Episode 209: Sarah Palin’s Alaska & Vanilla Ice’s new show, shout-outs, Pet Stories (including Buster Update), happy birthday Mr. M and Stennie’s brother, Bet’s New Favorite Commercial, update on Bet’s Tevas, What’s Up With That (pedestrian traffic in London, ), Fuck-Offs and You-Rules, Hucklebug Business, Top Five Best TV Show Finales.
Music: “The Hucklebuck,” performed by Sierra Rein, Lee Rocker, and Frank Sinatra.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
As the only retired HB regular (that I know of) let me set the facts straight about us staying home during rush hour. It ain’t gonna happen. Retirees meet once a month to plan rolling roadblocks and we aren’t giving them up. It’s our main source of entertainment. Our Commander assigns some of us to clog Walmart isles while others are sent out to jam traffic. We are proud of our coordination and execution.
Sounds like we need to send you both to Cling Wrap school. Have you tried putting a few drops of super glue on the rim before sealing the film?
More comments after I finish listening.
Here are a few TV finales I liked:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Tonight Show when Carson left
Star Trek – Next Generation
The Larry Sanders Show
The Fugitive (I love this one. Kimble finally finds the one-armed man)
The next logical topic would be to list the worst finales. Keep that one in reserve in case you run short.
Flo: Why don’t you face up to the real reason you don’t like her? I know you both auditioned for the role and got turned down, and now you’re bitter. Admit it!
Newhart: The show was pretty good early on, before Julia Duffy and Peter Scolari joined. I never thought the show was terrible, but after 3-4 seasons of pretty much the same thing I got fatigued and quit watching until that great final episode.
My top 5:
5. Extras (Ricky Gervais’ rant on the state of television and celebrity is one for the ages: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQAr_AjZt-E)
4. Newhart
3. Quantum Leap
2. Freaks & Geeks
1. M*A*S*H
Cling wrap/Saran wrap — nope, it doesn’t really work well. Never sticks to itself when there is food involved. Only if you’re just trying to lay it out to put something into it, THEN it clings to itself. I use tupperware (or any variant) most of the time.
Non-stick Reynolds Wrap — great for pans in the oven, but for cookies, parchment paper is better. Also slides right off and you can reuse it over and over.
Great TV Finales:
1. Most Star Trek series (thinking in particular of ST:TNG, and ST:Voyager). If they know they’re wrapping up the series, they actually tie up story lines and give you a little “where are they now” kind of thing. Oh yeah, and the Borg.
2. Newhart. Yes, it was a cheap ending that pretty much invalidated the entire show, but boy that last scene was funny.
3. MASH, but only because it was sort of the beginning of the big finales. I’m not sure we really needed that whole Hawkeye storyline. I know they had moved the series away from straight comedy, but that was just too much.
4. Six Feet Under. Again, because it tied up a lot of loose ends and gave you a look into the future.
5. Sex and the City (but strip your mind from any of the movies; they should just stop shows when they’re done). Okay, a pretentious end to a pretentious show, but at least I can still recall it and remember what happened. And you knew what was going to happen, and that was better, much better than if you’d had this relationship going on all these years and then in the finale, they do something else or just leave the storyline hanging. That’s why it’s a finale — wrap it up.
I’m glad to see no one mentioned Seinfeld so far. That was just dumb. A bad end to an overrated show. Shows that went on too long to have good finales (mostly because anyone you ever cared about on the show left years ago): ER, NYPD Blue
I still think the whole thing with Olbermann and MSNBC is ridiculous. Why does MSNBC even have the policy in place? Does anyone really trust the news to be unbiased anymore anyway? I sure don’t. There’s one thing that gets me to turn on the TV news: when something big is breaking. If the TV news is going to get anything right, it’s when some huge disaster is happening and they’re covering what they see and don’t have time to spin it. Sure, they’ll still say stupid crap and report on stuff incorrectly, but when it’s breaking news, I think that’s acceptable, because they’re doing their best on-the-fly. Of course, they always *act* like they’re on-the-fly even when the news isn’t breaking, and that’s one of the many reasons I don’t bother with TV news normally.
And you guys were right about Rick Sanchez last episode–A-1 rated D-bag. Saw him in person at a Twitter conference here in NYC last year and you could tell that he just thought he was sooooo important. I honestly think that CNN was just looking for an excuse to can his ass, so I don’t mind that it was about his idiot remarks about Jews running the media.
Is Similac not tasty? Why not just drink it? 🙂
I’m with Duke about Olbermann. I used to wish reporters would let us knew how they felt. Then they let non-reporters on TV news and opinions are all we get. Olbermann seems a pretty blowhardish to me, too.
As a New York City resident, I like the slow/fast lane idea for pedestrians. Of course, I like the idea of carrying a running chainsaw through Time Square, too.
I will send you our snailmail, Sten! Sorry, for some reason, I thought you had it already.
I agree with Bet–I loved the finales of St. Elsewhere and MTMS. The MTMS finale got me a little choked up and I haven’t even seen all of that show. I think I’ve seen the Reginald Perrin show when I was a kid. :\ But only remember it because it was the first time I’d seen a man’s naked ass. >_< I disagree with Lily on the Newhart finale–I loved the whole thing–the idea of the inn being bought up by Japanese business men and "Japanified" is just the kind of vaguely racist nightmare I'd imagine Bob from the original show to have. And like everyone else says, the show got kinda stupid after a while, so it was nice to have such a clever finale.
I do fully snap with Lily on Seinfeld, however. Totally overrated show. It saddens me that it will likely go down as the best sitcom according to viewers. Very frustrating since I think MASH should take that crown since it managed to be funny and serious pretty solidly since the beginning.
I don't think I have a favorite series finale, really. MASH's was pretty solid, though. Also, I *loved* the *series* finale of Farscape–not the movie that followed, I choose to ignore that. But the last regular episode of the show has a brilliant, really quite realistic ending. Sten, if you haven't watched Farscape, I think you should give it a try (most of the show is on Netflix Instant Watch–this is how I watched). It's a little rough around the edges in the beginning, but it really gets pretty amazing before long. Bet, sorry, it's scifi, you can ignore all this ;P
The series finale I absolutely hated was Battlestar Galactica. It really could not have been worse.
I'm caught up!
OH and incidentally, we have been thinking about having Jay and/or Kay speaking out against the use of puppets on Glenn Beck's program. Been real busy with other stuff, though, so Jay and Kay have been having time off since the Rally for Sanity and/or Fear. However, Jay ThePal did do a PPOV (Puppet's Point-of-View) account of taking the HuffPo bus down to DC for NoFactZone.net, but it looks like it didn't meet DB's standards/needs. She had asked Siskita to write one, but she pitched the idea of having Jay do it, to which DB gave a sort of vague answer that wasn't a clear "no puppets please" response. So he wrote something up and sent it in. Alas, we never heard back. Ah well. Jay will have to post it on his blog at some point.
Since both of you offered details about the consistency and circumstances of your pets’ elimination activities, I’m assuming you are soliciting submissions for an upcoming segment called “Tales of Scatology.” So, here’s a delightful anecdote about an especially volcanic case of diarrhea suffered by Pinkie recently. . . or not. 😉
Also, in cases where mine is the last comment you receive, I’d like to be thought of as the “anchor commentor,” kind of the like the last person mentioned in the opening credits, who really ties the whole thing together: e.g., “…and Jerry Mathers as The Beaver.”
My alarm is reminding me to comment on the Hucklebug.
I try not to watch the news anymore. Makes my stomach turn. Ick.
Favorite finales…shit, I can’t think of one. What’s wrong with me? Oh, I know, I’m so used to the networks yanking a show before it has a finale. My mistake.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone next week!
Fun fact: You might recall that Stennie and the man-cub share a birthday (Sept. 30), and apparently so do Mr. M and Pinkie and whoever else was born on Nov. 13.
@thePete What I meant by the ending of Newhart being cheap and invalidating the series wasn’t about the Japanese buyout (I don’t even remember that part), but taking a show that had established characters and actors for however many years it was on, and then in the last minute or so, coming to the audience with Bob and Emily — because no one could possibly have liked these impostors and we were all only just waiting for the “real” Newhart all these years. Doesn’t mean I didn’t love that scene, but I always felt it was vaguely insulting to the other characters/actors, especially Joanna.