A Cliché TV Plot I Haven't Seen Much of Lately

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 6:14 PM - 8 Comments

I was just thinking about a plot that used to be done on every show, but — because of the changing nature of TV storytelling, where stories are more show-specific and you can’t always repeat plots from show to show — doesn’t happen very often these days. It’s the “foul play in the hospital” plot. The story is always pretty much the same: the lead character has to check into the hospital for a routine operation. While there, he or she becomes aware that something is fishy, that people are being murdered, and that someone at the hospital is behind this. The hero decides he has to investigate, which involves sneaking out of the hospital room (leading to a scene where he either can’t keep the hospital gown closed, or looks for his pants). Whoever is in charge of the dastardliness at the hospital will usually try to kill the hero either by performing unnecessary surgery or injecting the hero with a lethal drug.

The last time I saw this done was, of course, on Monk, because that’s one of the few old-fashioned detective shows, and this usually happened to detectives. (It happened to Rockford, to one or possibly both of the Harts, and others.) But it used to turn up on shows where the character wasn’t a P.I., didn’t have any particular investigative skills, just because the writers automatically went for this “check him into the evil hospital” idea when stumped for a plot. Buffy the Vampire Slayer did that plot, and while the episode was tweaked a bit to fit her character, it was basically the same story we’d seen on other shows, except that the culprit was a Freddy Krueger knockoff demon instead of the evil doctor.

An odd thing about this plot is that it rarely produced great episodes. It’s not like evil biker gang episodes, which every show used to do to kick-ass effect. These evil-hospital shows are pretty slow and awkward, because they take the hero completely out of his element and leave the other characters wandering around trying to figure out what to do (especially when it’s after visiting hours). But there must have been evil-hospital shows more recently; I’ll bet that at least one of the psychic-lady shows has done one, though I’m not going to watch them all to find out.

Speaking of cliché plots, there was recently a thread at the Home Theatre Forum about “episodes where the lead character goes blind for one episode.” Despite the awkward plot mechanisms required to blind your hero and get him all better in 25-50 minutes, this may actually be one of the most-repeated plots in television history. It’s not done very often these days, but Smallville did it in 2004, because there is no plot too corny for Smallville to use.

An Anniversary To Make Us Feel Old

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 5:47 PM - 4 Comments

I mentioned offhand that How I Met Your Mother “borrowed” its plot last week from a Seinfeld episode that aired 18 years ago (Alan Sepinwall pointed this out long before I did), and a commenter understandably wrote:

That Seinfeld episode was 18 years ago?!?

I need a drink.

Here’s something else to think about, if any of us can stand it: the pilot of Seinfeld first aired (as a summer burn-off) on July 5, 1989 — meaning that this year is the 20th anniversary of Seinfeld. (It’s also the 20th anniversary of The Simpsons because the Christmas episode aired in 1989, but oddly enough, even though that show is still on, I still think of it as being older than Seinfeld — probably because it is; the characters actually began in 1987.) To put this into perspective, Seinfeld this year will be as old as the moon landing and the cancellation of the Smothers Brothers when Seinfeld began. The first appearance of Seinfeld was the 20th anniversary of Scooby-Doo and The Brady Bunch. Seinfeld once parodied The Godfather, and it is now older than The Godfather was when Seinfeld started. It is older than most of the shows I considered “old” when I first started watching it.

I don’t really have a thesis or conclusion for this post, except perhaps to note the way syndication scrambles up the age of shows: because Seinfeld has only just started to be eased out of syndication in favour of newer shows, it still doesn’t feel “old,” whereas most shows that began in 1989 (or 1990, when it had its four-episode mini-season, or 1991, when it finally got a regular spot on NBC) feel very much of there time. It will happen, though; Cheers used to be very much a part of the culture because it was constantly in syndication, but now that it’s not in syndication very much, it has taken on the feel of an old classic TV show, rather than a recent show that just doesn’t happen to be producing new episodes any more.

Iggy flirts with the West

By Nicholas Köhler - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 5:29 PM - 36 Comments

Over the last few days, in an apparently deliberate attempt to signal a shift in the federal Liberal Party’s approach to Alberta, rookie leader Michael Ignatieff has been busy wooing the oil sands, that homely but lucrative spot in the Western hinterlands. This from the party that, under former leader Stéphane Dion, campaigned on the Green Shift? “It’s kind if astonishing,” laughs Michael Bliss, the retired University of Toronto historian and distinguished political observer. “If you were a Liberal follower, it’s like when the party line changes in Moscow—you’ve suddenly got to be very agile. You run in the election campaign in favour of carbon taxes and all of a sudden you’re a friend of the tar sands.”

The first smell of this came, appropriately enough, in Vancouver’s Gastown district last week during a pub-night exchange between Ignatieff and a group of youthful Liberals. It was all caught on video, including the hubbub that erupted when Ignatieff declared: “This is where a chill falls over the room because everybody expects me to say they’re terrible and shut them down.” Then he raises his voice above the crowd. “Absolutely not,” he cries. Describing the oil sands as “awe-inspiring,” he goes on to argue that the resource gives Canada hammer in the world. Then there’s the little side issue of Alberta. “Energy policy in our country is a national unity issue,” he says. “The dumbest thing you can do, and no Liberal must ever do it, is run against Alberta, make Alberta the enemy.”

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Obama's Main Lesson

By John Parisella - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 3:54 PM - 25 Comments

With the inaugural address behind us, attention has now shifted to how President Obama is handling his first few days on the job. Since winning the November election, Obama has not appeared to need on the job training. His calm demeanor, his judicious choice of collaborators, and his expeditious handling of controversial issues like Gitmo and torture have all been embraced by the electorate. So much for the campaign rhetoric about inexperience.

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To infinity and beyond

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 3:49 PM - 5 Comments

In addition to a Twitter feed, this blog now has a YouTube hub—including (so far) 60 videos and links to the YouTube channels of Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff and this magazine’s own collection of clips.

Vintage Harper hair, Stephane Dion tries to tell a golf joke, Michael Ignatieff hanging out with Charlie Rose, Pat Martin’s puppets, and some gems from the CBC archives. Enjoy. The page will be regularly updated.

The best find so far might be the following footage of John F. Kennedy addressing the House of Commons in 1961. If Barack Obama makes a similar appearance later this year, he could do worse than to borrow liberally from both JFK’s words and attire. Continue…

Gitmo's problems won't disappear

By Michael Petrou - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 3:39 PM - 4 Comments

A former Guantánamo Bay detainee has shown up in Yemen, where he is now the local deputy leader of Al Qaeda. After his release from Guantánamo, he passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists. Apparently the rehab didn’t work.

President Listener

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 3:30 PM - 2 Comments

Colin Robertson, who used to be an advocate for the Canadian embassy  on Capitol Hill, has written a report about Canada’s prospects for dealing with the new administration. He includes this personal impression of dealing with Obama when he was still senator:.

“After making several hundred calls on Capitol Hill, I divided politicians into two camps: talkers and listeners. I reckon that 80% are talkers. Obama was a listener. I would pitch him on an issue – beef, lumber, or Devil’s Lake. He would listen politely, thank me and I would depart. I thought him ‘fit, elegant, comfortable in his skin.’ I also wrote that he appeared ‘deliberative, disciplined, and determined.’ In the months and years ahead, he will need all of those qualities.”

The Macleans.ca Interview: Power to the Parliamentarians

By kadyomalley - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 3:13 PM - 50 Comments

“Manipulation of public opinion by a well oiled and resourced propaganda machine has no place in the profound and critical constitutional decision making of the Governor General. It is simply unstatesman like to exploit the public’s misconceptions about parliamentary democracy.”

A round robin Q&A with four of the constitutional experts who joined with more than thirty of their colleagues to sign an open letter advising Governor General Michaelle Jean to consider all of her constitutional options – including calling on the Leader of the Opposition to attempt to form government – should the Prime Minister be forced to trek back to Rideau Hall in the coming days.

UPDATE: Through no fault of his own, Osgoode Hall Law School professor Bruce Ryder was not credited for his contributions. That has been remedied – sorry about that, professor!

1. Why are you sending out this open letter now, instead of in the days leading up to the Prime Minister’s visit to Rideau Hall last December?

Barbara Cameron, York University: There was academic commentary in December around prorogation. There was some frustration that the media was not featuring commentary that accurately portrayed the constitutional situation. Quite a bit of the media seemed to accept without question the quite inaccurate view that the Governor General had to accept automatically the advice of the Prime Minister and that her only option was to grant a dissolution to the Prime Minister.

Errol Mendes, University of Ottawa (bio), Margot Young, University of British Columbia (bio) and Bruce Ryder, Osgoode Hall Law School (bio): Last December, events moved very fast and time was limited to get such a collective action going. Several of us, myself included, only had time to make our individual views known extensively in the media. The principle is an important one and calls for clear assertion. In general elections, we elect a Parliament, not a government. A government’s democratic legitimacy depends on whether it can maintain the confidence of a majority of elected members of the House of Commons. Statements to the contrary are profoundly irresponsible.

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WTF Is the Deal With All The HAPPY DAYS References on TV?

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 3:09 PM - 3 Comments

I used to think that making Happy Days references was a sign of cultural irrelevance, which is why I did it (I like to be culturally irrelevant). But lately it seems like every time I turn on the TV, there’s another Happy Days joke. I mentioned the Ponzi Scheme/Fonzie Scheme joke from The Colbert Report a couple of weeks ago, but since then, the floodgates have opened:

- Jon Stewart (or rather his writers) made a joke about Fonzie being named Secretary of Defense (“President Reagan wanted someone who could tell the Russians to ‘sit on it’”) and called Dick Cheney “Linky Tuscadero.”

- Robin on How I Met Your Mother, going through the same plot that Seinfeld already did 18 years ago, said that telling her not to get emotionally involved after sleeping with someone is “like telling The Fonz to be cool.”

- Last night on 30 Rock, Liz reached into her limited repertoire of bad impressions and volunteered to do “Mrs. Cunningham from Happy Days! ‘Oh, Howard! Oh, Arthur!’”

Look, I would never complain about the TV industry making too many references to a once-popular, long-canceled TV show, not only because it would be hypocritical but because I like this kind of thing. (When such jokes are made in front of an audience, I’m always intrigued to see whether the audience seems to get the reference.) But what’s with all these 30-something writers writing in jokes about a show that was already on its last legs when they were kids? Nothing wrong with it, it’s just a little odd. Unless the Ron Howard Obama video catapulted Happy Days back into the cultural consciousness. (It certainly can’t be that Happy Days musical that’s crawling around the U.S. in the forlorn hope of making it to Broadway someday.) But for the sake of equal time, I demand that these shows make some jokes about the Andy Griffith Show, which was a better show and more popular in syndication. I expect Kenneth to say “Well Goll-ee!” on next week’s episode of 30 Rock, so make it happen, people.

On a related note, and since this isn’t worth a separate post, did you know that there’s a YouTube video that combines two internet fads from different eras: “Jumping the shark” and “LOLCats.” The result? LOLFonz.

'We deserve better'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 1:42 PM - 42 Comments

Partisans are invited to debate the substance of it, but Michael Ignatieff’s speech in Toronto just now did seem a fairly explicit attempt to up the public oratory ante in this country.

Full text after the jump. Continue…

Okay, seriously, why do we need to have a lockup again?

By kadyomalley - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 1:15 PM - 25 Comments

Other than to provide stimulus to the cafeteria at the Government Conference Centre, that is.  Hot off the wire from CanWest:

Raitt said that she expects the budget will contain a new community adjustment fund worth $1 billion to help rural areas adapt to the changing economic climate.

This would build on an earlier fund, also worth $1 billion, that Ottawa established late in 2007 that smaller and rural communities across Canada could tap into for special training or economic development projects.

Raitt also said the budget would set aside more than $100 million to invest in the development of emerging technologies for the forest sector, including forest biomass utilization and the development of next-generation forest products.

The federal budget will also contain $50 million to promote the forest sector abroad. This had been one of the requests made by the Forest Products Association of Canada.

And that’s not all we’re about to hear in the way of budget pre-announcements, apparently. From the same story:

The combination of Thursday’s budget news from the PMO and Friday’s announcement from Raitt may be part of a public relations plan by the federal government to spread out some of the budget news before Tuesday.

Later Friday, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq and Human Resources Minister Diane Finley are all scheduled to make “important announcements” in Edmonton, Vancouver, and Toronto respectively.

Assuming that the ministers listed above will be leaking providing advance notice of whatever spendy goodness the government has in store for their respective areas of responsibility, that would save a few big ticket items for the finance minister to unveil on Tuesday:  infrastructure, transport, defence, industry and environment.

That is, unless this is just the opening act, and we’ll be getting notice of similarly “important announcements” by John Baird, Peter MacKay, Tony Clement and Jim Prentice any minute now. We’ll keep you posted.

Don Newman is not impressed

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 12:58 PM - 20 Comments

The CBC’s senior parliamentary editor decides to single-handedly reform Parliament. 

He also points out the lingering concern of last month’s events at Rideau Hall.

The seminal event leading to the suspension of Parliament was a two-hour, closed-door conversation between Governor General Michaëlle Jean, the grantor of the request, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the requester.

Only these two individuals and perhaps a couple of close advisers know exactly what was said or what deals might have been brokered in the course of this conversation. In a democratic country in the 21st century, you have to ask: is this good enough?

Crawford on Ignatieff

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 11:23 AM - 9 Comments

To his credit, Gavin Crawford’s Ignatiff is wildly better than Fred Armisen’s Obama

Video after the jump. Continue…

Steve the Economist

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 10:51 AM - 88 Comments

Also from that Sun interview.

“As you know, I’m an economist and a big believer in a market economy.”

Setting aside recent evidence to the contrary (No recession! No deficit! Buying opportunities!), the supporting documentation for the Prime Minister’s status as “an economist,” would seem to be his undergraduate and Master’s degrees in economics. His career beyond his studies has been solely devoted to politics (Kady has a small, but valid, quibble with this below). But his status as “an economist” has periodically been asserted since the metaphorical wheels came off the economy.

So is the Prime  Minister an economist? Good question.

If you graduated with a degree in chemistry, then pursued a career in shoe sales, could you call yourself a chemist?

If you graduated with a degree in math, then spent the rest of your life working as a chef in a fancy restaurant, could you consider yourself a mathematician?

If you graduated with an English degree and were left only to wonder for the rest of your life why you bothered to get an English degree, could you, at the very least, identify yourself until your dying day as a literary scholar?

Don’t Call Me Grandma

By Alex Shimo - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 10:50 AM - 8 Comments

Baby boomers have always liked to do things a little differently. It might not come as a surprise then that for people like 58-year-old Jan Reisen of New Jersey, Grandma is not a name to be embraced. It’s stodgy, even “desexualized,” she says, adding that it evokes an image of someone who stays home, bakes strudel and rolls her stockings. Reisen, who runs www.AgingHipsters.com, doesn’t have grandchildren but she has already planned her future non-grandma name. When one of her adult sons— they are 20 and 24—finally becomes a dad, she has decided that she will be called “Queen Mum.” “When I told my boys about the name, they just rolled their eyes,” says Reisen.

Queen Mum may sound outlandish, but it’s pretty tame compared to some alternatives—like Geezer Girl, one of the names writer Lin Wellford has encountered. Wellford’s own grandchildren call her Mimi. She is the co-author of The New Grandparents Name Book, which lists hundreds of substitutes. Some, like Ugogo, mean grandmother in a different language (in this case, Zulu). Other names come about as a result of the mangled mispronunciation that emerges from the grandchild’s lips as he or she tries to grapple with the word grandma. When Kate Bandos’s grandson tried to say the word, what came out was Bacca. It stuck because Bandos, a 62-year-old book publicist, thought it was fun. When the child finally learned how to say grandma, he was told not to bother. “Anyone can be Grandma. I wanted to be Bacca—it made me special.”

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What if Obama wants us in Afghanistan past 2011?

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 10:40 AM - 18 Comments

During the election, Stephen Harper promised Canadian troops would be withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2011. Asked whether the new American administration might change that position, Lawrence Cannon and Peter MacKay have refused to budge—2011 is the end date. But in this interview with Sun media, the Prime Minister wiggles just slightly, saying “I’m not going to speculate on what President Obama may or may not ask me.”

Edmonton Sun

Blissful ignorance

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 10:35 AM - 0 Comments

Barack Obama’s first few days in office have been the most publicized—and scrutinized—of any president’s in recent memory. But his intentions on a number of key policy files remain murky. For example, it’s not yet clear whether Obama believes he can end the war in Afghanistan—and, if he does believe victory is possible, when and how that can be expected to happen. Even on Iraq, from where he’s promised to withdraw U.S. troops within 16 months, Obama has added so many caveats to the pledge that it’s difficult to tell how the president will respond if things take a turn for the worse. Some domestic questions remain similarly unanswered: If long-term deficits are as “unsustainable” as he says they are, how does he plan to balance the federal budget? How will he reconcile his promise to make government more transparent with the country’s national security obsession? And after placating unions during the campaign with talk of re-opening NAFTA, what will his relationship with Big Labour be like now that he’s in the White House?

Politico

Alberta Grits consider ditching Liberal brand

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 10:32 AM - 0 Comments

Last month, the Alberta Liberals elected a new leader, and the change couldn’t have come quicker. The beleaguered party had actually looked good to capture more seats in last year’s provincial elections, but were instead cut down to half their previous strength in the legislature. The party’s problems are myriad (debt, a lack of vision)–but at least one is subject to change: its name. Now rookie leader David Swann may rebrand the party. “Half of the people that come to me about wanting to change the government and create a more accountable government are saying the name is part of (our) liability,” Swann tells the Calgary Herald’s Renata D’Aliesio. “‘You are associated so strongly with the federal Liberals, with taking from Alberta, with the National Energy Program.’ It’s not helping us.”

Calgary Herald

Vatican launches itself on YouTube. What's next? Twitter?

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 10:31 AM - 3 Comments

Following up on its website, the Vatican launches itself deeper into cyberspace with its own YouTube channel. It will broadcast short video news clips updated daily on the Pope’s activities and what’s happening at the Vatican, with audio and text in English, Spanish, German and Italian. Officials at the Vatican say it is aimed at everyone from devout Catholics to the casual web browser. The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, noted Pope Benedict had always been “fond of new technologies” and hoped to use them to reach out to “the digital generation.”

BBC News

Saskatchewan Party outspends NDP, calls it fiscal prudence

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 10:30 AM - 2 Comments

Regina Leader-Post columnist Murray Mandryk today pokes delicious fun at Sask Party backbenchers intent on keeping the province’s public servants in fiscal check. The comedy stems from provincial auditor Fred Wendel’s appearance this week before the public accounts committee, where the Saskers gave him something of a talking to. Never mind that, as Mandryk points out, last year’s Sask Party budget was “a mere $9.623 billion–only $1.2 billion or 15.2 per cent more than proposed in the NDP government’s final budget. By comparison, former NDP premier Roy Romanow’s first budget in 1992 actually decreased spending by 5.3 per cent from the final budget of the Progressive Conservatives he replaced.” Mandryk is most cutting when he quotes from Blazing Saddles (1974): “Much like my friends on the public accounts committee,” he writes, “I, too, have lived by the credo of Mel Brooks’s character, Gov. William J. Le Petomane: ‘We’ve got to protect our phony-baloney jobs.’”

The Star Phoenix

Murder, rape, and ethnic cleansing during the Georgia-Russia war

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 10:30 AM - 1 Comment

Human rights watch has released a comprehensive report about violations committed by Russian, Georgian, and South Ossetian forces during last summer’s war. The NGO, which interviewed more than 400 people during several months of field research, condemns Georgian and Russian forces for indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force. It reports that the Russian army allowed South Ossetian forces, including volunteer militias, to burn, pillage, rape, and murder civilians in a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing. The Russian army participated in this process “either as passive bystanders, active participants, or by providing militias with transport into villages.” Russian forces “apparently participated in the execution of two Georgian soldiers,” and they did nothing to stop the torture and execution of Georgian soldiers detained by Ossetian forces in an area “over which Russia exercised effective control.”

Human Rights Watch

Vitamin D boosts mental health in elderly

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 10:10 AM - 1 Comment

Vitamin D can help fight off mental decline in the elderly, the BBC reports. In a study of 2,000 people aged 65 and over, researchers from the U.S. and the UK found those with lowest levels of vitamin D were more than twice as likely to have impaired mental ability. The vitamin, which boosts bone health, helps with the absorption of calcium and phosphorus, and protects the immune system, is produced by sun exposure. Yet, as people age, their skin has a harder time absorbing it from the sun—a real problem in countries with long, dark winters like Canada. Seniors, then, must obtain vitamin D from other sources, like oily fish or fortified food products (including milk and cereal). Based on this research, providing the elderly with supplements might be beneficial, one researcher suggests: “We need to investigate whether vitamin D supplementation is a cost-effective and low-risk way of reducing older people’s risks of developing cognitive impairment and dementia,” says one British doctor.

BBC News

Montreal’s weight problem

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

A new study shows that Montreal has more overweight or obese kids than neighbouring towns and cities. Quebec’s statistics institute conducted a study of more than 2,000 children under the age of seven and found that more than 20 percent of Montreal children are overweight compared to 13.4 percent in other Quebec regions. The author of the study argues that the weight problem is linked to poverty and the fact that a significant number of Montreal families don’t have access to the same food and quality of life as other cities in the province.

CBC News

Hitting the Anti-Benjamin Hot Button

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 1 Comment

Only a day after The Curious Case of Benjamin Button leapt to the front of the Oscar race with a total of 13 nominations, the backlash has begun. David Fincher’s epic expansion of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, in which Brad Pitt ages in reverse, has not received the kind of universal acclaim accorded to its much smaller rival, Slumdog Millionaire. The movie’s detractors have launched their own website, hailing Maclean’s film critic Brian D. Johnson as an ally “who NAILS everything that’s wrong with this epic turd.” The site begins with an open letter to Fitzgerald and includes posts like  “Benjamin Button took three hours of my life that I’ll never get back.”

Official Anti-Benjamin Button Club