Geek Punditry #115: Swept Up By the Past

March 14, 2025 blakemp Geek Punditry Game Shows, Jeopardy, Match Game, pluto tv, Supermarket Sweep, television, tv, Wheel of Fortune

I know that parents brag about their kids a lot, and a lot of it is overblown and unwarranted, but today I’ve got a legitimate achievement for you. I am willing to bet that my son is the only second grader in the entire state of Louisiana who plays Supermarket Sweep when he’s supposed to be getting ready for school in the morning.

I’ve written before about my love for Pluto TV and their various channels full of old TV shows. If you’re a Pluto viewer, though, and you stick with a single channel long enough, you see the shows start to cycle back to the beginning, so I find that we tend to go through phases. For a while there, whenever we turned on Pluto TV it was to watch I Love Lucy. Then there was a period where we were stuck on the channel with old episodes of Cheers and Frasier. We went through a Top Gear period and a Nick Jr. Channel phase and a nice chunk of time where we watched the old Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. But in recent weeks we’ve gravitated towards Supermarket Sweep, the old 90s game show where contestants answered trivia questions and played games about groceries and shopping, not to win money, but to win TIME. Then they used that time in a mad dash through the supermarket, trying to grab as much as they could in bonuses and merchandise for the right to play the final $5000 game. If you were around in the first half of the 90s, I’m sure you watched this show. I’m sure you thought about being ON this show. Hell, host David Ruprecht even ENTICED you with it at the end of every episode: “Remember, the next time you’re at the checkout counter and you hear that beep (BEEP BEEP), think of the fun you could have on Supermarket Sweep!”

Such a tease, that David Ruprecht.

Anyway, we can never quite predict which shows Eddie will latch on to, and something about Supermarket Sweep has really captured his attention. He runs around the house, grabbing random items for his “sweep,” and declaring which ones are bonus items and how much the bonuses are worth. Unlike the original sweep, where bonuses were usually worth something between $50 and $300, sometimes Eddie will declare the bonuses his mother and I have won to be worth, and I quote, “ZERO DOLLARS,” followed by an insane giggle. It’s all about the joys of parenting.

Watching this 30-year-old game show is a kind of television comfort food. It’s very low-stress, except when you’ve figured out one of the clues and the contestants haven’t and you’re YELLING at them that they’re supposed to be looking for the FLINTSTONES VITAMINS, NOT THE FRUITY PEBBLES, YOU MORON! At one point, I was writing something on my laptop when my wife shouted “KUDOS!”, and for a moment I thought she was congratulating me before I realized she was referring to a granola bar. Sometimes the answer will be a product neither Erin or I have ever heard of, or sometimes it’ll be something they stopped making 20 years ago and suddenly we find that we miss it. It really tugs on those nostalgic strings.

This episode triggered Ralphie Parker’s PTSD.

There’s also a quaintness to it. For instance, in one game the contestants are presented with three different products and they have to guess which one costs more than, say, $2. And I laugh, because every one of those products would be at least $7 today, and I realize that if I were to go back in time and be a contestant on this show, I would be very, very bad at the pricing games.

There was a revival of Supermarket Sweep a few years ago hosted by Leslie Jones, but it didn’t last. I watched it a couple of times, and it didn’t really get to me the way the old ones do. I feel like modern games shows work really hard to amplify the stakes. Bigger prizes, bigger sets, flashy graphics. I’ve seen shows that literally have an enormous roulette wheel, others where an incorrect answer will have someone ejected into a pool of water…and I still haven’t got the slightest idea what Fox’s The Floor is supposed to be.

Even the old stalwarts have had to change with the times. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy both have bigger prizes on the line than they did back in the day, and while part of that can certainly be chalked up to inflation, it also feels like there’s an effort to keep “modernizing” it. Wheel has new types of puzzles than they used to, for instance, with sometimes baffling rules. Jeopardy is still played more or less the way it always has been, but it’s become more attached to the cult of celebrity. It’s been a long time now since they got rid of their five-day limit for returning champions, but in recent years there’s been a push to make “stars” out of any champion who gets on a particularly long winning streak. I get it, it’s playing the media game, but watching these shows today does bring out a thirst for the classics.

A few years back, after Hurricane Ida hit, we were without internet at our house for about a month. Fortunately, we have an antenna, so we weren’t completely cut off from the world around us, but we certainly didn’t want to watch news coverage of the storm 24 hours a day. So my wife and I (this was before Eddie had quite reached the point where he was demanding control over the remote) settled on leaving the TV most of the time on one of the many digital channels that have cropped up since the analog signal was abandoned, one that showed nothing but game show reruns 24 hours a day. There was no Supermarket Sweep there, but we found ourselves reacquainted with old shows like Hollywood Squares, Match Game, and Card Sharks, cycling through the old games and chuckling at the old prizes.

That’s right, Bob, flip it like you mean it.

It’s a similar feeling to watching old sitcoms or science fiction shows, but there’s a strange contradiction when it comes to the stakes. If I’m watching an old episode of Star Trek, there’s a tension there about the fate of the crew of the Starship Enterprise, even though I know for a fact that these are all actors, that nobody was actually hurt in the filming of this episode, and that pretty much everybody not wearing red is guaranteed to be back next week unless their name is Denise Crosby. On the other hand, watching an old game show has none of that tension, even though the people on that show WERE real people and WERE playing for real money and prizes that might have changed their lives. The game shows are less intense for the viewer, even though there is far more at stake for the people involved. It’s such a weird juxtaposition, but it’s true.

“And if you get the Jolly Green Giant bonus, it comes with some of your absent father’s love.”

I don’t know how long Eddie is going to remain obsessed with Supermarket Sweep. If past performance is any indicator, it will go on until we stumble upon something else, purely by chance, that diverts his attention. It could be a cartoon, could be a sitcom, could be another game show. There’s no telling. But in the meantime, I’m kind of enjoying a virtual run down the aisle, trying to stack up on those big blocks of cheese worth $30 each or grabbing the three items from David Ruprecht’s shopping list for a bonus $250. And when the contestant can’t figure out that the clue is supposed to send them shopping for Aquafresh Toothpaste, I am there to yell the correct answer at the screen, only for Eddie to echo me a moment later.

It’s not game-changing television. It’s not Squid Game or Yellowstone, it’s not something people will be talking about around the water cooler if people still do that sort of thing. But it’s nice.

Sometimes just nice is okay.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Also nice: reruns of The Dating Game that do not involve serial killers. So, that’s at least 75 percent of them.

Geek Punditry #104: The 2024 Pundy Awards

December 27, 2024December 27, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry 4:30 Movie, Bluey, Christopher Reeve, comics, Eye Lie Popeye, Inside Out, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited, Kevin Smith, Movies, Pixar, Popeye, Spider-Man, superman, television, Three Body Problem, Ultimate Spider-Man

It’s the final Friday of the year, and that means it’s time once again to sit back and talk about all of my favorite things from this year. It’s time for the 2024 Pundy Awards!

Yes, just like I did in 2023, I’m going to wrap up the second year of my little column by talking about some of my favorite pieces of pop culture to come down the pipe this year. There is no rhyme or reason to this, the categories will be decided purely based on what I feel like talking about as I write this. I’m going to tell you my favorites in movies, TV, and comics from the past twelve months, and I’m gonna tell you why I dig them and why you should check them out if you haven’t already. Also in order to avoid repeating myself, I’m going to skip over shows and comic book series that I “awarded” last year. Please be aware that I’m still a fan of Abbott Elementary, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest, Fantastic Four, Skybound’s Energon Universe, and ESPECIALLY the final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks, and they’re all worth your time.

But today, I want to talk about things I haven’t talked about before. At least…stuff that I haven’t talked about as much. Let’s get on with it!

Not the only movie this year that made me feel seen.

Blake’s Favorite Animated Movie: Inside Out 2.

Back in June, I wrote a piece about how the shine had fallen off the once-immaculate reputation of Pixar Animation studio. After a series of duds, I wondered if the sequel to Pixar’s Inside Out was going to have what it took to bring back some of the studio’s former glory. I was so, so happy to see that it did. The first Inside Out was a great look at how the mind of a child develops and learns to process emotions, anthropomorphizing the process but doing so in a way that was both entertaining and easy to understand. Inside Out 2 continued this trend, with the character of Riley getting a bit older and the emotions she experiences becoming more complicated. Adding in the likes of Envy, Ennui, Embarrassment, and especially Anxiety into the mix has changed the game, making for a movie that perfectly encapsulates the personal journey a person goes through when they grow up. The finale of the movie was absolutely remarkable, with a scene that so perfectly demonstrates the experience of an anxiety attack that I nearly broke down in the movie theater. My son, Eddie, has since declared Inside Out 2 his favorite movie, and I’m not about to argue with him.

“Another movie about hanging around outside a convenience store, Kev?”
“Nah, this time it’s a movie theater.”

Blake’s Favorite Comedy: The 4:30 Movie.

I’ve been a fan of Kevin Smith for a very long time, and I’ve found it fascinating how his films have changed over the years. His early movies like Clerks and Mallrats were a reflection of the aimless feeling of being a young adult and trying to figure out what life is actually supposed to be. His more recent films, particularly Jay and Silent Bob Reboot and Clerks III, demonstrate a growing maturity and a sense of grappling with a life that didn’t turn out to be what you expected. Although he hasn’t let go of the filthy humor and goofy characters that made his name, he’s a subtler, more sophisticated storyteller than he used to be, and I appreciate that. The 4:30 Movie doesn’t connect to his “View Askewniverse” at all, instead telling the story of a young man in the 80s trying to find the guts to make a play for the girl he’s in love with, all set around a day going to the movies. Are there dirty jokes? Absolutely. But the film is wonderfully heartfelt, and even though neither Kevin Smith nor his alter-ego Silent Bob make an appearance on screen, you can tell that this movie was intensely personal. The final scene hammers that in especially, giving you a feeling that Kevin Smith has, in a way, told his own origin story. It’s a great movie.

Tagline: “You will believe a grown man can cry.”

Blake’s Favorite Documentary: Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story.

This should not be a surprise to anybody, but the documentary about the actor who brought Superman to life for my generation was incredibly moving. Everybody knows the basics of Christopher Reeve’s story – how he played Superman, how a horseback riding accident left him paralyzed from the neck down, and how he became a crusader for the disabled in the years before his untimely death. This movie delves into his history in a deeper way, told mostly through the reflections of his now-adult children, as well as further commentary and anecdotes from other family and friends. The movie bounces back and forth between his life story prior to his accident and the way his life changed afterwards. Having his children tell the story, I think, is one of the things that really helps sell the tale. The film feels so much more intimate and personal, coming from the point of view of the people who knew and loved him the best. One thing I didn’t expect, though, was the heavy focus on Reeve’s friendship with the late Robin Williams. Again, this is something fans of the actor knew about, but the way they intertwined the tragedy of Williams’s own life with that of Christopher Reeve just made it all the more powerful. Have your tissues ready when you watch this one.

Okay, if I’m gonna be honest here, *Super-Man* is not the only thing in this list that made me cry.

Blake’s Favorite Family TV Series: Bluey

I know, this is another one of those “no duh” moments. I have written extensively about my love for Bluey before, in particular this spring’s season finale episode, “The Sign.” But there was simply no other TV show this year that had as deep and profound an impact on me. In the final episode of this season, we saw the Heelers preparing both for a family wedding and a move to another city, two life-changing events that the titular Bluey was having a tough time dealing with. Bandit, the dad that every father on the planet is striving to become, is trying to do the best thing for his family, even as it becomes increasingly clear to the viewer that the rest of the family doesn’t actually want to leave. It’s a beautiful story and still amazingly funny, and the final song (by cast member Meg Washington) is absolutely sublime. It comes across as a meditation on being a parent and having a child, and it’s the kind of thing that absolutely overwhelms your heart if you’ve got children of your own. I couldn’t be happier with the news that the long-talked about Bluey movie has been officially announced, and I only wish we weren’t going to have to wait until 2027 for it to hit theaters.

Remember when science fiction was SMART? It’s finally back.

Blake’s Favorite Science Fiction Series (That Isn’t Star Trek: Lower Decks): The Three-Body Problem

This Netflix series, based on the globally popular trilogy by Cixin Liu, launched this year and grabbed me immediately. Like the novel, the first season of this show focuses on several groups of people around the world trying to uncover a mystery. The show follows scientists, police, and people from other walks of life as they slowly uncover evidence of an impending alien invasion. The novels are amazing – an incredible portrait of this sort of singular event and how it would completely reshape the entire world. So far, the first season of the show is doing the same thing, but in different ways than the book. The novels, by a Chinese author, have a cast that is mostly Chinese as well, while the TV series is more international. Characters are omitted, others are combined with one another, new characters are added – the TV show uses the framework of the novel, but takes the story in different directions to reflect the difference in cast and the different cultures of the characters. As a result, while fans of the book can still enjoy it, there’s still room to be surprised. I loved the novels, and I loved the show too, but for different reasons and in different ways. That’s one of the best things you can hope for in an adaptation.

This is the best an ongoing *Spider-Man* comic has been in 20 years, and it’s not even close.

Blake’s Favorite Ongoing Marvel Comic (That Isn’t Fantastic Four): Ultimate Spider-Man

Last year, Marvel announced a relaunch of its once-prominent “Ultimate” brand, which reimagined the Marvel heroes as new characters in the modern day. That version of the Ultimate Universe eventually gave birth to Miles Morales, but other than him, the rest of the line has been mostly jettisoned. The only other survivor is the Maker, an evil version of the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards, who has created a NEW Ultimate Universe, and it’s the flagship book of THAT line that has captured my heart this year. In the new Ultimate Universe, the Maker deliberately prevented most of the world’s superheroes from having their respective origin incidents, until their Tony Stark uncovered the truth and decided to put things right. (This is a HIGHLY condensed version of the Ultimate Invasion miniseries, by the way, which is also worth reading.) In the new Ultimate Spider-Man, we open with an adult Peter Parker who is powerless, married to Mary Jane Watson, and the father of two children when he is approached with the news that he’s supposed to be one of the world’s greatest heroes, and there’s a way to make it happen. For years, Marvel Comics has turned the mainstream Peter Parker into a punching bag, submitting him to one mindless torture and humiliation after another, to the point where stretches of his comics are unbearably depressing. Ultimate Spider-Man is the antidote to that, proving that you can tell stories about a married couple, about parents, that are entertaining and emotionally engaging without sacrificing the superheroes. This Ultimate Universe is even further removed from the main Marvel U than the original Ultimate Universe was, but this comic has been fantastic so far.

“So EVERYBODY is in the Justice League now? Ghost-Maker? Robotman? Clownhunter?”
“Okay, let’s not get carried away.”

Blake’s Favorite Ongoing DC Comic: Justice League Unlimited.

This may be a tiny bit of a cheat, as there’s only been one issue of JSU so far, but it was preceded by the excellent Absolute Power miniseries, which set the story up and was by the same magnificent writer/artist team of Mark Waid and Dan Mora, so I’m counting that towards the series. After an absence of the Justice League from the DCU for a few years, it’s time for a most triumphant return in a way that has never been done in comics before. Rather than a team of seven to ten heroes protecting the whole dang world, Waid is embracing the “Unlimited” part of the title. The Justice League – as in the classic animated series of the same name – is now a massive force, with virtually every hero on the planet Earth recruited as a member. Everyone who has ever been in the League, every Titan, everyone who wears the S-shield, Bat-symbol, or bracelets of an Amazon, is now part of the League. Waid kicks things off with a first issue showing a longtime – but fairly obscure – hero called Air Wave being taken up to the Watchtower and joining in on his first mission as a member of the Justice League. The story was great, with an engaging and entertaining point of view that is set to save Air Wave from the ranks of the D-listers, and a twist that promises great things for the series. What’s more – I’m gonna sound like a broken record here – Dan Mora is probably the best superhero artist working in American comic books right now. His characters are bold, powerful, but still wonderfully human. This book hit every box for me in the first issue and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

“What if we replace the spinach with boba?”
“No.”

Surprise of the Year: Eye Lie Popeye

It’s been a good year for reboots of old-school characters, including Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, Thundercats, and the Universal Monsters. But the one that surprised me the most, in a delightful way, is Massive Publishing’s new series Eye Lie Popeye, by writer/artist Marcus Williams. When the series was announced, I didn’t think it would be my thing – a new version of Popeye is fine, but the artwork showed a distinct Manga flavor to it. I’ve got no issue with people who enjoy Manga, it’s just not usually the sort of thing I’m interested in, and I planned to pass on the series. Then came Free Comic Book Day, and they released a preview of the first issue. Guys, this is why Free Comic Book Day works, because it did exactly what it is intended to do: show me a glimpse of something that I hadn’t planned on reading, but that I found incredibly entertaining. Williams shows a deep knowledge of Popeye and his enormous cast of characters, and while the book DOES have that Manga influence, I was startled by just how well all of it managed to fit together. The style works for the characters, the storyline feels like the kind of thing that used to be done in the classic comic strips (which are quite different from the seven-minute slugfests that people who only know Popeye from his animated shorts might expect). Overall, I never would have thought it, but this was one of my favorite comic book finds of the year.

And that’s it for this year, friends – some, but not all, of my favorite movies, TV shows, and comics of 2024. Feel free to share your own favorites in the comments, and here’s to coming back here in a short 52 weeks to do it all over again!

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. And yeah, he barely mentioned it, but Lower Decks was amazing. Go read it. Go read it now.

Geek Punditry #102: Making a Merrython

December 13, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry abbott elementary, ALF, cheers, Christmas, Community, frasier, Golden Girls, Honeymooners, i love lucy, television, tv

When the holidays roll around, one thing you can be certain of is that I’ll be queuing up all of the great Christmas movies and specials. And I don’t just mean the obvious ones like It’s a Wonderful Life, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, the Rankin/Bass catalogue, or the legendary yuletide adventures of Garfield and Charlie Brown. I also have a great affection for Christmas episodes of old TV shows. As I’ve written before, there was a time when I would get home from school and watch reruns of old sitcoms for hours on end, allowing me to have a far greater memory of the contents of said television programs than I ever will less pertinent information, such as my wife’s telephone number.

In this age of streaming, it seems like it would be simplicity itself to cultivate a massive playlist of holiday-themed episodes to start your own Christmas marathon…but alas, that does not seem to be the case. Although most streaming services have a “holiday” category, none of them seem to have what I really want, namely an option to just create my own playlist of episodes and set it to run on shuffle. I want an easily-curated selection of shows for a Yuletide Marathon – a Merrython, if you will.

But if Netflix, Hulu, and Paramount Plus won’t let me do it, damn them, I’ll do it myself. Plex is a great system, an app that I can use to arrange and watch all of the movies and TV shows I’ve got saved on my own server, complete with my own cultivated playlists and a shuffle option. Now the catch here is that you actually have to provide the video yourself, which obviously limits things a little bit…but I started collecting DVDs almost a quarter of a century ago. I’ve got a LOT of TV shows on disc, and I’ve got lots of compilation DVDs of Christmas episodes from assorted TV series that I can throw into the mix as well.

While I certainly encourage everybody to create their own playlists, today I’m going to share with you a part of MINE. Here are just a few of my favorite Christmas-themed episodes of my favorite sitcoms, many of them episodes that are sitting in my Plex queue waiting to be watched. On Plex I set the playlist to shuffle, so I never know what’s coming up next…but for you guys, I’ll put them in chronological order.

The Honeymooners: “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Season 1, episode 13, original air date Dec. 24, 1955.

My love for The Honeymooners knows no bounds. The only sitcom duo better than the pairing of Jackie Gleason and Art Carney is the pairing of Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows. Ralph Kramden’s antics with both his best friend and his wife are legendary, and have become part of the DNA of television comedy. While I can’t be certain that the Kramdens are the FIRST example of a sitcom schlub married to a woman who’s way out of his league, it’s definitely the trope codifier.

This legendary episode sees Ralph struggling to get a present for his wife, Alice, on the day before Christmas. Ralph is berating himself for having previously squandered money that he could have used to get her something nice on a bowling ball for himself (and before anybody says “Simpsons did it!” I must remind you that this show was some three decades before the adventures of Homer and Marge). As is always the case, Ralph ropes his sidekick Ed Norton into a variety of short-lived schemes to try to get the money or get a present for Alice, each of which is thwarted in a delightfully goofy fashion. In the end, the story works out to a sort of one-sided but utterly heartfelt variation of “The Gift of the Magi,” one that I never get tired of watching this time of year. Audrey Meadows was an absolute treasure, and this episode shows that as well as any.

I Love Lucy: “The I Love Lucy Christmas Show.” Season 6, episode 27, original air date Dec. 24, 1956

In this episode, the Ricardos and Mertzes are spending Christmas Eve together, struggling with decorating the tree and talking about how wonderful it was to have a child – Little Ricky – with whom to celebrate the holidays. I’ve mentioned before what an innovative show I Love Lucy was, on top of just being one of the funniest shows in television history, but this episode in particular has some historical significance. When Lucille Ball was pregnant in real life, they incorporated her pregnancy into the show. Those episodes proved to be overwhelmingly popular, and they wanted to milk a little of that juice again, so they used this episode to showcase the characters remembering the adventures they had surrounding Little Ricky’s birth. You see, not only did Lucy and Desi invent the rerun, but this Christmas episode marks the first clip show in television history.

These days, a lot of people consider clip shows tedious and wasteful, a cheap way to squeeze out an extra episode without spending a lot of money actually filming it, and in this day of shorter seasons the practice is almost extinct. But seventy years ago it was a chance for people to re-watch segments they loved, because there was no other option.

The show didn’t only recycle the clips, though, but also a gag at the end when all four adults (Lucy, Ricky, Fred, and Ethel) each independently decide to dress as Santa Claus to surprise Little Ricky. They wind up getting into a slapstick chase in the living room, during which a fifth Santa appears. As they remove each other’s beards trying to determine who is who, the superfluous St. Nick grins and vanishes before their eyes. They had first used this gag at the end of a season one episode, “Drafted,” in a tag that had nothing to do with the episode itself, and had shown it again in subsequent Christmases. This “remake” made a lot more sense, given the episode it was used to conclude.

Cheers: “The Spy Who Came in For a Cold One.” Season 1, Episode 12, original air date Dec. 16, 1982.

Cheers did a few Christmas episodes over its 11-year run, but none of them cling to my mind better than this one from the first season. This was, of course, a period where the show was still kind of trying to find its identity. It was still predominantly a romantic comedy, focusing on Sam and Diane’s relationship, but even at this point the ensemble piece it would eventually become was starting to shine through.

In this episode, a stranger shows up for a drink at the bar around Christmas and “accidentally” lets it slip to the patrons that he is – drumroll please – a spy. Diane, ever the pragmatist, meets his claim with the expected skepticism, but most of the rest of the gang plays along with it, plying the stranger for stories of his exciting lifestyle. When Diane finds a way to trap the spy in his own web, everything blows up in her face.

Aside from the date and the decorations, this isn’t an especially Christmasy story. We don’t get the usual “very valuable lesson” that so many of these episodes come with, nor is there a heartwarming moment at the end where everybody gets together for a group hug and reminds one another that friends are the real family. But I like the way it hammers down the dynamics of the group, how Diane gets a somewhat needed comeuppance about being too smart for her own good, and how it deftly establishes some of the tone and tropes that would follow the series further down the line, even after Shelley Long left the show.

The Golden Girls: “Twas the Nightmare Before Christmas.” Season 2, episode 11, original air date Dec. 20, 1986.

It’s Christmas in Miami, and the girls are all making plans to jet off to visit their respective families in other parts of the country. Things get derailed, however, when a man dressed as Santa Claus shows up at Rose’s grief counseling center and starts taking hostages.

Hopefully, by this point, nobody needs me to tell them what a brilliant show Golden Girls was. You had a cast of four outrageously talented comedic actresses and a team of writers who were willing to push the envelope in ways that few other shows in the 1980s took a chance doing, and it has legitimately become recognized as one of the greatest TV comedies ever made. The amazing thing about this particular episode is the way it breaks down the story into three segments, any of which would have been an entire episode of a lesser sitcom. It starts with a funny scene showing the gift exchange between the girls before they leave for the holidays, which itself is ripe with comedic potential. Then we crash into the hostage situation, which seems like it would be the whole episode on its own until Sophia casually takes the gun away from the hostage-taker and berates Dorothy for not being able to tell the difference between a real gun and a fake. The final act shows the girls – now stranded in Miami and unable to make their flights – having a Christmas Eve dinner in a diner where they slowly come to the realization that they haven’t missed out on a Christmas with family after all.

This episode wraps up with some of the schmaltz that the Cheers episode was missing, and it’s just lovely. It was only the second season of the show, and while the bond between the characters was evident, this was the episode that kind of cemented how deeply the four of them all cared about one another, which (despite any friction on the set in real-life) was truly the core of the show. And of course, typical of the Golden Girls, the drippy, gooey sentiment at the end is nicely undercut by a joke from Sophia, who is one of the greatest characters in television history.

ALF: “ALF’s Special Christmas.” Season 2, episodes 12 & 13 (two-part episode), original air date Dec. 14, 1987

Ah, is there anything that says “TV in the 80s” better than the adventures of a Muppet-esque alien living with a typical American family to the delight of audiences everywhere and – apparently – to the eternal disdain of the cast that had to work with him? From all accounts, the set of ALF was not a pleasant place to be, but this show was a favorite of mine as a kid, and I’m still on a quest to complete my run of the Marvel ALF comic books (50 regular issues, three annuals, two Christmas specials, a “spring” special, and two digests). It’s an oddly formative part of my personality.

In this two-part episode, the family leaves the Tanner home for a trip into the woods for Christmas. Willie rents a cabin for the family to stay in where ALF will be free from prying eyes, but as tends to happen, the little furball gets lost, winding up in a hospital where he’s mistaken for a doll and given to a child with a serious illness. He befriends the girl and eventually leaves, but the memory of her clings to him. Meanwhile, the Tanners find out that the man they’re renting the cabin from is giving it to them – two weeks after the death of his wife, he seems to be divesting himself of a lot of things…

This is honestly a pretty dark episode, even for a show like ALF, which frequently mixed a little darkness into its humor. (Cat buffet, anybody?) The two plotlines are about a child with a terminal illness and an old man contemplating suicide – fun for the whole family, right? But the whole thing is done with the typical ALF touch. There’s some goofy humor in it, and a dose of heart that makes the darkness a bit more bearable…and honestly, I think that’s kind of the point. The show doesn’t turn a blind eye to the bad things in the world, but does its best to show how to cope with them. That’s something I’ve always appreciated about it.

Frasier: “Frasier Grinch.” Season 3, episode 9, original air date Dec. 19, 1995

Let’s wing our way back to the Cheers Universe for this third-season episode of its successful spinoff show. The original Frasier was a brilliant series and arguably the most successful comedy spinoff of all time, but there was one thing about the adventures of Frasier Crane in Seattle that always kinda bugged me: the distance from his son. When the producers decided to give Kesley Grammar a spinoff they shipped him off to the other side of the country to do their best to resist the urge to have cameos from his former co-stars every other week, but the side effect here was that Frasier often came off as a very absentee father…ironic, as one of the best parts of this show was watching as Frasier rekindled his relationship with his own father, Martin. In this episode, Fraiser’s son Freddy is coming to Seattle to spend the holidays with his dad, and Frasier decides to shower the boy with the very thing every kid wants for Christmas: educational toys! It’s not long before Frasier realizes the enormity of his error and has to venture out to find the gifts Freddy REALLY wants for Christmas.

Like Diane in the parent show, the intelligentsia in the Crane family occasionally needed a reminder that they were not always the smartest ones in the room. This episode does a lot to help Frasier seem like a well-meaning father willing to go to great lengths to give his child a Merry Christmas (the least he could do, as he only sees the kid in one or two episodes a season). It also has some really great stuff with Martin, nailing the dynamic between Kelsey Grammar and John Mahoney. Frasier did many more Christmas episodes than Cheers, but this is my favorite.

Community: “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas.” Season 2, episode 11, original air date Dec. 9, 2010.

By the second season of Community, the show had firmly embraced its role of commenting on and parodying the various tropes of sitcoms, and in this episode they went one step further by parodying classic Christmas specials. The entire episode is done in stop motion animation, mimicking the old Rankin/Bass “Animagic” style, as Abed is somehow stuck seeing the world as a holiday special. With the help of Professor Duncan, Abed’s study group tries to get to the bottom of his delusion and help him see the world the way that it really is.

This is not the first sitcom to try an animated special for the holidays – Home Improvement had a memorable episode that had a segment in stop motion animation, for example. But what elevates Community is that the episode does not ONLY parody Christmas specials, but also makes a real commentary on the characters. Despite his delusions, we learn things in this episode about Abed and his family that leave deep fingerprints on the character and make him a little more understandable than he may have been in the past. The episode has one of the most bizarre explanations for “the meaning of Christmas” that I’ve ever heard, but damned if it isn’t just perfect for this show.

Abbott Elementary: “Holiday Hookah.” Season 2, episode 10, original air date Dec. 7, 2022.

The newest entry on my Christmas playlist comes from what I maintain is the best live-action comedy currently on television, ABC’s Abbott Elementary. After the last day of school before the winter break, young teachers Janine and Gregory (who have had your classic “will they/won’t they” thing happening for some time now) happen to run into each other at a hookah bar, each with a group of friends. Even if you’ve never seen an episode of this particular series, if you’ve watched other shows that use the same trope (see about a billion other shows) you’ll see the trajectory that this plotline is taking. There’s awkwardness, obvious attraction, confusion, and a reluctance to hook up with somebody you work with. It’s all done well, but is kind of standard stuff.

What I really like about this episode is actually the B-plot. Two of the older veteran teachers, Barbara and Melissa, have a tradition of having a Christmas dinner together after the end of the fall term each year. This year Jacob – a young teacher who fancies himself to be far cooler than he actually is – finds out about their celebration and winds up crashing their “Christmas Lounge.” The interaction between these three is wildly funny, and the relationship between Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph) and Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter) has become a core pillar of the show at this point. Although the two are almost diametrically opposites of one another, personality-wise, their shared experience and long relationship has them stand out as the best of friends. It’s one of the sweeter, most realistic elements of the show (I can name several pairs of teachers I know in real life that remind me very much of these two), and I think this episode showcases that extremely well.

We also get your usual “somebody has to learn a lesson” moments that frequently accompany any Christmas episode, and as befits this series, they come from unlikely sources. Ava – the crazy principal who often seems wholly unsuited for her job – comes to Janine’s rescue, while Jacob gets his head screwed on straight thanks to the timely intervention of conspiracy nut custodian Mr. Johnson. All of it together makes for a fine Christmas viewing.

There you have it, friends, some sitcom classics to get you in the Christmas mood this year. This is, of course, not to be considered a comprehensive list. There are hundreds of shows that have done Christmas episodes, and creating a truly complete list is probably beyond my abilities as a humble Geek Pundit. Which is why I invite you to share some of your favorites here in the comments, or on whatever social media you followed to get here! What are some of the all-time great Christmas episodes that have made it to YOUR Merrython playlist?

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He didn’t even get to Laverne and Shirley, The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers, The Beverly Hillbillies, Friends, Family Ties, Night Court, Family Matters, Perfect Strangers, Mama’s Family, Seinfeld, The Office, or The Big Bang Theory. Maybe there needs to be a sequel to this column next year.

Geek Punditry #82: I’m Going to Go Back There Someday

July 26, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry 1776, Comic-Con, comics, Conventions, DC Comics, Don Rosa, James Gunn, Marvel Comics, Movies, San Diego Comic-Con International, SDCC, Star Trek, star wars, superman, television

It’s that time again, friends. Every year, as July races to a close, kids sharpen pencils for school, and teachers spend an inordinate amount of time and money getting their classrooms suitable to post on Instagram, the geeks of the world converge on San Diego, California for the annual bacchanalia officially known as Comic-Con International. And every year I sit here in Louisiana, gazing to the west, and wishing I could be there with ‘em.

It’s a bucket list thing for me, guys. Some day, at least ONCE, I want to go to San Diego Comic-Con. I’ve got a lot of friends who have been – heck, with the pals I have who work in comics, I’ve got a lot of friends who go pretty much every year. I see the posts and I gaze at the photos shared on social media and I think about what it would be like to be there, even though I know it’s not going to happen any time soon. It’s expensive, first of all. Admission to the convention aside, I think about the costs of airfare, food, car rental or Ubers to get around, and hotel rooms (some reportedly going for over $1000 a night on this particular weekend) and I know there’s no way this can be swung on a teacher’s salary in the current economy. Then there’s the kiddo – making this trip would either require my wife to take time off work to stay home with our son or her take off work so all three of us could go together. Going together is my preference, but not really feasible at the moment. So it stays on that bucket list, unchecked, right next to “Play Benjamin Franklin in a production of 1776.”

“Ah, it’s okay Blake,” say some of my friends. “Comic-Con isn’t what it used to be anyway.” And that, at least, is true. It’s been a really long time since Comic-Con was actually about comic books. The media empires have taken it over – movie and TV studios are the stars of the really big panels, and video game companies flock there to shill their upcoming games. And while I don’t begrudge any of them, comics are my real jam, and are what I’d really want to see. I’d rather go to a DC Comics panel than a Warner Bros. panel most days…although if it were James Gunn and company talking about the upcoming Superman movie, it’d be a heck of an internal battle.

Still wanna go, though.

It also doesn’t seem to be quite as big in terms of making news as it used to be. For years in these waning days of July, I would refresh my web browser all day long, waiting for news reports coming from San Diego to tell me what was going to happen over the next year in the world of entertainment. Marvel would unveil whole slates of films there back when such a thing seemed like a wise thing to do, and fans like myself would teeter on the edge of Firefox to see what was coming next. I don’t feel like that happens as much anymore. Studios are so desperate to stay relevant that they squeeze out announcements all year long, often prematurely, very often promising things that wind up never happening. It’s frustrating, to be sure. But in terms of what it does to Comic-Con it’s even worse, as so many of the “big” panels have changed. There’s no longer an opportunity to blow our minds with announcements of what’s to come, but rather just a recap of the announcements that have been made since the last time they recapped their announcements.

Yet I still wish I was there.

It’s not like I’ve never been to a convention, of course. When I was young, I went with my Uncle Todd to a few Star Trek conventions (these don’t really exist anymore, as Comic-Con and its many imitators have become a catch-all for pop culture and cons specific to a single franchise have become much rarer). When the Chicago Comic-Con was still a big deal I did a road trip with my buddies Mike and James. I’ve been to Philly and Houston, and many Wizard World-turned-Fan Expo shows here in New Orleans. And I’ve been to dozens of smaller shows, which are honestly better when it comes to the comic book side of things. Back in April, Erin and I took Eddie to a small show in Covington (right across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans) and it was honestly the BEST show I’ve been to in YEARS when it comes to the number of vendors selling comic books and comic paraphernalia, as opposed to thousands of headshots you could get signed by whatever actors are in attendance. I loved that little show, and I’m looking forward to the next one.

Observe the Native North American Geek in his natural habitat.

But I still feel that COMPULSION to go to the BIG one.

Why?

Because in a weird way it feels like home.

I don’t know if younger readers will get this, because the stigma about being into “nerdy” stuff seems to have largely gone away. With Marvel and Star Wars being so mainstream and things like Game of Thrones and The Boys becoming media juggernauts, things that we used to consider niche entertainment have become dominant parts of the cultural zeitgeist. But when I was in high school in the 90s, I was always made to feel like I didn’t belong because I read comics and watched cartoons. I clung to the things I loved, but often felt the need to hide them, lest I become even more of an outcast than I already was. I’d even quit Disney and Archie comics not because I didn’t like them anymore, but because I let people put it in my head that if I was in high school and reading Uncle Scrooge something must have been wrong with me. If I was seen with a Star Trek novel or an X-Men t-shirt, the reaction quite clearly elicited the same response every time: you do not belong here. High school was a bitch of a place, guys.

I’ve got a core memory of a time in 1993 when Superman: The Man of Steel #22 came out. This was during the whole “Death and Return of Superman” storyline, and John Henry Irons IMMEDIATELY became my favorite of the four potential heirs to the throne. I brought the comic to school with me and, on a break outside, I sat on a bench to read it. And within seconds, a jerk from my PE class yanked it out of my hands because I was such a “nerd,” threw dirt into the die-cut cover, and stomped away laughing.

I can’t help but feel that John Henry would have known how to deal with it.

I don’t remember the guy’s name. I couldn’t pick his face out of a lineup. But I’ll never forget what he did, because you CAN’T forget anything that makes you feel that small.

I look at my own students, and I don’t see that anymore. Oh sure, there are still cliques and groups, there will ALWAYS be cliques and groups, but they aren’t really based on things like what kind of pop culture a kid is into anymore. I see a lot of kids who read Manga (not enough into western comics, but that’s a separate issue), but I never see anyone get bullied for that. You want to pick on a kid for playing video games? Dude, that’s a club whose membership is EVERYBODY. Things have changed and, in this respect at least, have very much changed for the better.

But I come from a time BEFORE those changes, when I only knew two or three other kids in my school who were openly comic book fans, and most of them wound up moving away before we graduated. It was a lonely time.

The first time I walked into a comic book convention, it was like I had finally found my tribe. There were people here who not only wouldn’t MOCK me for reading Superman, but would join me in a spirited debate over the credentials of the Man of Steel, Cyborg, Superboy, and Eradicator, and which of them (if any) were the real deal. There were people here who could ALSO explain why some crew members on the Enterprise wore red while others wore gold or blue. There were people who not only wouldn’t mock me for loving Uncle Scrooge comics, but they would join me in line to get a print and comics signed by Don Rosa, perhaps the greatest artist ever to draw the Laird of the Clan McDuck. (Yeah, I love Carl Barks too, but I said what I said.)

If my house caught on fire I would save my son, and then this. My wife is faster than me, she’s already outside at this point, that’s why I didn’t mention her.

Nobody should ever have to feel the way I felt on that day back in 1993, certainly not because of what they like to read or watch. But I wish that EVERYBODY could have that experience of walking into a room and suddenly feeling like that’s where you’ve belonged all along.

I still get that when I walk into my local comic shop (BSI Comics in Metairie, Louisiana – and I’ll never be shy about giving them the shout-out). I feel that way on Free Comic Book Day, when hundreds of like-minded folks come together to see what’s new. And I feel that way when I attend a show full of people selling, drawing, reading, and talking about comics and movies and TV shows. And even the people who aren’t into the same comics and movies and TV shows as I am are still part of the same tribe, because we know that even if I’m into Star Trek and you’re into Star Wars, we’re still more alike than we are different.

Not like that Stargate weirdo.

So why would I possibly want to go to the big, bloated, past-its-glory-days Comic-Con International in San Diego?

Because in a way that I don’t know if you can understand if you’re lucky enough to never have felt like an outcast, it’s where I feel like I belong. With my people. With my tribe. Just because I’ve never been doesn’t mean it doesn’t call to me like home.

Ah well. Maybe next year.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He believes the Great Gonzo said it best when he sang, “I’ve never been there, but I know the way,” and a tip of the hat to Steve J. Rogers for putting that bug in his ear.

Geek Punditry #77: Tooning In

June 21, 2024June 22, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry Animation, Beetlejuice, Broadcast TV, Captain Planet, Cartoons, MeTV, MeTV Toons, Muppet Babies, Police Academy, streaming, svengoolie, television

In 2024, there are an awful lot of us who don’t bother with live TV anymore. With the exception of sporting events (and increasingly even those) virtually every new show you could want to watch is available on at least one of the major streaming services, so the days of making sure that you’re home at 8 o’clock on Thursday so you don’t miss the new episode of Friends are long over. In my house, though, there is at least one exception to that rule: Saturday night. On Saturday night, unless there’s some pressing reason for us to be out of the house (or to watch a competing sporting event) the Petit TV is tuned to New Orleans’s WDSU Channel 6.2, the local MeTV affiliate, for the greatest TV event of the week: Svengoolie. Svengoolie is the last of the great horror hosts, the heir to the empires of Elvira, Chilly Billy Cardille, Vampira, and New Orleans’s own Morgus the Magnificent. Every Saturday Sven serves up a classic horror or sci-fi movie replete with his own brand of comedy and information, cracking jokes and telling us about the history of the film in a single breath.

And it is because I watch Sven every time that it’s humanly possible that I knew about the announcement of another new network that hopes to lure viewers away from their streaming services and back to the antenna: MeTV Toons. Whereas the prime MeTV network serves up seven days of reruns of classic TV comedies, dramas, westerns, and the like, MeTV Toons – launching this Tuesday, June 25 – promises to do the same thing with classic animation. At launch, the network will provide a home to such luminaries as Looney Tunes, Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, Popeye and Pals, and even later shows from the 80s and 90s like The Smurfs, The Real Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice, Captain Planet, and many, many more.

The long nightmare days of a world without Atom Ant will soon be over.

The response was shockingly positive. The network hasn’t even launched yet and there are already at least two Facebook fan groups dedicated to the station, one of which is approaching 5,000 members and the other topping 17,000 as of this writing. There’s a neat little community appearing here, and once you filter out the 14,000 members who have joined to ask if the network will be available in their area because they don’t know what Google is, there’s a lot of conversation ABOUT classic cartoons, the ones that will be on the network at launch, and what other pieces of animation history fans hope to see make an appearance in the future.

Of course, not everyone in the group is positive. That’s nearly impossible. Of all the different Facebook groups I’m a part of, there are only two that I’ve never known to have any sort of toxic presence: the Bandit group for Bluey fans sharing their journey through fatherhood I wrote about a few weeks ago, and fans of the Movie Crypt podcast, proving once again that horror movie fans are some of the kindest and most loving people you could ever meet in the real world. Some of the toxic comments in the MeTV Toons groups are complaining about the lineup, because the fact that they spend a half-hour a week showing Police Academy: The Animated Series is evidently a cardinal sin amongst a certain sect of the populace. Others are complaining because the network is not available in their area – which is a complaint I sympathize with, as for a while it didn’t look like we would get it in New Orleans at launch. I was flailing around the internet like a Dickensian waif until it was announced that it will be on Channel 41.6, which filled me with childlike glee. But even when I thought we weren’t gonna get it, I was smart enough to know that nobody in the Facebook group had any control over that and acting like everybody there broke into my house and crapped in my Cheerios wasn’t going to solve anything.

But the complaint that really got my attention was the one guy who asked why, in this age where “everything is available streaming,” anybody would care about launching a new pre-programed broadcast network. I’m going to address the two major flaws in his logic, starting with the more obvious and then moving on to the one that has more personal meaning to me.

First of all, let’s talk about the notion that “everything is available streaming.” The fact is, friends, that’s simply not true. As much as we might like it to be the case, there are large swaths of our television and cinematic history that are not legally available on any streaming service, or even for purchase digitally or physically. Sometimes it’s a rights issue. The original Muppet Babies cartoon from the 80s, for example, cannot legally be found anywhere, and likely never will, because that cartoon made extensive use of movie and TV clips from a half-century of Hollywood output. At the time, there was no thought behind it except for obtaining the rights for broadcast. Nobody was considering the afterlife of these shows. Now, in order to sell or stream an episode of Muppet Babies, the Walt Disney Entertainment Conglomatorium and Tiki Lounge would have to track down the rights holders of each and every movie or television clip ever used on the show to obtain permission to use it again, and in perpetuity. Disney clearly doesn’t think the effort it would take to do such a thing would be worth the likely return on their investment, and as much as I hate to say it, I think they’re probably right.

I dare you to find one historical injustice greater than the fact that this episode is lost to the world.

But Muppet Babies wouldn’t be on MeTV Toons anyway, since Disney has their own deal. What about the shows that will? Well, a quick glance shows that the Police Academy series isn’t available to stream anywhere. Captain Planet is available to PURCHASE from sites like Amazon or AppleTV, but not as part of any streaming subscription. And although there are limited (and often out-of-print) DVDs available for the likes of Underdog, Beetlejuice, and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, if you’re hoping to stream them on Netflix or any similar service, I’m afraid it’s a non-starter. And even for things that ARE available to stream – well, as we’ve seen in the last year, something that’s on Paramount+ today is not guaranteed to be there tomorrow.

Obviously, some things are worth fighting for.

I’m not going to go through the entire MeTV Toons schedule, but you get the point. There are a LOT of things that aren’t available to stream, whether it’s because of rights or because the copyright owner doesn’t think it would be worth the expense to put it out there or for any of a thousand other reasons. A network like MeTV Toons will likely shift their lineup often, especially for shorter-run series (for example, Wacky Races is on the schedule, and that series ran for only 17 episodes), so this will be a chance to give a bit of life to lots of cartoons that otherwise have been forgotten. People love to be dismissive of animation because, historically, Americans have viewed it as something that’s “just for children.” The number of adults eager for MeTV Toons would seem to disagree – and even if it DIDN’T, so what? The Hobbit was written for children. So was The Wizard of Oz. The sublime Paddington movies were made for kids. That doesn’t make a creative endeavor invalid, or mean that it isn’t something worth preservation.

So let’s move on to the second assumption of this question: why a pre-programed broadcast network? Who cares? Why not put all of these shows on a streaming service? Hell, you could even make it an ad-supported service like Tubi, which reported viewer numbers recently in excess of a lot of the premiere, paid streamers like Disney+. That seems doable, doesn’t it?

Well, yeah, kinda. And were such a service to exist, I would be first in line to sign up for it. But don’t discount the allure of a pre-programmed schedule. Apps like PlutoTV and RokuTV have built up a huge following by streaming pre-programmed channels of entertainment, supported by advertising, for free. I’ve written before about how much I love PlutoTV so I won’t get in too deep, but the fact that I can just say, “I wanna watch Star Trek” without having a specific episode in mind, then have TWO PlutoTV channels to sate my hunger…well that’s damned appealing.

“What do you want to watch? Kirk? Picard? Sisko? Janeway?”
“Yes.”

Pre-programmed TV is easy. Not mindless, mind you, but EASY. We live in a world where SOMETHING is demanding our judgment at every single moment of the day. It starts with something simple, like ordering coffee. But what kind of coffee do you want? What size? Hot or iced? Want a shot of flavoring in that? How about a shot of espresso? Whipped cream? Cherry on top? Paper straw that’s good for the environment but useless for drinking or plastic straw that actually functions as advertised but that will cause the barista to assume you murder turtles in your sleep? What name do you want on the cup? Any snacks? Okay, great, that completes your order, sir. Cash, card, or blood donation? Great. Want to leave a tip?

If we have taken something as simple as buying a cup of coffee and turned it into a process that requires a dozen decisions before the angry barista wearing a “Justice for Donatello” button gives you your order, what happens with something IMPORTANT, like buying a car or choosing a job? I’m a teacher, and there are studies that indicate the average teacher has to make 1,500 individual decisions over the course of an average day. Numerically, this is a higher number than most DOCTORS. (Although admittedly, the decisions doctors have to make are usually more intense than whether or not I’m going to let Jimmy go to the bathroom when I don’t believe he really has to go.) I cite this number any time my wife doesn’t understand why I’m begging HER to pick what we have for dinner, for God’s sake, I don’t care WHAT it is I just DON’T WANT TO DECIDE.

Ahem. Love you, baby.

The point is, apps like PlutoTV offer something that a typical streaming service does not: easy entertainment. If I don’t know exactly what I want to watch, I can spend hours scrolling through the choices on Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Peacock, Paramount+, Max, Shudder, the Criterion Channel, ESPN+, Screambox, BET+, Prime Video, Shout Factory, Freevee, AMC+, Disney-Minus, Nick at Night Terrors, and Cap’n Willie’s Streaming Emporium-o-rama before finally giving up and putting on a rerun of Gilligan’s Island. Streaming is GREAT if you already KNOW what you want to watch, but sometimes all you really want is to stop thinking and get in some comfort viewing. PlutoTV and RokuTV are built on this premise. It’s worked so well, in fact, that bigger streamers like Shudder, Prime Video, and Freevee have all added “channels” to their streaming model, and rumor has it that Disney+ is considering the same thing. Sure, it’s kind of weird that we abandoned cable for streaming only for us to want to turn streaming back into cable, but sometimes you’ve got to let something go before you realize how much it means to you.

This is what comes on when you activate your Fire stick in Hell.

The point is, MeTV Toons is another outlet for this kind of entertainment, and it’s promising us something that none of the other sources have offered, and by that I am of course referring to Peter Potamus.

But there are plenty of other things on that network that I would LOVE to see show up in rotation. KNOV 41.6 starts airing on Tuesday, I intend to park my TV on that channel and leave it there.

At least until Saturday night rolls around, anyway. Ain’t nothing gonna take me away from Svengoolie.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He is hoping against hope that MeTV Toons will find a way to show The Racoons, because he has to find out if that show is as weird as he remembers or if he just had a fever dream that lasted for much of his childhood.

Geek Punditry #68: The Importance of Being Bandit (or) Yes, I Am Taking Advice From a Cartoon Dog

April 19, 2024April 19, 2024 blakemp Dadding, Geek Punditry Animation, Bandit Heeler, Bluey, Disney, Family, Fathers, parenting, television, TV Dads, tv-shows

A few weeks ago I had one of the scariest nights of my life. My son was briefly hospitalized, and my wife and I were told he would probably have to have his appendix taken out. The idea of someone cutting open my little guy terrified me, not the least because I knew he wouldn’t really understand what was happening, and I got very little sleep sitting in that hospital chair. The story had a happy ending, fortunately. In the morning the doctors reexamined him and determined that the discomfort he was feeling was not caused by his appendix after all and was most likely a particularly nasty viral infection, and we were sent home later that day. But the night before was horrifying. I want to tell you, though, about the bright spot. That actually came early on in the process: Eddie had been sick all day and in the afternoon began throwing up with alarming frequency, prompting me to take him to urgent care. There, the doctor on call examined Eddie and advised me to take him to the emergency room.

For a parent, this is way scarier than any haunted house.

Those two words, “emergency room,” sent me into a total PANIC. I started to tremble. My hands were shaking as I texted my wife, who was at work, to meet us at the hospital. I was shaking harder when I searched for the hospital with the Pediatric ER on Google Maps – this despite the fact that I myself was a patient at that same hospital some years ago, and I knew perfectly well where it was. At that moment, though, I didn’t know much of anything and I could feel myself babbling, with questions spilling out of my mouth as frequently as Eddie gives them to me on a good day. At that moment the doctor seemed to realize that – right then and there – his primary patient wasn’t the one in the most need of immediate care. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Hey, I have kids too. He’s going to be okay. Nobody knows the pressure on a dad, do they?”

I could have cried right then and there. If I didn’t have to get Eddie into the car to take him to the ER I probably would have. But that moment of strength and compassion from this doctor meant more to me than I could have possibly told him, because he’s absolutely right. Society has bizarre and, frankly, contradictory expectations of fathers. On the one hand, we are often seen as the “disposable” parent. Mothers are considered primary caregivers, stores and restaurants frequently neglect to put diaper changing stations in the men’s restrooms, in custody battles the final decisions overwhelmingly favor the mother, and never once has anyone seen my wife with our son and asked if SHE was “babysitting.” On the other hand, fathers are expected to be the provider, to give the family everything that is needed, to push their own needs aside up to and including their mental health, and to never, EVER allow a crack in the armor to show lest it be revealed that they are anything less than a demigod who always has it together and can do anything all by themselves and make everything turn out in the end. It’s a cocktail of unreasonable expectations and toxic disrespect.

This is not to say that it’s easy to be a mother, of course – nothing could be further from the truth. Moms are looked upon as the nurturers and the caregivers, the emotional core of a family, and there is an immense amount of pressure associated with that role. The difference, to me, is that mothers are usually (justly) celebrated for their contributions and sacrifices, whereas fathers are made the butt of jokes. Think about the difference in our respective holidays. On Mother’s Day, flower shops are emptied, restaurants are packed, and everyone reminds you to celebrate Mom. On Father’s Day, the punchline is about which crappy tie Dad will be given this year.

My wife is wonderful. My wife couldn’t be more supportive. That’s not where this pressure comes from: it’s all about the pressure that we’ve been told all of our lives to bring on ourselves.

All of this is to say that Bandit Heeler is the best father on television.

Pictured: What I want to be when I grow up.

I shall try to keep my statements in praise of Ludo’s cartoon Bluey brief, but in case you don’t know, Bluey is an Australian cartoon about a family in Brisbane, Australia: six-year-old Bluey Heeler (seven after a birthday episode), her little sister Bingo, their mother Chilli, and their dad, Bandit. Creator Joe Brumm based the show on his own daughters and the way they used to play when they were little, and the majority of episodes focus on the games the children play and the way their parents (and, often, other assorted grownups) get sucked into the amazing fantasy worlds they create. The fact that the Heelers and the rest of the sentient inhabitants of this universe are all dogs is of utter irrelevance.

Over the course of three seasons and over 150 seven-minute episodes, Bluey has become that rarest of phenomenon: a show that is loved by children, but absolutely adored by parents. Bandit and Chilli love their children completely, and what’s more, love each other just as much, and none of the Heelers are shy about showing it. In an era where so many TV families are made up of characters who seemingly can’t stand each other and remain together only because of a vague description of “family” that the thesis of the show often works to destroy, the Heelers are, to put it bluntly, Squad Goals. And Bandit in particular is the father that every father who watches it wants to grow up to be.

TV dads, historically speaking, have largely fallen into one of two categories. In the early days of TV they were bland, plastic paragons of virtue like Ward Cleaver or Ozzie Nelson. Even by the 70s, when shows were beginning to allow a bit more of an edge, Howard Cunningham from Happy Days was a faultless (if loving) font of strength. Then a switch flipped and dads went from being carved out of marble to sculpted out of mud. TV dads in the 90s and 00s were buffoons. Either they were obnoxiously indifferent to the needs of their children like Al Bundy, or they were so stupid and vapid that they should probably, legally, not be allowed to have a child in their custody without adult supervision. Even the best dads of this era, like Home Improvement’s Tim Taylor, may have genuinely loved their kids, but were also often dangerously negligent in their actions and did incredibly boneheaded things in the name of comedy. It was good for a laugh, sure, but awful for the portraiture of dads in pop culture.

There HAS to be some sort of middle ground between these two.

(In the interest of painting a comprehensive picture I should mention that there WAS at least one great TV dad of this era, Heathcliff Huxtable, but real world circumstances have sadly made it virtually impossible to look upon him as a role model anymore.)

Bandit isn’t an idiot. He’s often a step ahead of his kids, playing their games but also using them to teach. In the episode “Bikes,” for example, he has Bluey observe the kids around them to learn perseverance, whereas in “Hotel” he teaches her how to compromise with her sister. Bandit is willing to become whatever is needed to keep the kids happy, and not even just his own kids. In “See-Saw,” he realizes that Bluey’s friend Pom Pom is feeling excluded because she’s so tiny (she’s a Pomeranian, you see, a small but hearty breed), so he sets himself up as the villain, sitting on the titular see-saw and refusing to budge until Pom Pom gets a chance to “save the day.”

This is actually what I look like any time my wife says, “We may as well finish this pizza, it would be silly to just have them box up two slices.”

He’s a fantastic dad, but…and this is the most important part…he is not flawless. “Magic Claw” is about trying to teach his girls the value of hard work, only to have his efforts hilariously collapse around him as all they’re really interested in is playing the game. (There’s a great line in this episode where he says that the girls are learning a lesson AND cleaning the house at the same time, only for Chilli to snarkily reply, “Neither of those things are happening.”) In “Ice Cream” the girls each want a lick of the others’ dessert but spend so much time prevaricating over how big a lick they’re allowed to take that their ice cream melts away. Bandit hopes they’ll learn a lesson from this but, like a dad, he feels bad for them and winds up giving them his own ice cream instead.

Every *Bluey* parent can quote this scene with absolutely no help from my captions.

And sometimes, the world gets to Bandit. In “Stickbird,” as the family plays on the beach, Bandit is completely preoccupied. Something is quite clearly bothering him and he’s struggling so badly that he’s not entirely present for the childrens’ game. Although the show never tells us what, exactly, is eating at him, every father who watched that cartoon saw themselves that day. We don’t know why Bandit is struggling, but we DO know that he’s trying to contain himself for the sake of his family, and I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so seen by a TV show.

The moment when every dad in the world saw themselves.

Many fans feel like the “Stickbird” mystery, the question of what was bothering Bandit, was solved in the most recent episode, the quadruple-length “The Sign.” I’m going to spoil “The Sign” now, so stop reading if you’re trying to avoid it, but I feel like pretty much everybody who cares has already seen it. And those who have seen it know that in this 28-minute blockbuster, Bandit Dadded the hardest he has ever Dadded.

In “The Sign,” the Heelers are planning to sell their house and move because Bandit has found a new, higher-paying job in another city, which he says multiple times throughout the episode will allow him to give his children a better life. Already, every dad in the audience is nodding in understanding. The trouble is that none of the Heeler women want to move. Chilli puts on a brave face, but you can tell that she’s upset, Bluey openly campaigns against the move, and Bingo is perfectly happy with the whole thing until Chilli realizes that she doesn’t actually understand what “selling our house” means, after which she is devastated. Bandit struggles through the whole episode with this decision, believing that moving will mean a better life even though the message is clear that the rest of the family is happy with the life they have and they don’t want to chase some abstract idea of “better.”

In the final moments of the episode, the family that was planning to buy the house cancels the deal after finding a home they like more (it has a pool, you see). Bandit, taking this as “A” sign, rips “THE” for sale sign out of his yard and tosses it aside just before he’s tackled by his wife, who is sobbing with joy and adoration.

THIS IS A SHOW THAT IS OSTENSIBLY FOR PRESCHOOLERS.

Bluey is the most heartfelt show on television, and although there are several episodes that have left me in tears, there has never been one that left me unsatisfied. And for me, at least, it’s because in Bandit Heeler I see someone who I wish I could be, somebody I can be on my best days and someone I can turn to for strength on my worst days. And I’m not alone. Fathers all over the world have taken up Bandit as the role model we need – someone who loves his family unconditionally, is not afraid to express those emotions, and shows us that sometimes it’s okay to not be okay. We don’t have that. The world has told us for decades that we’re not allowed to be human, that feet of clay must be hidden, that we are to have no Kryptonite. Bandit tells us that’s BS, and because of that, there are a lot of dads reaching out to talk to other dads who understand that pressure the doctor told me about.

When Eddie was in the hospital, after the doctors told us that it wasn’t his appendix after all and that he was going to be okay, I felt awash with relief. I texted my own father and the rest of the family to let them know the news. I sent messages to concerned friends, to those English Teacher Friends I mentioned last week, and called my grandmother to let them all know that the cause for fear was over.

And then, because I’d been holding the emotion in for nearly 24 hours at that point, I got on Facebook and went to a group I’m in called “Bandits.” And I started to type. “Fellas, everything is okay now, but it’s been a rough night…”

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, now complete on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform, and hitting print on May 4th! He could write a dozen columns about how great Bluey is, but right now, he’s in a Bandit place.

Geek Punditry #63: The TV Land Pet Sematary

March 15, 2024March 15, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry cheers, ducktales, frasier, night court, Star Trek, Star Trek: Picard, television, tv

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a new season of Night Court airing right now. Now that may surprise you if you, like most of us, remember the show going off the air back in 1992. But it may be slightly less shocking if I tell you that the new series, like approximately 75 percent of television these days, is a reboot.

We live in the age of reboots on TV, and I think there are few obvious reasons for that. First of all, the people who fell in love with shows like Night Court during their formative years in the 80s and 90s are now largely the ones calling the shots at the networks, contributing greatly to the already-cyclical nature of pop culture. If you loved something once, it’s not unnatural or unusual to want to reclaim it and bring it back again, so when that kid who grew up watching DuckTales was given a shot at pitching an animated series to Disney, you damned well better believe he was gonna pitch a new DuckTales.

The other reason, of course, is that the TV world in utter chaos as ratings for broadcast television drop like Wile E. Coyote strapped to an anvil and nobody knows how to interpret what little data we get from streaming services. It’s considered a safer bet to hitch your star to an older series that might bring its older audience along for the ride. It’s why we got shows like The Connors, Fuller House, Girl Meets World, Quantum Leap, Animaniacs, Raven’s Home, One Day at a Time, And Just Like That, and, for the kiddos from the aughts, iCarly. It’s why every couple of months somebody floats the idea of a new version of The Office and why Bryan Cranston likes to tease us to say he’d totally be down to resurrect Malcolm in the Middle. Reboots are here and they’re not going anywhere. It’s like all these old shows were buried in the TV Land Pet Sematary, and sometimes they come back VERY wrong.

More shambling corpses than 10 season of *The Walking Dead.*

The truth is, like any other wave in entertainment, there are good and bad attempts, and I think one of the things that contributes to how well a reboot is accepted is the adherence to the original. It’s bizarre how often a studio will bring back an old show and then change everything about it, sometimes resulting in something as appalling as Thundercats Go! (the Gage Creed of the TV Land Pet Sematary). The logic of the producers is usually something along the lines of “We’re trying to get new fans, not old ones.” My response to this is, “if you’re not trying to get the old fans, why the hell did you call the show Walker: Texas Ranger?”

One of the most interesting examples of both a failed AND a successful reboot is Star Trek: Picard. When the first season was launched, the idea was to focus solely on Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard character, with only sparse appearances from some of his old castmates. They didn’t want to just make season 8 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The problem, of course, was that the fans just wanted season 8 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. So after two seasons of – I’m going to be kind here – dubious quality, for the third and final season they threw away most of the elements that weren’t working, got the crew of the Enterprise-D on the phone, and made one of the most entertaining and warmly-regarded seasons of TV in Trek History.

I’m never gonna get tired of this picture.

But back to Night Court. The new series is set in the same courtroom as the original, and it is a continuation rather than a full continuity restart such as Charmed, which I for one prefer. The head of the new ensemble is Melissa Rauch (of The Big Bang Theory) as Judge Abby Stone, daughter of the character played by the late Harry Anderson in the old series. While many of these reboots make an effort to have a cast that frequently blends the old and the new, there isn’t a ton of cross-pollination in Criminal Court Part Two, and for a fair enough reason: most of the original cast is no longer with us. Night Court, tragically, has suffered a far greater attrition rate than most other shows of the 80s. Of the entire original main cast, only three of them were still alive when the reboot was announced, and one of them (the great Richard Moll, who played Bull Shannon) passed away after season one without ever agreeing to make an appearance. Marsha Warfield, touchingly, has made two appearances, and Brent Spiner (who played a recurring character for a few years on the original) has shown up as well, but fans looking for familiar faces will be disappointed.

The only original cast member that’s a regular on the new version is John Larroquette, whose Dan Fielding is almost unrecognizable as the same character. 80s Dan was sleazy, lascivious, and somebody that wouldn’t last ten minutes in a modern courthouse without getting “Me Too”ed into oblivion, which is probably the reason for the drastic change. Modern Dan is old, curmudgeonly, a combination of Oscar the Grouch and Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace. I’m not saying that I need a sleazeball character for a show to be enjoyable, but considering how it was his defining characteristic, it seems ridiculous that his bed-jumping past is almost completely ignored in favor of this somewhat lonely man that Dan has become. I don’t even mind that he’s changed, I just wish there was a clearer path of transition, because they don’t talk about his past at all. He’s mentioned the death of his wife, which is implied to have triggered this change in his personality, but HELL, that’s a story I want to know! Tell me about the woman who changed Dan!

I just want someone to make this make sense.

The show isn’t quite as wacky as the original either. Oh sure, the classic series didn’t start wacky, but it spun wildly out of control and by the final season it was practically a live-action cartoon. In fact, in one memorable episode, a defendant in a one-scene gag turned out to be the fully-animated and aforementioned Wile E. Coyote. The reboot occasionally makes a flailing grab at bringing that sensibility back, but it usually feels forced. So far the most authentic thing about the series is ditching the actor playing the Court Clerk and replacing him between the first two seasons.

Anyway, the new Night Court is okay. It’s not great, it’s okay, and that’s how I feel about most of the reboots that I’ve watched. Fuller House drew most of its charm by reminding the viewers about the cheese of the original series. The Animaniacs relaunch gave me a few laughs, but there was nothing that came even close to the genius of the Anvilania episode of the classic.

And then there’s Frasier.

The show that gave the world tossed salads and scrambled eggs.

I’ve written before of my love for Cheers and how I consider it one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, and that love extends to its spinoff. In fact, I would say that Frasier and Better Call Saul belong on a special shelf labeled “spinoffs as good as and sometimes even better than the original.” It is a very, very exclusive club. Laverne and Shirley keeps petitioning for admission but is denied on the grounds of the Cindy Williams-less last season. And because I loved Frasier so damned much, I was wary of the reboot when the first season dropped last fall. I finally worked myself up to give it a watch and…

…be surprised by this…

…it’s okay.

Let me tell you a little bit about the new set-up. In the original Frasier, Kelsey Grammer’s character from Cheers moved from Boston to Seattle where his father Martin (John Mahoney) wound up moving in with him. Frasier, of course, was a Harvard-educated psychiatrist with more than a little bit of pretension, whereas his father was a retired cop who liked beer and basketball. The Odd Couple style dynamic between them provided a lot of the fuel for what was one of the greatest comedies in television history (and that’s not even bringing up the brilliance of the rest of the cast). In the reboot, Frasier moves back to Boston and moves in with his son, Frederick (played by Jack Cutmore-Scott) who has inherited both his father’s intelligence and his grandfather’s working-class sensibilities. The original show gave us a long and rewarding arc of Frasier and Martin reconnecting and forging a sincere and touching bond. In perhaps the reboot’s most interesting twist, Frasier deliberately moves in with his son in an attempt to recreate this father/son bond following Martin’s death.

“I’m confused. Which one of them is supposed to be the new Chopper Dave?”

Cutmore-Scott and Grammer work well together, mirroring the Frasier/Martin dynamic but reversing the archetypes of the characters. The rest of the cast, though, isn’t as engaging, and I don’t think there’s anybody who watches the reboot who isn’t waiting for Niles and Daphne to show up. Obviously the late John Mahoney can’t make an appearance, but his specter hangs over the first season of the reboot and it makes for one of the most authentic elements of the show. It’s telling, though, that the two best episodes of the first season are the ones that guest-starred Bebe Neuwirth (as Frasier’s ex-wife and Freddy’s mom Lilith) and Peri Gilpin (as Frasier’s old radio producer Roz Doyle). Supposedly David Hyde Pierce and Jane Leeves, who played Niles and Daphne in the old show, were approached to appear in the reboot but declined. I’ve probably heard a half dozen explanations for why they turned the offer down, and since I have no idea which if any of them is correct, I’m not going to speculate or point fingers. All I’m going to say is the show has a much better chance of getting a season three if they find a way to get Pierce and Leeves to show up in season two.

If you’re going to bring back something from the past, you need to keep in mind what people loved about it in the first place. That doesn’t mean it needs to be exactly the same. In many cases – be it because of changing societal values or the loss of beloved performers – it can’t be. But if you don’t at least identify the spirit of the original and do your best to bring it back in the reboot, then what the hell is the point?

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, now complete on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He’s waiting with baited breath for the reboot of Mama’s Family now that Vicki Lawrence is actually age-appropriate to play Mama.

Geek Punditry #57: Guilty Reality

February 2, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry Alan Cumming, netflix, Peacock, reality tv, television, The Mole, The Traitors, tv

I’ve never really been a fan of the term “guilty pleasure.” It seems inherently reductive to me. It’s announcing to the world that you’re ashamed of something you like, but I don’t think anyone should have to feel that way. If you’re a grown-up who’s into Squishmallows, so what? Get yourself a Squishmallow. Tell your friends so they’ll load you down with them on your birthday. Why would that be anything to be embarrassed about? Adult Fans of Lego? We’re a thriving community. And if anybody tries to tell me that Bluey is “just a kid’s show,” I will personally offer to help them look for the soul they have obviously misplaced.

Don’t call yourself a dad if you can get through this episode without a lump in your throat.

That said, I do UNDERSTAND the idea of a guilty pleasure. There are some things that you enjoy that, for one reason or another, you feel like maybe you shouldn’t. It’s not a matter of shame for me, though, it’s more a question of why does this one thing, this piece of pop culture that includes so many elements that I usually find reprehensible, for some reason not only hold my attention, but leaves me thirsting for more? It’s not a guilty pleasure for me, it’s a confusing one. And here, of course, I am referring to the Peacock “reality” competition series, The Traitors.

It’s kinda like *Knives Out,* only the characters aren’t as likable.

I’m not a huge fan of reality competition to begin with. I watched the first few seasons of Survivor back in the day, the show that popularized (if not outright invented) this hybrid game show and docudrama, in which people in competition with each other are also forced to live together. The thing that makes this type of show stand out is that we aren’t solely watching the competition, but also the lives of these people in-between the events. The thing that made the format revolutionary, though, is also the thing that turned me off. Those day-to-day moments became much darker. The contestants started to turn into vile, backstabbing jerks to each other, and it became increasingly difficult to pull for anybody. It wasn’t long before the majority of shows in this category were wiped clean from my viewing slate. Most of the reality competitions I watch these days are the ones that focus solely on the “competition” part, like The Great British Baking Show, Masterchef, LEGO Masters, or Crime Scene Kitchen. Without the manufactured drama between games to make people hate each other, these shows are much more pleasant to watch. In fact, there are plenty of times on British Baking Show where one contestant will drop what they’re doing to help out one of their OPPONENTS in a moment of need, an act of kindness and goodwill that on a show like Big Brother would result in somebody’s spleen being removed and served to the group for dinner with a light balsamic glaze.

“It was kind of you to help Jeannie with her tartlet, but I’m afraid we WILL have to feed you to the leopard now.”

But back to The Traitors. Based (as so many of these things are) on a British series of the same name, when I heard about the first season a year ago I thought it would be worth a watch. The concept reminded me a little of one of the few reality competitions that I DID enjoy, The Mole. In that show, contestants worked together on a series of missions, with each success adding to the prize pot that would be awarded to the final victor at the end. One of them, however, was a “Mole” working for the producers and actively attempting to sabotage the others. This was a fun show in that the viewer got to play along, analyzing the clues and observing the behavior of the competitors in an attempt to figure out who the Mole was. Netflix brought that show back in 2022 for a reboot which worked well, although a promised second season has not yet materialized.

The Traitors is similar. Again, the competitors are working together to win challenges, and again, the prize money for each challenge goes into a pot to be awarded to the winners at the end. But there are several major differences. First of all, rather than a single Mole, a small group of the competitors are secretly chosen in the first episode to be the Traitors. And their task is NOT to sabotage the missions – in fact, it is in their best interest to see the missions succeed, because at the end of the game the prize will be split among the winners. If the non-traitors, or “Faithful,” manage to eliminate all of the Traitors by the end of the game, they win and those that lasted to the end share the pot. However, if even ONE Traitor remains at the end, then the Faithful get nothing and the money is divided among the remaining Traitors. Like most shows, each night the Faithful vote someone out, hoping like hell that they get one of the Traitors and not one of their own. But afterwards, the Traitors are allowed to choose a Faithful to “murder” and eliminate from the game.

Unlike The Mole, the audience is aware of who the Traitors are from the very beginning. We watch as they are chosen and we watch as they plan and scheme against the Faithful. We also watch the Faithful’s attempts to weed them out, which feel increasingly bizarre and nonsensical to those of us on the outside who already know the solution to the puzzle and can’t figure out how they could be so egregiously wrong.

The big thing about The Traitors, though, is that when I tuned in to season one last year, about half of the contestants turned out to be veterans from various other reality competition series like Big Brother. They hadn’t played THIS game before, but they played similar ones, and they think they’re savvy enough to carry through to the end. Not being a fan of those shows, the personalities were blanks to me, but they were frequently shown acting as though they were experts or major stars. I was even more alarmed in season two when it turned out virtually EVERY competitor was a reality show vet, including some dude who unironically calls himself “Johnny Bananas.” These were people who had actually turned appearing on these shows into a career. Would I be able to handle this level of ego on my television?

This is what it looks like to be famous for being famous.

To my shock and confusion, the answer seems to be yes.

The show is incredibly backstabby, and the competitors take it super personally. I get that there’s a lot of money on the line, but to hear them talk about the Traitors as if they were Nazi war criminals instead of people trying to win a game show seems a bit much. Are they lying? Sure – but in the context of the game I don’t really see that as any more unethical than bluffing at poker. Are they kicking out innocent people? Absolutely – because they have to do that in order to win the game. It’s in the DNA of the thing. And yet the Faithful seem to talk as though they were literal thieves and murderers. I want to go up to some of these competitors and ask them what they think THEY would be doing had they been chosen to be Traitors, and wait to hear them try to do ethical backflips to try to avoid conceding that they would behave precisely the same way. In both seasons so far (season two is only six episodes in, as I write this), I have found myself surprisingly rooting for the Traitors to win, because the level of rage and invective that comes from the Faithful actually makes the Traitors seem like far more agreeable people. Also because the Faithful are unbearably stupid.

I need to correct that. It’s not really fair to call them unbearably stupid. It’s the way these shows are made. The producers prod the contestants to say certain things and act certain ways, and then they take their performances and edit them down, taking whatever reality exists on the set and shaving it away to sculpt them into characters: this is the arrogant guy, this is the ditzy girl, this is the narcissist, this is the bitch. Actually, on The Traitors, they seem to sculpt multiple bitches. But the point is, I am aware that the figures I see on the screen are not the people that they really are, but rather who the producers of the show want me to THINK they are. So the accurate thing to say is that the producers want me to THINK the Faithful are unbearably stupid.

“Okay, Kate, tell us again how smart you are. But…maybe don’t try to spell it this time.”

I know it’s easy for me, from my perch on the couch knowing exactly who the “bad guys” are, to laugh at the wrong avenues the Faithful follow to try to capture them, but even without that filter, I just don’t see how a lot of their tactics make sense. In the first episode, the Traitors are selected duck-duck-goose style, blindfolded, as the host of the show walks around the room and taps the chosen on the shoulder. As soon as the blindfolds come off, before even the Traitors have a chance to find out who the other Traitors are, the accusations begin. “This guy breathed funny.” “I’m getting Traitor vibes from her.” “I’ve been suspicious of him since DAY ONE.” Dude, it’s Day Two. Stop acting like that’s impressive.

Another contestant gets confused by one of the Traitor’s “victims” and, unable to figure out why they killed that person, declares that the Traitors must be really stupid. This person who has utterly failed to track down a single one of the Traitors and has voted out several innocent people in the effort, helping their cause all along, is calling THEM stupid. I wanted to throw something at the TV.

One contestant is determined that “The Traitor HAS to be an Alpha Male.” Why? Because other Alpha Males are among his “victims.” This is ludicrous for various reasons. First of all, the Faithful are aware that there are, in fact, multiple Traitors. Second, the whole “Alpha Male” concept in and of itself is a myth. Even the biologists who first coined the term among wolves later dismissed it, saying they had misinterpreted the data, but the idea lingers. I’ve always thought that anyone who refers to himself as an “Alpha Male” as some sort of badge of honor is someone not worth paying attention to, but I suppose I need to extend that policy to include anyone who uses the term “Alpha Male” in an attempt to identify a fake murder suspect on reality television.

So I watch each episode, worried that the Faithful will get dumber and dumber and hoping that the Traitors – who damn it all, I actually like – can pull it off. I watch as the strategies learned from being on Survivor and Big Brother and The Challenge and The Bachelor inevitably fail, I watch as assorted Real Housewives decide which clique they’re going to be in, I watch as the only people with common sense are targeted by the rest of the Faithful and voted off the show, and I ask myself why the hell I keep watching this?

Gotta be because Alan Cumming is the host.

I’m not saying that this guy not coming back is the REASON *X-Men 3* sucked, but it sure didn’t help.

As another great fictional detective, Benoit Blanc, once observed, “It makes no damn sense. Compels me, though.”

There’s nothing else I can say to explain why I keep watching The Traitors.

Or why I can’t wait for season three.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, now complete on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He’s about to start Tweeting at Netflix to find out when the hell The Mole is coming back.

Geek Punditry #15: How Lucy Gave Us the Arc

April 14, 2023April 20, 2023 blakemp Geek Punditry i love lucy, pluto tv, story arcs, television, Writing

A few weeks ago I wrote about how, for a lot of people, familiar TV shows, books, and movies, act as a kind of pop culture comfort food, something that calms, soothes, and entertains you almost as much as a visit with an old friend. We rewatch these shows because the familiarity does us good and makes us happy, and that’s what makes Pluto TV the best app around, in my opinion. Pluto TV gives you (free) access to hundreds of channels that provide you with this sort of entertainment. There are channels dedicated to old sitcoms, channels dedicated to old gameshows, an entire channel that shows reruns of The Carol Burnett Show, another that gives you a steady stream of Mystery Science Theater 3000, one that’s all RiffTrax, and two separate channels dedicated to repeats of the various Star Trek series. My son specifically asks to watch “Nick Jr. on Pluto TV” as opposed to asking for a particular show, and as that has weaned him away from YouTube I’m not complaining in the slightest. There are also channels for news, sports, music, movies, cartoons, and (for my wife) true crime shows and documentaries. It’s honestly an app that has something for everyone.

I swear they’re not paying me to say this. I just really like it.

But most pertinently to this week’s Geek Punditry, there’s a channel that only shows episodes of I Love Lucy, the timeless sitcom about the love between Lucy and Ricky Ricardo and the barely-disguised loathing of their best friends, Fred and Ethel Mertz. To my surprise, once we added the Lucy channel to our regular Pluto TV rotation, I learned that my wife had not watched this show growing up, so for her, it’s all new. It’s given me a good excuse to voraciously rewatch the show and, since Pluto shows the entire series in order, it’s also allowed me to notice something that hadn’t occurred to me before. I don’t need to remind anyone what a groundbreaking, legendary series this was, about how it literally invented the rerun, how it pioneered the three-camera setup used by many sitcoms ever since, or about how Lucille Ball was simply one of the funniest human beings ever to walk the Earth. But what I didn’t realize until recently is that Lucy and Desi also apparently invented – or at least codified – one of the primary elements of television that exists today: the story arc.

“Luuuuuucy…are you breaking new ground in televised entertainment AGAIN?”

These days, of course, arcs are commonplace, and no longer the purview of only soap operas. Babylon 5 is largely responsible for bringing the technique to science fiction, blazing a trail that shows like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine began to follow a few years later. Then Lost premiered in 2004, probably the first mega-hit to run with an ongoing storyline, and since then almost any drama that isn’t a police procedural (and many that are) has followed suit.

Comedies were a different breed, though. A “sitcom” is literally a “situation comedy,” and changing up the situation was a big no-no. In the past TV comedies existed in a state of permanent status quo, where anything that changed in the story had to be changed back by the end of the episode. If it was a show about a nuclear family, that family stayed nuclear. If it was a show about a workplace, the people employed at that workplace stayed constant. Nobody ever moved away without moving right home again, nobody in the main cast ever got married or divorced, and if somebody lost their job, they had to regain it in 30 minutes or less. There’s a single episode of The Honeymooners where Ralph is laid off but they forgot to put him back behind the wheel of the bus before the episode ended. They simply ignored it the next week and moved on as if nothing had happened, but it was so shocking that it became a punchline in an episode of Family Guy decades later.

“When I catch the guy who forgot to gimme my job back, BANG! ZOOM!”

Now I could be wrong. I’m not a TV historian, and I know that things like radio dramas and soap operas had arc-based stories for some time, but when it comes to primetime shows, especially comedies, I feel like this is another area where Lucy broke new ground. Over the six seasons of the show, I count no less than six storylines that can legitimately be described as “arcs” (which, for ease of discussion, I will hereby define as a story thread or change to the status quo that carries through multiple episodes before resolution). The first was a matter of necessity: when Lucille Ball was pregnant during the second season of the show, they decided to incorporate it into the story rather than disguise it like so many shows have done before and since. (It was not, however, the first TV show to depict a pregnancy, as is often erroneously reported. A mostly-forgotten show called Mary Kay and Johnny actually beat them to the punch by a full four years, and they did it for the same reason that Lucy did.) Lucy’s pregnancy was announced in season 2, episode 10 and the baby was born in episode 16, with the five episodes in-between pretty much all dealing with the pregnancy as that episode’s major plot point.

Before and, for a time, after the birth of Little Ricky, I Love Lucy was mostly content with the one-off stories that were sitcom staples. In season 4, however, things changed with an absolutely massive arc in which the cast uprooted and went to Hollywood. It started in season 4, episode 6, when Ricky had a screen test with a movie producer. The next couple of episodes dealt with him waiting to hear back about the test, getting an offer to do a movie, planning a trip to Hollywood with the Mertzes for some reason, and several episodes of buying a car, fixing up the car, and driving from New York to California before finally arriving in Hollywood in episode 17. The cast stayed in California for the remainder of the 30-episode season, not returning home to New York until episode 6 of season 5. The arc was in many ways an excuse to bring in a bunch of celebrity guest stars like John Wayne and Harpo Marx, but it was still an unprecedented change to a series of this nature.

“Do you really think they’ll watch five episodes of us driving?”
“Of course they will, Nintendo hasn’t been invented yet.”

They didn’t stay home very long, though. In episode 10 of season 5, Ricky’s band is given an opportunity to tour Europe, and after a few episodes of getting a passport and (again) planning a trip with the Mertzes, they set off on a cruise ship in episode 13 and then continued traveling the continent for the remainder of the season’s 26 episodes.

Season 6, the final season of the show in its original form, brought with it two more arcs. The first one, once again, was based on travel, with episodes 6-9 centered around a vacation to Miami and to Cuba to meet Ricky’s relatives (with the Mertzes). The final arc is a little harder to define, but it’s there. In episode 15, Lucy decides she’s tired of city life and wants to move to the country. Cue several episodes about buying a house, moving, and settling down in their new home, along with the Mertzes, proving that Bert and Ernie’s was not television’s first codependent relationship. Episode 20 is about the Ricardos and Mertzes trying (hilariously) to start up an egg farm, and that’s where I declare the “arc” over, as the remainder of the season’s (and series’) 27 episodes didn’t really deal with the move anymore, but the fact that they were new in town did still turn up as a plot point more than once.

No other show at the time had ever done so many extended storylines, especially nothing as long as the Hollywood arc, and it was a long time before such things were handled the same way. While changes in the status quo began to be allowed, they still often took the form of a single episode where a change was made and a new status quo took over: the move of the Laverne and Shirley characters to California, Richie joining the Army and leaving Happy Days, and of course, the infamous introduction of Cousin Oliver on The Brady Bunch are good examples of this. Changes were happening, but they were done so quickly that it was almost like a whole new show took over after an episode rather than the sort of slow burn that Lucy and Desi pulled off.

No matter how mad you are about what happened on your favorite show, remember, it could be worse.

Comedies now embrace arcs as well. The Office, for example, started off with the unrequited love between Jim and Pam, which was the sort of thing that sitcoms had always done, but then they did something shocking in season three and (gasp) REQUITED it. So they needed new arcs. They had the “Michael Scott Paper Company” storyline, the Sabre arc, the Dwight/Angela/Andy love triangle, and assorted other storylines of varying length and quality. Most other successful sitcoms these days bring in arcs after a while, if not built in to the DNA of the series from the very beginning. But as I sit there with Pluto TV showing me Lucy spending two episodes ruining and then trying to fix John Wayne’s footprints in wet cement in the middle of their year-long brush with Hollywood, I am in awe of the people who blazed the trail for everyone else.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He didn’t even touch on the Pluto channels for Doctor Who, Top Gear, or The Price is Right, because how much awesome can you realistically handle in one column?

Geek Punditry #9: Pop Culture Comfort Food

March 3, 2023March 3, 2023 blakemp Geek Punditry back to the future, books, cheers, comic books, Movies, princess bride, superman, television

Reportedly, there are studies that indicate people like rewatching old TV shows and movies because there is comfort to be found in familiarity. I don’t have those particular studies in front of me because I don’t feel like looking them up at the moment (this is a highly scientific approach), but I completely believe it. When the world is starting to be too much, I often find myself going back to movies, books, or comics that I have enjoyed before. There’s something about returning to old stories that makes it feel like you’re reconnecting with a friend. There’s an ease and a comfort that can be desperately needed when there’s a weight on your shoulders, when the anxiety begins sending the pins and needles across your skin, when every text or phone call makes you worry that the worst has happened. I go back to these things a lot, is what I’m saying.

And since I know I’m not alone in this, I thought that this week I would share with you some of my storytelling comfort food. I’m going to tell you one example from each of my preferred forms of media (movies, TV, books, and comics) that I can and have returned to more times than I can count, stories I know as well as the walk from my car to the front door, characters who are as close to me as family. When I’m feeling down or beat up or that nothing is going to be okay, these are the places I turn to so that I can be reminded…sometimes it can be.

Movies: Back to the Future

A series that never fails to take you back in time.

In the interest of clarity, I guess I should say the Back to the Future trilogy, because heaven knows I can never stop with one. The first movie came out when I was 8 years old, and I distinctly remember sitting down in front of the fireplace after my parents rented it and put the VHS tape in. I remember how quickly and deeply I fell in love with the film and how we went to the movies together to see Part II, and how we went out during a storm while out of town on a family vacation on the opening weekend of Part III to see just how the saga concluded. I even remember my father commenting on the weather and saying that anybody who went out in it to see the movie must have been a die hard fan. Which, of course, I was.

I know I don’t have to explain to anyone why these films are so great, and I’m certainly not going to waste any time on a recap, but I’m going to tell you what it is about them that makes me feel better. Part of it, like with all of the things I’m going to share with you, are the characters. There’s something about the unorthodox friendship between Doc Brown and Marty McFly that resonated with me even as a child. I had already spent years dreaming of being picked up by a tornado and thrown to Oz or finding a closet door with a passage to Narnia, but even at eight it was starting to seem like either of those would be a stretch. Finding an eccentric mentor who would bring me along on grand adventures seemed much more plausible. Even now, at a stage in life where I find myself relating more to Doc than Marty, that relationship seems pure and genuine. (Ironically, I think that’s part of the reason Rick and Morty became so popular so fast – it’s a parody of the Doc/Marty relationship, but that parody wouldn’t have worked as well if there was something foul or sordid about the original.)

Then there’s the basic fantasy of time travel, of being able to hop into a machine that can whisk you away to another place. The idea of seeing the past and the future is tantalizing, and I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t be tempted to use Gray’s Sports Almanac the same way Marty intended to.

The other thing, which people may perhaps not think of immediately but I consider of utmost importance, is the music. The best movies often have memorable scores, but Alan Silvestri’s composition is one of the all-time greats. The sweeping tones automatically bring to mind the film, hit those triggers in your memory and pull you into the world of Hill Valley, and charge your heart with anticipation. The music moves from exciting to thrilling to, ultimately, triumphant. When you hear Alan Silvestri’s score to Back to the Future, you find yourself capable of believing that even when things are tough, like they were for Marty McFly, there is a solution that will make everything turn out okay in the end.

And c’mon. The car is really cool.

Television: Cheers

Where people know troubles are all the same.

Bet you expected me to say Star Trek, didn’t you? Yeah, I know, Trek is my jam, but sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name.

Cheers, the sitcom about a little bar in Boston, has two distinct stages, and I love them both…but not equally, if I’m being honest. In the early years, the show was mostly a workplace romcom about Sam and Diane, with the rest of the characters there to add flavor. It was a fine show, it was a funny show, but I was a fairly young child at the time and, although my parents watched it, I didn’t really start paying attention to the series until I got older. This may be part of the reason that – although I would never skip the Diane years when doing a rewatch – it’s the Rebecca years that leave the most indelible mark on my memory.

But my relative age isn’t the only reason the second life of Cheers is my preferred era. Like I said, during the Shelley Long years, the show centered around Sam and Diane’s relationship. This was good. This made for some excellent television. But after Long left to become a major movie star (I recently watched her performance in 2012’s Zombie Hamlet, and I highly recommend it), they replaced her with the recently-deceased Kirstie Alley, and although there were the occasional flirtations with making her couple off with Sam like they did with Diane, the writers wisely realized that the same chemistry wasn’t there, and shifted the focus from a romcom to more of an ensemble comedy. The other characters grew in prominence, Rebecca Howe found a different niche to fill than the one vacated by Diane Chambers, and the show blossomed yet again.

While the likes of Woody, Cliff, Carla, and Norm all had their moments in the pre-Rebecca days, post-Diane they had far more episodes in the spotlight. Frasier Crane was a Diane castoff who stuck around, but it was in the Rebecca era that he bloomed to one of the stars of the show, eventually spinning off into his own series (also a comfort watch for me), with a revival of the latter currently in the works. I’m not saying that the early years of Cheers weren’t GOOD, please don’t misunderstand me. It was a remarkable comedy, the character of Coach was sorely missed for the rest of the series, and the episode guest-starring John Cleese is perhaps one of the funniest half-hours of television ever put to film. It’s just that the pure love I feel for the series, the way I have affection for these characters as if they were personal friends of mine, the fact that I remember that Frasier’s first wife “Nanny G”’s phone number was 555-6792…that’s all a product of the Kirstie Alley years, and I’m fine with that.

Boy, I deserve some sort of trophy for THAT deep cut.

Book: The Princess Bride by William Goldman.

I may be cheating a little bit here, since much of what is wonderful about this novel is also applicable to the movie, which I also love and watch as comfort on many an occasion. But this is probably the novel I have read more times than any other (a feat which I insist is more impressive than the movie you’ve watched most often). It is the book I pick up when I’m sad. It’s the story I turn to when I’m depressed. It’s the tale I want to hear again when I feel like there is nothing good and beautiful in the world. I need this story at those times, because if it were true that there is nothing good and beautiful in the world, then how could a novel such as this even exist?

I know you’ve seen the movie, so I won’t bother to retell you the story. Instead, I’ll tell you about the elements unique to the book so that you can understand why it resonates with me so deeply.

First of all the framing sequence. In the film, the tale of Westley and Buttercup is being read by a grandfather to his sick grandson. In the book, Goldman creates a metatextual story (this was before metatextual stories) about his own family, in which his father read the story to him as a child. It was not until adulthood that he tried reading it himself to his own son (a fictional son, by the way, as the real William Goldman had only daughters) and realized his dad skipped all the boring bits and just read him “the good parts.” The book is presented as adult Goldman abridging a classic novel by getting rid of all the flowery muck and bits of Elizabethan satire that modern audiences wouldn’t give a crap about. It’s a really funny conceit, and it’s executed so perfectly that a lot of people reading the book for the first time don’t realize the framing sequence is fiction as well. (It’s me. I’m a lot of people. I didn’t get it the first time.)

Second, the writing is simply marvelous. A lot of the great bits of dialogue made it into the film, which isn’t a surprise since Goldman wrote the screenplay himself, but there simply wasn’t room for everything, and many of those pieces left on the floor are absolutely priceless. For instance, the movie largely ignores Buttercup’s parents and their unending bickering, for which they keep score. It skips over the history of Fezzik entirely and leaves out all but the most essential parts of Inigo’s backstory, which makes an already amazing character so much richer. There’s more time spent with Humperdink, more time devoted to Vizzini, and much more to Westley and Buttercup’s burgeoning romance. Because yeah, it is a kissing book.

I don’t begrudge Goldman any of the cuts, of course. The very premise of the novel is that sometimes parts of a story don’t translate from medium to medium. But if you’ve only seen the movie you haven’t experienced the whole story.

The last thing about this book is perhaps the most important: the message. In the framing sequence, Goldman discusses a conversation with an old neighborhood woman who served as something of a mentor to him. This segment concludes with the child Goldman learning that life isn’t fair. Rather than being angry or hurt at the realization, though, he is utterly jubilant to hear the news, because once you accept that life ISN’T fair, isn’t SUPPOSED to be fair, then a lot of the crap the world throws around suddenly makes a LOT more sense. This is, I think, a very important message, and the great thing about it is how it is presented in a way that is joyful and positive rather than dour and depressing.

The point I’m getting at is that if you haven’t read this book, you should, and I’m envious that you’re going to get to experience it for the first time, which I will never have the chance to do again. But hey, that’s all right, because life isn’t fair.

Comics: The Triangle Era Superman.

Okay, this paragraph is just for the uber-nerds like myself who already know all about the “Triangle Era” of Superman. The rest of you can skip to the next paragraph. Ahem. I’m about to give a super-condensed history of the era. I know I’m leaving out a bunch of stuff. Like William Goldman, I choose to focus on the good parts rather than telling everybody the intricacies of comic book numbering and whatnot. Please don’t send me corrective emails.

In 1986, DC Comics hired writer/artist John Byrne to revitalize the Superman character. He took over both Superman and Action Comics, the two titles that starred the hero, and they added a third book to the line as well, Adventures of Superman, which was usually done by other creators such as Marv Wolfman. After a while, Byrne left the character in the hands of other writers and artists, and while he had done good work in his time, it was after his departure that a certain kind of alchemy began to happen. With Superman starring in three comic books a month, the writers and artists would have to collaborate to make sure they weren’t contradicting or causing problems for each other. This collaboration began to grow more intricate, and in time, the three different titles began to function almost as one. Stories that began in Adventures of Superman one week would continue in Action Comics the week after. Before long a fourth title was added, Superman: The Man of Steel, so that there were four monthly Superman books that worked almost as a single weekly title. Then someone noticed that 4×12=48, but there were 52 weeks in a year, so a fifth title (Superman: The Man of Tomorrow) was added to fill in the extra gaps. At some point, DC started to put a triangle on the cover of each issue demonstrating which week of the year it was to help readers keep track of what order the books went in, thus the “Triangle Era” was born.

The weekly nature of the serial was a great concept. Knowing that there would be a new chapter of an ongoing storyline each and every week forged hardcore loyalty and created a devoted fanbase that still exists today. What’s more, although the main story was ongoing, each individual series had its own subplots that made it stand out. Adventures, for example, was more often going to deal with the mad scientists of Project: Cadmus, while Man of Steel devoted time to a story about an orphanage and a young child who would eventually be adopted by Perry White. The books were part of a larger whole, but still had their own flavor and identity.

The Triangle Era lasted over ten years, but those early days happened just as I started reading the books and featured many of the writers, artists, and storylines that are still most dear to me: Lois learning Clark’s double identity, their engagement and marriage, the somewhat vindicated-by-history era of Superman Blue/Superman Red, the classic “Panic in the Sky” storyline, and of course, the legendary Death and Return of Superman were all products of the Triangle Era. Like all comfort media, part of my love for these books is no doubt because these were the comics I read in my formative years. But there’s also the fact that, for a very long time, these comic books were just really good. The world of Superman, which had not-undeservedly been called stale and out of date a decade earlier, was suddenly energetic, exciting, and full of new characters, concepts, heroes, and villains. Many people have made Superman comics over the years, but Dan Jurgens, Brett Breeding, Roger Stern, Bob McCleod, Jerry Ordway, Tom Grummett, Louise Simonson, and Jon Bogdanove remain the gold standard in my mind.

As the song goes, these are a few of my favorite things. These are stories, characters, and worlds that I never grow tired of. These are the things that mean something to me, things I flat-out refuse to let go of, things that come together and help make me who I am.

So what are yours?

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He bets you thought he was kidding about Zombie Hamlet, didn’t you?