The Commons: Let's not jump to conclusions, for once
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 25, 2010 - 80 Comments
The Scene. However dark and dreary the capital can be in the late stages of November, there is Parliament Hill to warm the soul—the lights illuminating the Peace Tower, festive decorations lining Centre Block’s main hall, the impressive Christmas tree in the foyer and, of course, the flickering glow of alleged impropriety emanating from the House of Commons.
The bearer of good tidings this day was Mark Holland, he of the dramatic enunciation, youthful righteousness and nice taste in neckwear. ”Mr. Speaker, two weeks before the government made public a decision to block Taseko’s bid for a controversial mine, shares in the company mysteriously crashed. In a matter of hours, 30 million shares traded hands, 10 times normal. At one point, investors dumped 2.7 million shares in 40 seconds, obliterating hundreds of millions of dollars in the blink of an eye,” he reported.
The scene thus set, the Liberal tabled his interpretation of events. ”Someone somewhere in the Conservative government leaked,” he declared. “Insiders got wildly rich and investors got hammered. The government has known this for six weeks. Has it launched an investigation, called in the RCMP or done anything at all?”
Up came John Baird, well-armed with a confusing series of sentences. Continue…
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Will CEO's firing prompt exodus from Alberta Health Services board?
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 5:51 PM - 7 Comments
‘I don’t think that eating a cookie and not speaking to reporters is grounds for termination’
Two of the 14 members of Alberta’s Health Services board—Tony Franceschini and Dr. Andreas Laupacis of Toronto—have said they are considering resigning from their posts in the aftermath of the board decision’s to let CEO Stephen Duckett go. Duckett was sacked following his refusal to talk to reporters about a meeting on the province’s ER crisis, saying he was too busy eating a cookie. “The last few days have been difficult for all of us,” reads an e-mail from Laupacis, executive director at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital. “Given the importance of AHS, I will be taking time to carefully consider whether I will remain on the board or resign.” Gord Bontje of Red Deer, another board member, has already resigned in protest. Bontje said Duckett had done a credible job after inheriting a difficult situation, and that he had been working on the long emergency waits and seniors care long before the issue came to the public’s attention. As for the infamous cookie comments? “I don’t think that eating a cookie and not speaking to reporters is grounds for termination,” Bontje said. How the other board members decide to proceed may hinge on that same question.
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Malcolm William Brent Johnson | 1977-2010
By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 5:00 PM - 3 Comments
Hard-working since childhood, and always mature beyond his years, he was finally ready for his first-ever beach holiday
Illustration by Marian Bantjes
Malcolm William Brent Johnson was born in Vancouver on March 11, 1977, to Malcolm Sr., a navy officer and diver, and Lynda, a hairdresser. Malcolm, who was white-blond with piercing blue eyes, was “always ahead of the game,” says Lynda. “He walked early, talked early, read early.” But he didn’t always have it easy. His parents divorced when he was young, and he bounced around B.C., to Vernon, Mackenzie, Armstrong, then Prince George. He was only nine when his dad died, suddenly.
Malcolm threw his energy into karate—kyokushin, which is rooted in a philosophy of self-improvement, discipline and hard work. Soon, the ethic became his own. He was fiercely independent, and doted on his half-brother Lance, five years his junior, taking him trick-or-treating, and dropping him at school every morning, hanging up his jacket, pulling off his boots and putting him in his inside shoes. By 12, he was answering phones, making coffee and sweeping up hair at the Woolco salon his mom managed. At 15, he’d landed a job at Wendy’s.
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Breaking: Harper announces new environment minister
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 4:47 PM - 29 Comments
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A psychic to the stars comes to Canada
By Rebecca Eckler - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 4:20 PM - 0 Comments
Char Margolis ‘reads’ for royalty, Larry King, assorted bigwigs—and me
Devoncass.com; Istock; Illustration Taylor Shute
Char Margolis, psychic intuitive, only consults with clients twice a year, tops. She doesn’t want them to become too dependent. For most people, this is likely a blessing: Margolis charges US$600 for a 45-minute phone reading, US$825 for an in-person consultation.
In-the-flesh appointments will soon become more feasible for Canadians. After a decade residing in the Netherlands—where the American psychic requires bodyguards to fend off adoring fans when she tapes her top-rated TV show—she now “feels” in her “gut” that “the whole Canadian energy is special,” she says by phone from her second home in Michigan. She adds that her friend, psychic medium and television personality John Edward, has confirmed that she is “supposed to” spend more time here. So this week, she is coming to Toronto to “read” a dozen top movers and shakers, plus some lesser-knowns.
It won’t be her first visit. Margolis actually got her start in Canada on The Dini Petty Show in the late 1980s, where she was a guest several times, and also guested on Camilla Scott’s and Vicki Gabereau’s shows in their heyday.
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Maman Mia comes to Paris
By Katie Engelhart - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 3:40 PM - 0 Comments
Paris’s appetite for the pop classic may signal a larger shift
Dominique Charriau/WireImage/Getty Images
Move over, Sartre! Au revoir, Camus! Eleven years after it debuted in London, Mamma Mia! has finally arrived on the Parisian stage. French theatregoers, once less than shy about their distaste for “Anglo-Saxon” productions, are flocking in droves. More than 125,000 advance tickets were sold before the show opened last month. Of course, the lyrics have been translated—and not always seamlessly. “Mamma Mia, here I go again,” now reads “Mamma Mia, c’est la même rengaine” (“Mamma Mia, it’s the same old tune”). The confident claim to “Knowing me, knowing you” has been replaced by the more introspective “Qui je suis, qui sommes nous?” (“Who am I, who are we?”).
Though the changes were approved by ABBA co-founder Björn Ulvaeus, Gilles Médioni, musical critic for L’Express, is unconvinced. “[The audience] doesn’t know these versions,” he bemoans. “It can’t sing along, like in a concert!” Words aside, Paris’s appetite for the pop classic may signal a larger shift. Jerome Pradon, who stars as Sam in this latest production, says that Paris has finally embraced the kitsch and sparkle of musical theatre and is learning from “Anglo-American savoir faire.”
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Canada won't take part in "anti-racism" conference
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 3:33 PM - 38 Comments
Durban meetings are platform for racism: minister
Canada will not take part in the third United Nations anti-racism conference, called Durban III. At the original conference in Durban, South Africa in 2001, Israel was singled out as a racist country. “The original Durban conference, and its declaration, as well as the non-governmental activities associated with it, proved to be a dangerous platform for racism, including anti-Semitism,” Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said on Thursday. At last year’s conference (which Canada also boycotted), Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered the keynote speech, where he alleged Israel is a genocidal regime built on racism.
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Ontario gov't won't release employee Internet records
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 3:30 PM - 5 Comments
Journalists want report that shows which websites are accessed
Reporters at the Toronto Star have been repeatedly stymied in their attempts to access the monthly reports the Ontario government uses to monitor what its 60,000 employees are doing online. A mediation between The Ministry of Government Services and the Star has failed and the Information and Privacy Commission will now be forced to adjudicate. “Canada’s pretty much the worst advanced country that I know of when it comes to access to information,” Amir Attaran, a University of Ottawa law professor and an expert in access-to-information legislation told The Star’s Robert Cribb. “It’s abundantly clear that you’re being stonewalled by a government that has secrets to keep,” he added. The government argues that releasing the records could endanger the security of their information technology network.
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The gown dilemma
By Patricia Treble - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 3:20 PM - 1 Comment
It’s not just Kate Middleton’s big day. It’s her biggest fashion test.
Anders Wiklund/Hulton Archive/Anthony Harvey/Getty Images
For Kate Middleton, the big fashion test comes when she walks down the aisle. The wedding is the true coming out party for every royal bride. In the past, Middleton’s taste has meant clean, simple flowing gowns, all very form fitting while not revealing too much skin. So although she’s got Diana’s engagement ring on her left hand, she’s unlikely to mimic the late princess of Wales’s crumpled meringue of wedding dress.
In her choice of a designer and a dress, Middleton could draw inspiration from the dresses of previous royal weddings both in Britain and in Europe. The simplicity of Princess Alexandra of Kent’s dress from 1963 is a standout, with its one long unbroken line. Mette-Marit of Norway’s stark white gown (2001) and that of Princess Margaret’s daughter, Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones (1994), are masterpieces of soft draping, something Middleton favours. On the other hand, if the bride wants a gown with more structure, then the silk examples of Victoria of Sweden and Letizia of Spain are standouts.
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A child obesity problem?
By Erica Alini - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 3:20 PM - 3 Comments
The weight issue is particularly acute in China’s urban areas
Xue Jun/ChinaFotoPress/CP
Chinese children’s ever-wider waistlines are sparking fears of a Western-style obesity epidemic in the People’s Republic. While less than five per cent of China’s overall population is obese, levels of obesity among children have risen by 156 per cent between 1996 and 2006. The country is still struggling with childhood undernourishment in poorer, rural areas, but in the booming northern and coastal regions, overweight children number 12 million.
The problem is particularly hefty in big cities, where a traditional culture that equates “fat baby” with “healthy baby” meets Western imports such as sedentary lifestyles and Kentucky Fried Chicken. In Shanghai, over one-third of school-aged children are overweight or obese, according to estimates. China’s one-child policy has also led families (particularly grandparents) to spoil and overfeed little ones, say experts. Officials and concerned parents are taking a drastic approach to the problem, including military-style fat camps and one-hour-a-day mandatory physical exercise in schools.
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When Google Maps gets it wrong
By Erica Alini - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 8 Comments
It’s a sensitive issue—Nicaragua recently justified an incursion into Costa Rica because of a mapping mistake
In the case of the disputed region of Kashmir, Google has tried to play it safe | Google
Online maps have recently sent Google on a collision course with a number of governments, a sign of how the business of Web-mapping is increasingly encroaching on what used to be states’ sovereign realm.
This month, Nicaragua justified a military incursion into a tiny parcel of land in Costa Rica by saying that the territory appeared on its side of the border on Google Maps. The incident represents at least the third time this year that real or alleged inaccuracies on online maps have landed the search engine giant in the midst of diplomatic rows over land. Earlier, Spain lodged a formal complaint after Google labelled a deserted Mediterranean island as Moroccan territory, a claim Madrid disputes. In February, Cambodia called Google “professionally irresponsible” for allegedly misrepresenting its frontier with Thailand. And China, with its own share of border issues, just launched its own Mapworld website, which rivals Google’s mapping services and goes blank over Chinese military sites.
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No water in these closets
By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 0 Comments
The city of Durban is offering residents $4 a week for their stored urine, which can be turned into fertilizer
Outhouse in Durban | Rajesh Jantilal/AFP/Getty Images
The south african city of Durban is buying urine from its residents in a bizarre scheme to reduce water usage and increase sanitation. The port city installed waterless toilets in the gardens of 90,000 homes in 2002, following a cholera outbreak brought on by a widespread lack of access to proper washrooms. But as soon as the modern outhouses—which funnel urine and feces into tanks attached outside—were installed, residents started converting them into shacks, living rooms and garages, or tearing them down. Some believe close contact with waste brings misfortune; others simply saw an opportunity to grab raw materials or add on to their houses.
Now, in an effort to get people to actually use the toilets, the city is offering residents $4 a week for their stored urine, which can be turned into fertilizer. With almost half the city surviving on less then $2 a day, Teddy Gounden, who heads the project, told the AFP news agency he hopes the money might just be enough to overcome superstition: “South Africa is a water-stressed country. We cannot afford to flush this valuable resource down the sewer.”
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The ring's cycle
By Stephanie Findlay - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 1 Comment
Princess Di chose the stone that her son’s new fiancée wears with pride
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP; David Levinson/Corbis
On Friday, Feb. 6, 1981, on the grounds of Windsor Castle, Prince Charles proposed to Diana—sans ring. It came two weeks later on Feb. 22, when he and Diana were having an intimate evening with the Queen. Diana described being presented with a choice of potential gems in Andrew Morton’s 1992 book Diana: Her True Story. “A briefcase comes along on the pretext that Andrew is getting a signet ring for his 21st birthday and along come these sapphires. I mean nuggets! I suppose I chose it, we all chipped in. The Queen paid for it.”
The ring in question was a large oval sapphire surrounded by 14 round diamonds and set in 18-karat white gold, worth $67,000 and made by jeweller Garrard & Co., the official crown jewellers at the time.
Just two days later, on Feb. 24, following a private lunch with the Queen, Lady Diana Spencer and Charles officially announced their engagement. On the grounds of Buckingham Palace, the future princess of Wales posed for photographers awkwardly, placing her hand across her body assuming an uncomfortable, defensive position. Tina Brown, author of The Diana Chronicles, wrote that her department-store outfit, picked days before off a rack at Harrods, was “air-stewardess blue with a matronly print blouse tied by a large pussycat bow that made her look like a zaftig Sloane on the frontispiece of Country Life.”
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A trove of 'degenerate' art
By Josh Dehaas - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 2:40 PM - 0 Comments
Workers in Berlin have unearthed a slew of important Nazi-era bronze and ceramic sculptures
Getty Images
Workers digging for a new metro line near Alexanderplatz in Berlin have unearthed a slew of important Nazi-era bronze and ceramic sculptures. “Never before have artworks with this background been found during a dig,” wrote Matthias Wemhoff, the head of Berlin’s Museum of Prehistory and Early History, and Germany’s chief archaeologist.
The statues represent “entartete Kunst” or “degenerate art,” the label Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels gave to all “un-German” artwork, much of it created by Jews. The find includes works by Marg Moll and Otto Baum, who were mocked during the 1937 Entartete Kunst show, the culmination of a propaganda campaign to turn working-class Germans against cultural elites. Entartete Kunst included 5,000 works confiscated from museums and private collectors that were paraded across Germany with virulent labels such as “revelation of the Jewish racial soul.” When the show ended, the works disappeared. So did many of the artists: Max Ernst, Paul Klee and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner all fled during or after the show.
Officials believe the works became buried after the building they were stored in, the propaganda ministry, burned down. The art is now on display at the Neues Museum. This time, it’s shown with respect.
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Has the obesity riddle been solved?
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 2:19 PM - 10 Comments
World’s largest diet study reveals most successful diet
People who want to lose weight should maintain a diet that’s high in protein with more lean meat, low-fat dairy products, beans, and fewer finely refined starch calories like white bread and white rice, e! Science News reports. The world’s largest diet study, undertaken by researchers at the University of Copenhagen, showed that, with this diet, it’s possible to eat without counting calories or gaining weight if one eats until he’s full. Official dietary aren’t sufficient to prevent obesity, it concludes. The study looked at five diet types, and found that a high-protein, low-glycemic index diet works best.
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Early retirement is good for you, study shows
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 2:17 PM - 5 Comments
Retiring at 55 cuts stress and fatigue, boosts mental health
In a study of over 14,000 employees who work for France’s national grid, researchers found that giving up work at 55 cuts stress and fatigue, boosting mental health, although the study found no benefit in terms of physical health. Other research, though, has suggested retirement can actually be detrimental to health, the BBC reports: a year ago, a study found that those who stop working completely once they hit retirement age are at higher risk of heart attacks, cancer and other major diseases than those who do part-time work. In the new study, researchers found that in the year before retirement, one-quarter of workers showed depressive symptoms, and around one in 10 had a known medical condition (like diabetes or heart disease). After retirement there was a drop in mental and physical fatigue, and a smaller drop in depressive symptoms.
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Former Republican House Majority Leader convicted of money laundering
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 2:10 PM - 0 Comments
Tom DeLay was once a leading light among Texas Republicans
Tom DeLay, a former leading figure among Texas Republicans, was convicted on Wednesday of money laundering and conspiracy in connection with a plan to illegally funnel $190,000 in corporate campaign donations to GOP candidates for the Texas Legislature in the 2002 elections. DeLay is now facing between five and 99 years behind bars for the money laundering conviction and two to 20 years for the conspiracy count. DeLay was first elected to Congress in 1984 and quickly rose through the Republican ranks to become U.S. House Majority Leader during the George W. Bush administration. DeLay resigned from the House of Representatives in 2006 after being linked to the notorious Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was then being investigated for influence peddling. DeLay plans to appeal his conviction.
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A common occurrence
By Kate Lunau - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 1 Comment
Prince William isn’t unusual in wedding a commoner—royals just don’t marry royals anymore
bigpicturesphoto.com
She’s tall and graceful, with glossy dark hair and a beaming smile. She’s known for her taste in fashion, including the posh hats that British high society prefers. But despite her elegant bearing and movie star looks, the most remarkable thing about Kate Middleton—Prince William’s bride-to-be—might be how very normal she seems. She’s from a small village outside London. Her solidly middle-class parents (neither royal nor aristocratic) run a party-supply business. She’s known for her self-deprecating sense of humour. And now, the prototypical girl next door—and the first commoner in modern times to marry a future British king—is engaged to the most eligible bachelor alive.
It might sound like a fairy tale, but Prince William isn’t the only royal settling down with a so-called commoner. The fact is that royals just don’t marry royals anymore. In Europe, eight monarchies remain (10 if the statelets of Monaco and Liechtenstein are included), but the continent hasn’t seen an heir or king marry a princess since the 1960s, when Greek King Constantine II married Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, and Spain’s Prince Juan Carlos married Princess Sophia of Greece. These days, the royals often don’t even marry into the upper classes—instead, increasingly, they marry for love. While some argue it degrades the monarchy, others believe it makes out-of-touch royal families more accessible. And besides, what child doesn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a princess, or a prince?
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PHOTOS: The pageantry of the past
By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 1 Comment
Over the last century, royal weddings have become grand public spectacles. Thousands gather to watch shows of uncommon refinement—and ordinary optimism.
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Kitchen crusade
By Peter C. Newman - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments
Peter C. Newman on a restaurateur to the rich who now wants to build schools in Africa
A conversation with Nelson Mandela convinced Oliver he could make a difference fighting poverty in his homeland | Photograph by Clay Stang; Judy MacLellan/Stephen Leacock Foundation for Children
Toronto has more great restaurants than great chefs, but of the many places where the empire city’s first-rank power brokers hang out, none is more socially significant and brazenly chic than Canoe, which occupies most of the TD Bank Tower’s 54th floor. Toronto Life originally dismissed its look as “understated butch elegance,” but decor is not what keeps this particular canoe afloat.
Regulars occasionally glance across Lake Ontario to enjoy a horizon view of Niagara-on-the-Lake, but mainly they come to gaze at one another or, more specifically, at each other’s dining companions, to see what mergers or acquisitions might be coming down the pike. Peter Oliver, who along with his partner, über-chef Michael Bonacini, owns the venue, credits Canoe’s popularity to the creation of a club-like atmosphere. “The new-style executives,” Oliver contends, “want restaurants, like everything else in their world, to be direct extensions of themselves. That means slightly ‘hip’ and fashionable, yet unpretentious and understated.” (That lack of pretension has not been translated into Canoe’s à la carte offerings, which include a starter plate comprised of screech-marinated foie gras, B.C. honey mussels and chilled Yarmouth lobster.)
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Microfinance meltdown
By Erica Alini - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 1 Comment
Microlending appears to be headed toward its own mini financial crisis.
Getty Images
The global economic downturn destroyed the image of big finance, but did nothing to tarnish that of microfinance, the altruistic business of making tiny loans to small entrepreneurs in developing countries. Recently, though, even microlending appears to be headed toward its own mini financial crisis.
Once hailed as a magic bullet against poverty, the practice has come under attack in India and Bangladesh where it is being accused of increasingly adopting the same loansharking methods that it is meant to rescue small borrowers from, like punishing interest rates. The backlash first originated in India, where a wave of suicides by farmers with outstanding microloans led local authorities to rein in financiers. Similarly, in neighbouring Bangladesh—the birthplace of the global microlending movement—regulators are planning measures that include an interest rate cap.
Microfinance firms deny wrongdoing, saying that charging hefty interest rates (usually around 30 per cent) is necessary to cover servicing costs in remote villages. But microfinance founder and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has been warning that high growth and high profits have been corrupting the industry. The concept of microcredit, he told the Wall Street Journal, “is being blatantly abused.”
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Learning from past mistakes
By Anne Kingston - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments
Why William and Kate’s royal marriage may actually work out
Diana and Charles had a whirlwind courtship and seemed awkward in public | Tim Graham/Getty Images
Now that Prince William and Kate Middleton have finally announced their engagement, British bookies can begin to assign odds on the next inevitable speculatory salvos about the couple. Wedding date? First due date? And, of course, in a nation where the royal family routinely contributes to divorce statistics, how long the marriage will last.
Based on the couple’s first media appearance this week, however, they appear to be in it for the long haul—and decidedly on their own terms. That was evident with the surprising news that the prince had given his fiancée the much-knocked-off sapphire-diamond engagement ring his father, Prince Charles, gave his mother, Lady Diana Spencer, some 30 years ago. Some might balk at passing on a ring symbolizing a union that would come to be fractured beyond repair, but it was a masterstroke that felled the elephant in the room. The gesture elegantly, yet defiantly, salvaged family tradition. It recycled an heirloom, a nod to his father’s concern for the environment, while paying tribute to his beloved mother. “It was my way of making sure my mother didn’t miss out on today and the excitement and the fact we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together,” Prince William told a press scrum as a collective “whoosh” of the melting hearts of women over 50 echoed throughout the land.
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Where the responsibility belongs
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 1:18 PM - 52 Comments
The House is debating today the Bloc motion on Afghanistan. In his remarks this morning, the NDP’s Jack Harris recalled a private member’s bill that would have subjected all peacekeeping missions to debate and a vote in the House. The mover of that bill was Chuck Strahl, the current Minister of Transport.
Bill C-295 is a good idea, worthy of all party support because it would not cut off or even reduce Canada’s peacekeeping role in the world. Rather, it would affirm and institutionalize the role of peacekeeping in Canada’s foreign policy and strengthen Canada’s place as a leader among the United Nations.
Neither would it reduce the power of the government to make decisions about the deployment of Canadian troops. The bill deals strictly with peacekeeping and allows cabinet full authority to act on a temporary basis. However, it also places the responsibility for our long term commitments squarely where it belongs, in the capable hands of the Canadian people through their members in the House of Commons.
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The Tyranny of Sitcom Happy Endings
By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 1:11 PM - 5 Comments
Does it seem to you that half-hour comedies try too hard these days to have happy endings, or at the very least redemptive endings?
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but I wanted to talk about it a little more this week, because the Thanksgiving episodes (non-Canadian Thanksgiving, I mean) have mostly ended the way most Thanksgiving comedy episodes do: the gang gathered around the table, being relatively happy and thankful. Cougar Town had the most literal version of it last night; The Middle, a better show, managed to do it a bit better. But generally you can bet that a happy whole-cast Thanksgiving celebration will be part of most shows.
Now if we compare the Thanksgiving episodes of comedies past, that sort of happy gathering certainly happened sometimes. But many of the classic episodes end in something resembling disaster. The famous Cheers “Thanksgiving Orphans” plays the whole-cast-gathering bit sort of straight, except that it turns into a gigantic food fight. The Bob Newhart Show‘s “Over the River and Through the Woods” is about pathetic single men getting together on Thanksgiving to watch football, get drunk, and order Chinese food; there’s no redemption or sentimental moment except that Bob’s wife comes home to rescue him from the misery of single life.
There were a lot of shows that had sentimental endings or sentimental speeches, of course. (WKRP‘s Turkey Drop episode has that lesson-y speech people always fast-forward over between the big scene and the final punchline.) But the need for a moment of emotional connection or redemption was not always as great, particularly as the Very Special ’80s moved into the more cynical ’90s. The Cheers spinoff, Frasier, got everyone together for the episode “A Lilith Thanksgiving” but never actually allowed them to get together for dinner: instead, Frasier and Lilith ruined the Thanksgiving dinner and neglected their son while trying to get him admitted to an exclusive school. Also, they got a young Jane Lych really P.O.’d. And even this ending was happier than usual for a Frasier episode — Frasier and Lilith got what they wanted, even though they exposed themselves as obnoxious people and bad parents while getting it. Frequently the end of an episode would be Frasier or Niles screwing up and losing everything they tried to get.
But now if you look at half-hour comedies, one thing most of them have in common is that they do feel a need to provide a redemptive moment or a nice ending. Either the characters get what they want, or if they don’t get it, there’s a reminder that they have each other. If you look at a typical Community or Modern Family or How I Met Your Mother story, there’s usually an ending that is happy or at the very least pleasant — the Seinfeld type of ending, where characters fail miserably, or Jerry loses the girl or George breaks up a marriage, is quite rare now on mainstream network television, and it’s even getting harder to find on cable.
The unsentimental ending is often associated with Seinfeld, but in fact it was big before Larry David coined the “no hugging, no learning” phrase. Cheers had been moving towards it for a long time. The idea, though I don’t think the producers ever spelled it out, was that if you establish that the characters really do like each other or are basically okay people, you can make them act as badly as possible and don’t have to include a sweet moment at the very end. In “Thanksgiving Orphans,” the nicest moment is Sam’s toast to Coach, which everyone joins in: that’s how you’re reminded that you like everybody at that table. Then they can just go back to being destructive. But there doesn’t have to be a scene where they overcome obstacles and succeed and fix everything. The actual arc of the episode is just about building up to the moment where they ruin everything. Frasier‘s “Ham Radio” episode is a non-Thanksgiving example: the first part is the build-up to the scene of putting on the radio play, the second part is the play where everything goes wrong — and after everything has gone wrong and the play is in a shambles, the episode ends.
The “failure comedy” is an important part of the sitcom, of course. One of the templates for the U.S. and UK sitcom alike, The Honeymooners, had that in every episode. The hero has a goal. He tries to achieve the goal. He fails completely. Then there’s a little bit at the end where we’re reminded that in spite of being a failure, he’s still lucky to have a hot wife. Fade out. (Arrested Development uses a variant of this in many episodes: complete failure followed by thirty heartfelt seconds.) I Love Lucy, the other “template” sitcom, has a similar structure. Some shows, like Fawlty Towers, added to the template by making the failures more elaborate and by eliminating the sentimental comfort of a happy marriage (or at least reducing it; even though Sybil isn’t likable, the fact that she hasn’t left Basil is one of the subliminal ways we know Basil isn’t a complete psycho). And then you have Seinfeld, where it was a shock to see anyone succeed at anything. Since failure is funnier than success, and since comedy is to some extent about failure — it’s funnier when Charlie Brown doesn’t kick the football than when he does — it’s not surprising that a lot of sitcom episodes would follow that structure.
Now, however, it’s surprisingly rare. Even shows that could do pure failure comedy, like the Office family, tend to mitigate the failures, or mix a success story with a failure story, or create the sense that someone has actually gotten something positive (if only a moment of connection with another person) out of all this. The ABC shows all want to have “heart,” so it’s not surprising that they’re not going to end an episode with someone driving a car through a wall. Virtually all the new comedies introduced this season, on all networks, are essentially happy-ending comedies — Shat My Dad Says is that most depressing type of bad comedy, a negative show that tries to force positive endings on us. Other shows do need, by their nature, to have happy endings much of the time; The Office or Corner Gas are shows where a pure failure ending would often seem too bleak, whereas on Seinfeld, the cartoonish nature of the show and the characters’ basically consequence-free lives means that the writers can do more or less anything to them. Failure comedy isn’t right for every show; it’s just odd that the backbone of comedy — the zany scheme that fails completely — is in such short supply.
The failure comedy still turns up in some venues. FX has a bunch of them — there’s a reason why it gets much of its audience with reruns of the most amoral network comedy, Two and a Half Men. Its flagship original comedy, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, has elements of both Seinfeld and Men in its stories of sociopathic heroes, and its best comedy, Louie, doesn’t always care how happily a segment ends because it’s not a plot-driven show. And of course there’s always Curb Your Enthusiasm. But just as a general rule, it seems like sitcom heroes have it easier than they used to: they achieve their goals, or make things right, more often than we would once have expected.
I think a return to the comedy of failure would be a pleasant change back (this is yet another possible explanation for the continued success of Two and a Half Men, which almost has a network monopoly on bleak endings), since failure tends to be funnier than success and failure is the most reliable source of great comic set-pieces. But that would almost require recalibrating the way writers are trained to create scripts: instead of building up to the nice moment as the climax of the episode, you build up to the most disastrous moment possible as the climax. And either you end it there, or you treat the Ralph-Alice scene as an afterthought. Until that happens, though, a sitcom character can usually sit down for Thanksgiving dinner knowing that there might be a slap or a fight, but it will mostly be the kind of Thanksgiving dinner the audience wishes it could have.
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Breaking the cookbook addiction
By Anne Kingston - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments
A new thesaurus explains how to pair flavours, freeing amateurs to create recipes
Istock; Illustration by Taylor Shute
Most people would blanch at the very thought of banana guacamole. Not Niki Segnit, author of The Flavour Thesaurus: A Compendium of Pairings, Recipes and Ideas for the Creative Cook. The idea that the yellow fruit could replace avocado in the classic dip made sense in theory, the British writer explains on the telephone from her London kitchen: “There’s a green grassiness to young bananas that they share with avocado, and a softness.” The final result, however, was a disaster, she reports with a laugh. “It was so slimy—really, really, really disgusting.”
Such adventurous spirit and good humour underlies The Flavour Thesaurus, to be published in North America this month. The taste glossary, which includes hundreds of food pairings based on dividing 99 ingredients into a 16-category flavour wheel ranging from “Sulphurous” to “Citrusy,” has been a huge success in the U.K., snagging the first-time author a weekly column on flavour pairings in the Times and a Galaxy National Book Award nomination in the “food and drink” category, alongside Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson (Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty won).
