Ends N’ Odds

SNL Season 7 Finale

The one and only Olivia Newton-John handled dual host/musical guest duty on the final episode of season 7. A major star for more than a decade, she was near her peak at this moment, a few months after Physical completed its then record setting run at the top of the Billboard charts. (As an aside, she was one of my all-time celebrity crushes. I’m sure her Aussie accent helped, but she always seemed so likable. 16 year old me so desperately wanted her to be my girlfriend. Hell, 30 year old me felt the same way. End of digression.)

She had little to do in this episode, or at least in the portions that survived the Peacock edit. It stands to reason that a host coming from a music background would lead to a music heavy episode, and once again the cost of streaming rights forces Universal to make a lot of cuts. For example, I took a look at an episode recap and found that this one contained the classic Frank Sinatra/Stevie Wonder Ebony & Ivory parody, a sketch not to be seen on Peacock.

Since it was the season finale and everyone was likely exhausted, Update (or SNL Newsbreak as it was known then) was longer than usual, with 5 different correspondent pieces, including a cameo from a comedy legend. Graham Chapman appeared in response to an incident in which NBC refused to air a commercial for the film version of The Secret Policeman’s Ball, claiming it failed to pass standards. Chapman came on to offer a comedic apology, punctuated with the reveal that underneath the news desk he was wearing a tutu and garter. A huge chunk of time was also filled with a standup appearance from juggler Michael Davis.

The standout sketch for me was the latest edition of I Married A Monkey. Like any recurring bit, it suffers from repetition, but I do admire the way that Tim Kazurinsky was able to keep it together and remain in character as he shared a stage with not one, but two animals. (Another digression - following Monday’s newsletter I got into an interesting discussion regarding pedantry. By the letter of the law, 1986 was in fact the Mets 25th anniversary season. But there’s no ambiguity here. Kazurinsky’s character married a chimpanzee, which is decidedly NOT a monkey. On the other hand, titling the sketch in this way creates a nice alliterative sound. I believe the committee will allow this one.)

And that’s the end of season 7. Chevy Chase returned to host the season 8 premiere, and as always new cast members would join. One of next season’s newbies would be perhaps the prime example of one who was severely underutilized at the time. She eventually went on to become one of the most honored comediennes in TV history. We’ll get a chance to see her intro next week. Also worth noting is that in the goodbyes, Joe Piscopo informed the audience that over the summer break Eddie Murphy will have a movie coming out with Nick Nolte. If memory serves, that turned out alright.

The Wrong Way To Present A Sporting Event

World championships for Olympic sports in the year before an Olympiad often serve as a preview for the following year. There are some athletes who choose to take the year off from competing in order to focus on training, but otherwise many use it as an opportunity to make a statement, whether it is a younger competitor establishing him or herself as a face to watch, or a past champion laying the gauntlet to prove that they’re still the one to beat. The year can also serve as a dress rehearsal for NBC. It’s essentially a dress rehearsal for how the network intends to treat each individual sport in the following year’s Olympic telecast.

I try to be sympathetic towards the NBC approach to the Olympics. It is a mammoth endeavor, and they have to serve a disparate range of audiences. But their presentation of last week’s World Track & Field Championships was, in a word, abysmal. To be fair, for events of this nature NBC takes the international feed and supplements that with its own camerawork and graphics. So, many of the complaints I have originate with the supplier. Having said that, NBC isn’t completely off the hook. During all that prerace chatter among the competitors there was no reason they could not have thrown on screen a graphic listing the runners and lane assignments. Track is one of the marquee sports in the Olympic program and takes up a large chunk of primetime programming in the second week. If this is what the presentation will look like next year, I’m already full of dread.

The above was one random race in the event, but it illustrates how user-unfriendly the broadcast was. The two simplest pieces of info a viewer needs is to know who the competitors are and what the results are. NBC identified only about half of the runners before the race began. This was only one random example. Many other races were even worse. For some they didn’t even bother to intro anybody, other times they only listed the runners’ surnames, other times the only intro would be a graphic of the flag of a competitor’s home nation. And results were intermittently presented. There were multiple occasions in which the camera cut away as the results were scrolling, making it impossible to see what happened. Now, obviously any results are only one mouse click away, but as a viewer I shouldn’t need to do that. The Paris games begin 11 months from now. NBC just can’t handle such an important sport as poorly as they did last week. If it does, the network will deserve every bit of criticism thrown its way.

TV Of The 21st Century - Halt And Catch Fire

It’s always easy to immediately compare a new piece of work to something similar. Just think of the many horror movies that were immediately branded as “Alien in a ___” or action movies branded as “Die Hard in a ___.” When Halt And Catch Fire premiered in 2014, it arrived with numerous comparisons to Mad Men, aided in no small manner by the fact that both shows aired on the same network. Like Mad Men, it was set in the recent past and featured an enigmatic lead character.

The comparisons didn’t fully match, partly due to the fact that the show quickly veered away from its initial premise. Joe MacMillan may have been a bit of an antihero, but he did not share Don Draper’s background mystery. And HACF recognized that there was much more gold to mine from the supporting characters, particularly the females. By the middle of the first season it was already a much different show than the pilot suggested it would be, and it was the much better for it.

Set at the beginning of the personal computer revolution of the early 1980s, it starred Lee Pace as Joe MacMillan, a salesman working to develop an IBM clone. The other 4 main characters include Gordon, the engineer who collaborated with Joe (with Joe as the visionary and Gordon as the tech guy there were clear Steve Jobs/Wozniak vibes) Cameron, a young female programmer, Donna, Gordon’s husband and a talented engineer in her own right, and Bos, the money man.

Before too long it was obvious that Cameron and Donna were the keys that really made the show. Cameron was a character ahead of her time - by now, the sullen antisocial female programmer is practically a trope, but at the time the computer world was even more male-dominated than it is now. That’s not to mention the hurdles that Donna faced. She was just as business savvy as she was computer savvy, but once again in that era there was more than just a glass ceiling. The glass in that case was the reinforced glass found in presidential limos. Gordon and Bos had compelling backstories as well. Throughout the show’s run Gordon was dealing with a degenerative brain disorder and he was well aware that his life would be a short one. On the surface Bos appeared to be the prototypical Texas businessman, but he was wise enough to know what he didn’t know. He trusted the expertise of the technical people, and he used his down-home image to his advantage. Others underestimated him at their own peril.

Over the course of the show’s run the characters were crucial in developing such now standard concepts as online gaming communities and search engines. It was always going to suffer in comparison to Mad Men. It certainly wasn’t as good as Mad Men was, but it told a compelling story over the course of its 4 season run, and you have to give AMC credit for giving it the time to fully tell that story even though it was never a ratings smash.

Originally aired on: AMC

Currently streaming on: AMC+, it’s also coming to Pluto TV soon

No Comment Necessary

This is the front page of today’s Daily Tar Heel. It consists of texts sent during Monday’s lockdown.

We have failed a generation.

Playoff Preview

The NASCAR playoffs get underway this weekend when the green flag drops in Darlington. For those that don’t follow the sport, the playoffs consist of the final 10 races of the season. 16 drivers have qualified, and it’s an elimination system. After the first 3 races, 4 drivers are pared from the field, 4 more after race 6, and another group of 4 following race 9. That leaves 4 drivers still eligible to win the title in the finale held at Phoenix; whichever of the 4 finishes highest in that race is your Cup champion.

So how will it go? Here’s one man’s opinion.

First 4 out - Kevin Harvick, Michael McDowell, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and Bubba Wallace. 3 are fairly obvious. Wallace was the last qualifier on points, and McDowell and Stenhouse each have 1 victory this season surrounded by a lot of finishes in the 12-15 range. That shows consistency, but not the capability of racking up enough points to advance. That’s the case with Harvick as well. It would be a great storybook ending to retire as a champ, but he’s winless so far this season. As a result he doesn’t yet have any bonus points so he’s already a bit behind the 8 ball. It’s too much of an uphill climb.

Second 4 out - Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney, Ross Chastain, and Brad Keselowski. Keselowski is similar to Harvick in that he has no wins in the bank. He’s run well, but it’s tough to imagine him suddenly discovering the winning formula this late in the season. Blaney and Chastain are both in the midst of major slumps. Nothing against Bell, but somebody’s gotta go out at this juncture.

Third 4 out - Chris Buescher, Kyle Larson, Joey Logano, and Tyler Reddick. Buescher could be a real wild card. He’s won 3 out of the last 5 races, so he’s clearly on a major roll. I could see Larson grabbing a spot in the final 4, but three drivers have clearly separated themselves from the pack and appear to be on solid paths towards the championship.

Championship 4 - Kyle Busch, William Byron, Denny Hamlin, and Martin Truex Jr. Of this group, Busch’s hold is the most tenuous. Mechanical issues have created wild swings in results from race to race, but when he’s on he’s a tough out. The other 3 have been the classes of the field. My pick to win the whole shebang is Byron, but Truex is a solid bet as well.

Arrivederci

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