Wonders in the Dark

56. The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson (1962-1992)

July 22, 2017 by wondersinthedark

by Lucille Juliano

It’s a simple fact, that throughout show business history, there has never been such a success story. Who in the world has had thirty years in one spot? It never happened before. There’s nothing to compare it to. Sometimes old-timers hang on and they’re not so good, but the audience likes them and forgives. You don’t have to forgive him. He’s as good as the day he started. -Phyllis Diller

I loved being on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Nobody listened as good as Johnny. He’s also a great actor. He laughed at my jokes like he’d never heard them before.

-George Burns

He is, he was, and will always be the best there was. It’s been thirty years of the best television we will ever have. There is not another Johnny Carson . . . unless there’ll be another Charlie Chaplin.

-Jerry Lewis

I have nothing but the greatest admiration for him. I think that when he quits, it’s kind of an end of an era.

-Jack Paar

(taken from the foreword of Here’s Johnny! revised edition by Stephen Cox, 1992, 2002)

Johnny became the host of The Tonight Show about a year or so before I was born. My parents watched him religiously and as soon as we were old enough to stay up late, my sister and I became regulars as well. Apparently, Johnny had become an institution in our lives just as he had for countless Americans around the country. Like clockwork, he returned each night and we as admirers, banked on it. When I think about it, he was always there right after the 11 o’clock news on NBC for more than half my life. My family and I watched him every night Monday through Friday no matter where we were at home, visiting family or friends or on vacation. For three decades, Johnny was seated behind the desk and entertained us in so many ways. He was more than just an anchor to late-night audiences. He was the “King of Late-Night Television”. It has been said that Johnny had some of the greatest comedy writers around. His timing and delivery aged like fine wine and only got better. It could be that we just got so used to him that any errors really didn’t matter. We went easy on him because even his blunders were amusing. During his reign, seven presidents passed through the White House and the country moved through wars, victories, and taxes.

I can still remember watching his last show on May 22, 1992 with guests, Robin Williams and Bette Midler. Robin was his typical crazy self and had Johnny in stitches not knowing what he would do next. Bette was his official last guest. During the show, she sang three times including a duet with Johnny himself. Her rendition “You Made Me Love You” or should I say “You Made Me Watch You” was absolutely hysterical and a real roast of Johnny and his career. During the finale, Bette came out and sang her own rendition of “One More for My Baby (and One More for the Road) which was so touching and sentimental that there was not a dry eye on either side of the camera. You could see that Johnny was holding back tears as she sang and hear it in his voice as he said goodnight to his audience. Continue Reading »

Posted in Lucille Juliano's film reviews, Top 80 Greatest Television Shows | 10 Comments »

57. Sherlock (2010-present)

July 21, 2017 by wondersinthedark

by Dennis Polifroni

It all comes down to preference.

When a tried and true property takes on an over-haul, it’s natural for purists to bitch and buck at anything that doesn’t follow the rules by the book. Sherlock Holmes purists are no different from those that have seen new incarnations of old favorites. Sometimes the overhaul works (as with Barry Sonnenfeld’s ADDAM’S FAMILY movies) and some just never seem to catch on (as with the current guises this new slew of films has decided to paint onto Batman and Superman). Yet, even with the naysayers ranting, there also comes a slew of viewers that jump at the offerings of something new, something different.

Whatever the case may be, there will be naysayers against Mark Gattis and Steven Moffat’s updated take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved sleuth, and the world he created around him. Gone are the horses and carriages that toted the super detective and his assistant, the ever watchful Dr. Watson (a wonderfully toned down turn by comedian, Martin Freeman), from crime-scene to crime-scene. Gone is the double billed hat that illustrations of Holmes, and every filmic incarnation of the character since, has seen him sport. The time and place is no longer Victorian-age England. The time and place is England, NOW! Continue Reading »

Posted in author Dennis Polifroni, Top 80 Greatest Television Shows | 16 Comments »

58. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

July 20, 2017 by wondersinthedark

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by Sierra Fox and Nicholas Perry

It was the Star Trek program that wasn’t Star Trek: The Next Generation. The space station centered tv show that wasn’t Babylon 5. (Now, it’s the show Ron Moore worked on before Battlestar Galactica.) Despite never quite getting out of the shadows, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was one of the big three sci-fi shows of the ’90s (Babylon 5 and The X-Files filling out the trio.)

A spin-off of Star Trek: The Next Generation, DS9 represented a significant departure from the established formula. Where Next Gen had an episodic structure with almost all problems solved within the episode, DS9 was increasingly arc-based and focused on consequences. Where Next Gen‘s main cast was all but forbidden to argue with each other, DS9‘s was designed for interpersonal conflict. Plot threads (and characters) were carried over from Next Gen and refashioned into a new, complicated picture of the Star Trek universe.

The series starts shortly after the end of the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor (depicted as something of a cross between the Holocaust, European colonialism, and the Japanese occupation of China in World War II). When the provisional Bajoran government reluctantly turns to the Federation for protection against further attacks by the Cardassian Empire, the Federation agrees to send personnel to help staff and upgrade the abandoned Cardassian space station Empok Nor, newly christened Deep Space Nine. After a stable traversable wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant is unexpectedly discovered near Bajor, Deep Space Nine and its crew is placed at the center of a series of geopolitical conflicts that eventually threaten the entire Alpha Quadrant.

{Note from the writers: Nick watched Next Gen and started watching DS9 from its beginning. Sierra started watching with “The Way of the Warrior,” the opening two-parter of season 4, which functions as something of a second pilot. Either approach works, but it does affect our view of things. We’ll mention those effects as we go on.}

Led by Commander (later Captain) Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) and his second in command, Bajoran liaison officer Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor), the main cast also includes Starfleet officers Lt. Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell), Chief Miles O’Brien (Colm Meaney, reprising his Next Gen character), Dr. Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig), the shapeshifting Constable Odo (Rene Auberjonois), Ferengi bartender Quark (Armin Shimerman), and Sisko’s teenage son, Jake (Cirroc Lofton). They are eventually joined by Lt. Cmdr. Worf (Michael Dorn, also reprising his Next Gen role) in season 4, and Counselor Ezri Dax (Nicole de Boer, replacing Terry Farrell) in season 7. Continue Reading »

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(59) A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America”

July 19, 2017 by wondersinthedark

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by Bob Clark

There’s a passage in Scott McCloud’s graphic novel (or perhaps the better term is “graphic essay”) Understanding Comics in which the cartoonist examines the ways in which new artistic mediums sometimes rely on the principles of past forms in order to gain their footing. When films began, they were often little more than stageplays recorded on celluloid until directors began to take advantage of the newborn disciplines of camerawork and editing, and when television started out it chiefly resembled radio with a visual component, or films reduced to living-room screens (depending on who you ask they’ve never stopped being that). He didn’t directly mention the live playhouse experiments of the early 50’s where neophyte creators like Rod Serling and John Frankenheimer got to cut their teeth as professional writers and directors before graduating to feature films or their own series, but in the best examples of that form you can sometimes see the idea that McCloud was referring to come to life– the sometimes shaky, sometimes graceful first steps of a genuinely new and potential-rich creative medium, born of the clumsy and hodgepodge marriage of more established peers.

The fact that Tony Kushner’s landmark play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes would find its home on television can in some ways be recognized as a sort of artistic destiny, reaching back to the close relationship that newborn, cinematic television had with the stage in its early days. But it shouldn’t go overlooked just how unlikely and revolutionary it was for this work to thrive in such a mainstream forum, for reasons ranging from the political to the dramatic, to the purely aesthetic. It all looks so easy, fourteen years out from Mike Nichols’ saintly production of the epic-length Tony winning play– spanning two three hour installments and detailing, among other things, the catastrophic effect of AIDS on the gay communities of New York in the 1980’s and a whole host of legacies revolving around the worst abuses of America’s power throughout its lifetime. The fact that it was made with an Oscar winning director and flamboyantly scenery-chewing Oscar winning stars, the fact that it was made on HBO, ground-zero both for prestige television and the sometimes derided subgenre of AIDS dramas (sandwiched between the star-stutted And the Band Played On and The Normal Heart), or even the fact that its writer would since go on to become a dependable scribe for no less than Steven Spielberg on Munich and Lincoln (a fact that would probably make every single character in this play gag for multiple reasons)– it’s all very tempted to take Angels in America for granted and simply move on to the next celebrated bit of 00’s television and leave it at that.

Posted in author Bob Clark, Top 80 Greatest Television Shows | 6 Comments »

60. Friends (1994-2004)

July 18, 2017 by wondersinthedark

by Samuel Juliano IV

Note: This is the first published review by 20 year-old Samuel “Sammy” Juliano IV.

Joey: “Why do you call him Gandalf?”

Ross: “Gandalf the Wizard. Hello, didn’t you read Lord of the Rings in high school?

Joey: “No, I had sex in high school.”

This is a classic exchange in the hit sitcom Friends which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004 with 10 seasons and 236 episodes. The show revolves around a group of six friends during their twenties and thirties living in Manhattan, New York City. The creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman went through several different titles for the show such as: Insomnia Café, Six of One, and Friends Like Us before landing on the, Friends.

The filming of the show took place at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, California. Each of the ten seasons of the show all got ranked within the top ten of the final television season ratings with the eighth season getting the number one spot. The series finale of Friends, which aired on May 6, 2004, was watched by about 52.5 million American viewers, making the series have the fifth most watched series finale in television history and the most watched television episode of the 2000s decade. Continue Reading »

Posted in Author Samuel Juliano IV, Top 80 Greatest Television Shows | 34 Comments »

61. True Detective (2014-15)

July 17, 2017 by wondersinthedark

by Dennis Polifroni

“When you enter the darkness… The darkness enters you…”

I think what separates TRUE DETECTIVE from all the other crime shows and movies of the past two and three decades can all be boiled down to one word: PERCEPTIONS.

Perceptions are what we take into a thing when we feel that thing will follow a tried and true blueprint of design. We think the characters and plot points will resemble those shows and films of the past.

Let’s be honest, though.

When TRUE DETECTIVE premiered, didn’t most of us think that HBO, normally a haven for artistic creativity and freedom on the tube, was readying to give us another clone of NYPD BLUE and IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT? We pretty much feared that the show was only using superstar names, like Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughy, as a ruse to make us tune in and provide enough, in the way of ratings, to fuel a simple clone of TV past as a lure for even more subscribers to the pay-TV outlet.

What we got, as we know now, was something wholly different and, most of the time, utterly brilliant in both design and in its ability to slap preconceived perceptions in the face.

The backdrop of the series is the hot and sticky backwoods regions of Louisiana. Our perceptions of the area, as illustrated in contemporary crime noir films like Alan Parker’s ANGEL HEART, are that of seedy hotels and taverns where conservatism meets superstition and those not from the area are warned to make sure they keep enough gas in there tank as a breakdown on the road would surely result your disappearance at the hands of VooDoo practitioners and weirdos like the ones found in THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. To an extent, TRUE DETECTIVE does have all of these pinnings but, it’s the preconceived PERCEPTION we have to immediately add stigmas that often go with these things, and then not find them, that differentiates TRUE DETECTIVE from every other crime show and movie of the recent past, and inspires every crime show and movie that followed. Continue Reading »

Posted in author Dennis Polifroni, Top 80 Greatest Television Shows | 15 Comments »

War for the Planet of the Apes, The Beguiled, and Jaimie Grijalba fundraiser on Monday Morning Diary (July 17)

July 17, 2017 by wondersinthedark

by Sam Juliano

You could have practically fried eggs on the sidewalk this past week with some oppressive heat, but things at Wonders in the Dark are similarly in scorching mode. The Greatest Television Series Countdown has proven a monster hit, with an explosion of comments this past week that matches the site’s finest times. In fact we’ve had sixteen entries and both the comment and page view totals have been spectacular. The fabulous quality of the comments has also made the activity here endlessly rewarding. I want to thank everyone -including a brace of newbies for supporting the venture and for keeping the positive energy flowing. At this juncture there can be no doubt it is one of the most attended projects we’ve ever run in every sense. A special thanks for all those -for the second time- who descended on my Anne of Green Gables/Anne of Avonlea post with unbridled passion, wonderful anecdotes and artistic appreciation. The comments for my other pieces, Poirot included, and for the splendid essays by Adam Ferenz (latest thirtysomething), Dennis Polifroni (Star Trek: TNG and True Detective), Brian Wilson (The Muppet Show), David Schleicher (Fanny and Alexander) and my dear Lucille (The Waltons and Bewitched) and Jillian (Orange is the New Black) have been cause for celebration. We are having tons of fun here while honoring the art in television in a very big way.

Our longtime Chilean friend Jaimie Grijalba has informed me of a worthwhile fundraiser being conducted in his behalf for the Locarno Film Festival , and I want to share it here with everyone. It does include a video. Jaimie is asking for help:

https://www.fundmytravel.com/campaign/bNZ51YJL5T

Lucille and I with family members attended two films this weekend, both on Sunday in fact:

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