Monday Medley

What we read while scoring on Hope Solo…

• Breaking Bad finally returned from its long hiatus last night, with a stellar season premiere. In preparation, Bryan Cranston sat down for interviews with The A.V. Club and Alan Sepinwall. Sepinwall also interviewed Aaron Paul. Meanwhile, Vulture counted down the ten tensest moments in the show’s history, and broke down Walter White’s moral decline. That moral decline has, according to Chuck Klosterman, made Breaking Bad even better than The Wire (we wouldn’t go that far).

• Speaking of great television (and continuing Monday Medley’s recent run of oral histories): a brief history of Friday Night Lights, which concluded its run on NBC last Friday (as John S wrote about).

• 17th century guides to ladies’ decorum are sure to be entertaining.

• Tyler Cowen opines on the level of consumer surplus we get from the Internet.

• Louis C.K. was surprised by his multiple Emmy nominations. And every adult from Modern Family (even Ed O’Neill this time!) was nominated.

• Scott Tobias looks at the current state of Conan O’Brien’s career.

• What’s the deal with that crazy Sarah Palin documentary?

The War for Late Night: Smiling Politely Towards Disaster

Anyone who picks up Bill Carter’s new book about last January’s late night TV debacle—The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy—looking for a villain is destined to be disappointed. This is not for lack of effort. The book is impressively comprehensive about NBC’s decision to move Jay Leno from The Tonight Show to primetime and back again and the disaster that followed. Carter gives detailed histories of and various perspectives on all the major players involved—Leno, Conan, Jeff Zucker, David Letterman, Jeff Gaspin, etc.—but in the end nobody comes off as an evil monster responsible for the train wreck. Instead, we get a fascinating example of how a bunch of people all acting with the best intentions can lead to the worst possible outcome.

“If they’d come in and shot everybody—I mean, it would have been people murdered. But at least it would have been a two-day story. I mean, yes, NBC could not have handled it worse, from 2004 onward.” —Jay Leno

The Return of Conan

If you haven’t been paying attention to this blog for the last 11 months, then you may not have realized that I was looking forward to last night’s premiere of Conan on TBS. I haven’t even minded all the commercials and the endless promotion during the baseball playoffs.

The main reason for the excitement wasn’t just that a great comedian was returning to television, but that the return represented a chance to finally move on. Conan O’Brien has been active since he lost The Tonight Show to Jay Leno in January: He got a new job, he went on a live tour, he grew a beard, he appeared on 60 Minutes, and he even got on Twitter. What has been frustrating, though, is that the most common subject in his comedy during this interregnum has been Conan himself—namely his departure from NBC and his new job on TBS.

Back in January, when The Tonight Show essentially became about its own future, it was refreshing to see an unleashed Conan mercilessly go after his own bosses at NBC. Unlike Jay Leno, who played dumb during the whole process, Conan wasn’t afraid to be honest and hilariously vicious. Unlike Jimmy Kimmel, who had nothing to lose by being vicious, and David Letterman, who played the role of elder statesman throughout, Conan’s attacks were also endearingly honest and personal, since he was going through the ordeal himself and had something to lose by attacking his employer.

Monday Medley

What we read on our 48-hour sabbatical from MSNBC…

• The long wait for Conan O’Brien’s new show ends tonight, with the premiere of Conan on TBS. Jay Leno will probably not be a guest. Speaking of Leno and late-night TV, October saw The Daily Show beat its network rivals in the ratings, while Leno fell behind Letterman. I wonder if Dick Ebersol will call Leno an “astounding failure” now.

• Zach Galifianakis, in his early years, was sort of skinny. Also, a fascinating look at Woody Allen’s early years, including his stint on Candid Camera. Erik Voss at SplitSider, meanwhile, wonders if there’s ever a justification for a comedian to steal material.

• Tim wasn’t the only one spending some time on The Simpsons‘ Treehouse of Horror. In the spirit of Tim’s top nine, IO9 had its top 10 and 11 Points did its top 11.

• Speaking of Jews, one of the “numerous future” New York Times Articles comes to life.

• So, there was an election. Post-Citizens United Narrative Failure # 1: Democrats outspent Republicans on TV ads in House Races (and possibly in everything as well). Perhaps the most redeeming aspect of election coverage is Nate Silver’s incorporation into the mainstream media. He shows how unreliable and systematically biased (towards Republicans) Rasmussen Polls were during the campaigns. Oh, and Buzz Bissinger was clearly responding to John’s argument with this tweet.

• Speaking of fraud, comedian Bruce Baum has some pretty compelling evidence that Bruce Marder and Jerry Seinfeld are unjustly failing to attribute to him co-authorship of the hilarious Letters to a Nut series.

• Joe Posnanski had an even better week than usual, with posts on the weakest World Series winners of all-time, the currently active “certain” Hall of Famers, and the late Sparky Anderson.

• Why nobody can compete with the evil behemoth that is Ticketmaster.

• Zadie Smith offers a thoughtful new entry in the rapidly growing genre of “Distinguished Person Over 30 Complaining About Social Media’s Impact On Culture And Society.”

• The CFL–you’ve got to love it.

Monday Medley

What we read while deciding not to publish our own story about not having sex with Christine O’Donnell…

• As New York baseball fans, we were stunned and saddened by the news of the passing of legendary scorekeeper Bill Shannon. Tim, who was fortunate enough to meet Bill, wrote a brief tribute on his Tumblr. The best tribute, not surprisingly, came from MLB.com’s Marty Noble, with others pouring in from fellow scorer Billy Altman, Wallace Matthews, Ed Coleman, and Tom Boorstein.

• As for some other sports links, David Schoenfield tries to answer who the best postseason pitcher in MLB history is (hint: it wasn’t Cliff Lee even before Game 1). In direct contrast to what Tim McCarver said during Saturday night’s Game 3, here’s statistical backing for using a three-man rotation in the playoffs. And in other counterintuitive statistical analysis, Peter Keating argues that it is possible to give 110 percent.

• Speaking of statistical analysis, the Mets hired sabermetrics-advocate Sandy Alderson as their new General Manager this week. Here is an extensive (and excellent) interview of Alderson back when he was CEO of the Padres. Rumor has it that he’s going to bring along Paul DePodesta to the front office, who was prominent in Moneyball (a book we’ve invoked a few times so far), and has his own blog.

• With Conan O’Brien’s new TBS show just a week away, Vanity Fair published an excerpt from Bill Carter’s book about January’s Tonight Show fallout. As usual, Jay Leno and NBC do not come off well. Also from Vanity Fair, a profile of the real Sean Parker, a/k/a Justin Timberlake’s character in The Social Network.

• In the spirit of Halloween, Tim and Josh posted about the best candies. New York City candy shops have some interesting selections. This is a good time to link to Candy Blog, which, you know, is a blog about candy.

• Some pseudo-sociology about the rise and fall of the modern hipster.

• John S wasn’t the only one to take on Malcolm Gladwell’s social media bashing. The Hairpin did it this week, from the perspective of Gladwell.

• We don’t usually link to college newspapers/magazines that we may or may not have used to write for, but Kevin Lincoln’s feature on Mike Posner and what Lincoln calls “the college-white-boy rap phenomenon” in Duke’s Towerview is worth the read.

• We don’t think it should be too hard to interest you in the best cover versions of ’90s TV theme songs. If nothing else, this just made us appreciate the Duck Tales theme all the more.

• We’re against negative campaign ads — unless they reference Billy Madison.

• Speaking of campaigns, here are some of the signs from this weekend’s Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear.

Monday Medley

What we read while waiting for the first Chilean miner book…

• Speaking of Conan O’Brien, he had an announcement about Andy Richter’s status on his new show this week (as well as some unfortunate news about Max Weinberg). Richter talked about the new show, as well as a guest appearance of his on Will Arnett’s Running Wilde.

• The first BCS standings came out this week, and Don Borst thinks that BCS critics ought to be rooting for Boise State and TCU. Last month John S made the exact opposite argument.

• It’s posts like this that make us love Joe Posnanski (even if we sometimes disagree with him).

• Also in the world of great sports stories, ESPN breaks down the famous Fifth Down play from twenty years ago.

• In the world of not-so-great-but-not-all-that-surprising-sports-stories, a former agent details giving thousands of dollars to college athletes.

• Esquire‘s Scott Raab follows Philip Roth back to Newark, where the prodigious author says, among other things, that “life is one long BP spill.”

• A real-life version of Hans Moleman presents, “Man Getting Hit by Football.” Starring Brett Favre.

• The New York Times Magazine‘s Education Issue was a few weekends ago, but it brought back some memories of Josh and Tim’s Symposium on Handwriting (starting with Josh, on to Tim, back to Josh). One feature on the Livescribe smart pen seemed to suggest handwriting might not be dead while a second on the significance of video games in classrooms includes a teacher saying, “Handwriting? That’s a 20th-century skill.”

• Louis C.K. and Marc Maron break down their lives and careers in a two-part podcast.

• A haunting story about someone who preyed on on the suicidal and may have caused dozens of deaths. At least we know it isn’t T.I.

• Former Simpsons writer Bill Oakley has been sharing some old documents he came across via Twitter, including this early script for “$pringfield,” the first draft of the immortal luncheon between Chalmers and Skinner in “22 Short Films about Springfield” (which Tim has written, shall we say, extensively about), the original story pitch for what became “Two Bad Neighbors,” one of whom was George H.W. Bush, and finally, leftover story ideas and pitches.

• It’s officially been another year since the greatest series ever played…

Top Ten Things To Be Excited About In The Fall TV Season

As I noted one year ago today, I get more excited than most people by the start of a new television season. While Louie, Mad Men, and Pretty Little Liars have done a decent job of satisfying my TV-fix over the summer, I’m ready for a full slate of new shows. Of course, some of these will disappoint: My list from 2009 included such letdowns as FlashForward, Bored to Death, and the most recent seasons of How I Met Your Mother and The Hills. At the same time, though, shows I hadn’t expected to like, like Modern Family and Parks and Recreation, made up for it with great seasons. So even though this list will probably look equally stupid a year from now, here are the 10 things I’m most excited about this fall on TV:

10. The Event Premieres Monday September 20 on NBC

Now, I know this show is probably not going to be good. It seems like a show constructed around a marketing premise (“What is the event?”) and cribbing from the likes of 24 and Lost. Basically, it’s this year’s FlashForward. As with all of these shows, there is a very low probability of success—but if it does turn out to be good, it could possibly fill the void left by the end of Lost last May.* 

Reviewing the 2010 Emmys

FlashForward ended its run with more Emmy nominations and wins than The Wire. That should pretty much destroy any semblance of credibility the Emmys ever had. But other than the Golden Globes (which didn’t do so great themselves this year), there really isn’t another awards show that is taken seriously for television, so we have to deal with Emmys and all of its mistakes.

And while this year certainly had its fair share of mistakes, it was generally better than expected:

Monday Medley

What we read while being snookered by Fox News…

• Bill Murray. Need we say more?

• YES! In fact, GQ’s entire comedy issue is worth checking out, from a writer’s account of the last days of Conan’s Tonight Show to an interview with Paul Rudd, Zach Galifianakis, and Tracy Morgan, and another with some of the funniest directors of the last 30 years.

• Our friends at Dead Homer Society took a nuanced look at “Homer’s Enemy,” a memorable eighth-season episode of The Simpsons that The A.V. Club considers “the beginning of the end” and Sam Downing views as just another dark episode in line with several predecessors in the series.

• Keith Law on Malcom Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw.

• The NY Times has a new snazzy format for its “Room for Debate” feature.  Their recent features on college tenure and Teach for America were both thought provoking.

• Forget the signing of Darko Milicic, the trade for Michael Beasley and the trade of Al Jefferson; the surest sign of Timberwolves’ GM David Kahn’s insanity is that he discerned from this interview that Chris Webber was the one acting as “kind of a schmuck.” On the subject of basketball, we haven’t written a Double Bonus in a while, but we did enjoy this Luke Winn piece on one of the Tournament’s best games and Dana O’Neil’s survey of college coaches.

• Meanwhile, the world of sports journalism was aflutter when Mitch Albom, writer of hack novels and magniloquent prose, won the prestigious Red Smith Award. Writers from the ever-ornery Jason Whitlock and the guys at Deadspin, to even the more reserved likes of Dave Kindred, Charles Pierce, and Joe Posnanski have expressed outrage at this hypocrisy.

Conan On 60 Minutes Tonight

Conan O’Brien makes his return to television (kind of) tonight: He will be interviewed by Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes. This will be his first appearance on TV since he was booted from The Tonight Show in January. Back then, if you recall, I lamented what I referred to as “The Conan Travesty.” Now, though, he is going to TBS, and all is right with the world.

Meanwhile, Jay Leno is getting outdone by President Obama. Speaking of Obama, in honor of his commencement address at Michigan yesterday, here’s Conan’s speech to Harvard from 2000: