Friday, June 29th 2012

6:00am
Documentary; Assault on Waco (2006)
Transcripts of FBI negotiations and interviews with survivors of the Branch Davidian sect expose truths about the 1993 Waco, Texas, siege in which 82 died.

8:00am
Conspiracy Test: The Oklahoma City Bombing (1999)
Investigators document their struggle for justice in the terrorist attack.

[Ed note: The following episode selections and descriptions 9:00am-3:00pm came from Stephen Bowie's excellent 100 Greatest Television Episodes of All-Time. Found Here ]


9:00am
The Wonder Years 3.20 - "Goodbye" (1990)
This was the deeply affecting climax to a story arc (spread out across the series’ third season) in which Kevin Arnold’s formidable, unsmiling new math teacher and his lack of aptitude for the subject combine to create considerable pre-teen anxiety. In “Goodbye,” Kevin achieves a breakthrough of sorts under Mr. Collins’ austere tutelage, and comes to fancy that they have a budding friendship – when suddenly Mr. Collins tells Kevin he’ll have to succeed or fail on his own, and disappears. Kevin lashes out in anger and learns the truth – that Mr. Collins was terminally ill – only later, when a vice principal who can barely be bothered tells him in passing that the teacher has died. Many episodes of The Wonder Years pulled off this formula of tender adolescent emotion filtered through the wisdom of age, but this one soars thanks to the amazingly restrained performance of Steven Gilborn as Mr. Collins. Bob Brush’s script never allows him a scene in which he confides in Kevin, and Gilborn (an actor better known for his deadpan sitcom turns) resists the temptation to telegraph any hints as to the nature of Mr. Collins’ secret. That’s why the ending is so devastating: we’re compelled to empathize with Kevin’s resentment at the teacher’s inexplicable betrayal, and later with his shame at having failed to grasp an adult truth.


9:30am
The Paper Chase 2.18 - "Not Prince Hamlet" (1984)
A rare superlative outing from late in the series’ run, and one that featured mainly the second-tier cast at that, “Not Prince Hamlet” follows a grieving father as he interviews friends and acquaintances to try to find out why his law student son committed suicide. The title of the episode is also the content of the dead young man’s enigmatic suicide note, which turns out to be a quotation not from Shakespeare but from . . . ah, but if you don’t know already, that would spoil it. From the talented pen of Lee Kalcheim, who also wrote my other favorite Paper Chase, “My Dinner With Kingsfield,” a two-hander in which the foreboding law professor (John Houseman) lets his guard down (just a bit) while snowbound with his most adoring pupil Hart (James Stephens).


10:30am
The X-Files 5.05 - "The Post-Modern Prometheus" (1997)
Shot in black and white, this deranged, semi-farcical outing sends Scully and Mulder to a small midwestern town to track down the Great Mutato, a hideously deformed, peanut-butter sandwich-loving mutant who may or may not be a hoax perpetrated by some teenaged fanboys. Creator-writer-director Chris Carter’s magnum opus turns into a mad scientist tale of sorts, but really it’s an ineffably weird pop culture fantasia that somehow unites substantial references to comic books, Jerry Springer, Cher (think Mask), and James Whale’s Frankenstein. Fully deserving its titular adjective, the episode confounds every expectation (including the initial one that Carter is only out to score points off ignorant rednecks), and the ending breaks all the rules: Mulder, dissatisfied with the melancholy outcome, cries “Author!” and we’re transported to a feel-good rock-out where Mutato and the FBI agents are high-fiving each other at a Cher concert. Seriously. A series achieves a special kind of maturity when it’s willing to leave behind the comforts of an established formula and and venture into the unfamiliar – imagine if 24 were to try a comedy, or just an episode where everyone gets stuck in traffic. The X-Files challenged its fan base with this kind of adventurousness all the time, and here Carter’s courage extends as far as throwing away most of his best bits, confident that we’ll catch the details. The best is a revelation about the townspeople’s genetic makeup that’s conveyed only through some deft edits between a few bit players and some farm animals.

11:30am
The White Shadow 2.22 - "The Death of Me Yet" (1980)
TV shows had killed off regular characters before, but likely never one so beloved as Curtis Jackson, the Carver High basketball player who takes a bullet during a liquor store holdup in this episode. Jackson’s death occurs during the celebration after a game that sends the team to the state championship, a victory to which the show had been building for the entirety of its two-year run. The timing seems a deliberate provocation, a forceful reminder to the series’ loyal audience that life rarely permits the sweet without a dose of the bitter. “The Death of Me Yet” is not, as one might expect, about grief per se. The team accepts their friend’s death stoically; there’s a quick consensus that Jackson would want them to continue on to the playoffs. It’s implied (though not overemphasized) that none of them are strangers to acts of random violence. Appropriately, it’s Coach Reeves (Ken Howard), the middle-class outsider, who takes it hardest, spiraling into a self-pitying funk. “I’m just a basketball coach, not a savior,” he says, and considers fleeing to a cushy Moorpark College job. Reeves knows that he’s taken his kids to victory on the court, but only one has a chance at a scholarship, and the rest will stay behind on the mean streets that killed Curtis. The pragmatic vice principal (Joan Pringle) who hears him out has no patience for this: you do what you can. All the pathos in Marc Rubin’s script is saved for one scene, in which Reeves comes upon Jackson’s little brother cleaning out his locker, and it’s a heartbreaker.


12:30pm
Night Court 6.22 - "Yet Another Day in the Life" (1989)
The breezy, episodic, by-the-seat-of-their-pants storylines in this airy ensemble comedy offered some of the most underappreciated laughs of the eighties. Here’s my favorite: the one where laid-back judge Harry decides to beat the court record of cases cleared in a single session, plowing through a blitz of throwaway gags – even some, er, topical ones like the dispute Harry mediates between some “old” and “new” Trekkies arrested for fighting at a Star Trek convention. They’re all set to ace the record until the brilliant punchline: the defendant in the final case on the docket talks . . . very . . . very . . . slowly. It’s too close to call which reaction shots are funnier as the clock ticks toward the deadline, Harry Anderson’s slack-jawed expressions of disbelief or the constipated contortions of situation comedy’s nimblest acrobat, John Larroquette, as the sleazebag district attorney.


1:00pm
Columbo 3.02 - "Any Old Port in A Storm" (1973)
Columbo had a rigid, clockwork formula, and the episodes that succeeded almost always matched the shabby, loquacious detective against his opposite: one of the Nietzchean supermen played with cold calculation by Robert Culp or Patrick McGoohan or Robert Vaughn. “Any Old Port” is the only one that scores by giving Columbo a nemesis with a soul. Donald Pleasence delivers a towering performance as Adrian Carsini, a winemaker who murders his brother because the sibling wants to sell the family winery that Adrian runs for pleasure rather than profit. Like the film Sideways, Stanley Ralph Ross’s script (from a story by Larry Cohen) takes us inside the minutiae of wine appreciation, how to savor the bouquet and properly decant the wine, and builds an argument that the aficionado’s way of life may be more rarefied and rewarding than that of someone who lacks his all-consuming passion. The beautiful irony is that Columbo, though he’s as unrefined as any person can be, is the only character who gets this. The detective and Carsini form a sort of mutual admiration society – Columbo studies up on fine wines and Adrian compliments his knowledge and taste – even as they go through the motions of trying to outwit one another. Watching Falk and Pleasence play off each other in the final scene, in which predator and prey share “an excellent dessert wine,” is one of the true joys of seventies television. Falk hits just the right note of regret over having to nab this tasteful killer without betraying his character’s moral nature, and Pleasence’s rueful laugh – well, it’s a rare vintage port indeed.


2:00pm
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation 2.08 - "Slaves of Las Vegas" (2001)
A body found in a sandbox leads the CSIs to an underground sex club in this pivotal episode that gets inside the heads of the main characters without violating the show’s essential mandate of focusing on the professional, not the personal. Credited ambiguously as a “consultant,” the cult novelist-memoirist Jerry Stahl was the secret weapon on CSI’s writing staff for several seasons, contributing an array of episodes that limned the funny, naughty ins and outs of outre sexual fetishes in jaw-dropping detail. “Fur and Loathing” (about “furries”) and “King Baby” (adult babies) were wilder, but “Slaves” was the template, introducing the fascinating recurring character Lady Heather (Melinda Clarke), a madame and dominatrix who forms a unique bond with the enigmatic lead investigator Gil Grissom (less-is-more star William Petersen). From the opening scene in which Catherine (Marg Helgenberger) asks Grissom if he gets his trademark aphorisms out of a book, and he calls her “Grasshopper,” Stahl lets us know that he’s going self-reflexive. In his hands Lady Heather becomes the team’s unlikely interlocutor: Nick (George Eads), freaked out by her dungeon, reveals himself as a prude, while Catherine, a former stripper, is impressed by Heather’s success as a businesswoman and single parent. But the two long scenes in which Grissom and Heather spar verbally, then flirt, are the real delight. It’s Stahl’s conceit that Heather’s professional skills make her both a gifted amateur sleuth and the only person thus far to have some real insight as to what makes Grissom tick (a talent that clearly turns him on). Positing that your law enforcement hero’s moral/intellectual/romantic counterpart is a sex worker, and that there’s nothing particularly unhealthy about that: how’s that for subversiveness within a Nielsen megahit?

3:00pm
Mad Men 1.07 - "Red in the Face" (2007)
This episode turns its attention to Roger Sterling (John Slattery), the character most emblematic of the show’s slick sixties Madison Avenue milieu. The first half exposes the needy, boorish alcoholic behind Roger’s veneer of good looks and charm, as Roger invites himself over for dinner at his right-hand man Don Draper’s suburban home and winds up making a drunken pass at Don’s wife. Mainly preoccupied with character and metaphor, Mad Men distinguished itself from its contemporaries with its willingness to set aside the demands of narrative in order to luxuriate in the atmosphere of the period setting. Case in point: the final act of “Red in the Face,” a three-martini lunch after which Roger and Don (Jon Hamm) – finding the elevator out of order – have to trudge up twenty-three flights of stairs to get back to their office. Their forced march concludes with a gross-out moment that I think is destined to achieve some kind of infamy in the annals of television. Don’s smirk in the last shot confirms that the ad men’s misadventure has been a kind of payback for Roger’s earlier transgression, but what’s important – what Mad Men is all about – is not the sidewinder path of the story, but the rich, impressionistic sketch of a bygone ritual: the sybaritic business meal where men in vests, slumped down in red vinyl booths and enveloped in a cigarette haze, gulp down oysters and gin and crack sexist jokes. Writer Bridget Bedard delivers a second daffy, sideways jab at masculine pride in a subplot where corporate weasel Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) finds his own ersatz charm wholly lacking as he tries to navigate the lunchtime line of a department store returns counter. Both threads, which were among the best moments on television in 2007, consisted of little more than actors in three-piece suits standing around, talking, on notional sets. A throwback to Rod Serling, and a polished rebuke to the expensive but mindless chaos of what now passes for drama on the networks.


4:00pm
Movie: "The Law" (1974) (TV)
Judd Hirsch, John Beck
An examination of the workings of a big city's legal system as seen through the eyes of people involved in a sensational murder trial.

6:00pm
CFL Football
June 29th 2012
Saskatchewan Roughriders  @  Hamilton Tiger-Cats

9:00pm
CFL Football
June 29th 2012
Winnipeg Blue Bombers  @  BC Lions

12:30am
Movie: "The Night Stalker" (1972) (TV)
Darren McGavin, Carol Lynley
An abrasive Las Vegas newspaper reporter investigates a series of murders committed by a vampire.

2:00am
Columbo 1.02 - "Murder by the Book" (1971)
Dir: Steven Spielberg
When one member of a mystery writing team wants to break from his less talented partner, he becomes the victim in a real-life murder mystery.



3:00am
CFL Football
June 29th 2012
Winnipeg Blue Bombers  @  BC Lions

5:00am
Kiana's Flex Appeal

5:30am
Kiana's Flex Appeal

6:00am