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I skipped watching a new show on Monday to watch Castle. Kind of a mistake. Castle seems to have lost every shred of originality that it once had. Wouldn't call it bad. Maybe I've just seen enough of it.
Last night I watched The Muppets with low expectations. The fact that they brought back The Muppet Show after all these years shows how short of new ideas this generation of entertainment executives are. The show wasn't at all bad. It just wasn't exceptionally good like the original. It did seriously miss the talents of Jim Henson and Frank Oz. Miss Piggy sounded fine, but most of the other characters were less distinctive than the old voices. The old show was a variety show. The new one is a sit-com for puppets, albeit puppet characters we are all familiar with. In the lead up to the show in the past few weeks, it was said that The Muppets is not a kids' show. Having seen it I have to disagree. It's certainly less mature than the original, less sly humor and inuendo, more slapstick. I think its big audience, if it can attract one,will be kids and younger adults who are too young to remember the original Muppet Show and who definitely need a break from the unrelenting moody comic-book based shows , moody police shows, moody teen shows and moody medical shows that seem to be all that the networks can come up with these days.
Yogi Berra passed away yesterday. He was kind of a fixture in my life. He was definitely a whole generation older, but somebody who seemed to be always on the minds of St. Louisans of my generation. The fact that he played baseball and became a Hall of Famer in New York, really nagged at Cardinal fans. Those were the days before an amateur draft. Baseball teams simply signed whomever they could get their hands on. It really was no secret that Yogi was the best young player in town in his day. So why had the Cardinals passed on Yogi and signed the much more articulate, young St. Louis catcher, Joe Garagiola instead? Deep conspiracy (sort of). The general manager of the Cardinals at that time was a man named Branch Rickey. Rickey was considered a baseball genius. He changed the way baseball business was done by having the Cardinals buy up independent minor league teams (virtually all of them were independent when he started) and use them as a pipeline of talent for the major league team. Once the system was in place for a few years, the Cardinals won several World Series in short order thanks to their wealth of experienced talent. After Rickey left St. Louis, he was the general manager who decided to shake things up by bringing black players into the major leagues. He signed Jackie Robinson and Don Newcomb and the Dodgers won a string of National League championships. So why did this bright guy pass on Yogi Berra? It seems what really happened was that Rickey was already thinking of his future job in Brooklyn. It seems very likely that Rickey told Berra to his face the Cardinals didn't want him with every intention of signing him to the Dodger organization as soon as he switched jobs. Unfortunately for Rickey, the Yankees weren't asleep to what was happening in St. Louis. They stepped in and signed Berra. They'd had a tradition of being a great ball team for decades already, so why wouldn't he sign with them? Berra helped the Yankees beat the Dodgers (and everyone else) repeatedly in the World Series.
Last night I watched The Muppets with low expectations. The fact that they brought back The Muppet Show after all these years shows how short of new ideas this generation of entertainment executives are. The show wasn't at all bad. It just wasn't exceptionally good like the original. It did seriously miss the talents of Jim Henson and Frank Oz. Miss Piggy sounded fine, but most of the other characters were less distinctive than the old voices. The old show was a variety show. The new one is a sit-com for puppets, albeit puppet characters we are all familiar with. In the lead up to the show in the past few weeks, it was said that The Muppets is not a kids' show. Having seen it I have to disagree. It's certainly less mature than the original, less sly humor and inuendo, more slapstick. I think its big audience, if it can attract one,will be kids and younger adults who are too young to remember the original Muppet Show and who definitely need a break from the unrelenting moody comic-book based shows , moody police shows, moody teen shows and moody medical shows that seem to be all that the networks can come up with these days.
Yogi Berra passed away yesterday. He was kind of a fixture in my life. He was definitely a whole generation older, but somebody who seemed to be always on the minds of St. Louisans of my generation. The fact that he played baseball and became a Hall of Famer in New York, really nagged at Cardinal fans. Those were the days before an amateur draft. Baseball teams simply signed whomever they could get their hands on. It really was no secret that Yogi was the best young player in town in his day. So why had the Cardinals passed on Yogi and signed the much more articulate, young St. Louis catcher, Joe Garagiola instead? Deep conspiracy (sort of). The general manager of the Cardinals at that time was a man named Branch Rickey. Rickey was considered a baseball genius. He changed the way baseball business was done by having the Cardinals buy up independent minor league teams (virtually all of them were independent when he started) and use them as a pipeline of talent for the major league team. Once the system was in place for a few years, the Cardinals won several World Series in short order thanks to their wealth of experienced talent. After Rickey left St. Louis, he was the general manager who decided to shake things up by bringing black players into the major leagues. He signed Jackie Robinson and Don Newcomb and the Dodgers won a string of National League championships. So why did this bright guy pass on Yogi Berra? It seems what really happened was that Rickey was already thinking of his future job in Brooklyn. It seems very likely that Rickey told Berra to his face the Cardinals didn't want him with every intention of signing him to the Dodger organization as soon as he switched jobs. Unfortunately for Rickey, the Yankees weren't asleep to what was happening in St. Louis. They stepped in and signed Berra. They'd had a tradition of being a great ball team for decades already, so why wouldn't he sign with them? Berra helped the Yankees beat the Dodgers (and everyone else) repeatedly in the World Series.
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And I completely agree about The Muppets. Really, when a show can't be done the right way, I'd prefer that they just leave it alone. I'm afraid the same will happen to Sesame Street, although my granddaughter seems to be skipping TV completely and going only for the small screen.
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I know there are a lot of older and vaudevillian themes the muppets played to, but done right - there's no reason they can't be evergreen TV
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