Weekend Viewing: THE TONY RANDALL SHOW
By Jaime Weinman - Friday, May 15, 2009 - 1 Comment
Here’s a genuine rarity with an all-star writing staff. The Tony Randall Show was his first show after The Odd Couple was canceled. It was produced by MTM, though unlike most of MTM’s other shows, it was on ABC rather than CBS. It followed the same pattern as MTM’s previous hits like Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart: take a star, put him or her in a different city (every MTM show had a different locale; in this show, it was Philadelphia), and go back and forth between the lead character’s home and work lives. Randall’s character was a judge and a widower with two kids, so the show’s two home bases were his house, where he lived with his kids and his wacky, bad-cooking English housekeeper (the famously troubled Rachel Roberts), and the courthouse, full of wacky co-workers played by terrific character actors like Allyn McLerie and Barney “Seinfeld’s TV Dad” Martin.
As I said, the show’s writing staff was in some ways even more impressive than the cast (perhaps more impressive than the show itself). The creators were Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses (Buffalo Bill), creating their first original show for MTM after several successful years producing Bob Newhart. As their main writers, they brought along two young writers they had hired on Newhart’s show: Hugh Wilson and Gary David Goldberg. Two young writers who got their first staff jobs on the show were Ken Levine and David Isaacs, and two of MTM’s top freelancers contributed scripts: David Lloyd and Earl Pomerantz.
The show was not a particularly happy experience for Randall, who clashed with Patchett and Tarses over material that he felt wasn’t right for him and apparently found them unwilling to consider his input. Grant Tinker, the head of MTM, had these thoughts on the show in his autobiography:
It was well above average in the three-camera category. Tony was born to work in front of a live audience, and the writing was largely first rate. Ultimately, however, three strong egos could not live together. Since Tony was obviously essential, Tom and Jay retreated to their office and oversaw from a distance, giving two of MTM’s younger writers, Hugh Wilson and Gary David Goldberg, (just plain Gary Goldberg then) their first chance to produce.
It wasn’t a good fit on ABC anyway — this was the 1976-77 season, when ABC was having its greatest success with Charlie’s Angels, Happy Days and Three’s Company — and when ABC dropped it after a season, CBS (MTM’s regular home) picked it up for a second season with Wilson and Goldberg producing. (CBS put it on after The Jeffersons.) To give it more youth appeal, the second season added a subplot about Randall’s character teaching a law class at night school, and also re-cast the role of his teenage daughter, played in the first season by George C. Scott’s daughter Devon, with someone cuter. Not having seen any episodes from the second season, I don’t know how the re-tool worked out creatively, but the show was canceled for good after that.
This episode is the only one online and therefore the only one I’ve seen all the way through; it is the tenth episode of the first season, written by Patchett and Tarses, where Randall contemplates marriage with his recurring girlfriend, Eleanor (Diana Muldaur). This upload even includes the original commercials (there aren’t many of them — this was 1976, remember).
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Too soon?
By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 4:19 PM - 7 Comments
Concerns are raised that Jason Kenney has not acted duly impartial in regards to the allegations made against Ruby Dhalla. Meanwhile, at our little party, the minister makes sure to avoid any perception of impropriety.
It all started when the new immigration minister found a hot-off-the-presses copy of Maclean’s. He was under the impression winning the title put him on the cover of the contest-sponsoring magazine, but that was definitely not his face, often described as Fred Flintstonesque, on the front. In his place was an eye-popping, cleavage-busting shot of Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla, which would not look out of place fronting an edition of the men’s magazine Maxim, which rated her third sexiest politician on the planet last year.
Kenney thumbed the pages filled with 20 flattering photos framing a lengthy article on Dhalla’s life story and the latest brouhaha over the treatment of nannies in her family home and suddenly burst into laughter: “I put her there!” he howled, jabbing the magazine cover.
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Yes, We CanCon?
By Jaime Weinman - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 4:17 PM - 0 Comments
The CRTC has decided to delay the issue of balancing CanCon with AmCon (YankCon?), announcing that — since it’s getting late and the networks have already started lining up U.S. programming for the new season — it won’t implement the proposed one-to-one spending ratio (equal spending on foreign and domestic content) this year, but that it will be “considered for the following year.” Here’s Grant Robertson’s story in the Globe. And here’s the Hollywood Reporter telling the same story from a U.S. perspective.
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Mad about Ruby Dhalla
By Jonathon Gatehouse - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 4:00 PM - 56 Comments
FULL STORY: The beleaguered star MP has both passionate defenders and detractors
For a woman who has never met a microphone she didn’t like, it can’t have been easy. Days of enforced silence as her personal reputation, and perhaps political future, were savaged by allegations she and her family illegally employed, then bullied and mistreated, caregivers for her aging mother. Watching the critics pile on, and her federal Liberal colleagues run for cover. And when Ruby Dhalla finally did face the public last week, it wasn’t so much to mount a defence—a task delegated to a pit bull Bay Street lawyer—as plead for more time. “I would once again ask the Canadian public to please hold judgment,” the MP said in her brief remarks before the dozens of cameras and reporters jammed into her Brampton, Ont., constituency office. “Because when the facts and the truth come forward, then I think true victory will be achieved.”Less than a week before, Dhalla had been basking in her status as one of the Liberal party’s up-and-comers, arriving in a white stretch limo for the Vancouver convention and standing alongside new leader Michael Ignatieff, hoisting his arm in the air as the confetti flew. Now confronted by three former family employees, she finds herself at the centre of a controversy that has mushroomed to enmesh members of the Ontario government, and spark an ethics investigation as well as public hearings before the House of Commons immigration committee. Among the allegations—first aired at a round-table discussion on nannies’ rights attended by two provincial cabinet ministers and later reported in the Toronto Star—are charges that Dhalla seized the passports of the immigrant women hired to help her mother Tavinder, and used her position to try to sidestep the required paperwork. Furthermore, the caregivers allege they were overworked and underpaid, forced to take on tasks like washing cars, shovelling snow and cleaning the chiropractic clinics owned by Dhalla’s brother Neil. The MP has called the allegations against her “false and unsubstantiated,” and maintains that all who know her family recognize “how loving, and caring and compassionate we are.” Her lawyer, Howard Levitt, has gone even further, suggesting there is a political or media conspiracy at play, “a purposeful attempt to destroy [Ms.] Dhalla’s career and credibility,” as he told reporters. “The only question is: who’s really behind them? And who orchestrated, enabled or assisted these former employees of her brother to suddenly come forward?”
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The Macleans.ca Weekly News Quiz
By macleans.ca - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 3:52 PM - 0 Comments
Been following the headlines? Prove it.
Test your knowledge of the week’s events.
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Coming to a vending machine near you—'Plantbottle'
By macleans.ca - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 3:15 PM - 5 Comments
Coke to test bottle made of 1/3 plant material
Sugar cane and molasses are just two of the plant materials that Coca-Cola is using in its new eco-friendly bottles. The company plans to test the aptly named “plantbottle,” made from 30 per cent plant-based materials, with its Dasani bottled water brand this year, followed by some of its carbonated brands and Vitaminwater. According to Coke, the new bottle is 100 per cent recyclable and can be processed in existing facilities—a big change from the plastic it currently uses. The company has endured worldwide criticism in recent years for relegating plastic bottles to the dump.
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'I thought of Uruguay'
By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 3:11 PM - 11 Comments
Nicola Ross reviews Elizabeth May’s Losing Confidence.
The tone of May’s warning will make staid Canadians who have faith in the tenets of peace, order and good governance mighty uncomfortable. Described as they are in quick succession in a slim text in May’s energetic prose, the threats to our political process are disturbing.
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Apropos of nothing
By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 2:57 PM - 62 Comments
Excluding those born outside Canada, the following Conservative MPs have lived, studied or worked outside the country.
Jim Flaherty, Lisa Raitt, Brian Jean, Russ Hiebert, Jason Kenney, Maurice Vellacott, Mike Allen, Ray Boughen, Barry Devolin, Garry Breitkreuz, Ed Holder, Randy Kamp, Pierre Lemieux, Ben Lobb, Phil McColeman, Cathy McLeod, Scott Reid, Greg Rickford, Andrew Saxton and John Weston.
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Look, up in the sky!
By macleans.ca - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 2:47 PM - 1 Comment
A new Vancouver airport website tracks the flight paths of all YVR aircraft, a Canadian first.
Vancouver International Airport is famous for its plane watchers, who park themselves, literally, at the end of the runways. Now the airport authority is delivering to your computer, a bird’s eye view of all commercial aircraft over Metro Vancouver. The website tracks, with a 10-minute delay for security reasons, the flight paths of all incoming and outgoing planes and helicopters, their altitudes and even their noise levels. It’s a plane-nut’s dream, and a first for a Canadian airport, Canwest News Service reports. It will also, no doubt, be a focus for the wrath of those living under the flight paths in suburban Richmond and Surrey who contend with aircraft noise.
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Victoria's scam artist caught
By macleans.ca - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 2:38 PM - 0 Comments
Scotland Yard arrests Frank Hertel, after a two-decade long game of international cat and mouse
When Frank Hertel burst onto the scene in Victoria in 1984, he embodied the city’s ambition to become a major high tech hub. His International Electronics Corp., claimed to be churning out numerous innovations, like data communication devices, while he went about buying up local real estate. Barely a year later, Revenue Canada claimed Hertel owed $33 million in back taxes, and when he was charged with tax evasion the next year he fled to Venezuela. So began a two-decade long game of international cat and mouse, which ended this week when Scotland Yard detectives, acting on behalf of the RCMP and Interpol, arrested Hertel on a plane at London’s Heathrow Airport. Despite how much time has passed since his alleged fraud, the Department of Justice has said it’s willing to seek the 72-year-old disgraced businessman’s extradition to face charges in Canada.
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An oily, sandy sin?
By macleans.ca - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 2:37 PM - 4 Comments
Church leaders gather in northern Alberta to debate the theological implications of the oil sands
Next week, Church leaders will head to northern Alberta for a multi-denominational fact-finding mission looking at the Athabasca oil sands. The goal—to put the oil sands in a theological context. It’s just one more setback for an energy sector that now finds itself facing a Job-worthy array of difficulties, from economic malaise to poor public relations to a government that doesn’t seem to care. Could the Quakers, Anglicans and Catholics really find something good to say about the oil sands? One is reminded of the first book of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which says of fallen angel Mammon after he landed on earth that he “Ransack’d the Center, and with impious hands / Rifl’d the bowels of thir mother Earth For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew / Op’nd into the Hill a spacious wound / And dig’d out ribs of Gold.”
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Week in Pictures: May 7th – May 13th, 2009
By macleans.ca - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 2:31 PM - 0 Comments
The best pics of the last seven days
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Comedy Tonight — Which Is To Say, Comedy Last Night
By Jaime Weinman - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 1:20 PM - 1 Comment
Some Friday comedy thoughts:
- The excellent season finale of The Office didn’t have a tag (a scene before the closing credits but after the final commercial break), which was a bit disconcerting. I actually prefer the show without the tags, but I’m so used to them that I simply didn’t expect the show to be over after Pam’s Big Revelation™; I was not mentally prepared to think that that was the end. That’s why I think it helps a show to have the executive producer credit at the end, the way 30 Rock does: when you see Lorne Michaels’ credit, you know the episode is over.
- I’m still not into Parks and Recreation but the sixth episode was the best yet, and the presence of writer Norm Hiscock on the show is a good sign. (Hiscock, formerly head writer for Kids in the Hall, was hired by Greg Daniels to write many episodes of King of the Hill; after he left that show, he moved back to Canada and wrote for Corner Gas among others. I guess Daniels lured him back.) There are reviews from Televisionary and (more positively) from Myles; both agree in their own ways that the documentary format, uneasily grafted onto this show, may be holding it back. (It may be a little cursed by the fact that it grew out of NBC’s desire for an Office spinoff.)
- One advantage of 30 Rock‘s single-camera setup and cartoonish style is that it allows the writers to get away with using some of the oldest sitcom plots on record. Last night’s episode had Continue…
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At Issue: Mimi
By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 1:14 PM - 11 Comments
For whatever reason, CBC has uploaded two minutes and 48 seconds of its camera crew taunting Michael Ignatieff’s new kitten.
In other news, there’s speculation going round—erroneous, one assumes—that CBC is planning to do away with Politics once Don Newman retires. Perhaps instead of giving the show to, say, Susan Bonner and forcing a single hour of serious television on Newsworld viewers each day, they could develop some sort of reality show for Mimi.
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Supermen
By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 12:54 PM - 26 Comments
When is the Prime Minister’s press secretary not the Prime Minister’s press secretary? When he says he isn’t.
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So many ideas, but no one using them
By Paul Wells - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 12:20 PM - 42 Comments
The reports say Canada isn’t innovating. That’s hurting our productivity and prosperity—and creating fat and lazy businesses.
If he ever gets done saving GM and Chrysler, Tony Clement will have some reading to catch up on. Clement is Canada’s industry minister. Don’t worry if that’s news to you. It’s not as though he’s provided much evidence of his existence. But his desk is lately piling high with reports commissioned by his predecessors.In May 2007 Maxime Bernier asked the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) why Canadian business isn’t as good as the private sector in other countries in coming up with new ideas and implementing them. Five months later, Bernier’s replacement, Jim Prentice, set up a Science, Technology and Innovation Council (STIC) to advise him on, well, basically the same topic.
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Junk food that’s good for you?
By Cathy Gulli - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 12:17 PM - 10 Comments
Manufacturers may gain the power to fortify products with nutrients
If you think that “nutritious chocolate bar” sounds like an oxymoron, you may be surprised to learn of a controversial proposal Health Canada is reviewing that would give the food industry “discretionary” authority to fortify junk food with vitamins and minerals such as iron and calcium.
In its latest issue, the Canadian Medical Association Journal describes the debate. On the one hand, critics say that this is a cheap way of making junk food seem healthy. They worry that it will encourage consumption and further aggravate Canada’s rising obesity problem. Supporters, on the other hand, argue that if people are going to eat junk food anyway then it might as well contain nutrients.
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Truth in advertising
By macleans.ca - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 12:02 PM - 1 Comment
There’ll be no escapism as commercials and ad campaigns tap into recession anxiety
The “Mad Men” are getting very angry indeed. In response to the sharp economic downturn, ad firms are now trying to tap into new, fearful zeitgeist, with messages crafted to appeal to aggrieved consumers. “Progress is overrated,” declares one cereal company. Jet Blue, the US airway, has a new series of commercials mocking corporate bigwigs who must now fly with the rest of the plebes. “Candor is in,” declares one ad exec.
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Big oil’s big fight in Ecuador
By macleans.ca - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 12:01 PM - 0 Comments
Chevron inherited Texaco’s pollution controversy—and a country’s anger
When Chevron employees visit former oil fields in Ecuador, they do so escorted by armed guards. The oil company is deeply enveloped in controversy there over drilling projects started in the 1960s by Texaco, which it acquired in 2001. Villagers say the sites were never fully cleaned up and that pollution, which over decades has leached into groundwater and streams, is causing cancer deaths. In lawsuits, villagers are seeking as much as $3 billion. Chevron is fighting back, lobbying Washington to pressure Ecuador into trying to resolve the conflict, but there’s evidence that this fight may only be getting started.
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Guantanamo trials back on
By macleans.ca - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 11:42 AM - 2 Comments
Yet again, President Obama changes his mind
Barack Obama has had a change of heart—again. Just days after reneging on a promise to release the latest batch of detainee torture photos from Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. president is planning to resurrect the Bush-era tribunals for terror suspects jailed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Obama signed an executive order suspending the so-called military commissions on his third day in office, the same day he signed an order closing the infamous holding facility. But after a four-month review of what to do with the remaining 241 prisoners—including Canadian Omar Khadr—Obama has decided that bringing back the commissions is the best option. However, his staff insists that the updated system will include expanded due-process rights for the suspects. The American Civil Liberties Union is not impressed. “The military commissions are built on unconstitutional premises and designed to ensure convictions, not provide fair trials,” said executive director Anthony Romero. “Reducing some but not all of the flaws of the tribunals so that they are ‘less offensive’ is not acceptable; there is no such thing as ‘due process light.’ ”
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The Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang
By macleans.ca - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 11:41 AM - 1 Comment
Twenty years after, a former Chinese Communist leader’s memoirs denounce Tiananmen Square
The secretly recorded memoirs of Zhao Ziyang, the former head of the Communist Party who was ousted for sympathizing with the students during the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, have been released four years after his death. In tapes Zhao secretly recorded over 30 hours, onto Peking Opera and children’s music tapes during his 16 years under house arrest, he denounces the killing of protesters as a “tragedy,” and challenges the party’s subsequent rejection of democratic reforms. In them, he praised Western-style democracy and insisted that the activists were not attempting to overthrow the system. “On the night of June 3rd [1989], while sitting in the courtyard with my family, I heard intense gunfire,” wrote Zhao, according to reports. “A tragedy to shock the world had not been averted.” He added: “I had said at the time that most people were only asking us to correct our flaws, not attempting to overthrow our political system.” Smuggled out of China in 2000 by three former high-ranking officials, the tapes will be published in English and Chinese this month as Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang in time for the 20th anniversary of the massacre.
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A reader writes (II)
By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 11:18 AM - 77 Comments
Susan Delacourt links to yesterday’s clarification and receives a similarly worded letter of outrage. Citing her father’s birth in Glasgow, she has declined to clarify her views on whether time spent outside this country can be used to judge one’s commitment to it.
Pointing to the above precedent, I again asked my reader if his letter could be posted here. And Mr. Sparrow, communications director for the Conservative Party of Canada, has now agreed. Full text after the jump. Continue…
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Hit the road, Jack
By macleans.ca - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 10 Comments
NDP leader heads to DC to back Obama on health-care reform
NDP leader Jack Layton will travel to Washington in June to give President Obama’s administration a few pointers on universal health care. During the three-day trip, Layton will speak in Congress, the White House and party headquarters. The intention, says NDP national director Brad Lavigne, is “to not only defend Canada’s health-care system—but encourage them to adopt similar features.” In return, several members of Obama’s team will attend an NDP convention in Halifax this summer to offer suggestions on improving the campaign.
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Don't mess with Doug Finley
By macleans.ca - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 10:59 AM - 0 Comments
Federal and provincial Tories fight over membership lists
In the run-up to the June 27 leadership contest among Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives, the federal party is claiming that the provincial party misused the national party’s membership list, the Toronto Star reports. Doug Finley, the federal party’s director of political operations, complained to all four provincial PC leadership candidates about their use of the list in an effort to recruit new members. “I would like to remind all campaign teams that Conservative party data is the property of the Conservative Party of Canada and is not to be used by any of the leadership campaign teams in any form,” Finley wrote in a letter to PC senior officials. “We will continue to monitor the situation and will take the necessary action to ensure compliance.” Meanwhile, Ken Zeise, president of the Ontario Tory party, recognized that privacy laws mean parties must guard their lists closely, and said Finley’s letter is moot because the cutoff to join the party to vote passed at 10 pm last night.
