d e a d t h i n g s o n s t i c k s .

JAIME WEINMAN thinks he's the only guy in the world who cares about the cuts to music in TV shows that get released on DVD. He's not, of course. So far this year, I've not bought the DVD of the British show SKINS, which I otherwise would have grabbed, due to music substitution. There's a couple more, too, which I just can't remember right now. And don't even talk to me about WKRP.

Add to that list Andy Richter Controls the Universe, the engaging 2 season long show that shows in this YouTube clip, just how companies not wanting to pony-up for music rights completely pooches the show. Ugh. This is really, really painful to watch.

WHOA. THIS IS more of Jaime Weinman's usual beat, but I just happened to be doing a flip around and caught part of the last episode of season 2 of Skins on Super Channel. I'm going to assume that they didn't do a different master version for Canada, so I'm guessing this applies for the United States as well.

One of the best parts of Skins, of course, was the music -- an incredibly lovingly-hand picked mix of the eclectic and trippy. Old school reggae, modern British house, weird folk, instrumental, industrial -- it ran the gamut.

But the finale was something different again. The final song playing as Sid scours Times Square for Cassie, is MGMT's Time to Pretend. You can see the scene as originally intended on YouTube (embedding is disabled but click the link) One look at the lyrics, and you'll see how the song kind of perfectly summed up the attitude through two seasons of Skins.

I'm Feelin rough I'm Feelin raw I'm in the prime of my life.
Let's make some music make some money find some models for wives.
I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin and fuck with the stars.
You man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars.

This is our decision to live fast and die young.
We've got the vision, now let's have some fun.
Yeah it's overwhelming, but what else can we do?
Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?

Forget about our mothers and our friends.
We were fated to pretend.

I'll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms.
I'll miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world.
I'll miss my sister, miss my father, miss my dog and my home.
Yeah I'll miss the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone.

But there is really nothing, nothing we can do.
Love must be forgotten. Life can always start up anew.
The models will have children, we'll get a divorce,
we'll find some more models, Everything must run its course.

We'll choke on our vomit and that will be the end.
We were fated to pretend.

Harsh, melodramatic, kind of like, you know, being a teenager. The song that replaced it on the DVD and North American broadcast version is so anemic, so terrible, that it robs the scene of all its impact.

You know, I'm starting to think Needle Drop isn't worth it. Not if some fucking lawyer can just go in there and bung up the ENDING TO YOUR SERIES. Gaaah!

Don't buy the Skins DVD. Stay ah-wayyyy.

The New York Times today has a review of the DVD release of Twitch City.

To the few who saw it, “Twitch City,” a short-lived Canadian series that revolved around its main character’s crippling attachment to his television, stood out as a bold and perversely literal form of meta-TV.

Produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and created by Don McKellar, a Renaissance man of the Toronto indie film scene who won a Tony last year as a writer of the hit Broadway musical “The Drowsy Chaperone,” the comedy ran for a mere 13 episodes over two seasons in 1998 and 2000. But it attained cult status at home and abroad and is the rare television show that also holds up as a work of media scholarship. (It was shown here on Bravo in 2000 and is being released in a two-disc DVD set Feb. 20.)

Its protagonist, a socially challenged shut-in named Curtis (played by Mr. McKellar), spends almost all his time glued to the television, often to a “Jerry Springer” -like confessional circus called “The Rex Reilly Show.” To watch “Twitch City,” in other words, is often to watch someone watch TV. The screen serves as a de facto mirror — a nifty trick for a show about the vortexlike pull and mind-altering possibilities of television.

On the DVD commentary Mr. McKellar calls “Twitch City” an “anti-sitcom.” Many of the plot convolutions are indeed satiric variations on the roommate shenanigans that have long been a sitcom staple. (Joyce DeWitt of “Three’s Company” pops up in a knowing cameo.)

It's this kind of thing that kind of made me dislike Twitch City when it was on the air. The very idea of an "anti-sitcom" makes it feel to me like McKellar channeled the derisive, I hate the theatre character he would later lampoon in Slings & Arrows and let him create a TV series.

I found Twitch City incredibly smug. Not that TV wasn't (and isn't) a rich target, but I just don't think McKellar, with his connection to the precious and elitist world of Canadian film, was the right guy to level the critiques. I thought Larry Sanders, for instance, was a far sharper satire of TV. Even forgotten series like Beggars and Choosers hit harder. (Actually, there's a show I'd like to see on DVD.) It always seemed to me that Twitch City was more interested in saying something important than being entertaining. And that's the kind of attitude that I don't like, either in film or TV.

But here's the thing. It sure was different. And that feeling of mine? Well, that's personal taste. I mean, the original Newsroom was just as savage and smug about TV news as Twitch City was about TV and those who watch it. (And just to qualify it further, I have loved some stuff McKellar's done. Last Night, Highway 61, 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould, his work in Slings, lots of stuff.)

So while I probably won't be re-watching the show on DVD, the last paragraph of the review in the Times really gave me pause:

Curtis is neither a mindless viewer nor a stereotypical pop-culture savant. His obsession is somehow deeper and purer: he watches TV silently, without ironic comment, “to learn from it and not laugh at it,” he says. As a case study Curtis supports the contention of his fellow Canadian Marshall McLuhan that the effects of television are more relevant than the content. In “Twitch City” the medium truly is the message.

Slowly but surely, partly because of the collapse of syndication, (which DaVinci and Cold Squad are rushing in to fill in U.S. markets) and DVD leaks like this, the Corner Gas sets, Trailer Park Boys, Slings & Arrows and the like, there is a distinct flavor of Canadian TV that is starting to make itself known in the USA.

I wonder what happens first. Changing attitudes at home, or even more recognition in the USA which finally makes it "okay" for Canadians to like our own stuff? Hmm.

Or, you know, maybe I just need to knock my head in with a hammer.

Once upon a time there was a Television show about the backstage life of a television show. And it was self-referential. And brilliant and prickly.

But this one had Rip Torn. And Jeffrey Tambor, and Carol Burnett uttering the words, "I can see your balls." And ladies, in one episode, you get to seen Jeremy Piven's naked ass.

The Larry Sanders Show flamed out on DVD because the first season didn't sell well enough to release more, which bums out people like me who loved the show with a white hot pure fire.

Well, now it turns out that there's going to be a new set of 23 Episodes across all six seasons. And Garry Shandling is extensively involved. In fact, it sounds like these might be some of the weirdest, most revealing extras you're ever going to see on a TV DVD set.

Other performers might be content to put out such packages with a few sweeteners, maybe some outtakes and running commentary from the star. But Mr. Shandling has never been like other performers. More than a year ago he set out, hand-held camera crew in tow, to interview virtually everyone connected to the show. There are the series regulars, including Jeffrey Tambor, who played Hank Kingsley (“hey now!”), Larry’s eager-to-please yet quick-to-lash-out sidekick, and Rip Torn, who played Artie, Larry’s fiercely protective executive producer. Mr. Shandling’s camera also found many of the A-list guest stars whom he had goaded into cameos on the original show, including Mr. Seinfeld, Mr. Baldwin, Sharon Stone, David Duchovny, Carol Burnett, Jon Stewart and Tom Petty.

Thus the DVD’s title, “Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show,” and its length: four discs, despite containing just 23 episodes.

Mr. Shandling concedes that these recorded conversations — which are presented largely unedited, with awkward silences and plenty of mistakes — are at least partly self-congratulatory. Taken as a whole the treatment is also expansive, exhaustive and at times exhausting, with Mr. Shandling’s new material (including a documentary) adding up to nearly eight hours.

But the results are, in many instances, riveting. There are some good casting stories: Ms. Burnett, for example, tells how Mr. Shandling persuaded her to be a guest and to play against her clean-cut image. (On the talk-show-within-a-show, she warns Larry that the loincloth costume he’s wearing isn’t covering what it needs to cover.) And Bruno Kirby, whom Larry memorably “bumped” from the last episode, made an appearance as well — his last, it turned out, before he died last summer.

But to those who watch them carefully — and Mr. Shandling hasn’t a clue whether anyone will — the interviews are also striking for his efforts to make amends. He apologizes to some of the best-known people in Hollywood for having failed to thank them for their service on “Larry Sanders,” and for largely allowing them to drift from his life in the years since.

The full New York Times article about the upcoming set is here.

Over the holidays, I've managed to finally dip into my DVD set for St. Elsewhere, which I got a few weeks back.

The set contains all 22 episodes for the 1982 season, with commentaries from Mark Tinker on some, and a couple of featurettes. 1078 minutes total program content. (Yes, chickens, shows were longer in the olden days. We'll get to that.)

I approached this with some trepidation. St. Elsewhere isn't just a show -- to a lot of TV writers working today it can almost seem like the Rosetta Stone.

St. Elsewhere was the show that Joshua Brand and John Falsey created before Northern Exposure. It was Tom Fontana's big break. Bruce Paltrow produced it, back when he was a big TV producer, and not just Gwyneth's late dad. 15 Emmy Awards, and over 60 nominations during its six year run.

It mixed realistic (for the time) medical conditions with social commentary, with character, and with offbeat humor in a formula that was completely new for network TV, which had become calcified into restrictive, unbending 1970's dramas. (To compare: the only other medical drama that was on at the time was Trapper John, M.D. Go, try to watch an episode of that today, see if you get through it.)

In short, this was a show where a group of talented people cast off the soap opera pretensions and general dopiness of 70's TV and started blazing the trail to The Sopranos.

But then again, we said that about Hill Street Blues, too, and when you watch the early episodes of that show, they just don't hold up. Too much has changed in policing, in our culture, in...everything. Hill Street seems, sadly, like a relic.

I'm happy to report that St. Elsewhere fares a lot better. There are still dated elements that clang every once in a while, but there's plenty to enjoy from a story and a character point of view. And if you were a fan of the early years of E.R., you'll be blown away by how much the latter show owes to the former. For one thing, Anthony Edwards and Noah Wyle need to send David Morse a fruit basket.

David Morse, of course, was the centrepiece of a strong ensemble cast which included Denzel Washington (in a smaller part than his placement on the DVD box suggests -- naughty, naughty marketers) Howie Mandel, pre-game show bald, Ed Flanders, and Ed Begley, Jr. to name a few.

David Morse also apparently did this series when he was twelve. Oi. He looks young.

I tend to watch older TV shows with a historical eye, trying to see where the lessons for what we do came from and seeing if, perhaps, we missed some things along the way.

With St. Elsewhere, looking back, I have to say that a lot of the revolutionary things about it now seem directorial instead of writerly. The "hand-offs," as Tinker calls them, where you'd be in one plot, a character would walk by and you'd follow them to another plot -- that seems natural today, but back then it was a big deal. Although I guess scripting them to be that way would seem a bit bold. St. Elsewhere doesn't have E.R.'s ever-moving steadicam, which makes the handheld work all the more impressive: long takes following people onto elevators and off, long runs of dialogue make for a fluid, faster-paced show than just about anything else you saw at the time.

Which is not to say that St. Elsewhere looks modern. It doesn't. And the sniggers go beyond the sartorial quirks, like, "did everyone wear glasses the size of satellite dishes?"

There's a bad synth quality to the score that's unfortunate. They didn't have the money to license songs back in the day (though they were forward thinking in trying) so they had a guy do sound alikes. Well, on this set, even the soundalikes have been stripped out and replaced by soundalikes of the soundalikes, which are pretty awful.

The other thing that's sociologically interesting is seeing the change in acting styles. The less said about David Birney, the better. The guy walks through every scene looking like he's waiting for Marcus Welby to drop by. But even Morse, in the pilot, has a scene that I remember being very emotionally affecting back in the day, which now seems like scenery chewing. It's not a bad performance -- it's just a performance from another time, when the demands of TV were different.

Coming out of the 1970s, TV's main acting influence, it seems, was still soapy. And when scenes called for emotional, everyone went big. Compare Morse's recent run on House to his work here and you'll see what I mean. The one exception is Ed Flanders -- always understated, always sad-eyed.

It sounds like I'm ragging -- but I'm not. Let's be clear: the advantages of this set massively outweigh the disavantages. The Cora & Arnie episode is still as great as I remember. This is an episode which -- unheard of for the time -- actually did a plot about the Homeless. Doris Roberts and James Coco both won Emmys, and their performances are stellar. It's wonderful to see Roberts do drama like that again. (And hilarious to listen to her self-promotion on the commentary track. What. An. Actor.)

You also get to see what, in his words, is Tim Robbins' first onscreen appearance, playing a "terrorist." Lay aside for a moment the sense of queasy dislocation you get hearing that word thrown around about a spoiled rich kid who set off a bomb in a bank. Robbins is good as a young punk. You can see his charisma, you can see the beginnings of the talent he would later bring to bear -- but he's still way unformed. Between the commentaries and a small featurette on Robbins, you get to hear differing interpretations of how green he was and what that meant to the set. (Let's just say it involves a Clash concert.)

The episodes tackle stories that put them way ahead of the curve, like addressing the spiralling costs and limitations of the U.S. healthcare system. But the stories, again, sometimes drag. I found myself wondering, simultaneously, what could we do with that extra seven minutes today, and marveling on how, even in a quality show like this -- how little the audience was trusted to put two and two together. I guess Steven Johnson was right about how TV has gradually made us smarter. (No, I still haven't read the book. I'm getting to it.)

In the past few years, St. Elsewhere has become mainly known for its mindblowing ending. (And some scary, scary internet fans have gone to town and taken that to a scary place.) But it's nice to see the show again. I enjoyed my stay at St. Eligius. Skip the spoonful of sugar. This medicine goes down just fine on its own.