Okay, like so many others with a keyboard at their disposal, I feel it's required that I chime in and comment on the new changes to the Academy Awards.

The most notable by far is the addition of what they're calling Best Popular Film.  And like pretty much everyone else I read, I agree that it's mind-numbingly idiotic.  Not because it's a change and How Dare You Change the Oscars (it's the Oscars, for goodness sake, it's open for change), but because they're panderingly foolish and diminish the whole point of the show.  To be clear, I've written lengthy articles about how the Tony Awards should change their broadcast and why.  (The short, core answer to the latter is that these are TV shows, so they should make them good TV shows.)  So, I'm absolutely fine with changing awards shows.  

My friend Ken Levine, a multiple-Emmy-winner who's also written several features, has a a spot-on rant about what's wrong about this Best Popular Film category, which you can read here.

Part of the challenge with everyone's complaint about this rule (including my own) is that the Motion Picture Academy hasn't actually announced yet how it will work.  But then, that should give you a hint about the problem with it.  I suspect that the Academy hasn't announced how it will work because it doesn't have a clue how it will work.  Most probably because it won't work.  Can a film be eligible for Best Popular Film and Best Picture?  Will this undercut the value of Best Picture by suggesting that if it's not popular, it's just a froo-froo artsy-fartsy film no one should care about except the effete snobs?  Does it demean the Best Popular Film nominees by saying they're perhaps a bit dumb and not good enough to be a Best Picture? And what qualifies for a "Popular Film"?  And will you now get people whining (by the way, the answer to this is "Yes," regardless how the sentence finishes...) that some movie won Best Popular Film when another movie was clearly more popular?  And why only Best "Popular" Film ?  Why not an award for Best Comedy Film?  And Best Action Film?  And, hey, why not Best Un-Popular Film?  (since after all, most movies that don't do well at the box office, no matter how brilliantly made rarely get Oscar nominations -- because people didn't see them, not just the public but Oscar voters,!)  And for that matter, why not Best Popular Actor in a Popular Film?  Because they generally get overlooked, too.  Most especially Best Comic Actor in a Comedy Film?  And...and...and...well, fill in the blank with your own "ands", including at the top, and why have the category at all???!

The whole point of the Oscars is excellence.  After all, it's given by the Industry itself, by the people who actually make the movies.  There are plenty other awards shows that honor popularity.  And there's the box-office, too.  We can see pretty easily which movies made the most money and therefore was the most popular.  (That doesn't inherently mean such films will be The Best, but it certainly focuses the list.)  The Oscars are about craft.  That might bother some people -- or perhaps many people -- who think the concept of quality is too high-brow and elitist.  But it's not, of course, the concept of quality is based on doing your best.  We don't demean an Olympic Gold Medal-winner because he or she was a better runner than all others.  No, the two concepts are not the same, but the foundation is. You don't get a bonus Gold Medal for finishing seventh but you have the most TV commercial endorsements.  There are no participation trophies when you get past the third grade.  If the U.S. Movie Award-a-ganza show wants to honor The Most Popular, swell.  But these are the Oscars.  Yes, it's just about honoring movies, not medical breakthroughs, but it's what separates them from the other shows, there's a point to them, some heft,)

And to be clear, this change has nothing to do with excellence or craft.  It's to draw a larger TV audience and perhaps even assuage egos.  And it's idiotic.

Which leads us to the other changes, designed to streamline the TV broadcast.  (Here, I only partly agree with what Ken Levine wrote in his aforementioned article.  He makes some good points, though overall I don't have an issue with trying to make a TV show a better TV show.) I'm actually okay with the Oscars -- or any awards show) -- doing little sketches and montages.  It's a TV show, after all.  The problem is when you do silly, pointless, interminable "bits" that might at best be after-thoughts on a late-night TV talk show ("Hey, let's get volunteers and go down the block to surprise tourists with candy!!") and not something organic to the broadcast.  When you do the former, they're a waste of space.  When you do the latter, they enhance the show.  

The streamlining changes are being made to keep the show at three hours and not spill over interminably.  In doing so, they will now present some of the awards during commercial breaks, and then edit them to show the winner's speech later in the broadcast.  (Which awards that will be should be a fun debate in the Academy.)

I understand why some are bothered by this.  Hey, if I was nominated, and my category was one of those, I'd be bothered. But this isn't about five people being bothered.  It's about hundreds of millions of people watching on TV being bored.  They're no eliminating the award, after all.  If you get an Oscar nomination -- let alone win -- you have the nomination, and have it for all time.  It forever will be the first line in your biography whenever anyone writes about you, whether it was on TV or not.  When you're up for your next job, the people hiring will know you were nominated for an Oscar -- and maybe even won.  Moreover, they already give a lot of Oscars that aren't shown on TV -- in fact, they're given on a complete separate night, the Technical Achievement Awards, which get very short shrift on the Oscar broadcast.  But they still count as Oscars.  And Oscar nominations.  So, there's LONG precedence with this, and even more drastically, it's not a Huge Deal.  Though it is a deal.  The thing is, it all depends on how it's handled.  (In the new, edited version, for instance, they could show and identify all the nominees on-screen in boxes while the winner is being announced, and then quick-cut to the winner on stage, and give 30 seconds of the person's speech.)  It certainly can absolutely be handled poorly...but it doesn't have to be.  

The Tony Awards, after all, do something sort of like this already for several awards (though given at an earlier ceremony), and sometimes some of the awards are significant ones.  They've worked on getting it right over the past few years.  The first year they didn't do a great job with it, but with some trial-and-error, it worked fairly nicely this past season.  It still has a ways to go, but it can be done well.  And the Oscars can do it well, too.  If they don't -- that's the problem.  Not that they're trimming the full live-presentation of a few awards that the viewing audience doesn't care about.

And in the end, again, it's a TV show.  The point of the Oscar telecast is to make a good TV show.  If you want to present all the awards and in full -- great!  Just don't accept the millions of dollars for rights fee and put a TV camera in the room.

By the way, that said, I also don't have any qualms with an Oscar broadcast going long.  Such length can be boring -- or add heft and substance.  Gandhi was long -- it also won Best Picture.  (And was pretty popular, too!)  One From the Heart wasn't all very long at all -- and it was mind-numbing.  In the end, everything should be done to make the Oscars a sharp, fluid, thoughtful, entertaining TV broadcast...that honors excellence and craft. 

That's a tall order and a tough challenge.  But you only have to do it once a year.  And, c'mon, you're starting from a foundation of honoring movies.  So, you've got a big leg up on broadcasting the gala for Insurance Salesmen of the Year.

On Sunday, my article about Kukla, Fran and Ollie mentioned that in 1986, the show's creator Burr Tillistrom was inducted into the TV Academy Hall of Fame, unfortunately a year after he passed away.

Here are a couple of related things of interest.  First, a long and eloquent tribute of Tillstrom on the TV Academy's official page that originally appeared in the program the night of his induction.  It's a detailed and interesting history of how Kukla, Fran and Ollie came about, which you can read here.

Best of all, though, is a video of the induction itself.  Alas, it doesn't include the film clip montage of the show that preceded the presentation, but it has pretty much the rest.  And all the better, it's hosted by Jim Henson, and there to accept -- briefly but emotionally, affectionately and sweetly -- is Fran Allison.

Also unfortunately, I'm not able to embed it on these pages, but you can watch it here on the TV Academy's site.

Most the Kuklapolitan players are here, if only some briefly -- Kukla, Ollie, Beulah Witch, Fletcher Rabbit and an aria from Madame Ogglepuss, along with a brief appearance from Ollie's niece, Dolores Dragon.  Best of all for me is that we get to see my favorite, Cecil Blll (pronounced "Sess-uhl) who rarely got in the show, but Burr Tillstrom would pop him in every very-random once in a while.  That's likely because Cecill Bill was totally lunatic, speaking in no discernible language that was known to Man, although every Kuklapolitan and Fran easily conversed with his "ta-toi-toi-toi's".  He comes in at here the 38:23 mark, though it's impossible to miss him...

(Many years later, I discovered something wonderful about Tillstrom's thinking and Cecil Bill.  There was a tremendous 50th anniversary tribute exhibit to Kukla, Fran and Ollie at the Chicago History Museum -- the TV show had been broadcast out of Chicago -- and as part of it, they had all the original puppets on display.  (As well as the proscenium "stage" which you could wander behind and see how it was all set up.)  And when looking close up at Cecil Bill, I noticed something I'd never caught before for all those many years on television.  Tillstrom had Cecil Blll's mouth painted on crooked.  It wasn't something you'd necessarily notice on a small screen, especially when black-and-white, but it added to the sense that something was just a bit "off" about him.), 

This guest on this week's 3rd and Fairfax podcast from the WGA is Christopher Lloyd -- no, not the actor, but the accomplished TV runner and showrunner whose career includes Modern Family, Frasier, Golden Girls and Wings, as well as co-writing the animated film, Flushed Away.

I've watched several made-for-Amazon Prime series, though not most of them.  Perhaps five or so.  I've enjoyed them all, to varying degrees.  I quite liked the first season of Goliath with Billy Bob Thornton, from David Kelly (though have been warned off the new season.)  Bosch is pretty good, and I've watched two seasons so far.  I very much liked Mozart in the Jungle, although haven't felt compelled to watch the second season yet.  Sort of, "Okay, I get it," but haven't yet cared enough to see where it's going.  The weakest was Woody Allen's Crisis in Six Scenes -- though even that had some very good things about it, notably every scene with Woody Allen and Elaine May as his wife.  Tremendous.  As for the rest of the show, it was only six episodes, so it was quite watchable.

And then there's The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

It lives up to its name.  It's utterly marvelous.  Absolutely great, the whole way through the first season.  Not one of the eight episodes was a let down, and it ends the year on a proper note.  It's so smartly written, joyously acted by the entire cast, and has impeccable production values that's much of the fun, 1950s New York with Broadway music flowing through the soundtrack.  The show comes from Amy Sherman-Palladino, who created Gillmore Girls.  I didn't watch that, so I can't compare the two.  I can only rave about this one.

I'm not alone.  It got a remarkable 14 Emmy nominations, including Best Comedy Series.

Though the full cast is excellent, a few people standout.  At the top is Rachel Brosnahan in the title role.  It's a difficult one to pull off, requiring deftness, and she handles it impeccably, playing an upbeat, young married mother whose husband decides he wants out of the marriage.  She's thrown for a loop, yet pushes forward with her positive but now-slightly-pounded attitude.  For reasons that make sense in the plot, she falls into the world of stand-up comedy, though the first season doesn't rely on that.  The stories cover a range of plots, and she even gets a job in a department store as, step-by-step during the season, the comedy world slowly begins to develop.  (The real-life character of Lenny Bruce even appears a few times in the series, played wonderfully by Luke Kirby.)  But through it all -- dealing with her wandering husband, kids, comedy, the department store and deeply-caring but overly-protective parents who she lived above and is now forced to move in with -- Brosnahan manages it with a a seriously impressive touch.  And got a highly-deserved Emmy nomination as Best Actress in a Comedy Series.

Alex Borstein is a hoot as a perpetually-crabby booker, Susie Myerson, who runs a low-end nightclub and sees something in Miriam Maisel, deciding to make the young women her first client as a personal manager.  She too got an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.  I can't do her character and performance justice by merely describing it.  (Happy, I do have a video below, which should help...)  I'll just note that to the character's everlasting annoyance but acceptance, people tend to confuse her at first with being a guy.  But she has such a hilarious sardonic chip on her shoulder about pretty much everything that little in the world seems to concern her, other than her need to improve her life, which she does her best to hide.  (One of my favorite moments requires its visual set up, but I'll just say that I recognized the opening chord of the Broadway song from Flower Drum Song as it began to play, though didn't know where they were going with it, as half a dozen well-groomed, attractive women were entering the department store -- and just as the peppy song hits the line, "I enjoy being a girl", Boorstein comes barreling in behind them.) 

And finally, Tony Shaloub and Kevin Pollack are absolutely wonderful as the two fathers -- Shaloub as father of Miriam, and Pollack of her philandering husband Joel Maisel (well-played by Michael Zegen).  Both fathers are terrific, in their like-annoyed relationship with each other, but Shaloub especially stands out and got an Emmy nomination for it, as Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.

Oddly, there aren't many clips from the show.  And no single one gives the right impression of the show.  So, I'm going to post three here.

The first is "Midge" Mainsel coming home -- now living with her parents -- late at night.

And here you get to see Alex Boorstein doing her stuff, as Susie and "Midge" try to figure out what kind of on-stage personality she should have and what her act should be.

And finally, here are Shaloub and Pollack coming to terms about partnering in order to buy their kids' apartment, keeping it available in hopes that they'll get together.  Just know that in an earlier scene, Shaloub explained to his family how Pollack's story about World War II drives him nuts and that he had to pay for temple seats on the High Holiday which Pollack thinks they split.

In all the years that the PBS show American Masters has been on the air, they have never featured a male athlete.  They've had a couple of women athletes -- both tennis players, Althea Gibson and Billie Jean King.  But zero men in sports.  That finally changed on this past Monday.  That's when they aired, "Ted Williams:  The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived."

It was wonderful.

Clearly it will be of more interest to people who follow baseball.  But keep in mind, this is American Masters, they understand what they're doing.  They're presenting stories about people, their lives and why they were so important to American culture.  So, I think there's a great deal here of interest to people who aren't baseball fans.  But yes, certainly, it will be particularly impactful if you are.

Ted Williams (who had numerous nicknames -- (Teddy Ballgame, The Kid and The Splendid Splinter, among them) was a fascinating person -- indeed between him and Babe Ruth, perhaps the greatest hitter ever in baseball.  And for all his amazing career statistics, he lost five years to the sport fighting in World War II and then the Korean War.  In many ways he was profoundly independent, almost a loner -- which suited him perfectly as a world-class fisherman -- who was a prima donna and carried long grudges, but also with a fascinating, warm personal side within his circle.  (A great story is when he was actively fundraising for a charity and a former ballplayer kept putting off his pushy requests until finally telling Williams, "I'm all tapped out."  Yet Williams didn't give up and got the guy to send $10 to him for the charity.  Then, getting the check, he marked down the bank code number, tracked down the account and put $1,000 in it.)

I found out about the show last week, when the inveterate Chris Dunn sent me an article about some remarkable footage that was found of Williams' famous last game.  That was when he hit a home run in his last-ever at bat.  Black-and-white footage exists of the at bat, but it turned out that a young man (at the time) took a color home movie of the entire game, and it sat in his attack for 50 years.  He finally tried to interest people in it, but could get nowhere.  Finally, he found out about this American Masters documentary, and asked the filmmaker if he was interested in it -- just a day or two before he "locked" the film.  The footage is crisp and in great condition.

PBS doesn't make its shows available for On Demand.  But they do post them online for a while -- maybe a month or so.  And therefore I'm able to embed the hour-long program below.  At some point, it will expire, but for now, here 'tis --

I think this is going to be a day for palate cleansers.

And when you need something like that -- another one, to bookend the day -- it tends to be that you'll stand on really good ground with The Muppets.  So, let's go high with that, too.  This is the Television Academy Hall of Fame presentation for Jim Henson, done in 1987.

By the way, it must be odd for Jim Henson to be sitting in the audience there and watching Kermit on stage.  (Not to mention all the other characters here that he does, but Kermit especially.)

It will be difficult not to smile at this.  Smiles are good.

There have been a bunch of postings on social media today about it being the birthday of Fred Gwynne, who passed away in 1993 at the age of 67.  And all of these postings have a photo of him from the TV series The Munsters, clearly his more recognizable role.  But --

Back in my dark days when I was a unit publicist, I worked on the Stephen King film Pet Sematary that Fred was the co-star of.  He gave a extremely good performance and was a nice man -- not overly outgoing, but personable and approachable.  But when it came time for me to interview him...he would NOT talk about The Munsters.  He almost shut down when I brought the topic up.  And no, it's not that I just sort of got that impression, but he specifically said that he wouldn't talk about it.  He fully recognized that the show made him famous, and clearly there were benefits from that, but he said bluntly it pretty much ruined his acting career.  He was deeply typecast and couldn't get roles -- or at least decent roles -- for a long time.  Happily, late in career he started getting hired in some solid roles and gave wonderful performances, most particularly in The Cotton Club memorably paired alongside Bob Hoskins, but also My Cousin Vinnie, as the judge, and the aforementioned, Pet Sematary.  Unfortunately, he passed away in the midst of this long-overdue renaissance -- but at least he had the renaissance.

And lest one think that he was being presumptuous about his acting career -- know that he appeared on Broadway quite a bit, making his debut in Mrs. McThing (by Mary Chase, who wrote Harvey) opposite Helen Hayes.  And his first movie, though uncredited, was On the Waterfront.  And during the years he had difficulty getting solid roles in films and TV, he returned to the stage often, such as the Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as 'Big Daddy,' and in two parts of the Broadway production of A Texas Trilogy, as well as the stage manager in the American Shakespeare Festival production of Our Town.  He was also a good singer -- appearing on Broadway in the Meredith Willson musical, Here's Love, based on The Miracle on 34th Street, for which I included one of his songs here.  And I also embedded a video of him here singing a song in his first sitcom, Car 54, Where Are You?  And an accomplished painter and illustrated and wrote several well-regarded children's books.  

I've tried to "correct the record" when I've seen some social media postings on Fred with those photos, since I'm certain it would have galled him.  But that's an uphill battle with no expectation of success.  But at least here I can not only give the proper record -- but have a proper photo, as well.

And what the heck, let's end it with a bonus:  Here's Fred Gwynne singing Gilbert & Sullivan's "A Policeman's Lot" (from The Pirates of Penzance, though with altered lyrics) from an episode of Car 54, Where Are You?. at the precinct's holiday party.

What with the Roseanne show in the news and all, I was reminded of an especially funny and clever thing they did in the original series.  As I've noted, I didn't watch the show -- I may have seen parts of a few episodes, but that's it.  But when one of the actress, Lecy Goranson, who played the daughter Becky, decided to go to college, they replaced her with Sarah Chalke -- and when Goranson decided to return, they brought her back.  And I wanted to see how they handled that.

It actually was quite funny.  They set it up that it was meal time, and Becky was long-since due home and late.  And when she finally arrived (and Goranson made her re-entrance to the show), the character of Roseanne snapped at her, "Where have you been??!  We've been waiting for you."  And yes, it got a huge laugh from the audience.

But that wasn't the "especially funny and clever thing they did."  That came during the closing credits.  If you never saw it, it's really smart and a total hoot.  The did a parody -- even duplicating the black-and-white -- of the opening credits of the old Patty Duke Show, where Duke played look-alike cousins.  ("They're cousins, identical cousins all the way.  They laugh alike, they walk alike / At times they even talk alike...")  Only here, they wrote news words -- that are pretty funny -- about "Nearly identical Beckys."  There's also a very funny homage near the end that I don't want to give away.  But you have to know the Patty Duke Show to get it.  I don't want to give anything away of what to look for, but I'll explain it at the bottom, after the video.  (Also, since some of the words fly by and are hard to understand, I'll post the lyrics below, as well.)

And indeed, here's the video of that parody.  Also, for those who don't know The Patty Duke Show, the person who made the video edited in first the original opening of that show, so you can see and hear what's being parodied.

Okay, here's what the homage joke is.

I'll skip a few lines, so your eyes don't accidentally drift to it.

Here it is -- at 1:55, you see John Goodman, who played the father on Roseanne, along with another older man.  That is longtime character actor William Schallert -- who played Patty Duke's father on the The Patty Duke Show​!

Interestingly, Schallert himself was involved in a character replacement.  When the actor Ross Martin was playing the sidekick Artemus Gordon on the series The Wild, Wild West, but he sadly passed away.  William Schallert was hired to replace him, albeit with a different character.

And here are the lyrics --

Meet Lecy the one you used to see, from '88 to '93
Then Sarah came and took her place
Because she had a similar face --
Just like on TV.

They're Beckys, nearly identical Beckys all the way
One pair of matching actors but only one part to play

Sarah loved that dopey Mark and wound up in a trailer park
Our Lecy showed some Lecy skills
She wants a house that's not on wheels
What a crazy pair.

They're Beckys, nearly identical Beckys and you'll find
They walk alike, they talk alike,
Abruptly leave the show alike
You could lose your mind
When Beckys ain't two of a kind.

The other day, Sean Hayes was the guest host for Ellen Degeneres on her TV show.  It's a nice monologue, some good jokes, some just okay, but personably done.  But...stick with it.  I shall say no more.