Sixteen Volts

For some reason, my dreams that are about TV tend to be about The Sopranos. Last night I had the most interesting dream that I might as well post here. In this dream, I was watching the next episode of The Sopranos while being immersed to the story as a lowly soldier in Tony's family. As I was part of the action, I was thinking to myself how cool it is that I get to see this episode before it will play for real sometime next year. The story of this episode was that Paulie Walnuts had grown tired of not being the boss, so he started secretly killing the other members of the family one by one, and the Soprano crime family was furiously trying to find out who was killing them. Near the end of this episode, Paulie was trying to whack me, but somehow I escaped to an international airport in France, and there I somehow tricked Paulie (I am a bit hazy on the exact details) to start wildly shooting at other people. I woke up after I saw some French special forces cops in full SWAT gear running past me to get him.

So now you know what is going to happen when The Sopranos comes back after the long break. I apologize if I spoiled anybody's enjoyment. To make up for this transgression, maybe I will write something about TV shows that have already ended their runs. After all, one of our basic cable channels recently changed its name to TVTropolis, and it now fills the airtime with reruns of hit shows from the 80's and 90's. I have occasionally skipped to this channel during commercials just to remind myself of what the shows such as "Beverly Hills 90210" and "Grace Under Fire" were like. One can only hope that they will soon start playing Miami Vice.

I also watched a few episodes of "Married With Children" in full, and they were not quite as good as I remembered, but then again, few things ever are. I can still remember that I, as watched this show as a kid, wondered how exactly Al was supposed to be poor, since he lived in a perfectly normal house that looked quite large in the outside shots. Later, Al was a hero for me and many of my high school chums, many times making us to pretend that we are high school football heroes. (At that time, I also remember wondering why exactly Bud Bundy was supposed to be a virgin, since according to my calculations he scored with at least a dozen different hot babes during the run of the show.)

Tell me, in whatever public memorial service Aaron Spelling is given, will the fans show up dressed as their favourite characters? My favourite Spelling show was certainly Beverly Hills 90210, but when I checked it out at TVTropolis, at least the first season turned out to be very different from what I remember. Man, was everything ever slow in the past. I can similarly remember when I watched Dirty Harry a few years ago, and I bet that any romantic comedy or costume drama made today is edited to a faster pace than this action classic. It's almost like the filmmakers of the past didn't know that they can compress time with editing. For example, in that airplane runway hijacking scene where Dirty Harry dresses up as the pilot, instead of the immediate transition cut that would be normal these days, he is shown walking to the plane all the way, casually eating an apple.

"90210" started playing in Finland when I was in high school, and for some reason, its name was translated to "LA Beat" for the first two seasons, after which the channel switched to the international name. I didn't watch it, but I remember some of my chums telling me that I really have to start watching that show, since they so much wanted to hear my commentary about it. By the opening titles, I was naturally hooked and never missed an episode afterwards. Fast forward to the time before my Ph.D. thesis defense at the university, and when I was carrying my rented formalwear to my office, one guy saw me and asked me what is the occasion, is it perhaps the hundredth episode of 90210?

I hate it when TV makes me think by being more confusing than the real world. Here in the present day, The Daily Show recently featured a humorous segment about the Mexican-style restaurant "The Pink Taco". First, I would say that the audience reaction when the name was revealed pretty much refuted all arguments about the meaning of the name. But I did find the restaurant entrepreneur's vapid defenses of how there is nothing wrong with this name to be illustrative. Somebody could perhaps open "Uncle Coonster's Fried Chicken and Watermelon Shack" to test if the exact same arguments would get much traction. Hey, it's a free country and you don't tell me what to do!

I guess Peanuts came pretty close in its time, but it would be interesting to see an animated cartoon version of some newspaper comic strip so that this cartoon was at least somehow similar to the strip, other than just having the same characters. For example, the animated Dilbert cartoon that I had such high expectations for when it first came out turned out to be a totally watered-down disappointment that had absolutely nothing whatsoever in common with the comic strip. I recently watched one episode of The Boondocks animated series, and I didn't see any similarity with the original comic strip. And I have read quite a few strips during the past few years at BartCop. It's not like I'm a fan of that particular comic strip or anything, but the whole thing just feels so very silly.

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 8:05 AM