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Nerd Lunch Episode 82: 90s sitcoms

Posted in podcast, pop culture, TV shows with tags Nerd Lunch Podcast, nostalgia, podcast, pop culture, TV shows on April 23, 2013 by Paxton

You have arrived at Episode 82 of the Nerd Lunch podcast. Unfortunately, Jeeg went on a bender the other night and is sleeping it off so we are joined by two guests. The first is my co-host from the Cult Film Club podcast, Jaime Hood. Also in the guest seat is the return of our good friend, William Bruce West.

Urkel

This week the four of us discuss sitcoms from the 1990s. We talk about our favorites, our not so favorites, some of the ones we thought were overrated and some of the ones we thought were canceled too soon. Surprisingly there are a couple shows that show up on all of those lists. It’s a fun time talking about TV shows from the 90s, so join us, won’t you?

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.

Or listen to it online here.

Nerd Lunch Episode 79: Drilldown on Firefly

Posted in Firefly, podcast, pop culture, TV shows with tags Firefly, Nerd Lunch Podcast, podcast, pop culture, TV shows on April 2, 2013 by Paxton

Only 21 episodes to go before we hit the big 100. This week we are joined again by the always awesome Mark Dury, the unofficial fifth Atomic Geek. We brought Mark in to finally discuss a subject that I am frankly shocked we haven’t really discussed yet. We get nerdy and drill down on one of the Geek Sci-Fi Holy Grails, Joss Whedon’s Firefly.

We talk about our own experiences with the show. We see if any of us saw the very short Fox run or if we saw the movie. We even discuss if we would like to see Firefly return in some form or another. It’s all pretty geeky. Come check it out.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.

Or listen to it online here.

Bionic Review: Dynamite Comics’ The Bionic Man (2011)

Posted in Bionic Man, comic books, movies, pop culture, TV shows with tags Bionic Man, Bionic Review, Cavalcade Comics, comic books, movies, pop culture, reviews, Six Million Dollar Man, SMDM Comic, TV shows on March 29, 2013 by Paxton

Richard Anderson, the man who played Oscar Goldman in The Six Million Dollar Man TV series tried for years to get a Bionic Man movie off the ground. Many different writers took a stab at a script. In the mid-90s, Kevin Smith famously wrote a script for a Bionic Man movie that was a reboot of the TV series. I was very excited about this prospect as, at the time, I was a big fan of Kevin Smith and loved the idea of him re-imagining the Steve Austin universe (of which I was a big fan). Unfortunately, nothing ever happened on that project. It just disappeared. Then, in March 2011, Kevin Smith announced that his unproduced script would be re-adapted into a comic book series for Dynamite comics. The comic’s script would be written by Phil Hester and be based on Smith’s movie script. The book’s interiors would be drawn by Jonathan Lau, it would have Alex Ross variant covers and the name would be Kevin Smith’s The Bionic Man. The first issue would be released in August 2011.

Up to this point I have read the first 14 issues of Dynamite’s The Bionic Man. The first 10 issues contain the story arc that is taken directly from Kevin Smith’s unproduced script.

Essential Plot: It starts off very similar to the original TV show/novel. The events have been updated a bit and a few things changed. We actually start off, not with Steve Austin, but with a break in at a government laboratory. An unknown assailant kills all the scientists and steals what looks like a bionic arm. Then we cut to Steve Austin at home. He’s still a test pilot. He’s engaged to Jaime Sommers. Austin is about to retire as a test pilot and marry Jaime. He just has one more test flight to make. And what happens is exactly what you expect. Something goes wrong with the flight, Austin crashes and loses both of his legs, his right arm and his left eye. In this story he’s good friends with a younger version of Oscar Goldman. They convince Steve to become a part of their bionics experiment, so the government pronounces him dead and begin the operations to graft on the bionic limbs. There are several issues devoted to Steve’s recovery and coming to grips with the fact that he’s now part machine. In issue #7 Jaime returns as Steve unexpectedly finds himself at her house and reveals to her that he’s not, in fact, dead. In this issue we also discover that the earlier mysterious assailant from issue #1 has ties to Austin and the bionic program, so the rest of the story arc is discovering information about this assailant and Steve going after him to put a stop to his plans.

The next issue after the Smith arc, #11, was a standalone issue. Steve goes back to his parents’ ranch for some soul searching. We meet his parents and see that his father is dying.

Issue #12 begins the first new wholly original story arc. It’s written by Phil Hester and Aaron Gillespie and drawn by Ed Tadeo. This story introduces the fan favorite bionic Bigfoot from the TV show into the new bionic universe. Austin discovers some unscrupulous people are attaching bionic parts to Bigfoot creatures so he teams up with one of them to help.

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Bionic Review: Cyborg IV by Martin Caidin (1975)

Posted in Bionic Man, books, Six Million Dollar Man, TV shows with tags Bionic Review, book, Book Report, pop culture, Six Million Dollar Man, SMDM Book, TV shows on March 4, 2013 by Paxton

Martin Caidin wrote his fourth and final Steve Austin novel in 1975. It was called Cyborg IV.

Cyborg IV

By this point, Caidin’s character had spun off into the famous Six Million Dollar Man TV show. However, Caidin continued his novels as if the TV show didn’t exist. The continuity within the novels did not overlap with the show. Despite this fact, this particular book was included as #6 in the Six Million Dollar Man book series. Which is confusing (is it Book #6 or Book #4?). The Six Million Dollar Man book series were paperback translations of episodes of the TV show in which authors like Mike Jahn and Jay Barbree novelized episodes like Pilot Error, Rescue of Athena One and Solid Gold Kidnapping. Caidin’s third Cyborg novel, High Crystal, was also confusingly included in this series. The first two Cyborg books were not included.

For this last novel, Caidin takes the idea of “man working in tandem with machines” to a new level. Steve is introduced to a new project within the Army in which an advanced fighter jet/spaceship is directly connected to a human pilot so that ship and man are one and the same. This setup requires that the human pilot have interface ports surgically added to his body, but since Steve already has most of that done, Oscar thinks he’s the perfect test pilot for the project.

The idea that Caidin introduces here is pretty cool. When directly connected to the ship, Steve would “feel” and “see” what happens to that ship as if it were a part of his body. Instead of having gauges and digital readouts tell him about the telemetry of the ship, it would be fed directly into his body and he’d know it just as he knows that it’s cold outside or that he’s hungry. It’s a pretty crazy idea and for some reason it immediately made me think of the Clint Eastwood movie Firefox. And the first time they test Steve and the plane, they have to dial back the connection to 30%, otherwise, Austin may lose all of his individual identity and become “one” with the ship. The way it’s written in the book is actually pretty cool.

The problem? Caidin is his own worst enemy. We spend the first 1/3-2/3 of the book learning about the project and then training Steve on the equipment. The final action of the book is really just the very first outer space flight test for the plane/cyborg hybrid. There is a small conflict with the Russians in that they are destroying US spy satellites, but other than that, the book is just training and a few test flights of the new ship. And the book essentially just ends not giving you any indication about the future of the project or where Steve will go next.

So, again, I’m a little frustrated reading these Caidin Cyborg books because the author has really good ideas but the written execution of the novel is seriously lacking. And considering the books are short, (< 200pgs) Caidin still manages to drone on WAY too long about the most mundane things. So while I’d recommend this more than Operation Nuke it’s not as good as High Crystal or the original Cybog novel.

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A Review of the 1973 TV Guide Fall Preview Issue

Posted in fall tv premier, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews, TV, TV shows with tags nostalgia, pop culture, TV, TV Guide, TV Guide reviews, TV shows on February 27, 2013 by Paxton

Welcome to the second installment of my TV Guide Fall Preview reviews. This is a feature that I sort of “borrowed” from my good friend Shawn Robare over at Branded in the 80s. He covered mostly the issues from the 1980s, I’ll start taking a look at issues from the 70s as well as the 90s.

I previously reviewed the 1974 Fall Preview issue for my birthday last year. I love looking back at these old Fall Preview issues to see the debut of popular shows when they were brand new as well as see well known actors in TV shows that have long since been swallowed up by time. These issues also provide great full page ads for some of the new shows as well as some great vintage ads for products that haven’t been seen in years.

So, let’s dive right into this installment with the Fall Preview issue from 1 year before the previous installment. This article is going to run long. There’s just so much information and ads to show you, so prepare for a ton of information to come your way. Starting now:

Here is the cover to the 1973 TV Guide Fall Preview issue.

There are several very popular shows that debuted this year.

Like last time, I’ll divide this article into three parts. In the first part I’ll look at all the new shows that are debuting in 1973. Following that I’ll look at full page ads for TV shows and movies and at the end I’ll show you some awesome vintage advertising from this issue. It should be lots of fun.

So, let’s begin by taking a look at all the brand new shows for the 1973 TV season (which, technically, began in Sep 1972).

The Bob Newhart Show (left) first debuted during the 1973 fall season. This is a great show and one of my favorites. The Bob Newhart Show would become immensely popular following The Mary Tyler Moore Show for its first three seasons. The show would eventually last 6 seasons and air its final episode on April Fool’s Day, 1978.

Another very popular show, The Waltons (right), would debut this season as well. Again, this show would become extremely popular and last for nine seasons before bowing out in 1981. I remember this show but never really liked it. I thought it was boring as balls.

The TV show M*A*S*H (left) was based on the 1970 Robert Altman movie. M*A*S*H would become a ratings phenomenon and go on 8 seasons before airing its final episode in Feb 1983. That final episode garnered the highest ratings of any single episode of a TV show then or since.

Yul Brenner was probably most closely associated with the role of the King of Siam from the stage and movie musical versions of The King and I than any other of his roles. He toured in the traveling stage production until just before his death. The non-musical television adaptation, Anna and the King (right), was an attempt to repeat that success. It didn’t work and the show was cancelled after 13 episodes.

The Men (left) was an umbrella title for three separate TV shows made by three different studios. It was a spinoff of the weekly NBC Mystery Movie. Each installment of the anthology series would rotate and air every third week. The first series in the rotation was called Assignment Vienna and starred Robert Conrad as Jake Webster, an American agent in Austria posing as a bar owner. He’s real job, though, was tracking down spies and criminals for the US government. The second series was called Jigsaw and featured a Police Detective that disliked proper police procedure and protocol but was effective in “piecing together” crimes like a puzzle. The final series was called The Delphi Bureau and starred Laurence Luckinbill (Sybok from Star Trek V). Luckinbill starred as an American agent with a photographic memory who works for an obscure anti-espionage department in the US government. That last one actually sounds like a show that would air today (See The Mentalist, White Collar, Suits, etc).

The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie (right) began its life the previous season as just The NBC Mystery Movie. It’s where the TV show Columbo got its start. After its success, the group was moved to Sunday and The NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie was born with three more shows. Those shows were Banacek, starring Hannibal Smith himself (George Peppard) as a Polish-American insurance investigator (?) in Boston. Cool Million featured a security/retrieval expert whose fee was $1 million per job. Madigan, the third show, featured Richard Widmark reprising his role from a 1968 movie he had made about an NYPD detective. This particular incarnation of the NBC Mystery Movie would only last a season. Both Madigan and Cool Million would be canceled by the end of the season to be replaced by three more detective shows.

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