But it wasn’t a gag. This man believed that comedian Ray Romano’s TV character—the guy never seen writing a story or interviewing an athlete or watching a ballgame or getting a disruptive phone call from an editor—is in fact a sports writer of the newspaper species.
For my neighbor to divine that thin truth, which is a truth in the way that “it sometimes snows in Mississippi” is a truth, is proof beyond a doubt that nuclear engineers truly are geniuses.
This whole Raymond-is-a-sports-writer conceit has fascinated me for years. I may not know much about many jobs, but I do know what newspaper sports writers do, having been one for 24 years, most of them as a baseball or football beat reporter for San Diego’s largest newspaper. Raymond, ostensibly employed by Newsday, rumored to be covering the Yankees, is suitably flippant to be a sports hack. His arrested development rings true, too. Not so his life of apparent leisure. Sports writers actually work. Raymond doesn’t work.
There you have it.
My wife, Mrs. West Coast Bias, could confirm this, at least the part about sports writers working, but she’s not commenting owing to subject fatigue. Whenever she dared watch “Raymond” in my presence, I pointed out 394 times that this man couldn’t be a sports writer.
Repoz
Posted: June 25, 2012 at 02:32 PM |
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I appreciate that those ring true to certain people. I'm a loner personally, so I've really never been in any sort of clique. My wife has a bunch of college friends that have all moved away, and some new mom friends. No real clique for her though. I figured those shows must be more true to life for some people than others.
I think one of the problems with Sports Night is that ESPN had already set the bar with their numerous humorous commercials. Sports Night probably didn't have a lot to offer the people who liked those commercials.
I get that people can like the way Sorkin writes, but you can't just plug that same style into any setting and have it make sense. Can Sorkin do a show about a baseball team? A rock band? High voltage linemen? All with the same witty repartee and long speeches?
If Soderbergh can do Magic Mike I think Sorkin could do a rock band or high voltage linemen.
Why not? I can see him doing good dialog with a show centered around a trash collector. Not everyone has to write in the vein of Mark Twain with their characters. I mentioned Shakespeare before, his dialog didn't matter for the setting, the dialog was as much a part of the experience as the actual going ons of the play.
To be fair, sometimes his characters are genuinely tongue-tied (recall "You're a lousy ####### softball player, Jack!" from A Few Good Men). And I thought Malice was actually a pretty good movie, in part because (*SPOILER*) you later learn that Alec Baldwin's ridiculous monologue was just an act, part of an insurance fraud scam.
No, of course not, at least and not have it be at all believable. There's a reason all of Sorkin's projects are about super-achieving intellectuals. If he wrote an episode of "Green Acres," he'd make Eb sound like a graduate student in French history at Princeton.
Sorkin did co-write "Moneyball," with Steven Zaillian, who can actually write dialogue; I assume it was Zaillian's job to make Sorkin's stuff sound plausible.
I think it still works to a certain extent because there are those moments when the acting, writing, and overall production overcome a somewhat schmaltzy bedrock.
The problem with Sorkin's dialogue isn't that no one talks like he writes - it's that not everyone does, but they do on a Sorkin show.
So, derivative, but having enjoyed both Sports Night and West Wing, I guess there's room for it on the DVR.
You'd fell differently if every single person you knew thought it was OK to just barge in without knocking any time they wanted to. You know, like if you lived on a sitcom set, for instance.
It gets even worse when the show takes place in a small town. For instance I watched a few shows of Longmire and in about a month or so of time there have been like 10 murders. Yet the town has only 4 officers and everybody in town seems happy enough.
The thing that amuses me about TV is the murder rates. I think someone ran the numbers once and if all the murders that happened in Law & Order actually happened that NYC would have the highest murder rate in the history of cities.
Yeah, I've often wondered how shows like that affect people's views of city living. I've lived in NYC for nearly a decade and I don't think I know anyone who has been the victim of an assault, let alone a murder (I do, however, have a friend who was mugged and whose home was burglarized within the span of a few weeks in DC).
Jessica Fletcher spent a lot of time in small towns. Didn't help her.
Just imagine the death rate of people who are invited to the same dinner party as Hercule Poirot.
True Blood is the all time worst at this. In a town small enough that there's only one freaking restaurant, 20 people die every six months. And yet somehow everyone hasn't moved out yet.
And the Emily Mortimer character makes me want to claw my eyes out.
This explains a lot.
How many Assistant DA's are there in NYC, though? More than one, right?
That's not even remotely close to being close to remotely true, unless it was an L&O marathon and all the deaths were happening the same day or something. There was generally only one murder per episode; there were some episodes with multiple. To be conservative, let's call it two per episode. At 22 episodes per season, that's 44 extra deaths in a year. Within normal statistical fluctuations for NY over the span the show was on; definitely not one of the highest murder rates in the U.S.
But there are multiple L&O series, and most of them focus only one one particular set of partners' caseload. Are there only two homicide detectives in Manhattan?
I stopped watching Sports Night after the episode where they send the nerdy guy hunting (maybe five or six episodes in). I hate hunting, I am not a fan of it at all. But there was something so pandering and overly dramatic about that episode that I turned off Sports Night and never, ever felt the urge to watch another episode.
I've liked the movies of his that I've seen, and I will check out Newsroom, but I'm genuinely baffled by how many people seem to love Sports Night.
My favorite part of that show - and all I actually remember - was the bubbling, transforming hand.
I was upset until I saw the afterschool special, "They took my show away". Then I felt better.
That is 22 murders in one precinct.
Uptown:
34th: 7.1
33rd: 9.0
32nd: 12.6
30th: 3.3
28th: 13.4
26th: 4.0
25th: 19.0
24th: 4.7
23rd: 6.8
22nd: 0.0
20th: 0.0
19th: 0.9
Lower Manhattan:
1st: 0.0
5th: 0.0
6th: 1.6
7th: 8.8
9th: 1.3
10th: 5.9
13th: 2.1
14th: 9.6
17th: 0.0
18th: 0.0
So two partners working homicide get somewhere between 22 to 44 homicides a year in just one precinct is pretty darn extraordinary.
and no 12th precinct, so that means barney miller never happened? it was fictional?
Actually, it was based on a real police squad in Toronto.
Remember that show Hunter from the late 80's (or whenever)? They played re-runs on the TV at my work's breakroom a few years back and that guy must have gunned down like 30 bad guys per season. I remember one episode where they actually arrested the perp instead of killing him and Hunter seemed noticeably disappointed. Wouldn't a cop who killed a couple dozen suspects each year be under some serious investigation?
Completely unrealistic. An accurate portrayal of Miami would include it's full range of diversity and also show plenty of hobo's, hookers, pimps, and drug dealers (or are they amongst the killers and victims?)
No, because he'd just find a way to frame you and then kill you. It would be a season finale.
Or the first couple of seasons of Homicide.
can't find a cite for that. i'm skeptical because the show's creator, danny arnold was legendary for being an original and brilliant writer who singlehandedly crafted the show and its quirky character.
staying with the barney miller theme, the actor dennis farina (law & order, etc.), who was a cop for years, says that barney miller was the most accurate cop show he ever saw.
You know, I've been watching Entourage on DVD and I don't really get it. I mean, the characters are nice to each other, in that they band together, have each others' backs, etc. But they're complete a**holes to everybody else. All Drama and Turtle care about is getting laid. Vince gets any girl he wants. In the few episodes where he doesn't get the girl right away, he goes back and gets her by the end of the episode. Everything always just works out for the group: Vince bets $100,000 on a soccer game, the team loses, and it turns out the guy didn't place the bet. Or they turn down a flight to Cannes because one would have to stay behind and Kanye West shows up and flies them there anyway. People just give them stuff all the time for doing nothing.
except for the part where they never left the office :-)
seriously, for those who have never seen it, Barney Miller was set on one stage, period, there was the detective's common room with some desks, to the left was a door that lead "downstairs" {you never saw downstairs), to the right was Barney Miller's office (the camera would go there), straight ahead on the far wall was an open barred small holding cell-
that was it- you saw the detective's room (and through it the holding cell) and Barney's office, that was it- I think maybe once or twice - in 8 years, you saw two character sitting in a squad car.
In a way it was like a stage play, always the same set, never outdoors, only the dialogue changed each week.
The detectives would bring someone in, that someone was either a "perp" or a complainant (victim), they would be interviewed, the victim would go, the perp would either be let go, or go to the holding cell... The detectives would talk/complain about their jobs and personal lives, every single episode someone (or some two or three) would complain about the coffee
That was it- and yet for years it was a really good show.
exactly. it was that well written.
i think what cops liked about it is that tons of things went on in the squad room of the quotidian nature that is depicted in barney miller. cops aren't always out in the street breaking heads and stuff.
besides, alot of what went on is because of what happened on the street. the detectives were always walking in with a compainant/suspect with a story about what went on outside. miller was really the only one who almost never went anywhere.
aw, i liked him okay. but geez, he had to follow jerry ohrbach. that's just not fair to anyone.
Early on, they'd make an occasional look in at someone's apartment, and had a couple of stakeouts. Ironically, the episodes where they left the office were much more static than the others.
"A puppet?"
--Inspector Luger
Amen - I'd add Get Shorty to that list, too.
I love Farina to the extent that he's one of those sort of bit/supporting actors that will cause me to watch a movie I might skip otherwise.
Given that I think he was a Chicago cop, it was disappointing that he was so mediocre - but not awful - on L&O. I actually restarted watching L&O regularly when he was on it.
It was definitely over the top, but the hunting was really more the catalyst than the main event. He didn't want to speak up because he had left 3 or 4 other jobs where he knew he didn't fit in. He was a nerdy guy and he didn't want to stand out and start the slide to leaving this job and hoping he can find another good job. As a nerdy guy who has left a few places where I didn't advance like I wanted to, I can totally relate.
I don't know if the original script that was leaked is still around somewhere, but it was Zaillian that wrote the first manuscript and Sorkin that finalized it. It would be interesting to see how much Sorkin inserted himself into the original.
L&O at the time could have supported one mediocre actor, but the combo of Farina and Elisabeth Röhm at the same time were just too much awful going around. Describing Rohm's acting as 'wooden' wouldn't have done it justice.
she was pretty bad, and also her exit was a real 'wtf?' moment. at the end of her last season she gets fired by fred thompson (another read dud, but he wasn't as bad as dianne wiest) and she asks 'is it because i'm a lesbian?' ... i don't get why the writers thought it was necessary to do that.
No, they left the office. You, the viewer, never left the office.
yeah yeah yeah
actually Barney and Jack Soos' character never seemed to leave the office either
Oh, Jack Soo eventually left the office, all right.
Yeah, especially since it came out of left field. Rohm character always talked about going out with some guy, or on a date with somebody. Was she supposed to be in the closet the entire time? And Dianne West was a crappy actress for that role to boot. Hindsight being 20/20, they should have bumped Sam Westernson's character to the DA's office years ago and made Angie Harmon's character the star. She probably would have stuck around longer if they did that.
In an interview she said that she was asked if she wanted to character to go out with something shocking(or a bang I forget)or something simple and she of course took shocking, and so that's what Wolf picked as shocking.
</serrano>
come to think of it, i have to laugh. because fred thompson's reaction on the show was the same as mine. 'hell, i didn't even know you were a lesbian', or something like that.
Yeah, that was really weird. It wasn't so much shocking as much as just 'um...ok....' Poochie had a better exit.
To be fair (regarding her casting), her successor may have been worse than she was.
To David N's point, was Rohm more "wooden" than any of the others? Besides Angie Harmon I don't think I can name any of the actresses who filled that role by name, and if you hadn't mentioned the "lesbian" thing I would have had no idea which one you were talking about because they all seemed pretty similar. Rohm at least played her part with emotion when given the opportunity to do so.
I'll take a stab
Derrick Brooks - Paul Robinette
Jill Hennessey - Clair Kincaid
Carey Lowell - Jamie Ross
Angie Harmon - Abby Carmichael
Elisabeth Rohm - Serina ?
Can't name her or her character, though I remember she exited the show stuffed in a trunk.
(something) De La Garza - Connie Rubirosa
I liked Hennessey a lot, but Harmon had the best written character of the assistants, by far.
And the "is it because I'm a lesbian" scene was easily the biggest WTF moment in the show's history, though I still wonder whatever happened to the close friend who swore to take Adam Schiff down storyline.
Not only that, but it's 22 interesting murders. Most murders fall into one of two categories, obvious or unsolved.
Neither Carey Lowell nor Jill Hennessey were remotely "wooden." de a Garza wasn't, exactly, but she suffered from coming in as the show was over the hill and they had run out of good scripts.
Derrick Brooks - Paul Robinette
Jill Hennessey - Clair Kincaid
Carey Lowell - Jamie Ross
Angie Harmon - Abby Carmichael
Elisabeth Rohm - Serina ?
Can't name her or her character, though I remember she exited the show stuffed in a trunk.
(something) De La Garza - Connie Rubirosa
Sadly, I can name all the actors - I've always enjed Law & Order (and have all the episodes on my gigantic media server). Sadly, I even know Profaci was played by John Fiore.
Neither Carey Lowell nor Jill Hennessey were remotely "wooden." de a Garza wasn't, exactly, but she suffered from coming in as the show was over the hill and they had run out of good scripts.
What really kinda sucked is that all the promos for L&O the last few years all had gigantic spoilers. If you watched anything on the network, you already knew exactly how the episode would be, sans the one twist they would do to make it different than the headline they were copying.
It is kind of funny when subsequent roles of some of the actors make some of the episodes unintentionally hilarious. Rob McElhenney and Adam Scott (Mac from It's Always Sunny and Ben Wyatt from Parks & Rec) don't quite work as killers anymore. Even Charlie Day's cameo as a witness in that episode where the kid was pushed off the building during a reality show is funny because that's ####### CHARLIE KELLY!!!!
Neither Carey Lowell nor Jill Hennessey were remotely "wooden." de a Garza wasn't, exactly, but she suffered from coming in as the show was over the hill and they had run out of good scripts.
I guess that's my point, I didn't think Rohm was particularly wooden either. Perhaps it hurts watching the show in syndication because you don't get the same continuity of characters, but as both actresses and characters, the assistant prosecutors are usually pretty interchangeable.
If you expand to the whole L&O universe, I've got to go with Michaela McManus as an ADA in SVU. She made Govich seem like Cagney & Lacey. She was so bad they fired her in mid-episode.
It is kind of funny when subsequent roles of some of the actors make some of the episodes unintentionally hilarious. Rob McElhenney and Adam Scott (Mac from It's Always Sunny and Ben Wyatt from Parks & Rec) don't quite work as killers anymore. Even Charlie Day's cameo as a witness in that episode where the kid was pushed off the building during a reality show is funny because that's ####### CHARLIE KELLY!!!!
Yeah, it was also really confusing when Dean Winters had a cameo as a dirty ex-cop in Criminal Intent after his season as a good cop on SVU.
Imagine my confusion when the NYPD tabbed a defense attorney to serve as a senior detective or a grieving mother to be the lieutenant of the 27th precinct.
Agreed. I actually thought the cast at the very end of the show's run was quite good. I really liked Jeremy Sisto as Lupo; he's easily my second-favorite character the show had, after Jerry Orbach's Lenny Briscoe. Anthony Anderson was actually good, too, and moving McCoy up to DA and letting Linus Roache's Cutter be the head ADA was a good move.
I might go as far as to say it was my favorite overall ensemble ever on L&O.
But yeah, the plots themselves were weak, so the show itself wasn't as good as it had been, say, ten years prior.
The guy from Blue's Clues was pretty convincing as a nerd who killed someone who had been bullying him.
Everyone there has some supernatural powers though, so they must have an exaggerated sense of their survival skills.
While Steve did make an appearance on L&O, he did his bully killing on Homicide.
I give a pass to shows that make some attempt to justify everything happening in one small town. Buffy lived on a "Hellmouth," which was a supernatural vortex that drew vampires and other supernatural creatures to Sunnydale. Smallville had that kryptonite meteor that caused mutations!
I've always wondered if Charlie's obssesion with Law and Order on the show is related to this. Kind of Rob and Charlie rubbing it in to Glenn that he didn't get on Law and Order. Though I suppose he was the star of "That 80s Show", which is a fine thing for an actor to hang his hat on.
I have zero experience with the law, so I have absolutely no idea how accurate a representation it is, but the Canadian legal show "This is Wonderland" tended towards the mundane rather than the grand drama.
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