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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Friday, June 19, 2009
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack!
I’m am not kidding in the least with the headline above. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce released the names of the latest individuals to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and THE Christopher Berman is on the list. Joining the ESPNer is a cavalcade of dignitaries, entertainment pros and….Mark Wahlberg….
TELEVISION:
Chris Berman, Jon Cryer, Peter Graves, Jimmy Kimmel,
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bill Maher, and Sam Waterston
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Hollywood: We thought you'd want it back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back, back there.
Is she any more than a run-of-the-mill sitcom actress? Apparently the bar for a star is fairly low. I'm surprised. I mean, whatever you think of Berman, he's been on the air and fairly popular for 30 years.
The bar is set at a check for $X thousand to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
That's pretty much how I've always understood it to be.
I'd see it the opposite way. She was a star of one of the biggest sitcoms of the past two decades, has made a few movies and is again in a sitcom of some length. These are entertainment industry productions, and so I can see how she'd be included. Berman's in an entirely different field (and is an insufferable ass, but I suppose that's besides the point).
Are you saying JLD:Seinfeld::Vivian Vance:Lucy?
She was a key ingredient of a long running sitcom which is in the discussion for best TV show ever and is a star in a moderately successful show. Wasn't she also on SNL? She's above mid-level of this entrance class.
Is Peter Graves more of a star? Stalag 17 was probably his most important movie, and as a 50s sci-fi lover I give him bonus points for them and while I loved MI in its day, his role didn't really require tremendous acting chops.
Plus as the BBHC said, she had the scratch.
Did you miss the part where they said Jon Cryer was getting one?
More importantly, this will increase the number of homeless people who take a dump on Chris Berman by nearly 30%.
Speaking of Eddie Murphy, I was beyond surprised to see that Charlie Murphy is honoured. I mean if that's the case, then I'd say Ducky is more than deserving.
and remember "Fury" ("...the story of a horse, and the boy who loved him..")
so long ago that Graves had dark hair
She also did like 5 episodes of Arrested Development. AFAIC, anyone whose name rolled in the credits should have their own star.
(And yes, I am aware that her episodes are probably the weakest of the series).
Ba-zing!
From a quick glance at Shooty's link, I see Liza, Charlize Theron, Ron Howard, and Henry Winkler. It's been too long since I've seen an episode, so I don't remember the guests as well as I should.
JLD was also pitch-perfect in her role, and the development of her character from silly sidekick to strong-willed business woman was simply amazing.
(Watching all of the seasons back-to-back on DVD and listening to the commentary tracks from the writers really highlights how amazing those two were.)
Well, it's not that hard to just act like Larry David all the time.
Echoing Rich -- I think Alexander brought a bit more snivel than does Larry David... and FWIW, I think he brings more of a conniving edge than Allen, too.
George Constanza is probably one of my 5 favorite TV characters of all time.
In the Gumby (Eddie Murphy) Christmas special, she played Marie Osmond. Donny and Marie, show up, start to sing, then neck. It was one of her few laughs, but it was funny.
Merry Christmas, Damnit.
I have no doubt this is the case, but that makes his on-screen schtick no less annoying.
Yes, Los Angeles Waterloo of Black Hawk Will Soon Have a Designated Spot Upon Which to Piss When Drunk on Hollywood Boulevard
Okay, I'll bite: George Costanza, Louie DePalma, Felix Unger, Ernie "Coach" Pantuso and Ralph Wiggum?
Wrong thread.
I heard that Mark Wahlberg will celebrate by reprising his famous 1988 role blinding a Vietnamese man in an unprovoked attack.
Okay, I'll bite: George Costanza, Louie DePalma, Felix Unger, Ernie "Coach" Pantuso and Ralph Wiggum?
Sounds like a fun game. I'll go with D.A.
D. A. Adam Schiff - the boss
Homer Simpson - baffoon
Bob Hartley - straight man
Oscar the Grouch - grouch
Col. Flagg - recurring character.
Honorable mentions include:
Coach Pantuso, Dr. Johnny Fever, Lou Grant, Reverend Jim Ignatowski, Niles Frasier, Church Lady.
He gets in and in another 5 years we'll be hearing about how Woody Paige was the most feared member of PTI....
I do believe there is objective humor, but there is certainly a wide range of taste on it too.
Except for 30 Rock which is universally funny.
This is a joke, right? Seinfeld wasn't even the best comedy of its decade (hi, Simpsons). It wasn't even the best comedy series Julia Louis-Dreyfus ever appeared on.
As you can tell, I am not a Seinfeld fan. I know, lots of people love it; I know, humor is subjective. I'll agree that it was one of the most popular shows of the '90s. It's just a pet peeve of mine when people canonize decent but unremarkable shows. (It's why Firefly fans hate me, but that's another story.)
Wow, you don't see many "Day by Day" fans around these days.
And it goes without saying that Day by Day wasn't the best comedy series starring Courtney Thorne-Smith.
Whether you like it or not, calling Seinfeld "unremarkable" is silly.
Totally agree. All four of them were great, but Louis-Dreyfus and Alexander were the true stars of that show. Richards was far funnier with his deadpan lines than he was with his physical slapstick act, which wears kind of thin.
With the most perfectly timed eyeglasses fogging in the history of everything. And don't forget the "Milk? COOKIES?" line in the Keith Hernandez episode, which might have been even better. And her reaction to the woman who was "talking about my Botticelli shoes!!"
He was good though. Considering the way he played Kramer, the vast majority of actors would have turned him into a goofy caricature. Richards was brilliant to realize that Kramer was two steps ahead of everybody else, not two steps behind (as he plays early Kramer). He was goofy but he was still a believable character. Though like you I'd still rank him behind Elaine and George. George is the best sitcom character of all time, IMO.
TV Guide said that Seinfeld was the best show ever. While that hardly ends the debate, the statement that Seinfeld is "widely regarded as the best comedy ever" is not exactly out there, no matter your personal opinion.
It's one of the most beloved and quoted shows, yes. It has one of the biggest fanbases ever, I would guess. The show itself still didn't impress me.
Fair point.
Peak value The Simpsons, career value Seinfeld. All those teaching and preaching scenes in The Simpsons kind of dilute the comic effect of nearly every other episode.
Yes. Also, the way she walks away from George after "You want a Christmas card? You want a Christmas card?"
The only way I've seen to avoid this is to change up the characters, but that often has the opposite effect because the original characters still have nothing to do. I have seen very few shows do this successfully*. Cheers did it. It may not have been intentional, but the moves from Long to Alley and Coach to Woody opened up new interactions. MASH did it. They didn't try to plug new characters into the old roles. Sure, Winchester didn't get along any more than Frank did, but it was for very different reasons.
This is not intended to rehash Jumping the Shark. I'm not talking about specific turning points, I'm talking about pinpointing when they run out of ideas. The most common telling point is when they just decide that the characters are losers and we should laugh at them:
Friends: Ross was a dork, but not a loser. Chandler was somewhat effeminate, but again, not a loser. Then, they were losers.
Wings: I'm not in the majority here, I know, but it was very funny early on. Brian was a ladies' man. But then there was the episode where the whole cast independently went to a singles' night.
Night Court: Harry was odd, as was the whole cast. But later on, even Dan was a pathetic loser pining away for Markie.
Drew Carey: Again, I don't think I'm with the crowd here, but the first few seasons were very funny. Then they decided that instead of quirky, Oswald and Lewis were just stupid.
Scrubs: I don't think this really lost it, but the JD/Turk love affair got pretty over-the-top by the end.
*I've only watched sitcoms since about the mid '80's, so don't take what I'm about to say to apply to anything older than that.
Best Sitcom of the 90s: NewsRadio [hence my handle]
Best Sitcom of the 00s: Scrubs
I've never gotten the fascination with Seinfeld. It's okay, and I'll watch it if there's nothing else on, but it ranks even behind "Friends" for me.
Seinfeld was very good. I never liked JLD (and thought she was one of the few weak guest stars on AD -- actually, I can't think of any others) but have to admit she did a very good acting job there.
Not only is NR forgotten by the sands of time, but Maura Tierney is one of the most underrated hotties in television history -- a Lou Whitaker I guess.
You could make up a good list of SNL cast members of the 1980s and 1990s who never got a chance to shine on the show but went on to ridiculously successful careers afterwards: Gilbert Gottfried, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Harry Shearer, Robert Downey, Jr., Damon Wayans, Ben Stiller, Janeane Garafolo, Sarah Silverman...
I guess I knew that Larry David left, but not really when.
But, yeah, The Contest has been praised to death, of course.
Gottfried and Garofalo went on to ridiculously successful careers?
These are the 10 best sitcoms in order of all time:
1. Seinfeld*
2. The Mary Tyler Moore Show*
3. The Bob Newhart Show*
4. M*A*S*H
5. I Love Lucy*
6. Cheers*
7. Taxi*
8. Sanford & Son
9. All In the Family
10. Bewitched
Honorable mention: Get Smart; The Honeymooners; Welcome Back Kotter; The Partridge Family; Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.; The Andy Griffith Show; Hogan's Heroes; The Dick Van Dyke Show; Frasier
Chico and the Man; The Jeffersons; and The Odd Couple.
*Notice that almost all of the best sitcoms follow the Rifkin formula: Have your main character (or at least a very major character in each episode) be a relatively regular, normal person (Mary Richards, Jerry Seinfeld, Ricky Ricardo, Sam Malone, Alex Reiger, Bob Hartley) who is not all that funny, but who is surrounded by wacky characters who do all kinds of odd sh*t in odd ways. A show with Kramer or Ted Baxter or Jim Ignatowsky as the centerpiece does not work. A show with those people orbiting around a regular guy or gal can be very funny.
???
There was not a single believable character in Seinfeld. If any of these unutterably and incessantly annoying people had actually lived in New York, somebody would have pounded them into hamburger in fairly short order -- Elaine included.
If they had lived in LA, I would describe them as a drive-by waiting to happen.
There was not a single believable character in Seinfeld. If any of these unutterably and incessantly annoying people had actually lived in New York, somebody would have pounded them into hamburger in fairly short order -- Elaine included.
One name: Larry David.
In any case, I found them a hell of a lot more believable than three thirty something women living in an enormous loft in Manhattan across from two guys and having no white friends at all.
Arested Development is, of course, the limiting case of this formula.
I give up, what sitcom is this?
And I know plenty of needy, annoying, neurotic NYers from the Upper West Side. Like.. me.
Racists. Racists everywhere.
I watched Friends for awhile hoping that a sudden plot twist would turn it into "Alive", but left quickly and very disappointed.
The "gritty" character was the worst trainwreck ever.
Well, that would have helped. Also only two of the women lived together, didn't they?
That's actually the same problem I have with Seinfeld--I can't enjoy myself laughing if I hate everyone involved.
Bingo.
There are no believable characters in sitcoms.
Not true. They are almost always some ridiculous characters, but many sit-coms were grounded in some form of reality. Some, of course, just go for the completely surreal from the get-go, like Night Court. Others, like the Dick Van Dyke show, exaggerate but do not take you into the outer limits.
Seinfeld was populated by people with whom you would not spend 5 minutes, given a choice, and who did not even vaguely resemble anyone I have ever met.
That could also pretty well describe the great majority of Major League baseball players if you couldn't get them to talk about baseball.
*I was trying to think who the best character was on Barney Miller. My first instinct is to go with Frank Luger. But Fish was fairly good in a limited way. (The show called Fish starring Abe Vigoda, of course, was not too good.) Yamada was excellent for one-liners, as well. All that said, maybe the best odd characters on Barney Miller were the special "guests" every week, the one or two arrestees who sat in the precinct jail. I loved the guy who claimed he had come back from the future, for example.
1. The mensch; 2. the shlemiel; 3. the shlimazel; and 4. the shicksa.
Jerry is not quite a mensch, but he's close. He's they guy most men watching would like to be. He gets the girl.
Kramer is without a doubt a total shlemiel. He's the waiter at the restaurant who spills the soup on his customer. He's clumsy. He accidentally causes problems for other people.
George, likewise, is an unyielding shlimazel. He's the customer at the restaurant on whom the soup is always spilled. If something bad happens to someone, it normally happens to George. Even when George has a girl, everything goes wrong. When, for example, he learns the special method of giving oral sex to a woman, he has to write it on a notepad and she notices and leaves him.
Elaine is more-less the shicksa, even if in real life JLD is a Jewess. She was not, however, the only shicksa. It seemed like every other show Jerry was dating some hot girl. The shicksa in Yiddish comedy, traditionally, was the unattainable girl. In Seinfeld, with rare exception, the hot girls were attainable, but used simply as props. My favorite prop in this regard was the deaf girl (Marlee Matlin), reading lips at the Long Island party. (That episode also featured Kramer, in ultra shlemiel-mode, plowing over the tennis player at the U.S. Open when he got a job as a ball-boy.)
It's one thing to know you are adequate but to be actually told you are adequate ...
My all time favourite line.
This is what ruins Always Sunny for me.
If you get a chance, listen to the commentary tracks from seasons 7, 8 and 9. You'll quickly realize that most of the stories weren't "made up". They were stories from the life of the writers, and Seinfeld would hear about them and say "That's a good one for the show."
Even one of the most famous and insane stories from the show ("Festivus") is 75% true! One of the writer's father actually created "Festivus", and it did involve "airing of grievances, "Festivus" greeting cards, no tree (but no pole, either). The writer mentioned it to one of the other writers and Seinfeld INSISTED they attach that to George's life.
Jerry knew about the dancing. No one else knew about it because she simply didn't dance that much.
And it isn't funny, it's awkward (which makes it funny for us). It's like watching your 60-something father attempt to do the Running Man. It's painful for you to watch, but everyone else watching on YouTube is busting a gut.
After Larry David left and Seinfeld took over the reigns entirely, they started getting much more creative with the writing, and I found that seasons 8 and 9 were when they hit their groove.
Pretty much true. Cloris Leachman is a terrfic actress and she was wonderful as Phyllis on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," but the "Phyllis" sitcom was a non-starter. You may also remember there was an early "Cheers" spinoff, "The Tortellis," with Carla's ex and his new wife, who were great comic relief foils on "Cheers" but highly unlikeable when they took center stage. The strength of "Frasier" was giving Kelsey Grammer a group of very strong sidekicks he could play off against.
The exception to that rule might be Basil Fawlty.
Elaine is more-less the shicksa, even if in real life JLD is a Jewess.
IRL, Ms. Louis-Dreyfuss is actually Protestant. As is Valerie "Rhoda Morgenstern" Harper.
But they took all of the wacky things that they ever heard of someone doing, and put them into characters where they had no business. Another example is on Friends, where after 5 or 6 years they decided that Chandler was afraid of dogs. When he had been near dogs in earlier episodes. Again, out of ideas, do something to make fun of the characters.
After Larry David left and Seinfeld took over the reigns entirely, they started getting much more creative with the writing, and I found that seasons 8 and 9 were when they hit their groove.
Well, in the "comedy is different things to different people" category, we're obviously opposite. I found the later seasons to be poor.
Thanks for the chuckle.
I was in the same boat. I tried watching in the middle of Season 3. I think it was "The Gang Solves the North Korea Situation." I just couldn't get into it. Hated the characters.
But I gave it another chance last summer when every episode was on Hulu. And yeah, pretty much none of the characters is a remotely decent human being. But good lord, the show is hilarious. They're all just such wonderfully vile characters. My favorite eps have to be "Mac is a Serial Killer," "Sweet Dee's Dating a Retarded Person," "The Gang Get Invincible," "The Gang Dances Their Asses Off" and "Dennis and Dee Go On Welfare."
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