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Chuck Lorre last night used his “vanity card” (something he invented for Dharma & Greg and whose hectoring, half-earnest half-snarky tone seems to be the inspiration for many TV-writer blogs) to call attention to a ripoff of The Big Bang Theory that is running in the former Soviet republic of Belarus, with the same characters and scripts, but no money paid to the copyright owners.

Though Warner Brothers would presumably prefer to sell some official international remakes of the show in the future, its legal department advised Lorre that he can’t shut down this unauthorized version: “we were told that it’s next to impossible to sue for copyright infringement in Belarus because the TV production company that is ripping us off is owned and operated by the government of Belarus.” Now, I take that with a grain of salt — it sounds like it’s playing to stereotypes of Eastern European countries as lawless wastelands — but if true, then this is what Belarus’s tax dollars are paying for:

One useful thing: if you want to know the difference between audience laughter and “canned” laughter, listen to this. The acoustic is almost totally dead and silent until the fake laughter kicks in, obviously in a different sound-world from the rest of the show.

And a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this show. I’m not sure if they do or don’t mention that the show is based on a U.S. show (I would assume that many viewers know it is, and the point is simply to remake it without paying any money, but who knows).

I can’t really deal with the fan outrage over last night’s Chuck. Seriously, I can’t do it, so I’ll let the links do it for me. I understand that many fans are invested in particular relationships (Chuck-Sarah, in this case) and feel upset when they see the writers resorting to the Frasier Technique, the introduction of a new love interest to separate the two people whose romance is the focal point of the show. (Frasier Crane, you will recall, was introduced into Cheers as a take on the stuffy fiance characters from old screwball comedies, a way of keeping Diane and Sam apart for a while.) They know the writers are doing it to try and stretch the show out. And they may feel even more upset when this technique is tried by a low-rated show that could be canceled at any second. Chuck is not a show that can take its time in giving the fans what they want, and fans are understandably worried that the show could end without ever giving them what they’ve been waiting for.

On the other hand, here’s what I find weird about ’shipping: it often seems so divorced from any specific goal for the characters. In a way, ’shipping is a holdover from “closed” storytelling forms, like novels and films and plays, where the ending of the evening’s entertainment is literally the end. In those forms, we root for two characters to get together, i.e. get married or at least go steady or something. If it’s a comedy, they get married; if it’s a tragedy, they die. Either way, it ends. But in a television series, unless it’s specifically intended to have a limited run, there is no pre-set ending. More importantly, the people who are producing the show want to keep it from ending. Everything they do is geared towards making sure that the show won’t have to end. That’s one reason shows introduce obstacles to the will-they/won’t-they relationship: by keeping the two leads apart, they hope they can sustain interest in the show and keep it from ending.

Because TV ’shipping is a closed-form idea applied to an open-form medium, it’s inevitably vague about what exactly the fans want for particular characters. Do they want them to be together in the end? Not exactly, because they don’t want the show to end. ‘Shipping is rarely expressed as a wish that characters will get married or even just start dating. It’s more of a general feeling that characters should be “together,” without a definite feeling about what “together” means. Basically it seems to just mean that the characters should be kissing each other instead of kissing other people.

‘Shipping a TV show may have made more sense back in the days when almost every show would push the reset button at the end of every episode (particularly drama shows). ‘Shipping Jim Rockford and Beth Davenport, or Kirk and Uhura, was a harmless pastime because you knew nothing was going to change anyway. It was part of the interactive way that the fans themselves created continuing story and character development for shows that didn’t actually have any. Once we entered the post-Cheers era where actually had ongoing romances (shows that weren’t soap operas) the fans’ rooting interest became a bigger problem, because we now have an expectation that our favourite romances will actually happen and be an ongoing part of the show. The writers know this, and devote a lot of attention to the romances, trying to keep the tension going without angering the fans. And there’s the biggest problem with ’shipping: not that people do it, but that it comes to dominate the conversation about a show and even the way it’s written. There’s something unfortunate about the way an action-adventure-spy show is going to be dominated for as long as it lasts (maybe not long) by romance.

Well, it’s official; MTV hasn’t had music videos for a long time (the line that “MTV doesn’t have music videos” went from trenchant observation to over-used cliche years ago), and now they have redesigned their logo to drop the “Music Television” tag. They are just another network whose acronym no longer stands for anything, the way The Nashville Network became TNN and finally changed its name to Spike TV or whatever they are now. Whether MTV will fee the need to give itself a new name depends on whether they continue to do well; if they ever need to rebrand again, the MTV name will go and be replaced by something else.

MTV’s rebranding has been, generally, a success, at least commercially. They don’t have music videos, and they don’t have the genuinely good scripted shows they used to have; but they do have a genuinely identifiable brand. Apart from being a network for young-skewing reality shows, some of which are addictively trashy (Jersey Shore, most obviously), they are still sort of a music network, in the sense that their shows tend to be saturated in music, played in the background or over montages. They’ve managed to survive into the YouTube era (which would have killed off their music-video format if it had still existed) by presenting shows that are like a mash-up of everything their viewers are interested in; they’ve made themselves over for the era of remixes and multi-media projects.

Still, let’s face it; for many of us, MTV still means this:

RESULT: A runaway victory and a second win overall for Sean, putting himself in contention for the All-Pro Captioneer Bowl, which doesn’t exist but maybe one day might. Prizery headed your way soon, Sean.

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This week’s challenge attracted some solid entries, which is better than I expected because let’s face it: Jim Flaherty isn’t the easiest politician in the world to make fun of. He has no discernible personality traits to exaggerate. He’s neither good at his job nor terrible at his job. He didn’t get any credit in times of surplus and he doesn’t get any blame now that we’ve got deficit out the wazoo (sorry for using such complex economic terminology). He’s a fiscal avatar that’s driven by Stephen Harper, except he doesn’t even get the thrill of being blue, 10-feet tall and prone to hackneyed dialogue.

So kudos on a job well done. Here’s the list of finalists, which features Continue…

Tonight’s episode of How I Met Your Mother, which brings back Jim Nantz from last week and adds NFL announcer Phil Simms to the mix, is an example of a show crassly (and probably network-ordered-ly) doing a cross-promotion with its network’s sports broadcasting. HIMYM did it well when they did the episode that tied in with the March Madness coverage (“The Bracket”), so this shouldn’t be a problem. The other thing that struck me was that the title, “Rabbit Or Duck,” suggests a possible Looney Tunes reference somewhere in there. I know that’s a lot to hope for, but it would automatically make it a good episode if it happened.

And while I’m on the subject of HIMYM, check out Myles McNutt’s paper “A Canuck in an American Sitcom,” which looks at the CanCon of the show (mostly Robin-related, of course) from an accessible academic perspective.

Anyway, the thing I like about HIMYM’s titles is that they are meaningful without being cute. Titling episodes is harder now than it used to be, because everyone knows the titles. Once upon a time, only the shows that actually chose to put the episode titles on the screen (I believe NCIS still does this, probably a Don Bellisario hold-over) actually had to care whether the titles were memorable. Shows that did not broadcast the titles, which included most half-hour comedies — not all, but most — would either use cutesy in-joke titles or punsthat the writers came up with to amuse themselves, or very brusque, simple titles. Barney Miller called almost every episode by some one-word title that referred to something that was dealt with in the episode: “Hash,” “Werewolf.” And on the in-joke front, the underrated 3rd Rock From the Sun put “Dick” in every title because the writers didn’t realize that anyone would know the titles other than themselves. Then the internet and cable boxes and the like began to tell everyone what the titles were, and today almost any fan of a show can tell you the title of any episode. So even shows that used to have simple titles began to over-react and do elaborate titles, often with very involved puns or movie references. The Simpsons went from having a bunch of normal, nice titles like “Bart the Daredevil” — plus the occasional pun if the writers thought of one — to having long pitch sessions just for the titles.

But the vogue for crazy titles seems to be subsiding (even Fox’s newest animated show, The Cleveland Show, doesn’t over-write its titles quite as much as their other cartoons). Now we’re more likely to see simple titles, or uniform titling gimmicks (Big Bang Theory, Chuck). And HIMYM’s solution to the titling problem has been a very good one: instead of big wacky titles, they have simple, unadorned titles usually taken from something that is said or done in the episode — but the line chosen is usually one that relates to the overall theme of the episode. So An episode about how a relationship can be ruined once someone’s flaws are pointed out: “Spoiler Alert.” An episode about the catchphrase of Danny Glover from Lethal Weapon and how the characters apply it to their own lives: “Murtaugh.” The titles don’t give away what the episode is about, but they make sense once you see the episode, and they sort of conjure up the mood and tone of the episode when you say them.

By contrast,the problem with elaborate pun titles is that they are often at odds with the episode they describe. The worst example of that actually comes from the era when nobody thought the titles would be known. A moving, downbeat episode of Family Ties where Mallory’s favourite aunt dies was titled… “Auntie Up.” Now the writers of that show have to live with this fact: anybody who owns the DVD has the mood of the episode spoiled even before it begins.

This is the most pointless imaginable opening to a post, but after watching an episode from Shout! Factory’s upcoming release of The Patty Duke Show, Season 2, I was asked how the show — and therefore the theme song — could be updated if the show were remade as an hour-long drama for CBS, Fox or USA. What I came up with was this:

Meet Cathy, who’s nice, with hippie hair,
She thinks we ought to love and care,
But Patty’s always having fights
And has the villains in her sights –
What a crazy pair!
But they’re cousins,
Identical cousins, fighting crime.
Cathy has done forensics,
Patty has done some time.

Where Cathy wears T-shirts that get wet
And has a cute, eccentric pet,
Our Patty likes to use her fists
On all the nasty terrorists –
What a wild duet!
But they’re cousins,
Identical cousins in their prime!
They jump alike, they run alike,
They even fire a gun alike,
Life is so sublime
When cousins unite against crime!

Unfortunately, selling this remake idea means convincing a network to allow a full minute for a theme song, and you know that’s not going to happen.

Speaking of theme songs, we just lost John Dankworth, the English jazz musician who composed a number of memorable theme songs, including the first theme for The Avengers. The BBC has a piece on this side of his career and what makes a memorable theme tune, a piece that’s worth reading because it discusses theme songs from a British perspective (most people, including me, focus on U.S. themes). And here’s his Avengers theme:

In a recent issue of Maclean’s, and then later here on the Interwebs, I challenged readers to test their abilities at the sacred, time-honoured skill of wasting time on frivolous challenges. Many responded. Dozens seemed to put an awful lot of thought into it. Several included detailed footnotes.

Here’s how it worked: Readers were presented with a list of Super Bowl XLIV “over-under” propositions. They were invited to forecast whether the actual tally would be over or under the benchmark I had set.

Below, you’ll find the results from Sunday’s broadcast, followed by the dramatic Naming of the Winner.

As indicated in the terms of the challenge itself, I offer no proviso for recounts, no forum for complaints and no capacity for love. If I decree that five cheerleader navels were visible over the course of Super Bowl XLIV, then that’s how many navels were visible. (That’s a bad example in that I’m pretty sure I got that particular category correct.)

A final note: I want to offer a special thanks to all who sent along kind words about my writing while placing their entry. I’ve yet to decide whether these “thanks” extend to the fellow who said my column is the first thing he reads on the toilet each Friday.

And now, the results:

1. Number of times, during the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner, that the performer does one of those Continue…

Of the Super Bowl commercials we didn’t get to see in Canada because simulcasters are out to get us, this Google ad — demonstrating how their system can create a romance between a French girl and a guy who uses the computer way too much — was the most acclaimed. Josh Schwartz, creator of Chuck and Gossip Girl, called it “maybe the best commercial I’ve ever seen. Incredible storytelling. Genius.” It is a pretty good illustration in how you can tell a genuinely visual, dynamic story without any people.

NOTE: The outcome of the Maclean’s Super Bowl XLIV Over/Under Challenge will be posted here sometime this afternoon after the results are compiled and a winner declared by the accounting firm of I Can’t Believe I Have to Do This Myself.

Hey, look: It’s Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, left, up there in Iqaluit for the big meeting of the G7 finance ministers. Your task: Come up with an amusing caption for this photograph. Your potential reward: a Continue…

The most buzzed-about commercial of the Super Bowl cycle so far (it’s early yet) seems to be this promo for CBS’s Late Show With David Letterman. As you can see at the link, it’s based on an earlier Super Bowl spot featuring Dave and Oprah. And it’s been confirmed that all three participants in this promo were together for the taping.

Like everything Jay does, this can be interpreted in two ways depending on what you think  of him; comment online already falls into the “see, Jay’s a good sport” and “see, Jay will even sell out his own network” camps. It’s really just another reminder that celebrity “feuds” are mostly done for the sake of publicity, and they will gladly appear together and plug each other’s shows if it gets them some extra publicity.

Update: It seems that Letterman was hoping to have Conan on the couch as well, but O’Brien didn’t bite. That could be because was in the middle of finishing up his last round of Tonight shows and he didn’t have time to consider it. But many of us will prefer to think that it was because unlike Letterman, whose bitterness is probably largely an act at this point (look, he didn’t get the Tonight Show, but he basically got everything he wanted on another network), O’Brien is not ready to play Good Sport. And probably shouldn’t be.

10:03 a.m. ET Five hundred and eight minutes before kickoff, ESPN’s four-hour pre-pre-game show opens, and within mere seconds there’s the sound of… horns… violins… oh my God they couldn’t already be going to Well of Over-the-Topness, could they?… and suddenly a graphic on the screen: “Every Ring Has a Story, Narrated by Andy Garcia.” That sound we hear – could that be a… lute? Cue the images of old-timey football. “Every ring has a story, a story carved in gold,” Garcia says, slowly, verrrrrrry slowly, like a supervillain in a Bond movie or Kevin from The Office. “A story adorned in gems – 43 histories of kings, and the crowns they’ve worn upon their hands.” Easy, dude – leave some forced gravitas for later in the day.

10:20 Panel discussion on Dwight Freeney’s ankle, the most talked-about body part in America this week, having finished slightly ahead of Sarah Palin’s hand and Tiger Woods’ naughty bit. A consensus emerges: the ankle is either going to be sore or it’s not, and it’s either going to be a huge factor or no factor or possibly a minor factor. With intel that solid, is there even any reason left to play the game?

10:33 We’re told the NFL has spent $6-million on security for the Super Bowl to ensure “an incident-free event.” And yet no one has raised a finger to stop Mike Ditka from assaulting the English language.

11:01 Panel discussion about Peyton Manning. Tragedy strikes when so many complimentary adjectives are used up that we’re temporarily left with no way to describe Scarlett Johansson’s body.

11:08 Feature on Indianapolis fan whose goal is to tattoo onto his body the autographs of all 53 members of the 2007 Super Bowl-winning Colts. He’s currently at 32. “When Tony Dungy agreed to sign my left shoulder, that’s the point I realized Continue…

Cougar Town is more enjoyable to me now than when it started, and I think I enjoy watching it more than Modern Family; it’s not nearly as well-done overall, but it has moments of crazy spontenaity that sometimes break through into something surprising, and the lowbrow goofiness of it is sometimes kind of refreshing. There is something about it that has consistently bothered me since it began, though, which is that most of the performances — and the way those performances are filmed — seem pitched all wrong for this one-camera, no-laugh-track format. Most of the acting, from Courteney Cox on down, is broad and a little loud, with bug-eyed looks and long pauses. It’s also statically staged (many scenes just have characters standing there, with no real physical component to the scene). It really feels like the acting and filming of this series was based on the 1967 handbook “How To Make a Columbia Screen Gems Sitcom: Look bug-eyed, pause a lot, and keep the cameras locked down.” And Cox, Christa Miller and other actors deliver their lines in an over-emphatic way that is familiar to anyone who’s ever watched an episode of I Dream of Jeannie or The Partridge Family; there’s nothing quite so jarring as overacting in an empty studio. (Though this doesn’t have a great deal to do with the lack of an audience; How I Met Your Mother doesn’t use an audience and has a much more lively rhythm, and many shows that do have audiences have had faster rhythms and snappier delivery. It’s just a choice some single-camera shows make for some reason.)

Which means that, while I would never say this for 30 Rock or Community or even a so-so example of the genre like The Middle, I think Cougar Town would work better with a canned laugh track. The rhythm of the show is so hobbled that the dialogue delivery practically cries out for a laugh track to improve the pacing and flow, and fill in the dead spots after each line. I figure they’ll eventually try to fill these gaps by slathering the scenes in background music, the way many shows do; but a laugh track would probably work better. That’s one of the reasons for the existence of the laugh track in the first place, that TV and radio comedy have their roots in the theatre, and it’s awkward and unnatural to have dead silence after constant pausing and emphatic delivery. The acting/directing on Cougar Town is so static and emphatic that it needs something to keep it from feeling hammy. I mean, a typical outdoor scene Cougar Town is not far from a scene like this in terms of its style, but the people in this scene have a laugh track to keep them from seeming like weird-talking space aliens.

Okay, that’s an overstatement, and you never know what’s going to work, but this sure sounds terrible for all kinds of different, interlocking reasons:

ABC has added another one to the mix, greenlighting the comedy pilot “Wright vs. Wrong.”

Sitcom, from scribe Stephnie Weir (“Mad TV”), centers on a sexy, female conservative pundit and her staff.

Weir is exec producing along with Tantamount’s Mitch Hurwitz, Eric Tannenbaum and Kim Tannenbaum. Sony Pictures TV is the studio.

This sounds terrible because:

1) Modern Hollywood stories about politics always devolve into a childish longing for “centrist,” “middle-ground” politics. Even The West Wing wound up creating characters who couldn’t exist in real life — like Alan Alda’s Republican candidate in the final season — to fit the Hollywood belief that the only reason anybody disagrees is because we just don’t sit down and talk things out enough. The number of wishy-washy, can’t-we-all-just-get-along stories offered by this particular premise are almost endless.

2) The wacky punning title, and the fact that the lead character was only named “Wright” so they could make that title. This is a jinx even when the show is good, like The Powers That Be.

3) Mitch Hurwitz is producig, and his name on a show now guarantees failure. Which is not something we would have expected back in the Arrested Development days, but it does seem like that was the best thing he had in him — either that or he’s better at writing a show than producing someone else’s show (or remaking a foreign show, which a lot of his other flops have been).

4) It sounds like a conservative Murphy Brown, and that show doesn’t hold up anyway.

Now just sit back and watch as this terrible, doomed premise becomes next year’s biggest hit. I don’t think it will, but it might. That doesn’t stop me from shuddering a bit at ABC’s taste.

I’ve long suspected this to be true, but now it has been confirmed: Stephen Harper is less popular than an onion ring.

Although, to be fair, the Prime Minister has not had time to unleash his negative advertising campaign:

[Sinister music. Deep voice. Grainy footage of a deep fryer.]

Onion rings.

They’re round.

Know what else was round?

Hitler’s head.

The Facebook Onion Ring: Exactly like Hitler.