Well, this year I've been trying to watch less movies, just as a kind of breather, I suppose. And so far it's worked out pretty well -- I can't say I've skipped anything I was really desperate to see. Take this weekend: FORBIDDEN KINGDOM would've made a lot of sense fifteen years ago, but now smells like a straight up sad cash-in, and as much as I like that girl from Veronica Mars and especially that girl from That Seventies Show, I cannot foresee any sequence of events that would involve me actually paying for FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL.

What I have been doing is watching a lot of old tv online. And right there I've discovered that I'm as hopelessly addicted to video entertainment as anyone, there you go, better get that smug look off my face, huh?

I think it's harder to talk about tv than movies -- at least so far I find it so. I caught up with everything I missed in South Park, for instance, and am going through the Arrested Development cycle. I love both shows, but they point up the paradoxical notion of comedy: if you get it, no amount of explanation is needed; if you don't, nothing I say will ever persuade you otherwise. (I think "With Apologies to Jesse Jackson" and "Cartman Sucks", both from the 11th season of South Park, are two of the funniest things I've ever seen on tv, personally.)

Although paradoxically more vervid cults seem to spring up around tv shows than movies. I have nothing against Alias Smith and Jones, for instance, a very amiable BUTCH CASSIDY crossed with Maverick late period tv western, but while it's a perfectly acceptable time waster there's nothing especially notable about it, either, and I think it's odd that it apparently had so many die hard fans. Maybe because there's a nostalgia factor embedded in the tv experience? There is with movies too, of course, but tv, especially from this period, came straight into your home and was accessible in ways that even the neighborhood multiplex wasn't. Read through the IMDB comments for something like Alias Smith and Jones one of these days -- they actually get kind of sentimental.

As for American Gothic, the cult around this seems inexplicable, although some of the show's problems simply seem to be that it was before it's time. But generally I don't think it was all that good, either.

Part of the problem is that horror relies on atmosphere, which neatly translates into the visual realm but you need some bucks to toss at it, and Gothic just looks cheap. I kept expecting to see Jessica Fletcher from Murder, She Wrote sipping tea in between making unholy alliances with Satan.

Part of the problem is that they were obviously limited in what they could do by CBS, so the gore and sex has to be mostly implied, which occasionally works but often didn't, because see point one. Of course, a low budget filmmaker can replicate atmosphere without spending a lot of money, but there's just too much of a corporate look here, for whatever reason. Gothic really needed an auteur.

Part of the problem is that the "salt of the earth guy who's really evil" is actually a tiresome modern cliche, both now and then. I'd like to see Satan's next representive be a ponytailed college professor who supports Greenpeace and wears Birkenstocks, just to y'know, mix it up a little.

And part of the problem is that it's hard enough to suspend one's disbelief for two hours in a dark theater -- almost impossible to suspend one's disbelief over a whole season on a tv in your house. Gothic makes The X-Files look real good by comparison, if only because Chris Carter solved the structural problem of a series devoted to scary stuff with reoccuring characters. Why doesn't everyone in town leave? No good explanations for that. There's certainly no reason for the boy and his cousin to stick around -- and all sorts of reasons for them to split.

I did like the pilot, which was effectively spooky, and there was an unshown episode that really just got behind the characters and told some of their backstories that was pretty powerful, actually. But after that -- the theme of which was "even I, Satan, don't force these people to do the evil things they do" -- I'm not sure what the show really had to say.

doug

"Alias Smith and Jones" carries a lot of memories, in part because the very likeable lead Peter Duel killed himself one New Year's. Voice artist Paul Frees was brought in to loop unfinished dialogue, and then Roger David (late of "Dark Shadows") was hired to replace Duel (he'd already been doing the opening and closing narration for the show). Those of us who had grown up watching him go from "Love on a Rooftop" to eventual stardom in this western romp felt as though we'd lost family.

Sandra Sagala's book about the series features a lot of juicy behind-the-scenes information about Duel and co-star Ben Murphy, who really didn't get along nearly as well as their characters did. Not that they disliked each other, but there was a rivalry and a difference in working habits (Duel was late to the set a lot). When Davis took over, it was almost literally the day or two after Duel's suicide that he reported to the set, which was a very difficult and emotional situation for all parties. In fact, Davis had to go back and reshoot scenes Duel had just done the week before, and you can probably imagine what that was like, as Duel was well liked.

I'll recommend the book to ALIAS SMITH AND JONES fans, although too much of it consists of detailed plot synopses. The author had access to original script materials and Roy Huggins' notes, which are often interesting.

But AS&J was a very popular show in its day, even in the UK - TV Westerns were sort-of important back then (I sometimes used to go to my grandparents to watch "The High Chaparral" as our TV couldn't access the channel that showed it) - so I don't think it's purely a nostalgia trip; or was there nostalgia involved even then, as it harked back to a kind of Western that had, BC&TSK apart, generally been put out to pasture? I wouldn't mind seeing it again though "THC" and "The Virginian" are higher up in my wants list.

I was a big fan of AMERICAN GOTHIC when it originally aired, though I haven't seen it since and it may not live up to my memories of it. I don't remember it looking cheap, but perhaps everything from that era looks cheap by modern standards. I'm always surprised when I revisit old tv productions that seemed sumptuous at the time to find that they were really done on a shoestring. For example, the tv version of THE FOUR FEATHERS with Beau Bridges and Jane Seymour. I was really surprised by how little action and colorful scenery was in this when I revisited it recently on DVD. I guess my younger self filled in all the details in my imagination.

Anyway, Gary Cole will always have a place in my heart for OFFICE SPACE and HARVEY BIRDMAN. Looking over his IMDb page, I am reminded that he was in the amusing "Hollywood Babylon" episode of SUPERNATURAL. He was also on an episode of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT [one of these days I have to catch up with that show].

Ben Murphy, btw, did a pastoral full-frontal but non-smutty photo-shoot for Penthouse's answer to Playgirl, Viva.

Never mind Gary Cole, whoever he may be, what about Dennis Cole and "Bearcats!" Any chance at all of a DVD release?

On the bright side, Michael Cole's THE MOD SQUAD is out on DVD.

Cole and ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT star Jason Bateman also shared the screen together memorably in DODGEBALL as sportscasters Cotton McKnight & Pepper Brooks, providing color for the final tournament on ESPN 8 ("The Ocho").

I actually didn't mean that, but that's a fantastic point, so I'm going to shamelessly lie and say I did. :P I wonder if that wasn't part of it.

The other notion I'm struggling with , somewhat incoherently, is that tv may be more "timelocked" than movies, that in some ways it's impossible to really understand why this show or that show was ever popular, that you almost had to be there. I don't know why people in the early Seventies -- in the UK, yet -- loved "Alias Smith and Jones". I don't know why "Billy, Don't Be A Hero" was a big Seventies song, either, but it apparently was.

I don't know, I have to think more about this. (Actually, I'm curious -- for British posters -- were Westerns generally big on TV there? Interesting if so, maybe akin to why certain types of British entertainment classically does well here -- "More crumpets, M'Lord?" and all that.)

Gary Cole is a fine actor and not bad in "American Gothic" -- I just think it was a stupid role.

Currently I've been going through the "Firefly" season. Another interesting question all this tv watching has provoked in me is why a series becomes a cult classic -- as "Firefly" definitely is. Artistic intent paired with frustrated aspirations seems to be the key, although I wonder if others don't slip through the cultist nets.

Anyhow. I still think this is an exceptionally mannered and somewhat ridiculous future, but the guts of it are still very interesting. Whedon has a real knack for casting, and his shows hit a certain level of dialog-quality that a lot of tv shows shoot for, but never hit. (His shows snap back and forth, but they somehow never feel glib or arch, which is a real trick.) I remember liking SERENITY alot when I saw it, before I saw any of the "Firefly" episodes, but I hope Whedon sticks with tv, as I think his talents are perfectly suited to the medium.

doug

As far as why some shows become cult hits and others do not: you can't underestimate name recognition. I think anything Whedon touches is going to be a cult hit, if not an actual hit, because of his name. The same is true of Bryan Fuller [DEAD LIKE ME, WONDERFALLS, PUSHING DAISIES].

A more interesting question might be why a successful tv creator does not have a cult hit. Chris Carter, for instance, who created THE X-FILES, failed to spark any interest in HARSH REALM. I think some of THE X-FILES writers have bigger cults attached to them than Carter himself [e.g. Vince Gilligan, whose name is what drew me to BREAKING BAD].

The early Western series were before my time, but yes I think they were popular; I never saw "Wagon Train" but I did have a WT annual, the very publication of which must have indicated a measure of popularity...that said, I had a couple of "High Chaparral" ones too and that played midweek at 9 o'clock on BBC2 which was considered the channel for less mainstream programmes. But I do recall "The Virginian" being popular (at least in my family) and when Western films were shown on TV they were usually a big draw. From what I recall "AS&J" was a significantly bigger hit than similar shows (I don't remember many other Western series from that period being shown; "Lancer" is one, and that aired on BBC2 Saturday afternoons as an alternative, along with films, to BBC1's sports show "Grandstand"), maybe on similar scale to "Starsky & Hutch".