May 2010 Archives

The "24: Finale: In the End, The Clock Counts Down to 00:00:00

May 24, 2010 10:21 PM

The three most powerful punches of the Fox 24 finale all came at the very end -- like one final triple flurry of potent, emotional "Ka-Chunk, Ka-Chunk" sounds as the clock counted down one last time...

First came the final close-up image of Keifer Sutherland's Jack Bauer -- given a reprieve one second before execution, and staring into the direction of CTU's flying camera drone. His face was a bloody mess, but his expression said everything, as he thanked Mary Jane Rajskub's Chloe for being concerned about his safety the entire time.

Second was Chloe herself, in similarly tight close-up, responding to Jack's grateful praise with a stream of tears and sobs. It was the validation she'd always been seeking, and the friendship she'd seldom heard acknowledged. With the disgraced President turning CTU over to Chloe to find and help Jack, her time had come at last.

But it came, ironically, just as time for Jack Bauer literally ran out. At the end of another long day, having brought down another White House resident whose behavior was, in the end, unconscionable, Jack fled to evade detection before government factions (his and the Russians) caught up to him.

Except this time, as the final second counted down, we weren't shown a graphic of the last seconds leading up to a new hour. Instead, 24 counted down, as with a rocket on a launch pad, counting down to zero. Or, specifically, to 00:00:00.

Mission accomplished. Series over. Nine years in real time, eight days of TV "real time" -- and, as with ABC's Lost, the end of 24 marked the passage of a groundbreaking drama series likely to be remembered for years, and decades, to come.

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ABC's "Lost" Finale: Death, Be Rather Proud

May 23, 2010 11:52 PM

[Bianculli here: In addition to this review, which was posted after the finale, listen for Monday's Fresh Air with Terry Gross on NPR, for another analysis from me. I liked it, both times.]

The ending of ABC's Lost, whatever it turned out to be, wasn't going to be able to please all of the people all of the time. But even with an unsettling core "explanation" and some frustrating unanswered questions, Sunday's 2.5-hour finale was one entertaining movie-length wrap-up...

It should go without saying that if you haven't seen the Lost finale yet, save this column and return when you have. It should also go without saying -- but I'll say it anyway -- that if you didn't watch this in real time, you missed one of the last times broadcast TV will be serving up such a treat to a sizable, attentive mass audience.

And now, to some quick, final points:

While Desmond, and then Jack, were in the subterranean cave trying to plug the island's hole and stop/restart its life force, writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse were busy trying to plug plot holes. And overall, they did a very good job, providing viewers with satisfying off-island, memory-triggered reunions of Sawyer and Juliet, Sayid and Shannon, Sun and Jin, Desmond and Penny, Claire and Charlie, and so on.

Overlooked, though, were Walt and his dad. And internal logic was overlooked a bit, too: On the island, Desmond agreed to let evil Locke capture him in exchange for sparing the lives of Bernard and Rose. But if Bernard knew their fates already, why would it matter?

The big reveal, flirting dangerously close to Twilight Zone territory, is that everyone was dead already. But the subtext -- that everyone was happier, and happily reunited, in the "sideways" world -- was a prism through which the show, like its characters, found redemption. And when Jack died, and why, all turned out to be very important.

The most satisfying parts of the finale included these:

Essentially rewinding the premiere episode's opening images so that the ending of the finale presented them, more or less, in reverse. The first image in the pilot episode was a close-up of Jack's eye opening, after which the camera zoomed above to show him in the cane field, and suddenly met by a dog. In the finale, the dog was there, and the cane field, as Jack collapsed to the ground, having saved the island but suffering mortal wounds.

And the last shot being Jack's eye closing -- for a series finale, that was a literal sense of closure.

Of course, referring to the start of the premiere at the end of the finale won't always please people, either: That was how Seinfeld ended. But Lost, in its final hours, had plenty of playful, clever touches. (My favorite: the sideways-world birthday bash which most of the characters attended, mostly because the banquet tables had some very familiar numbers on them. Claire and Desmond, for example, were seated at table 23.)

The general tendency, after a show this complicated says goodbye, is to pick it apart and complain about every untied plot thread, every final inconsistency, every forgotten character. But I'd rather just thank Lost for the ride, and for providing such unforgettable characters and performances, and presenting a series of such originality.

It's been 20 years since ABC's Twin Peaks, which lost its way and never even ended, yet we still think of that show very fondly --- and should. And my guess, my prediction, is that in 20 years from now, we'll be remembering and revering Lost just as affectionately.

Don't be annoyed, in the end, by the inconsistencies and unresolved mysteries. Just follow the final advice of Jack's father, as Jack realized his own quest was over, and the two of them were equally dead:

"Remember. And let go."

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Newest TVWW Contest: Guess the Opening-Weekend Grosses for Two More TV-Inspired Movies

May 20, 2010 8:02 AM

It's been a while since we mounted a TV WORTH WATCHING contest for readers, offering tacky prizes for a predictive puzzler. So here's a new one, and it's a two-parter: Guess the opening-weekend grosses for two movies based on TV fare -- MacGruber and Sex and the City 2 -- and, by so doing, predict which one will outdraw the other...

The rules are the same as for previous contests. You can enter only once. In the event two predictions are identical, the one received earliest will count, and others can resubmit an altered estimate until the contest deadline.

The winners are determined in tried and true Price Is Right fashion: The person who gets closest to the actual revised box-office tallies, without going over, is the winner. And, of course, the winners must be ranked correctly in the final order for their respective weekends. If MacGruber out-earns Sex 2, your prediction must reflect that.

A sample contest entry, for example, might read: 1) Sex & the City 2, $62 million; 2) MacGruber, $19 million.

Deadline for entries is noon ET Friday, May 21, giving readers a full day to hone their predictions.

Among the key factors:

MacGruber, which premieres Friday, May 21, will be up against, among other films, the premiere of Shrek Forever After, the fourth film in the nine-year, $1-billion movie franchise (and those are U.S. figures; worldwide, it doubles).

MacGruber is based on series of Saturday Night Live sketches in which Will Forte plays a MacGyver-type inventor whose neuroses and distractions result in his constantly being blown up while trying to invent a way to defuse an explosive device.

Sex and the City 2 will premiere on Thursday, May 27, giving it a four-day Memorial Day Weekend box-office total.

As the original Sex and the City movie approached theaters in 208, I guessed $55 million for the opening weekend -- its actual opening-week tally.

Winners will be announced after the revised figures for Sex 2 are in, post-Memorial Day weekend. Ad to entice readers (but only a little), here are the prizes from which the winner can select, taken straight from my still-uncleaned office floor:

1) a Ghost Hunters plug-in night light

2) an Alice deck of giant playing cards, keyed to the recent Syfy miniseries reimagining of Alice in Wonderland

3) an Ultimate Fighting Championship small-scale UFC fingerless leather glove trinket

4) a bright red NBC News mini-note pad and matching attached mini-pen.

Winners will be announced, then contacted, and can select their prizes.

Guess away. Quickly, but only once. And please, if you like, add a sentence defending your guesses. If you think MacGruber will be a sleeper hit, for example, or that moviegoers will be tired of Sex, explain why.

Remember... the deadline is noon ET Friday, May 21. Have fun!

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The Smothers Brothers Call It Quits, High-Class but Low-Key

May 19, 2010 9:52 AM

Sunday night at the Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, the Smothers Brothers performed what they say was their final performance as a duo -- 50 impressive years after their FIRST performance as a duo. I flew in just to see it and be there, and was glad I did...

The performance itself was the same act Tom and Dick performed at the same venue last November (the photo above was taken after that performance, when I presented them with Dangerously Funny, my book about them), and the audience was unaware they were watching anything other than a typical Smothers Brothers concert date. But this time, the ending was different.

They announced, rather vaguely, that this would be one of their last appearances "for a while," and Tom noted that his wife and children were in attendance. And to conclude, the brothers allowed themselves to improvise for a while.

Tom went off on a Tea Party rant, saying how those loud protesters were angry at the wrong target. The blamed the government for everything, he said, when the government wasn't in charge. Big business was in charge, controlling the politicians and the government, and it has been that way for a long time.

It was, in essence, the very same speech Ned Beatty, playing a media mogul, delivered at the end of Paddy Chayefsky's Network... delivered just as passionately.

Funny? No. But it wasn't meant to be. The Smothers Brothers, after half a century of fighting the good fight and entertaining millions, went out not only singing, but swinging. I was proud to be there, proud to have written the book about them, and very happy that a quintet of cameras recorded the final concert for posterity.

Here's hoping it sees the light of day soon -- either as a home-video release or a golden-anniversary cable special. Fifty years on, Tom and Dick Smothers deserve that much... and more.

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Pure "Glee": "Dr. Horrible" Cohorts Joss Whedon, Neil Patrick Harris Reteam for This Week's Fox Musical Series

May 16, 2010 9:50 PM

Tuesday night at 9 ET, Fox's Glee presents guest director Joss Whedon and guest star Neil Patrick Harris in a new episode that counts as one more reason this musical series is one of the best TV treats of the year...

You have Whedon, a Stephen Sondheim fan whose own musical forays include the Internet's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and the classic musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And you have Harris, the titular star of Dr. Horrible, but also a Broadway star of Cabaret and Sondheim's Assassins. Put them into the Glee mix, and what do you have?

A triumph.

Harris is cast as Bryan Ryan, a rival singer who overshadowed Matthew Morrison's Will back in his own glee-club days. They're still rivals, but in different arenas: Bryan's now a school-board member threatening to cut the funding for Will's New Directions singing class, and both Bryan and Will are up for the local community-theater production of Les Miserables.

It's an episode about dreams. Will dreams of starring in a show and of being an inspirational teacher. Rachel (Lea Michele) dreams of finding her birth mother, and wheelchair-bound Artie (Kevin McHale) dreams of walking.

The episode pulls only these characters to the foreground -- those and Idina Menzel, who plays rival glee-club teacher Shelby. The former star of Wicked on Broadway gets to sing a duet with Lea Michele, another Broadway baby (from Spring Awakening). And it's "I Dreamed a Dream," a number from Les Miserables, to boot. And throughout, there are revelations, and surprises, and lots of drama.

Whedon, who once guest directed an episode of NBC's Office, doesn't show off in his return to high-school corridors, but does show off the cast to great advantage.

Harris and Morrison square off in two duets -- the first, an impromptu barroom version of Billy Joel's "Piano Man." Then, at the auditions for Les Miserables, their second duet, to Aerosmith's "Dream On," is more of a duel -- and it's brilliant. What voices.

The other big production number features Artie, out of his wheelchair and held aloft by a shopping-mall crowd to the tune of Men without Hats' "Safety Dance" (the one with the lyrics "You Can Dance If You Want To" -- which have a different meaning when sung by a character with a spinal cord injury). All the numbers have emotional resonance and dramatic underpinnings -- they aren't just look-at-us production numbers.

What else could you want from a weekly TV musical series?

Yet, greedily, I DO want more. I want Whedon to direct again, in another episode where Harris returns -- an episode built specifically around the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim. And I want Kristin Chenoweth back for a third time, this time to sing a duet with her former Wicked co-star Menzel.

And I want theme episodes built around the music of The Beatles. And Randy Newman. And Paul Simon. And Fiona Apple...

But for now, I'll settle for Whedon, Harris and another fabulous hour of Glee. Thanks, Ryan Murphy, for entrusting an hour of your show to talents eminently worthy of it. And if Harris and Chenoweth aren't nominated for Guest Actor and Actress Emmys for their respective turns on this series, by the way, there is no joy in Hollywoodville...

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Rowan University: Graduation Day, And One Memorable TV History Essay

May 14, 2010 8:11 PM

Last year, when I was completing my first year as a full-time faculty member at New Jersey's Rowan University, I also was crashing on the final month of writing my Smothers Brothers book, so I passed on attending, and participating in, what would have been my first graduation ceremony as an associate professor.

Friday, with the book done and published and the school year over again, I happily attended -- and was so glad I did. The day was about the graduates -- the 2,477 students who were walking away with diplomas -- but on this site, at this time, I can admit I got a lot out of it as well.

Some students from elsewhere in the College of Communication had taken one or more of my classes and it always felt good to see a familiar face beaming as he or she walked across the stage. But when it came time for the Radio-Television/Film students -- the ones from my department -- to get their diplomas, I was allowed to join other teachers from the department in a post-diploma gauntlet, congratulating them as they exited the stage.

And I must admit, it was an unexpected, unforgettable delight to be warmly and enthusiastically embraced by so many attractive young students. Even some female ones. And for me, the delight was in realizing how, in only two years as a full-timer, I actually had gotten to know, like, and many even connect with a lot of these young adults. I knew which ones were the computer wizards, which ones were the jokesters, which ones the best writers, and which ones I had advised, about their final schedules and their professional internships, on their way to graduation.

What I enjoyed the most, maybe, was how many of them kidded me about wearing a cap and gown with no trace of my trademark Hawaiian shirts. Maybe next year. Meanwhile, to all of them, I happily say "Aloha" -- which, of course, is Hawaiian for both hello and goodbye.

And to salute this year's graduates, I'd like to end by sharing one of the graduates' essay assignments from TV History & Appreciation, the required media course I co-teach with Professors Mike Donovan and George Back. Lisa Pontelandolfo, a bit older than most of her classmates, was able to reach back to the 1970s when asked to write about her earliest favorite prime-time TV series, and the circumstances under which she watched it.

It may be about a slightly more dated show than most of the essays we read these days -- but the content and tone are indicative of what makes the assignment, and the course, so special. Lisa's essay should make you smile. For me, the whole graduation day did.

Here's the essay of Lisa Pontelandolfo, now awarded a B.A. in Communication Studies, with a specialty in Rhetoric/Cultural Criticism. (She got an A.)

--

"I grew up with a mother and father who were devoted to family life. It was mom who was in charge of worrying about the eating of vegetables, the studying for tests, and the sitting too close to the television screen. In fact, mom would often scold us to turn off the afternoon television programs and go outside to play.

"The evenings were a different story. When dad came home from work, the television went on and stayed on, long after he fell asleep to the flickering image of Johnny Carson. Of all the days I have loved my father, the day he brought home a television for our kitchen was one of the best.

"As the owner-operator of an auto salvage business, my dad often worked late. The table would be set, oven turned to warm, ice melting in the glasses, while we waited for dad. It used to drive my mother crazy when he would allow us to watch television while we ate supper. However, there was one program that could lighten the mood. Little House on the Prairie was the kind of show the entire family could enjoy, none more than my mother back in the early 1970s.

"I was still young enough to idolize the family I saw portrayed in Walnut Grove. I idealized they were similar to my own family. The mother was patient and thoughtful. The father was hard-working and good-hearted. Just like the television family, the head of the household was a handsome shaggy-haired dad surrounded by daughters. I had an older sister, who was popular and pretty like Mary Ingalls.

"In my mind, I was the Laura Ingalls character, complete with dirty fingernails and enough spunk to stand up to my schoolyard nemesis, Karen Grear, who just so happened to be as bossy as Nellie Oleson.

"Little House on the Prairie often portrayed characters that made do with very little. Every member of the Ingalls clan had chores and responsibilities. My parents would assign chores to us as well. My sister would pull weeds, while I raked our garden. She watered the plants, while I filled wooden bushels with tomatoes. One of us would fold the clothes while the other put them away.

"Much like Little House on the Prairie at the end of the meal, Charles Ingalls would tell stories and smoke his pipe, occasionally playing his fiddle. My dad would relate interesting stories of his day at work while his girls scooted past him to put items in the refrigerator, or fetch the broom from the corner near the door.

"Most nights were filled with banter, except for the ones we turned back the clock from the 1970s to the 1870s on NBC. When Little House came on, one of us would inevitably say, 'Ooh, I love this show,' and the sounds of a family struggling on the plains of Minnesota would replace those of my own hard working Italian-American one.

"These days, Little House on the Prairie reruns can be seen on TV Land. Merely hearing the opening strains of the theme music has an ability to transport me back to a simpler time in my life, when my dad would call me 'Lee' instead of 'Lisa,' and Charles would almost always refer to 'Laura' as 'Half-Pint.'

"The everyday chatter of a real dad and his girls would halt as we listened to the fictional 'Pa and Ma' raise their young family. We did not yet own a dishwasher. My mom or my sister would quickly wash the plates, pots, and pans during the commercials so that we would not miss a word of the show. I was allowed to dry them during the show, but I had to remember to not cross in front of our little 13" screen.

"Often, the meal would be completely cleaned up and the strawberry-shaped cookie jar that matched the strawberry curtains and wallpaper would be back in the center of our freshly wiped table while the family remained in the kitchen, with two larger screened televisions just a few footsteps away. Maybe it was the aroma of mom's wonderful cooking that made us linger. It could have been the soothing warmth of the oven. More than likely, it was the comforting feeling of family love that kept us clustered together in that humble kitchen.

"Neither my own family nor the Ingalls on the TV screen had much money, but love and devotion we had in abundance. A lot of delicious memories surround Little House on the Prairie and that kitchen television."

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For "24" And Its Final Hour, It's Not Too Late to Kill Jack Bauer

May 10, 2010 9:04 AM

In two weeks, we'll be saying goodbye to the Fox series 24, and to Kiefer Sutherland's character of Jack Bauer, who's had a memorable string of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days. The real-time clock on 24 is running out -- and so is the chance for the series to deliver one last, shocking, legendary twist:

Kill Jack Bauer.

This is something I think the producers should have done a year or so ago, if not this year -- midway through the season, with no advance warning whatsoever.

After all, Jack Bauer has died on this series before. He's just been revived after a few minutes of the big sleep. But if he died mid-mission, the water-cooler and talk-show conversations the next day would be dominated by the sudden death of a TV hero. And the rest of CTU would be left to pick up the pieces, and we'd stay with them, leaning forward in our chairs all the way.

After all, if Jack Bauer can die, who's safe? No one. And isn't THAT a nice switch for a weekly TV series?

The second Jack Bauer got to kiss fellow agent Renee, you knew she was a goner. But what if it had gone the other way? The bad guys have surrounded Jack and Renee, gunfire is blazing -- and at the end of the episode, it's Jack, not Renee, who takes the fatal bullet, and is cradled in Renee's arms.

Cha-CHUNK! Cha-CHUNK! The episode ends, and you're left reeling. But the next episode continues, with Renee, not Jack, in full-on revenge mode. THAT would have been a cool way for 24 to go out -- and, perhaps, to continue next season, following Annie Wersching's Renee or some other agent. If Law & Order can continually refresh its roster of character and stars, why couldn't 24? And with Renee at the center, wouldn't that refresh the show -- until, someday, SHE dies unexpectedly?

This is nothing against Kiefer Sutherland, or his portrayal of the long-tortured Jack Bauer. (And in this case, the "long-tortured" can be taken literally.) It's just that in a show where the life-and-death stakes are so constant, killing the protagonist -- especially without warning -- would add credibility to the show's premise and reputation.

I know, you're saying, it's just wishful, ghoulish thinking. After all, the producers and Sutherland have talked openly, and often, about making one or more theatrical movie versions of 24 once the TV series has wrapped. You couldn't really do that, and expect to draw a big audience, once you've killed the main character.

Although, come to think of it, there IS a precedent: In the 1950s, ABC's Disneyland presented three monthly installments of a Davy Crockett miniseries, killing him at the Alamo to complete the trilogy. But by then, Davy was such a hit that Disney produced a couple of prequels, presenting more adventures of the frontiersman from the time before he met his well-documented end.

But regarding Jack Bauer, there's still a way to pull off one of the biggest dramatic surprises in TV history. What if all that talk of a 24 movie franchise has been a brilliant bluff? A sly smokescreen?

What if the producers have been throwing that out, as a red herring, so that they can kill Jack Bauer tonight, or next week, or the week after, and catch the nation by surprise? After all, once he killed Dana last week with only vengeance as a motive, doesn't he DESERVE some sort of serious retribution?

I'm not saying it's probable. I'm just saying it's possible... and boy, from the wider perspective of TV history, wouldn't it be wonderful?

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STUDENT BLOG #5: Rolling with the Ups and Downs of "Grey's Anatomy"

May 5, 2010 7:45 AM

[Bianculli here: Once a term, I try to discover a student with enough obvious writing and critical ability to give him or her a shot at writing a guest column about TV -- and give us a chance to see things from a younger generation's perspective. Today, Rowan University junior Eve Patzlaff evaluates the shifting effectiveness of a long-time favorite. Please welcome her..]

Sounding Off, But Not Giving Up, on Meredith and Company

By Eve Patzlaff

I've been watching ABC's Grey's Anatomy (9 p.m. ET Thursdays) since its premiere in 2005. I'll admit, I was one of those people who gasped when I learned Derek Shepherd was married, cried when Denny died, and cheered when Meredith built the house of candles. But for the past season and a half, I have yet to feel any overwhelming emotions of any sort -- besides disappointment.

What are intended to be "twists" feel more like desperate attempts to entice the viewer rather than advance the plot. Meredith in the afterlife? Izzy and George? Callie becoming a lesbian?

The problem is the show sets up each "twist" in such a way as to make you believe that huge repercussions will occur and a lot of characters will be affected. But Meredith just goes back to work, Izzy and George call it quits, and Callie seems to adjust relatively well to her new sexuality, and finds no shortage of female partners.

There also are random subplots that are never revisited. How about that kiss shared between Yang and Avery? Whatever happened to that Mercy West intern, Reed, who obviously liked Karev?

Instead, we are left with Webber's continued (and, frankly, tiring) tantrums over not being chief any more, and Sloan's womanizing ways. Sloan was temporarily redeemed and humanized during his romance with Lexie -- a romance I did not see coming, but found believable nonetheless. After their breakup, he was convinced that he wanted a wife and children, but eventually went back to sleeping with nurses in on-call rooms, and currently is sleeping with Teddy.

I can't tell whether this is supposed to be another "twist" or if we're actually supposed to care. Now Sloan has returned to the same, boring, stale character he was before.

Any attempt to add to a character is taken away two steps later. Bailey's foray into the dating world, for example, is overshadowed by her worries about her "surgical space."

The show is just asking too much of its viewers to be trusted. It feels like new romances, such as George and Izzy, are contrived, and are used as a last-ditch effort to pull the audience back into the show.

However, I will commend the show for writing in the character of Owen Hunt. He's more than just a trauma surgeon: He's a trauma surgeon with a tortured and relevant past, and how Christina and Owen decide to handle that will be fascinating to watch.

Dr. Avery also seems to be an interesting character. We know he has the hots for Yang, but there seems to be more to him than meets the eye. We got a taste of that when we learned he had a famous doctor for a grandfather, a fact he tried to keep hidden from everybody.

But overall, I'm disappointed -- and the reason that I am so disappointed with the show is that it set such high standards when it first began. Still, I can't help but hold out hope that greatness can be achieved again. So I'm still watching.

And hoping.

--

Eve Patzlaff is a junior Radio/TV/Film major, and Creative Writing minor, and currently writes for Venue, a student publication at Rowan University.

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Kent State, 40 Years Later -- A Personal Perspective

May 4, 2010 7:26 AM

Forty years ago today, the National Guard fired into a distant crowd of student protesters at Ohio's Kent State University, killing four students. As a TV critic and scholar, I've been quoted by the Cleveland Plain Dealer about one media-related aspect of the tragedy -- but back in 1970, at age 16, I relayed by thoughts via the media also -- delivering a controversial editorial for my high school's closed-circuit TV system...

My more recent media appearance comes courtesy of a Plain Dealer article by friend and fellow critic Mark Dawidziak. He writes a story about Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's "Ohio," the hot-off-the-record-presses reaction to the Kent State killings, with Neil Young's chillingly concise phrase, "Four dead in Ohio."

You can read that story -- and I hope you do -- by clicking HERE.

Forty years ago, I was a junior at Nova High School in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, at a pivotal point in my young media-loving education. By that time, I already had been a columnist and editor for my high school newspaper, quit to start my own underground newspaper, then gotten a weekly show on the school's closed-circuit TV system. (For a while, anyway.)

The show was supposed to a short, simple method of broadcasting the day's school announcements, but a group of us TV-savvy youngsters expanded it, making it a longer daily show with comedy, talk, sketches and other stuff. Playful nonsense, basically. I wrote a multi-part soap opera, set in a college town, called "Secret Dorm," spoofing a then-popular TV soap opera. That should give you an idea of the usual content.

But after Kent State, it wasn't a time for anything usual. On campus, we were planning a mock funeral to protest the killings. (Yes, technically, 1970 was still the Sixties.) And even though I was basically a joker on TV, I wanted to write and deliver a serious editorial -- a first for me, and the TV operation. Our TV journalism teacher, a wonderful woman named Joyce Hall, approved it, and fought for and got the approval and signature of the principal as well.

So on Wednesday, May 6, two days after Kent State, I delivered my first and only TV editorial. It's one of the few things I've saved from that period, and here are two sample paragraphs:

"At Kent State University, four college students were killed, and another dozen wounded, by gunfire from the National Guard. Regardless of where the blame is placed, the fact remains: Allison Krause, Sandy Scheuer, Jeff Miller and William Schroeder died during a college demonstration.

"It is important that people across the nation realize what is happening to our college, and even high school, campuses. It is also important that they understand that the deaths of these students should not be permitted to fade from the memories of the 'silent majority'..."

Forty years later, Kent State remains front-page news, as it should. "The only cause we can give to their deaths," I concluded then, at age 16, "is to make us all think. About what's happened, about each other, and about ourselves."

At age 56, that still sounds like good advice... which is why, today, I'm indulging myself by doing just that.

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Tom Fontana Reunites "Oz" Cast, Raises Money for WGAE Foundation and Puts a Stuffed Moose's Head in Play, In a One-Day NY Stage Play Called "The Godfather Part IV"

May 3, 2010 11:27 AM

In a one-day-only, two-performances benefit staging for Writers Foundation East, a giggling gaggle of cast members from Tom Fontana's groundbreaking HBO drama series Oz reunited in New York yesterday, for a comedic, playfully homoerotic, revenge-fantasy comedy of Fontana's unproduced The Godfather Part IV. What a riot -- and what a shame it wasn't filmed for HBO, or as the funniest DVD Extra of all time...

The Godfather Part IV, it turns out, was an existing script by Fontana, tweaked for the occasion. Why he wrote it, and for whom, I don't yet know. Nor do I know if one of the scheduled cast members playing exaggerated versions of themselves, Julianna Margulies, actually was supposed to appear. She didn't, and Fontana explained at both performances Sunday her absence was unavoidable, because she was at the previous night's White House Correspondents Dinner. Which she was -- so who knows?

In any event, her part was played by Fontana himself -- which made it even funnier, especially when "Julianna" was being fondled and snuggled by Chris Meloni, one of many Oz graduates playing themselves in this very odd, very playful play about love, revenge and the movie version of The Godfather.

Fontana, who felt close enough to Oz when it began in 1997 that he had its title emblem tattooed on his own arm, for real, as part of the opening credits sequence, clearly has stayed close enough to his cast members to draft their willing participation for an informal script reading on a Sunday in May. Staged at New York's 59E59 Theater, Sunday's two performances raised money for Writers Foundation East, one of the many philanthropic foundations of the Writers Guild of America, East.

Some audience members who attended had little or no knowledge of Oz, but enjoyed the comedy thoroughly anyway. I attended with Mike Donovan, one of my co-teachers of TV History and Appreciation at Rowan University, and the Oz references were like catnip to us. But, Fontana being Fontana, the play also was peppered with in-jokes that, most probably, only the cast members could get -- and maybe not even all of them.

But the play's basic premise built on one central theme of Fontana's cable prison drama: the masochistic romance between Lee Tergesen's innocent Beecher and Chris Meloni's Machiavellian Keller.

As Godfather Part IV opens, Tergesen and Meloni, playing themselves, are arguing about the relative merits of Marlon Brando and The Godfather.

Also participating in the debate are other Oz veterans, also playing themselves: Terry Kinney, who played prison idealist McManus, and Dean Winters, who played the slick, shady Ryan O'Reilly.

The conversation hinges, in part, on Meloni's rejection of the infamous "horses' head" scene as preposterous -- but when Tergesen learns that Meloni is sleeping with Tergesen's recent ex, Julianna Margulies, Tergesen, Kinney and Winters conspire to teach Meloni two lessons in one, by putting a severed horse's head in HIS bed. For Tergesen, Meloni betrayed him twice -- as friend and as lover. He DESERVES a horse's head in his bed.

Except that it turns out to be a stuffed moose's head, borrowed from another Oz veteran, Zeljko Ivanek, who played Governor Devlin. And other Oz players, including Eamonn Walker (Kareem Said on Oz, providing narration here), Kristin Rohde and Catherine Wolf -- appear as well, moving to and from the downstage stools as their time came to read their lines.

The whole thing was loose, funny and totally enjoyable. Walker, as narrator, alluded to one night, during the Oz days, involving "twins and that jar of Fluffernutter" (at which point Winters smiled widely and told the audience conspiratorially, "That happened, by the way"). Kinney kept wryly distancing himself from the insults he was tossing out in all directions, blaming them on Fontana the writer. And when Meloni was described, in essence, as a pagan god of unmatched sex appeal, his pleased, cocky smile and strutting head bobs drew laughs and applause from the audience, without him having to say a word.

Only Fontana, perhaps, could conflate The Godfather and Lord of the Rings and make it work, leading Tergesen to utter the immortal line, "I'm Frodo, not Fredo!" Tergesen and Meloni had the best lines and drew the biggest laughs, but everyone had his or her moments -- and the pop references throughout were fast, furious and hilarious. Dick Wolf and his Law & Order franchise, now home to Meloni, drew plenty of good-hearted barbs -- as did Damages (for which Ivanek recently won an Emmy), and even Avatar.

Oh, and I checked. I was at the matinee, but Margulies didn't show up for the evening performance, either. But who cares? When Fontana stepped in for her and shared the scenes (and the bed) with Meloni, it was just as entertaining. Maybe more so...

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