Cleveland Rocked

Scott Hardie | May 3, 2004
Any comments on the quiet death of "The Drew Carey Show"? I never cared for the show much, as it was obnoxious and depressing, but any show that lasted nine years and once dominated the ratings for several seasons and is still popular in syndication deserves a better send-off than this. At least they finally got the creative carte blanche they always wanted.

Anna Gregoline | May 3, 2004
I've always hated Drew Carey, and so I've never watched the show. And for the record, I think the fuss over Friends is ridiculous.

Jackie Mason | May 3, 2004
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Anna Gregoline | May 4, 2004
I love Sopranos, but I am a little alarmed when msnbc has something in there on every monday talking about the "body count." Do we need to talk about shows this much. IT'S TELEVISION.

Scott Hardie | May 4, 2004
MSNBC reveals the outcome of The Sopranos, Survivor, and The Apprentice each week on their menu, the morning after the episode. It drives me crazy. I don't watch The Apprentice, and I almost always watch Survivor on broadcast, but I don't have HBO and so I'm saving The Sopranos for DVD. I already know the cliffhanger at the end of Season Four thanks to MSNBC; now they're trying to spoil the surprises of Season Five as it airs. This weekly summary feature seems completely pointless to me, as there are three kinds of people: Those who don't watch the series at all (don't need a summary), those who watched the episode last night (don't need a summary), and those who watch the series but have not yet seen this episode (don't want a summary on account of spoilers). What good does it do? I could always skip the summary, but they have to post spoilers on their menu and make them hard to avoid. They've been doing this for years; they never learn.

Anna Gregoline | May 4, 2004
Jesse and I are watching the Sopranos from the beginning on DVD, although we are current with it. Watching it all at once in a row is really helping me understand a lot of loose ends that I was confused about. Highly recommended to do it this way.

Jackie Mason | May 4, 2004
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Anna Gregoline | May 5, 2004
Seinfeld started it all.

The Sopranos is set mostly in New Jersey.

Melissa Erin | May 6, 2004
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Jackie Mason | May 7, 2004
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Anna Gregoline | May 7, 2004
No, I don't remember the Roseanne ending. What happened?

Seinfeld's ending was pretty weird (they all went to jail) but it was kind of appropriate.

Melissa Erin | May 7, 2004
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Jackie Mason | May 8, 2004
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Scott Hardie | May 8, 2004
Didn't watch the "Friends" finale on account of "Survivor" being on, but I do plan to rent the DVD next week, not that the ending hasn't been thoroughly spoiled for me already. When eating breakfast this morning, I didn't have my computer or DVD player hooked up yet, so I took advantage of the free cable in this apartment and surfed the morning news shows. I swear to you, I could not land on a news channel for more than thirty seconds without them mentioning the "Friends" finale. NBC & MSNBC covered it the most of course, but even their rivals were playing clips and interviewing TV critics about it and speculating on the ratings it drew. I must have heard it brought up at least twenty times over breakfast, no matter how often I changed the channel. My annoyance inspired the new image on the main menu.

I rarely watched "Friends" and so my opinion holds much less weight than that of a fan, but I was kind of hoping Ross and Rachel would stay broken up at the end of the series. If they broke up and fell out of love that many times over the years, they obviously were not made for each other! When Sam and Diane stayed broken up at the end of "Cheers," it taught me that a TV series can surrender the romantic subplot and still have a happy ending. If my own life were a TV show, and the actress playing Kelly (my ex-fiancée) had been a series regular but quit, and they were to bring her back right now for a series finale, I would not consider it a happy ending if she and I were to become a couple again; it would feel like all the progress I had made since she dumped me was for nothing.

Also on that note, it bothered me when Carol Hathaway spent a year pining away for Doug Ross on "ER" when George Clooney left the series a year before Julianna Margulies did. Doug got to have all these personal plot threads and develop into an independent character, but Carol spent four years having virtually no plot thread that did not involve Doug romantically. When Doug left the series, Carol finally should have started developing as an individual, but no, the writers made her pregnant with his twins and she spent a year moping about his absence and in the end he showed up to marry her. I'm angry that in so many ensemble series, the women get romantic subplots almost exclusively, while the men actually get other things to deal with.

Jackie: I could be mistaken, since I stopped watching "Roseanne" halfway through its run, but I think Dan Connor's heart attack (as a plot element) came about by accident. John Goodman had decided to leave the series after eight years, and they wrote out his character with a fatal heart attack in the last scene of the season finale. When it was decided over the summer that the ninth season would be the last, Goodman decided to stay after all, so they found a (sloppy) way to bring him back, and the final episode managed to get some use out of that heart attack scene.

But I do agree with you that "Roseanne" took itself far too seriously. It wanted to be a drama but didn't have the talent (in writing or acting) to pull it off. My mom and I watched it together every week for a few years, and I remember whole months at a time going by in which literally every episode involved some change in the status quo: Some couple came together or split up, someone moved into or out of the Connor household, someone opened a new business or got a new job, someone quit an ongoing habit or developed a new one, someone got pregnant, someone died, whatever. The show eventually became unbearable for me because of an abundance of these soap-opera plot twists; I found myself looking forward too much to those one or two episodes per season that were just pure comedy and had no bearing on any running plotline.

Jackie Mason | May 9, 2004
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Anna Gregoline | May 10, 2004
I stopped watching Friends when all of them started sleeping with each other and having each other's babies. I don't know any people who in real life would continue to be friends through all that mess. It's stupid.

Scott Hardie | May 10, 2004
Good point, Anna. I remember some cynical blogger asking why the "Friends" didn't just have a big group orgy and get it over with.

I agree with you about "Cheers," Jackie. Diane had been gone from Sam's life, and Rachel was not gone from Ross's (though she should have been, as Anna said). Plus, "Cheers" was mean-spirited at heart; nearly every punchline was one character insulting another one. For more than one or two of the characters to live happily ever after just wouldn't have felt right. Save for occasional zingers from Chandler, "Friends" had a sentimental attitude about its characters and couldn't have ended any other way; you could have guessed halfway through season one that the show would eventually end with Ross and Rachel together.

Just out of curiosity, I looked up "Frasier" and learned that Kelsey Grammer is actually still in his forties, which means Frasier Crane probably is, too. I wouldn't have guessed it. I do remember that episode with the past loves, and it seems Frasier is destined never to stay in love for long. If he did finally find a woman in the final episode, they would be broken up a few years later in the timeline. Rebecca Howe had the same problem with her men, and I remember that after she became engaged to Tom Berenger's plumber in the final episode, Ted Danson guest-starred on "Frasier" a few years later.
Frasier: "How is everyone?"
Sam: "Well, Rebecca's plumber struck it rich in the lottery and dumped her. So she's back at the bar."
Frasier: "Oh, you re-hired her?"
Sam: "No. She's not working for me. She's just back at the bar."

Scott Hardie | May 22, 2004
Rented and watched the "Friends" finale. I hope I don't offend any "Friends" viewers here, as I count a few fans among my friends, but good god that was awful! I do not exaggerate when I say that I can imagine second-graders planning a little skit for a class assignment coming up with better jokes. Joey's wild double-take at the baby? Erica not recognizing her own name? Ross not learning his mistake after nine years of failing to get Rachel? This is really stupid material. It scored one laugh for me, Joey referring to Paris and New York being on "two separate continents! ... (right?)" Maybe my problem was expecting more comedy and less sentimentality, but this was pretty bad all the same. If not for that MSCL Christmas episode, this would be the worst hour of television I've ever rented.

To Jackie: I agree with you, and most critics, that what the finale got right was giving the fans what they wanted. That meant the romantic ending they wanted, but also just letting the show end in its own natural way, not becoming overburdened with the need for some giant twist. It was satisfyingly low-key for a much-hyped event that drew 51.1 million viewers.

Jackie Mason | May 22, 2004
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Melissa Erin | May 22, 2004
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Scott Hardie | May 25, 2004
Earlier in this thread I wrote about MSNBC trying its damnedest to spoil "The Sopranos" for viewers like me who were into the series but not watching it as it aired, instead saving it for later. It's one thing to have a weekly summary on your site that such viewers can skip, but it's another thing to announce spoilers right there on the menu, making them impossible to avoid.

Well, they finally did what I feared; they spoiled the surprise death of a major character. If you don't want to know who it is or how/why it happened, don't read this link. The title of the article, which doesn't name the character but makes it pretty clear all the same, was linked right there on the menu. An instant, unavoidable spoiler.

My first encounter with MSNBC spoilers came back in the summer of 2000, when the first season of "Survivor" was on fire in popularity. (Perspective: The final episode, naming Richard Hatch as the winner, scored higher ratings than the series finale of "Friends" did a few weeks ago.) That night was so exciting for me and tens of millions of other viewers, but not one poor fellow in California. According to the angry letter-to-the-editor he sent to MSNBC the next morning, he was leaving work, preparing to go to a "Survivor" party to watch the finale in suspense with friends, and he briefly checked MSNBC for travel times to find the fastest route to the party. There, in giant letters on the site menu, was RICHARD WINS. The episode had just finished airing on the east coast minutes earlier.

That man said he had been a loyal reader of MSNBC for years, and would no longer read it as of that day forward. The same is true for me today; I have been reading it many times daily since 1997, but now I spurn it.

Anybody want to suggest a permanent replacement?