world. Though he leaves our world and his Earthly body, the Arizona prison system can't kill the spirit of the Raiders, who will return to greatness under Lane Kiffin. As for his victim, we hear he was a snitch and a Raiders Hater, anyway, so it's all good. Bless Robert Charles Comer as the Raiders will dedicate the 2007 season to his memory.

Proof That God Loves You

This isn�t about celebrating the misfortune of the Celtics once again. Nor is it a chance to rejoice in the fact that Greg Oden and Kevin Durant will live long enough to showcase their talents in the NBA. This is about celebrating David Stern, who went out of his way to fix the NBA Draft Lottery, as he ensured that three teams who tanked for position, Memphis, Boston, and Milwaukee were all left without a franchise super star next year. You can have your rigging of the Knicks/Patrick Ewing or Spurs/Tim Duncan. This was the crown jewel, and a valuable lesson to those who want to screw with the integrity of NBA basketball.

Wait, nah, this is about making fun of the Celtics and celebrated fan, the Sports Dork Bill Simpson. The Celtics are doomed once again, proving that God�s love is indeed wonderful. If for nothing else, but that idiot Cellbitch fan spent all of that money on a Oden jersey which he can hang in his closet next to that Len Bias jersey.