In which DC Animated takes on the origin story of Jason Todd as the Red Hood and makes it make sense.

To be sure, the DC Animated people had both a signal advantage and disadvantage. Feeling that Jason Todd had been rather badly treated (a vote to kill him off, for heaven's sake, and one that seems to have been mishandled, at that), DC Animated gave Jason's origin story to Tim Drake in the Batman animated series of the 1990s, so that Bruce Timm and friends could tell Jason's story they way they wanted -- only without Jason. Of course, that meant that if they were going to keep the movies in the same universe as the animated series, and they wanted to tell this story, they not only needed to introduce Jason from scratch, but make us understand who he was and how he fit in. After all, if all you'd ever seen was the animated series, and then went to this, your immediate assumption of the start is that the Joker is beating on Tim Drake, and that would be quite wrong.

DC Animated seem to be treating the direct-to-DVD animation as though it were almost its own universe, almost but not quite independent of the storylines they'd established with the various series.

As for Jason Todd, he gets his own origin story back. In fact, I would be very curious to see if they didn't simply re-animate, or improve, on the Tim Drake origin story from the animated series; the scene showing how Batman met Jason -- lifting the wheels of the Batmobile -- looked very familiar when it appeared (surprisingly late in the film, actually). Jason also apparently gets Dick Grayson's original Robin outfit to start with, scanty panties and pixie boots included. He winds up with Tim Drake's Robin outfit -- the red sleeves and leggings, rather than the green ones. (What they're going to do if they decide to bring Tim Drake into this version of DC Animated, I'm sure I don't know.) Moreover, he gets a Red Hood origin that actually works. No "Superboy prime punches the universe and Jason wakes up in his grave" nonsense; without giving anything away, let's just say it's about someone trying to make something right that they did wrong. (One of the enduring surprises about the "Lost Days" comic book is that DC Editorial didn't allow the writers to take the opportunity to retcon that storyline; given what they actually did allow them to do, it would have been fairly simple. DC Animated chose to take that simple path that DC Editorial didn't.) Jason does die as he did in the comics, being blown up by the Joker. After that, things get ... different. Except when they don't.

Assuming that the DVD movies don't take place independently, this story takes place before any of the Batman animated series. Interestingly enough, Bruce has a better relationship with Dick Grayson/Nightwing in this movie than he does in the series -- much less hostile on Dick's part. (Dick also has short hair, which he didn't in the series.)

Once DC Animated didn't have to limit themselves to the bounds of what was acceptable for broadcast television, they got much more violent. The sheer number of corpses in this video, while entirely in keeping with the original Red Hood arc, is truly astounding for an animated Batman story. Moreover, the violence meted out is unusually gory. We begin by watching the Joker beating Jason Todd with a crowbar, complete with blood spatter, middle with the Red Hood killing a really startling number of crooks, and end with watching the main characters mete out a couple of jaw-dropping beatings. We also get the same discussion of Batman's philosophy of violence that occurred in the comics, if not quite in the same situation. Interestingly, Batman isn't required to make quite the same sort of choice at the end that the comic book required of him. What happens here makes much more sense, and it shows the very stark difference between Batman and Jason at that point.

The animation is, of course, very well done. Bruce Greenwood takes on the voice of Batman, sounding very like Kevin Conroy, who will be back for the next film -- "Superman/Batman: Apocalypse", the origin story for Supergirl --and has done all but one of those, plus the animated series. (That said, Greenwood will be the voice of Batman for the Young Justice animated series.) They have, for no apparent reason, given Alfred a different character design from the series or anything else. As has been the habit of recent DC Animated DVDs, it contains no extras relating to the actual story being shown; there are trailers for upcoming and different DVDs, but nothing at all about this one. A pity; it would have been nice to have had a secondary audio track, as they did with Return of the Joker, explaining what they did and why. (For no apparent reason, the audio tracks are English 2-channel, English 5+1 channel, and ... Portuguese?)

If you're a Batman fan, and wanted to see the Jason Todd story done right -- or closer to right, anyway -- then this is definitely something that you ought to see.

Excellent; Highly recommended.

Questions? comments? brickbats? Cigars, cigarettes, cigarillos?

It's one thing to put Miss Marple in stories where she doesn't properly belong, and to a certain extent, you can even understand that. There are, after all, only so many novels, and the short stories are unfilmable. All of the Miss Marple shorts involve her club of relatives and friends, sitting around and discussing old cases and problems that she, of course, solves just from hearing all the details. But you can't reasonably film that. (That said, they've actually filmed "The Blue Geranium". I would imagine that this goes from being a story told by Sir Henry Clithering to Miss Marple to being a story investigated by Miss Marple with Sir Henry drifting along in the background.)

The thing is ... the current producers change the motives and the murderers, even in stories in which she actually appears. (There is no lesbianism in the novel The Body in the Library, no matter what the series would have you think.) And in several other stories, they've combined and reworked characters, and changed motives and murderers wholesale. (The Secret of Chimneys and Murder is Easy are unrecognizeable .... although at least Murder is Easy keeps the same murderer, although the motives are drastically changed. (Dame Agatha would not, I believe, have ever dreamed of giving the murderer the particular motive that shows up in the episode. She would have been genuinely shocked at the very idea.) The baffling thing is that there are other stories given a straight-ahead narrative filming more or less exactly as they were written. The Mirror Crack'd and A Pocketful of Rye are recognizable adaptations of their source material. (And perfectly cast, besides.)

It is a puzzlement.

...So his complaint is that it's a distracting multitasker. (Whereas my complaint would be that it can't multitask enough, but then,if I'm spending that much money, I'd rather have a computer than an appliance, which is what the iPad is designed to be.) And getting grouchy because something is exactly what it's meant to be and designed to be is just a bit silly. That said, I still think they should have turned the Air into something, you know, functional and affordable instead of doing an appliance. I mean, consider: the screen is more or less the same size on the Air and the iPad. If they'd just stuck a central hinge on the Air, made it so that you could rotate and flatten the screen against the keyboard, then you could have something a lot more useful. And then they could bring the price down into something that's reasonable for Apple -- Apple's prices are infrequently reasonable in regular terms -- and people would be plotzing themselves with happiness even more than they are. (And considering as the iPad is reportedly selling a million per month world wide, we're talkin' a whole lotta plotzin' here.)

Practical ideas like this, no doubt, are why I have the money I have, and why Apple has, quite insanely, surpassed Microsoft in the market cap value of the company. (Seriously, you've got software on something like 90% of all computers in the world, most of the hardware is made to work with your system, and the value of your company is surpassed by one that makes a computer that's only used by a very small segment of the population. However, the population LOVES your toys. Not your productivity stuff -- except for a couple of the software programs -- but the toys. Everyone loves iPod! Everyone loves loves loves iPhone -- even though they pretty much universally loathe AT&T, or rather, being bound to the company unwillingly.

And now for a slight veer: Have I mentioned that I love revision3.com? No? I love revision3.com. So far, I watch three shows on their site. In part, I must confess, I watch because it's where Robert Heron and Patrick Norton landed, and as an old-time TechTV/dl.tv watcher, it warms the cockles of my heart to see them gettin' their geek on with HD Nation, even though I only just got any sort of HD anything with the new computer. Sadly, Patrick seems to have retired the kilt from the tech.tv days -- although he still has the tam. He also does Tekzilla with Veronica Belmont, covering computer technology more generally. Veronica also gets her geek on just as much as they do -- even more so, really, since she's a hard core gamer, and Patrick doesn't seem to be.

Revision3 seems to be branching out beyond the merely techy these days. They've got a new show called Food Mob, with Niall Harbison, which is, of all things, a cooking show. Done on what looks like something slightly more than a shoestring budget -- it's got a very static camera style, and as far as you can tell from the way things are handled, it's done primarily by Niall, his cameraman Aaron (who is also the official food taster) and a producer. Each show also gets broken into something called Food Mob Bites, these little 3 minute recaps of each recipe. They're actually kind of annoying; they don't have the chyron notes and things that make up for the fact that, despite that the show is clearly aimed at beginners, Niall never tells you the amounts of anything. You chop some of this, cut in some of that, and if it weren't for the chyron sidenotes that fill in the quantities, beginners could be very lost in trying to repeat some of what he does. But still, it's fun to watch overall. It reads sort of like the concept was, "Hey, let's get a bunch of our mates together and do a cooking show!" The vibe is deliberately homespun, and weirdly Andy Hardy.

Revision3 does do a bunch of other shows, but honestly, most of them are too geeky even for me. Which is saying something, if you think about it. LandlineTV comes as close as they really get to being something that I like -- they do manage the odd moment of interestingly acid commentary (that one will go over the heads of anyone who didn't know about the Lane Bryant bra controversy, however), but it's overally not really my thing.

For Revision3 as a whole: Come for the geekery, stay for the cooking, and, if you like, stay for the gaming and even more geekery and the odd bit of comedy.

I'm glad to see that "The Sing-Off" is coming back this December. I really enjoyed it the first time through; they managed to get a nicely eclectic group of groups together, and it was very entertaining. (Plus, the right group won.)

Now that it's been renewed, however, I really hope that the University of Oregon's On The Rocks tries out and gets onto the show. Why? Mostly because I want to see them do the number below on national television, just because.

That would play even better with them all dressed in similar clothing, as the groups did last season.

Regardless, I'm glad to see that the show will be back, and that the network didn't decide to overkill a good thing, keeping it down to a very limited series.

I get the idea of writing a hook to pull readers in, truly I do. It would just never have occurred to me to make costume fetishists the lede on an article about gay comics content and gay comics fans. It reads like there might actually have been two entirely independent articles at one point, but there wasn't enough of either of them to work, and so they got smushed together. Which kind of works. Kind of.

To be fair, sometimes, that's exactly what's needed. For example, in one case, a person was doing the job of four people, because the manager directly above her was trying to meet certain targets for personnel expenses -- erroneously, it seemed -- and wasn't hiring replacements for people as they left. The solution there, as was perfectly reasonable, was to hire a couple of people, and to give that person a major raise. In another case, I'm pretty sure that a manager at Hooters had his job saved purely by the fact that he was being filmed; he was having his female employees doing some terribly, horribly degrading things -- not quite sexual harrassment, but still terribly humiliating. Quite honestly, I would think that without the filming, a corporation would lay itself open to all sorts of lawsuits if they didn't fire the guy ... if he hadn't been filmed. In another case, Waste Management realized that it needed to rework its trucks and/or its break policy because they didn't allow female workers to take bathroom breaks during an eight hour shift on the trucks. And so on and so on, and those are all perfectly reasonable.

What sometimes bugs me is that some of the solutions on Undercover Boss are directed specifically at individuals. And it's not that I begrudge them their good luck; it's that the same opportunities are almost certainly not going to be available to other employees whom the president/CEO/COO has not met. White Castle made arrangements for one guy to go to culinary school. Two different companies made arrangements for specific employees to undergo wellness training of various sorts -- Roto-Rooter apparently arranged for one employee to get a home gym, as well as working with a nutritionist and an account at a health foods store. They also arranged for another employee to get a minibus for his amateur kids basketball team -- though, to be fair, that was almost certainly done as a donation to an organization that could use the bus for other activities. Others have gotten various types of housing arrangements handled, because for various reasons, they weren't making enough money to stave off mortgage default. (That usually, and deservedly, gets corrected as well. It's rather surprising the sheer number of people at these companies who are being outrageously underpaid, in ways that the leaders seemingly don't know about.)

To be sure, I'm not at all sure how long the "undercover boss" gimmick is going to be sustainable. You can only have just so many people appearing with unexpected video cameras just so often without people eventually figuring out what it's likely to be. (Myself, if that happened, I'd go checking the company website for the name of the chief officers -- CBS usually makes sure that photos are taken down before filming starts, so I wouldn't expect to find pictures -- and then I'd do an image search to see if I could find photos. And then I might very well warn people I knew in other locations, if I knew any of them.) But apart from the sustainability, what I wonder is how long it will be before the show winds up getting one of its undercovered companies sued by employees who figure that some of the individual solutions they see should be offered to the entire company. After all, it's going to be hard for a company to justify just giving person A a certain amount of money to cover their mortgage, just because the founder met them and knows how hard they work. Or to justify giving employee B a scholarship, just because the CEO met them and realizes what a kickass employee they'd be with a little more of a specific type of education.Or why worker C, who met the COO, gets a tailored wellness program and a home gym and worker D, who's just as unhealthy, doesn't. Some of the things they're giving out to individuals really ought to be universal benefits available to everyone in the company.

And perhaps, just perhaps, they need to think harder about some of the solutions to the other employee problems that they're trying to solve. Because it can't be that long before one of those solutions causes an even bigger problem that it's going to take a lot more work to solve.

Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) - 21st Annual GLAAD Media Awards - New York:

Awards Presented on Stage
Outstanding Drama Series: Brothers and Sisters (ABC)
Outstanding TV Movie or Mini-Series: Prayers for Bobby (Lifetime)
Outstanding TV Journalism Segment: "Why Will Won't Pledge Allegiance", American Morning (CNN)
Outstanding Digital Journalism Article - Two-Way Tie:
- "'We Love You, This Won't Change a Thing'" by John Buccigross (ESPN.com)
- "Why Can't You Just Butch Up? Gay Men, Effeminacy, and Our War with Ourselves" by Brent Hartinger (AfterElton.com)

Other English-Language Awards Announced in New York

* Outstanding Film-Limited Release: Little Ashes (Regent Releasing)
* Outstanding Individual Episode: "Pawnee Zoo" Parks and Recreation (NBC)
* Outstanding Daily Drama: One Life to Live (ABC)
* Outstanding Talk Show Episode: "Ellen DeGeneres and Her Wife, Portia de Rossi" The Oprah Winfrey Show (syndicated)
* Outstanding TV Journalism – Newsmagazine: "Uganda Be Kidding Me" (series) The Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC)
* Outstanding Newspaper Article: "Kept From a Dying Partner's Bedside" by Tara Parker-Pope (The New York Times)
* Outstanding Newspaper Columnist: Frank Rich (The New York Times)
* Outstanding Newspaper Overall Coverage: The New York Times
* Outstanding Magazine Article: "Coming Out in Middle School" by Benoit Denizet-Lewis (The New York Times Magazine)
* Outstanding Magazine Overall Coverage: The Advocate
* Outstanding Comic Book: Detective Comics by Greg Rucka (DC Comics)
* Outstanding New York Theater: Broadway & Off–Broadway: A Boy and His Soul by Colman Domingo
* Outstanding New York Theater: Off–Off Broadway: She Like Girls by Chisa Hutchinson

Benoit Denizet-Lewis' story was fascinating, if vaguely inconceivable back in my day. And, in one of those moments of clanging irony, One Life to Live had its award announced a couple of days after the producers announced that the gay storyline for which it won was being phased out. Apparently, they thought that the storyline had harmed the ratings. (The fact that they also dragged out the wretched and annoying Mitch Laurence storyline from mothballs at exactly the same time somehow doesn't get blamed. Only the gay guys in what was clearly a subsidiary storyline. Yes. Quite.)

And you know what? I'm not even going to snark about that comics award. Yes, Detective Comics comes from one of their beloved four mainstream publishers (DC, Marvel, Image, Dark Horse). Yes, Greg Rucka is, you know, a straight guy. It's also a superhero comic starring two lesbian leads, with gripping storylines. And it's bloody flippin' gorgeous to look at. (It's a bit of a pity that this seems to be only a writers award; I think that artist JH Williams III has had as much to do with the series' success as Rucka, frankly.) Doesn't mean that I don't think there were other titles out there worthy of consideration; just that, even allowing for GLAAD's relentlessly narrow parameters for consideration, this is a pretty good choice.

Spanish-Language Awards Announced in New York

* Outstanding Novela: Más Sabe el Diablo (Telemundo)
* Outstanding Daytime Talk Show Episode: "Adopción gay: un tema muy controversial" Paparazzi TV Sensacional (MegaTV)
* Outstanding Talk Show Interview: "Realidades de ser gay en la tercera edad" El Show de Cristina (Univision)
* Outstanding TV Journalism – Newsmagazine: TIE: "En el cuerpo equivocado" Primer Impacto (Univision) & "Damas gracias: Entrevista con Eva Leivas-Andino" Al Rojo Vivo (Telemundo)
* Outstanding Newspaper Article: "Mas familias de dos papás o dos mamas" by Pilar Marrero (La Opinión)
* Outstanding Magazine Article: "Del odio a la justicia" by Lena Hansen (People en Español)
* Outstanding Digital Journalism Article: "Saliendo del clóset: Cómo enfrentarlo en familia" by Fernanda Martínez (Univision.com)

What the hell was Leno thinking? There's being a good sport, and then there's being a total idiot, and this pretty clearly crossed the line. By the end, Leno was clearly not a happy camper. And he set it up! After it became obvious where this was headed, wouldn't you change a question or two on the fly, do something so that you didn't turn yourself into the comedic equivalent of a volleyball? (Serve, lob, set, SPIKE!) I mean, jeez, guy, do something.

And yet another shoe drops as NBC announces its forthcoming post-Olympics schedule, also known as Life After The Great Failed Experiment.

Mondays kind of make sense. Kind of. On the one hand, "Trauma" -- which has been yanked from the jaws of cancellation but not necessarily back into production, as NBC still had six episodes of the series to burn off -- would seem a terrible fit for "Chuck", albeit a better fit with "Law and Order". You'd think that maybe they'd want something more transitional between Chuck and L&O, like, say, "Parenthood". But then, that's the one so-far-unaired series that's been getting a certain amount of critical respect, even with the last minute recasting of a central role forced by Maura Tierney's breast cancer. So putting it after "Biggest Loser" on Tuesdays makes sense, as BL has been their consistently highest-rated non-football primetime series. So, perforce, Tuesday's schedule is perfectly understandable.

Wednesday's schedule, on the other hand ... that one has a certain head-scratching quality. "Mercy" is profoundly unsuited for the early evening timeslot. And if you're going to do that, why wouldn't you have the one new drama you managed to save lead into new episodes of SVU, rather than into an encore SVU episode that then leads to a new episode of the same show? The only thing I can think is that they decided to simply suicide the second hour against of "American Idol" and "24" ... but then, why would you suicide "Mercy" as well?

Thursdays are pretty much the same schedule NBC's had all year, with the exception of "The Marriage Ref" -- which sounds like an utter abomination before the programming gods.

...Yeah. So there's that. Because watching real life couples fight and get comedic zings launched at them is going to be so entertaining! In any event, "The Marriage Ref" as an end to the evening doesn't seem exactly calculated to improve NBC's fortunes on that night; wasn't the one thing that came out of the Leno experiment a fairly clear indication that people don't quite want that sort of comedy heading into their evening newscasts? But then, it's not as though NBC has a lot of product on their shelves to stick into that slot.

Fridays are very meh, with "Who do you think you are?", a celebrities' origin story reality series which sounds like a less sensationalistic take on "E! True Hollywood Story", only it's possible that some of the celebrities won't have died tragically or stupidly or have done something lunatic to warrant being profiled. (Which ... honestly, sounds like it could be a bit dull.) Saturdays, along with every other network, are a very traditional "lay down and die" schedule. (Once upon a time, Saturdays were the second most watched night on television. True story. CBS had the killer lineup of Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart and the Carol Burnett Show. Oh, for the good old days. But one digresses.)

Sundays are kind of eyecrossing, featuring NBC taking direct aim at CBS ... by counterprogramming with more or less exactly the same type of shows that CBS is airing for the early part of the evening. Sending "Dateline" up against "60 Minutes" again? I mean, Dateline sometimes does ... OK on those nights, but by and large, it never seems to win that sort of thing. And they're sending "Minute to Win It", a game show formerly called "Perfect 10" hosted by Guy Fieri, up against "The Amazing Race", ABC's "Extreme Home Makeover", and Fox's animation block. (Interestingly enough, Fox has ordered a US version of Britain's "The Cube", which uses a similar concept, giving people a very limited amount of time to complete otherwise very simple tasks for a startlingly large amount of money. The Cube adds in the concept of a sort of physical restraint -- contestants are contained inside a plexiglass cube Fox apparently sent the order straight to series, but it's not clear when the series will air -- my own guess would be as a summer replacement series, depending on cost, given the relative success of ABC's "Wipeout!" as a summer series. But i digress.) Guy Fieri, the second winner of the Food Network's "Next Food Network Star", can be a very ... acquired taste, let's say. Though, honestly, game show host seems like the sort of thing that would suit his expansive personality to a T. "Celebrity Apprentice" goes up against ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and "Brothers and Sisters" and CBS' procedurals, offering a genuine alternative and a proven show that should do OK in that time slot. (Though, seriously, two hours a night of that every week? Well ... OK.)

Really, the best thing you can say of NBC's winter/spring schedule is, given the utter lack of notice and time they had to construct it is that they're clearly making the best effort they can. It'll be interesting to see how it all works out.

It's worth noting that they're a day behind at this point. Last night, Conan got truly vicious and mean about the whole thing in a way that I hadn't thought he had in him, including taking a direct shot at Jay Leno.

I have to admit, I hope this is the last time he does something like that. As long as he can direct his shots at NBC, and not Leno, I think he'll get a lot more support. Once he starts going after Jay ... well, honestly, at least in his public persona, Jay is a bit meaner and a bit sharper with the personal attacks, and I kind of don't think Conan can win that way anyway.

Moreover, in order to maintain any sort of respect from its own employees and from the business at large, NBC has to put a stop to this public sniping on its own airwaves, and soon. In any other business, an employee who went after their employer like this would at the least be suspended, if not fired outright. Of course, they're in a difficult position there, as well; Leno's also been sniping at the network, and he's the one they want to keep the most. Differential treatment for substantially the same activity might put NBC in an even more difficult legal position. The one thing they've got to work with is that Conan seems to have now specifically said in public that NBC breached his contract, which is something their lawyers can go after.

On the other hand, there's this interesting aspect: NBC is actually kind of benefiting from the late night follies. Kind of. "The Tonight Show" ratings are up 42% in key demographics this week. You'd think that might be enough of a "win", if that's quite the right word, for NBC to let things continue. However, ratings for the Leno show have dropped 10% during the same time period, which means they're feeding even fewer viewers to the affiliates' late night newscasts, which was the key that set all these dominoes in motion in the first place.(That said, Leno's lead-in was off substantially as well. Sort of points out the benefits of a strong lead-in, doesn't it?)

The whole mess will probably end, or at least disappear from public view, fairly soon. Enhanced ratings for Tonight aside, NBC simply cannot tolerate things going on like this for much longer.

So presumably, when NBC moves Jay Leno back to the 10:30 Central time slot, he will actually get to be hosting the Tonight show again. I can't imagine that NBC will want the name to go away after all these many years, and it'll be available.

Except ...

The question is just how much NBC wants to screw over Conan at this point. Considering the rather epochal reaming they've been giving him the past week or so, the idea that they don't "have the stomach" for a long legal battle seems kind of improbable. They may decide to shelve the Tonight show name for a couple of years -- ending something like a continuous 50-odd year run -- purely to keep from having to make a massive payout. After all, part of this whole mess was about NBC wanting to save money at the corporate level, even though they were told and told and TOLD that the Leno show would be ruinous for their affiliates.

That Conan may not have the stomach for a long legal battle I can imagine -- his public persona, at least, is the sort of person who really woudln't like that. And, hey, he's been getting paid a few million a year for a while now. Even with the downturn in the stock market, he surely has enough stored by to decide, What the heck, I'm going to take a couple years off, let my contract expire, maybe go back and do a lot more standup to sharpen those skills again, and then come back to late night with Fox or whoever. And that said, as the article notes, the Fox affiliates are for the most part not at all happy about Fox wanting a late night show and having to give up the lucrative (and unshared) advertising spots that come with the syndicated shows in that timeslot. That's apart from the rather hefty expenses to the network itself that come with starting the show in the first place. Given that their affiliates are going through "a challenging business cycle", it might also suit Fox to back off for a couple of years until things settle down a bit.

The only issue then would be whether or not people were still interested in watching Conan at all -- a very real issue, given how easy people seem to bounce from show to show these days.

And all of this coverage came from people noticing that NBC had ordered a startling 18 pilots for next season, including an even more startling 10 one-hour dramas, and unless the Leno show went away, NBC had nowhere for those shows to go, even if they cancelled the rest of their lineup.

Here's the question I'd like to see answered: if NBC really does plan to effectively cancel Leno's show as of the end of the Winter Olympics ... what do they do with the rest of this season? They didn't order drama pilots for this season in large enough numbers to cover the space. They don't have enough comedy shows in reserve to shove back their dramas into the late primetime slot. They let Southland go to TNT -- and I would argue, myself, that it should have been either there or at FX in the first place, but that's neither here nor there. They let Medium go to CBS. So far this season, they let Trauma go, period. That's three shows that they no longer have to plug holes with. The question remains: what does NBC do with that last hour of coverage from the beginning of March through the end of August? (And make no mistake: NBC will need to do something to prevent the normal summer viewing doldrums from absolutely killing any momentum they might build up for next fall.)

They may be able to expand Dateline to take over some of the space. It has the virtues of being relatively well-respected and, you know, cheap. And its ratings couldn't possibly do much worse than Leno. But even Dateline would need some prep time to get stories filmed, edited, ready to air. And the last time NBC tried to overload its nightly lineup with too much of that sort of thing, viewers, again, deserted in droves. People only want just so much news coverage, alas. Apparently, they do have some reality shows in reserve, and as noted in The Wrap's article, they can always pull over some USA, SyFy and Bravo shows for a short-term fix. (That said, they tried doing exactly that the past two summers. Turns out that people really don't want to watch USA shows on NBC. Cable penetration seems to have finally gotten deep enough that most people who want to see those shows actually do watch them on their original broadcast.) Depending on how the contract reads, they may also be able to pull "Friday Night Lights" onto the rotation a bit earlier -- though I'd think that DirectTV would object most strenuously to shortening their exclusive window.

It's likely that whatever sort of short-term solution NBC comes up with, it will involve doing something with the earlier slots as much as the later ones. Those previously mentioned reality shows without air dates will almost certainly be better suited for earlier in the evening rather than later. Perhaps they can come up with some sort of game shows on the fly or perhaps expand existing ones -- two hours of Biggest Loser that night, maybe, instead of one? except that's already been taped, of course, and that would probably be much too major an edit and would likely damage that show very badly. Regardless, doing something earlier would allow them to set the schedule back to the slightly more sane state it was in last season. "Heroes", the mostly-departed "Trauma", "Mercy", "Law and Order" and "Law and Order SVU" are all clearly in timeslots too early for the material -- the "Law and Order" shows most notably. Seriously, who on earth thought it was a good idea to lead Fridays with that material?

NBC has done this sort of rebuilding act before, of course. They were in a terrible state back in the 1980s, before they built their line-ups of doom with the Cosby Show, LA Law, ER, and other shows that pulled them out of the pit. The landscape now, however, is dramatically different. That television viewership has become heavily fractured since then may, oddly enough, help a bit; it means that in order for something to work well, it doesn't need the same sort of huge audiences that you needed back then. (A side note: One of NBC's notable decisions back in the day was cancelling an excellent comedy called "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd" because it was damaging their powerhouse Thursday night lineup. At the time, Molly Dodd was something like the 13th highest rated show of the season, and LA Law, which followed, was top ten. They replaced Molly Dodd with, I believe, Family Ties or Night Court. The next season, LA Law was the top rated show on television.) That said, the one thing that NBC had at the time, which they don't have now, is time and stability. They could afford to let shows that didn't do well initially have some time to find their audience. They had people who got to hang around long enough to tinker with lineups until they worked. None of that seems to be true today; if whatever they do to make things work doesn't work fairly quickly, those people may not get a chance to try again.

Basically, NBC has a six-week to two-month window in which to figure out what the hell they do now, as well as a summer to figure out what they do next. The network's certainly going to be looking at some interesting decisions ahead. Possibly -- even probably -- in the Chinese curse sense of "interesting".

In last night's episode of Glee, they made the students pair up with each other to sing ballads to each other, as it would be required at sectionals. Fine and dandy. And the students were paired randomly by picking names out of a hat, which allowed for people to be paired in hi-larious ways. The club has an interesting yet very Hollywood mix of apparent ethnicities -- a black boy and girl, Matt and Mercedes, and an Asian boy and girl, Tina and .... They have, interestingly enough, resisted the temptation to pair everyone up romantically along ethnic lines. So far, so good. For last night's episode, the black guy, Matt, was supposedly out sick, leaving Mr Schuester, the teacher, to pair off with the student who he discovered had a crush on him. Larf riot! And then Tina pulled a piece of paper out of the hat, and she said: "Other Asian."

Ha.

Ha.

Ha.

Here's the thing: Glee club only has 12 students. They've been going for several weeks in the show's time. Mr Schu is practically neurotic about trying to be a good mentor to his students. You're telling me that after all this time, he wouldn't know the student's name? Moreover, he wouldn't know how humiliating it would be for that student to have it stated in public that the teacher couldn't remember the guy's name? Mind, it's also possible -- perhaps even probable -- that Tina said that on her own, as an insult to someone who might well have been one of her persecutors. Which ... OK, but in that case, the teacher should have said something. It shouldn't have passed unnoticed. And in either case, quite honestly, it feels vaguely like the powers that be were trying to avoid giving him a name because once he has a name, he'd actually maybe get lines, and the speaking cast is quite crowded already.

I suppose I shouldn't be terribly surprised. They screwed the pooch rather badly the last time they brought up anything like ethnic issues played for comedy, in the episode "Throwdown", but that was easier to get past, since they were trying to make a point -- albeit badly, and the point was actually quite quite wrong -- and the good intentions were practically glittering on their sleeves. (And, in fact, in light of later revelations about Sue Sylvester, the episode makes a great deal more sense ... though the point Schu makes is still quite quite wrong.) In "Ballad", this was just a small moment played straight up for comedy ... and they should have known better. Anyone thinking about it for a tenth of a second would have known better. It's not true to the characters as they've built them, it's not true to the situation, and it's wrong on its face. Plus, it's just plain not funny.

To be sure, last night's episode was wildly uneven. One thing they did right was showing other parents, finally, and how they react to the news that their children are going to have an untimely baby, which the entire school including faculty already knew. Finn's mother was hurt, but supportive; Quinn's parents threw her out. There's also the gay kid Kurt with a crush on Finn, and Finn having the brains of a flea (and, to be fair, being a teenager) has not the slightest idea how to handle it. And the actual crush plot with the teacher and student was handled fairly well, and done in one, which is good. And we will not speak of Mercedes' advice to Puck, which was not only wrongheaded, but possibly also wrong for the character as we've seen her built to date. (She seems to have very firm ideas about what's right and wrong, and to tell someone that they should just shut up about what's right in order to make life easier for someone else doesn't seem in character.) It wasn't, overall, a bad episode, and it had some very good moments in it.

But that "Other Asian" crack ... it still nags, for some reason. It's a tiny, small thing. I know this, I absolutely know it. It just ... vexes me.

It vexes me, you hear?

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Commendations? Brickbats?

No, really.

No ... really.

"Acquire voices" ... well, whatever.

Most likely, to the extent that gay romances get published, they're going to be M/M romance rather than gay -- that is, aimed and oriented at their women readers, rather than at the gay market. Developing a new client base would be massively difficult, after all, and they've had Torquere and Samhain and Dreamspinner and Ravenous Romance and (somewhat accidentally) Cleis Press to show them that yes, there are lots and lots of women out there who will read stories of men in love and/or gettin' it on. And Carina, as long as people know that it's a Harlequin imprint, would be a desperately hard sell to gay bookstores and gay male readers. After all, we've long been conditioned to run screaming into the woods at the very sight of a Harlequin romance, because gooshy books that women like are icky! Icky icky icky! (We men are delicate flowers that wilt at the mere mention of women's literature and/or romance. Be gentle with us.)

(For the record, I have, somewhat accidentally, wound up with three Harlequin audiobooks. One was actually pretty enjoyable, although the pace of the reading kept the wacky hijinks from coming off quite the way the author probably intended. The other two, I must admit, were rather dreadful. Not because they were romances -- strangely enough, I like a good romance, meself -- but because the authors didn't seem to trust the characters or the story they were telling. They kept introducing extraneous obstacles, because if the characters actually just, you know, talked to each other, the stories would have been about half the required word length. It was very frustrating. But one digresses. For the record, I've also quite deliberately bought some from Ravenous Romance, including some gay(ish) and a couple of straight ones. Overall, not bad, although I do have Issues with some of the writers. But that's fodder for another entry.)

It really will be interesting to see what writers and what types of stories wind up getting published by Carina. The no-advance policy may deter some people from even trying to sell to them; it depends, in part, on what the royalty rate actually is. Judging from ravenousromance.com and Amazon's Kindle books, the price of your average e-book will be noticeably lower than that of a paperback, so it might wind up that you get a smaller amount of royalty moneys than you would from a traditionally published book, with or without advances, anyway.

The other interesting point, from a purely business perspective, is Harlequin deciding to make their books DRM-free. If they also pick one of the more open formats -- which, if they're not using DRM, they might as well do -- that will enable their books to be used on the Kindle, the nook (Barnes and Noble insists on the lower-case "n", and I'm certainly in no position to kvetch), netbooks and laptops or most PDAs and smart phones. There should be the potential for a surprisingly large market. It is, however, a highly unusual business decision; most of the current e-book publishers are pretty solidly in the "DRM! DRM! Oh, dear gawd, do not put something out without DRM lest we die! die! Die right here and now! Aieeee!" camp. Harlequin may be one of the few major publishers to decide not to copy-protect their works. This will, of course, lead to a certain amount of piracy, but it may also lead to slightly higher sales, as well, assuming that the model for the music industry is somewhat valid.

I have to admit, I am rather curious as to how Harlequin's M/M books will turn out. My main issue with the M/M romances that I've read is that the men frequently aren't particularly realistic, but then, I'm never quite sure how realistic romances are supposed to be. After all, they're a fantastical sort of literature, entirely by design. It seems rather pointless to harp at fantasies for not being real. I suppose my particular taste in romantical literature would be for more real men, though. Somehow, that seems to make for a story that works better.

But that's an entry for another day.

Questions? Comments? Brickbats?

Hmm.

Well, assuming that they not only want to deal with relevance, but also to connect the films with something more than just the existence of the characters, I'd think that a painful politicized war with the Romulans was somewhat more likely and reasonable. For that matter, although they were at odds for years and years in the outer space version of cold war -- speaking of allegory and relevance -- the Federation never, I believe, actually went to war with the Klingons. They just yelled at each other a lot. And then the Klingons had the odd civil war or two which the Federation both tried to keep out of and wound up helping particular factions therein, because nobody gets to be completely disinterested in a civil war on your borders. The other reason that the Romulans would make slightly more sense than the Klingons is that, according to the story of the first film, Nero's Narada devastated the Klingon space fleet -- something like 40-60 warbirds destroyed. Add to that the destruction of a fairly hefty chunk of the Federation fleet at Vulcan, and the chance to take out two of their rivals could look terribly tempting to the Romulans. THAT said ... if the Klingons think that Narada was a Federation weapon, if they don't know about the destruction of the fleet or Vulcan, then some sort of retaliatory strike that leads to war might make sense. (How they would not know about all that fairly quickly, I leave as an exercise for the screenwriters. Hey, maybe we can get the Golden Gate Bridge all destroyed again!)

But on the ... well, not so much an upside as a "gee, wonder if they were paying attention" side, it looks like they're going to be reinventing the better years of Deep Space Nine -- only with characters that weren't quite developed for any story that dark, and putting it in a terribly compressed storyline. After all, one can but assume that they're not going to make war with the Klingons/Romulans any kind of long-running theme through the next and succeeding films; that would hamstring their ability to tell stories that didn't have to do with the wars of the worlds. Any war is likely to be a one-and-done story, maybe with enough time passing between the films to say, "So, right after Nero, the Romulans/Klingons did this thing, and then the Federation finally retaliated, and then we had this war, see?" Starting more or less like Star Trek: First Contact, in the middle of a battle that gets explained as things move along. (Though it's worth nothing that First Contact is a very "inside baseball" film; it fails completely if you never saw Next Generation, since you wouldn't know who the Borg were, and if you never saw the Zephram Cochrane episode of the original series, since you wouldn't know who he was either.)

I wonder if Section 31 is known to exist in this new, darker version of the Federation that the new timeline contains, or if it's still called Section 31. It would certainly exist -- Starfleet is much more military, judging from the size of Enterprise and the fact that a huge chunk of the fleet was off doing military exercises, and any organization that military will have some sort of black ops group.

Sounds like the new film is going to be all about defining the parameters and ethics of the new Federation. We knew what it was, what it aspired to be, back in the days of auld. What we don't know, because the first film was concerned with reintroducing the characters and showing us that things were different now, is what it is. And now we get to find out.

One suspects that the Federation's version of Abu Ghraib, Baghram, and extraordinary rendition will be very nasty indeed.

And Playgirl vs Unzipped is only the tip of the hot throbbing iceberg, as it were. Other gay porn outlets have been offering him money to pose naked, and possibly do a bit more. Mr. Johnston does not, it appears, seem to be taking those offers even remotely seriously. No, it's narrowed down to two -- (1) Playgirl, which, apart from the fact that the magazine portion of the title has died and the online version is perfectly well aware that perhaps 60% or more of its readership is actually gay males, and (2) Unzipped, which is unabashedly all gay! all the time! (but which is perfectly well aware, if you read the articles -- really, there are some! -- that a certain smallish portion of its readership is actually straight women. (The article on strap-on sex from a few months back could only ever have been aimed at women. After all, absent illness or injury, we do come pre-equipped, as it were. But I digress.)

Apart from the issue of whether it's going to be Playgirl or Unzipped -- and, seriously, judging from the admittedly very little I've heard/seen Mr Johnston say in various places, I really do think that Unzipped might be a tad further than he's willing to go, even though they'd be perfectly willing to allow him to protect his manly modesty, as it were -- there's also been a veritable feeding frenzy over the shirtless photos of him changing his kid's diaper. (Scroll to the bottom of the Advocate article for a sample.) Is he a good looking guy? Well, yes, I suppose. Needs some chest hair. But yes, he's perfectly decent looking. Is there perhaps a touch of the schadenfreude in having the baby daddy of Sarah Palin's daughter's child doing something of which former Gov. Palin and her social conservative set would strongly disapprove? Oh, hell, yes! Does all that account for all the unseemly feeding frenzy in wanting more, more, MORE of him? Well ... not really, no.

Sometimes, I just don't understand the gays.