Andrew Daglas

Moving Day: The blog is relocating

2011-11-19T09:16:00.000-06:00

For various reasons, I've decided to migrate my blog over to Wordpress. Visiting andrewdaglas.com will automatically direct you to the new site, but anyone who follows or visits the blogspot.com URL should update their bookmarks/RSS/etc (you must be out there somewhere, right?) to andrewdaglas.wordpress.com

Sunday driver: What does AMC's scheduling say about its branding?

2011-11-04T13:19:00.001-05:00

I contributed a discussion to In Media Res, a project of MediaCommons curated by friend of the blog Noel Kirkpatrick. Check out my thoughts on how AMC's determination to schedule their programs on Sunday nights represents a conscience branding decision on the part of the network - one that may not be working to its overall advantage.

Sunday driver: What does AMC's scheduling say about its branding?

Guest-criticizing from around the web this week

2011-10-27T13:13:00.003-05:00

Over in the realm of TV criticism, I've teamed up with friend of the blog Cory Barker of TV Surveillance for a couple of projects this week.

Check out our dueling takes on the pilot episode of HBO's K Street, a short-lived 2003 docudrama from Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney.

Then give a listen as Cory, fellow friend of the blog Les Chappell of A Helpless Compiler, and I ruminate for 90 damn minutes about Boardwalk Empire and The Walking Dead on the TV Surveillance podcast.

Stratford-On-Hellmouth

2011-10-26T11:34:00.001-05:00

One of the many reasons I adore Twitter is the way the hive mind can concoct some amazing things. A good idea can become a great idea can become something truly gazoinksbo, in the best possible way.

In that spirit, I give you a sampling of how I spent much of Monday evening with a group of Twitter comrades. In the wake of the news that some of the Joss Whedon Players have made a film adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, we naturally took it upon ourselves to cast some of the Bard's other works with our favorite denizens of the Whedonverse. And Christine Becker, who curates the wonderful @GoodTVeets, was there to chronicle the wackiness.

Check it out, shan't you? And then be sure to follow all these participants on Twitter, so as not to miss out on the next bout of inspiration that strikes we few, we happy few, we band of Scoobies.

UPDATE 11/3/2011: This carefully curated bit of tomfoolery is now available in Tumblr form, with all the original participants playing along.

In which I make my podcast debut

2011-10-20T12:14:00.001-05:00

Do you enjoy reading about TV, except for the part where you have to read? Then why not try a podcast instead! In the inaugural episode of the ChicagoNow TV Tandem, Julie Hammerle of Hammervision and I gab about the season finale of Breaking Bad, the return of The Walking Dead, our favorite new shows of the fall, and just why Julie and the rest of femalekind insist on oppressing hard-working white men like me and Tim Allen.

A version should also be available through iTunes shortly. Check it out, and feel free to send questions, suggestions, or cookie recipies to chicagonowtvtandem@gmail.com. We'll hope to make these podcasts a regular feature, so listener feedback will go a long way. You may even receive a cut of our profits!*

*Editor's note: Our profits are zero.

Listen to the ChicagoNow TV Tandem podcast, Episode 1

The Vast Wasteland on the radio tubes!

2011-10-05T17:55:00.001-05:00

On September 25, I was invited to appear on Blog Talk Radio's The Down and Dirty with Frank Fontana, discussing fall television. Starting at 26:40 in the clip below, I talk with the show's hosts about some of the season's early storylines, including Ashton Kutcher's debut on Two and A Half Men, Ted Danson joining the cast of CSI, my distaste for Jim Caviezel in Person of Interest, and my impassioned plea for everyone in America to watch Community and Parks and Recreation.

The Craftsman World of DIY Presents The Down and Dirty 09/25 by Down and Dirty | Blog Talk Radio

AOL's Patch, HBR, and sustainable local journalism

2011-08-24T11:33:00.004-05:00

Last week, Maxwell Wessel posted an entry on the Harvard Business Review’s blog network critiquing AOL’s strategy for Patch, an experiment in local news aggregation that is currently a rather high-profile drain on the company’s coffers. I appreciate the thesis of the post: that rather than ignore or discard Patch, AOL should invest in it more intelligently.

What bugs me is that Wessel mentions the ostensible purpose of Patch—the gathering and reporting of news—exactly twice, both times subtly disparaging it. First, in characterizing Patch’s unsustainable business model:

“Patch's current business model is unsustainable. Patch is building a network of journalists and salespeople, and it's costing the company a lot. This is not the way to build a disruptive business and it's an open question as to whether Patch must grow this way to win in local news. Patch doesn't need to be spending money this way to win in the space.”

The Business Insider story to which he links has some particularly unflattering things to say about Patch’s sales structure, but it mentions news or journalism precisely never. Conflating the functions of journalists and salespeople, without specifying how exactly the former are detrimental to Patch’s growth, is troublesome. How, exactly, is a news site supposed to grow without journalists?

Wessel offers a half-hearted recommendation to that quandary later, writing:

"A successful Patch might have deep integration with high school newspapers to source content and editors."

Wow. I was a high school newspaper columnist for over two years, and an editor-in-chief for one. I was a damn moron. Okay, we produced some decent stuff, but still—we were 17! We didn't have the foggiest what issues were important to our communities, nor the resources to pursue them even if we did. I’m not sure how integrating with high school newspapers would work, exactly, but I know that a multi-billion dollar company should not be pinning one of its key growth areas on the acumen and news savvy of 17-year-olds.

Look, I realize that journalism is a business like any other, beholden to the cruel capriciousness of supply and demand, and that trying to inject Very Serious notions of the Duty and Integrity of the news into a discussion about business models is, at best, quixotic. I get it, really; I have degrees in both fields. But in journalism, no less than in any other industry, shouldn’t the quality of the product still count for something?

Wessel talks about creating value for customers (actually what he says is, “in non-MBA jargon, Patch needs to align its resources with the value it creates for customers,” leading me to wonder if he knows what the prefix “non” means). And the obligatory caveat here is that, for most publications, the reader is not the customer, advertisers are. Granting that, you don’t acquire readership—which is the product you then sell to advertisers—without putting out something people want to read.

This requires trained, seasoned, professional journalists, people who know how to find stories that matter to readers, develop relationships with sources, navigate the cracks in the system to dig up information, ask the right questions of the right people, and coalesce it all into a clear, compelling, informative whole. And Wessel does recognize this: “[Readers] do care about the news that is featured on their Patch…about the community issues that will affect their families.”

I agree wholeheartedly that some new, sustainable model for gathering and reporting local news to communities is not only a valuable business opportunity but a vital service to the body politic. Patch may turn out to be the innovator that spearheads that model—but only if it respects its function as a news source, and not just a bulletin board for the local pizza parlor.

Why you'd rather be killed by a Mayan prophecy than a French psychopath

2011-08-20T17:47:00.002-05:00

In the latest installment of The New Cult Canon (a feature you should be reading regularly at The A.V. Club), Scott Tobias examines the grisly French horror film Inside, and questions how viewers gauge what is "too far" when it comes to representations of violence and death in movies. He notes how often people are repelled by the visceral depiction of individual deaths in horror films, but shrug off the far greater lethality implicit in end-of-the-world blockbusters from the Michael Bay or Roald Emmerich mold. Writes Scott:

As a rule, I’m reluctant to draw any hard lines on what horrors are beyond representation, because I recognize how subjective that can be. For example, I find the trailer for 2012 far sicker in its bloodless apocalypse fetishization than anything I’ve ever seen in “torture porn” genre, but clearly that opinion isn’t shared by the legions who gave a pass to the former while routinely turning up their noses at the latter.

Which is completely logical, when you stop and think about it for half a minute. The combined body count of the Saw franchise is but a minute fraction of the death toll claimed in just one sequence of Independence Day, a lighthearted popcorn flick better remembered for Bill Pullman's bad-ass quasi-Patton moment than for gleefully positing the obliteration of dozens of major cities—and, along with them, tens of millions of human lives. It brings to mind the infamous quip attributed to Josef Stalin: "One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic."

Because the deaths in 2012 or Independence Day or what have you go largely unseen, it's easy to rationalize them away. They might as well be numbers on a ledger. But watching the central casting machete fodder in Saw or Hostel (or the far more intense horror films on which Scott is an expert and of which I am petrified), it's easy and natural to sympathize with the victim, to imagine ourselves in their newly-lungless place.

More than that, I think there's something else at work in our preference for apocalyptic demise. Being skewered into cheesecloth by a methodical sadist or a lumbering chainsaw delivery vehicle is (besides being awfully painful) a fairly unglamorous way to go. It's just so blasé, so quotidian.

Armageddon, on the other hand, would earn you some serious bragging rights in the Great Beyond. Perishing in the last throes of humanity's existence would have to feel sort of like an accomplishment: I made it to the end. I know how this story wraps up, and I stayed through the credits. Not for me the hollow mortality of my ancestors, the humble realization that after I'm gone the world will continue as though I'd never been here. No one who came before me can say they had access to the whole of human endeavor, to the pinnacle of our technology and the most cherished ancient literature and the latest new episode of Jersey Shore - but I can. Suck on that, Shakespeare.

It appeals to the same innate arrogance which convinces people that they're exceptional because of the land they were born in, or that they were created in the image of an almighty deity, or which simply makes it hard to fathom that the world once existed without you in it and one day will again. We all know we're going to die anyway. Why not go out as part of Generation Omega, the last graduating class of Planet Earth?

Something something "write stuff" pun

2011-08-18T18:33:00.000-05:00

As a writer, one of my strongest and most well-practiced skills is talking myself out of writing. This should come as no surprise to anyone who follows the lamentably sparse updates of either of my blogs lately (hey, I had one good week in July there!) Oh sure, every now and then some diaphanous wisp of an idea floats into my head and I manage to mold it into 900 words of reasonably entertaining prose. But for every one that somehow sees the light of day, three or four others vanish ignominiously into the ether, having inspired little more than a few illegible scribblings or incoherent out-loud sputterings.

It's a discouraging state of affairs, and one I'm inspired to improve after attending a class/discussion group on blogging last night with genuinely accomplished blogger & writer Kate Harding, at Story Studio Chicago (a terrific resource for you fellow Windy City wordsmiths). In that light, I've decided that step one is identifying the most common—well, excuses is such an ugly word; let's call them "perfectly sound and logical counterarguments"—which lead me to abandon a potential piece of writing:

Somebody must have already made this exact point. Probably better. And if not, they will.
The DVR's at, like, 64%.
What sentient, literate being would ever even want to read this misshapen jumble of quarter-baked doofusery??
Hey, 18 new tweets!
Yup. This is it. This one would wake them all up to the reality that I am a hack and a charlatan. It must be buried and forgotten. The illusion of my competence must live another day!
Welp, this Dragon Age quest ain't gonna play itself.

Other creative types, please feel free to chip in with your own favorite self-defeating tactic.

Programming Update

2011-08-17T22:15:00.001-05:00

Cory Barker, impresario of the excellent site TV Surveillance, welcomed me to guest on his regular feature Test Pilot. Check out our thoughts on the pilot episode of the classic late-1980s drama thirtysomething.

Nostalgia: It's not just for Boomers anymore!

2011-07-21T21:08:00.013-05:00

Every now and then, the New York Times likes to check in on the mystifying attitudes of These Kids Today. Case in point, this piece from Tuesday in which the Old Gray Lady reports on Nickelodeon’s (stupendously awesome) plan to revive a handful of beloved early ‘90s programs - including Clarissa Explains It All, All That, and Doug - in a late-night bloc on its Teen Nick channel.

It's clear, if baffling, that the headline - "The Good Old Days of 20 Years Ago" - is shooting for ironic juxtaposition. To the Times' brass and much of its target demo, anything that post-dates the Pentagon Papers probably seems like last Tuesday. When he declares, “That’s right: classics from the 1990s," writer Brian Stelter (a member of the generation Nick is targeting) probably anticipates plenty of readers harrumphing incredulously into their Sankas.

But 20 years is a pretty typical benchmark for hitting the nostalgia button in modern American pop culture. Take Grease or Happy Days - romanticized depictions of the 1950s that struck chords galore in the 1970s. In 1988, America’s yuppies began freebasing eight grams of pure 1960s wistfulness every week in the form of The Wonder Years. The FM radio rotation of 1971 was driving hundreds of classic rock stations in 1991.

Hell, look no further than the stars of some of these Nick shows to see what a difference 15 or 20 years makes. Kenan Thompson is the third-longest-tenured member of the current Saturday Night Live cast. Melissa Joan Hart is on her second post-Clarissa sitcom. Amanda Bynes has already retired AND unretired from show business.

So yes, in 2011 the time is ripe for those of us straddling the Gen X/Gen Y divide to start sepia-toning the cultural diet of our youth.

The article’s lede asks, “Are 18-34 year-olds too young to be nostalgic?” The convenience of market researchers aside, it isn’t apt to bunch 18-year-olds and 34-year-olds into the same discussion here. Fond memories for these programs belong to a fairly specific cohort of people, between more like 25 and 32. And as 30 bears down on me like a T-Rex bearing down on Jeff Goldblum, this strikes me as a perfectly natural age at which to be gazing into the rose-colored rearview mirror.

This is the point at which the few remaining vestiges of childhood have finished falling away. Maybe we’re a few years into our careers, and past the point where the promise of a thousand possible futures is enough to temper the scraping edges of life at entry-level. If we’re not married, or en route, enough of our friends and peers are to elevate such a milestone from the realm of the hypothetical. Chances are, someone we grew up with has, or is expecting, a kid. That amorphous, quasi-responsible transition period of our early-to-mid 20s is fading like a Pearl Jam T-shirt from the Vs. tour, and the onset of full-blown adulthood can't be ignored or postponed much longer.

Why shouldn't more than a few of us happily embrace the chance to stay up past our bedtimes once in a while and slip back into versions of ourselves that shouldered no more pressing concerns than accidentally shoplifting underwear?

2011 TV Preview Part Four: The Network from Whence The Premise Came

2011-07-21T07:36:00.003-05:00

Round four of America’s newest favorite way to kill ten minutes at work brings us to the network that started it all: NBC. It gave the world both The Cape and Community, without which this entire gimmick wouldn’t exist (for background, see the installments for FOX, CBS, and ABC), and without which I might be forced to actually put some thought into what I write on this blog rather than falling back on half-assed jokes and YouTube embeds.

A dozen new programs are tasked with resuscitating the once-proud Peacock from its perennial place in the ratings cellar. Proving itself to be a fount of originality, NBC’s line-up includes a modern day spin on classic fairy tales (...wait...), a sitcom developed by popular stand-up comic Whitney Cummings (no, not this one, a different one), a coming of age tale set in the world of musical theater (but not, y’know, THAT one), and a moody 1960s period piece centered on a brooding, nattily-attired anti-hero. Yup.

Eh, to hell with originality. I just want to know if any of these new shows will give us 2011’s answer to this guy!

Grimm
Fridays, 9 p.m. EST / 8 p.m. CST

The Premise: He's a brooding cop descended from the legendary authors of old, whose grisly lore, as it happens, was actually grisly reportage. Which means the modern-day Mr. Grimm will be spending a lot of time [takes off sunglasses] chasing his own tales. [YEEEEEEAAAAHHHHH!!!!]

The Promo:

The Prediction: Real-Life The Cape. Was...was that promo actually the whole pilot? It had a climax and a resolution and everything. Grimm hasn’t even aired yet and it’s already been demoted to webisode status.

Whitney
Thursdays, 9:30 p.m. EST / 8:30 p.m. CST

The Premise: Although skeptical of marriage, a young committed couple nevertheless learn valuable lessons about hospital visitation rights, tax advantages, and the limits of Fifth Amendment protection.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Real-Life The Cape. Hang on, that promo was basically a whole episode too. NBC, you’re not going to sell a lot of advertising time if your shows are all four minutes long.

Smash
Midseason; Mondays, 10 p.m. EST / 9 p.m. CST

The Premise: Bright-eyed ingenue Katharine McPhee competes for a star-making singing role, and must audition before a panel that includes a surly Brit, a praise-spouting musician, and a woman (Debra Messing) who once co-starred with an animated cat.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Six Seasons And A Movie. As Law & Order once subsidized full employment for the New York City theater community, Smash will soon become a bustling jobs program for L.A.’s throngs of refugees from televised singing competitions.

The Playboy Club
Mondays, 10 p.m. EST / 89p.m. CST

The Premise: Welcome back to the 1960s, when the men were men, the women had boobs, and Hugh Hefner was Dr. Claw.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Real-Life The Cape. And yet, such a shame to waste all those months Eddie Cibrian devoted to mastering the art of method smirking.

Are You There Vodka, It’s Me Chelsea
Midseason

The Premise: This innovative sitcom from multimedia star Chelsea Handler pays homage to NBC’s radio roots by narrating every single goddamn thing that happens.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Six Seasons And A Movie. The mark of a successful sitcom? Trust in its supporting cast. And I think I’m sizing this one up pretty astutely when I say... wait, what? Whelp, never mind. Another The Cape it is!

Breaking Bad: Box Cutter

2011-07-19T22:27:00.000-05:00

Been a busy few days, but I wanted to register a quick reaction after the jump to Breaking Bad, which began its fourth season this week in a confidently low-key fashion.

After a year-long layoff, Breaking Bad returned with a grab bag of signature nerve-jangling elements. Walt chased a brutal, cold-hearted decision with a soberly dissembling rationalization of why it was someone else’s fault. Jesse, truly and completely hollowed out now, sits numb amidst the fallout of his latest bout with punching above his criminal weight class. Only alone with Walt can he yet again begin rebuilding an armor of curdling nihilism.

Toss in a healthy helping of casual deceit, in this case courtesy of Skylar, who continues to inch with unsettling ease down the path Walt blazed (enlisting her infant daughter in her manipulation of the law-abiding locksmith was some truly veteran sliminess). And of course Saul, wonderful Saul, injecting the requisite dose of comic, sneering paranoia.

Breaking Bad’s brilliance, and its audacity, is in the way it maintains a racing pulse throughout an episode so pitched in silence: Skylar calmly relocating Walt’s abandoned car, Hank atrophying in his bed pan, Walt and Jesse helplessly awaiting Gus’s reaction. The violence is notably brief, startling for its sangfroid cruelty despite its obvious necessity to the plot. The real centerpiece is the air around that violent moment, as Gus slips out of his cerebral, respectable exterior and back in again with complete deftness, his languid movements pumping up the tension in the room like a bellows.

Lastly, let us pour out a batch of aluminum for poor meek Gale. You could pack a whole support group full of people whose faith in Walter White (even unknowing, in Gale’s case) is repaid in tragedy. Or you could if half of those people weren’t either corpses or functionally shattered individuals.

Self-Interest ≠ Selfishness; A Brief Response to HBR

2011-07-16T12:34:00.002-05:00

The current issue of Harvard Business Review features a somewhat frustrating piece by Yochai Benkler called “The Unselfish Gene.” It’s quite engaging in places, particularly when discussing some of the research regarding how context shapes people’s motivations, and in the resulting prescriptions for restructuring business environments to promote collaborative behavior. Unfortunately, the arguments are weakened by two fairly key misinterpretations central to his thesis.

First, Benkler treats self-interest and collaboration as direct opposites, when they don’t even belong in the same category. Self-interest is a motive, collaboration a modus operandi. People don’t collaborate for its own sake; they do so as a means to an end. Almost invariably, that end will be a self-interested one, albeit one that all of the collaborators happen to share. This, writ large, is the essence of civilization, of representative government, of the rule of law. It’s the very point that Adam Smith, contra Benkler, makes when describing self-interest as something that must be understood and channeled, rather than denied or squashed. (He also invokes Thomas Hobbes as, apparently, an indirect influence on neoliberal economics, an interesting claim I’m fairly sure I’ve never heard before.)

Which brings us to the other key flaw, the reason why Benkler denigrates the notion of the self-interested rational actor: he seems to conflate “self-interest” and “selfishness.” These are by no means equivalents, though at points he uses the terms interchangeably. (Curiously, though Benkler takes Alan Greenspan to task, he doesn’t mention Greenspan’s guiding light Ayn Rand, who actually wrote a polemic called The Virtue of Selfishness. I haven’t read that, but I suspect it’d make a more fitting target for Benkler’s ire than either Leviathan or The Wealth of Nations.)

Take this passage, for instance (from Page 2 of the online version):

In fact, systems based on self-interest, such as material rewards and punishment, often lead to less productivity than an approach oriented toward our social motivations.

This argument presumes that “self-interest” and “social motivations” are mutually exclusive. In fact, every social motivation - the desire to contribute to the greater good, to assist loved ones or peers, to achieve a common purpose or sense of identity - is a self-interested one.

Yes, self-interest can be narrowly constructed as simple material gain (i.e., selfishness, which I think is more fairly characterized by a deficit of empathy than by a surfeit of self-interest). But it can also be more broadly constructed as anything which tends to enhance one’s well-being, including what we think of as “selfless” actions.

Altruists, no less than anyone else, act out of self-interest. They derive individual gain from values and behaviors that benefit other people. They act because they feel better as a result, or because on some level they expect to reap the social benefits of a positive reputation. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t. The world is not is exactly lousy with hair-shirted ascetics undertaking good deeds in spite of the wrenching agony such deeds visit upon them.

Put another way: I doubt that even the most dedicated Wikipedia updater or Yelp reviewer (two of Benkler’s examples of unselfish, collaborative actors) is sacrificing their own happiness out of an ironclad moral obligation to enhance the commonweal. Whatever obligation they may feel is one they’ve chosen for themselves, because they value its outcomes more than its expenses. They devote time and resources because it gives them pleasure to contribute to society, or because it taps into a skill they enjoy using, or simply because they’re compelled by ego to show off their education (on Wikipedia) or spout their opinions (on Yelp, Amazon, etc.).

So long as they perceive the benefits to outweigh the costs they’ll continue, and the moment that calculation reverses, they’ll quit. Just the way rationally self-interested social animals have evolved to behave.

2011 TV Preview Part Three: Separating ABC's "Meh" Wheat from its "Meh"-ier Chaff

2011-07-13T20:59:00.000-05:00

Continuing to raise the bar for shallow, gimmick-based criticism everywhere, my highly scientific assessment of next season’s network TV schedule rolls on. See here and here for the first two entries in this series, in which I watch the trailers for a few new shows and predict whether they are bound to more closely match the creative nadir of The Cape, or the hopes once held by Mr. Nadir for The Cape. Today I take a gander at some of the whopping 13 new programs to be unleashed by ABC in 2011-12, while categorically refusing to suffer even a second of Work It, lest I pop a few veins and activate Dark Willow mode.

Once Upon A Time
Sundays, 8 p.m. EST / 7 CST

The Premise: Have you guys ever read Fables? How much would it cost to license that as a series? … Whoa, seriously? Fuck that noise, Snow White’s public domain.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Real-Life The Cape. Congratulations, Once Upon A Time trailer. Creepily uttering the phrase “happy endings” three times in about 20 seconds shatters Entourage’s all-time record.

Charlie’s Angels
Thursdays, 8 p.m. EST / 7 CST

The Premise: Young, attractive women do crime-stoppy things while being young and attractive. Also they have a Bosley who is suave and good-looking, which is as offensive to the Pop Culture Gods as having a Horshack who’s soft-spoken and erudite.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Six Seasons And A Movie. On a technicality, this is kind of a lock. After all, the original series has already generated five seasons and two movies. All this one has to do is survive til May, and the promise of Minka Kelly donning a cheerleader uniform once again should guarantee that.

The River
Midseason

The Premise: Look, let’s just throw some people into a jungle and hit them with ooky supernatural stuff again. It can’t do any worse than Off The Map.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Real-Life The Cape. Though not before introducing some conspicuously out-of-place panda bears and an ominous Silt Monster.

Missing
Thursdays, 8 p.m. EST / 7 CST

The Premise: Why hear it from me, when you can hear it straight from Ashley Judd, who, despite starring in the show, clearly only learned what it’s about ten minutes before shooting this:

The Promo:

The Prediction: Real-Life The Cape. Something about this trailer doesn’t instill me with a lot of confidence. Maybe the fact that it’s centered on the star narrating the plot to us in a weirdly affectless monotone, like she’s reading from the darkest children’s book ever.

Scandal
Midseason

The Premise: A crisis management expert helps D.C. politicians out of embarrassing situations. And how could you not root for her! Because what self-respecting body politic would actually want to see such tawdry circumstances come to... um... hmm.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Six Seasons And A Movie. But just a HUGE missed opportunity by not naming the main character "Scandal." Just think of the crossover potential with Castle. Or with Gail Simone’s Secret Six.

Last Man Standing
Tuesdays, 8 p.m. EST / 7 CST

The Premise: It’s hard to be a man-sitcom these days in a world ruled by lady-dramas.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Six Seasons And A Movie. Look, ABC paid all that money to build the Sitcom-O-Matic 9000. Are they going to let it collect dust or are they going to churn out some good old-fashioned syndication fodder, dammit?

Man Up!
Tuesdays, 8:30 p.m. EST / 7:30 CST

The Premise: It’s hard to be a man-sitcom these days in a world ruled by lady-dramas, especially if you can’t even trot out the soothing nostalgia of a Tim Allen to score some faint good will.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Real-Life The Cape. Not only does it star a guy who was ON The Cape, but ABC’s promotional blurb actually lists that as his primary credit. It’s like they’ve never even heard of jinxes over there.

2011 TV Preview Part Two: In which CBS knows what CBS do

2011-07-08T17:57:00.006-05:00

Yesterday, I took it upon myself - dedicated servant to the people of the Internet that I am - to predict the fates of some of next season's new television hopefuls. In lieu of pilot screeners or genuine critical talent, I've opted to approach this task with the next best thing: a preposterous gimmick: Which shows will wind up on the scrap heap before finishing out a season, like last year's poster child of ineptitude, The Cape? And which will become the sort of Nielsen-slobbering stalwarts that run for six seasons and a movie, as a normally wise man once predicted for that selfsame The Cape?

Today, I check in on CBS, which continues to dance with the fluffy multi-camera sitcoms and moody procedurals that brung 'em to the network TV catbird seat.

Two Broke Girls
Mondays, 8:30 p.m. EST / 7:30 CST

The Premise: Caroline has lived most everywhere from Zanzibar to Barclay Square (or their nearest 2011 equivalents). Meanwhile, Max has only seen the sights a girl can see from Brooklyn Heights, or maybe the Village, or whatever neighborhood Michael Patrick King thinks working class people in New York City live in these days. What a crazy (though neither identical nor related) pair!

The Promo:

The Prediction: Six Seasons And A Movie. Most of the jokes are trying too hard (like another King series that got six seasons and two movies), but if the writing eases and finds a rhythm, leads Kat Dennings (definitely) and Beth Behrs (apparently) can carry a light, Big Bang-y show off well.

A Gifted Man
Fridays, 8 p.m. EST / 7 CST

The Premise: A boorish man is guided to wisdom and compassion by a tiny green space alien that only he can see. Wait, what? Sorry. By the ghost of his dead wife that only he can see.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Six Seasons And A Movie. Did you know that Touched By An Angel ran for NINE seasons? No, you did not. Do you know who did know that? Everyone who will watch this show.

Unforgettable
Tuesdays, 10 p.m. EST / 9 CST

The Premise: CSI: Marilu Henner.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Six Seasons And A Movie And Three Spin-offs. According to the clip, 6 people in the United States have “perfect memory,” and if CBS has anything to say about it, every one will turn out to be a police detective with a haunted past.

How To Be A Gentleman
Thursdays, 8:30 p.m. EST / 7:30 CST

The Premise: A dapper, refined, socially awkward writer named Andrew meets a... wait a second. [Wikipedias “likeness rights”... Shit.] Anyway. Meets a dimwitted clod who teaches him how to behave more manly, even though he’s plenty manly and does just fine with the ladies to boot, thank you very much.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Six Seasons And A Movie. I’m being generous, largely out of affection for Dave Foley and Mary Lynn Rajskub. But I fear cleaving Barney Stinson’s Bro Code into its id and superego components will wear thin quickly.

Person of Interest
Thursdays, 9 p.m. EST / 8 CST

The Premise: Jim Caviezel has some sort of power to stop violent crimes before they happen. Or maybe Michael Emerson does, but he needs Caviezel to shoot dudes in the leg and toss off raspy-voiced threats. I've watched it twice and I'm still sort of fuzzy on the details.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Real-Life The Cape. But pop in a jauntier soundtrack, a sunnier color scheme, and a set of shades for Caviezel, and USA will snap it right up.

A Look At The 2011 TV Season, Through The Lens of The Cape

2011-07-07T14:15:00.004-05:00

No sooner does the current television season come to close than do the five (four? four and a half?) main networks begin directing our collective gaze to the awesome and amazing new shows awaiting us next season.

Some of these offerings may approach the sort of cultural ubiquity that renowned TV guru Abed Nadir imagined was in store for The Cape (i.e., six seasons and a movie). Others will turn out to be risible, misbegotten calamities that crash and burn in a blaze of anti-glory, like what actually happened with The Cape. Most will probably fall somewhere between those extremes, but I’m going to ignore those cases because they don’t conform easily to this admittedly strained joke premise.

Now, pilot screeners are already making their way into the hands of actual TV critics. Despite protesting loudly and whipping up a quite snappy “PRESS” card to affix jauntily in the brim of my fedora, studios have yet to add me to their mailing lists. Thus, I must rely on promo clips from YouTube and my own formidable prognostication abilities to determine the fates of 2011’s new shows. Which will soar to pop culture ascendancy, like The Cape in Abed’s mind, and which will plummet to the depths of ignominy, like The Cape in real life?

Over the next few days, I’ll take a look at some of the more interesting offerings, starting today with FOX.

New Girl
Tuesdays, 9 p.m. EST / 8 p.m. CST

The Premise: Zooey Deschanel moves in with three guys who live in a sitcom (including one who actually lives in a different sitcom) and proceeds to flit all about, Zooey Deschanelling all over the place to the delight of twee and sensitive boys everywhere.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Six Seasons And A Movie. It doesn’t look that funny, but people have tuned in to shows for years for far less compelling reasons than watching Zooey Deschanel for 22 minutes every week.

I Hate My Teenage Daughter
Wednesdays, 9:30 p.m. EST / 8:30 p.m. CST

The Premise: Two formerly nerdy women fear their daughters are growing up to be [comically pregnant pause] bitches [whooping laughter at mere utterance of curse word].

The Promo:

The Prediction: Real-Life The Cape. Couldn’t even finish the clip. Anytime you can leaven your unfunny jokes by sticking them the mouths of thoroughly unlikeable characters, you've got a formula for comedy...hm. What's the opposite of gold? Boron? A formula for comedy boron.

Alcatraz
Midseason; Mondays 9 p.m. EST / 8 p.m. CST

The Premise: J.J. Abrams! An island! Mysterious goings-on! Jorge Garcia! WHAT MORE DO YOU PEOPLE NEED?

The Promo:

The Prediction: Six Seasons And A Movie in the Blue Universe, Real-Life The Cape in the Red Universe.

Terra Nova
Mondays, 8 p.m. EST / 7 p.m. CST

The Premise: People from the future discover that the truly awesomest special effects lie in the past.

The Promo:

The Prediction: Real-Life The Cape. Look, no one wants a show about dinosaurs on their TV every week more than me (with notable exceptions). But it’s hard to imagine the show being a big enough hit to justify its brachiosaurus-sized budget (you see what I did there?).

Napoleon Dynamite
Midseason; Sundays, 8:30 p.m. EST / 7:30 p.m. CST

The Premise: Don’t think that the best time to capitalize on a inexplicably well-received indie movie is many years after its mild cult popularity has waned, leaving behind a general sentiment of indifference or outright disdain? Think again!

The Promo:

The Prediction: Real-Life The Cape. “Hey, did you guys see last night’s Napoleon Dynamite?” -No one, anywhere, anytime in 2012.

Pop culture is ready for its next favorite psychopath

2011-06-04T13:22:00.015-05:00

This month's GQ excerpts an essay from Jon Ronson's new book The Psychopath Test, which examines the frightening likelihood that the subtly yet undeniably insane are prevalent in every area of society - especially in the upper echelons of power. Reading the piece - an intriguing mini-profile of a notorious corporate executive, "Chainsaw" Al Dunlop - motivated me to revisit two related texts that I've loved (though one of which I have
only the faintest memories of).

One is Snakes In Suits, a book co-authored by Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, the psychopathy expert who designed the test which gives Ronson's book its inspiration and title. Babiak and Hare argue, with fairly chilling plausibility, that many traits endemic to psychopaths are also traits that drive a great deal of success in corporate America. (It's important to note here that, despite its grisly popular connotation, the medical diagnosis of psychopathy is not intrinsically tantamount to violent crime.)

Adrian Pasdar in Profit.

For example, they're experts at reading and manipulating people and at mimicking, if not interpolating, accepted social behavior. This makes them adept at cultivating surface-deep relationships and appearing outwardly charming - expert networkers, in other words. They bore easily and are constantly seeking ways to occupy their minds (in resume spin this would translate to "curious" or "go-getter"); they're consummate narcissists, unconcerned with anyone but themselves ("confident;" "goal-driven"); and they exhibit an almost total lack of either fear ("risk-taker") or empathy ("able to make tough decisions").

The other point of reference the article triggered is the very short-lived Fox series Profit, which starred Adrian Pasdar several lifetimes before he whisked an exploding brother into the wild blue yonder. I probably haven't seen a minute of it since its initial 1996 run (oh hello, Netflix cue...), but I remember being engrossed in its story of a deeply ambitious, deeply damaged man who gets ahead in business by the most despicable means. The lead character, Jim Profit, isn't so much an anti-hero as a straight-up villain, presaging and in some ways outstripping modern dark protagonists like Tony Soprano and Walter White.

Profit didn't fit in the network TV landscape of the mid-90s, even on Fox, which was still embracing some vague notion of "edginess" in its brand identity at the time. But something like that show, taking Hare's theories as a guide, would find a more welcoming home on cable in 2011. Snakes In Suits is filled with vignettes, both real and imagined, which illustrate the rich character and narrative depths that could be explored in a movie or series about a genuine psychopath flourishing in business school and climbing the corporate ladder.

Two things will immediately leap to everyone's mind in response: American Psycho and Dexter. But a show based on the Hare model would differ from both in two important ways. First, as I mentioned, a psychopath doesn't have to be violent. Like Hare's case studies, many rely just fine on psychological warfare for destroying enemies and attaining power subtly, behaving immorally but not necessarily illegally. Even light on lethality, that's still the stuff of potent, intelligent drama.

Second, both Patrick Bateman and Dexter Morgan (their live-action versions, anyway; I can't speak for their literary counterparts) seek to disguise their sicknesses and blend in; the extent to which they succeed is in spite of, not because of, their mental maladies. When Batemen's homicidal urges boil over, or when Dexter grapples with his "dark passenger," it threatens to unravel the "normal" life the man is faking his way through. Hare's corporate psychopaths, by contrast, relish and exploit their anomalies. They blend in only as a means of getting what they want - normalcy is a sword, not a shield. They have no dual life, no hidden dark side. They're all dark side. And they've monetized it.

A series centered on such a character would, though, be a clear thematic kin to both American Psycho and Dexter, which both use a mentally unstable protagonist to hold a mirror up to warped contemporary values. The former is about how the culture of the 1980s became so aggressively materialistic and navel-gazing that it turned a blind eye to the horrific domestic and international violence it fed; the latter is about how civilization fails to wholly reconcile conventional morality with primal notions of justice and vengeance, and how easily one rushes in to fill the vacuum left by the breakdown of the other.

Snakes In Suits: The Series (or whatever) could explore how and why society defines "success" in the ways it does, and the ramifications of that in terms of what sort of people are allowed into power. A show like that, handled with an honest appreciation for the psychology involved, could be damn gripping in the wake of the financial collapse - which, I'd wager, more than a few textbook corporate psychopaths had some kind of hand in.

From Gapers Block - Chicago Rot: Embracing the City's Dark Side

2011-06-03T23:38:00.001-05:00

In a sparsely-furnished office in the Merchandise Mart, five recent graduates of Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy are striving to write the next chapter in Chicago's film history. With their independent movie Chicago Rot, currently in pre-production, they're determined to change the perception of their hometown among film-goers and filmmakers alike. And by partially funding the project via the crowd-sourcing website Kickstarter, they're inviting Second Citizens who share that vision to chip in.

Continue reading at Gapers Block

A (partial) defense of History Channel

2011-05-24T20:05:00.000-05:00

The announcement that History Channel will air a 10-hour scripted series based on the Bible, just a few months after very publicly rejecting a miniseries about the Kennedy family on the grounds of historically inaccuracy, is raising some eyebrows. James Poniewozik of Time.com, astute as ever, sums up the case well.

As a committed agnostic, I’m sympathetic to the argument that the Bible shouldn’t be regarded as a work of history in the sense that it accurately relates real world events which occurred in the past. Few but the most devout fundamentalists would argue otherwise.

But it’s absolutely a work of history in another sense. It’s a cultural artifact of rare significance spanning continents and millennia, on par with the Odyssey or Arthurian legend. It’s an ineffable, protean amalgam of historical truths, parables, cultural prisms, and good old-fashioned storytelling flair.

This makes it an altogether different case than that of The Kennedys, which sought to dramatize factual events - recorded, verified, remembered by plenty of people who lived through them first hand. Taking creative liberties with that sort of dictionary-definition history clearly runs afoul of History Channel’s nominal brand identity. I don’t think dramatizing the Bible falls under the same standard, and I similarly don’t think anyone would bat an eye if History announced it was producing a scripted tale of, for instance, Arthur’s exploits in Camelot.

Now, if we’re going to gripe about History Channel tarnishing or outright discarding its brand identity as one of cable’s preeminent institutions of nerdery - well, that's an argument I'm even more sympathetic too, as I rant about after the jump.

That argument begins and ends with unyielding trend away from actual historical documentaries and towards incongruous reality pabulum like Pawn Stars, Ax Men, and something the Internet tells me exists which is called Swamp People, a link I refuse to click. For casual history buffs, the channel used to be a reliable place to flip on for an hour of disappearing into Renaissance Italy or the empire of Qin Shi Huang or what have you. In recent years, though, it’s clearly decided to ditch its original raison d’etre and become a Discovery Channel clone.

Hey, I suppose this is a smart business decision. Given that 90% of the commercials I’d see on that network were for life insurance and hearing aids, I’d suspect that programs about the War of 1812 weren’t roping in those coveted 18-34 year olds as reliably as the brass would’ve liked.

That’s where spin-off channel History International came in, picking up the slack while the parent station has devoted more and more hours of airtime to the shenanigans of Larry the Cable Guy. It reminds me quite a bit of the metamorphoses of MTV and VH1 around the early 2000s. Back then, the erstwhile Music Television was accelerating its total abandonment of music videos, while chasing younger and younger audiences.

Meanwhile, the latter trended away from stodgy adult contemporary rock and found a niche servicing the displaced early-thirtysomethings (and, um, prematurely grizzled early-twentysomethings) who had been reared on MTV. For those of us who missed Headbanger’s Ball and shook our canes at the whippersnappers on Total Request Live, VH1 was there to provide our Bon Jovi fix - often in the form of Behind The Music, but hey, you took what you could get. So it is today, as those of us jonesing for two hours on the French Revolution are shunted a bit further down the dial (yes, in this analogy, the French Revolution is playing the part of Bon Jovi).

Cable channels evolve and change purposes; most don’t change their names along with it, as anyone scratching their heads at the word “Syfy” can understand. History Channel has as much to do with history in as Music Television has to do with music. But a scripted version of the Bible feels much closer to its original intent, to me, than most of the rest of its current line-up.

Dispatches from The Vast Wasteland

2011-05-24T15:42:00.002-05:00

The 2010-11 TV season winds down tomorrow. Over at The Vast Wasteland blog at ChicagoNow, I review the series finale of The Chicago Code, which comes to a satisfying if lamentable end; and I speak with Bill Lawrence, co-creator of Cougar Town and Scrubs, about the former show's second season finale Wednesday night. Check them out, shan't you?

Place your bets, Windy City

2011-05-20T16:46:00.002-05:00

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has gone on the record supporting a casino in Chicago, an idea which has also been previously endorsed by new Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Whether this long-discussed, often-thwarted plan ever becomes a reality remains to be seen. But any gambling enterprise that may set up shop in my hometown would be wise to tap into the parochial nature of Second Citizens. Might I suggest a few locally-flavored odds for future Chicago bookies to consider.

Rahm makes an alderman piss themselves on the council floor: 3-2

Anyone not employed by it actually calls it the Willis Tower: 7,500-1

Schwa launches a food truck fleet: 50-1

Red Line is extended south of 95th by 2050: 250-1

The remains of a Donner Party-esque band of lost shoppers is found on the upper levels of Merchandise Mart: 4-1

Rod Blagojevich serves more than one year of jail time for federal corruption charges: 500-1

Rod Blagojevich appears on multiple reality programs in the 2011-12 TV season: 3-1

Rod Blagojevich appears as a “prominent Democrat” on Fox News in the 2011-12 TV season: Even

The Sun-Times uses the word “Rahm-shell!” in a headline in 2011: 6-1

University of Chicago fields a competitive football program: 1,000-1

Northwestern fields a competitive football program: 1,500-1

DePaul men’s basketball draws more than 1,000 fans for a game: 2,000-1

DePaul men’s basketball draws more than 1,000 fans for the season: 1,999-1

Block 37 is fully occupied: 15-1

Block 37 is razed back into an empty lot: 15-1

Someone loudly makes a point of insisting it’s still Marshall Fields to them: 3-1

Oprah is found wandering along State Street in a daze, just handing out cars to bystanders: 8-5

A non-tourist patronizes the Rainforest Cafe in River North: 750-1

Billy Corgan reboots the Smashing Pumpkins again: 3-1

People notice Billy Corgan rebooted the Smashing Pumpkins again: 300-1

Cubs win the World Series: ∞ -1

Over/Unders for 2011

Arrested city officials: 4.5

Tribune editorials endorsing more Walmart: 12

Boutique muffin shops opening: 65

People bumping into you at Taste of Chicago roughly every second: 14,000

Ending On A High Note: A Few Great Season Finales

2011-05-19T23:06:00.000-05:00

The 2010-2011 network TV season draws to a close this month, sending us out into invigorating, socially well-adjusted, outdoor summer evenings (okay, fine, sending us flipping over to repeats and catch-ups on Netflix). In honor of this bittersweet time, let’s talk favorite season finales.

By no means is this meant to be a best-of-all-time catalog, since I can’t pretend to have seen all sixty years worth of television (careful observers will note that all of these episodes aired in the last two decades). Nor is this even a comprehensive list of my personal favorites. I have no doubt that I’m omitting some wonderful specimens from shows I love - Cheers and Homicide: Life On The Street come to mind - but which I simply haven’t seen recently enough to recall sharply. I’m also excluding series finales, which aren’t fair to compare given their built-in emotional triggers.

So, feel free to jump into the comments and share your own favorite, and tell me exactly why I’m an irredeemable soulless idiot for leaving it off the list.

(Oh, do I even need to add that spoilers follow? Well, this is the Internet, so yes. Yes I do.)

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "Restless," Season 4, Episode 22, Original Air Date: May 23, 2000; written and directed by Joss Whedon

I am restricting myself to only one example per series, and picking just one representative from Buffy is nigh-impossible. I could easily shower praise upon season two's "Becoming," season three's "Graduation Day" (both two-parters), or season five's "The Gift," each of which belongs in the series's top 15 or 20.

But if I'm to select just one - and my arbitrary, self-imposed rules are nothing if not ironclad - I'll single out the one finale which was not a climax but a coda. Having dispatched the year's Big Bad, Adam, in the penultimate "Primeval," season four ended on a note exploring its theme rather than its plot. Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles each delves into a nightmare drawn by their most deep-seated insecurities, revealing the richness of the characters at the core of the show. And somehow, "Restless" also manages to be one of the funniest episodes of an often hysterically funny series.

Friday Night Lights, "State," Season 1, Episode 22, OAD: April 11, 2007; written by Jason Katims, Patrick Massett, and John Zinman, directed by Jeffrey Reiner

This series makes its living on gut-punching, tear-welling moments, and the fresh emotional impact of the first season remains the most gripping. A year of strain and hardship culminates in a hard-earned victory, but even that excitement is tempered by the pall of Coach Taylor's impending (short-lived) departure for TMU. FNL struggled in the ratings perennially, and if the first season finale had proved a series finale, it would have encapsulated the show's ethos perfectly as the capstone on a story fully told. Its characters, like the show itself, scraped and struggled for every inch of success they ever found.

And "State" serves up some of FNL's most indelible moments: the quiet awe washing over the team arriving at Texas Stadium; Coach's stirring halftime speech not about football or winning but about family and integrity; Eric embracing his QB One after the game; the road trip hilarity of Grandma Saracen and the Collete crew packed into the Landrymobile.

The West Wing, "Two Cathedrals," Season 2, Episode 22, OAD: May 16, 2001; written by Aaron Sorkin, directed by Thomas Schlamme

Certainly a cliche on a list like this, but sometimes cliches become cliches for a reason. I have my issues with Bartlet's multiple-sclerosis arc that led to this point, but I can never help but be riveted by Martin Sheen chewing out God in Latin with precisely measured rage, channeling the memory of Mrs. Landingham to battle his demons, and striding to the East Room through the thunderstorm to the strains of "Brothers In Arms" - easily one of my all-time favorite uses of pop music to score a scene of television.

The Office, "Casino Night," Season 2, Episode 22, OAD: May 11, 2006; written by Steve Carrell, directed by Ken Kwapis

The second season of The Office is when the show distinguished itself from its British inspiration, largely by trading the latter's undercurrent of fatalism for a jaded but romantic core. That heart is pinned square on the sleeve of an episode which forms the pivot point between the show's two strongest seasons. Jim's parking lot declaration of love to Pam, and their subsequent first kiss, is a powerfully earned expression of the way a deep enough friendship becomes indistinguishable from romantic love.

Besides which, it's packed with sharp and hilarious moments, like Darrell's faux-street slang ("fleece it out... dinkin' flicka...You know, things us Negros say."), a vintage Michael-Toby exchange ("I hate so much about the things that you choose to be."), Jim' fake telekinesis, Dwight and Angela's thrill-of-victory kiss/slap at the craps table, and the debut of Scrantonicity.

Seinfeld, "The Opposite," Season 5, Episode 21, OAD: May 19, 1994; written by Larry David & Jerry Seinfeld, directed by Tom Cherones

One of the top three or five episodes of the series, and a quintessential case of examining a key character by subverting that character completely. And befitting Seinfeld's ethos - "no lessons" - George's life-changing personal progress here has vanished by the time season six starts (though somehow he still retains gainfully employment with the Yankees for two more years).

The Simpsons: "Krusty Gets Kancelled," Season 4, Episode 22; OAD: May 13, 1993; written by John Swartzwelder, directed by David Silverman

Again, virtually any season finale from The Simpsons's Golden Age in the early-mid 90s could qualify here, simply because pretty much every episode period from that four- or five-year stretch belongs on any "favorites" list worth its salt. I'm selecting this one because it feels more like a proper "finale event," rather than just a terrific half-hour of TV that happened to air last before the summer break (it was a toss-up between this and season six's cliffhanger "Who Shot Mr. Burns, Part 1.").

It featured a roster of guest stars that most contemporary sitcoms wouldn't dream of nabbing in an entire season - including Elizabeth Taylor (before she became the voice of Maggie), the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Hugh Hefner, Luke Perry (hey, it was 1993, he was huge!), Bette Midler, and Johnny Carson, whose celebrated Tonight Show swan song this episode paid homage to. As that line-up reflects, this was the year that The Simpsons became a ubiquitous pop culture juggernaut - and, in perhaps a sly bit of meta self-deprecation, "Krusty Gets Kancelled" satirized pop culture fads in the form of Krusty's hugely popular and then quickly forgotten competition Gabbo.

Mad Men, "Shut The Door. Have A Seat," Season 3, Episode 13; OAD: November 8, 2009; written by Matthew Weiner & Erin Levy, directed by Matthew Weiner

I've always relished the stories that examine the culture and dynamics within Sterling Cooper just a little bit more than the ones that focus on Don's home life. Even amidst Mad Men's deliberate, cerebral, often moody nature, the classic circle-the-wagons story at the center of this episode is a great deal of fun. It's exhilarating to watch the ad men assemble to improvise the ramshackle, mildly felonious birth of Sterling Cooper Draper Price.

Buffett Vs. Scott - The Tale of the Tape

2011-05-13T16:16:00.003-05:00

The season finale of The Office, already stuffed to the gills with prayers for view-errr, I mean, guest stars, recently added investment mogul Warren Buffett to the roster of famous people who will jockey for the resume jewel of managing northeastern Pennsylvania's most famous branch office. The Sage of Omaha is as hallowed a name as there is in American business, but he's known primarily as a savvy investor rather than a leader of men and women. So how would he stack up against the man he'd be replacing, veteran manager Michael Scott? Let's go to the tale of the tape:

Professional Affiliation
Buffett: Berkshire Hathaway, a holding company valued at just over $186.7 billion as of May 13, 2011.
Scott: Dunder Mifflin, a mid-sized regional paper company recently purchased by a maker of printers.
Advantage: Scott, unless evidence emerges that a Chili's in Omaha is the annual host of the Berkie Awards.

Philanthropy
Buffett: Promised 83% of his fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Scott: Promised to pay for college for 15 of “Scott’s Tots.”
Advantage: Buffett, who evidence suggests will be able to follow through on his vow.

Management memoirs
Buffett: The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
Scott: Somehow I Manage
Advantage: Scott. C'mon, it's got a whole chapter on gum (even if it is just one sentence).

Idols
Buffett: Benjamin Graham, author of The Intelligent Investor, popularly considered the godfather of value investing.
Scott: Ed Truck, former Dunder Mifflin manager (deceased).
Advantage: Scott. Graham's treatise may have revolutionized investing in the 20th century, but Truck was the frigging White Shadow.

Proteges
Buffett: Todd Combs, hedge fund manager currently tabbed as Buffett’s successor at Berkshire Hathaway
Scott: Dwight K. Schrute, assistant to the regional manager, beet farmer, hotelier.
Advantage: Scott, unless this Combs dude has also ever straight-up maced a guy in the office.

Interests in China
Buffett: Investments in PetroChina, BYD Auto
Scott: A topic where Michael managed to briefly out-smart Oscar.

Advantage: Buffett. It's always nice to trump a know-it-all, but Berkshire's earned something like 500% return there.

Screenplays produced
Buffett: None.
Scott: Threat Level Midnight
Advantage: Agent Michael Scarn.

On business
Buffett: "In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield."
Scott: "There are four kinds of business: tourism, food service, railroads, and sales."
Advantage: Buffett. Sorry, Mike - I have an MBA, and I can tell you there are at least seven kinds of business.

On money

Buffett: "The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It is like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die."
Scott: "At the end of my life, when I'm sitting on my yacht, am I going to be thinking about much money I have? No. I'm going to be thinking about how many friends I have. And my children. And my comedy albums. I mean, I have a yacht so I obviously did pretty well money-wise."
Advantage: Scott. He's got the yacht, and Buffett doesn't have those 10,000 portraits, so it's really just about the math.

Home base
Buffett: Omaha, NE
Scott: Scranton, PA
Advantage: Push.

Winner: In a stunning upset, the Pride of Scranton bests the Oracle. Business schools, take note: we have seen the face of leadership in America, and it is Michael Scott.

Anti-Superman screeds are moronic - but not because Superman's fictional

2011-05-01T12:29:00.002-05:00

The hysterical kerfuffle over the latest issue of Action Comics, in which Superman renounces his American citizenship, has predictably inspired a huge amount of jingoistic blathering. And of course there have been plenty of calm, well-reasoned rebuttals from people who actually understand the point of the story and who aren't, y'know, morons.

But one counter-argument I've heard around the Twittersphere - partly in jest, partly not - basically amounts to, "Calm down, Superman's not real." There are many valid reasons to reject the anti-Superman screeds, but this isn't one of them. If you believe that fiction has a serious role to play in demonstrating and shaping societal values, then it's perfectly reasonable to be angered by a work of fiction that seems to spit in the face of the values you cherish - or worse, one you once regarded as sharing your values which suddenly seems to upend or reject them.

This is doubly true of an iconic character like Superman, who is as potent and lasting a mythological figure as American culture has ever produced. More than any other superhero - probably more than any fictional character we've birthed - he has been a model for the better angels of human nature. He's lasted as more than a kid's comic book figure because of the high ideals he represents. Existing only in ink and paper doesn't diminish the real-world importance of those ideals; and that means any complication, alteration, or subversion of those values (all of which are inherently subjective) is fair game for an honest emotional response.

To put it another way, remove the context of the citizenship issue. Suppose DC released an issue of Action Comics in which Supes straight-up murders a bunch of bad guys - chucks them off buildings, mows them down with his heat vision, what have you. Intelligent, rational readers everywhere would be fucking furious, and rightly so - it would be an utter obliteration of one of the character's most fundamental values: unyielding respect for human life. That none of those deaths really happened would be entirely beside the point.

Basically, you can't have it both ways: If we can be inspired by a character's positive attributes, we can be incensed by his negative ones. Either you believe fictional actions have a real meaning, or you don't.