'Mooners Monday: Audrey Meadows steps out

Audrey doesn't just step out of Bensonhurst this week, she steps out of the 1950s! Thanks to a free trial period of Starz last week, I enjoyed Ms. Meadows in The Nancy Palmer Story, the season 4 finale of Wagon Train.

The episode premiered March 7, 1961, on NBC. it wasn't even 5 full years after the Classic 30 Honeymooners season, but Audrey already looks a little more seasoned. I guess life on the frontier is even harder than life in that dingy flat on Chauncey Street on a bus driver's salary. However, the plot of this episode relies on Meadows' "innocent" and "sweet" face--the words are from the teleplay, I'm not mocking their use by putting them in quotes--to drive the action.

At the beginning, she regales the chillun of the train with some stories and even captivates the adults. Her natural way with the kids and her pleasant, unassuming demeanor makes her a comforting presence for the wagoneers. It's interesting because to me, Audrey always has a bit of an edge to her, and in fact, post-'Mooners she got edgier and edgier, to the point where she kind of scared me on Too Close for Comfort.

 

However, she's married to Jack Cassidy, who wants to rob a bank. He figures no one will suspect her, and so when everyone else heads off to a night of celebration, they volunteer to babysit, and, whammo, there's his chance to go steal some cash.

I hope that revealing Jack Cassidy plays a scoundrel is not a spoiler for anyone. I will say, though, that this scheme doesn't end that well for neither Jack nor Audrey.

Meadows gets a lot of spotlight moments in this episode, and well she should considering she's Nancy Palmer--it's HER story! I recommend this for any Honeymooners fan who wants to see Audrey Meadows stretch and play a completely different character.

Meadows and Cassidy make a great team, too. Check out this classic Audrey reaction in one early scene they share:

Streaming Video Power Rankings #118

We know streaming video and cordcutting is "a thing" now because everyone is raising rates. PlayStation Vue, Fubo, Sling, DirectTV Now...all raising rates. Netflix is testing a rate increase in Europe. I bet Disney has already raised the price of its OTT service 2 or 3 times...and it doesn't even exist yet.

1) Starz: I enjoyed a free trial of Starz this week, and when you combine all the Starz channels and the stuff they license, you get decent value and commercial-free viewing. I spent my free week watching stuff like Wagon Train, of course, instead of the original programming like Counterpart (which I really do want to see). I mean, a week isn't enough to really dig into those originals, right?

Does anyone know if Starz has done some kind of fake-HD thing to some of the older shows it has acquired? In particular, I thought Sanford and Son looked odd on Starz.

Thanks for the preview, Starz. I'll be back someday and will pay for at least a month or so. I was tempted to do so now so I could see Karen Gillan in those shorts--uh, Jumanji--but I need to check out other stuff this month.

2) Hulu: Because this week I actually started watching some of the shows Hulu is accumulating. Daria is as funny as I remember. Oh, and I rediscovered Regular Show.  I'm excited that 2018's Borg vs. McEnroe is already available (starting tomorrow).

Word of warning, Hulu: Don't think about raising prices. Just because you lose $500 billion a month is no reason to start thinking about spending less on content or raising prices.

3) Prime Video: An impressive slate of catalog movies debuted July 1, and the original Jaws series comes Monday. TWO versions of Stripes? It's also adding a lot of series I don't watch--Bones, Damages, Burn Notice, The Closer--but I'm sure others enjoy. Hey, if you like NYPD Blue, it's here now, too--and without commericals, unlike Hulu. One quibble: It just put up a bunch of official World Cup videos after the 2018 tournament is half over. It's not quite as bad as adding Christmas movies in the summer, but what's up with that?

4) Netflix: I predict this retakes the top spot next week now that my Starz trial is over. I never thought I would enjoy a reality cooking competition show, but I enjoy watching Nailed It with my kids and have to give Netflix big ups for it.

I'm not so interested in most of the originals this weekend, but a new season of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee is cool. His guests include...Jerry Lewis? That's a hell of a get. You know who would be great on this? Andy Kaufman. Jerry Seinfeld should get Andy Kaufman next season.

5) PIX 11: It added some really cool stuff to commemorate the holiday: Bicentennial coverage of Operation Sail in New York City plus coverage of the 1986 Statue of Liberty reopening. These are the kinds of specials you would never run on commercial TV today but are great curios for streaming on demand.

6) Sling TV: It's making my World Cup viewing possible this week. More on Sling TV, which I just got for the first time, is coming soon.

7) WWE Network: I'm stunned that WWE uploaded hours of raw unaired footage from a 20+-year-old event as a "Hidden Gem," but I am also impressed. Plus watching Saturday's Night Main Event on July 4 made me feel like a Real American, brother.

8) YouTube: I was too busy (and by busy I mean busy watching Wagon Train, not busy doing actual life activities) to check out the recent batch of old commercial uploads by my man SeanMC, but I plan to catch up this weekend.

9) Filmstruck: John Wayne is the star of the week, and there's a fun new collection called Eighties Fantasies with movies like Time Bandits and Clash of the Titans. I also want to commend Filmstruck for using its Twitter account to warn people of notable films that are expiring.

10) Shout! Factory TV: I'm not thrilled with the monthly content drop--mostly horror movies--but much respect to Shout! for getting it out and ready on Roku on July 1.

Today on Battle of the Network Shows

Our 50th full-length episode calls for the return of one of the most BOTNS-ish series ever...CHIPS!

Like Roller Disco, the two-parter The Great 5K All Star Race and Boulder Wrap Party features celebrities, troubled youths, and bumbling crooks. Does this one live up to the greatness of Roller Disco? Will Actors and Others for Animals make another appearance?

Click right here to go to our website, or you can get the show wherever you get your podcasts. Don't you dare miss it!

Brooks on Books: "Slugfest: Inside the Epic 50-Year Battle Between Marvel and DC" by Reed Tucker

I love this book. It's just the right blend of taking the subject seriously and having fun with it, just the right combination of facts and opinion, just the right amount of reportage and gossip.

As a DC guy for all my comic book life, though--which is close to 100% of my total life--it pains me to read it. Oh, I'm not one of the hyperpartisan fans mentioned in the text who support one of the Big Two comic publishers at the expense of the other. I have always read both, and when I bought comics and stayed "current" in the hobby, I bought both. But my heart has always been with DC, and my favorite characters are the ones controlled by that company.

So it's tough reading so many anecdotes about Marvel surpassing DC in commercial and critical success, Marvel being perceived as the cooler and hipper outfit as DC time and again tries to imitate it and play catch-up. It hurts, I tells ya.

It's a lot of fun, though. Tucker, a former New York Post staffer and freelancer who is not in the industry, offers an evenhanded but lively account of the decades-long rivalry between DC and Marvel. The former company got a 20-plus-year head start, but when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby invigorated the field with Fantastic Four and other creations, the tides turned and the game was on.

At times it does seem like a game, with publishers, editors, and creators taking playful snipes at each other but still socializing and competing in friendly softball games. At other times, it feels more like a cold war, with personal animosity driving business and creative decisions (like DC and its executive Paul Levitz's anger at Marvel executive Joe Quesada's brash, insulting interview blocking efforts for a Batman/Daredevil team-up). Over the years, though, the two companies managed to cooperate on special projects, share talent, and work together on relevant issues. In Tucker's narrative, there is always at least an undercurrent of rivalry, though.

Tucker spoke with many comic book notables and also gathered info from sources like mainstream newspapers and fanzines and comic book magazines. His skillful integration of that research makes for a smooth read. The history of the medium has been told (and told well) before, but Tucker offers a unique slant on the saga. His focus on the relationship between the two largest publishers mean there is a lot here for people who have read other tomes. Sean Howe's excellent Marvel Comics: The Untold Story  is similarly compelling and gossip-flavored, but there is a lot new in here even if there is some overlap in the themes.

If Jim Shooter, former Marvel editor-in-chief, was a controversial figure in Howe's book, he may be topped by former Marvel president Bill Jemas in Tucker's. One of my favorite moments, even though I am a DC guy, is when the publishers meet for a Comics Code Authority conference and Jemas makes it a point to bring a bunch of guys he just hired away from DC just to stick it to the other side. DC has two reps there, Archie Comics has one. When DC squawked about the unnecessary entourage, "Jemas contended that the number of people from each company was in direct correlation to sales."

That's a great example of the kind of tidbit you get in Slugfest, but most of the time, the feud is friendlier. Tucker shows how the underlying tensions remain even as the specific dynamics often change. In the 1960s, it's the upstarts at Marvel against the staid, conservative DC. Both companies get new corporate overlords and flirt with financial disaster. DC finds licensing success and movie success with Superman while Marvel tries again and again to get some movies off the ground. Now, of course, Marvel Cinematic Universe releases are massive events while DC struggles to find consistent success despite its favorable results on the small screen.

And of course, the battle wages on in the comics itself despite a landscape that is much different than it was in the 1960s. After years of skirmishes in areas like price increases, page counts, variant covers, etc., the two publishers seem like intellectual property farms in an increasingly narrow market for readership. They are still around, though, and still competing not only against all of the other entertainment options out there, but against each other.

Tucker offers valuable perspective on the epic rivalry while wisely refraining from choosing sides. He references the sniping between fans of DC and Marvel but concentrates on the people actually working for the two companies. Slugfest shows that the giant adversaries have a symbiotic but contentious relationship and that their conflict has been an entertaining driver of change in the medium for years and will continue as such. Anyone who grew up on comics and took a side in the eternal DC or Marvel debate will love this, but so will those who always made room for both. Tucker's book is strong enough to bring everyone together--maybe even Paul Levitz and Joe Quesada.

Behind the Rankings: About those MASH reruns

Hulu rocketed to the top of the power rankings this weekend partly due to its unveiling of all 1,983 episodes of MASH. Commenter Top Cat James pointed out that the show is not exactly scarce in reruns. Ah, I replied, but now the series will be uncut and un-time-compressed!

Well, word is out: The adventures of the 4077th aren't truncated for commercials, but they aren't exactly in their as-broadcast form, either. On one hand, they look great--sharp picture and vivid colors that look better than they did on your 19-inch Magnavox in the family den back in the day.

On the other hand, these new HD transfers follow a recent trend of widescreening older shows by cutting the tops and bottoms and showing more on the left and right, thereby avoiding the 4x3 aspect ratio that would leave--GASP--blank space on the sides of the screen. I thought we had won this war (I won't demean our nation's veterans by making a Korea joke) when DVDs eventually made pan-and-scan passe. Yet there is still a fear of "Why is my whole screen not filled?" and it's leading to these kinds of transfers. For more examples, see the recent crop (no pun intended--or, OK, maybe it is) of old Warner Brothers TV shows like CHIPS on Amazon Prime Video. Fake widescreen seems to be the norm.

(Is this why it's taking so long to get promised Fox library series like The Bob Newhart Show? Is someone prepping new HD transfers of the likes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show?)

I understand why many fans of the show are angry. I understand the argument that these shows weren't meant to be seen this way and that this is butchery. I have never been a big MASH watcher, though. I avoided it in reruns over the years--the ubiquity may have driven me away in a sense--and I never got around to digging into the series in its short stint on Netflix. It bothers me that this presentation distorts the original picture, but I think I can enjoy the series, anyway. Hawkeye's sanctimony might be a bigger hurdle for me.

Maybe if HD transfers are done with care and thought, it's worth altering the original broadcast picture if we get far superior picture quality AND uncut episodes. There is reason to suspect that kind of attention to detail is not evident in these Hulu versions. According to this fansite, The Interview, one of the series' more notable installments, is in color instead of the original black and white.

For me--let's put aside the obvious botch on The Interview--the most important thing in general is complete runtimes. As a viewer, I will put up with this if I want to give the series another shot. I have to wonder, though: Why can't we get HD transfers that offer superior quality AND preserve the original 4x3 broadcast ratio?

Classic Shows That Should Be Streaming: 5 for Sony Crackle

I haven't had a good relationship with Sony Crackle.  The service almost never makes the Streaming Video Power Rankings despite offering lots of free content. It never seems to get the user interface right, its ad load is obtrusive, and when it gets a TV series I enjoy, it ditches it without much warning.

I am not giving up on it, though! It keeps trying with original programs, but no one is paying attention to them. Why not dig deeper into the back catalog of Sony material and throw up some more vintage series to get viewers in this crowded streaming landscape? Here are 5 TV classics that make a good fit for Crackle.

NOTE: Much as I would love to see Burns and Allen and black-and-white series like that here, I am not getting my hopes up since Crackle shows little interest in anything pre-1970. So I am limiting my selections to color TV programs.

NOTE #2: I am talking complete series here. Yeah, it's a free service, but the Crackle move of selecting one season or maybe two and then pulling them after a few months is outdated in today's world. Let's shoot for the whole thing for each of these 5:

1) Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman/Fernwood 2Night/America 2Night: Amazingly, Hartman is on DVD, but I think clearances will keep the Martin Mull talk shows off the format forever. All of them deserve another shot. Fernwood had a great run on Nick at Nite, but its parent show, a soap opera satire that ran over 300 (!) episodes in syndication, has had much less exposure.

300-some episodes is intimidating, perhaps, but there are no limits in streaming! Well, OK, there are plenty of limits, really, but you can't tell me Sony doesn't have the resources to make even a big sprawling run like this available on its platform.

2) One Day at a Time: I thought Netflix would pick this up when it produced the remake, but nooooo, Netflix just doesn't roll like that anymore. In fact, despite runs on Logo and Antenna TV, this series has a remarkably low profile considering it ran 9 seasons AND got a lot of attention for the ongoing revival. It seems like an easy add for Crackle.

3) Barney Miller: It never really goes away, exactly, but this critically acclaimed police sitcom never gets much love, either, and it has been conspicuous by its absence in streaming. It's on the digital subchannels like Antenna and is now complete on DVD (thanks to Shout!), but it hasn't received a nice comfy spot on Hulu. I believe Crackle did show some episodes in the past, so it could turn up again.

4) Fantasy Island: The last time I regularly watched Crackle was last year when it had a selection of Island episodes. So naturally it pulled those, and the show hasn't returned. I don't know what's keeping it off. This series is NOT on DVD, but Shout! isn't doing anything with it. It's been more than 5 years since the season 3 DVD release, and that leaves 4 more seasons in the vaults.

Like Love Boat, the guest stars and goofy premises make this a nice "dip into every now and then" kind of show and therefore well suited for streaming. Some episodes were on Hulu, and the show aired on Cozi and Universal HD, but it's too cheesy to not be available on demand. Crackle really should make this one happen.

5) It's Your Move: This is a personal choice for me. A young Jason Bateman and the great David Garrison squared off in this short-lived Leavitt-Moye sitcom on NBC. As the show went on, producers watered down the original concept and took away some of its edge, but at the time it was a breath of fresh air. It wasn't so much that Bateman's schemer was so audacious in his feuding with the adult Garrison (who played a man dating Bateman's character's mom--Caren Kaye), but that he was sometimes wrong. The kid wasn't always the smart one, and it was nice that the show didn't make the adults look like total idiots.

Clever writing and great performances make this one of the great "what ifs" of the 1980s. The episodes are out there, but I'd love to see them in good quality, and this would be a great and very welcome surprise on Sony Crackle.